Under a Painted Sky

  40

  I SCREAM, BUT WATER CHOKES ME.

  Though I paddle as hard as I can against the current, the water is a sticky, living thing, playing with me before it will consume me whole. Angus sees the danger, too, and starts swimming up current, using strokes more powerful than mine.

  I spend a precious few moments working off my clothes to reduce my drag, shedding the layers I have hidden under for so long. But in so doing, I slide even closer to the edge. Kick, stroke, focus. It’s like climbing a giant bolt of fabric by pulling on the cloth. It unrolls and I get nowhere. I look wildly around for something to grab on to. But there is only the slick rock of the shoreline.

  “Sammy!” Andy stands on the shore holding a lariat, which she has anchored to the great fir tree. Oh, thank God she’s alive!

  “I’m gonna throw it, and you better catch it! On the count of three!” she yells.

  The drop-off inches ever closer, only twenty feet away now.

  My arms are so tired, I want to give up. But that would mean fate would collect yet another prize today.

  “One!”

  Why should fate always have the upper hand? Passing out luck, like mooncakes in autumn, then snatching them right out of your mouth. Well, Fate, I reject you, from your gleaming jaw to your pale underbelly.

  “Two!”

  From now on, I will make my own luck.

  “Three!”

  And this time, I will not roll snake eyes.

  Andy hurls the rope and it lands a few yards ahead, but quickly starts moving toward me. I catch the rough hemp by the loop.

  Angus notices and stops swimming. The current speeds him backward, and as he passes me, he latches on to my waist. I kick with all my might, but he pushes my head underwater. With one quick yank, he wrestles the rope from my hands.

  And just like that, fate shows me who’s still in charge.

  I lift my head, eyes stinging. Angus flashes me a grin. His cheeks are red with cold except for the scar like a jag of lightning running down his cheek.

  Oh, Father. I cannot fight fate. It is too great, and I am so tired.

  You’re right, I hear Father say. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. Have a pea shoot.

  This is not the Paganini, I want to scream.

  Right again, he tells me.

  Fine, I tell Father, since I still need the last word. I can stop a waterfall with my bare hands. I can sing opera, too. Fly, if I want, all the way to Mars. What I can’t do is catch that damn rope.

  Andy screams something. Maybe good-bye? The story she told about Harp Falls rushes back into my memory. If only the prince had seen that he was holding the harp all along, he would not have fallen to his death.

  Who am I struggling against now?

  Nature? No gun, no rope, no feat of strength will stop this river from taking me.

  Angus? He’s more than an arm’s length away—too far, even if I had the strength to fight him for the leash.

  Myself. I am the monk. I am the prince. I have struggled with my Snake luck all along, and now, only at the end, do I understand this.

  Fate casts its cold shadow over me, daring me to be afraid. In those last seconds before I go over the falls, I listen for the harp, the voice as familiar as the D-flat scale.

  Stop struggling and you will find common ground, says Father’s wise and gentle voice.

  My arms go limp. As I stop kicking, suddenly my feet graze rock. I can touch the sandy bottom. In a last move, I push off, more out of instinct than any conscious effort. Like a giant bullfrog, I lunge. Angus is pulling the hemp over his body as my hands catch the rope.

  Over the falls we go.

  Father, I will see you soon.

  41

  MY STOMACH DROPS AND I FEEL GIDDY AND SICK all at once. I grip the rope as tightly as I can, wondering, as the river ejects us, how long is this rope, and will I have the strength to hold on if it doesn’t break?

  The rope runs forever, and when it finally ends, it nearly pulls my arms off. We swing under the falls like an anchor. Water pummels me so hard, I wonder if it’s rinsing me of my skin. Somehow, even though all of my senses are engulfed with icy torrents and I cannot see him, I can feel Angus moving beside me.

  The downpour ceases for a moment as we pass into a cave behind the falls. We dangle, two keys on a chain—thirty? fifty? feet above a dark pool. Angus kicks, making it harder to hold on. With a sickening clutch of my gut, I realize that my arms encircle his neck. After a moment though, he goes still, and we sway like a pair of lovers, slow dancing.

  I draw back my head a notch and let out a gurgled shriek. Angus’s eyes bulge, the black pupils like ticks on a cornflower. His tongue looks like a bitten plum with red juice running out the sides.

  He was trying to pull the rope around his body.

  But he only made it as far as his neck.

  I am hugging a corpse.

  Even in death, Angus manages to terrorize me. I recoil as much as I can. Every fiber in me wants to put as much space between myself and Angus as I can, but the only place to go is down. I nearly laugh at the irony. That the end of my journey should be at the end of hemp, but not hanged.

  Even if my arms could hang on longer, the rest of me refuses. As my grip begins to slip, I know for certain that this is my moment of reckoning.

  An image of Father holding out a plate of suns flashes through my mind. And Andy, crooking her pinkie at me. And West, with light from the campfire dancing around his face, who will never know how much I love him.

  You may have me now, Fate. I am ready.

  • • •

  The world speaks no more.

  My body hangs, suspended in some buoyant medium. It drowns out my senses until all that remains is a single note. An A for acceptance.

  I cling to that silvery strain, following it to the source. A violin. But not just any violin. I know that voice—her highs, her lows, and her cranky D-string. My vision clears.

  Before me, a man plays Lady Tin-Yin, doing the Paganini as easily as if he were whistling. His wrist trembles expertly as he draws out the last note. Father!

  He puts down the violin when he sees me. I rush over and squeeze him tightly, for I can’t lose him again. My tears pour out. He smells like I remember, of ginger and cedar shavings.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I say, blubbering all over his small but sturdy frame.

  He pats my back. “I know, daughter.”

  Then he pulls me away from him. I drink in every detail of his face. He looks younger than I remember, with neatly combed hair, a smooth forehead, and only a few creases at the corners of his eyes. His cheeks are tight, marked by one dot under his watermelon-seed eyes.

  “Where have you been?” I choke out.

  “I have been with you,” he says in his quiet voice. “Remember what we learned about the fireflies?”

  My mind drifts back to a warm July night, in New York. “You caught a firefly in your hand. You showed me that the glow is actually on the lower abdomen, where the firefly can’t see it.”

  He nods. “We carry around the light of our loved ones who have passed. It is they who light the path for us.”

  “Passed?” I gasp, beginning to cry again. Father’s really dead. That means I must be dead, too.

  His own dark eyes grow luminous and he stretches his shoulders back. “I am proud of my Snake daughter.”

  He looks up, slowly letting go of my hand. Cirro cumulus clouds fan out, like a knife spread them across the sky.

  I start to panic. “Father, don’t leave me, I still need you,” I plead. The threads of his worn gray suit disappear under my fingers like smoke. “Come back!” I scream.

  The echoes of my cries ring in my ears. But Father is gone. And I’m alone in the world once again, only this world is not the one I remember.
I am standing on a floor of white marble wearing the dress I wore that very dark day, the one washed so many times that the flowers had faded.

  Have I died? I scream but no one and nothing responds now, not even my own echoes. Maybe I have gone to hell, for Ty Yorkshire, for Angus. Maybe hell is not fire and brimstone, but a place of loneliness.

  I collapse onto the marble and sob.

  Something warm and wet wedges itself under my cheek, pushing its furry face into mine and nuzzling until I open my eyes.

  It’s a rabbit.

  He lies down beside me. The black of his magnificent coat invites me to pet him. I lose my fingers in his fur, stroking its silkiness until I feel calm again.

  The rabbit rises onto his hind legs, regarding me steadily. He’s as tall as a horse, with glittering eyes and sleek ears. I climb onto his back, and knot my fingers in his fur.

  His muscles flex and release as he stretches out his legs. And then, with a mighty leap, we shoot into the sky.

  42

  I WAKE TO THE WARMTH OF BODIES BESIDE ME. Something soft and warm is pulled up to my neck, like a knitted blanket. I force my eyes open. Two cowboys with the same dimples kneel on either side of me as if praying, one with brown hair, the other’s, golden. On my right, West wears the haggard look of someone who hasn’t slept for a week.

  My friends! How did you find us? Where’s Andy? I want to ask a million questions, but my tongue is too sluggish to even utter a syllable. I wander back to the sleepy realm.

  • • •

  “You did a good job knitting this up,” says Andy. Her cool touch on my right arm is familiar and gentle.

  “I know how to set bones. I do for animals all the time,” comes Peety’s low, reassuring voice from somewhere behind me. “Andita, it is time for you to rest. You’ve been up all night.”

  Did he say Andita or Andito?

  “I promise to get you if Sammy wakes up,” he assures her.

  “When Sammy wakes up,” she corrects.

  Oh sister, go to sleep. I just need another moment here, myself. My whole body aches.

  “That’s what I meant,” says Peety.

  “Careful of that bump on her head,” she says. Her. The word never sounded so sweet. “Put the shawl back on. She’s freezing.”

  Something comforting and warm is laid across me, and though my eyelids are too heavy to lift, I know it is the shawl that I lost a lifetime ago, made of the finest wool. I can almost feel its positive energy cocooning me. In an instant, I understand. West found it, that dark day when I nearly collided with him in the street. He knew.

  I hear a double set of footsteps as Andy and Peety walk away.

  West lies down next to me and lays his arm securely over my chest.

  “If you’re going to start pitching woo, I’m making tracks,” says Cay.

  “So make ’em, then.”

  The gravel crunches as Cay walks away. Now I’m fully awake, but I don’t move.

  “Samantha?” West’s voice is uncertain, almost shy. “That’s going to take some work.” His Texas drawl sounds more pronounced. It strikes me that he is nervous. I’m about to speak, but instead I let him continue. “I ain’t good at talking about things like this. So maybe I’ll practice so I get it right when you come to.”

  I relax my eyelids and stay limp.

  “I could give you a heap of reasons for my bad behavior. I didn’t have a smart daddy like you, or maybe where I come from, people like you don’t mix with people like me.”

  A single drop of yolk can ruin a meringue. My cheeks flame as I remember his story about the blood in the fence paint. There were certain things about him he could never change, no matter how he tried.

  “Or maybe I’ve just got stew for brains and couldn’t see what was in front of my nose until it was waving good-bye.” His voice takes on a more urgent tone. “You know when you were in that tree, burning? That was me whenever I looked at you. Stuck between heaven and hell, and not sure how I got there. All I knew was, I was gonna die if I didn’t do something about it. Thought I could get my head on straight if I just—” His normally smooth tenor cracks, and he pauses long enough for me to notice a songbird calling. “I’m sorry for what I did. By the time I realized no other hat would fit me, I figured you despised me, and there was no way I could dig myself out of that hole.”

  I nearly open my eyes. Cay wasn’t talking about himself that night we peeled tangerines at Independence Rock. He was talking about West. I was the alligator-suede hat left in the window.

  He lifts his arm off me and tucks the shawl up to my chin. “You know, I never needed much. Worked out good since all I owned was the sand in my boots and Franny. But now I do need something,” he says in a ragged voice, pausing to inhale. “I need you.”

  The words send a delicious tingle through my ears and down to my toes. I should wake up now. Though it would be nice to hear this all a second time.

  I open my eyes. He blinks when he sees me and the tears that have collected on his dark lashes splash onto my face.

  “Well then, come here and kiss me.” I don’t bother lowering my voice anymore.

  His face lights up and he does it, a kiss as sweet as a serenade and achingly familiar. The smoke of a lonely fire and something wild fills my senses and lifts me from my ordinary existence. My sigh echoes in his throat.

  He lifts his face from mine. His eyelashes flicker. “You killed me twice in one day—once when you left that note, and again when I come here to find you half dead.”

  “I’m sorry for so many things, for lying, putting you in danger, being a bur—”

  “You’re apologizing for the wrong things.”

  “What should I be sorry for, then?”

  “For not trusting me.” He tucks his mouth into mine, making me lose all sense of who I am, and how I got here . All I know is, the snake’s aboard the rabbit again, and we’re flying to the stars.

  43

  ANDY WEARS ISAAC’S BLUE-AND-WHITE-CHECKERED shirt. We’re standing on the banks of the Yellow River, far enough away from the falls that we no longer hear its pounding. The water, which fought me only a week ago, now moves guiltlessly along. Andy shows me the remains of her bracelet, which she found back at Isaac’s camp. The rock with the hole is missing. “I think Isaac took it to Tommy,” she tells me.

  A few days ago, Ian’s body floated down the shore—well, most of him, his back broken and his belly split open. Later that same day, Angus followed, missing his head. I don’t care to think about the details of his condition. Just as with Ty Yorkshire, one day I will have to answer for my role in his death, whether in this world or the next, and I can only pray that God will be merciful.

  For now, I am content that God saw fit to keep my own body intact. Perhaps He has carved out a path for me whose general direction is up, despite troublesome corners, and perhaps luck is not a sticker in my boot after all. After a thousand miles of trail, it seems to me that good luck is always just a few steps ahead of bad, and maybe the amount one receives of either simply depends on the distance traveled.

  We didn’t find Isaac. I imagine that, like the falcon, Isaac flew away faster than death could reach him.

  Cay holds a bouquet of wildflowers as we all stare at the river. “Dear God, I’m sorry I never knew the man, but he must have been a good one, since you cut him from the same cloth as Andy here.” He studies the bouquet. “I s’pect one day, when we do meet, he’ll knock me sideways for risking his sister’s neck during that stampede, and when that happens, I’ll remember I had it coming.” He plucks out a single stalk of freesia and throws it into the river, then hands the remainder of the bunch to Andy.

  Andy puts her nose into the bouquet and inhales. “Isaac, I know you’s with Tommy now.” She sniffs and her eyes brim with tears, setting off my own. “The only reason I can figure you’s up there and not here is ?
??cause Tommy needs you more than me.” Her voice breaks and a fat tear travels down her cheek. “Well. Take care of each other, boys. Amen.” She casts the whole bouquet into the river. The stems separate, and the river scatters them.

  Peety enfolds her under his arm. After a moment, she shakes him off. “I think I’ll go for a ride.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I say.

  “Not a good idea,” says West, following so close he nearly collides with me when I stop. “The two of you pick up trouble like bad habits.”

  “Agree. Plus, Chinita’s wrist is broken. How she going to ride?” asks Peety. He sweeps his arm as he bows to Andy. “It will be my pleasure to accompany you.”

  As he begins to whistle for Lupe, Andy tugs his fingers away from his lips. “Sammy and I will double ride on Lupe. I do know how to ride a horse, you know.”

  “Well then, we’ll follow you,” says West. “This is the Haystacks. You ain’t the only criminals up here, you know.”

  Andy throws up her hands. “We might take a bath.”

  “Even better,” says Peety, elbowing West. The two of them start hauling up their saddles.

  Groaning, Andy shakes her hat at them. “All right. But keep a hundred paces behind.”

  Cay raises his hand. “I volunteer to be le chaperon.”

  West swats him in the chest. “Sit down and watch the camp.”

  With a grumble, Cay plops down into the grass and leans his cheek against his fist. “There’s something wrong with this picture.”

  The great Andalusian carries Andy and me toward the grass-covered hills. I twist around and see Peety and West following, small as ginseng roots. A family of bison grazes peacefully near a shallow slice of water with steam rising off the top. Their bodies are twice as big as longhorn cattle, tufts of blackish-brown hair sticking out in patches all over their hides. They don’t even lift their heads as we pass.