Crunch (15 page)

“STOP CLAWING AT THAT BANDAGE, ANGUS,”
Lil warned.

“So, wait,” he was saying, “my sunburn is going to turn to a tan, right? And then when I take the bandage off I’m going to look like I have a beard?”

“That’s right.” Vince was teasing him. “A white one.”

“Cool.”

“If it was me, I could be a bearded lady-girl,” Eva said.

My siblings kept laughing and talking at the picnic table. I was spacey. Tired. Thinking. And suddenly, I was listening, though not to them.

“Earth to Dew. What’s the matter with you?” Lil gave me a nudge.

“Shh!” I turned around on the picnic bench. I waited and listened some more. “Do you hear that?” I asked. We waited.

“I just hear the quiet,” Eva said.

“I hear…the highway,” I said. “It’s trucks. I swear.” I stood up. “I’m going to see.”

“Take me, Dewey!” Eva came running.

“Report back!” Lil called. “I can’t
wait
!”

I swung Eva up onto my back and jogged out our driveway and past the trees. We broke into the open at Bridal Path Lane—the on-ramp—and waited. All was quiet.

“Dew, I don’t see trucks,” Eva whispered. “Just bikes.”

“But see where the bikes are? See how they’re all keeping to the right side? They’re leaving room,” I said.

By now Vince had come up behind us with Angus, who ran up and wrapped himself around one of my legs. “Where’s the trucks?” he asked.

“Shh! Listen! Watch!” I said. We all stared out at the highway to the north. “Hold on. Something’s coming. It’s coming….”

“Truck!” cried Angus.

“Yes! See! And look behind it. And one more after that.”

“Convoy!” Vince cheered.

That was a stretch. This barely qualified as
traffic
. Sometimes there were several minutes between rigs. But it still felt historic. We walked to the wedge of grass that split the highway from the ramp and stood watching the trucks pass. The back drafts sucked at our clothing. The brush and brown grasses bent, then popped up again. We took to waving at the drivers. They honked their horns.

“Dad will honk,” Eva said. “He’ll honk all the way home!”

Highway biking would come to an end, I realized. In fact, I was sure it was already over for those of us who had Lilly Marriss calling the shots. She’d never let us out here now. A tiny seed of regret settled in my chest. We hadn’t taken enough advantage of the empty highway. Not as riders. But I smiled to myself when I thought about how many bikers we’d put out there with all our repairs. And more to go…

We watched a few more sets of headlights come
over the horizon. They seemed like the winking-blinking proof, somehow, that Mom and Dad would be home soon. Bedtime caught up to Angus and Eva. Soon they were just staring. I’d watched them do this before—reach the end of the day with their eyes still open but with everything else all gone to sleep. They would not speak any more now. How good it must feel, I thought.

“Let’s go back,” I whispered to Vince. “I don’t want to miss the call tonight. I want Dad to know we made it through the day. In fact, I’m surprised he hasn’t called. It’s late.”

I lifted Eva to my shoulder, and Vince took Angus.

We heard the phone ringing from the porch step. Lil answered it as we walked inside.

“Hello? Mom? You guys are calling late! Angus and Eva are”—she looked at our cargo—“already asleep.” She covered the phone and whispered to me, “Did you see trucks?” I nodded, and she made a huge grin with her eyes closed. She waved Vince and me on up the stairs. She turned back to the receiver and said, “Mom? Okay, tell me.”

Upstairs, Vince and I each slid an unconscious
twin onto their beds. “They’re dirty,” Vince whispered. He picked up one of Angus’s limp feet and examined the grime. “We should try to wash them again before Mom and Dad get here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Except, my fantasy is that Mom and Dad have a full tank. And they’re driving through the night to surprise us.”

When we got back downstairs, Lil was facing the kitchen window, her back to us. Her fingers were still around the handset of the phone. She suddenly picked it up and gave it two hard slams on the countertop then pushed it to the floor. She grabbed a dish towel and stood with it pressed tight to her eyes. I saw her back convulse. My sister was sobbing.

“Lil?” I said. “Lil, what’s happening?”

She drew a breath inward, made a high-pitched sound like nothing I had ever heard come from Lil before. She swallowed hard, wiped her face, and said, “Dad’s been hurt.”

“Hurt? How? A crash?”

“Somebody
attacked
him.” She choked again. “And they did it for those—
goddamn ration cards.
Oh my God. You guys.” She looked at us almost as if
we
were giving her the news instead of the
other way around. “Someone
beat
our dad and they
robbed
him. For
fuel
.”

Vince grabbed his head with his hands and said, “No!”

I was frozen where I stood, but I could feel my heart falling.

Beaten and robbed? What does that even mean? I needed to know. Couldn’t ask. Dad is one of the nicest people on the planet. He’d sooner give you a ration card…

“How—how bad is it?” I said. “How bad is Dad?”

“Mom said—he—has a concussion. Stitches over one eye. And his hand is badly hurt. Broken, they think.”

“Oh my God.”

“He’s—he’s going to recover,” Lil said. She shook her head quickly. “I—I should have said that. Sorry.” She took a new breath and said, “But with the head injury, they’re keeping him in the hospital. At least a few nights.”

My own head felt light. I let myself into a chair at our kitchen table. I wanted to talk to Dad. I had never wanted anything more.

FOR THE SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW, I DIDN’T SLEEP
much. I thought about Dad half the night and about all the bikes in the Bike Barn the other half. When I got upset about Dad’s injuries I could at least remember Lil’s words.
He’s going to recover
. I’d relax and think I was going to fall asleep. But when it came to the backlog of bikes, there was no relief. For days I’d been telling myself that everything would be okay
when Dad got home
. But I had to face two things. One, Dad wouldn’t be able to drive for a while. Mom didn’t have a commercial license. Two, it would be pretty tough for Dad to repair bikes with a busted hand.

So after greasing my brain on those thoughts all night long, I finally dozed off for an hour or so right around sunrise. When I woke, I rubbed
my face and looked out the window. The yard was full of broken bikes and owners. Again. I stumbled down the stairs.

“No! No! Please don’t come to the house!” I heard Robert say as he came up our steps. He was speaking to the swarm. “Just line up. Yep. Just like you are. The barn is where the business is.” From the window I saw him point his arm straight and hard at the building as if to direct them away from our house. Smart, I thought. He came inside and we shut the door together.

“Ai-yi-yi,” he muttered. “I thought they were going to follow me in. I left my bike around back of the house. Too many envious looks!” He set a bag of bagels on the table. Then he faced me. “Hey,” he said, “you okay? You look wiped out, Boss Man. Oh, gosh, I didn’t give you that stomach bug, did I?”

“Nope.” My voice croaked. “We had a bad night.”

“What happened?” Robert asked. “No more thefts…oh, no! Don’t tell me…”

I shook my head no. I told him about Dad.

“Oh, you
cannot
be telling me this,” Robert
said. He settled himself on the edge of our kitchen table. Turned his palms up. “W-hat can I do?”

“You can’t do anything,” Lil said. Boy, did she sound like she was at the wrong end of the day. No morning cheer. She held out a pair of Eva’s shorts to me. “Dew, Eva’s being a snot. Take these up and wrestle her into them. And get Angus and Vince moving too. And don’t forget to get dressed yourself,” she added.

I shot her a look. So what, I had come down in my boxers and a T-shirt. I didn’t need to be told to get dressed. Especially not in front of Robert.

“I want us all together when I sit the twins down and tell them about—” She cut herself off. Stood looking at Robert.

“Dewey told me about your dad. I’m so sorry,” Robert said. “Look, I came to work in the shop, but how can I really help the most?”

Lil didn’t answer him. She flapped Eva’s shorts at me impatiently. “Take these. Please?” she said.

I told Robert I’d be right back. “We’ll eat and then go face the mob together.”

“You got it, Boss Man,” he said, and I saw Lil wince like she had a bumblebee up her nose.

I ran the stairs two at a time. Maybe Lil would be nice to Robert long enough that they’d get some of those bagels toasted. The smell would get everyone into the kitchen.

I passed the attic stairwell and called up to Vince. “Get up! The yard is full again!” I banged the wall with the flat of my hand.

He called back. “I. Don’t. Care.”

I stood still with my teeth gritted and my fists balled up, but only for a second. “At least I have Robert,” I mumbled to myself. I turned the corner into Angus and Eva’s room. Eva immediately went into a fit about the shorts—
not
what she wanted to wear that day. She flung them to the floor. Angus sat up and began pawing at the bandage on his chin. I cautioned him—too harshly, I guess, because he started to melt down.

Time to be firm.

“Angus, chill out. Eva, you get dressed.”

“No,
you
get dressed.” She showed me her bottom lip.

We struggled a bit more. I felt bad. We usually didn’t butt heads like this. It was a relief to finally march them both into the bathroom to wash up.
Meanwhile, I picked up an armload of dirty clothes off their floor and headed for the hamper in our back hall. I banged my toe—something wicked—on the baseboard.

“Ow!” I grabbed the toe and squeezed it hard. “And doesn’t
that
just have to happen today?” I hopped and groaned.

The hamper was overflowing, so I started to split the lights and darks as fast as I could. It was a job that messed with me because Lil always corrected the piles anyway.

“You did too get it in my hair!” I heard Eva wail from the bathroom.

“No, you did it yourself! My toothpaste is on my own brush. See!”

“Ouch! Now you scratched my arm, didn’t you? Angus!”

“Where?”

“Right there! See the marks? You
toothbrushed
me!”

“No…”

“Angus! Eva!” I boomed from the hallway. “Cut it out in there. Get the job done!”

It was going to be a hard day. They were already crabby, and we still had to break the news about Dad.
And
there were all those customers in the yard and bikes in the barn.
And
we lacked parts to fix half of them—okay, okay. This was not positive thinking. What would Dad be saying about today?

Take time for yourself in the morning.

Breakfast. Bagels! Fresh bagels! Bagels to make everyone happy. That was a bright spot to this morning. And all because of Robert, who had come to us in the first place all because of
bikes
. Yes. The universe is connected!

Robert was my godsend!

That’s when I heard Lil’s voice coming up from the backyard, and boy, did she sound serious.

“Look, I know you’re older than I am, Robert. I know you are an adult. But this is my family, and I’ve been left in charge. Could you please just respect me here? This is a tough decision. I think it’s better if you aren’t here when I tell him.”

Robert sounded desperate. “There must be something I can do to help even if—”

“I just need you to leave.”

Leave? Oh, no, no! You can’t send the godsend away!

“Well,” said Robert. “Okay then.”

I heard a pedal set rotate backward. He was getting on his bike!

I hollered. “No!” I darted down the hall and swung myself around the banister. I thundered down the stairs. I wove past Goodness and Greatness, who tried to corral me for a greeting, and went tripping over them to the rear door.

By the time I reached the backyard, Robert was out of sight. Lil looked at me wide-eyed.

“Uh, Dewey, listen. Robert is gone.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard.
What were you thinking, Lil?
Ever heard of strength in numbers?” I glared at her. “Have you forgotten that the brother upstairs in the attic is people
phobic
? What am I supposed to do now? I
want
Robert here. I need him here!”

“Dewey, I’m sorry.” She fixed her eyes on me. “I’m
not
going to let you log in any more bikes,” she said. “I sent Robert away because
he’s a part of the Bike Barn, and the Bike Barn
has to stop
.”

“
Stop?
Oh, Lil!” I wailed. “Seen the crowd out front? It’s not going to stop!” I pointed a finger at her and said, “You’re trying to make me fail!”

“Dewey, that’s not fair—”

“Not fair? I’ll tell you what’s not fair. All those people out there with busted bikes,” I said. “Not fair is me trying to handle every last one of them alone. It’s not fair that I have to
protect
Vince. It’s not fair that there’s no one else who can put those people back on the road—”

“Dewey!” Lil stared at me. She got so calm it was maddening. She leaned toward me. “
I’m sorry
. I should have stepped up sooner. I knew it was too many bikes—”

“The Bike Barn is
me
, Lil! My job!”

“But the crunch made it too big.” She shook her head. She gave me a look I hated—a pitying sort of face. “You can’t do it alone, Dewey. You can’t.”

“Hah!” I shouted. “You sent my help away, and now you tell me I can’t do it alone!” I stood there,
breathing at her through my nose. “You want to shut me down, Lil? Forget it! I’ll do it myself!”

I marched around the house into the front yard and hollered, “Go!” So many pairs of eyes stared back.

“Oh no! Hey, buddy, we’ve been waiting since—”

“I’m
closed
!” I cried. “Closed, closed, closed. No more repairs.”

The mob spoke. Their sentences blurred.

Just look at my shifter cables—I’ve got to get to—I can’t move the seat post—it’s a simple flat—I’ll pay you double—I just have a broken chain—lost my Allen wrench—will you sell me—can I use your—there is no place else to go…

I stood there shaking my head. “No,” I said. “None of you know. Ev—everybody wants bikes. We’ve been alone. My—my father can’t come home—”

“Dew.” It was Lil with her hand on my shoulder. I was on auto-rant.

“We’re just a tiny shop. W-we were never supposed to be this big.”

“Dew,” Lil said again, “you don’t have to explain.”

The hot morning fell quiet except for a nanny goat bleating in the distance. Then a tiny bit of birdsong. The low murmur of hens. The heat ringed my nostrils. Choked my throat.

“Sorry, everyone. Sorry to turn you away,” Lil said. She sounded sweet. Like another bird chirping in the yard. “We need you to leave.”

There were groans and mutters. People turned their crippled bikes and began to slowly roll them away. Lil ushered them along, keeping up her apologetic song.

I stood by. Numb. Mute.

I think everyone was gone when I finally turned and started up the steps into the house. I watched my bare feet—the newly swollen toe—my bare knees—the hem of my boxers.

My boxers
.

On top of everything else, I had gone outdoors without my pants.