Crunch (6 page)

VINCE HAD AT ME WHILE I RESTOCKED OUR
shelves. I let him vent.

“You’re supposed to be here,” he said. “
You’re
the manager. The
people
person. That guy Jerrod came in to get his bike. I had to deliver the bad news. He thinks I’m an idiot,” Vince said. “Doesn’t believe me that he’ll never get that seat post to move again.”

I shook my head. “I loaded that thing with penetrating oil. He can try pulling it with a tractor. It’s a bimetallic weld. Could have been avoided with a little lube. Rule Three.” I reached up to tap a finger on Dad’s One-Page Bible for Bike Mechanics. “‘An ounce of maintenance is worth a pound of repairs.’”

“Not my point,” Vince said.

“I know. But I had to go get these parts.” I stepped back from the shelves. “Didn’t we have a box of fourteen-gauge spokes? Vince, are you craving metals or something? Are you
eating
bike parts?” I tried to joke, but he just gave me a dirty look in return. I think he thought I was trying to change the subject. “Look,” I told him, “I’ll be here now. I promise.”

“You boys fighting?” Lil popped her head into the shop. She was carrying a bucket of rags and two cans of old paint, and she had several big brushes tucked under her arm.

“No,” said Vince. “One of us is
slaving
and one of us is
telling lies
.”

“Well, cut it out,” she said, but not like she really cared. She didn’t even stay long. She was on her way out to work on her mural. I hadn’t gone to see it, but I knew she’d been inching a scaffold along the side of the barn so she could reach the higher parts. It was huge fun for Angus and Eva, who loved to climb. They’d been talking about how soon they’d be able to climb the scaffold and
make it into the loft through the hay door.

It was probably eleven o’clock before I got on a roll. That was also about the time Vince dropped everything and went fishing. He had a job that had been giving him trouble all morning. I heard him swear in the paddock. Twice. He left a bike on the stand with the pedal set all apart. He tied his rod and tackle to his own bike and started away.

“You’ll remember to pick up the twins at camp?” I called after him.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t turn around. He stuck out one arm, put a thumb up and kept pedaling away.

I wasn’t mad. He was sick of the shop and I knew it. There was no denying I would’ve loved to go hang my toes off the pier too. But we had sixteen bikes in and somebody had to be the
embodiment of responsibility.

Too bad for Vince, just after he left, Mrs. Bertalli and her boys, Chris and Carl, arrived to pick up their bikes. I’d fudged the order of things just the littlest bit and had pushed them through. She was one of our favorite customers. Lil felt the
same way about her. She’d called Mrs. Bertalli “the patron saint of my art.”

“Hey, hey, Mrs. B!” I called.

“Hi, Dewey, sweetheart.” She waved. Then she stood outside the Bike Barn door gazing up at Lil’s smashed bicycle art while I wheeled her boys’ bikes out. Chris and Carl shouted, “Hooray! Pedal power!” They rode past the paddock, then out of sight as the pasture sloped downward.

I gave Mrs. Bertalli her invoice. She dug into the straw bag she carried on her handlebars and handed me a large bill. “This will do it,” she said. “The extra is a tip. Go spend it when the trucks finally make it to Shoreland’s Market.”

“Trucks. I’m looking forward to that,” I said. I explained that Mom and Dad were gone.

Mrs. Bertalli gasped. “You’re
alone
? Oh, I had no idea!”

“Oh, we’re fine. We talk to them every night. If they can find a way, they’ll put Mom on a train back,” I said. “But they’re so far north that just getting her to one is a huge problem.”

“I saw a
maddening
report that they’re selling
train tickets two days ahead. Then not letting people on anyway! It’s dreadful. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks, but Dad has trucker’s ration cards. When there’s gas again they’ll be first in line,” I said. “Anyway, Lil is here all day. Did you know her art session’s been canceled?”

“Oh no! Her scholarship! Poor girl!”

“She’s keeping busy,” I said. “She’s painting around the other side of our barn.”

“Dewey, if there’s anything you need while your parents are gone—Oh! I almost forgot! I brought a gift.” Mrs. Bertalli reached into the straw bag again and grinned. “Now, you can’t get these just anywhere anymore. Certainly not at Shoreland’s Market…” She brought her hand out of the bag slowly.

Roundish. Yellow.

“Lemons!” I said. “You have lemons!” Then I remembered her little potted trees. Vince and I had helped move them out to her patio in the spring.

“Not many!” Mrs. B said. “Who knew lemons would be so rare this summer? I’m thinking of
increasing my
orchard
,” she said.

“You know what?” I said. “You should take those around back and give them to Lil before you go,” I said. “She
loves
lemons.”

Later on, Lil poked her nose into the shop—while holding the two lemons up to her eyes, of course. “So where’s Vince?” she asked.

“He fritzed out and went fishing,” I said.

“Oh.” She sighed. “Well, he’s not you, Dew.”

The way she said it made me feel ridiculously proud. I love it when someone recognizes that I
am
the oldest Marriss brother. “Yeah, I can’t blame him for wanting to get out.”

Lil was silent. She looked around the shop and out at the bikes in the paddock.

“What?” I said. I drew a length of cable through my hand to relax the curl. My job was waiting.

“I don’t know,” she said. “This seems like a lot of bikes.”

“Hey, weird times,” I said, throwing her back her own line. “This is a real business now, Lil.”

“Yeah…” She had a worried look on her face. I suddenly wanted her to move on. “Dew,
can you really handle all these repairs? Are these easy fixes or—”

“We’re just jammed up.” I spoke louder than I’d meant to. “B-because we didn’t have parts until this morning. Besides, once Dad gets back we’ll clear them out in no time.”

Lil left without saying anything more. I struggled to thread that cable for the next twenty minutes. That never happens. I finally threw it down and went to sit in front of the fan with the dogs. “Where’s the Bike Genius and his magic fingers when I need him?” I said. The dogs thumped their tails. A few minutes later, I was trying the cable again.

Dad always says that patience will be rewarded. Mine was. Twice. I won my war with the cable,
and
supper that night was a sizzling batter-dipped sea bass. With lemon. Caught by Vince, cleaned and cooked by Lil. She was just about in her glory squeezing juice from Mrs. Bertalli’s lemons over her fish and humming as she ate each bite. But other than that, things were a little quiet at the table.

I took a forkful of the sea bass. “Going fishing was a good idea,” I said. Vince looked up from his
plate and gave me a guilty look.

“About that…” he said.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Do you want to do both trips to Sea Camp?”

“You kidding? I’ll do the milking early. I’ll be in the shop by nine thirty.”

“Deal,” I said.

“Umm…umm.” Lil swallowed another bite of her sea bass. “Nicely negotiated, boys. But we also have to find time for Vince to go fishing again. Soon! Even if we don’t have lemons.” She paused to put a whole wedge in her mouth.

Eva’s face puckered up. “Oh! Lil! I can’t eat a lemon like that.” She grabbed the sides of her cheeks.

Lil gave Eva a lemon-slice grin.

Eva shook her head at Lil. “Mom says you’ll ruin the
ee-nanimal
off your teeth!”

Timing is everything. The phone rang. Mom and Dad were messaging in early. They’d had word that there was a government-aid truck out on the highway.

“Aid trucks? What kind of aid?” I asked.

“I expect it’s mostly a lot of speaking in soothing tones.” Dad laughed. “We’re hoping to pick up bottled water and some food and reduce our diner meals a bit,” Dad said. “It’s getting expensive.”

“Bad for his waistline,” I heard Mom interject.

“The shop is making lots of money, Dad.” I couldn’t help telling him. “It’s pretty unbelievable.”

“That’s great. But how much are you boys working? The shop’s important, but don’t let it tie you down too hard,” Dad said. “It’s also summertime, Dewey. You need to have some fun.”

Vince overheard. He grinned at me, sprung up on his toes, and pretended to cast a fishing line.

“People really need us, Dad.”

“They need to chew on our butts,” Vince mumbled, and I steered away from him with the phone.

Dad asked, “Are you making it to the bank with the cash? You’re not leaving it all in the tin every night, are you?”

“N-no.” It was a half-lie. “I’m just leaving enough to make change.” I tried to think then. I might have skipped a night. Or was it two?

Vince put his face in mine again. He looked at me with one eye closed, one eye wide open. I turned my back and changed the subject with Dad.

“Dad, about the aid truck…well, it means there is fuel
somewhere
. Right?”

“Well, ‘government reserve’ or something like that. And it’s making people a little crazy. They arrested a fella up here for siphoning from an aid truck in the middle of the night!” Dad said.

“Stealing gas,” I mumbled. “What next?”

“Anything valuable is subject to theft,” Dad said. “And values are changing out there.”

As soon as I passed the phone to Lil, I grabbed the key to the shop and headed toward the door.

“Where ya goin’, Dewey?” Vince gave me a smirk. He knew, and I knew, that I was going to the barn. I had a wad of cash to bring in.

VINCE CAME BACK FROM THE MORNING SEA
Camp delivery whistling. He bounced right out to the paddock and picked up the difficult job he’d been working on the day before. No swearing.

Meanwhile, I’d taken my triage theory in a little different direction. I gave Vince the harder jobs (without mentioning to him that I knew he was the better mechanic). I knocked off the standard stuff more quickly by lining up the similar jobs and getting on a roll. I also got into the shop right after morning chores—no Angus-and-Eva drop-off. Vince did better focusing on the couple of jobs a day. And I didn’t feel like a tyrant.

Well, except for the times I nagged him about the parts. True, we had a very loose system for
keeping track—maybe no system at all. We’d never really needed one. But now that we were busy, I was trying to stay on top of it. Vince seemed to have no idea what he used.

I’d stand there looking at the shelves and ask him, “How many brake assemblies did you go through yesterday?” Or, “Wasn’t there another roll of Teflon cable? Did you take a box of twenty-seven-inch tubes outside?”

For the first time in his life he couldn’t come up with a short answer. He barely answered at all. He’d say, “No. Uh, no. I don’t
think
I used that.” But he sounded more like he was asking a question.

I had no time to go back through orders checking and rechecking. Not with so many repairs still waiting. My strategy was to go forward—with my brother Vince, the spaced-out bike-mechanic genius.

I kept telling myself it was okay. I was getting an earlier start now, and I was even setting myself up with the parts the night before.

Who’s the genius?

“In the zone,” I said to myself. I fired up the
compressor and hissed air into three tires in a row. “Oh yeah!”

Suddenly Lil was at my elbow.

“What?” I said.

And don’t bother me about the shop being too full of bikes when we’re having a good morning here and I’m perfectly in charge…

“I want that,” she said. She pointed to the compressor and gave me an only slightly apologetic look.

“Don’t let her have it!” Vince warned from the paddock door. “She’ll flatten it with the sledge and glue it to the barn.” He had a point. Lil thought everything on the planet had something to do with her art. Things went missing, then turned up sort of
re-created
.

“Back! Back!” I said, and I aimed the air hose at her.

“
Puh-leese!
I’ve started lots of detail work and I want to see if I can throw a lot of paint at the barn all at once,” she said. “But I also need to be able to
aim
. And Dad said this would work, and I found the paint-sprayer attachment….” She
paused and showed it to me. “I just need today to learn how to use it and then maybe a day or two more. Can’t you manage without it?”

“Ye-sss,” I said. I flipped the hose out of my fingers.

So there went the compressor on its cart, rolling out the door.

Vince and I listened to Lil run it off and on for the next hour or so. Tough as she is about most things, Lil admits to being “shy of machines.” There were a lot of stops and starts. In between, we could hear paint hitting the side of the barn.

I stopped Vince as he came through the shop on his way out to pick up Angus and Eva. “Does it sound like she has that pressure set kind of high?” I asked.

“Like artillery,” Vince said. King of the short answer.

He might have been gone ten minutes when I heard a sudden loud
pop
and a yelp. I dropped my work and ran around to the back. The dogs galloped beside me.

The first thing I saw was the greasy blue paint
shining on the side of the barn. Test splotches, I thought. Then I saw Lil. She was blue. Painted blue. Mostly down one arm and leg. A piece of wood she was holding was also partly blue. She was otherwise all right. She stood there looking at me with her eyes wide.

“Oh! Dewey! Did you see that? W-what did it do?”

I shook my head. I looked at the compressor and the sprayer head. Then I looked at Lil. Then I knew.

“It
painted
you,” I blurted. I started laughing. Hard. I could barely speak. “The compressor holds a reserve even after you shut it down. There’s pressure in there, Lil! Did you have the sprayer propped on the fence post?”

She nodded.

“Well, it’s on the ground now. It must have landed on its trigger.”

“Oh, my heck. What are the chances…” She looked down the length of her arm then up at me again.

“Nice color!” I cheered.

“This,” she said, “is pretty permanent stuff.”

I laughed again. “At least it didn’t get you in the face,” I said, and I brought her a rag from her bucket. “Hey, check out your stunt double,” I said. I pointed to her headless silhouette on the barn. It was a pretty clean image. The plywood scrap in her hand made it look like she was holding a book out to an invisible someone.

Lil drew a big breath. “Oh. Yes! Yes! Good little scary machine,” Lil said, and she ran up to the compressor and gave it a pat. “See?” she said, looking back at the side of the barn. “It’s perfect! Just what I wanted.”

“You wanted to stencil yourself onto the barn?” I asked.

“Well, not
me
. But—”

I made wide eyes and stared back at her for a few seconds. “Goodie, Greatie!” I called. “Run for your lives!”