Under a Painted Sky (20 page)

I FALL ASLEEP BY WEST'S SIDE BUT WAKE WHENEVER
he moans. Finally, when the sun travels over my face, I rise. The prairie is a shadowed landscape clotted with shrubs like giant mushrooms. With the trail out of view and no one around, the world seems foreign, as if we've arrived at a country where we are the only inhabitants. It relieves me to be out of the scope of lawmen, but it is a fleeting comfort. We cannot hide out here forever.

Peety takes West's rifle to go hunting, and Andy accompanies him. Before they leave, I ask them to look out for wild yarrow. Father always applied the cooling yarrow to my bumps and scrapes. Maybe it will bring West some relief.

When I start to change his dressings, he winces. I show him the whiskey but he presses his mouth into a line and turns away.

“Okay. What about a story while I clean your scratch?” He does not protest so I press on.

“Father and I were about the only Chinese people in the state of New York when I was growing up. Mr. Wong owned a bakery down the street from us, but he did not have family. So whenever we went out, people paid attention.

“When I was six, someone brought a menagerie to town.” I pause as I realize that was almost ten years ago to the day. I turn sixteen next week. “I begged Father to go, but he didn't want to take me, probably fearing we would become another exhibit for people to point and stare at. I was born in the Year of the Snake—”

I pause when the ghost of a frown flits over his face. “It's not a bad thing,” I add. “A Snake brings good luck.” I don't mention that I'm the exception. “Anyway, I wouldn't be so quick to judge, you were born in the Year of the Rabbit.”

He chokes on his disbelief, I suspect most men prefer to think of themselves as something more ferocious than a rabbit, and I let him finish his coughing before continuing. I muse that, despite their lovable appearances, Rabbits are uncomfortable talking about feelings, and if matters turn personal, tend to hop away. Of course, West can hop all he wants, but he won't be getting too far in his condition.

“Snakes don't like to be told no.”

More throat clearing ensues, which I ignore.

“So Father gave in and took me. While I was counting zebra stripes, a crowd of children gathered, but they didn't care about the zebras. They were staring at me.

“‘I bet it feels like rope,' said one little girl. She was talking about my hair, which had grown so long I could sit on it. Father always combed it so gently before braiding it, like Peety does the horses' tails.”

West lifts an eyebrow and a zing of panic shoots through me. I sweep my hand through the air in what I hope is a gesture of indifference. “All Chinese boys wear long braids, you know. It's just the style.”

His eyebrow settles back down and I hurry on with my narrative. “The girl's father told her, ‘Nope, it ain't like rope, it's like a snake, and it will bite you, so leave it alone.'

“She could not resist. She edged toward me, but I didn't turn around. And then, when I could almost feel her hand reaching for my hair, I spun around real fast, and yelled, ‘Boo!'

“She screamed and ran away. Everyone laughed at her, instead of me, especially Father.”

West starts to chuckle, but the movement triggers a spasm of pain. His face screws up, and I put a cool towel on his head until he relaxes again and closes his eyes. I wish for him the kind of sleep that Homer called a ‘counterfeit death,' delicious and profound.

• • •

A while later, Peety and Andy bring back a prairie chicken. Peety and I follow Andy to the stream after watching her plunge the bird in boiling water.

She hands the chicken to Peety. “Go.”

“Ay, too hot, Andito,” says Peety, bouncing the bird in his hands.

“Don't juggle it, just pluck it. A deal's a deal,” says Andy. She winks at me. “
I
caught it, so he's doing the cooking today.”

Then she pulls out a bouquet of feathery gray leaves from in the back of Peety's belt. “Here's your weeds.”

I thank them and rinse the bunch in the stream. “He's hurting,” I say as I pound the yarrow into a poultice with a rock. “What do you think about slipping him some of your whiskey, Peety? I know he does not want to drink it, but this is an emergency.”

“No,
chico.
You cannot do that,” he says, ripping out feathers.

“Careful! You's gonna take off the wings,” protests Andy.

“Ees okay, chicken no using them no more. West had
uno problemo
with the spirits, the whiskey.”

“West?” I repeat, as if we could be talking about someone else.

“He was only ten, maybe. His papa don't like nobody, blacks, reds, yellows, not even his own son. Even after Cay's family took him, papa still hurting him in here.” He taps his heart with his fist. “Maybe he don't want to live no more. Maybe there's too much hurting inside and can't be fixed.” He stops plucking. “So, he runs away many times. Cay always find him, passed out somewhere with a bottle. Not always good stuff either, you know. Sometimes, very bad stuff. Puts demons in your mind. Maybe those demons easier than ones papa put there.”

My chest burns, like someone poured in poison. Andy takes the chicken and finishes plucking it.

Peety wipes his hands on a rag. “This happens until he's fourteen and old enough to work at El Rancho. West finds peace with animals. But those demons are always there in the bottle. So he don't go near it. You understand now?”

I nod, then return to West's side with the poultice. He seems to be stable for now, no fever that I can tell, though his face is pale as death. I watch his eyelashes flicker in deepest slumber, and wonder at the wounds that tear at him from the inside.

• • •

Peety doesn't want an audience when he makes dinner so Andy and I sit by the river. The water tumbles by, blissfully unaware of the suffering upon its shores. Yellow grass and tangled reeds gain footholds on the opposite bank where the ground is less rocky.

“You's gonna freeze like a gryphon statue hanging over West.” Andy cuts her eyes to me. “Don't look at me like that, I know what a gryphon is. Lion body with an eagle head that's always stuck out like it's gonna pounce. Ungodly things. Miss Betsy had a statue of one she made me clean every day. It got real dirty between the claws, even though it never caught anything.”

We dip our toes in the water. “What kind of demons do you think West's father put in him?”

“The worst kind, is my guess. Child's supposed to depend on his parents. Better to have no daddy at all than one that hurts you.”

“But his daddy's been gone for years.”

She kicks up her foot throwing water across the stream. “Your head's like a room and when you's forced to stay in it, you gotta deal with all the trash that's left in there.”

Andy reminds me of you, Father, and your infinite wisdom.
“You think everyone has trash?”

“Yep, I do. Even the ones whose head you think is empty, like Cay. Bet he's full of it.” She grins, and I feel my cheeks lifting, too.

Peety calls us back to the fire, where the horse blankets have been folded in three neat squares for sitting. Between two of the squares, a bouquet of purple blazing stars blooms from one of West's empty boots.

Andy eyes the floral arrangement with a bemused expression. “You got a lady friend in town?” She makes a show of looking behind herself at the miles and miles of empty prairie land.

Peety chuckles. “I got no lady friend.” With his handkerchief, he whacks at the folded horse blankets, then gestures toward them. “Please sit in my best chairs.”

Andy and I plunk down, and he proudly hands us steaming mugs of soup. “I put in a surprise for you.”

“What do you mean by that?” asks Andy.

Peety grins. “If I told you, it's no surprise.” He kneels beside us and digs into his soup, even though it's still steaming.

I watch him carefully blow his spoon, then I ask, “Who is Esme?”

The vaquero lowers his mug to his lap. “Esme.” He stares into his soup as if seeing a memory. “She is the youngest of my four sisters. They're all trouble, but Esme worries me the most. The other three, they will make good Mexican wives one day, but not Esme.” He looks up from his lap, lips curved into a sad smile. “Please, enjoy your soup.”

I stir my cup, wondering about this youngest sister, and something round comes to the surface. As Andy brings her own mug to her lips, she looks at my spoon. Abruptly, she sets down her cup, nearly scalding herself. She runs to the river.

Peety's broad face splits open in confusion. “He don't even try it.”

I show him the onion on my spoon. It still wears its papery peel, like he just dropped it in recently. “You put onions in the soup.”

“I found in my bag. Three of them for three of us.”

I remember the onions I put there from Cay's lumpy sack back at the Little Blue. Sure took him a long enough time to find.

“He doesn't like them,” I explain. “It's not your fault.”

I hurry over to Andy, with Peety on my heels. She hugs her knees to her as she glares at the river.

“I'm sorry, Andito,” says Peety. “I ruin your dinner for you.”

She waves us away, so we return to the fire. I try my best to finish my soup, raw onion and all, just to make Peety feel better.

• • •

The next day, West's temperature spikes, and I alternate bundling him up with fanning him down. Andy simmers a new soup, this time with no onions. A layer of fat swims on top. But West has no appetite for it and only takes a few sips of water. When he slips into sleep, his pain follows him and he cries.

“She didn't do it,” he gasps during one nightmare.

I take his hand, clammy and trembling. The two scars on his wrist peek out from under his sleeve, gleaming like the eyes of a ghost. I match my fingertips to them, and they feel hot under my touch.

He opens his eyes and squints at me, like he is trying to remember who I am. “Sammy?”

“Yes.”

Then he fades back into unconsciousness.

Every hour I put the cup of broth to his lips, but he will not take it, not even with me spooning it to him. Eventually he stops sweating and his eyes lose focus.

“West,” I call to him. His eyes slit open for a moment. “You need to drink something, or you will . . . ” I can't say it. “Please?”

Still, he does not drink.

Later that night, I beg sleep to open her doors to me. She leads me to a barren field. West and I face each other dressed as two knights, wearing armor too heavy to shed. The earth opens and swallows him. I clutch his hand just like that day we wrestled, but he is slipping from my grasp.

• • •

When he refuses to drink again the third day, I want to shake him in desperation. “Come on, drink, or I might do something reckless.”

Nothing.

Peety and Andy took the horses out to graze and will not return for another hour. The late-morning sun hides in a tepid curdle of clouds.

I shuffle to the water. A random trail of stones lines the shallow stream. I roll up my trousers and step out of my boots. I remember Father walking a path of stones. He said it helped him sort through problems.
A balanced body balances the mind.

I step up onto a steady rock with my right foot and hold my left in back of me.

Problem one: the faraway Mr. Trask.

I had accepted the possibility that I might never find him when I decided to go with Andy, even if she still hasn't accepted my company. Yet I held out hope that I might cross paths with the grocer before Calamity Cutoff, especially now that we are so close. With every passing moment, however, he slips farther from my grasp. And with Lady Tin-Yin gone, the loss will be doubly bitter.

A twinge of sadness stirs me again as I remember Father, his face full of hope as he told me, “I have great plans for us. We might even see a mermaid!”