The Blue Between the Clouds Page 2

  We let the rope fall out of our hands. Two Moons looked at me, and I could tell he was havin’ the same idea I was. Emmett could help us build the plane. We walked quickly over to the door of the kitchen truck. You don’t have to knock at Emmett’s; he always knows when someone is standin’ at his door. So we stood, and waited.

  He didn’t come right away, but he knew we were there. We could tell because he would shuffle to the door, then back inside the truck somewhere, then back to the door. When he finally did open the door, he was wearin’ half of his officer’s uniform. He looked at us for a moment, stone-faced like. Then he saluted. We weren’t sure what to do, so we saluted back. Then he shut the door.

  You see, that’s how crazy Emmett is. He has his own world all set up in his head, and real live people like Two Moons and me, well, we’re dream people to Emmett. So if he feels like rollin’ over and goin’ to sleep after a dream, he does. We figured he just rolled over and we would have to come up with somethin’ to wake him. That is, if we wanted to talk to him.

  “I’d sure like to make that airplane today,” I said to Two Moons.

  “I’d like to fly to Canada,” Two Moons said. “You suppose Emmett will help us?”

  “He will,” I said.

  Trouble was, Emmett had just shut the door on us. He could be in a deep sleep or he could be into another dream by now. We looked around the yard. Two Moons pulled up the rest of the rope, coiled it, and held it up to the cab window. He was offerin’ it as a gift, but Emmett paid no attention. Two Moons laid it on the porch and put a shiny penny in its center. Emmett watched us through the bedroom cab. We waited.

  One summer afternoon we waited for three hours. My bike was broken, and Pa was still in the mine. Emmett was the only person I knew who could fix it. We left gifts that day too: a tin windup car, Bazooka bubble gum, and seven bottle caps. Emmett finally came out. He wasn’t wearin’ anything but his bathrobe and cowboy boots. Half of his face was shaved, and he had his flight cap on backwards. He fixed my bike in about ten minutes. I’ve never seen anything like it. Even Pa was amazed when I told him about it.

  “Emmett has a mechanical gift,” he said. “He just don’t know it.”

  I wished I had some bottle caps now. I knew he liked ’em. We sat down on the porch, preparin’ to wait a long time, when we smelled it. Ma was makin’ corn muffins.

  “I bet crazy Emmett would open up that door for a corn muffin,” Two Moons said.

  “He’d break it down,” I said.

  We stood up and stared at the house, makin’ mental notes of the kitchen, the parlor, the pantry window. We had to get some of those muffins. Ma would slap us with a long wooden spoon she kept hangin’ by the icebox if she caught us. The slap never hurt so much, it was the thought of gettin’ caught that bothered us. How could we fly to Canada if we couldn’t even steal a few muffins from Ma?

  We walked toward the house. I motioned for Two Moons to move to the pantry window. I crept along the side of the house until I was under the kitchen window. Slowly I pulled myself over the sill. The window was open enough to squeeze through. Ma was standin’ with her back to me; she was so wide I couldn’t see past her to the pantry window. Pa always called her his big ol’ gal, and slapped her on the backside. I guess he liked her that way; I sure did. When I was younger and the Kranz brothers would knock me around until I cried, Ma would comfort me. I could snuggle up on her lap and the whole world would practically disappear.

  Ma moved away from the stove. I lifted the window slowly. Two Moons lifted his window and waited. Ma was in the parlor, where her Sears catalog was spread out on the table. She’d check the muffins, read the catalog, empty a tin, read the catalog, and so on. She pulled a fresh batch out and carefully dumped them onto the kitchen table. She filled the tin with fresh dough, put it in the oven, and turned back to her catalog. I climbed through the window like a cat and scooped up two fresh muffins and pitched them to Two Moons, then jumped back out the window.

  Two Moons was already to Emmett’s porch. He set the muffins down beside the penny in the center of the rope.

  We sat down on the steps and waited.

  “What do you think is in Canada?” I said to Two Moons.

  “Grizz,” said Two Moons. “Lots of grizz. Grandfather told me there’s more bears in Canada than people. He said they got a tribe up there called the Ojibway. Believe everybody got two spirits. One good. One evil. The body got to choose which side he’s on.”

  “Grizz have two spirits?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Two Moons.

  “What about crazy Emmett?” I said. “You think he got more than two—that’s why he’s so confused?”

  “Grandfather says Emmett is growin’ younger. That he reached his death day and lived, now he’s gonna grow until he’s a baby again and crawl back to the gods. Maybe come back as a wolf or something.”

  I turned around and looked through the window of the bedroom truck. Emmett’s feet were up on the steering wheel.

  “Look,” I said to Two Moons. “Emmett must be asleep.”

  Just then I felt a hornet sting on my shoulder. I yelped and jumped to my feet. As Two Moons was lookin’ at me, tryin’ to figure out what caused the pain, he yelped and jumped clean out of his shoes. We stood there, rubbin’ our wounds and wonderin’ what stung us. Then we heard it, a muffled giggle.

  “It’s Esther!” I shouted. My sister can shoot the wings off a bumblebee with a slingshot.

  “Over by the shed!” shouted Two Moons. We were off, runnin’ through the slippery field. Esther poked her head around the corner of the shed just long enough to get off another shot. I got hit in the stomach and fell to my knees. Esther ducked around the shed to reload. When she jumped out and sighted again, Two Moons dove behind the Model T. She let go and the small stone glanced off a fender. I rolled through the snow and mud until I was on the other side of the shed.

  Two Moons could see that I could get to Esther if he could keep her busy.

  “Esther!” he shouted. “You couldn’t hit the side of a barn if you were standin’ inside!”

  “I hit you, didn’t I?” Esther shouted back.

  “Luck!” shouted Two Moons. “Pure luck!”

  I was around the back of the shed now. I could see my sister reloadin’. I knew she could hit anything with that slingshot. Last fall she came home with a pheasant. Shot it right through the head. Ma was furious. Pa said it was the best dinner he ever had.

  “Just see if you can hit my hand from there, squirrel bait!” Two Moons shouted. He let his open hand slowly rise up from behind the car. Esther took aim. I got ready to pounce on her. Esther shot. Two Moons screamed. I ran headlong into her backside and knocked her right into a mud hole.

  “Two Moons!” I screamed. “I got her!”

  Two Moons came runnin’ and dove on top of us. Esther got ahold of Two Moons’ long braid of hair, but Two Moons wrenched the slingshot free and threw it just out of our reach. When I tried to wrestle free and go after it, Esther scooped up a handful of mud and rubbed it in my face. I had mud in my eyes and couldn’t see to get away. Two Moons put his fingers in her mouth and stretched it back by her ear until she bit him. I wriggled free and went after the slingshot. I scooped it up and was about to heave it into the holdin’ pond when Esther got ahold of my feet. I pulled out of my boots and ran all blurry-eyed through the snow and mud in my socks. I threw the slingshot as far as I could, maybe too far. It landed on the other side of the pond.

  Esther was madder than a wet cat. She couldn’t decide which one of us to tear into first. When she looked at Two Moons, he hit her in the face with a mud ball. It gave us the break we needed, and we were off. We ran across the field and through the henhouse. Esther was right behind us and scooped up eggs as she ran. The hens were squawkin’ and flappin’ at our heads. We burst out the other side and Esther hit Two Moons in the back with an egg. She can throw, too. She hit me in the leg before we reached the barn. That’s where it happened.
I turned to see where Esther was and tripped over a milk bucket. I reached out to catch myself, but all I could grab was air until I hit the front of the tractor.

  Esther and Two Moons froze. They could see I was hurt. My head was bleedin’ like crazy. Esther ran to me and held my head up. Two Moons found a rag and pressed it hard on my head to stop the bleedin’. I didn’t feel much pain, but I was dizzy.

  “We got to get you cleaned up ’fore Mama sees,” Esther said. “You know how she gets when she sees blood.”

  “Can you walk?” Two Moons asked.

  “I think so,” I said. But I was sure I couldn’t. When I stood, I was so wobbly that I almost fell over. Esther and Two Moons caught me and helped me limp out of the barn toward the house.

  “Let’s go back around by the cellar,” Esther said to Two Moons. “I’ll run in and get some water and towels so we can clean him up. We’ll sneak him in and get a bandage on his head before Mama sees any blood.”

  I suppose it would’ve worked if Ma wouldn’t have come to the door right then to call us all to supper. She saw the three of us standin’ there, covered with mud, and me with my head down and blood all over my shirt. It was more than she could stand.

  “Oh, oh, oh my,” she gasped. Then she ran out into the snow in her house shoes, flappin’ her arms and callin’ my father.

  “Tom, oh Tom. Oh, somebody!”

  She kept on like that, callin’ Pa, wanderin’ in circles, breathin’ through her mouth like she was going to drown. She patted herself on the forehead and stomped around until she lost both of her house shoes.

  Esther and Two Moons helped me into the kitchen. I took off my muddy clothes and stood there in my underwear while Esther cleaned my face and cut. Then she poured iodine on it. I screamed and acted kind of like Ma while Esther called the doctor. Two Moons wrapped my head with gauze, and Esther went out and dragged Ma in out of the snow and made her some comfrey tea.

  From the kitchen I could see Emmett gazin’ out his window at the clouds that were moving north. I wished I were ridin’ one of ’em about then, like it was a huge brahma bull ragin’ over the mountains.

  4

  ME AND ICARUS

  I guess you could say it was Miss Alexander that broke Two Moons’ arm. See, the next day I was feelin’ pretty good. I wasn’t dizzy anymore, and I only had a slight headache. Ma thought it best that I go to school, get my mind off my head. I sort of wanted to go anyway; you know, show everybody my wound. I kind of thought I looked like the drummer in that one picture of the soldiers from the Revolutionary War. Miss Alexander put it up on the wall the first week of school when she talked about freedom. All the way to school that morning I walked with one stiff leg like I had a drum slung on my hip. I drummed on my leg and whistled “Yankee Doodle” until Esther flipped my backside with a piece of tube rubber. That girl ain’t never gonna get married.

  The schoolyard was like Main Street after the war. Everybody rushed up to see my head. Jimmy Kranz offered me a nickel if I would take off the bandage.

  “Worth more than a nickel,” I said.

  Then everybody wanted to see it. Two Moons collected the money and told the story of how it happened.

  “Me and Matt was out after some bandit coyotes, them ones that been killin’ off Hansens’ chickens. Well anyway, we run into a whole pack of ’em in thick oak brush. Now, coyotes don’t normally attack people, but seein’ as they were trapped, I guess they thought it was their only way out. I picked off three of them, and Matt here shot one and clubbed one down with his rifle butt before he was throwed to the ground, where he hit his head.”

  It wasn’t exactly how I would’ve told it, but I had to go along.

  “I shot three of the devils, Two Moons,” I said.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I forgot about that sickly one you shot first.”

  Everybody was like they were in a trance, the way they get at the movie house. Two Moons had collected seventy-three cents and probably would’ve collected more if Esther wouldn’t have started to laugh.

  “Ahhh, tell ’em the real story, boys,” she said.

  I glared at her like an angry bull, but she didn’t pay me much attention.

  “C’mon, Matt. Tell ’em how you and Two Moons here were really runnin’ from me.”

  The crowd gasped and turned quickly to Esther.

  “You know,” she said. “Tell ’em how you sneaked in my room and were playin’ with my dolls. How I caught you, and you tried to run away and fell down the stairs.”

  Everybody busted out laughin’. They started pushin’ me and Two Moons, and grabbed their money back. We swore right then that we would get Esther so bad she would remember it the rest of her life. Revenge was all we could think about for most of the day.

  It wasn’t until Miss Alexander started talkin’ about Icarus that we cooled down.

  You see, we were talkin’ about Greek stories, mythology and all. And Icarus, he had this father named Daedalus. They both lived on this island way out in the sea. I suppose Daedalus got a bit tired of that island, ’cause he started thinkin’ of ways to get off. Must’ve been before good ships and all. Anyway, he made these huge wings out of feathers and wax so he could come and go as he pleased. Well, he got older, and he wanted his son Icarus to feel the wonders of flight. So he passed along some wings and a little advice. “Don’t go flyin’ too close to the sun,” he said. “It’s hot up there and the wax will melt. Your wings will fall apart and you’ll drop faster than a plucked chicken.” Somethin’ like that. Well, of course Icarus didn’t listen. He got to flyin’ around and the thrill overtook him, and he flew higher and higher until the sun melted the wax and he fell straight into the ocean and drowned.

  You see, I figured the only way out of Thistle was to go to war, or to bury myself in a mine. “I ain’t gonna spend the rest of my days in a cave,” I said to Two Moons after school. “And I sure don’t feel like dyin’ in someone else’s country.”

  Two Moons was quiet. He didn’t talk much about himself and what he wanted to do. But I could tell he had somethin’ to prove, I just wasn’t sure what it was yet.

  “It can’t be so tough to make us a pair of wings,” I said to Two Moons. “It’s got to be easier than makin’ an airplane.”

  “There are bad spirits in the sky,” Two Moons said.

  “Bad spirits?” I said. “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “The gods made us all a place to live. To trespass the skies would be bad luck. We don’t belong there,” Two Moons said.

  “You sure changed your mind fast,” I said.

  “I’m not afraid of bad spirits,” Two Moons said. “I know their medicine.”

  “Well, don’t get all worried about me,” I said. “I’m gonna fly outta here and I don’t care what’s up there. Are you comin’ with me?”

  Two Moons stared at me, then he looked at the sky.

  “Yes,” he said.

  We ran the rest of the way home and cleaned out the henhouse. We had three gunnysacks full of feathers when we were done, and both of our hands were bleedin’ from bein’ pecked by mad hens. Then we cut some willow branches and bent them into long loops. We covered these with bed sheets. Ma would’ve beat our backsides with a wooden spoon if she’d caught us. We melted all the candles we could find and poured the hot wax on the wings. Then we pushed feathers into the wax before it dried.

  By then it was dark. We decided to wait until the next day when we could see where we were flyin’.

  “I’m thinkin’ we should stay kinda low tomorrow,” Two Moons said. “Just till we’re sure everything works out.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “We don’t want to get close to that sun. Besides, it might be more effort than we think. We could get tuckered out pretty fast.”

  “The spirits,” Two Moons said.

  “Right,” I said. “We don’t want to be in the air too long, just enough to get familiar, see how they treat us.”

  We agreed that the first fl
ight would be a short one, and that we wouldn’t go showin’ off until we were really good at it.

  We were up early the next day. We hurried through breakfast and got on our way to school. I guess we were a little anxious to get home and get into the air. The hardest part was keepin’ the whole thing a secret. We were so nice to Esther it made her nervous. But we had to be. If we got in a fight, we were liable to burst out in anger and tell her everything. Besides, we both knew deep down that we would get her back after we felt the wonders of flight.

  I was thinkin’ about all this when I looked up and saw a chicken hawk circlin’ above us. He followed us all the way to school. I figured it was a good luck sign. I pointed him out to Two Moons. Two Moons smiled.

  “Brother hawk is waitin’ for us,” he said.

  “What are you talkin’ about?” Esther said.

  “Nothin’,” I said.

  “You two better not have some fool ideas in your heads,” she said. “I’ll throw you both in the holdin’ pond. You know it too, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, we know it,” I said.

  Well, we planned on keepin’ everything a secret. You know, lay low all day, then sneak back to the barn unnoticed and go for a short flight before supper. That was before all the kids in the schoolyard crowded around us and asked us about Esther’s dolls.