Cynthia Kadohata - The Thing About Luck

“Your obaachan drive when her neck hurt, I should drive when I sick. But she stronger than me. Tell Mick I need quit now. Cannot do more.”

I gingerly picked up the radio. “My grandfather is finished.”

“Is he all right, then?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.

“You drive back to pickup,” Jiichan said. “I no can. Then you drive me in pickup to motel.”

Doubt fluttered through me. “But the pickup is a stick shift,” I said. “I don’t think I can drive it.” In Kansas you could get your learner’s permit at age fourteen. So I’d practiced driving with my father, but our pickup was an automatic. I looked at the expanse of wheat still uncut. I looked at the sky, which was getting overcast. I hoped the rains didn’t come early. I looked at Jiichan.

“Then drive me in combine to motel,” he said.

My heart was pounding as I climbed out onto the platform, Jiichan following. Then we got back into the combine, me first, sitting behind the steering wheel, him in the passenger seat. I felt very small. I suddenly knew what it must feel like to be a mouse. I took the combine out of idle and slowly headed across the field toward the pickup. I checked Mick’s combine through the side mirror.

The land here was more terraced than the land on the Laskey farm. This made the going slower. There was no way one combine could cut all the wheat that was here in only a few days. Even though it was a small farm, right then it seemed like the biggest farm in the world. The combine shook as I rolled into a trench hidden beneath the remnants of cut wheat. That shook me up, and I had to go into idle again.

Jiichan had closed his eyes. “Jiichan?” I said, but he didn’t answer. When we reached the pickup, I turned off the combine and just sat there. With Jiichan asleep, I wasn’t sure what to do. On the farm across the street, I saw someone else’s combines driving through the wheat fields. I wondered if we would have to offer our job to them in order to be finished on time. And if we did that, how much would it cost the Parkers? And would they dock our pay? I pocketed the key so nobody could steal the combine.

The radio came to life. “Is he quitting, then?”

“Yes,” I answered. “He wants me to drive him to the motel in the combine.”

“I’ll handle it,” Mick said. “Just wait there.”

I sat and watched Mick bring his combine in. He climbed down the ladder, hopping down the last few rungs and hurrying over before climbing up our combine. He flung open the door and studied Jiichan, who appeared to be sleeping.

“I won’t be able to get him down the ladder. Can ya wake him?” Mick asked.

“Sure.” I shook Jiichan gently. That didn’t work, so I leaned over and said, “Jiichan? Jiichan!” His head rolled over to the left. “Mick’s here. He can take us to the motel in the pickup.”

Jiichan opened his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Mick.”

When we got back to the motel, Mick helped Jiichan into our room, where he crumpled into his bed. “Let me know if ya need anything,” Mick said. “Here, write down my cell phone number.”

I got a pen and wrote his number on a Wheatland Motel pad of paper. Then he was gone. I sat on the bed I was sharing with Jaz. Obaachan, Jaz, and Thunder were still at the elevator. In a minute the phone rang, startling me.

“Hello?” I said.

“It’s Mr. Parker.”

“Hi!”

“Is your grandfather going back to work?”

Mick must have just called him. “Uh, not exactly. I mean, not right at this moment.”

“Tell him we don’t have much time.”

I glanced at the clock—it was almost six in the evening.

“He’s going back out tonight,” I lied. “He didn’t get enough sleep.” I just felt like I wanted to get off the phone.

“A short rest is acceptable,” Mr. Parker said crisply. “But tell him to try to make it short. Can you do that? It’s just a nap he needs?”

“I hope so,” I said honestly.

Mr. Parker sighed, then fell silent.

“Hello?” I said.

“Que sera, sera,” he finally answered. I knew that song: Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see, que sera, sera. “If he’s too sick, of course he shouldn’t go back out. Don’t mind me. Let me know either way, if he goes back out today or doesn’t. I’d like to keep all my customers happy if possible. Okay, bye.”

“Bye.”

I could almost feel Mr. Parker’s torment pulling him every which way. Be nice, be firm, be nice, be firm. Take care of the people, take care of the crops.

I went outside with some homework. I looked around. I missed Thunder. A mosquito landed on my arm, and I scrambled up, screaming. A man opened the door of the office down the way. “Was that you?” he called out.

“It was nothing.”

“A scream like that for nothing?”

“It was ... a mosquito.”

He just stared at me for a moment before returning to the office.

I went inside our room, took a shower, and spread DEET all over myself. My stomach hurt. If we messed up this job, how would we pay our mortgage? If we lost the house, where would we live? I took out my journal and a pen and sat on the floor, using the closed toilet as a table.

One of our essay assignments was to write about who we would like to be if we weren’t ourselves. This didn’t quite make sense as an assignment, because you couldn’t know who you really wanted to be until you tried out life from their point of view for a while. But I attempted to do the best I could.

If I could be anyone else in the world, it would be, my grandfather. He is sixty-seven years, four months, and three days old. He is from Japan. He came here because my mother was born in the United States during a long visit he was taking with my grandmother. My mother was a preemee and they were scared, she might die the doctor said. But she did not. My grandfather is a combine driver. There are probably, maybe, approximately three thousand combine drivers working right now in America this very summer. Maybe less. That’s not too many. They work hard. But I wouldn’twould not be a good combine driver because

Suddenly, I couldn’t remember if it was my new teacher or my old one who didn’t like contractions. I stopped. I had an idea. I mean, it was a really big idea. It was such a big idea that my hands started shaking. I couldn’t concentrate on my homework anymore. The front door opened, startling me. I stepped into the main room. Thunder’s paws went galumph galumph on the floor as he ran to fling himself at me. “Thunder, Thunder, I missed you!” I knelt beside him and held him close. Obaachan tossed a few plastic-wrapped sandwiches onto the bed I was sharing with Jaz. Jaz had mayonnaise on his upper lip. He always squeezed his sandwiches too hard.

Then Obaachan stood next to the bed where Jiichan was sleeping. It was dim in the room. “He look terrible,” she said. “He look gray.” She scowled at me like it was all my fault. Then she nodded at nothing and continued sadly, “I guess this last time we work for Parkers. I know I give trouble to Mrs. Parker, but she good woman. They no hire us again. It my fault. I should have learn to drive combine. I should have take better care of my back. I should have done yoga. I should have brought umeboshi for Toshi.” She hung her head low and nodded once more.

I didn’t know what to say. I called softly to Thunder and stuck my DEET into a back pocket. We walked around the motel, down the highway, and back to the motel, thinking about the idea I’d had earlier. It felt good to move around in the clean night air. When I got back inside, everyone was asleep except Obaachan, who was sitting up on her bed with a table lamp weakly glowing. She didn’t speak to me.