Read Online Having Everything Right by Robert Michael; Kim; Pyle Stafford - Free Book Online Page A

pretty hot, and they weren’t doing too well. Hadn’t caught a thing. So they were riding home, with the hawk on the king’s arm, and the king on the horse’s back, just trotting along through the dust and hot wind. And this king gets real thirsty. Comes to a cliff where the water is dripping down, sends the hawk up to circle around while he holds his silver cup—kings always carry a silver cup, even to the hunt—holds his silver cup up to the water that drips and drips and drips. And just when he brings the cup that’s full of this cool water up to his lips, the hawk swoops down and knocks it out of his hand and spills the water.
    Hawks get kind of wild sometimes, and the king, being a king, isn’t the kind of guy who just gets mad over any little thing, so he waves off the hawk, picks up the silver cup, and holds it up to the dripping water again. Well, the hawk circles above, the man holds his cup—even though his arm’s about to fall off, he’s so tired—and the water drips, and drips, and drips, and drips. And he sort of looks up at the hawk and tries to bring the cup up to his lips real fast—but the hawk is faster, swooping down and knocking the cup out of his hand again and spilling that water.
    This time the king gets real mad, and he whips out his sword. Holds his cup up to the water again, and it drips, and drips—and this time when it’s only half full he thinks he can fool that hawk, and he brings the cup up to his lips. But the hawk’s too fast—swoops down, knocks the cup out of his hand, spills the water, and he swings his sword and kills that hawk with one blow.
    By now this king is so thirsty, he can’t wait to let that water drip again. So he drops his sword and his cup by the hawk, and he climbs up that cliff, and there at the top, sure enough, is a little pool where the water comes from. And just as he bends down to drink, his eyes see past the reflection of his face in the pool to where a snake lies dead in the water, sort of turned over on its side—a poison snake his hawk, circling above, had seen. The hawk had saved his life.
    Then the story gets very sad. The king climbs down the cliff, takes up his hawk and folds its wings, wraps it in his crimson cape lined with gold, and rides home slow. . . .
    But there I was with my hat in my hand just standing up to drink when that whole story goes through my head. And that story makes me hesitate just for a moment. I think about that story, and the water soaking out cool through my black felt hat and running down my elbows. And as I hesitate, the wind—which had been coming down the canyon behind me—shifts around to the side a little, and I smell this terrible smell. Just a little whiff, but awful. Just a little touch in my nose.
    Instead of drinking, I dump the water out of my hat, shake it out, and walk up that little stream past a screen of pine saplings—and there, not thirty steps upstream, a dead elk lies across the water, hot and rotten, covered with flies. Been there for days. And now, when I look close at the water flowing in the little stream, I can see the rainbow sheen of some poison riding that water down toward where I dipped my hat.
    And then I think to myself, if I had not remembered that story, I would have drunk the water, and never climbed out from Joseph Canyon.
    The bell had rung. The buses had pulled up outside to take us home. “Remember your stories,” I said. “They can save your life, a little at a time.”
    Grace lives too far from town to worry when the snow falls deep. Can’t drive? Stay home. But today the road is clear. As we step from the car, the colt hangs back, but her three Appaloosa mares crowd the barbwire fence stapled from tree to tree—aspen leaves just coming out. Bending to step between the second and third strands of wire, Grace says, “I guess a man goes over a barbwire fence, a child under, and a woman