Read Online The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron - Free Book Online

Lincoln, “who made everyone leave you alone. He said the decision was yours, and whatever it was it would be the right one.”
    “My father ? My father wasn’t even there ! I’ve never even met him!”
    Lincoln’s ears turned red again. “Don’t you remember the tall guy with sunglasses? He was the only one wearing a suit in the heat.”
    “That was the crematory man,” said Lucky, but she could feel something squeezing her heart in her chest. “What do you mean, my father ?”
    “I just remember people saying he was Brigitte’s former husband, from before, and I thought that was weird,” said Lincoln. “But then Dot was telling people, ‘Lucky’s father made all the arrangements,’ and pointing to him with her chin like she does.” He stood up and took a few steps back, like he was afraid of what Lucky would do.
    Lucky smeared the knot design with the heel of her sneaker. “That whole deal is so stupid ,” she said. “If he was my father , why didn’t he say so?”
    “Listen,” said Lincoln. “Here.” He pulled a knot out of his pocket. It was large and complicated looking, made from blue and green silky cords. “It’s called the Ten-Strand Round knot.”
    It looked like a piece of jewelry, intricate and beautiful. For some reason, this made tears surge into Lucky’s eyes, which was very embarrassing. “Lincoln,” she said. “People think you’re kind of clueless, but you’re really not.”
    “I know I’m…” Lincoln used his stick to write the last word in the dirt road: K-N-O-T.
    Then he showed the stick to HMS Beagle and threw it with a graceful long overhand toss and she ran and caught it in her mouth by leaping into the air, and brought it back to him so he could do it again.
    Lucky cupped Lincoln’s gift in her hand. The neat round buttonlike knot had no cord ends sticking out that might unwind, and you could never in a million years decipher how Lincoln had made it. You’d never find out how he had taken cords that were pretty useless, just lying around in someone’s drawer, and looped and threaded them over and over in a special way until they ended up becoming a beautiful knot.
    Never before had Lucky realized that Lincoln’s knot-tying brain secretions gave him such a special way of seeing. She had thought he tied knots for practical reasons, in case there was ever a boat that needed to be tied to a dock, or a swing to be hung from a tree. Now she knew that Lincoln was really an artist, who could see the heart of a knot.

Lucky wished she were an artist too, and could organize all the complicated strands of her life—the urn she still had, the strange crematory man, Brigitte and Miles, HMS Beagle and Short Sammy, the Captain and the anonymous people and Dot and even Lincoln himself, and weave them into a beautiful neat ten-strand knot.



11. Smokers Anonymous
     
    Lucky had had the day off on Saturday because there was no twelve-step meeting that day. So on Sunday afternoon, she picked up cigarette butts and other trash left over from Friday’s Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. She collected plenty of butts, because the ex-drinkers stood around talking and smoking before their meeting. The ashtrays were big coffee cans and flowerpots filled with sand—and they were always loaded with butts that the ex-smokers didn’t want to see or smell before their meeting.
    Lucky went around back to the Dumpster and stored her broom and rake against it. She heard someone moving chairs inside the museum, so she eased herself quietly into her lawn chair to listen.
    The best part of the meetings came after they were done reading from a book called Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions . Even though that part was a little bit boring, Lucky listened carefully for information about how to find your Higher Power. Then came the part where people told their most interesting and horrifying stories of how they hit rock bottom.
    First it was the Captain’s turn. Before he got the part-time