Crunch (4 page)

“THEY’RE HERE!” I HEARD LIL SING OUT.

I looked up from the coals. Pop Chilly and Mattie were coming down our driveway. Pop pedaled his seniorcycle, as he called it—a big green tricycle with a tractor seat and a huge wire basket on the back—into the yard. Mattie rode her pale blue cruiser (with her new tire) and a creel on the front. She had her backpack on, and two long loaves of bread stuck up out of it behind her head.

Lil ran to greet them. She was happy to see Pop and Mattie, but she was still mad about her class being called off. “But I’m starting something here,” I heard her say as I got closer. “I’m not giving up just because of this rotten crunch.”

Suddenly Pop called out, “Oh boy, here it comes! Quadruple trouble!” Goodness and
Greatness came wagging. Angus and Eva followed. They climbed straight up onto Pop Chilly’s seniorcycle.

“Hello, stinkers!” Pop said. “Don’t tip me over!” (Impossible. The trike was as stable as a mountain. The thing had
running boards
.) Pop took one twin onto each knee and hugged them up. Old Goodness stood by politely woofing under his breath while Greatness licked Pop’s ankle.

“What’s that on my foot?” Pop said.

“That’s Greatie’s tickle torture,” Angus said.

Mattie laughed. “We’d have to debate who’s being tortured there, I think.” She shrugged her way out of her backpack. I stepped up to take it from her and the smell of French bread reached all the way down to my hungry gut.

“Hey, hey!” Vince called. He came striding out of the house with a jug of iced tea and set it on the picnic table.

“Hey, hey, yourself!” Mattie called back.

Pop Chilly hefted the clam bucket down from the trike before any of us could offer to help. “Strong as an ox, I am,” he said, and it was true.

Lil set to chopping onions. Pop sat scrubbing
potatoes over a bucket while Eva clung to his back and talked in his ear. Mattie, Vince, and I set to checking the clams for a tight seal.

Twice I had to stop, wash seawater off my hands, and log in bikes for repairs. “Is there any chance I can pick up tomorrow morning?” one guy asked. Vince rolled his eyes at me from behind the guy’s back.

We had the onions sizzling in the bacon fat when one more person arrived. But this guy didn’t bring a broken bike with him. He came dragging in on foot like a lost dog come off the highway. But he wasn’t lost. He meant to be right where he stood, five feet in front of me.

“Dewey,” he said. “Dewey Marriss. Do you remember me?” He held up a Marriss Bike Barn business card in one hand, and I knew I ought to know him. But his face was tomato red from the heat. His shirt was soaked at the pits and open at the neck. His sleeves and pant legs were rolled to catch the breeze. I looked at the raw, purple scrape on his shin.

“Dewey,” he said. “I need to buy that bike.”

“Oh!” I said. “Robert Deal!” I turned to Vince and said, “Hey, it’s my
hitchbiker
.”

I INTRODUCED ROBERT DEAL TO EVERYONE.
Well, more like I explained who he was, and he and Mattie recognized each other from the beach a few years back. But I couldn’t help thinking that he was not quite the same Robert that I’d met on the highway that morning. That Robert was a pretty cool lifeguard dude. This guy was burned toast. Then I realized he must have just walked twenty-something hot miles from Elm City. I think he was trying to smile at us. But his lips stuck to his teeth and made him look like a ferret.

Pop poured a glass of iced tea and held it out to Robert. “Drink this, son. Down the hatch. Right now. Whole thing.”

Robert obeyed, taking gulp after gulp. He
looked like a fish trying to put out a fire in its own belly.

“We should dunk him in the trough,” mumbled Pop.

“I dunked in the trough once,” said Angus.

“Yeah,” Eva said. “And remember? Mom said, ‘Angus! Ahhh! The trough is not for boys!’” Eva waved her hands over her head. I thought Pop was going to fall over.

Robert looked up at us between swallows of tea. I felt bad for him. All of us were laughing, though not at him, and now, a salt-hungry Marriss dog was going in for a lick on his bare leg.

“Greatie! Leave him!” I called. But Robert leaned down to pat her before he took another drink.

Lil piped up, “Mr. Deal, are you all right?”

Robert swallowed and tried to catch his breath. “Y-yes. And hello,” he said. “You’re Lilly. I saw you in the morning. I mean, across the highway lanes. When I rode on the back of Dewey.”

Vince let out a laugh. I shot him a look, but I couldn’t really blame him for thinking it was funny. Robert made it sound like I’d carried him
piggyback down the highway.

Robert looked at Lil and tried again. “Sorry. I mean, when Dewey
gave
me a ride.”

Lil helped him out. “You rode the tandem.”

“Yes. But tonight, I-I need to buy a bike,” Robert said. He held up our business card again.

Lil got up from the table where she’d been chopping potatoes. “Okay then,” she said. “But it’s dinnertime and—”

No, no, no, I thought. Don’t go being the parents now…oh, she’s going to turn him away….

“I’m really sorry. I should have realized…” Robert said.

“It’s okay. What I was going to say is, Dewey will help you with the bike. But not until you’ve cooled off, and not before we’ve all had supper. Together. We’ll set another place.”

Okay, yes. Be the parents, Lil. You go! She sounded just like Mom and Dad, actually.

“Oh, no. I can’t do that,” Robert said.

“People come here for dinner all the time,” Angus said.

“True that,” said Mattie. “
I
sure do!”

“And me!” Pop raised his hand.

“You can stay,” said Eva. “I’ll even get another bowl.”

I turned to Robert. “There’s a shower around the back of the house. It’s private. You can cool off and—”

“I’ll find you something to wear. We’ve got a stash of old clothes in the basement,” said Lil.

“He has that over-hotness disease, doesn’t he?” Angus said, leaning toward Pop’s ear. Just about everything the twins said made Pop laugh out loud.

I took Robert around the back of the house as much to rescue him from my family and friends as to show him where the shower was. I grabbed a clean towel from the clothesline and threw it to him. “I’ll bring the clothes and leave them on the hook.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry for interrupting your dinner.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “No problem.”

“Okay, careful with the heat now,” Mattie said. Vince and I knocked the fire down. We slid the
heavy pot over the grate. Mattie’s secret to great chowder was leaving the shells in. I liked the sound of them scraping against the pot.

“Won’t be much longer now,” she said.

Robert Deal came around from the back of the house looking less like a human tomato. He wore a loose T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts that he had to hike up with just about every step.

Lil looked him over. “Eh, maybe a little big. Best I could do.” She shrugged. “Feel better, Mr. Deal?”

“Yes,” he said. “But will all of you just call me Robert? Please.”

“Robert. Have a seat,” said Lil. “Angus, Eva, pass those napkins.”

Vince and I grabbed the bowls and held them while Mattie filled each one with chowder, shells and all. We set them around the table and Lil dropped a lump of butter off a knife into each one.

“Enjoy that butter, friends,” she said. “There won’t be any more until we get to the grocery store. And who knows how that’ll go in these new weird times,” she added. There was a collective
nod all around the table. But it was a nod that said more about enjoying that lump of butter
now
than it did about how long it’d be before we had another one. I had been missing Mom and Dad at dinnertime more than any other part of the day. It was good to have a crowd around the table.

“You break bread, son.” Pop Chilly gave Robert a nudge.

“That’s because you’re the guest,” Eva told him.

“No. It’s because you have the cleanest hands,” Pop said.

Robert fell right in, handing hunks of bread around the table. He looked at his bowl of chowder and said, “Spoons?”

“Ah. It’s done like this,” said Mattie. She picked a clamshell out of her bowl and scooped it full of chowder. She closed her eyes, tipped everything into her mouth, and slurped.

Bad manners ruled. We all slurped. We all dabbed our hunks of French bread into puddles of the chowder and we all licked our fingers. We
clinked shells in our bowls and tossed empties into the tin colander in the center of the picnic table. We were consumed with consuming.

I might have been on my second-to-last clam when I realized that something had changed. Something had been added. I
felt
it behind me. It was Mr. Spivey.

“I’ll need one of you to come get that sheep out of my yard now.”

I turned on the bench. There he stood, just ten feet away, hands in his pits. I had probably missed the pecking finger.

I found my wits and said, “Okay, Mr. Spivey. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.” I think we all must have been staring at him then.

The Spive shook his head. “Can’t wait, can’t keep watch that long,” he said.

Pop Chilly tossed an empty clamshell into the colander with a bang. He looked right at the Spive. “I heard the young man say he’d be there soon. We’re enjoying a well-earned supper here.”

“What’s that you say?” Mr. Spivey sometimes pretended he was hard-of-hearing.

Pop Chilly raised his volume. “I said,
not quite done with supper
!”

“Shh! Pop!” Mattie touched her father’s arm. “Settle down.”

“I’m settled!” Pop growled. “This is communication. This is how it’s done—geezer to geezer.”

Then, because timing is everything, our own Officer Runkle came biking down the drive with another Rocky Shores bike cop right behind him—somebody new. The Spive scuttled away around the fence into his own yard.

“Hello, fine Marrisses and fine Marriss friends!” Officer Runkle called. (He did some community theater on the side. Mom always admired the depth of his voice. “He’s a bit like a town crier,” she said.)

“Hey, Runks!” Lil waved one arm over her head.

“And how are you this warm summer eve?” Runks asked.

“Stuffed!” Pop Chilly called.

“Runks, I’m afraid we didn’t leave you or the other officer a single clam,” said Lil. She gave the
new guy a wave and he returned it.

“Not to worry,” he said. He stood astride his copsicle and patted his gut. “We’ve already dined, thanks. I’m really here to introduce you to our recruit. Say hello to Officer Macey.”

A few things about the new cop stood out. First, he seemed young for a cop—about the same age as our new friend Robert, I figured. Second, he had that white-blond hair. The kind that looks like it’s glowing in the dark even when it’s daylight. And finally, he was a beast. Biker muscles, big-time.

“I thought Macey should get to know you,” Runks said. “He’s on bike duty for now. Fast as lightning, he is.”

I believed it. It’d be fun, I thought, to get him out on the highway and just try and keep up. But it wasn’t like I had time on my hands.

Runks turned to Officer Macey. “The Marriss Bike Barn is the nearest and dearest stop when a cable snaps or the gears turn rickety. These are good people to know,” he said.

“We’ll put you ahead of our orders and get you
back on the road,” I told him. “Just like we do for Runks.”

“I do most of my own maintenance and repairs,” said Macey. “But thanks. I’m still glad to know you’re here.”

Dad would like that, I thought. He always said it just made sense to be able to do at least minor fixes on any machine you own.

“So how goes the bike-repair biz in these days of fewer carbon emissions?” asked Officer Runkle.

“Busy,” I said. “Vince and I are working overtime.”

“Slaves,” said Vince. “Child labor. Call the authorities. Oh wait, you
are
the authorities, aren’t you?”

Eva sat forward. “Officer Runks, did you know that Dad and Mom went away? They can’t get back to our house because the pumps dried up,” she said. “So did the diesel and that’s how my dad’s truck runs.”

“Oh, no kidding?” said Runks. He looked at Lil and then at me.

“But they’re going to keep calling us every night,” Eva said.

Pop Chilly slipped an arm around Eva. He planted a kiss on her head. “That’s right,” he said.

“How long have they been out?” Runks asked Lil.

“Well, they’re just a day past the plan so far,” said Lil. “Dad thought the ration cards would be a sure thing, you know?”

Runks shook his head. “This shortage has caught all of us.”

“Have you seen the highway?” I asked.

Officer Macey made a loud laugh. “Seen it? That’s all we do. Bike in big circles all day and the highway’s one of our major loops. The staties can’t cover it all.”

“I biked out there today,” I said. “Oh. Not to get myself in trouble…” I grimaced and ducked my head.

“We’re not making arrests for just walking or riding out there,” Macey said. “Too much paperwork!”

“Then I confess too!” Robert stood and shook
hands with both officers. “Yes, sirs! I’m guilty of many hot, illegal miles on foot. I’m buying a bike. Tonight. Tomorrow, I join the pedaling violators.”

“That’s cool,” Officer Macey said. “Just watch out. It’s bound to get nasty out there eventually.”

“Really? You mean road rage?” I said. “I thought everything was pretty orderly. Lanes forming and all.”

“Sure. For now. But it’s hot and people will get frustrated, and they’ll turn mean.” Macey folded his arms over his chest and nodded.

“Where? Who’s being mean?” Angus wanted to know.

Pop cleared his throat loudly. Both Angus and Eva had saucer eyes trained on Macey. Runks shifted. He shook his head at Macey, who quickly said, “Oh, sorry about that.”

Robert Deal spoke up. “Well, people have been nothing but nice to me. Dewey gave me a ride this morning. That was the best help I’ve had. But I’ve seen other good things happening in recent days.”

“Like what?” Lil asked.

“Well, this afternoon, some of the businesses
and residences that back up to the highway set up rest stops. Places in the shade with lawn chairs. They leave their hoses out. Of course only the
smart
people use them.” He grinned and pointed to himself. “I should have. Obviously. One of the motels in Sand Orchard was letting people dunk their feet in the pool. For free!” Robert smiled at the twins. “People are
good
,” he said. He reached across the table and tapped Eva on the nose. “I’ve made new friends on the highway.”

“Our dad and mom are making friends too. Where they are.” Eva said. We didn’t know this to be true, so I thought it was funny that Eva said it. She pointed in exactly the direction our parents had gone.

“Hey, when are they going to call?” Angus asked.

“Probably just before bedtime,” Lil said. “Let’s clear and start the dishes. We’ll have dessert later.”

“I love doing dishes!” said Angus.

“Me too,” said Eva.

This was true. They loved standing on chairs
at the kitchen sink. They also loved using
way
too much soap.

“I’ll help,” said Mattie. She started stacking our empty bowls. “I can’t stand to sit still anyway.”

“Well, I can!” said Pop Chilly. “I’m going to sit right here doing my imitation of a well-fed old man.” He thumped his belly. “Unless you want me to go get that sheep from the geezer neighbor,” Pop said.

“Oh, Gloria Cloud,” I said. I jumped up.

“No, Dewey, you have a customer,” Lil said. “I’ll go get Gloria Cloud from our fine neighbor, who, by the way, spent the day following our woolly girl around his yard with a shovel.”

“A shovel!” Mattie looked horrified. “Why?”

“Because he doesn’t want any of her manures,” Angus said.

“Fear of feces,” Vince said, and Robert coughed to cover a laugh.

“He catches the manures on the shovel. Then he puts them over in our yard,” Eva said.

“Wait,” said Officer Macey. “Are you talking about the guy I saw slinking around here when we
rode up? A guy with a weird walk?”

“Yes. Mr. Spivey is a grumpus,” Eva leaned forward and whispered.

“Yeah, and he’s a thief, too,” Angus piped.

“A thief?” Macey said. He squinted at Angus.

Vince shrugged. “Yeah. But he’s
our
thief.”

“The fine neighbor is prone to petty egg thefts and such,” Runks explained. He kept his town crier voice low. “The Marrisses are rather good to him in spite of it.”

“Too good!” Pop piped up.

“Never mind,” Lil said, flapping a hand.

“So Robert, are you ready?” I tipped my head toward the barn.

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you all for dinner. You’ve been incredibly kind.” He gave me a nod. “To the barn,” he said.

I led the way.