The Thing About Luck

CHAPTER SEVEN

When I opened my eyes the next morning, Obaachan wasn’t on her mattress. Jaz and Jiichan were still sleeping. I climbed down—Thunder jumped—and padded toward the kitchen area. I stopped when I saw that the Irish guys, Mr. McCoy, and the Parkers were already eating cereal, all squeezed together on the built-in benches. Mr. Dark was probably on the road from Kansas, hauling the fourth combine. Then Obaachan spotted me and said, “Summer, you eat cereal. Hurry, before it all gone.” I walked into the room feeling thoroughly embarrassed to be seen by Robbie in one of the stupid T-shirts I always slept in. Across the front it said I LOVE HOUSEWORK—NOT.

“I love housework—not,” Robbie read in a monotone.

“Ah, ya’ll make someone a fine wife one day,” Mick said, and everybody laughed.

I was trapped. I snatched up a box of Cap’n Crunch and poured it into a bowl, adding just a little milk, since there wasn’t much left. Obaachan shook her head at me for some reason. I held the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other.

“Oh, sit down, dear,” said Mrs. Parker. “There, squeeze in next to Robbie.”

Everybody squished together even more, and I sat next to Robbie, our shoulders pressing against each other. Even though my T-shirt already reached almost to my knees, I stretched it down as much as I could.

“It’s the strangest thing—your face is flaming red,” Mrs. Parker said. “Do you have a fever?”

Everybody looked at me. “I’m fine,” I said. I faked a smile and spooned cereal into my mouth.

Mrs. Parker laughed. “I think you have the messiest hair I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, ma’am, it gets very tangled at night,” I said. “I thrash.” Could this possibly get any more embarrassing?

“Goodness, maybe you should cut it.”

“Yes, maybe.”

And yes, it could get more embarrassing. Because then Robbie said, “You smell funny. Like ... insecticide?”

“Robbie has a very good nose,” Mrs. Parker said.

Great. “Last year I actually almost died from malaria that I caught in Florida, so I use DEET. It gets on my clothes.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, as if I had just said something profound. One of his green eyes held a tiny spot of hazel. He was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Then suddenly he looked mischievous. “You heard of washing machines?” he asked, almost tauntingly.

I paused. I thought about something smart to say, something that would un-embarrass myself. Then I said, “We don’t have a washing machine at home. We put soap and water in the bathtub, and I stomp on our laundry.”

Robbie paused. Then, since I was only kidding, I smiled slyly, and he smiled back.

“You’re kidding. You’re okay,” he said, then poured some more cereal.

Yeah! No matter what else happened, the entire day was now a success because I was okay!

I finished my Cap’n Crunch while everybody talked about harvest. If everything went well, we would be heading for Oklahoma in about a week. Rain was coming, but during growing season, Texas had been in a drought, so there wasn’t much business here. Some harvesters weren’t even bothering to come down to Texas. According to Mr. Parker, to get to Oklahoma in time meant sixteen-hour days every day. Farmers—and custom harvesters—weren’t happy until every single grain was in the elevator. Only then could anyone relax.

Robbie checked his watch, as if he had an appointment, and turned to me. “Did you bring a lot of schoolwork?”

“Yeah, but I probably won’t do all of it. The teachers really don’t expect harvesting kids to do all their homework.”

“I know, but I gotta do all mine, anyway. My dad’s a tyrant. Are you gonna help your grandmother cook?”

“Uh-huh. That’s my biggest chore. I have to help with every single meal. Washing the dishes, boiling turkey, whatever. Do you have chores?”

“Like I said, my dad’s a tyrant. So almost every time we change farms, I have to clean and check the combines. I check all the fluid levels—the engine oil, the water, the hydraulic oil. I check the tires. Then I look over the sickle sections and guards. Then I grease all the ten-hour zerks. There are also twenty-five-, fifty-, and hundred-hour zerks, but they need to be greased only after the machine runs that many hours. I blow out the filters. And I have to wash the windows and clean the inside of the cabs.”

“That sounds like a lot of stuff,” I said. I knew only a bit about cleaning combines, because once when I couldn’t sleep on harvest, I went outside and found my dad cleaning his combine. Many custom harvesters made each employee clean his or her own combine. We were lucky to have an extra person—namely, Robbie—to help us.

“It takes about an hour per combine.” He shrugged. “I like it. I’d better like it, because I’m going to be doing it until I go to college.”

“Wow,” I said. He had three little freckles right above his lips.

“Wow what?”

“Wow, I never even think about college.”

“How old are you again?” he asked.

“I’m twelve, but I’m really thirteen because that’ll be my next age.” That made no sense, but Robbie didn’t say anything.

There was a knock on the door, and then it opened before anyone had a chance to say “come in.” It was Mr. Laskey. “Has anybody checked the moisture level yet? We had a pretty dry night. Might be time to cut already,” he said.

“I checked thirty minutes ago and it was fourteen-point-five,” Mr. Parker told him.

“Then it might be ready now.”

Though he wasn’t finished eating, Mr. Parker got right up and went outside with Mr. Laskey.

Everybody followed except for Obaachan and me. It didn’t change my life if the wheat was ready to cut or not. I started clearing off the table.

It was pretty easy because, like I said, in the menu books, Sundays were the only days when we made a full breakfast, with scrambled eggs and sausage and toast and stuff. I loved iri tamago—eggs scrambled with sugar and shoyu and rice wine. It sounded so weird when people called shoyu “soy sauce.” It made it sound like Tabasco or something instead of the clean and perfect thing that it was. Anyway, I made a mental note to ask Mrs. Parker if we could make that for everybody one Sunday.

Obaachan picked up a bowl I’d put in the rack. “What this?” she asked, pointing at it.

I had to admit there was a little piece of gunk stuck to the outside of the bowl. I took the bowl back and rewashed it while Obaachan checked and then dried every dish in the rack.

“I clean counters, you walk Thunder, then do homework.”

I got a tennis ball and walked out with Thunder into the bright sunshine. I threw the ball for him for about fifteen minutes, until his tongue was hanging long out of his mouth. I got him some water, hoping he’d perk up and play longer, so I wouldn’t have to do homework yet, but he just lapped up the whole bowl and went to the camper door and looked at me. Okay, then. Homework time for me.

Inside, Jaz was at the kitchen table doing his so-called homework. He was supposed to be making a detailed family tree, but I knew he was making up some of it. Our family consisted of farmers and fishermen as far back as anyone knew, but when I’d sneaked a peek at his paper earlier, he’d claimed we had several samurai in our background.

I took down A Separate Peace and finished reading the middle part. So I’d read the first part first, the last part second, and the middle part third. I didn’t know how I would write my book report, because I just plain didn’t understand the book. Next I read the parts I hadn’t read. The book was supposed to be for high schoolers, but a sister of one of my friends was in high school, and she thought it was the worst book she ever read. And even though I kind of agreed with her, I also kind of disagreed with her. Maybe I should just write the truth and say that it was the worst book I ever read, but that it made me wonder things about myself. It made me think that each person had all sorts of things going on inside of them, but most of these things would never surface unless circumstances were exactly right. So basically, inside of me was a big wilderness, and then around the wilderness was a nice, mowed lawn. After I thought that, I admit I figured I was kind of a genius. The only problem was that I had taken an IQ test once, so I knew I wasn’t a genius.

Jiichan had wanted Jaz and me to take the test so he could understand us better. Jaz scored “very superior,” but when it came to real life, he basically flunked. I ended up with an overall score called “high average.” But what I didn’t understand was, did that mean I always operated on “high average,” or did that mean sometimes I operated on “very superior” and other times on “low average”? On the other hand, whatever.

I hugged Thunder to me. Once, Jaz told a boy in my class that I still slept with a stuffed penguin, and so I told Jaz that I loved Thunder ten times more than I loved him. I got grounded for a week by my mother. Her big concern was that my love for Thunder might stunt my “socialization,” as she called it. How could I be unsocialized when I had so many friends? If I put together all the times I had ever been grounded, I wondered how much time that would be. Three months? Five? Eight?

After Obaachan had cleaned the table and counters, she lay on her back in the kitchen area. After a while she pushed herself up with a grunt and said, “We go to supermarket now. Mrs. Parker like fresh meat, not frozen. And we need fruit and vegetable.”

Jaz and I stood up. “Can I read what you wrote?” I asked him.

“No, it’s none of your business.”

“But your family tree should be exactly the same as my family tree.”

“Then what do you need to read it for?” he asked.

We all got into the pickup—Thunder too—and headed for town.

We drove down the dirt road to the highway. “I wonder which way supermarket,” Obaachan said. “Summer, you pick, and if you wrong, you make lunch by yourself all week.”

“Why didn’t you ask someone?” I asked.

“Because nobody’s as smart as you,” Jaz said.

“I’m not going to pick,” I protested.

Obaachan nodded her head a few times and turned left. We drove down the highway, surrounded by wheat fields. You just couldn’t get away from them.

Out of the blue Obaachan said, “Fifteen times four.”

She liked to test my math because I wasn’t very good at it. Of course, we were way past multiplication tables in school. “Sixty,” I said.

“No!”

“Obaachan, it is.”

She pulled the truck over and took out a pen and paper from her handbag. “Let’s see ... carry two ... Okay, you right. See? You say I never admit when I wrong. Take that back.”

“But this is the first time.”

“Take back and say you make mistake.”

“I take it back and I made a mistake,” I said. I didn’t see how she could turn her being wrong into me saying I made a mistake. So I added, “But you made a mistake too!”

“That subject finished,” she replied.

Jaz hit his head softly on the dashboard. With each thunk, he’d say one word. “I. Didn’t. Make. A. Mistake.”

Basically, Thunder was the only normal person in the truck, and he wasn’t even a person.

Jaz suddenly sat very straight and still, and then his shoulders relaxed again. Then he started talking.

“So last night I woke up and my action figures were alive. They were talking about a raging battle. The sergeant asked me if I wanted to go fight, but I didn’t want to because I was too sleepy.”

I looked out the window as Jaz’s voice continued. “The sergeant told me to take a cold shower to wake myself up. So I did that, but then I thought I still didn’t want to go to battle because I’m just a kid. Battles are for grown-ups.”

I leaned back as he went on, talking about what each action figure was wearing, what their dog tag numbers were, what their hair looked like, if they had skinny or fat fingers, and a million other details. My parents had taken him to three different child psychologists in Wichita. One psychologist said he had ADHD, one said he had PDD-NOS, and one said he was OCD. I wasn’t sure what the initials stood for except for OCD, which meant “obsessive-compulsive disorder.” That was why he would use only his three special cups. All three doctors wanted him on medication for his head-banging, but my parents refused. So did my grandparents. We had all learned to live with him, so what was the problem? It was just a part of life.

Though nothing was in front of us, Obaachan suddenly slowed down, and we all jerked forward with the momentum. My grandmother’s braking strategy was always a mystery to me. I was about to ask her why she’d braked but then thought better of it, because she would only say something that would somehow make it all my fault. I might not have been a genius in general, but when it came to Obaachan, I did have a smart thought now and then.

I leaned over Thunder and made little noises like most people would for a baby. Obaachan kept up her strange braking strategy. Finally, I couldn’t stop myself. “Obaachan, why do you keep braking?” I asked.

“Every time you make noise to Thunder, I think I about to hit something. It your fault. If you no like, call taxi.”

I ignored that.

There was no wind, and the wheat was still. I wondered what the fortune-teller would say about that. The sky filled suddenly with clouds, but they disappeared so quickly that you would have had a hard time convincing someone it had just been cloudy.

I peered through the back windshield at the highway curving through the wheat. Highway. Wheat. Sky. So simple. Compared to a city like Wichita, it all looked like a doorway to another world—our world. I always had this weird feeling as I stared out at the wheat, like the dust of my personality was settling a bit, like instead of me ever being confused or with my thoughts all over the place, I was just me, without any questions about anything or any worries or even any sadness. But that was impossible, because I didn’t even like wheat. Did I?

A mosquito zzz-ed in the air in front of me, and I smashed it by clapping my hands together. I looked at it. It was a male; it had the feathery proboscis.

In that old movie The Fly, Jeff Goldblum was half fly, half man. When I was so sick, that’s kind of what I felt like. I felt like I was turning into something that wasn’t me. Some scientists wanted to eradicate all the mosquitoes in the world, because they thought only good could come of that and it would prevent diseases like dengue, West Nile virus, and malaria. I wondered if that was true or whether every living thing had a purpose.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked the smashed mosquito.

“Obaachan, Summer is talking to dead mosquitoes again,” Jaz said, causing Obaachan to laugh.

Then Obaachan stopped laughing and said, “Summer and Jaz always make me forget pain.”

The supermarket was air-conditioned. Basically, it was paradise. Except for two cashiers at the front, it was totally empty as far as I could see. I didn’t get to go to a supermarket very often. At home we just went to the local grocer’s in town. There had been a big sign outside saying GRAND OPENING. Below that it said IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME.

I was kind of surprised by just how big this store was, and how empty. Obaachan handed me some recipes for the rest of the week. I had to get all the ingredients that weren’t crossed out.

Mrs. Parker had miscalculated how much cereal everybody would eat. I put five boxes of Cheerios into my cart. Original Cheerios was the bestselling cereal in the country. It had been invented in 1941 and was called Cheerioats until 1945. I knew this because we once had to do a paper on one of the top ten crops raised in Kansas. Oats were much less important to the economy of Kansas than wheat, but I chose to write about oats because I figured I already knew a lot about wheat, and I just felt like learning something new. There were something like twelve different types of Cheerios the last time I counted.

In the dairy section I found buttermilk, fat-free milk, flavored milk, lactose-free milk, low-fat milk, reduced-fat milk, whole milk, almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk, and soy milk. Mrs. Parker wanted 2 percent milk. This really annoyed Obaachan because she was a firm believer in whole milk, especially for growing kids. So I bought an extra carton of regular milk for Jaz and me, even though it wasn’t on the list and even though Mrs. Parker had told Obaachan to get exactly what was on the list. I guess we were already going rogue.

Then we bought all the other stuff and checked out while the cashier smiled almost the whole time, even when nobody was talking. Then she smiled harder and said, “Thank you. We hope to see you again!”

The whole way back, Obaachan was growling “Errrr,” so I knew she was in a lot of pain. She took seven aspirin, then said, “If I die from aspirin poisoning, Parker fire us. Here. Take this.” She pulled over and handed the cell phone to me.

When we got a signal, I helped Obaachan call Mrs. Parker. “We almost back,” she told her. “Yes ... Yes ... Yes ... Yes ... Yes ... Good-bye.” She handed the phone back to me. “Make sure that turned off.”

I looked at the phone. “It’s turned off.”

“If you wrong and she hear me, you grounded. I keeping list of every time you grounded during harvest. Then you be grounded for long time.”

“It’s off,” I said again.

“I just want to say, then. I want to say that woman drive me crazy.”

“Well, she’s just very detail-oriented,” I said.

“I like detail too. I love detail! Detail my most favorite thing in world! But she drive me crazy.”

When we arrived at the Laskey farm, it was already afternoon. The combines were going strong. When we got back to the camper, I called in on the radio. “Mrs. Parker? We’re back. Should we make everyone sandwiches?”

“Yes, of course. I’ve decided to move dinner to eight for this job.”

“Okay.”

“Personally, I believe in three nice, big meals a day, not in those six smaller meals that are so popular today.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Personally, I believe in the traditional method of just about anything.”

Obaachan was watching me glumly. “Yes, ma’am,” I told Mrs. Parker.

“I’d like to get on one of those cooking shows. I think my recipes are just as good. I looked into self-publishing a cookbook; I think it would be a bestseller.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Anyway, you’d better get to making the sandwiches.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I put the radio down.

Obaachan was pressing her palms against her temples. “She give detail a bad name.”

Obaachan made the sandwiches and went to drive them out to the combines. I went into the bedroom and took out my lucky amber, with the mosquito in it. I pressed it against my forehead for luck and then meditated the way Jiichan had taught me. First I did alternating-nostril deep breathing, then I lay down on my back and spread out my limbs. Thunder took that as an invitation and climbed back and forth over me three times before settling down on my shins. Jiichan liked me to pick a person to open my heart to. I picked Jenson. “I accept you for who you are,” I said. I hadn’t even realized he was still in my mind, but apparently, he was. I tried to picture him. But usually when I closed my eyes, all I saw were chaotic lights and shapes. Mrs. Parker once said she could see pages and pages of writing in her head if she’d just read a book. She could pick out a page number and know exactly what was on that page.

After I did my breathing, I opened my heart to Jaz, as Jiichan sometimes asked me to do. Then I tried to untangle some of what I saw when I closed my eyes. I could never quite meditate because of the chaos in my head. After a while I thought I was awake ... unless I was asleep. The next thing I knew, Jaz was leaning his face a foot over mine.

“Hey, Summer?” Jaz asked.

“You surprised me!” I yelped.

“Two kids at school said I’m a freak.”

“Which two kids?”

“Just two kids.”

“You’re not a freak,” I said.

“Why do you think they said it, then?”

“Because they don’t know what they’re talking about,” I told him firmly.

“Summer, can you just answer honestly?”

I considered that and decided to tell him what my true opinion was at that moment. “I think you’re a very intense boy and are really good at concentrating, and Jiichan says people like that are very successful in life.”

“Like thinking hard can make me successful?” Jaz asked. Something in his voice indicated that he was already moving on from the idea that he was a freak and was now playing with the possibility that he was a great thinker.

“Yes.”

“That’s interesting,” he said, clearly pondering which particular type of greatness he should aspire to.

I could hear voices in the kitchen and realized Robbie was talking to Obaachan. I really wanted to go out there to see Robbie, but Jaz’s earnest expression—with a few scars on his forehead—told me that he needed my full attention right then.

“So why can’t I make friends with any kids from school?”

Trying to be helpful, I said, “Sometimes you say the wrong things at the wrong time.” I heard Robbie saying, “Okay, thanks, bye,” then I heard the door open and close. Rats.

“How can you say the wrong thing at the wrong time?” Jaz asked me. “If you have a thought, why not say it?”

“It’s like that time the teacher said you started singing during a test.”

“I got an A on that test.”

I ignored that and said, “There was that time we went into town and you asked that boy from your class if he wanted to come over and play.” I felt the camper shake from the wind. Tonight would be dry and windy. The dust and bits of cut wheat would make the combines look like gigantic tumbleweeds.

“What was wrong with asking him that?”

“You can’t just ask someone that.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not your friend yet.”

“How can he become my friend if he doesn’t come over?”

Jaz was making my brain hurt. I heard Obaachan growling and pushed myself up, then pulled my knees in close and rested my chin on them. I didn’t know what to say. He was a strange boy.

“You’ll make another friend,” I said finally. “It just might take time.” I stood up. “I have to help Obaachan. You coming?”

“No.”

In the kitchen Obaachan was making lasagna. She didn’t even turn her head. “You make brownies,” she ordered.

“How did you know it was me?”

“I have eyes on back of head.”

I took out the mixing bowl. “You always lecture me to tell the truth.”

“I never lie.”

“But you just said you have eyes on the back of your head.”

“Did I know who come in without looking?”

“Yes.”

“Then I no lie.”

At almost eight, we drove dinner out to the combines. I’d seen Robbie on a dirt bike ahead of us. At the combines, Obaachan and I arranged all the food on the open bed of the pickup, buffet style. We’d set out a bunch of folding canvas chairs for everyone. The drivers all stretched their necks and backs before turning to the food.

“It’s lasagna,” I said proudly, even though I hadn’t made it. “And brownies for dessert.”

Mrs. Parker was already looking over the food. “Oh, dear, the broccoli is overcooked.” She turned to me and Obaachan. “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s overcooked vegetables. Wasn’t that included in the directions at the start of my menu book?”

Obaachan didn’t say a thing, so that left it to me to admit, “We didn’t get a chance to read the whole preface. The broccoli is still kind of crunchy.”

“Oh, honey, you must read the preface. It’s my whole theory of cooking. I just wrote it this year. It needs to be a tad crunchier.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll read it, I promise.” I felt totally deflated. She leaned over and lightly sniffed the lasagna but didn’t comment. She only glanced at the brownies.

Everybody grabbed the reusable plastic plates and utensils and sat down. I stood watching. Mick stuck a big forkful of lasagna in his mouth, then made an unpleasant face. When he had swallowed, he said, “A bit cheesy, isn’t it?” Right then and there, I decided I hated Mick.

Mrs. Parker looked offended. “It’s my own personal recipe.” Then she took a bite, smacked her mouth together a few times, and shook her head. “Oh, no, no, no. This is all wrong. Too much Parmesan and no basil at all.”

Since Obaachan obviously wasn’t going to participate in this conversation, I said, “There actually wasn’t any fresh basil at the store.”

Finally, Obaachan said, “Not enough Parmesan in your recipe. Lasagna need—what you call it?—tang. I put more in.”

Mrs. Parker looked at Obaachan as if she couldn’t believe her ears. There was a deadly silence.

Then Mr. Parker said, “Oh, come on, honey, it’s actually good. I like the tang.”

She looked at him as if she was going to take a butcher knife and plunge it into his heart.

“Tang. No tang. All I know is this is good food and I’m hungry,” he said. “Sit down and eat, sweetheart. Mick, cheese is good for you.”

Mrs. Parker turned to Obaachan. “This must be the last time, and I do mean the last, that you deviate from a recipe.”

Obaachan said, “What ‘deviate’?”

“It means change,” Mrs. Parker answered. “You must follow my recipes exactly. I just want you to know that before I married my husband, I went to cooking school and worked as a chef for seven years.”

Obaachan nodded her head and said, “You great cook. I know that. But your school no teach you about tang.”

I was stunned that Obaachan would talk back to Mrs. Parker.

“In future I follow all your recipe exactly,” Obaachan continued. “But I have very strong feeling about tang. But you pay me, I leave the tang out. I give you my promise.”

I’d never even heard Obaachan use the word “tang” before.

Obaachan and I sat down and began eating with the others. It really wasn’t half bad. Yes, it had more tang than the usual lasagna, but it still tasted good. Everybody scarfed down their food. All the guys even went for seconds. Then it was brownie time. Nobody commented as they ate their brownies, so I guess that was good. Personally, I thought they were excellent brownies.

Then Robbie suddenly said, “Good brownies.”

“I made them,” I said. And I had to admit, they were excellent.

I wanted to make him brownies every day for the rest of the harvest.