Cynthia Kadohata - The Thing About Luck

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?”

“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.