Lucky Breaks (2 page)

“Lincoln,” Brigitte said in her tired-feet voice from inside the kitchen trailer. “First, push that little stool over here so I can get my feet up. Then you will tell me what is this big knot project that you carry everywhere in the black sack.”

Just outside, squatting in the wedge of shade cast by an A-frame sign, Lucky listened through the open windows. In a cheerful welcoming curlicue way the sign’s bright red letters said:

Brigitte’s Hard Pan Café
Open for
Lunch/Dejeuner
Sat–Sun & Holidays

So before the weekend when she would be busy helping Brigitte, Lucky was searching for worms on a row of potted
tomato plants that bordered the little cluster of Café tables and chairs. Part keen-eyed hunter, part keen-eared listener, she, too, wondered about Lincoln’s secret project, which he carried slung over his shoulder in a big Santa Clausy sack. Except Santa didn’t carry his stuff in an extra-large, heavy-duty black plastic trash bag the way Lincoln did.

“It’s for a contest,” Lincoln said, “of the International Guild of Knot Tyers.”

Lucky already knew that much. She herself had tried to pry the secret of what the thing actually
was
out of Lincoln, but he wouldn’t tell. Lucky had her own private theory about it but hoped she was wrong. Lincoln had a doofus-dorky side that was kind of sweet, but there were limits. She couldn’t believe that he would spend weeks making a fishing net. Not in the middle of the Mojave Desert, where there wasn’t an ocean for zillions of miles around. However, each time Lucky had stolen a glimpse of the thing in the black plastic trash bag, it had always looked exactly like…a fishing net.

Lucky examined the underside of a large stem, sniffing its unripe-tomato smell.

Lucky would have liked to probe into the compartment of Lincoln’s brain where he kept his secrets, using one of those special scientific-medical instruments that have a teeny tiny camera on the very end. In some ways she felt that she already knew quite a lot of what was in his brain, but lately he’d become sort of different—not older, exactly, but a little bit more
reserved. Without knowing exactly why, Lucky worried about this slight and gradual change in Lincoln, and she hated not knowing the particular secret about whatever he was making for the knot contest.

At least she did know the secret of tomato worms, which is camouflage. Since they are
exactly
the same color green as tomato leaves and stems, and since their bodies have little angular notches to resemble branches, they look just like part of the tomato plant and are hard to see. Lucky understood about creatures blending in with their habitat because she herself had skin, eyes, and hair exactly the color of the sand and rocks of Hard Pan, California, where she lived. But she had seen the all-time best example of an animal camouflaging itself on a program recently: caterpillars in Japan that looked exactly like bird droppings! Lucky pictured the whole thing: the predators going, “Eww, don’t eat those—they’re bird droppings!” while the caterpillars lie around laughing. Her hero, Charles Darwin, had been dead for way over a hundred years, but she knew he’d love the caterpillar story, and she held a little conversation with him in her mind, telling him the whole thing.

Her worm-hunting technique had to do with the fact that tomato worms go to the bathroom just like everyone else. So she put white paper on the soil underneath where branches stuck out from the barrel. Eventually little black dots appeared on the paper, which meant there was a tomato worm directly above. The black dots were his droppings. So then you made your eyes
travel all along every branch and leaf above those black dots, very carefully and thoroughly, especially on the underneath sides—and sooner or later, if you were patient, you’d spot the worm.

As Lucky searched, she heard Brigitte say from inside the kitchen trailer, “And if you are winning that contest, then perhaps you will go to the headquarters in England for the big convention of the Knot Tyers?”

“Well,” Lincoln said, “yeah, but it’s even better than that. I’d go to England, and one guy who’s been helping me, Mr. Budworth, he’s the best knot tyer alive—he’s written more than a dozen books on knotting—he and his wife offered to put me up for the summer, that’s how they say it over there, ‘We’ll put you up,’ so I’d have a place to stay for free. Mr. Budworth knows
everything
; he knows the entire history of knots, and how the same knot will show up in different countries. He says I could help him with
Knotting Matters
, which is even more cool than
Knot News
; it’s got articles and stories by knotters from all over the world. Going to England is really why I want to win the contest. My dad says if I do win, he’ll pay for the plane ticket.
Plus
—” Lincoln broke off.

“Plus what?” Brigitte asked.

“Well, Mrs. Budworth wants me to stay on with them and go to school in England for a year. She says I need much more challenge than I’m getting here, and she thinks I’d love the school where their own kids went.”

A bad feeling came over Lucky. The thought of Lincoln being gone next year, or even just for the summer, made her
stop hunting worms and sit back on the ground, not caring about getting the seat of her jeans gritty. Lincoln would become this contest-winning world traveler, meeting all sorts of interesting people, living in a real city with the most famous knot-man in the world, probably skipping a grade when he finally came back home because he’d be so far ahead of everyone here. And Lucky herself would be…abandoned.
And
condemned; condemned to a bleak, lonely life, without—without any other person her own age in Hard Pan.

And that was when a thought like a gas bubble in the La Brea Tar Pits seeped up, murky and foul. The thought had to do with Lincoln somehow
not
winning that contest. It came from Lucky’s anxiety gland, which could get overactive. She forced herself to concentrate on tomato worms.

Inside, Brigitte and Lincoln had begun to discuss food. Lucky knew that a bunch of geologists had made a reservation at the Café for lunch on Saturday, and Brigitte had told Lincoln about the soups and salads and sandwiches on her menu. She’d just asked Lincoln if there were something else he thought geologists would like.

“Hamburgers,” said Lincoln.

“Ah,
non
,” Brigitte said, but not in her tired-feet voice. This was her I-won’t-change-my-mind voice. “They can get their hamburgers anyplace. The Hard Pan Café does not have them. The Café is a little bit Californian, but also it is a little bit French, and that is why people like to come. But never, never, never do I cook the hamburger.”

They had had this conversation before. There were even a bunch of Hard Pan advisers helping Brigitte with her studies to become an American citizen. She wanted, she said, to learn the kinds of things that they don’t have on the test, things that would make her more like a
real
Californian. The advisors included Lincoln, Lucky, Miles, Short Sammy, Dot, the Captain, and actually just about all forty-three residents of Hard Pan. Most of them had told Brigitte, in addition to other tips, that she should serve hamburgers at the Café. So Brigitte practiced making the
th
sound, which she said was very hard for people with French tongues, and she tried to understand the rules of baseball, and she learned how to turn avocados into guacamole. But to hamburgers on her menu, she always firmly said
non
.

Lucky spotted a worm, a big soft fat one. The word for not wanting to touch a big soft fat worm is squeamish, which has a built-in sound of exactly the feeling in your fingers as they reach for that worm. Being, like Charles Darwin, a scientist, Lucky un-squeamished her fingers. Worms grasp their branch strongly, so you have to get a really firm grip on their bodies in order to pry them off.

She didn’t kill the worms, first because they were gooshy and mushy and she did not want to see them bleed; second because she was fine with protecting the tomatoes from them but at the same time she was not a cold-blooded worm murderer; and third because she was saving them in a jar as a present for the Captain’s chickens. Most of the old
LUSCIOUS TOMATOES
label was still on the jar, so in a funny way it was exactly right for a temporary tomato worm home.

The Captain’s chickens loved tomato worms, and once Lucky had had an ingenious plan of borrowing a couple of them
so
they
could find the tomato worms and save
her
all that trouble. But Brigitte would not let her because of the Café. She said people eating at an outdoor café did not like to see or smell chickens or chicken feathers or chicken poop. It was one of those plans, Lucky realized too late, where you need to just do it instead of asking first, especially when you’re pretty sure the answer will be
non
.

“But I do not
want
to cook the hamburger for them,” Brigitte was arguing. “At every restaurant and fast food they can eat the hamburger. Here, I say no hamburger. Eat instead something new. I am thinking sometime to put
escargots
on the menu.”

“What’s that?” Lincoln sounded interested. Unlike Lucky, he loved trying things he’d never tasted before. Plus, he was always, always hungry.

“Oh, Lincoln, they are so delicious baked in their sauce of melted butter and garlic and parsley. When I am little, we go to the countryside after it rains, because it is the time they all come out. We gather many baskets of them, the
petits-gris
, bring them home, and starve them until they become clean inside. One time I remember”—Brigitte broke off and laughed—“one time my papa forget to put a weight on the basket lid. The next morning we find them climbing all over the kitchen.”

Lucky listened to the silence inside the trailer, waiting for Lincoln to ask what in the world kind of animal Brigitte was talking about. Horrendous descriptions like this one of Brigitte’s always made Lucky a little worried about her adopted mom’s parenting skills. Brigitte was only a beginner parent, having been Lucky’s guardian for a little over two years. Apparently, it was
normal in France, where Brigitte came from, to hunt and starve some poor little creatures before you cooked and ate them.

Finally Lincoln said, “Brigitte, what kind of animals are they?”

“
Escargots
—snails. They are very delicate and beautiful on the plate, and we eat them with the little fork right in their shells.” Lucky’s squeamishness gland contracted. Gah!

“Come on,” Lincoln said. “Why don’t the shells break? They’d be too fragile.” Lucky could tell that Lincoln didn’t for one minute believe this gross, ridiculous story any more than she did.

“
Non
, in France our snails have the very hard shell. I show you the picture in my cookbook.” Lucky was tempted to go inside to look at the picture but decided that tomato worms were enough for one day.

Six of them, Lucky counted as she dropped some tomato leaves in the jar and screwed on the lid with its punched holes. She wanted to keep them from starving or suffocating to death before they got eaten by the Captain’s chickens. She put the jar in the shade under one of the Café tables. She would take it to the Captain’s house after she helped Brigitte prep for tomorrow’s lunch.

“Well,” she heard Lincoln say as she came inside, “I’m not sure about geologists, but if it’s a choice between snails and hamburgers on the menu, I think you’re safer with burgers.”

Brigitte made a gesture like waving away a fly. “Pfft,” she said.

Lucky was not shy at all, being scientifically curious about everything. So on Saturday, when the minivan with a Cal State Northridge decal on its window pulled up, and a pack of geologists sat themselves at the round table of the Café outside, Lucky went straight out from the kitchen trailer with the blackboard menu and a big welcome smile.

Then she saw that one of the geologists was a girl about her own age, who looked a little shy around the edges.

Lucky set the blackboard on its easel and leaned over to the girl—who had on khaki shorts and climbing boots and a camouflage vest and matching hat—Lucky leaned over just like a real waitress and said to her, “Let me know if you have any questions about the menu.” The girl was peering at the three connected trailers where Lucky and Brigitte lived: the kitchen trailer in the middle, with Lucky’s canned-ham bedroom trailer soldered to one end of it and Brigitte’s Westcraft to the other.
And Lucky saw, through the girl’s wide-open, amazed-looking eyes, the Café’s white-tableclothed tables, the hard-packed sand floor, and the lattice fence to break the wind and give shade. She looked as if she’d never been anyplace like this before, ever.

The girl kind of whispered to Lucky, “Do you get to be the waitress?” like saying with her voice,
How cool is
that
?
; like wondering if Lucky got to do the best job in the world. So Lucky showed her, yes, by setting up the glasses in a very efficient waitressy way, same as Lulu at Smithy’s Family Restaurant in Sierra City, which is a major restaurant open twenty-four hours a day, not just an outdoor place like Brigitte’s Hard Pan Café, open for lunch on weekends and holidays only. What you do is you pretend the place setting is a clock, and you put the water glass at exactly one o’clock.

The geologists studied Brigitte’s Frenchy handwriting on the menu, and Brigitte came out smiling in her short cotton dress and espadrilles sandals, carrying a pitcher of water on a round tray.

One of the group, a regular customer by the name of Pete, said, “Hey, Brigitte, I brought you some hungry geologists.” To the others he said, “Meet Brigitte, the best chef in the Eastern Sierras, and that’s her daughter, Lucky.” Pete was tall, with big arm muscles and an energetic face. When he spoke, his eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and even his ears moved a great deal; they were acrobatic. Although he was clean shaven, his beard was the type to already be growing out again the minute he finished shaving. It was an enthusiastic beard. Lucky often had an urge to touch his cheeks, which looked scratchy in a handsome way, but instead she stared at them quite hard. When she did this, Pete himself would rub his cheek, as if he were feeling it for her.

He grinned at Brigitte, ears rising up on the sides, and went on, “This is the gang I told you about—been bragging on your food to them, and now we’re all doing fieldwork in the area, so I brought them along. This is Sylvia; she’s a sedimentologist. Then Dixon—she’s the hungry-looking one—mineralogist, and my buddy Erwin the Earthquake Guy, seismologist. Next to him is Rocky—paleontologist—and Rocky’s niece, who came along”—he winked at her—“just to worry her mother.”

“Well,” Brigitte said, “it is good that we have such a lot of rocks around here,” which made the geologists laugh. “Do you have any question about the menu today?”

Someone asked whether they served hamburgers.
“Ah, non,”
Brigitte said, looking regretful but at the same time as if this were not the correct question. Then she smiled and explained how the tomatoes were grown organically right there in Hard Pan. “You are going to like them very much,” she said, “also the avocado salad today, which has a spicy sauce.” Brigitte smiled serenely, to show that they didn’t have to worry one bit because all the dishes on the blackboard were delicious.

So everyone ordered cold soups, salads, and iced tea, and Lucky went inside to get a basket of Brigitte’s crusty bread and little individually wrapped pats of butter.

There was a tap, and Lucky looked up to see the girl’s head poking in. “Is there a bathroom?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Lucky, and lifted her chin toward the far end of the trailer. The girl had that way of not looking right at you, which some people think is unfriendly but Lucky understood could also be a certain category of shyness.

So instead of worrying about a possible unfriendly aspect to this girl, Lucky thought of how her tone of voice had said that being the waitress was cool. And that inspired Lucky to make herself look even more professional when the girl re-emerged. Hefting a large tray, she said, “The whole trick to not spilling,” as if she were an accomplished waitress training a new one, “is don’t look at it. You have to trust your hands and arms to balance everything without supervising them. They know what they’re doing.”

“Whoa!” the girl said, as she followed Lucky down the
trailer steps and across the hard-packed sand. She said it like she’d never have thought of that tray-carrying tip in a million years.

And then Lucky worried that maybe right now she was being a little bit show-offy, although without really meaning to. “Are you really a geologist?” she asked to change the subject.

The girl shrugged. But then she said, “I might be one when I grow up, which, you get to be outside a lot and wear camo.” Lucky peered intently at her eyelashes, which were dark and curly, beautiful little frames for her eyes. There was probably a very good evolutionary reason to have eyelashes like that, and Lucky wondered what that reason would be.

“Hey!” the uncle said to the girl as she sat down, while Lucky distributed plates to each person. “I think you’re supposed to keep out of the way, Paloma.”

“
Non
, it is okay,” said Brigitte. But that name slammed into Lucky like a sonic boom and made her drop her empty tray. Paloma! Paloma was the tragic woman in Miles’s story, who got killed when two miners fought over her up at the Lost Brooch Well. And now here was this
other
Paloma, who had
also
come to Hard Pan. It was a zillion-to-one coincidence…or it was, Lucky thought, something even more powerful.

As she picked up her tray, brushing off the sand, Lucky realized that she had just seconds ago delivered a little lesson on the correct way to balance one. The girl was watching her,
frowning slightly. It could have meant,
Hey, run that by me again, what you said about not spilling
, or it could have just meant, in a good way,
Yikes! What just happened that made you look so surprised?

Lucky clutched her tray and kept her chin up. She was used to Lincoln, who had never been complicated or mysterious. If only she could decipher whether Paloma was shy but nice versus shy but snobbish. She hoped, strongly, that the verdict would be shy but nice.

“This bread’s good,” the paleontologist said to the sedimentologist.

“It is to keep your stomachs from getting too wet,” Brigitte explained, pouring tea.

Paloma folded her lips inside and cut her eyes sideways at Lucky. This time Lucky was positive that the look was a kind of extra-cool coded way of saying,
Wet stomachs?
Lucky’s mouth made a tiny half smile and she cut
her
eyes to the side, meaning,
Don’t make me laugh right now!
Then it was time for Lucky to go inside with Brigitte to prepare the lunch plates.

In the kitchen trailer, Brigitte seemed to have five arms, and all of them were moving at once. Lucky had noticed that when the Café was full of customers and Brigitte was cooking or serving, she kind of speeded up, like a sled going downhill. She hummed her French tunes and seemed to become somehow lighter, as if she could move around without having to use her legs. Whipping the salad dressing, grating carrots, and ladling
soup into bowls, Brigitte said, “What are you and that girl saying together? She is nice, yes? Her name means—what is the name of the bird that came to the ark of Noah after the flood?”

Lucky nodded. “Dove,” she said as she cranked the handle of the parsley grinder over the finger-sized slices of avocado. “We didn’t really talk much, but I think I like her.”

And Lucky believed that, because of her name, and also having a geologist uncle who was a friend of Pete’s, Paloma had been
destined
to come to Hard Pan. But what Lucky liked about the name especially, and hoped would be a sort of prediction, was the very first part of it: a syllable that could stand by itself, a separate word embedded in her name. Lucky also had a whole separate word in her own name, so they had that amazing coincidence of first syllables already in common.

They had pal and luck. At least, Lucky hoped so.