Lifting the Sky (10 page)

I wiped their soft noses, closed them up in the pen, and followed my tracks back to the house. I scooped some snow into the bottles and set them on the porch.

I looked again at the tracks leading down to the barn. I knew I should go see if Mam needed help….

Hills or helping Mam?

No contest.

I pinched up the top strand of barbed wire and held the lower one down with my boot and squeezed through the fence, hooking my coat in the prongs. It took forever to get it unsnagged. My boots made scrunching sounds as I trudged through the snow past white humps of snow-covered sagebrush. I checked over my shoulder, half expecting Stew Pot to come bounding up through the white fields. Not even my own shadow followed.

In the hills coyotes
yip-yip-yipp
ed as they ganged up on a rabbit or—oh
cripes.
It was fawning time! The first week of June, the time when the antelopes would start having their fawns, and some deer fawns would already be
out there…. I covered my ears. Tried not to think of rabbits and fawns. Tried to blank out the sound of the coyotes.

I was halfway up the hill and already my heart thumped and my throat ached from the cold. I sank down and flopped back in the snow and watched snowflakes float lazily out of the clouds. I closed my eyes for just a minute.

I don't know whether one minute passed, or ten, but when I opened my eyes it was no longer snowing. The pale sun had bored its way through the gray clouds, and patches of blue showed here and there. I scrambled up, wiped my snotty face with my gloves, and hopped up and down to shake the snow from the sticky spots on my coat where it'd been slobbered and slimed by the bums. I wished I'd grabbed my trail mix. I snatched up a handful of snow and sucked on it.

That's when I saw them. If I'd hiked a bit farther I'd have noticed the delicate, pointed-hoof tracks in the snow. They looked as if they'd been made sometime earlier in the morning. I had the strangest feeling that they belonged to Lone One, though they could've been those of a deer. I hesitated, and then decided to follow them. The tracks led down an old animal trail that sloped from the ridge into the canyon. I decided to keep to the ridge, following the zigs and zags of the canyon while keeping an eye on the tracks below. I was almost to the end of the canyon, near where it widened out into a small bowl-shaped valley, when I spotted her.

And yes! It
was
Lone One. I couldn't have picked a worse time to come upon her—she'd just had a fawn! She was cleaning it, licking and licking and licking. Thank
goodness
Stew Pot wasn't with me.
Please
, I prayed as I dropped to my knees and wiggled down flat on the ledge,
don't let me ring any alarm bells to make her bolt and run!

She was standing in a snowy nest of sorts, with sticks and stones scattered in the snow around her where she'd rooted them out and scratched down to bare ground. And of course she'd already seen me. She was super aware of every single thing around her. Her golden light was huge. It spread so far it seemed to touch the sides of the canyon and even reached up to touch me.

Her dark round eyes fixed on me and she didn't move. She stared up, her head cocked to the side as if she were searching her memory bank and remembering where she'd seen me before. Whatever, I must've looked familiar and not a threat because she went back to licking her fawn.

She was making grunting sounds that seemed to come from deep down in her belly. She licked and grunted and licked and grunted and then another fawn started coming right as she was licking the first fawn, licking it all over and grunting, and I just knew the second one would tumble out and clunk its head on something; she wasn't paying attention—she wasn't paying attention at all. She was licking and grunting and licking and grunting as the next fawn slid out all steaming like a little smoking bundle slipping out from a nice cozy warm dark world into a bright snowy-white cold one.

Within minutes the new fawn was struggling to get to its feet. All the while Lone One licked it and grunted and cleaned up all the signs of its birth. All the while her brown eyes scanned the landscape.

It was amazing how quickly the first little fawn had managed to stand, all tipsy and wobbly on its long spidery legs. It latched on to its mother to nurse—the shortest two-second nip ever—and then tipped over, bobbed up, and tried once again. The second fawn wobbled and rose halfway up and then sprawled back down on the ground. Again and again it tried. Again and again it fell back.

I stared at the fawn. With the mother right over it I couldn't see clearly, but something seemed to be wrong. Lone One made a loud honking sound and nudged under the fawn's belly with her long nose as if she were trying to get it to its feet. It took a step, wobbled, and tumbled back down. The fawn seemed to favor one leg.

The fawn finally tottered up long enough to get its first sip. The other fawn was already happily hopping about trying out its long spindly legs. Lone One seemed anxious now; probably she wanted to move the fawns away from their sheltered nest at the end of the canyon to a safer, clean place where the fawns could hide from hungry coyotes and such. Again she nosed the lame fawn up, almost pushing it out of the nest. Soon the family of three was headed for the nearby bowl-shaped valley, one fawn skipping ahead, the other limping behind with its worried mother stopping to grunt at it and to nudge it along with her nose.

Me, I was a frozen lump of ice stuck to the snowy
ledge. I could just see the headlines: “Ice Sculpture of Maiden Found in the Hills. Sculptor Unknown.” I pushed myself up and stood still as a fence post, not daring to move and frighten the trio below me.

When they got to the bowl Lone One ran ahead, as if she wanted the fawns to follow her and climb up the hill. But the lame fawn lagged behind and limped toward a snowy clump of sagebrush at the foot of the hill and dropped down. The other one scrambled halfway up the bowl to huddle between snow-covered rocks. Lone One stared for a few seconds at each fawn's hiding place and then turned and sprinted over the hill. I watched her go. When I looked back, both fawns had melted into the landscape.

And then, because the odds against them were so great, I sent prayers up to the skies to please keep all the coyotes, golden eagles, ravens, mountain lions, and owls away. And to please,
please
keep the poor little lame fawn safe.

From the ridge I'd noticed Ol' Yeller parked by the barn. It seemed strange that Mam would still be there. As I trudged through the snowy meadows the cows barely looked up. They'd been fed a big round bale of hay, and tractor tracks circled back to the barn. I hopped into the tracks and started to run.

As I rounded the corner of the barn Stew Pot bounded over and thumped his big paws on my shoulder. He whined softly, which wasn't like him at all.

“Hey, boy, what's the matter?” I asked as my eyes zipped across the barnyard.

A dark, muddy gash led to the snowy creek bank and from there down into the rushing water and to Mr. Mac's pet of a tractor. The tractor bucked and swayed as the water crashed and sprayed against its big tires. Its hay fork bobbled up and down as it seemed to claw at the gash in the creek bank.

I sucked in my breath as I ran toward it. Where was my mom? No sign of her. I spun, not daring to breathe. Suddenly, over the roar of rushing water, I heard her voice coming from behind Ol' Yeller.

“I've really gone and done it,” she said.

Honestly, it took a moment before I could tell her apart from Ol' Yeller—they both were totally splattered with mud. Mam kneeled on the ground next to the tailgate, holding one end of a chain, which she'd just unhooked from Ol' Yeller. The other end of the chain stretched out toward the tractor. Skid marks grooved through the mud-splattered snow.

Obviously they'd been having a tug-of-war with the tractor. Just as obviously, they'd gotten nowhere.

Mam swiped at her forehead, leaving one more streak on her already-mud-covered face. “I'd fed the cattle, and when I backed up to drive the tractor back into the barn, the bank just caved in,” she said, glaring at the tractor as if it'd just bucked her off.

Down at the trading post I'd heard talk about “high-water day,” as it was called around here, almost like some sort of holiday. The creeks and rivers would gush over their banks while boulders, brush, and logs hurtled down with the rising water. I'd heard Clyde joking about some rancher who was always saying that if his bridge washed away at high water and floated downstream, why, whoever ended up with it could buy it for practically nothing.

I could almost see the water rising as I stared up the creek, see it churning down from the mountains where snow had piled up and soon would be melting.

See us having to tell Mr. Mac that his tractor had—well, had just floated away.

See us loading up Ol' Yeller.

I was still taking it all in when, above the roar of the creek, I heard what could only have been Mr. Mac's big diesel pickup, still out of sight behind the trees on the other side of the creek. Mam and I locked anxious eyes. After everything had been going so great, without a hitch or a glitch,
now
he came.

Slowly the truck drove across the bridge and stopped. In the half-moons carved into the snowy windshield by the wipers I could see Mr. Mac's startled face. I could see a hand wiping a swath across the fogged window. See a frown. I squinted, half expecting to see a spurt of dark red or maybe a cloud of dark gray sparking out of him. I stared really hard. I could hardly believe when his lights just flashed his usual pretty colors as if saying, “Never mind that monster in the creek.”

The truck revved up and swerved into the barnyard. The door flew open. “Are you all right?” Mr. Mac asked as he hopped out.

Mam wiped another muddy swath across her cheeks and just looked at him and nodded. I stood there swallowing and bobbing my head up and down.

Mr. Mac scratched his chin as he studied the scene. “Each year when the water rises it gobbles away another big hunk of the bank,” he said in a deep, solemn voice. “One of these days it'll nibble away so much that the bridge will tumble right in. I wouldn't be surprised if the barn didn't
take off along with it. Of course I hadn't thought of the tractor diving in, too….”

And then, honestly, he beamed at my mom, his smile almost hooking up on his ears. Of course, anyone looking at Mam would've had a hard time not laughing. Really, she made quite a sight.

Mr. Mac had a plan. We'd pull the tractor out with the winch that was attached to the front end of his truck. “Should be no problem,” he said. “This truck's plenty big. Good thing I came by to check up on things after this storm.”

From then on it seemed as if everything happened in fast-forward.

I zipped about searching for rocks to wedge in front of the wheels of Mr. Mac's truck while Mam attached pulley cables to the frame of the tractor. Her lights flashed pretty pinks when she brushed against Mr. Mac, but she still didn't say more than, “I'm really sorry.” He just nodded and said, “It's okay,” and then, “Better get out of the way.”

Me, I jumped up and down because I really, really did have to pee, but not wanting to miss one second of all this, I galloped off along the snowy bank to find me a stump to crouch behind. I peeled off layers of clothes and stared spellbound at water spraying against a small dam up of sticks and brush wedged between rocks on my side of the creek.

I'm sure it was fate that had me there on the bank all tucked in and zipped up when, back in the barnyard, the cable snapped loose. I looked up just as Mam dashed over to hook it back up. I saw her take a step backward, out of
the way. Saw her arms whirl as if she were trying to fly as underneath her the bank crumbled and she tumbled backward into the creek.

“She can't swim!” I heard myself yell as I stumbled up the bank above the stick jam and without even thinking I threw myself into the water.

Oh! Shock of water so freezing cold it was boiling! Then over-under rumble-bumping until
smash!
I exploded against the logjam and
crash!
Mam blasted into it too and I was wildly grabbing at her coat, water bashing against us, and then
crack!
Stew Pot hit the jam-up and swirled over it, looking helplessly back as he whirled down the creek. My mouth fizzed with icy hard-hitting water and I couldn't hear myself
think
with the crashing roar of the creek, but I heard a loud screaming, either in my head or out loud, and suddenly a big hand reached out and grabbed on to my coat.

Then we tumbled, all three of us. We slipped and slid and stumbled over slippery rocks and fumbled and flopped onto the snowy bank, where I pulled my heavy sodden self up on my elbows and threw up. My teeth clacked in my head so I could hardly hear the deep voice saying,
Stew Pot's okay. He's a hero and Blue's a hero too.
I looked at the bright light of Mr. Mac's hands as he scooped me up and I thought,
He's my hero
, and I wanted to cry but I didn't.

Mr. Mac carried me to Ol' Yeller. He pulled the door open and plopped sopping-wet freezing-me down on the seat and switched on the motor, turned on the heat, and
then dashed to his truck to grab a horse blanket. He came back and tucked it around me, all the while asking was I sure I was okay? When I gulped that I was, he boosted a bedraggled Stew Pot into the truck beside me and ran back to help Mam. I heard her shivery voice saying, “I'm so sorry about the tractor.” Then I heard her silvery laugh and something about the tractor being a double whammy, twice causing him troubles, or maybe it was the hired hands causing trouble and not the tractor at all. And Mr. Mac's laughing voice saying, “No, Mam, no double trouble at all.”

He helped her to the truck, though I heard her protesting. As he opened the door she coughed and said, “I'm a bit waterlogged, but soon as I've dried off, I'll be back down to help.”