The Higher Power of Lucky

Brigitte squeezed into the banquette next to Miles.

“Did you find Lucky then?”

“No. When I get out of the car I see that it is very, very hot—as hot as today, but I had not ever been so hot in France.” Brigitte told the story in her excited French way, which was a way, Lucky thought, that made people listen more thoroughly. “So I go up to this house and it has a glass tower on the roof. I do not know it is the Captain’s house, of course. I do not know any person in America except Lucky’s father, who is in San Francisco. I am afraid to speak bad English, so I do not know what will happen. The man at the door has long gray hair and he is wearing some kind of big shirt with a rope for the waist. His dusty leather sandals and his beard make him seem like a person from the Bible.”

“The Captain doesn’t look from the Bible,” said Miles. “He looks normal.”

“To me, my first day in America, he looks actually like someone who has lost his marble. Later, I discover how nice he is, when he drives us back from Sierra City in his van after we return the rental car.”

“Don’t they have people like the Captain in France?” asked Miles.

“Not exactly,” said Brigitte. “Next what happens is I say, ‘Lucky?’ and I explain everything in French, but he does not understand. Then he says, ‘Oh! Oh! LUCK-y!’ because I have been saying this name with my accent the way I did before, ‘LU-key.’ Then he takes me up the hill to an old metal tank with a door in the front.”

“Short Sammy’s water tank!” Miles said.

“Yes, and Sammy comes out, but I do not know who he is. I see a tiny man with a hat like a cowboy—but a miniature cowboy. I think, no one has told me America is so strange.”

Lucky remembered this part brilliantly because she had been there, peering out from inside Sammy’s water tank house. Her first sight of Brigitte reminded Lucky of the beautiful ladies on Short Sammy’s calendar. Every month there was a different lady, looking very sparkly and smiley, and not wearing too many clothes. Brigitte’s dress fit her more like a bright red slip, except the twirly skirt gave you thoughts of dancing. Plus her blond hair was shiny and bouncy, and her lipstick was the perfect, exact same red as her dress. Her high-heeled shoes and creamy clean neck made Brigitte look way too French, and too…fancy for Hard Pan.

But the thing she remembered most strongly was that something bad to do with her mother had happened and she was at Short Sammy’s and her mother wasn’t there.

“Did Lucky know you were her Guardian?” Miles asked, smoothing the plastic of his Buy-Mor-Store bag, as if soothing a cat.

“No,” said Lucky. “She wasn’t, yet.”

“I was going only to stay a short while,” Brigitte explained. “Just until Lucky can be placed in a foster home. I promise her father that. I tell him that I must go home to France after.” Brigitte fanned herself with a piece of the waxed cheese carton.

Miles asked, “Was I born yet?”

“Yes,” said Brigitte. “You were a fat little boy of three years old then, almost a wild child, running everywhere in the town. Your grandmother is always looking for you.” Brigitte shrugged. “I try to understand American customs, but they are so different from mine. And Lucky for a long time cannot sleep unless I am with her. She is of course very sad and missing her maman.”

“Was I allowed to do anything I wanted?” asked Miles. He tucked the plastic sack tightly around his book.

“I thought it was perhaps the way of all American children to be so free,” Brigitte said. “I wanted Lucky to have a good American foster family who is letting her be a little bit free and also giving her some discipline.”

“Will Lucky have to go to a foster family where they make her take care of all the other little foster brothers and sisters?” Miles had asked Lucky about this before. It was something he had seen on a TV program.

“For a long time we cannot find any foster family for Lucky. Then her father tells me all the paperwork for California will be easier if I become her Guardian, especially because Lucky and I, we have already the same last name of Trimble. I say okay.” Brigitte got up and continued to put the Government Surplus food away, frowning at the canned pork.

Lucky was thinking that even though Brigitte said okay, she meant only until they did find a foster family. And if she had to take care of all the crying orphaned babies in her new foster family, that would mean leaving Hard Pan. Then the sign that still said POP. 43 would really be wrong.

But what Lucky wanted most was for that sign to stay the same forever, with no subtracting allowed.

7. Tarantula Hawk Wasp