Susan Patron - The Higher Power of Lucky

All the needles were out. Lucky kicked the burr aside and then crushed it with a rock.

“This is quite a mild case,” Lucky said professionally as she peered at the foot. “It will hurt for a while, so you have to be brave about that.”

“I will,” he snuffled. “I didn’t run away on purpose, Lucky. I was just looking for Chesterfield.”

“You won’t get into trouble, don’t worry,” Lucky said, without knowing if this were actually true.

But now she had a major problem named Miles to worry about. Running away is one thing. Running away with a one-shoed five-year-old is much, much more complicated and dreadful.

19. Eggs and Beans

The windstorm seemed to be getting dis- couraged at last. It was less noisy, and you could see parts of blue sky through the dust. Lucky hoped strongly that the storm would blow way out into the desert that stretched before them like an ocean. From their protected spot in front of the dugout, the desert was all they could see. Hard Pan was far, far behind them.

HMS Beagle raised her head, her black nose twitching, when Miles began making the where-are-

you, where-are-you, where-are-you call of a quail. Lucky let him. Being around Miles took a lot of energy, and she didn’t have much left.

Suddenly Miles quit. He lay facedown on the towel and began to cry softly. Lucky sighed.

“Time for dinner,” she said in her brisk nurse voice. As expected, Miles sat up and looked interested.

“I have sand in me everywhere,” he announced. “Even under my clothes. What are we having?”

“First, hard-boiled eggs.”

“Ewww. I only like eggs when the white part and the yellow part are mixed up together,” Miles explained. “Can’t we have scrambled eggs?”

“Do you see a stove around here? Do you see a fridge with fresh eggs inside? Do you see a pan for cooking ?”

“No,” said Miles in a small voice. “Is there any gravy? I love gravy for dinner.”

“Beans,” said Lucky in a don’t-push-it, Brigitte-

like way. She was saving the Fig Newtons for a later emergency. Maybe by breakfast time tomorrow Miles would decide to like hard-boiled eggs.

Miles peeped softly to himself while Lucky found the can, spoon, and little packets of ketchup. She was very hungry and thought how delicious the beans would taste.

But there was one problem, she realized.

No can opener.

“What’s wrong?” Miles asked.

“Nothing. We’re going to open our can just like the old miners who once lived in this dugout did, okay?” She had no idea how yet. Because of the look on his face, she said, “Miles, do you realize we’re having a big adventure? This is going to be a lot of fun, but we also have to be adaptable , like Chesterfield and the other burros.”

Miles still looked worried. “I can’t run away overnight,” he said. “I’m not allowed to.”

Lucky decided to deal with that later. She peered into the cool darkness of the dugout. It smelled like ancient earth, like she imagined a tomb would smell, which was why she’d never explored in there before and did not want to go far inside now. She did not like that smell. But it wasn’t too deep to see into the corners. A wooden crate held a jumble of old junk.

Checking first for the sticky, messy-looking web that black widows spin—not at all like Charlotte’s beautiful flat web—Lucky searched for something she could use to get the lid off her can. There were a couple of sand-filled glass jars and bottles, a broken rake, a lot of rabbit droppings, and a rusty screwdriver.

She rubbed the screwdriver with sand to get off all the old germs and gunk, then wiped it with a corner of the towel. By holding the screwdriver at the rim of the can and pounding the handle with a rock, she made a small puncture. Steadying the can between her feet, she moved the screwdriver very slightly and made another puncture, widening the first one. She had to go almost all the way around before she could pry the spiky lid back.

“Okay, here’s how the old miners do,” Lucky said at last. She tore off a corner of a ketchup packet, dipped the spoon in the can, poured a little ketchup on top, and ate the beans. “Yum,” she said enthusiastically, to show Miles the one and only response she wanted to hear from him. She passed him the spoon and his own ketchup packet.

Miles dipped the spoon and squeezed a large dollop of ketchup on his hand, missing the spoon completely. Trying to lick it off his hand, he dumped the spoonful of beans on the towel. “Don’t the old miners have a plate ?” he asked.

“Too much trouble to wash up,” Lucky said. She considered Plan B. “What you do,” she said, “is you squirt ketchup straight on your tongue, then you eat a spoon of beans and it all swaps together in your mouth. Try it.”

Miles did. By the time they slurped the last bean juice, taking turns, Miles had beans and ketchup in his hair and all over his T-shirt, but he hadn’t cut himself on the lid and he hadn’t complained. He told Lucky she knew how to cook almost as good as Short Sammy.

As HMS Beagle finished her kibble and searched the ground for extra fallen morsels, Lucky was thinking that, considering the horrendous windstorm, the bother and trouble of Miles showing up, the cholla burr, and the lack of a can opener, still, all in all, it was a pretty successful Running-Away. She felt full and in charge. She looked grown up and maybe even pretty in Brigitte’s dress.

It was then that Lucky felt a little fluttering in her ear and automatically slapped at it. She was not thinking about specimens because the sensation of something in your ear makes you forget all about Charles Darwin.

The bug in her ear went deeper. She tried to gouge it out with her finger but couldn’t reach it. It got to a very deep place inside and sent a shooting, piercing pain into her head. She screamed and leaped to her feet, holding her head sideways. “Something crawled in my ear!” she screamed. “It’s biting me!”

20. A Good Book

Lucky had always worried, in a far back corner of her mind that wasn’t a scientific corner, about a bug crawling into her ear. This was partly why she had a garden-hedge perm. At night, if she remembered, she arranged a clump of hair over her ear, so any bug would come along and say, “Whoa, too hard to go through that thicket of hair,” and find some other thing to do.

The main reason she had mineral oil in her survival kit was to smooth some on her eyebrows for glistening. But another use she knew for the oil was to drown bugs.

“I can get it out like you got my cactus out!” shouted Miles. “Let me try!”

“No! Get me the plastic bottle of oil, quick!” Lucky kept her head to the side in case the bug might fall out because of gravity, but instead it dug around deeper inside. Lucky never knew you could feel that much pain.

She had an urgent, tremendous bad scary feeling and a crazed panic, with that bug moving around and biting tender, sensitive places that should never be touched ever by anything. Its scrabbling and scritching noises filled up her entire head, and those noises drummed out other, regular noises. She grabbed the bottle from Miles, got down on the towel on her side, and aimed for her ear. A large glop spilled onto her hair and neck and Lucky started crying because she thought she’d used it all up and wasted it. But there was still a little oil left that she carefully poured, knowing more by feel, now, where the opening to her ear was.