The Thing About Luck

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The walk sure was less scary with the flashlight. When I climbed into my combine, I immediately picked up the radio. “I’m here,” I said to Mick.

“Summer” was all he said.

“Yep, it’s me.”

“Be careful when ya dump tonight.”

“I will. Mick?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for helping me yesterday.” And in my head I was also apologizing to him for not liking him before and wishing he had fallen out of a truck.

“It was nothing.”

Thunder lay squished at my feet as I honked twice and started the combine. I started to feel like we were in our own world. I felt safe, the way Jaz felt safe in his bed at home. He loved his bed. I knew this because he kept all his important possessions on the shelf in his headboard at home. He kept a key from when we had lived in another house he liked better. He kept his completed Sudoku books. And he kept a box of his favorite LEGO minifigs.

I suddenly realized I was thinking about something else and operating the combine at the same time. According to my controls, the moisture content of the wheat was 11.5 percent: still perfect. Thunder whimpered in a dream. Mick was wrapped in dust on the far end of the field.

I could drive confidently at two miles per hour, but when I tried three, everything seemed barely under control. Two was good.

When I needed to pee, I stopped the combine and slipped into an area facing the empty highway. When I got back, Mick was on the radio. “Everything all right?”

“Yes,” I replied. Then I added, “Ten-four,” because I had learned that from a movie. I pushed yesterday’s mistake out of my mind. Like Jiichan sometimes said to Jaz when Jaz got stuck on something, “Walk on, walk on.” And at least it seemed as though the farmer hadn’t noticed.

The bin was empty when I started. I drove slowly, sometimes even more slowly than two miles an hour. I wanted it to fill, and yet I didn’t want it to. I wished the combine would break down. Then I wouldn’t have to dump, and the Parkers couldn’t get mad. Mick had already dumped twice by the time my bin was filled.

I drove over to the semi. I thought about my whole life. There wasn’t that much to think about, except that I’d had malaria. I was born in Kansas, and I still lived in Kansas. I went to school. I hated homework. My mother was lenient, my grandmother was strict. I got three dollars a week for an allowance.

I moved the auger over the grain trailer. Then I turned off the combine and got out to stand on the platform. The auger was over the trailer but very close to the edge. I got back into the cab, honked twice, and started the engine again. I pulled in the auger, backed up, and moved closer to the semi, feeling a little sick to my stomach about how close I was. I knew that the famous John Deere green color on this combine was polished and perfect, and I didn’t want to be the one to scratch it. But when I got out to check, the combine wasn’t as close as I had feared.

I pushed the auger-out button located on the throttle control, and then I pushed one more button on the throttle lever, this one a bit harder to reach, so you didn’t accidentally hit it and lose the grain while you were driving in the field. A beeper sounded the whole time I was dumping. The beep was to tell the operator that the auger was running. When the controls said that my combine was empty, I pressed the same button. Then I brought the auger back in by pressing the auger-return button. I realized I was holding my breath. I exhaled, then inhaled deeply, smelling the beautiful scent of cut wheat.

I picked up the radio. “I did it! I dumped my whole load, and it’s perfect!” I said to Mick excitedly.

“Good girl!” he answered. “Can ya get that wee section near ya? The field is a strange shape, isn’t it?”

“Got it,” I said. “Ten-four.”

That was it. I was a combine driver, or maybe a third of one since I went so slowly. I tried to do that math in my head, and for once I could think clearly. Since I went two miles an hour and good drivers went five miles an hour, that meant I was 40 percent of a combine driver, more or less. Not bad for a twelve-year-old girl.

“Summer.”

I picked up the radio. “Yes?”

“I’m going to have to dump at the elevator. They’re open late because of the rain this weekend. Do ya want to come with me or are ya okay by yerself?”

I didn’t answer at first. I searched inside myself and decided that my need to keep cutting trumped my fear of being alone.

“Summer?”

“No, I’ll be fine working out here.”

But a minute after he drove off my heart started to go whompa, whompa. I was suddenly terrified out there by myself. I idled the combine and watched as the big rig’s taillights disappeared in the distance. I sat very still, then turned off the ignition. I laid my arms on the steering wheel and my face on my arms, and pressed my eyes closed. I was so, so scared. I remembered a night several years earlier when I had a dog who was killed by a truck on the highway, and as I held him I thought I was going to lose my mind. That’s kind of the way I felt right then, like everything that was real—the black sky and the stars and the wheat—all started to kind of melt into one another, and the only thing that seemed clear was me and a dog. Whompa, whompa. “Thunder, help me. I’m scared,” I said, looking at him. He lifted his head curiously, then sat up and placed his paw on my leg.

I suddenly burst into sobs, and the next thing I knew, I wasn’t sobbing because I was scared, but because my grandparents worked so hard and because Jaz couldn’t make a friend at school and because I knew how desperately my parents wished for their own business, and I doubted they would ever get their wish.

I squeezed onto the floor and hugged Thunder to me. As I hugged him something unfamiliar welled up inside of me. Maybe it was courage. I mean, this was my world, the black sky and the stars and the wheat. I knew this world backward and forward and up and down. I got back into my seat and looked around at the wheat. Something started to happen: The dust of my personality started to settle, and my fear left me. In its place was the hyper-superalertness from yesterday.

I turned on the ignition and got back to work.

When my bin was full, Mick still hadn’t returned. I turned off my combine and waited for him.

He got back in an hour and called me on the radio. “I’m back. There was a bit of a line at the elevator. Are ya full?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll dump for ya. Why don’t ya go on back to the motel? I’m thinking of quitting myself.”

“Do you want me to help you clean the combines?”

“Naw. Go get yer sleep.”

“Okay, ’night!” I said. And that’s when excitement flooded into me. I hadn’t made any mistakes today! I wanted to jump up and touch the sky.

I parked the combine where I had found it and walked home.

One of my flip-flops broke, so I walked barefoot in the middle of the road to avoid stepping on gravel. I walked exactly in the middle because that somehow made me feel kind of like I was celebrating or in a movie or something. I was so happy. I loved how quiet it was out, how the breeze brushed my face, and how the road felt soft under my feet. Bugs touched my face like snowflakes.

When I reached the motel, I snuck into the room. Even Obaachan seemed to be fast asleep. I changed into a T-shirt without showering—too bad, EPA!—and eased myself into bed beside Jaz. Thunder jumped on top of me. An hour went by. I couldn’t sleep. I felt wired. I gave up trying to sleep, got my keycard, and went to sit outside and look at the stars. Thunder followed me out.

I was startled to see Mick sitting on the curb down the way. “You finished cleaning the combines?” I asked.

He shook his head no. “I ran out of water.” He held up a couple of bottles of water from the vending machine. He took a swig and said, “Ya did good tonight. Yer grandparents are going to think I’m Superman when it comes to cutting.”

“Thank you.”

He sighed heavily, then looked up toward the stars and sighed again. “When my girl still loved me, she made me a quilt of the constellations. She’s handy with a sewing machine.”

I didn’t reply.

“I wanted to marry her.”

“She doesn’t love you anymore?”

He shook his head again. He seemed really sad and rubbed his palms over his face and into his hair.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know much about that stuff, except from my brief experience with Robbie. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, then. Being on a different continent has taken my mind off her quite a bit.” He stood up and stretched. “I best be finishing my work.”

“Okay, then good night,” I said.

“Get some sleep.”

I went inside, but I peeked back outside and saw Mick had sat back down. A few thin clouds passed in front of the moon. Soon it would rain. I hoped we would finish the field in time. If we did, it would be because of me, partly. I smiled a little smile and immediately felt guilty about being happy when Mick was so sad. I gently pushed the door shut.

I took a few silent steps.

A voice came out of the darkness. “You wake me up.” Jiichan.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I tried to be quiet.”

“When sick, not much difference between asleep and awake.”

“Are you still really sick?”

“You use word ‘really.’ ” He thought a moment. “No. I still sick, but not ‘really.’ ”

“A little better?”

“Yes, I think a little better.”

“I just stepped out for some fresh air. Mick was sitting out there, so we talked a little. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“I felt you walk in. No hear you. That woke me up.”

“Obaachan was crying earlier,” I blurted out.

“She been very sad.”

“Because of all our bad luck?” I asked.

“No. Today in combine she say you growing up so fast, and she no could stop crying.”

I stared at him for a moment. What did that mean?

Just then Obaachan chuckled in her sleep, no doubt over a dream of America’s Funniest Home Videos. She said that was the only thing she ever dreamed of. Then something else about growing up occurred to me.

“Jiichan, can you be in love when you’re only twelve?” I asked suddenly.

“You can be in love, but it the kind of love that go away, not kind that stay.”

“How come it doesn’t stay?”

“Why? You want to get marry?”

I thought this over. “No, I guess not yet. I mean, not for, like, twenty years. But ... can’t you be in love and not want to get married?”

I heard him making a small noise in his throat. When he was thinking really hard, sometimes he made a soft, squeaky sound. “Temporary love very beautiful thing. In Japan, thing that don’t last called tsukanoma. Tsukanoma very beautiful, like cherry blossom. Perfect.”

Jiichan paused. “Wabi-sabi beautiful too, in different way.” Once, Jiichan had made me watch a BBC show about wabi-sabi that he’d recorded. It’s very hard to determine what wabi-sabi is, because supposedly if you could define it, then you knew it couldn’t really be wabi-sabi. It’s kind of important to what it means to be Japanese, and yet hardly anybody knows exactly what it was. It kind of means that there can be beauty and nobility inside of a rough exterior. “Another thing. When you get marry, it like great Shinto shrine of Ise. It many hundreds of years old, but for all those hundreds of years, they rebuild it every twenty years. In temporary love, no rebuilding.”

“If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell Obaachan?”

“I make solemn promise.”

“I think I was in temporary love with Robbie Parker.”

“First time I in love was Akiko. I same age as you.”

“How long did you stay in love?”

“Five week. I never speak word to her in life, but I in love.”

“How come you stopped loving her?”

“Orchid interesting flower. Some cherry blossom last only one week. Orchid can live many month. She was like cherry blossom.”

“You mean your love withered away?”

“No wither, it fall off tree.”

“Why did it fall off the tree?”

“I don’t know. Maybe wind blow it off.”

Then, just for the nosy heck of it, I asked, “Do you love Obaachan?”

“God put us together. That bigger than love. I tell you story. Jaz, you listen?”

“Yep,” Jaz answered.

“You’re awake! You tricked me!”

“I didn’t trick you. Nobody asked me if I was awake.”

“Listen to story,” Jiichan said. He cleared his throat. “One day my brother and me have many work to do. But we decide to run away for just one day. We get our fishing poles and go to lake. We catch many fish. Nice day—overcast, so we don’t get hot, but not cold enough for sweater. Many day my brother and me fight, but this day we like best friend. Then we go home and say, ‘Look at all the fish we catch!’ We excited. But we didn’t do our chores that day. My father get switch and hit our legs until we cry. My brother get hit more than me because he older. Altogether, my brother live almost seventy year—that equal more than twenty-five thousand day. I with him at bed when he die. He say to me, ‘Remember that day we run away and go fishing?’ I tell him I remember clearly. ‘Wasn’t that day fun?’ he say. I say, ‘Yes,’ and then he die. Oyasumi.”

“Oyasuminasai, Jiichan,” Jaz and I said.

I cracked the door again and peeked out. I could see Mick still sitting on the curb. I watched him a long time. Then he looked up at something in the distance, and I turned to see what it was. It was a pair of combines driving side by side, their headlights illuminating the night. He had come across the ocean to drive one of those and forget about a girl he loved. I felt surprised. What I felt surprised about was how beautiful hard work looked—the combines moving slowly in tandem, the moon hanging over the field. It was wabi-sabi.

I knew going out to talk to Mick now wouldn’t make him feel better. A twelve-year-old girl didn’t mean a hill of beans to him. I couldn’t help. It was just like we couldn’t help Jaz to make friends at school, and just like I couldn’t change Jenson’s life with a simple hello. Still, as my dad liked to say, “You do what you can do.” Maybe I would talk to Jenson again. Maybe I would keep looking for friends for Jaz back home.

I got back into bed, and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I knew something: Our year of bad luck had ended. It had begun when I caught malaria, and it had ended here tonight. Maybe I’d known that earlier, and that was why I had walked down the middle of the highway so happily. Anyway, I needed to get some sleep, because I’d have another long night tomorrow. I closed my eyes and saw the header, spinning ... spinning ... spinning.