The Thing About Luck

“He’s obsessed with Angry Birds. I have to hide his phone every night so he doesn’t stay up playing.”

I looked up longingly at him, then quickly looked away so Mrs. Parker wouldn’t notice.

After that I really had nothing to do, especially since it would be dark soon. We didn’t have any artificial lights, so at least there wouldn’t be so many insects around. Just the usual crickets. They were chirping up a storm because of the high temperature—they chirp faster the higher the temperature.

If all went well, the semi with the employee camper would probably be back by one a.m., maybe around the same time that the combines would finish. I found a pen and a piece of scratch paper in the glove compartment of the truck and turned on the inside light. Let’s see. On a perfect day, four combines together might cut eighty acres per hour. Eighty times sixteen hours of work equals 1,280 acres a day. So since the farm was about seven thousand acres, and since nothing ever went perfectly, it would take at least seven days to finish the job.

So you already know that the grain cart dumps into the grain trailers, and the big rigs take the full trailers to the elevators. Sometimes the wait at the elevators is as long as five or six hours; other times nobody at all will be in front of you. The nearest elevator, the one Obaachan stopped at, was going to stay open until around ten p.m., she’d found out. Some custom harvesters try to have the combine bins and grain trailers empty around elevator closing time. Then everyone would keep working for a few hours more until all the containers were full again. Only then, at one or two a.m., did the work stop. That way, early in the morning, when the elevators opened, the big rigs could go straight to the elevators to dump. The Parkers didn’t like to work their drivers past midnight unless it was necessary to beat the weather. And why was I thinking about this stuff? I was done for the day and couldn’t wait for our camper to arrive so we could all go to sleep in style. But I wondered if Jiichan was getting tired out there.

I got out again and walked around with Thunder. I heard buzzing in my ear—a mosquito! I screamed and shook myself like crazy. Jaz always said that when I shook myself, I looked like a zombie on fire. It was only a myth that just female mosquitoes buzz. Both male and female mosquitoes buzz. Thunder barked, but I wasn’t sure what he was barking at. I loved being in my bare feet. So I took off my shoes, which my mother always warned me not to do, because apparently, you could step on all sorts of terrible things outside—to her, the ground was a battlefield.

It was pitch-black, which made it kind of exciting. Thunder and I walked slowly so as not to walk into anything. It was daytime in Japan right now, and my mother was probably helping out with my great- grandparents, washing them or feeding them or just keeping them company.

I stopped and stared straight ahead into the darkness. I felt like I was part of the darkness, in a good way. Sometimes I loved farm life, the way you felt like you were such a part of the dirt and the wheat and the trees and the grass.

I heard something moving, and my heart began to thud. It was probably a coyote, and Thunder would scare it away. Still, now that I was scared, I didn’t want to walk anymore. Jiichan said that since I’d gotten sick, I’d turned into a scaredycat. Well, things moving in the dark were scary! I turned around and hoped I was going in the right direction. I couldn’t even see any lights from the combines. They must have been on the far end of the field.

I called out, “Jaz?” He didn’t answer, so I called louder, “Jaz?”

Obaachan shouted back, “You bother everybody with your noise! You walk loud like rhinoceros in jungle!”

I seriously doubted that she had ever heard a rhinoceros walk in the jungle, but I was glad to hear her voice. I walked toward it. In a few minutes Obaachan said, “Over here.”

I held out my hands and moved them back and forth until I felt the pickup. I stepped on Obaachan’s hand by accident and she cried out, “My hand! You ruin my perfect hand!”

“I’m sorry! Where’s Jaz?”

“He sleep in truck. You go too.”

I climbed into the pickup with Thunder and lay down on the backseat. Thunder tried crawling on top of me. I couldn’t push him off, though, because he was too strong and stubborn. So I lay there with ninety-five pounds of Doberman on top of me. Seriously, Dobermans have elbows like rocks. I concentrated all my energy, the way I did when I was holding Jaz, and with a grunt, I pushed off Thunder. He curled up on the floor and went to sleep.

I woke up to a commotion. A big rig had arrived with the employee camper. Jaz was sitting up, stretching on the front seat. The back doors of the pickup couldn’t open unless a front door was open, so I climbed over the front seat and got out with Thunder and Jaz. Mr. Laskey had apparently woken up with the noise as well and was standing nearby in a robe. The other combines were in from the field. I squinted at the headlights of the big rigs, then checked my watch: 2:47 a.m.

Mr. Parker was already attaching the employee camper to the water and electricity hookups. Yay—a real bed! I staggered into the camper and felt for the light along the wall. I turned it on and found myself standing in the kitchen. To the right of that was a couch and TV. Then I checked out both ends of the camper, which turned out to be identical. Each had six beds—two three-level bunks. I knew my grandparents would want the bottom bunks. I took a middle bunk so that Thunder would be able to get up into it. I told him “Hup!” and he struggled onto the narrow bed.

Even though the bed was hard, it felt really comfortable compared to the backseat of the pickup. I usually liked to take a shower before bed, but I was so tired, I thought I’d be able to fall asleep without being clean. The rest of my family trudged in together. Jiichan looked exhausted; the lines on his face seemed deeper than usual, as if he were a lifetime smoker. “You want air conditioner, Toshi?” Obaachan asked.

“Hai,” he said, lying down with a grunt.

“I’ll get it,” Jaz said. He turned it on and climbed to the top of the other bunk. I could tell how tired he was by how he kind of slapped his hands onto the rungs instead of grabbing them firmly.

Obaachan eyed her bed critically, then pushed at it a couple of times with her hand. “Summer, pull mattress off for me. I sleep with it on floor.”

I climbed down obediently, pulled off the mattress, and climbed back up.

“I change my mind,” she said. “I think I sleep with mattress on bed. Summer.”

I had a feeling she was doing this on purpose, but what could I do? I climbed down and put the mattress back on the bed. This time I waited. “Well?” I asked.

“Floor is better.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“You smart-mouth me?”

“No, it’s just what I figured, that’s all.” She looked at me suspiciously, but I just pulled the mattress to the floor without another word. Then I turned out the light and got in bed.

“Ah, kita makura!” Obaachan said. She groaned and I heard rummaging before she groaned again.

Kita makura was the Japanese superstition that sleeping with your head to the north was bad luck. The beds had already been made, with the pillows on the north. I supposed Obaachan had just moved around so that her head was now facing south. But then she said, “Summer.”

“Yes?”

“I want to sleep east. Change my mattress. It too heavy for me.”

In fact, it wasn’t heavy at all, but I climbed down carefully and felt my way to the light switch. I didn’t know how I was going to survive the whole summer without killing somebody.

“Never mind,” she said. “I like south after all.”

“You’re doing this on purpose!” I cried out.

“What you mean?” She gave me her best innocent look. That made me even more suspicious.

“You’re making me climb up and down just because you think it’s funny!”

“What funny about that?”

“Well, do you want anything else before I get back in bed?” I asked, exasperated.

“What would I want? It middle of night.”

Obaachan lay down and closed her eyes. By the time I got back in bed, I was wide awake. I stared into the blackness and thought about practice-kissing my hand and pretending it was Robbie. But somehow Obaachan