Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

“Just being neighborly.”
Clunk clunk clunk.
    I felt very confused. According to what I’d heard, the devil himself was a saint compared to Traft Martin. What kind of devil helps someone pick rocks? Didn’t figure. We worked together for an hour or more. The sun slipped to the horizon. Traft rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist. “I best git going.”
    I brushed dirt off my hands. “This was so kind of you.”
    â€œNeighbors should help one another,” he said. “Don’t you agree?”
    â€œDo unto others,” I said.
    He nodded at me, then mounted his horse.
    â€œLet’s go, Trouble.” He and the horse wheeled around. “It was nice meeting you, Miz Brooks.” He rode off. Mr. Whiskers padded up behind me, rubbing against my legs.
    â€œTrouble,” I mused, bending down to scratch Mr. Whiskers behind the ears. “I have a feeling that could be Traft Martin’s middle name.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    That night, the four walls of that shack squeezed so snug that I did my reading on the front steps. After a few pages into my book, I set it aside. Traft’s help in the field had brought up a memory of me and Charlie painting half the fences in Arlington that one summer. With the two of us, it seemed more like a taffy pull than work.
    I leaned back against the rough siding of Uncle Chester’s house and studied that Montana sky. I know the same sky hangs over Iowa—over Charlie in France, for that matter—but I don’t think it looks like this anywhere else in the world. There weren’t many trees or mountains to catch at that sky and keep it low. No, it stretched out high and smooth and far, like a heavenly quilt on an unseen frame. Back in Iowa, I’d spent my fair share of time studying the clouds and the stars. Sometimes, lying out on Aunt Ivy and Uncle Holt’s back lawn, it’d felt as if I could stretch out my arms and my fingertips and rake them across the underside of the heavens and end up with a fistful of stars.
    Not even the biggest giant I could imagine could brush this Montana sky with his fingertips. It made me feel like one of the prickly pear cactuses I crunched under my feet: small and unimportant on the prairie near Vida. Was I feeling lonely? How could I be? Mattie and Chase stopped by after school most days, and Rooster Jim had deepened the path from his shack to mine. Was there a word in Uncle Chester’s big dictionary to describe what I was feeling? Solitary? Desolate? Forlorn? “It’s like when you play Old Maid,” I said to Mr. Whiskers. “That’s what I feel like. Leftover.” He wiggled into my lap, purring away. I stroked his dark head. “Not that you’re not good company,” I told him. “But there is something to that two-by-two business.”
    Mr. Whiskers flipped over for a belly rub. All he cared about was a warm place to sleep, something to eat, and someone to give him a pat now and then. Maybe I should learn from his example, quit moping, and think about November, when I’d march into Mr. Ebgard’s office. I closed my eyes and pictured the flax field come fall. Perilee had said it would look like the ocean, all bloomed out in blue. And the wheat, golden and whiskery. I saw the fence—every inch of it—marking off the lines of my claim.
    â€œIt’s going to be mighty fine to be land barons, isn’t it?” Mr. Whiskers batted at my hand. He was done with petting. And I was done with moping. Here, under this big sky, someone like me—Hattie Here-and-There—could work hard and get a place of her own. A place to belong. Wasn’t that my deepest wish?
    A warmth wrapped over me, like I was being covered with a quilt. I whispered a prayer of thanks, then went back inside, turned out the lights, and crawled into bed.

          CHAPTER