8
EVEN IF I REFUSE TO ARM WRESTLE, SOMEONE will issue the chicken threat, and I will have to do battle anyway.
“Sammy, c’mere,” orders Cay.
I drag myself over. This is madness. Neither of us even wants the darn thing.
I get down on my stomach, opposite him. Andy smashes her clasped hands up to her nose, praying, I think.
A tiny dent appears in the side of West’s cheek. I hood my eyes and try to look fierce. The others crowd around us for the final match, or mismatch.
“I’ll try not to hurt you,” I mutter.
A warm wind kicks up, throwing dust into my eyes. West folds his callused hand over my cold bony one. He has guitarist fingers, slender and strong, the kind that might be nice to hold under different circumstances. What am I thinking? I shake those thoughts from my head and focus.
“Your hand’s kind of soft,” he says.
“I’m a musician,” I say scornfully. “Of course it is.”
“Shouldn’t you be out giving lessons?”
“Shouldn’t you be out branding cows?”
His thumb twitches.
Since one of his arms equals two or three of my own, I will never win this on brute strength. So I keep my elbow as close to my side as possible to add my body weight to the fight. Might as well throw a twig in front of the locomotive.
“On the count of three,” says Cay. “One, two, three!”
I pull down a fraction before he says three, gaining an inch in my corner right out of the gate by bending my wrist over his. But a second later, he flicks out the kink. When I look up, he is watching me, not his arm. I might as well be wrestling a hitching post.
“C’mon, Sammy,” says Andy, at least playing along with the sham. “Send him home.”
“I’m boring, West,” says Peety, faking a yawn. “Why you want to play with babies?”
I redouble my efforts, crooking his wrist again. He gives me some slack, though I wish he would just ax the chicken already. When I’ve depleted all my strength, he crushes me.
“Ow,” I whimper, as my shoulder grinds against its socket. I grit my teeth and roll it out. The boys take turns slapping me on the back.
“Ain’t a square match,” says West, tucking the jawbone into Cay’s hatband.
“You noticed that, did you?” snipes Andy.
West cocks an eye at her, then shakes his head. He and the others spread their bedrolls.
“Time for ropes,” he says.
“What do you mean by that?” asks Andy, glaring. We both feel the same way about ropes these days.
He unwinds a length of cord. “Rattlers don’t cross hemp.”
Andy sucks in her breath and stops glaring. No doubt West wonders how a couple of greenhorns like us expect to survive the wilderness.
“’Course, ain’t many rattlers in the towns, if you’re still on the fence . . . ” He trails off.
Andy and I don’t have bedrolls, just our extra shirts, so we bundle them into pillows and settle down on the hard earth. Despite my layers, I feel every blade of bluegrass, every lobe of sow thistle, to say nothing of the gravel. I chuck the bigger rocks aside, though doing so just makes the smaller ones more obvious.
To my right, West shakes out his bedroll, with Cay on his other side. I expect Peety to lie beside Cay, but he spreads his blanket right by Andy. West lays the rope in a circle around all of us.
A chorus of yips starts up, coyotes celebrating a kill, but even worse than the coyotes is the wind. It started as a dry breeze, but now it pulls at me, sucking the moisture from my lips and eyes. It blows through the cedars in a dissonant chord that rises and falls like the wheezing of croupy lungs. I resist the urge to scoot closer to Andy. She’s looking straight up at a rift in the clouds where a red moon has appeared, a bullet wound in the dark skin of night. Father said the moon changes color when bad luck is near.
“Looks like the moon did show up,” says Andy. “A red one, too.”
“What’s that mean?” asks Cay, sitting up.
“Never you mind. It’ll scare ya.”
“Oh, come on,” says Cay. “The only things that scare me are hairy caterpillars. The ones that look like someone’s mustache fell off and is crawling away.”
Peety cranes his neck toward Andy. “You got a story? Please tell us.”
Andy sits cross-legged. The boys arrange themselves around us.
“Anyone heard of Harp Falls?” Andy sweeps her gaze over each of us. No one has. She pulls her coat more securely around her, then begins.
“A prince was born with everything a man could want, good looks and wealth. Never had to work for much. One morning after a night of whoring, he wakes up lying in a haystack, not even sure how he got there.”
“I hate it when that happens,” says Cay, flapping the brim of his hat up and down.
West leans back on his hands. “Yeah, but you ain’t no prince.”
Andy ignores them. “He’s thinking what a sorry sap he is, when he hears music so sweet it makes him weep. A woman’s voice, out of nowhere, says, ‘I’m the harp at the top of the waterfall. Find me, and you shall have everlasting joy.’