The Thing About Luck

talk to me before he give me direction! It not my choice. You need talk to him.”

“What did he have to talk to you about?”

“His second cousin wife.”

No one said more into the radio.

“Mrs. Parker already drive me crazy,” Obaachan said. But I figured that before long, Obaachan would be driving Mrs. Parker crazy, so it would be even Steven.

Just for something to do, Jaz, Thunder, and I drove into the field with Obaachan.

Robbie was busy with what appeared to be a handheld video game or maybe a smartphone. Jaz would probably have sold me for a quarter if it meant he could get a video game. I thought about yelling hi to Robbie, but why couldn’t he be the one to call out to me? So neither of us said anything to the other, and after we gave Mrs. Parker the sandwiches, the combine roared away, Robbie disappearing into the fields.

When we got back, Obaachan groaned. “My neck is kill me, so you make dinner later. I may get up to help. Errrrrr.” She lay down on the ground, right where she’d been standing, in the shade from the pickup. First she dropped to all fours, and then she lowered herself carefully to her back.

I sat in the shade beside her and opened my sketchbook to a half-finished picture of a mosquito hanging in the air near a leaf. I had to draw his leg over and over before I could get it right. It was a male. A male mosquito has featherlike antennae that are fun to draw. The antennae of the female are more simple, and the palps are short. Palps help mosquitoes taste. Then there’s the evil proboscis. It’s like a living spear that stretches out from around a mosquito’s mouth. The females use it to stick in you and suck your blood and sometimes kill you. I had memorized this from Wikipedia: “Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism.”

Once, I had a very old dog, Shika, who one day followed me to the washing machine. I stopped to pet her, and I could sense that she really, really, really wanted to be petted. Then I pulled a comforter out of the washer and put it in the dryer. When I turned around, my dog was lying dead. I lay on the ground beside her and just held her until my mother found us. I didn’t even know how much time had passed, but the dryer had stopped. She’d known she was about to die and that was why she’d been so open to being petted.

My mother said that when I was dying and the nurse had left the room, Obaachan had lain beside me on the bed and held me. That was so hard for me to believe I thought my mother might be lying.

After I finished with my mosquito sketchbook, I picked up one of the books I had to read for school. It was called A Separate Peace. My teacher said I had to read three books over the summer. Even though it was for older kids, I chose A Separate Peace because it was the only book in English that Jiichan had ever read, and he wanted me to explain it to him. He was very troubled by the book and had been after me to read it all year. It was about two Caucasian guys who went to a boarding school during World War II. In other words, it was about a world completely alien to mine. I was already on page 30. Some kids I knew would read only books that were about something they could relate to. But I was interested in other stuff.

Jaz, in a huge straw hat, worked on his LEGO building right out in the hot sun. He was concentrating so hard on the building that I don’t know if he even realized he was in the sun. His construction was really very impressive. There were four floors, with balconies, and the insides were furnished. Nobody could talk to him when he was focused on his LEGOs, because he might have a meltdown. He might pound his head on something. He might throw a cup at you.

I looked around at the wheat in the distance. I knew there was also wheat on the other side of the highway. There was nowhere to go except to other wheat fields and nothing to do except walk through the wheat fields.

All three of us were drenched with sweat. I wished they had brought the employee camper first, but I also understood that working the fields was more important than whether or not I was sweating. I read the last few chapters of A Separate Peace. Okay, that wasn’t a good move. Now I felt even more confused. So I went back to where I was before to keep reading from there.

Later, as I took the chicken out of the cooler to prepare sandwiches for dinner, I suddenly realized I was thinking about A Separate Peace, just like Jiichan. The book made me think about what was deep inside of me. Was I good or bad or mixed or what? And was the way I acted every day the real me, or was the real me somewhere so deep that I would never even know it? I made a mental note to talk about this with Melody when I got back home. Then I tried to remember, Wasn’t there another mental note I made to myself earlier? I couldn’t remember. Maybe I needed to start writing down my mental notes. Who knows what all I’d forgotten to do over the years? But then what if someone got ahold of my notebook and some of the mental notes were embarrassing?

Back to A Separate Peace. Why would a book in which hardly anything happened for most of the time eat at me so much? It was the weirdest thing.

The radio crackled to life. It was Mrs. Parker. “If you can hear me, can you cut the sandwiches into rectangles, not triangles? It makes them easier to eat.”

“I going to cut her into rectangles,” murmured Obaachan.

I hopped into the truck and picked up the radio. “Hi, it’s Summer. We’ll definitely cut into rectangles this time. I think my grandmother thinks triangles look better.”

“I don’t mean to micromanage,” said Mrs. Parker, “but could you and/or she also use just a touch more mayonnaise? I think even my husband would have liked a bit more if he were here.”

“Okay.” I waited, but she didn’t say anything further.

“Actually, I want less mayonnaise on mine,” Jaz said. “And as long as we’re bossing you around, can you slice my tomato really thin? I like some tomato, but not too thick.”

“I like thick tomato,” Obaachan said.

I wished I had an MP3 player so I could drown everybody out. We’d bought a cheap knife at the grocery store, and when I tried to cut Jaz’s tomato thin, I ended up squishing the tomato.

“And don’t give me the end part of the tomato with all the skin,” Jaz said. “Even if it’s thin, I don’t want that part.”

If Obaachan weren’t right there, I would have told him to shut up. Then I did say it: “Shut up!”

I waited for Obaachan to say something, but at first she didn’t. Finally, she said, “You grounded, Summer. Errrr.”

How could I be grounded on harvest?

“You too sensitive. You need to be tough cookie.”

Actually, harvest was a good time to make trouble, because I couldn’t get grounded. I made a mental note to test out that theory. Then I sighed and carefully cut a thin slice of tomato. I made the sandwiches with a little bit more mayonnaise, except for Jaz’s sandwich. I gave everyone except Jaz a thick slice of tomato. And I cut all the sandwiches in half, into rectangles. The problem with me, I decided, was that I was too good. I mean, every so often I was bad, but nobody took me seriously enough. Like, Jaz had everybody in the palm of his hand because of his temper. Everyone took his temper seriously. If I threw a cup across a room like Jaz sometimes did, my entire family would have a nervous breakdown. But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing if it made them take me more seriously.

The radio came to life again. “Are the sandwiches ready?”

I grabbed the radio. “Yes, they’re ready,” I said.

We drove out to the combines, and Mrs. Parker couldn’t stop herself from examining the sandwiches before she distributed them.

She suddenly ran her hand over my head and said, “How are you holding up, dear?”

“I’m reading and drawing, and Jaz is playing with his LEGOs.”

“Don’t worry, it won’t be this bad every time.” Then she gave a laugh. “Well, I can’t promise you that. One thing about harvest is that anything can happen.”

I smiled. “Remember that time I fell off the combine and everyone thought I had a concussion?”

She laughed again. “Honey, some of us just aren’t blessed with coordination.”

I couldn’t stand Robbie just sitting up there, so I said, “How’s Robbie doing?”