Cynthia Kadohata - The Thing About Luck

2. Big rig hauling combine

3. Pickup hauling header

4. Pickup hauling header

Jiichan and Mick would each drive a big rig. Rory and Mr. Dark would ride together in one of the pickups. Obaachan would drive the other pickup. Then Rory would drive one of the pickups back to Texas, and Mr. Dark would drive one of the big rigs back. Or something like that. It all made my head spin.

Once we got to the Franklin place and started cutting, Jiichan and Mick would dump directly into the grain trailer instead of into a grain cart. Then Obaachan would drive the semi, with the grain trailer attached, to and from an elevator. She’d gotten her commercial driver’s license a couple of years earlier, so she was allowed.

As we set out around six thirty, Jiichan was still sick, but he was trying hard to pretend he was fine. He’d told Mrs. Parker that he and Obaachan were feeling well. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, because now Obaachan had to drive the pickup to Oklahoma, though it would have made more sense for Mr. Dark to drive us. Mr. Dark was getting a rest because he hadn’t slept well.

But since the drive wasn’t long, I thought both Jiichan and Obaachan could make it. Jaz and I did jan ken pon to decide who had to ride with Obaachan. I lost. “Errrrr,” Obaachan kept saying. She didn’t talk much, just seemed absorbed in her pain.

After a while I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes, we were parked by the side of the highway. Everyone except me had gathered around Obaachan. She was lying on her back on the roadside.

“How long has my grandmother been there?” I asked, getting out of the pickup.

“About ten minutes,” Mick said. “I don’t know why yer grandparents came when they can barely work.”

“They work just as hard as you,” I said, but he didn’t respond. “Obaachan, can you get up?” I asked, kneeling by her side.

She held out her hands. Jaz and I each took a hand and pulled her up. She seemed surprisingly light, even more so than usual, as if she were fading away into nothing this morning.

I was surprised to see Obaachan get in the passenger side. They must all have been talking while I slept. Now Mr. Dark would drive the semi Jiichan had been driving, and Jiichan would drive us in the pickup.

Jaz climbed into the truck after me.

We all started off again. “I tell you I drive,” Obaachan said. “Stubborn old man.”

“You stubborn old woman,” Jiichan said. “I can drive.”

“Who old? You older than me!”

“Only one month older!”

“Thirty-five days! That more than month!”

It amazed me that they could argue about the smallest things even when they were trying to do something nice for each other. Each of them wanted to drive in order to save the other from having to. “They’re expressing love for each other,” my dad had once said while he was watching a football game. “That’s just the way they talk. Down in front—I just missed a touchdown!”

Before I got malaria, I used to think that my dad loved sports more than he loved me. But then while I was sick, my whole family practically moved into my hospital room. I had a vague, almost hallucinogenic memory of them drifting around the room like silent ghosts. I felt like I was alive and they were the walking dead. We were in two different worlds. But in my world I just knew how badly my father wanted me to get well. In fact, I knew everything. I did.

“How far are we?” I asked Obaachan now.

“You need sleep” was all she said.

Then I thought of Mick and felt anger rise in me. Jiichan happened to have gotten sick, but otherwise, he worked just as much and just as hard as Mick. And Obaachan and I cooked for everyone every day. We were all doing good jobs, and he had no right to say what he’d said. I didn’t like Mick at all.

I turned my head toward the window, my mind filled with evil thoughts about Mick. I wished he would fall out of the truck and get run over by another truck. Then I felt guilty for thinking that. But you know how it is. You can’t stop yourself from thinking something. At least, that’s what I believed. My parents agreed with me, but my grandparents didn’t. In fact, all that meditating I did was supposed to help me think nicer thoughts. Sometimes it was hard, though.

Maybe that was why I kept thinking about A Separate Peace . Gene was jealous of Finny, and then one day he acted on that jealousy by shaking the branch so that Finny fell to the ground. I had decided that Gene shook the branch on purpose. I didn’t want to do something horrible like that in the future. It scared me that I might have evil inside of me. That was why I never argued when Jiichan said I should try to meditate and do my breathing exercises. This would help me to open up my heart more.

I closed my eyes again.

After a long time I heard Mick on the radio saying we had reached the motel Mrs. Parker had booked for us.

“We’re going to drop the machines at the farm,” Mick said. “It’s a bit up the road. Yukiko, why don’t ya get our rooms? Tosh, ya ought to come to the farm after ya drop yer family off.”

Jiichan pulled into a gravel lot below a sign reading WHEATLAND MOTEL. A small group of people were just leaving the motel. They were probably wheaties like us. I could tell somehow.

I stayed in the pickup because I had just decided to follow Jiichan around all day to make sure he was okay. Jaz got out with Obaachan and cried loudly into the wind, “For I am the great LEGO builder Jaz Miyamoto! I come to conquer your state!” When we reached the farm, Rory was already unloading a combine. Then he got in a semi without a word and set off for Texas again. Mr. Dark climbed into a pickup and drove off. I had no idea how everyone was operating on so little sleep.

Jiichan put a weird trying-to-appear-fine grin on his face. Mick cut a swath of wheat with a combine, then climbed into the bin with a moisture meter. “Too moist,” he called out. We hopped back into the pickup and returned to the motel to check in and sleep while the wheat dried.

Obaachan and Jaz were sitting on a bench outside the office. She got up when she saw us and handed Mick his keycard. “Let’s meet in two hours, then I’ll check the moisture again,” Mick said.

Jiichan nodded. He usually walked with perfect posture, but now his shoulders slumped. I held on to his hand as we walked to our room. Obaachan and Jiichan immediately got into bed, so Jaz and I unloaded the pickup. We’d brought bottles of water, two thermoses of coffee, and one suitcase apiece. We weren’t expecting to be here very long.

It seemed as if I had just fallen asleep when I heard knocking. I staggered sleepily to the door. When I opened up, Mick stood there looking exhausted, looking, in fact, a lot like my family.

“The wheat’s ready,” he said. “Mr. Franklin called. He’s waiting at the farmhouse for us.” He held up a thermos. “I don’t know how Americans drink so much coffee. Awful stuff, but it does wake a man up.”

“Do you want to wait in here?” I asked him. “We’ll just be a few minutes.”

“I’ll wait outside.”

Obaachan was already up and dressed in fresh clothes. She was the Incredible Sleepless Woman. She was listening to music on an MP3 player. She liked Bruce Springsteen. Go figure. It was pretty funny when she cried out lyrics like “Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart!” She took one of the thermoses and filled the cap with coffee. “Tosh,” she said. “Sorry, very sorry, but you have work now.”

Jiichan opened his eyes but didn’t move. He finally sat up. “This worst moment of my life,” he said before getting out of bed. I felt so bad for him. We had all gone to sleep fully dressed. He went to use the bathroom before walking out without changing. Obaachan and I followed him. She would need to take the pickup back and forth from the motel to the big rig as she alternately went to the elevator and relaxed in the motel. I let Thunder stay in the motel because I didn’t want any trouble.