The Higher Power of Lucky

It was a cholla burr the size of a golf ball, a dozen of its needles stuck deep into Miles’s heel. Lucky didn’t touch it. She knew very well from the time she had stepped on one that you could not pull it out with your fingers. Plus she knew that it burned like fire underneath your skin.

“Where’s your shoe?” she said into his ear. He hadn’t loosened his grip on her neck.

“I don’t know! I lost it.”

“Okay, look. I’m going to carry you piggyback. You have to help by letting go and then climbing on me.”

“Please don’t trick me and leave me here, Lucky!”

“I promise I won’t, Miles. Come on.”

Even though she’d had a lot of practice lugging her survival kit backpack all the time, Lucky was surprised at how heavy a five-year-old boy could feel. She staggered back up the hill to the dugout, feeling as if the day had been going on for weeks.

Her worst thought was that she didn’t have pliers to grip the cholla burr and pull it out. Even if she made a very clumsy glove by folding the dishcloth over and over on itself, the cholla’s steel-hard needles would plunge right through the cloth and get stuck in her hand.

Miles sat on the towel with his bare foot propped on his other leg to keep anything from touching the burr and making it hurt worse. He gulped Gatorade, finishing the bottle. HMS Beagle spent a long time lapping water.

“I already tried to get it out,” he said, “but it hurts your fingers to touch it.”

“I know,” Lucky said. She rummaged through her supplies and survival kit. She’d seen Short Sammy dislodge a burr stuck in a boot by slipping a fork between the needles and the leather and f lipping it out, instead of trying to pull it out.

But Lucky didn’t have a fork or even a comb, which also might have worked. She needed something toothed. But the toothbrush bristles were way too soft.

“Lucky?”

“Miles, I’m concentrating. What.”

“Nothing.”

Lucky sighed. “Okay, what?” she said in a nicer, paying-attention way.

“You don’t look normal. You look kind of…fancy.”

Lucky scowled.

“But you look pretty and kind of…grown up,” he added.

Lucky thought of herself as someone highly adapted to her habitat, being all one colorless color, rather than pretty. She narrowed her eyes at Miles to see if he was up to something, but he was looking worriedly at the cholla burr, with its needle-sharp thorns sticking out in every direction—a dozen of them in his heel. She tucked the thought of prettiness into a safe crevice, for thinking about later.

Suddenly Miles said, “Is Brigitte coming to make our dinner?”

“No, Miles. We ran away.”

“I didn’t run away.”

Lucky let that go.

“Then why is her thing for parsley here?” Miles asked.

“Just a keepsake, like when you want to remember someone and—” Lucky broke off. Her mind had found a great spectacular idea. She plucked Brigitte’s gadget from the pile of supplies and released its little latch. The two parts separated—a funnel-like part where you crammed in the parsley and a little spoked part with a handle.

She gripped the top of Miles’s foot in one hand. “Don’t move,” she said. Very carefully she angled the tin spokes under the cholla and with a hard, sure, sudden twist, she flipped the whole burr away.

“Ow,” Miles cried.

All the needles were out. Lucky kicked the burr aside and then crushed it with a rock.

“This is quite a mild case,” Lucky said professionally as she peered at the foot. “It will hurt for a while, so you have to be brave about that.”

“I will,” he snuffled. “I didn’t run away on purpose, Lucky. I was just looking for Chesterfield.”

“You won’t get into trouble, don’t worry,” Lucky said, without knowing if this were actually true.

But now she had a major problem named Miles to worry about. Running away is one thing. Running away with a one-shoed five-year-old is much, much more complicated and dreadful.

19. Eggs and Beans

The windstorm seemed to be getting dis-couraged at last. It was less noisy, and you could see parts of blue sky through the dust. Lucky hoped strongly that the storm would blow way out into the desert that stretched before them like an ocean. From their protected spot in front of the dugout, the desert was all they could see. Hard Pan was far, far behind them.

HMS Beagle raised her head, her black nose twitching, when Miles began making the where-are-

you, where-are-you, where-are-you call of a quail. Lucky let him. Being around Miles took a lot of energy, and she didn’t have much left.

Suddenly Miles quit. He lay facedown on the towel and began to cry softly. Lucky sighed.

“Time for dinner,” she said in her brisk nurse voice. As expected, Miles sat up and looked interested.

“I have sand in me everywhere,” he announced. “Even under my clothes. What are we having?”

“First, hard-boiled eggs.”

“Ewww. I only like eggs when the white part and the yellow part are mixed up together,” Miles explained. “Can’t we have scrambled eggs?”