Cynthia Kadohata - The Thing About Luck

“Jiichan?” No answer.

“Obaachan?” Not even a grunt.

Making sure I had my keycard and the flashlight, I slipped out the door with Thunder.

The walk sure was less scary with the flashlight. When I climbed into my combine, I immediately picked up the radio. “I’m here,” I said to Mick.

“Summer” was all he said.

“Yep, it’s me.”

“Be careful when ya dump tonight.”

“I will. Mick?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for helping me yesterday.” And in my head I was also apologizing to him for not liking him before and wishing he had fallen out of a truck.

“It was nothing.”

Thunder lay squished at my feet as I honked twice and started the combine. I started to feel like we were in our own world. I felt safe, the way Jaz felt safe in his bed at home. He loved his bed. I knew this because he kept all his important possessions on the shelf in his headboard at home. He kept a key from when we had lived in another house he liked better. He kept his completed Sudoku books. And he kept a box of his favorite LEGO minifigs.

I suddenly realized I was thinking about something else and operating the combine at the same time. According to my controls, the moisture content of the wheat was 11.5 percent: still perfect. Thunder whimpered in a dream. Mick was wrapped in dust on the far end of the field.

I could drive confidently at two miles per hour, but when I tried three, everything seemed barely under control. Two was good.

When I needed to pee, I stopped the combine and slipped into an area facing the empty highway. When I got back, Mick was on the radio. “Everything all right?”

“Yes,” I replied. Then I added, “Ten-four,” because I had learned that from a movie. I pushed yesterday’s mistake out of my mind. Like Jiichan sometimes said to Jaz when Jaz got stuck on something, “Walk on, walk on.” And at least it seemed as though the farmer hadn’t noticed.

The bin was empty when I started. I drove slowly, sometimes even more slowly than two miles an hour. I wanted it to fill, and yet I didn’t want it to. I wished the combine would break down. Then I wouldn’t have to dump, and the Parkers couldn’t get mad. Mick had already dumped twice by the time my bin was filled.

I drove over to the semi. I thought about my whole life. There wasn’t that much to think about, except that I’d had malaria. I was born in Kansas, and I still lived in Kansas. I went to school. I hated homework. My mother was lenient, my grandmother was strict. I got three dollars a week for an allowance.

I moved the auger over the grain trailer. Then I turned off the combine and got out to stand on the platform. The auger was over the trailer but very close to the edge. I got back into the cab, honked twice, and started the engine again. I pulled in the auger, backed up, and moved closer to the semi, feeling a little sick to my stomach about how close I was. I knew that the famous John Deere green color on this combine was polished and perfect, and I didn’t want to be the one to scratch it. But when I got out to check, the combine wasn’t as close as I had feared.

I pushed the auger-out button located on the throttle control, and then I pushed one more button on the throttle lever, this one a bit harder to reach, so you didn’t accidentally hit it and lose the grain while you were driving in the field. A beeper sounded the whole time I was dumping. The beep was to tell the operator that the auger was running. When the controls said that my combine was empty, I pressed the same button. Then I brought the auger back in by pressing the auger-return button. I realized I was holding my breath. I exhaled, then inhaled deeply, smelling the beautiful scent of cut wheat.

I picked up the radio. “I did it! I dumped my whole load, and it’s perfect!” I said to Mick excitedly.

“Good girl!” he answered. “Can ya get that wee section near ya? The field is a strange shape, isn’t it?”

“Got it,” I said. “Ten-four.”

That was it. I was a combine driver, or maybe a third of one since I went so slowly. I tried to do that math in my head, and for once I could think clearly. Since I went two miles an hour and good drivers went five miles an hour, that meant I was 40 percent of a combine driver, more or less. Not bad for a twelve-year-old girl.

“Summer.”

I picked up the radio. “Yes?”

“I’m going to have to dump at the elevator. They’re open late because of the rain this weekend. Do ya want to come with me or are ya okay by yerself?”

I didn’t answer at first. I searched inside myself and decided that my need to keep cutting trumped my fear of being alone.

“Summer?”

“No, I’ll be fine working out here.”

But a minute after he drove off my heart started to go whompa, whompa . I was suddenly terrified out there by myself. I idled the combine and watched as the big rig’s taillights disappeared in the distance. I sat very still, then turned off the ignition. I laid my arms on the steering wheel and my face on my arms, and pressed my eyes closed. I was so, so scared. I remembered a night several years earlier when I had a dog who was killed by a truck on the highway, and as I held him I thought I was going to lose my mind. That’s kind of the way I felt right then, like everything that was real—the black sky and the stars and the wheat—all started to kind of melt into one another, and the only thing that seemed clear was me and a dog. Whompa, whompa. “Thunder, help me. I’m scared,” I said, looking at him. He lifted his head curiously, then sat up and placed his paw on my leg.

I suddenly burst into sobs, and the next thing I knew, I wasn’t sobbing because I was scared, but because my grandparents worked so hard and because Jaz couldn’t make a friend at school and because I knew how desperately my parents wished for their own business, and I doubted they would ever get their wish.

I squeezed onto the floor and hugged Thunder to me. As I hugged him something unfamiliar welled up inside of me. Maybe it was courage. I mean, this was my world, the black sky and the stars and the wheat. I knew this world backward and forward and up and down. I got back into my seat and looked around at the wheat. Something started to happen: The dust of my personality started to settle, and my fear left me. In its place was the hyper-superalertness from yesterday.

I turned on the ignition and got back to work.

When my bin was full, Mick still hadn’t returned. I turned off my combine and waited for him.

He got back in an hour and called me on the radio. “I’m back. There was a bit of a line at the elevator. Are ya full?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll dump for ya. Why don’t ya go on back to the motel? I’m thinking of quitting myself.”

“Do you want me to help you clean the combines?”

“Naw. Go get yer sleep.”

“Okay, ’night!” I said. And that’s when excitement flooded into me. I hadn’t made any mistakes today! I wanted to jump up and touch the sky.

I parked the combine where I had found it and walked home.

One of my flip-flops broke, so I walked barefoot in the middle of the road to avoid stepping on gravel. I walked exactly in the middle because that somehow made me feel kind of like I was celebrating or in a movie or something. I was so happy. I loved how quiet it was out, how the breeze brushed my face, and how the road felt soft under my feet. Bugs touched my face like snowflakes.

When I reached the motel, I snuck into the room. Even Obaachan seemed to be fast asleep. I changed into a T-shirt without showering—too bad, EPA!—and eased myself into bed beside Jaz. Thunder jumped on top of me. An hour went by. I couldn’t sleep. I felt wired. I gave up trying to sleep, got my keycard, and went to sit outside and look at the stars. Thunder followed me out.