Cynthia Kadohata - The Thing About Luck

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.