The Higher Power of Lucky

Lucky didn’t say a word. It was too hopeless and disappointing. Brigitte hated bugs and she hated snakes and she thought California was a country. Plus the checks from her father were too small.

The sad and beautiful French songs played on and on, the sound drifting out the window and into the dry desert air. Lucky didn’t know what the words meant, but she understood that Hard Pan was pushing Brigitte away, and France was calling her home.

9. Short Sammy’s

You could smell Short Sammy’s water tank house before you got there, because whatever he cooked in his big black cast-iron pan, he cooked in grease. Beans, pancakes, lettuce, apples—always cooked in grease, bacon grease being his most favorite. The smell of the water tank house activated Lucky’s hunger gland.

Lucky and HMS Beagle walked up Short Sammy’s path, which was not the kind of path you could stray from because it had old car tires along each side, and each tire had a cactus growing in its center, which made sure you went carefully along straight ahead because your feet were entirely positive of the way with a path like that.

The house had once been a giant metal water tank until it sprang too many holes and the town bought another one. Sammy got the old one to live in, one big round room with four windows cut out. The door had been sawn out a little unevenly and was hinged with strips of leather. There was no lock on the door, because Short Sammy wasn’t worried about anyone stealing anything except his big black cast-iron frying pan, which was the most valuable thing he owned.

Lucky thought that Short Sammy’s water tank house was even better as a house than regular houses, because inside you didn’t have the normal impression of straightness and squareness and corners, or of different rooms. Instead it was a very convenient one-room house with a bed, a woodstove where Short Sammy did his winter cooking, a round table, three chairs, a crate full of books with his guitar on top, and nails sticking out on the wall where he hung a calendar, his clothes, and three stained white cowboy hats. He stored some other stuff, like his official Adopt-a-Highway equipment—orange vest, hard hat, and trash bags—in the big trunk of his ’62 Cadillac.

There was only one picture on the wall—a photograph of a goofy-looking dog’s smiling face that had been exactly fitted into a clean sardine can. The edges of the can made a perfect tiny frame that also looked a little bit like a shrine. Lucky knew it was a snapshot of Sammy’s dog, Roy, who because he didn’t die from a rattlesnake bite got Sammy to quit drinking.

The floor was made of flat rocks fitted neatly like pieces in a puzzle, with concrete poured into the cracks—it was a floor you could spill things on and not worry. Short Sammy just hosed it off every so often, and when he did it smelled wonderful, a mixture of dust and wet stone.

Outside there was a hose for washing and showers, a Weber grill for summer cooking, and an outhouse in the back.

Lucky heard a radio announcer’s smooth radio voice plus Sammy’s growly one as she followed HMS Beagle inside.

“Man, I tried melting it. Wouldn’t melt. Tried grating it. Turns into dough. It must be some kind of secret weapon,” Short Sammy was saying. In the center of the room, at a rough wooden table that had once been a spool for coiling electrical wire, Lincoln leaned over a small bag of Fritos, eating out of it with a spoon. Nearby on the table was a length of cord with knots in it.

“Sammy’s been experimenting with the Government Surplus cheese,” Lincoln explained to Lucky. The radio announcer was telling about traffic tie-ups.

“So far, nobody can figure out what to do with it to make it something you’d want to eat,” Sammy said. He pushed back the brim of his cowboy hat and frowned at the cheese. “The chili’s good, though. Made it with U.S. Government Surplus canned pork. Help yourself.”

Quite a lot of people, especially Brigitte, had a strong opinion that Short Sammy used too much grease in his cooking. Brigitte insisted that Lucky should very politely say she wasn’t hungry if he offered her anything to eat.

“Okay, yes, please,” she said. Sammy opened another snack-size bag of Fritos and gave it to Lucky with a tin spoon.

“Pan’s outside. Lid’s hot.”

Lucky lifted the lid with a rag, set it on a rock, and spooned beans and pork into the small bag of Fritos. She replaced the lid.

“…a fender bender,” said the radio announcer, “on the 101 South into downtown L.A. Slow going on the 10 East due to an oil spill in the car-pool lane. Better take the 60 if you can. That three-car pileup on the Pasadena Freeway near the four level has been cleared….”

Short Sammy poured hot water over coffee grounds in a sock filter and shook his head. “That L.A. traffic is terrible,” he said, sounding pleased. The traffic report always cheered him up. “Today’s Saturday, and it’s as bad as Monday rush hour.” He poured dark black coffee into a tin mug.