Crunch (18 page)

AT THE END OF THE DAY VINCE AND I SAT
slumped in the open door of the shop. “I can hardly move,” I said.

Vince grunted back in agreement. “But it worked,” he said. “The clinic was the way to go. People were so
nice
.”

“A lot of them came to find me just to say thank you. And Pop said there was a lot of cash in that can. And could you
believe
the Boccis showed up? Saved our tails!”

“And that food…” said Vince.

“Hmm. Food. Man, how long ago was lunch? I am ready to chow down again.” I straightened my legs and groaned. “Or maybe I’ll just crash straight into my pillow.”

Vince looked at me. “Let’s face it; you’ll eat,” he said. “By the way, you smell.”

“Yeah. You too.” I returned the compliment.

“Race you for the first shower?”

“Ugh. If you can run, you go for it. I’m going to take a minute and sweep up. Slowly.”

“Sure,” he said. He bent one knee, then the other. He rose up with a groan and walked away on tired legs.

The shop looked skeletal. Empty bike stands, bare shelves, the workbench littered with just a few pink order slips. Only a few bikes remained. A couple of them were terminal cases. One, seatless with a drooping chain. Two more stripped down to the frames for parts.

I spoke into the air. “Dad,” I said, “we did it.”

I ran the Shop-Vac over the place. I pushed together a pile of paper trash—boxes from parts, mostly—into the middle of the floor. When I looked around for the recycling bin, I remembered that Lil had moved it out back by the scaffold. I walked out behind the barn. Mr. Spivey was sitting on his stoop. I gave him a nod. He could say
anything, ask for anything right now, and it’d be impossible to sidetrack me. I had a plan: Drag that bin around to the shop and fill it. Wash up. Eat the world’s biggest dinner. Fall into bed. The last thing I expected as I rounded the corner was an adrenaline rush. But, boy, did I get one.

There stood Officer Macey—right beside the scaffold. My heart struck my ribs hard.
“Macey,”
I said. I may have only whispered it.

“D-Dewey!” He stared back at me, eyes huge. “I-I didn’t expect to see you.” His face reddened. He looked strange, worn and scared, and not even so powerful anymore. “L-look, I know I’ve done a lot of wrong and I’m sor—”

“No!”
I bellowed at him. Suddenly I felt as big as a bear. “You’re
not
supposed to be here!” I took a step toward him. “You’re
never
supposed to be here!” I picked up Lil’s paint sprayer. It wasn’t even attached to the compressor anymore, but it felt good in my hand. I shook it at Macey. He held his palms out toward me and glanced nervously behind him.

“I know I can’t make it all right,” he said. “B-but maybe I can fix one small part.” He took
a few steps backward and motioned for me to follow him around the scaffold. “Let me show you.
Please
.”

I went.

Two very familiar junior bikes were leaned up against the barn at the base of Lil’s mural. “Oh, you plug of sludge!” I glared at Macey. “You’re just trying to save your hide now! You think I’ll forgive you for returning stolen—”

“It wasn’t me! I didn’t take these! I found them stashed between the Dumpster and the fence at the beach. I knew they had to be yours. They’re hand built. Who puts quality components on baby bikes?”

“Oh, I know they’re ours,” I said.

Macey shook his head. “Like I said, I’ve done so much wrong. But I worked on recovering these from the start. Honest—”

Something whizzed by my ear. I heard a crack and a splat. Macey jumped and squawked. Eggshells and yellow goo oozed down the front of his shirt. He and I looked at each other—both surprised. I turned to look behind me.

In his yard, Mr. Spivey wound back for another
pitch. Macey tried to duck, but a second egg broke against the bare skin of his neck.

“Hate to waste another on you,” the Spive crowed. “But I will if I have to! And I’m a witness!” His finger pecked at the ground. “I’ll see you go down.”

Macey took a few steps backward. He made the slightest move to turn and go. But suddenly a foul and familiar smell filled the air. There came Sprocket, climbing up over the Spive’s junk pile. He stepped onto the fence post and jumped down to the ground like he’d been practicing for the moment. The goat stood between Macey and me.

Macey’s eyes opened up wide.

One awesome thing about a billy goat is the way it lowers its head but keeps its eyes on its target. Another is the way it gathers speed over a short distance. Macey braced and took the hit in his thigh. He stumbled against the bikes. Caught a pedal in the ankle and winced. He hopped backward, tripping and trying to untangle himself.

Sprocket rallied on his haunches.

“Oh! Sheesh! Call him off!” Macey begged.

“Yeah, it doesn’t really work like that,” I said.
I gave my head a scratch. “Not like a dog who will lick your boots for a few biscuits.”

Macey gave me a desperate look as Sprocket bowed again.

“You could try running,” I said.

“W-w-will he chase me?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “He’s a goat. He thinks in a straight line. But you’re fast. You could get lucky.”

With that, Macey turned and ran. Sprocket pawed the ground with his hoof and gave up his war with a single snort.

I glanced at the Spive. There was something weird on his face. A smile. “Got your brush cutter back,” he said. He pointed to Sprocket with his chin.

“Guess so,” I said. I pulled up a few wild carrots from right there by the fence and held them out to the old goat—to Sprocket, that is. I walked him to the gate and flipped the latch. Sprocket walked inside.

I turned to my neighbor. “Thanks for backing me up, Mr. Spivey.”

He barely let me finish before he threw his arm forward and pecked at the ground with his finger. “All that paper came down in the storm. Made a terrible mess.”

“Paper? You mean the pine tree came down. Yes. We’ll take care of it eventuall—”

“Naw, naw, naw! I’m saying
the paper
got wet and it all came down!” Mr. Spivey tucked his chin. Pecked some more. Either he was back to yelling at me again or he was trying to show me something.

I turned and looked at the narrow side yard. I’d been distracted before, but now I saw the big curls of brown and blue paper lying on the grass. I looked up at the wall. Took it in slowly. Lil’s mural had unveiled itself, and it was awesome.

It took one loud whistle and I had everyone running to join me—Pop and Mattie, Runks and Robert, Vince, Angus, Eva, and Lil.

“Hey! Hey!” I shouted. I stood the little bikes up. “We’ve got ourselves a couple of miracles out here!”

Angus and Eva shapes flew everywhere. They swirled in paint patterns on the barn wall above
us while the two live models sailed by at ground level on their junior bikes.

“How the heck?” Vince said. “Did the bikes just…
appear
?”

I would not speak Macey’s name. I whispered, “I’ll tell you later.” Then I said out loud, “This is just a day when everything went right.”

“We made history!” The twins squealed. They rode around the barn, down to the far pasture and back again.

Lil stood looking up at the mural. She made binoculars with her hands against her eyes. She let out a breath. “It’s really not finished yet. I want to add some details. I’m thinking I want metal. I want edge. I want shine…” She made a fist and held it close to her chest.

I THINK IT WAS POP AND ROBERT WHO TEAMED
up to make dinner. Leftovers from lunch and a platter of fire-roasted vegetables with cheese and summer sausage rendered me speechless for at least twenty minutes. All around me there was talk of how well the clinic had gone.

“Dewey, that was brilliant,” Lil said. She gave me a rough sideways hug that made me slop my milk.

“Nope, nope,” I said. I raised a finger and made them wait while I drained my glass. “It worked because of the people. It’s crazy. But Dad was right. The people were the answer. I am just glad he won’t come home to—”

Timing is everything. The phone rang and
Vince ran for it. He came out of the house. “It’s Mom,” he said, and handed the phone to Lil.

Lil listened and then said, “You are? You’re sure?” Her voice sounded strange. So hesitant, so careful. “Okay. Then we’ll be watching.”

My sister looked at me when she said, “They’re coming home.”

Why was it the last thing I expected to hear when it was the very thing we’d all waited for?

Lil held on a minute more, still listening to Mom and nodding slowly. At the end of the call she collapsed onto Mattie’s shoulder and started to cry. Mattie closed her arms around Lil.

“What’s the matter?” Eva asked. “They’re coming! Right?”

“Yes, yes,” Mattie said. “It’s all good.” She gave Lil another squeeze.

“They have a new friend—another trucker.” Lil finally choked it out. “He—he’s going to leave his own rig and drive them home.”

“Awesome,” said Vince.

“Good people on the highway,” Robert said quietly. “Every day.”

“Do we have an ETA?” I asked.

“Sunrise,” said Lil. “As long as Dad feels okay to sit upright that long.”

I thought about what they’d be coming home to. The main garden was full. There were tomatoes to can and cucumbers to pickle. There was a downed pine tree in the far pasture, and probably a bit too much dirty laundry in the house. But there were
not
too many bikes in the barn, and that’d probably hold true at least until sunrise. Goats were still giving and hens were still laying. I thought that wasn’t too bad. Not too bad at all.

I chose a short night of sleep for all of us. I set my alarm for 4:33. Then one hour before sunrise, I tugged all my siblings from their beds.

Still in our nightclothes, we walked out to the driveway together. Angus and Eva trotted ahead of us with two puzzled dogs zigzagging across their path. Vince shook off sleep and jogged to catch up to them. Lil walked next to me.

“Hey, Dew, I’ve been meaning to say something.” Lil spoke quietly. “I didn’t give you
enough credit,” she said.

“For…”

“Running that Bike Barn this summer was a huge job. I know that you weren’t just
playing
at it out there.”

“No, I think that’s called
work
.” I scratched my head. I laughed.

“Yeah. Well. I might not have understood. At least not at first.” She puffed a breath through her lips. “Anyway, you outlasted me.”

“Outlasted you?”

“Hmm. I love you guys
so
much. But the crunch went so long—” She shook her head and caught a breath with a little hiccupping sound. “I was
so
done
being the parents
,” she said. I think she might have caught a tear on her shoulder then. Hard to be sure in the half-light.

I waited, then said, “You should do what I’m going to do now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to
quit
for a while,” I said.

“Quit the Bike Barn?” She looked at me in surprise.

“Naw, I can’t do that. But I’m going to drop
back on that whole
being the embodiment of responsibility
thing,” I said. “It gets tiring, you know that?”

“Yes, it does.” She sighed, and then she laughed.

Sitting on the rough beside the highway, I tucked Angus under my right wing and Eva under my left. Vince sat on one side, Lil on the other, while the dogs huffed hot dog breath onto the backs of our necks.

The five of us had come out to this patch on many summer nights. We had come for the stars above, and for the fireflies that hovered over the grass.

But on that very early morning we watched the pairs of diamond-bright headlights coming down the highway.

Finally—
finally
—we saw Dad’s rig, hauling the sun behind it, and carrying inside it the only thing any of us really wanted.

SCHOOL BEGINS IN TWO WEEKS. THEY SAY THERE
will be buses. Angus and Eva are supposed to take a practice ride before they start kindergarten. Mr. Spivey gets his weekly egg delivery. But mostly the twins hang close to Mom, and she hangs close to them. They’ve been in the garden. The pantry is full of new jars of tomatoes.

Vince is still talking about his “What the Crunch Did for Me” essay. I write my own version over and over again inside my head. I like thinking about the crunch in the past tense. But I’m not so sure we’re there yet. The pumps flow, but it’s unpredictable. Red flags come and go. Sometimes it all seems pretty random.

The Bike Barn is still busy. I still work every
day, but the pressure is off of me because Dad is home. He feels pretty well, he says, and he does the best he can with repairs.

The other day he told me, “Look, Dew! Turns out I’ve got a good elbow on the end of this bad hand.” He uses that elbow to pin this or that to the bench while the fingers on his good hand work through a repair.

Robert appreciates Dad’s humor. We’ve kept him on in the shop. We need him. Lil is finally cool with all that, now that it’s Dad’s decision, and I guess I get that.

Lil’s out back again most days, working on her mural. She does a lot of
gazing
and says she feels stuck. But this morning she got a new push. Robert showed up with a gift for her: a cardboard box full of brass tacks and doorknobs, copper scraps, and drawer pulls. Then they sat in the grass together, talking, while Lil examined every piece of the treasure.

I left them to it. I went back to the Bike Barn. I was following an urge. I dug through the spindles and picked a job—one that I really felt
like doing. Forget triage. Forget the order of things. I settled on a wheel that needed truing. There’s nothing like watching something spin just the way it should.

Wow! What a bike ride!

I have the good fortune to pedal with a pack of
the best
friends, family members, and professional contacts a life could offer. Forgive me for not mentioning every one of you by name (I’m really, really tired), but please know that I am grateful.

Special thanks to:

~Katherine, for your patience and rock-solid faith, even when I was miles behind.

~Jennie, for patching the potholes.

~Teresa, for checking the pace of things.

~Leslie B., Doe, Mary-Kelly, Judy, Nancy Eliz, Nancy A., Lorraine, and Kay, for listening to me spin, for steering me ’round the curves, and for providing a whole lot of grease for this race. (You are tireless wonders.)

~Mary, Paula, Thea, and Debbie, for well-timed swallows of cool water.

~The
irrepressible
Ethel Bacon, for just
being
. (She never feared speed, and she perfected the art of trespassing to the
point of being invited back multiple times.) Miss you.

~Nancy and Sandi, for arriving with the first-aid kit that time my bike and I took a wicked skidder in the gravel, for setting me gently back on the pavement, and for being the very wind at my back for all the rest of those miles. (Honestly, if not for you…)

~Mom, Dad, Carey, and Denny, for checkpoint activity; Mac, for the music; Jess, for the overnights.

~Mark and Jan, for wise thoughts about the creative process, and for always being there to climb hills with me.

~Shep and Luna (yes, honestly), for your unconditional love and all the goodness and greatness inside of you.

~Jonathan, Sam, Marley, and Ian, for
always
keeping my tires pumped for the lifelong ride we take together; you are champions and heroes.

~Last mention: Nick, your joyful spirit and tinker’s heart placed you relentlessly in my thoughts all along this journey. Peace now, beautiful boy.