Crunch (8 page)

SHORELAND’S MARKET WAS PACKED. I FOUND LIL
in the produce section. She was holding a grape in her finger and thumb. I faked a gasp.

“Did you
pick
that?” I asked. (Time to make nice with her.) “You renegade. You deviant. Picking and eating in the grocery store.” I shook my head. (Had to have some fun. I
belonged
in the Bike Barn.)

Lil wrinkled her nose at me and said, “First, I wouldn’t eat
this
if you paid me. Second, I did
not
pick it. I didn’t have to. They’re falling off the vines. And they’re all spongy.” She set the grape back into one of the bunches and several more rolled off the vine. “None of this produce looks good,” she said. “And look, no lemons.”

“Maybe Mrs. Bertalli will visit again.”

“Well, it’s not like we
need
lemons.” Lil looked around at the produce section once more. “We have fresh stuff in the garden. Dark greens are full of C, right? And the early tomatoes, too. So we’re not going to end up with scurvy just yet. Let’s skip this and move on.”

She steered our cart around the cheese case, which wasn’t full but wasn’t empty, either. I picked up a small wheel of cheddar and pressed it over my head a few times. “What do you say?” I asked.

Lil checked the sticker. “Hmm…yeah, let’s do it. It’s not cheap, but I can see us carving off of that for a while.” I rolled the cheese wheel off my hand and into our cart.

“Okay, what’s next?” I said.

The shelves in Shoreland’s were spotty in places and completely empty in others. I wondered how the big chain stores were doing. Shoreland’s bought a lot of locally grown and produced foods, and I thought maybe they were better off during the crunch.

“This is so surreal,” Lil breathed. She pushed the cart slowly. “Look at these shelves.” She rested her chin on her knuckles. “The empty spaces.”

I went up behind her, cupped my mouth with my hands, and called, “Black hole in aisle two. Black hole in aisle two.”

She swatted at me like the fly that I was. Then she was quiet for a few seconds. She stood staring at the shelves, then at other people’s carts. The look on her face was suddenly strange. “I think we should skip the list and just get what we can get,” she said. “And a lot of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just get to it,” she said. She leaned toward me and spoke quietly. “Start picking things that we can store for a while. Like that cheddar. That was a good one, Dew.”

Now I was kind of creeped out. This grocery run felt like a preemptive strike. We got oats and brown rice. I picked up two bags of quinoa, because Mom called it “God’s greatest grain that nobody is eating.” We got a hard salami, summer sausages, and ten cans each of sardines and tuna fish. We loaded our cart with bags of beans and boxes of pasta. Then, because we had no choice, and because we love our dogs, we slid a big bag of chow onto the bottom of the cart. That was
going to take up a lot of space in the bike carrier, I thought.

At the checkout, Lil suddenly went jogging back through the store in search of dried fruit. She came back—grinning just a little, finally—with a tall round box of raisins and a tray of dried apricots.

Outside Shoreland’s Market, we met Vince, who’d been snoozing in the sun next to our bikes. We set to loading up. The carrier filled quickly. We tucked cans and packages all around the dog chow. The panniers sagged, but we made them sag evenly.

“Nothing lighter than a brick for sale, I see,” Vince said.

“I know. These cans, the cheese. Bags of grains. What were we thinking?” I said.

Lil took my question seriously. “We were thinking that the trucks still aren’t rolling,” she said. I waited a beat.

“You really think this is going to last longer, don’t you? You think that Mom and Dad are still days out, don’t you?” There. I had said it.

Lil shrugged. Suddenly, I wanted to know
how
long it’d be. And if the answer was a month, well,
okay. I just wanted to know the plan.

“I think—I have no idea what to think,” Lil said. “But a lot of people are going to start…well…they’re going to start doing what we’re doing,” she said. She gestured toward our packages of food.

“Do you think we’re hoarding?” I asked. Lil didn’t answer me right away. She muscled her way into the straps of her stuffed backpack and tightened up on the waist belt.

“I guess you could call it that,” Lil said. “Or you could say that I don’t want Pop and Mattie or anyone else thinking they have to come feed us every night. But most of all, I’m making sure that I never have to tell Angus and Eva that there’s no supper.”

We pedaled our weighed-down bikes toward home. The tandem frame complained beneath Vince and me every so often.

“Dew, let’s bike out,” Vince said, and I felt him push his pedal set. We could have gone faster. But I didn’t want to leave Lil behind. I turned my head back to tell him no.

At home, I brought the big bag of dog food in
on my shoulder and let it down to the floor. The dogs came over, wiggling and wagging, as if to say, “Yeah, yeah! This is ours!” That made Lil laugh. Then the Athletes strutted in through the open door. Chickens in the house are always funny. But I think it was looking at a full pantry that really lightened Lil’s mood.

When I carried the cheese and sausages down to the cellar, I took a quick look at what was left from last year’s canning. There were still a few jars each of tomatoes, peaches, some pickled beans. We had food ripening in the garden. I got a funky feeling in my gut. That suddenly seemed both good and bad. Canning season was coming again. But surely Mom and Dad would be home by then. They
had
to be.

Back upstairs, Lil was almost done filling all our big jars with oats and rice. Vince had filled the dog-food bin.

“You guys can go,” Lil said. “But take the animals with you.”

I clapped my hands in the air and called the dogs. Vince and I each pinned a chicken in our hands and headed out the door.

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, TWO BIKES HAD BEEN
left off while we were gone. I had to laugh. One person had scribbled us a note. The other person must not have had paper with him because he’d used the back of the first guy’s note to leave his information.

Vince went into the shop ahead of me and opened up the door to his paddock. I stood still for a moment and took in the smell of the grease and rubber, the wooden walls. So much work waited, so many bikes, and two more to log in. So how could it be that I thought of this shop as my oasis? But it
was
my oasis—from the upside-down world of empty fuel tanks and useless ration cards, bike thieves at the beaches and
barren shelves at Shoreland’s Market—

“Ah, good. You’re finally here!”

I snapped around and found myself face-to-face with Mr. Gilmartin, who seemed to be burning a hole through my forehead with his stare. Time warped. I registered Lil, passing behind him on her way out to her mural. Her oasis, I thought.

“This is my second time by this morning,” Mr. Gilmartin said.

“Good morning,” I said.

He nodded. Seemed pleasant. Not angry. “I’ve changed my mind about the derailleur,” he said. “I think you were right. This one is back to rough shifting—not that I blame you. I can see you did what you could. But it’s driving me nuts. I’m on the bike at least two hours a day now. I want to go with that upgrade,” he said. “Why not? I’ve spent a whole lot more to improve the performance of my car in the past.”

“I’ll show you what the part will cost,” I said, sticking to the facts right from the get-go. I put the invoice that Mr. Bocci had given me right under Mr. Gilmartin’s nose. “Here is what I paid. That’s
what you pay,” I said. “Labor by the hour.”

“Yes.” He was not thrilled. “But you have it in stock?”

I turned to the bench and pulled the box out. It was the only high-end derailleur I had—the best one for Gilmartin’s bike. It was also one of the items I had hesitated to take from Mr. Bocci. But now, just maybe everything was turning out all right. I lifted the lid and showed him the part. It was beautiful—forged aluminum, carbon fiber.

“Then let’s do it,” he said.

“Okay, I’ll log you in.”

“Log me in?” Gilmartin’s face contorted. “No, no. I’ve already waited once. And you know that.”

Here we go again.

Vince stepped inside from the paddock. He fiddled with something over on the bench, then stood by. I had to give my public-phobic brother credit. Even silent support took some pressure off. I drew a breath.

“Mr. Gilmartin, we appreciate your business. But everyone feels like you feel. Everyone needs their bikes back ASAP.”

“But I
assumed
you’d put me through,” he snapped. When I didn’t budge, he huffed in disbelief. Then he started to get loud. “Look, I paid your
sky-high
price before, and I’m willing to pay this now. But I don’t want to wait a second time!” Now he was yelling.

“We share your frustration with the high prices, sir,” I said. (What a great phrase, I thought. I hoped I could remember that one if I ever needed it again.) Meanwhile, Vince shifted next to me. “But putting this job ahead of others—well, it wouldn’t be fair to the people who have been waiting.”

“So you’re going to put me back at the end of the line to address the
same area
of my bike again?”

“Y-yes. If you’d been
dissatisfied
with our work, I—”

“I am dissatisfied with your
bad business practice
!” he yelled.

Now I could hear my heart in my ears. Heck, I could hear Vince’s heart in my ears.

Gilmartin went on. “Then again, what did I
expect
from a
rinky-dink
operation?” He scoffed
and flung the back of his hand toward our workbench. “Nothing but a bunch of
coffee canners!
”

“‘Coffee canners’?” I said.

Vince gave me some wide eyeballs. He pointed a finger at our peppermint tin but hid the gesture from Gilmartin.

Suddenly, I was fuming. Who was this guy to insult us for not having a cash register? And calling us
rinky-dink
?

Don’t break. Stick to facts, I told myself.

“Mr. Gilmartin, please don’t make me
refuse
to serve you,” I said. I let a second go by—waited in the warm Bike Barn air. Then I told him, “The way I see it, there’s only one question: Do you want this new derailleur or not?”

So strange—my heart actually quieted down then. I looked at my feet. I listened to the fan. I smelled the aroma of my oasis. I longed to turn my back on Gilmartin and start the next job on my spindle. But I needed his answer even more.

“Have you decided?” I asked.

His skin was red all up his neck, his lips in a straight line. Finally, he nodded. “I’d like to have
you install the new derailleur,” he said.

Then I heard somebody say, “O-okay.” It was Vince! He spoke! He even passed me an order slip and a pen.

As I wrote, I told Gilmartin, “Please know that we
want
to get your bike back to you as fast as we can.” Nothing could have been truer.

Mr. Gilmartin finally walked out of the shop. I set the derailleur in its box and slid it to the back of the workbench.

A minute or so later, Vince piped up. “That guy’s a gripe-a-pottamus,” he said, as if he’d just figured that out.

“Yeah. He’s kind of like the Spive,” I said. “What is it Mom says? He’s ‘invested in being unhappy’? Something like that?”

IT WAS SIX O’CLOCK WHEN VINCE AND I
degreased, washed up, and met Lil and the twins at the picnic table. That’s when we realized that though we had food, we had no dinner plan.

“Ack!” Lil said. “I was lost in it out there this afternoon. It was great!” She smiled. “When the work is a winner—”

“—you forget to eat dinner!” Angus and Eva finished her rhyme.

“Well, what do we want? Who has an idea?”

We heard a cluck or two, and one of the Athletes jumped onto the table. The bird shook herself. A puff of dust settled below her.

“We’re
not
going to eat you,” Angus said, and he lifted the hen down. The hen’s chicken feet
were stenciled in the dust.

Lil stared at the prints with a slight grin on her face. “Look at that. Cool,” she said. Then getting back to the matter at hand, she said, “Well, we always have eggs.”

We all heard someone call out. “Am I too late for dinner?”

Timing is everything.

Robert Deal came riding into our yard. The first thing I noticed was a new headlight on his bike. The second was the pizza box—make that
three
pizza boxes—bungeed to the back rack of his bike.

“Hey, Robert!” I called. “How’s the bike?”

“I
love
this bike,” he said. “I love it so much I brought you all a thank-you dinner. No anchovies!” He greeted our dogs first, then he untied the boxes and set them on our table.

“Pizza!” cried Eva. “Angus, don’t you love pizza more than eggs?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Wait, wait. You brought us dinner?” Lil said. “You didn’t have to—”

“Thanks!”
I said. I was freakishly loud. I didn’t
want Lil to have a chance to go into her we’re-fine-on-our-own mode. Something smelled seriously good—better than eggs—and I didn’t want it leaving the yard.

“You guys ever go to the Old Stone Oven in East Elm City?” Robert asked. “Best pizza I know of. And they’re still up and running.”

Vince sighed. “Oh. Ye-s-s.”

“And you biked it all the way here?” Lil said.

“Yeah. I tried not to sway,” he said. “It’s probably still hot because, well, what isn’t hot today?” He threw open the boxes on the picnic table and I think Lil understood there’d be no turning down this gift.

Robert gave us the latest news from the open road while we ate. He’d seen two government-aid trucks posted along the highway.

“Oh, Mom and Dad said the same,” I told Robert. “There is fuel somewhere.”

“Genius,” Vince said.

“I just really want Mom and Dad to get that tank filled up.” Eva leaned on her elbows and pouted. Robert slid a piece of pizza under her nose,
and she snapped right out of her funk.

“I was thinking about them,” Robert said. “What’s the news?”

“They’re still stuck. Can’t really get Mom south to the trains, and even if they could, it doesn’t seem to be a sure thing. So they’re still waiting it out.”

“And staying together,” Lil added.

“Man, I’m sorry.”

“But we’re fine,” Lil said. “We are
so
used to this. There’s nothing Mom and Dad can do for us that we can’t do for ourselves.” I wasn’t so sure that was true. But I knew she was trying to hammer home a message to Robert:
We don’t need help
.

“Yes. You seem very self-sufficient,” he said.

I drifted then. Took a look around our property—the part I could see from where I sat. Raspberries were popping off the vines along the fence next to Mr. Spivey’s house. In fact, we were wasting them. Mom wasn’t here to make jam. None of us had taken the time to pick them—except for Mr. Spivey, who happened to be stealing from us through the slats of the fence at that very moment. The canes bobbed as he
nabbed handfuls of fruit.

What’s a few berries between neighbors?
I could almost hear Dad say.

Lil gave me a poke in the arm. “Where are you, Dew?”

“Oh. Spacing out,” I said.

“Hey, that’s my job,” said Vince, and everyone laughed.

I left my real thought behind. “I was just thinking,” I said, “that we should pick raspberries for dessert.”

There was a rustling sound just over the fence. Then Mr. Spivey’s screen door slammed shut.

Soon Robert Deal was lifting Angus up so he could reach the highest raspberry canes. Later, he put the leftover pizza in our fridge for us and folded the box down into the fire pit. He had an easy way about him. Mom would have said he was a “comfortable sort.”

Lil wanted to trace outlines of the twins on brown paper that night. It had something to do with her mural, but I was just glad it would entertain the twins. She said she’d run them a shower afterward.
I wanted to clean up the shop a bit, dust being the enemy of all things with moving parts.

Robert came to the Bike Barn with Vince and me, and the dogs, of course. “Doesn’t look like things have slowed down any in here,” he said.

“Buried in bikes,” said Vince.

“Well, actually we cleared a bunch today,” I said. “But then we took in a bunch more.”

“Oh, and you stocked up on parts. That was smart.”

I told him about my trip to Bocci Bike. He told me they’d sold him the new headlight and had admired his Marriss-built bike. I made a note to tell Dad about that.

Robert seemed to like being in the shop. Of course, he spent a while just patting our dogs. But then he helped us straighten up. He even ran the Shop-Vac for us. Vince and I moved away from the noise and stood out in the paddock under the yellow lamp and sorted the next day’s orders.

Robert helped us lay out parts with order slips for upcoming jobs. (It was my latest method for getting a jump on things every day.) He seemed
truly interested in bikes. He stood reading Dad’s One-Page Bible for Bike Mechanics and followed it up with a slow-breaking grin. “This is great,” he said, tapping a finger on the paper. “Eight rules, and they all make sense.”

“That’s how we learned,” I said.

“And we used cheat sheets,” Vince said.

Robert laughed. “Like there’s a way to
cheat
at bike repairs!”

“Sort of,” I said. I opened the bench drawer, reached inside, and pulled out a few three-by-five cards. “Our dad made these up for us for the most common repair jobs.” I flipped through them. “You’ll have to meet our dad someday,” I said. “When the crunch is over.”

Together, the three of us slid the big door shut and locked up the shop. We thanked Robert for the pizza supper and the leftovers. (I knew what I was having for breakfast.) He suddenly remembered and gave us back the flashlight I’d lent him.

I felt bad about just one thing after he left. I hadn’t asked him how his job hunt was going. But by the next morning, I knew.