Under a Painted Sky (7 page)

“Who wants the jaw?” asks Andy, holding up a stick with a razor-edged bone dangling off the end. “Snake jaw's a lucky charm. You might need it if there's no moon tonight.”

Both Peety and Cay raise their hands, but West makes a
tsk
sound with his tongue.

Cay gets down on his stomach and elbows. “Settle by wrestle.”

Andy covers her mouth with her hand.

Peety lays a horse blanket on the poky yellow grass in front of Cay. Hitching his trousers, he carefully lowers himself onto it.

“Oh, c'mon, prima donna, your pantaloons are already filthy,” says Cay.

“
Pantalones,
” Peety corrects. “Pantaloons is what you wear.”

The two clasp hands and start pressing. After a good half minute of evenly matched straining and grunting, Cay summons a burst of strength and pushes Peety's arm to the ground.

“I let you win, hombre,” gasps Peety, rolling onto his back. “'Cause you need more luck than me.”

“I get more lucky than you, you mean. Who's next?” Cay shakes out his arm and looks at West.

West snorts. “I make my own luck.”

“Chicken,” says his cousin.

West's jaw twitches. Then he tosses aside the blade of grass and shakes his head.

As he positions himself in front of the grinning Cay, I wonder at the power of a single word to goad males into doing things they don't want to do to acquire things they don't want to have. I would never fall for that.

Biceps bulge and in under five seconds, West slams Cay's arm into the dirt.

“If I didn't have to wrestle that buffalo that came before you, I'd a won for sure,” says Cay.

Andy holds the stick with the jaw out to West. “Here you go, and good luck.”

“Hold on, now,” says Cay. “He needs to wrestle one more to make it fair.”

His eyes slide to me. I nearly choke on my greens, knowing I will be eating my thoughts for my next course.

EVEN IF I REFUSE TO ARM WRESTLE, SOMEONE
will issue the chicken threat, and I will have to do battle anyway.

“Sammy, c'mere,” orders Cay.

I drag myself over. This is madness. Neither of us even wants the darn thing.

I get down on my stomach, opposite him. Andy smashes her clasped hands up to her nose, praying, I think.

A tiny dent appears in the side of West's cheek. I hood my eyes and try to look fierce. The others crowd around us for the final match, or mismatch.

“I'll try not to hurt you,” I mutter.

A warm wind kicks up, throwing dust into my eyes. West folds his callused hand over my cold bony one. He has guitarist fingers, slender and strong, the kind that might be nice to hold under different circumstances. What am I thinking? I shake those thoughts from my head and focus.

“Your hand's kind of soft,” he says.

“I'm a musician,” I say scornfully. “Of course it is.”

“Shouldn't you be out giving lessons?”

“Shouldn't you be out branding cows?”

His thumb twitches.

Since one of his arms equals two or three of my own, I will never win this on brute strength. So I keep my elbow as close to my side as possible to add my body weight to the fight. Might as well throw a twig in front of the locomotive.

“On the count of three,” says Cay. “One, two, three!”

I pull down a fraction before he says three, gaining an inch in my corner right out of the gate by bending my wrist over his. But a second later, he flicks out the kink. When I look up, he is watching me, not his arm. I might as well be wrestling a hitching post.

“C'mon, Sammy,” says Andy, at least playing along with the sham. “Send him home.”

“I'm boring, West,” says Peety, faking a yawn. “Why you want to play with babies?”

I redouble my efforts, crooking his wrist again. He gives me some slack, though I wish he would just ax the chicken already. When I've depleted all my strength, he crushes me.

“Ow,” I whimper, as my shoulder grinds against its socket. I grit my teeth and roll it out. The boys take turns slapping me on the back.

“Ain't a square match,” says West, tucking the jawbone into Cay's hatband.

“You noticed that, did you?” snipes Andy.

West cocks an eye at her, then shakes his head. He and the others spread their bedrolls.

“Time for ropes,” he says.

“What do you mean by that?” asks Andy, glaring. We both feel the same way about ropes these days.

He unwinds a length of cord. “Rattlers don't cross hemp.”

Andy sucks in her breath and stops glaring. No doubt West wonders how a couple of greenhorns like us expect to survive the wilderness.

“'Course, ain't many rattlers in the towns, if you're still on the fence . . . ” He trails off.

Andy and I don't have bedrolls, just our extra shirts, so we bundle them into pillows and settle down on the hard earth. Despite my layers, I feel every blade of bluegrass, every lobe of sow thistle, to say nothing of the gravel. I chuck the bigger rocks aside, though doing so just makes the smaller ones more obvious.

To my right, West shakes out his bedroll, with Cay on his other side. I expect Peety to lie beside Cay, but he spreads his blanket right by Andy. West lays the rope in a circle around all of us.

A chorus of
yip
s starts up, coyotes celebrating a kill, but even worse than the coyotes is the wind. It started as a dry breeze, but now it pulls at me, sucking the moisture from my lips and eyes. It blows through the cedars in a dissonant chord that rises and falls like the wheezing of croupy lungs. I resist the urge to scoot closer to Andy. She's looking straight up at a rift in the clouds where a red moon has appeared, a bullet wound in the dark skin of night. Father said the moon changes color when bad luck is near.

“Looks like the moon did show up,” says Andy. “A red one, too.”

“What's that mean?” asks Cay, sitting up.

“Never you mind. It'll scare ya.”

“Oh, come on,” says Cay. “The only things that scare me are hairy caterpillars. The ones that look like someone's mustache fell off and is crawling away.”

Peety cranes his neck toward Andy. “You got a story? Please tell us.”

Andy sits cross-legged. The boys arrange themselves around us.

“Anyone heard of Harp Falls?” Andy sweeps her gaze over each of us. No one has. She pulls her coat more securely around her, then begins.

“A prince was born with everything a man could want, good looks and wealth. Never had to work for much. One morning after a night of whoring, he wakes up lying in a haystack, not even sure how he got there.”

“I hate it when that happens,” says Cay, flapping the brim of his hat up and down.

West leans back on his hands. “Yeah, but you ain't no prince.”

Andy ignores them. “He's thinking what a sorry sap he is, when he hears music so sweet it makes him weep. A woman's voice, out of nowhere, says, ‘I'm the harp at the top of the waterfall. Find me, and you shall have everlasting joy.'

“‘I don't see no waterfall,' he says. ‘How do I get to you?'

“‘Follow my music,' she says. ‘The way will not be easy. But listen for my voice, and you shall have me.'

“So the prince sets off, but before long, a group of men attack—chain him up and throw him in the river. As he starts sinking, he remembers the harp. He hears her sweet voice again, and suddenly, the chains fall away.”

Cay and Peety scoot in closer, but West's face is unreadable as firelight dances around it.

“On he travels. Next thing that happens, black birds swoop on him, pecking his skin and lifting him to the sky with their sharp claws. As they's about to drop him onto some rocks, again, he remembers to listen for the music.” She pauses and holds her index finger up.

“When he hears it, the birds begin to fall away, one by one. Then there it rises: a great waterfall surrounded by golden rock, higher on one side than on the other, like a harp, with water pouring like strings. He lands on top, and the view is wide and handsome.”

Cay's brow wrinkles and he glances at his cousin. West, not noticing, folds his legs and puts his elbows on his knees.

“There, he sees her, a harp clear as glass, like she's cut from water, and she's in the arms of a hooded monk. The prince never wanted anything so bad in his life. ‘I'm here for the harp,' he says. But the monk ignores him.” Andy pauses, letting the ghostly
whoo
of the wind take over for a moment. “So he repeats himself. Still, the monk acts like he don't hear. Angry now, the prince tries to pull the harp out of the monk's hands, but that monk won't let go. They wrestle for it, and finally the prince smashes a rock over the monk's head.

“Harp falls into the water. The prince is reaching for it when he feels something wet on the side of his head.” Andy touches her temple. “Blood. He looks down at the monk, whose hood falls away . . . ” She leans toward us, hands held out like she's going to cast a spell.

“And?” urges Cay.

Andy sits back. “And he sees his own face.”

“He's the monk?” Cay exclaims. “I didn't see that com—”

“Shh!” West cuts him off.

With the image of the monk's staring face in my head, the wind sounds even eerier, raising the hair on my arms.

Andy goes on. “The prince dives after the harp, but it's too late. The harp goes a-tumbling down the waterfall, and the prince with it.” Her eyes study us, but only the wind speaks. “Hear that howling? That's the sound of the wind passing through the broken harp and blowing the prince's blood to the moon.” She leans back on her hands and squints at the sky.

“What's it all mean?” Cay asks.

“What do you think it means?” asks Andy.

Cay rubs his whiskers. “Never trust a monk?”

“Don't take stuff that don't belong to you,” ventures Peety.

“That's not it, you dummies,” says West. “He forgot to listen to the harp. The music was all around him at the end, but he got too greedy.”

“What do you think, Chinito?” asks Peety, using the word for “China boy.”

Everyone looks at me. “Well,” I say, still mulling over the story, which reminds me of Icarus, whose wings melted off when he flew too close to the sun. “It's a parable of caution. The story represents man's struggle with others, nature, and ultimately himself, which is the hardest one of all. The prince didn't understand he was fighting himself until it was too late.”

No one's looking at me anymore. West crosses his arms. I'm close enough to see the gooseflesh on his skin.

• • •

One by one, the boys start to nod off. I wait until I hear them breathing deeply, then scoot closer to Andy. “Was that a story from your ancestors?”

“Nah. I made it up.”

“It's a good one.”

She smiles. “Tommy, my little brother, needed stories to help him get to the end of the day. Isaac and I took turns telling 'em.”

“You followed classic Greek story structure. I'm impressed.”

“Best stories are the ones everyone can see themselves in. But you explained that meaning real well.”

I thank Father for that, and also Pépère, my Sorbonneeducated grandfather, who passed everything he knew to his adopted son, who in turn taught me. Such an education was typically saved for males from reputable families, but Father didn't care. Studying was one of the ways to improve one's station in life, along with doing good deeds. He schooled me in music, philosophy, history, language, and, of course, literature.

“You done real well today,” Andy says softly, halfway to dreamland already.

My stomach turns in loops as I once again worry about the journey ahead. “The Little Blue's only a day away,” I whisper. “Maybe I should've bargained for farther.”

“We'll think of something.” She sighs.