Susan Patron - The Higher Power of Lucky

After Lucky heard the screen door slam and the Jeep start, she carried everything for her project to the Formica table in the kitchen. She wasn’t supposed to work on her specimens at the table, but she needed to spread out. And anyway, she’d be done by the time Brigitte got back.

The collection of specimens, taken out of their Altoid boxes and lined up in a row, was magnificent. She had a hoverfly (waspy looking), two craneflies (mosquitoey looking), a giant tarantula hawk wasp, and a delicate baby scorpion.

Lucky measured the wasp specimen head to tail. It was almost an inch long, a beauty with big, orange wings. The first time you see one may be alarming when it zooms around diving-bombing at you. Brigitte was afraid of them, even though Lucky had explained that they mostly wouldn’t hurt people. All they wanted was a nice fat tarantula.

Lucky began writing the description that would be put in the museum case. It needed to be both dramatic and scientific. She wrote:

The Story of Tarantula Hawk Wasps

and Their Victems the Tarantulas

DO NOT READ ALOUD TO VERY YOUNG CHILDREN

1. The main job of the TARANTULA HAWK WASP is to find a tarantula and sting it between its legs. By the way even though these wasps are pretty big and scary looking, don’t worry. Human beings are a total waste of their time.

2. Finally the TARANTULA HAWK WASP finds a tarantula. This is pretty easy in the fall, when all the tarantulas walk across the main road

Lucky stopped to think about this for a moment. She had not yet discovered why the tarantulas were all traveling southwest in the fall, and she thought it would be interesting to include this information. She thought the museum visitors who came from around the world would want the complete story. Later she would ask Short Sammy, but for now she wrote:

but no one knows why, unfortunately.

3. Then there is a big fight! The tarantula tries hard to get away. The wasp wins the fight, she is happy because now she can lay her egg which is her most important duty.

WARNING: THE NEXT PART IS GRUSOME

4. The TARANTULA HAWK WASP stings the tarantula, who becomes paralized but not dead. Then the TARANTULA HAWK WASP digs a hole, a GRAVE for the tarantula, and lays her egg inside the tarantula’s actual STILL ALIVE body. When the egg hatches, it isn’t a flying wasp yet. It is only a grub. But it is very hungry and guess what it eats? The tarantula!

Lucky was very pleased with the story, which was thrilling and horrid. The tourists and visitors to the Visitor Center would say, “That little town of Hard Pan has quite a wonderful museum. I wonder who made that interesting exhibit?” And they’d say, “I sure never thought I’d feel sorry for a tarantula !” Lucky was picturing large groups of them gathered around the bugs’ dusty glass case, peering excitedly at the tarantula hawk wasp, when Brigitte pulled open the screen door.

8. Snake

Too late to hide the specimens. Lucky scooped them into their boxes, which you have to be very careful about or their legs or wings break off, but Brigitte had already seen. Instead of acting mad and making Lucky scrub the entire table with Ajax—not just the little place where the specimens had actually touched it—Brigitte went to the sink and leaned on it, gazing out the window.

“Oh, Lucky,” she said, “bugs again on the table.”

Lucky noticed that the envelope in Brigitte’s hand was from her own father. She had recognized his handwriting. Every month he sent a check, but never a letter, even though every month Lucky still thought he might. She said, “Did my father send a letter to me?”

Brigitte sighed. She kept on staring out the window. “No, only the little check that is never enough.” She looked like a beautiful daytime TV lady doctor in her pale green hospital scrubs from the Sierra City Thrift Store.

“I have twelve dollars and fifty-six cents saved from my job at the Found Object Wind Chime Museum,” Lucky offered. “We can add that to the money he sent.”

Brigitte answered by lifting a shoulder and poofing air, her way of saying, “Forget it.”

The phone rang just as Lucky realized she hadn’t put the wet clothes in the dryer. It was Lincoln.

“Hold on,” Lucky told him. Then to Brigitte, “I forgot about the laundry. I’ll do it in a sec.”

“No,” said Brigitte in a faraway voice, a voice that was thinking of other things. She slid a cassette into the tape player, the one with the French songs that Brigitte knew every word of by heart. “It does not matter,” she said. “I do it.”

“What’s up?” Lucky said into the phone.

“Nothing. Why?” Lincoln was not a good conversationalist.

“Lincoln, you called me .”

“Oh! Right. It’s commodities day.”

“I know. We already got ours. There’s some weird orange cheese this time.” Lucky could hear Lincoln adjusting the phone. She knew he was tying a knot.

Lincoln said, “Want to meet up at Short Sammy’s in a while?” Lucky and Lincoln liked to see how Sammy cooked the free Government food. He had a very unique way of cooking, and he liked having company.

“Okay. First I have to scrub the table because of the scorpion, flies, and tarantula hawk wasp that I—” She broke off just as Brigitte screamed and slammed the dryer door shut.

“Hang on, Lincoln,” Lucky said and dropped the phone. In a second Brigitte flew by, grabbing Lucky’s hand. She ran outside, pulling Lucky after her. HMS Beagle followed excitedly.

“What happened?” Lucky asked.

Brigitte’s eyes were huge and her face was red. She seemed to be sending off waves of heat in the bright sunlight.

“What happened,” Brigitte said breathlessly, “is that a snake ”—she said the word “snake” like most people would say “rotting dead pus-filled rat”—“a snake is in the dryer.” Brigitte pointed dramatically toward the laundry area at the end of the kitchen trailer.

In a very calm and relaxed way, to show Brigitte that snakes were actually clean and not repulsive, Lucky said, “I see, a snake’s in the dryer.” She said it like snakes in dryers were not a very big deal. She leaned casually against the aluminum side of the trailer. “What kind of snake?”

Brigitte pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “A giant snake!” she said.

Brigitte didn’t even like to see pictures of snakes, which was really, really silly as far as Lucky was concerned, because a picture couldn’t hurt anyone. But Lucky knew that to Brigitte an actual snake in the dryer was a quadruple gazillion times worse than a picture.

Lucky ran back inside, with Brigitte behind her.

“Do not open the door of the dryer!” Brigitte shouted. “She is in there!”

“Who?”

“The viper! I think she snuck inside the trailer and climbed up into the dryer!” Brigitte’s hand and arm showed a snake slithering toward the dryer. “We have to seal it so she cannot escape. Quick—get that sticky gray tape.”

“Well, what kind of snake is it?” Lucky asked again.

“I am sure she is a viper—a rattlesnake! Imagine to live in a place where just by doing the laundry you can be killed!”

Privately, Lucky admired snakes because they were very, very highly adapted to their habitat. One amazing true fact she had read was that snakes actually started out as creatures with legs but evolved to not having legs because they could move around better without them. In fact, Lucky figured the average person went around thinking, Those poor snakes sure have been waiting a long time to evolve some legs. She would never have guessed not having legs would be better than having them.