Freaky Fast Frankie Joe (10 page)

It's just not fair. The Huckaby brothers go their happy-go-lucky ways on Saturday afternoons. Not me.

“Take another cookie,” Lizzie says. “I made plenty.”

“Thanks.” As I chew, I wonder what I'll be made to do today. Read? Say my multiplication tables? Recite important dates in history?

As Lizzie goes back inside the house to finish setting
up, I sit down on the front steps to watch Matt. Until FJ is ready to leave, Huckaby Number Two is racing his bike with some other kids. They stir up the leaves in the gutters, making them swirl overhead.

The Huckaby house has been designated the official finish line, so I have a front row seat. Matt comes in first every time. The racing tires on his bike help a lot, but he knows how to run a race, too.

I watch as he starts out, pumping hard and fast. Shifting into a faster gear once he's going good. And leaning forward at the finish line so his weight carries him forward. No two ways about it, Matt's fast.

Wonder if I could beat him. . . .

“Hey, Oddball. When are you gonna stop hidin' out?” Mandy rides up next to the front steps on her old Mongoose BMX with twenty-inch wheels. It's almost as beat up as my Rover Sport. She's been bugging me for two weeks to participate, ever since Matt opened his mouth about Mom being in jail.

“I'm not hidin' out.”

She drops her bike to the ground and sits down next to me. “Um, I got an uncle who went to jail.” She glances at me sideways. “He drank too much and got thrown in the drunk tank—”

“Shut up, Mandy.”

“Okay.”

She manages to stay quiet a couple of seconds.

“Did I tell you Miss Peachcott ordered more cookies? I took by her order, and she bought a bunch more. Isn't that great?”

“Yeah,
great
.”

“You don't mean that,” she says, looking hurt.

I feel bad. Mandy is okay.

“No joke,” I say, looking at her, “that's really great.”

“Miss Peachcott asked about you. She'd like it if you came to see her. She said her project wasn't going so good—whatever that means.”

I decide Miss Peachcott is okay, too.

“Well, you should go see her sometime,” Mandy says when I don't say anything.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Oh, stop pouting,” she says, poking me in the rib with her elbow. “C'mon, grab your bike. Bet I can beat you.”

“In your dreams—”

The front door squeaks again, and FJ walks outside.

“Hi, Mr. Huckaby.”

“Hey, Mandy. How are you?”

“Okay. Trying to talk Frankie Joe into biking with me. He's being pigheaded.”

FJ looks at me. “Why won't you go? Lot of fun, riding your bike through leaves. I did it when I was a kid.”

“Not in the mood,” I say. “Besides, I got chores to do and”—I nod toward the living room—“it's . . . you know, Saturday.”

Mandy climbs back on her bike. “That's not the
real
reason he won't ride.” Giving me a
so-there!
look, she wheels across the yard and bumps over the curb into the street.

I want to strangle her.

FJ sits down next to me. “Look, Frankie Joe. If I could, I'd buy you another bike, but it's not in the budget right now. I'm real sorry you're stuck with a trash bike, but—”

“It's not a trash bike,” I say, feeling angry. “Mr. O'Hare was a mechanic in the air force. He worked on jet planes! He helped me fix it. It's as good as any of those bikes
out there
.” I jab my finger toward the street.

“Then what's Mandy talking about? What's the real reason you won't ride with them?”

Caught off guard, I blurt out the truth. “ 'Cause they don't like me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The names they call me.”

He looks at me like I'm corn or soybeans that he's analyzing. “What names?”

“Well, the one I hate most is Freaky Slow Frankie Joe.” I know I've gone too far to turn back, so I keep talking. “They think I'm stupid because . . . well, because I
am
stupid. Mark can do ratios, and I can't even count by sevens. Even Luke can count by sevens!”

FJ's mouth goes straight as a plank. “Don't ever let anyone tell you that. You are
not
stupid. You just didn't
go to school like you should have and got behind. Your mother always was irresponsible. . . .”

As FJ's voice trails off, he turns to face me. “Martha Jane made rash decisions, didn't think about the consequences. But that doesn't mean you're stupid. You hear me?”

“Yes sir.” Part of me doesn't like what he says about Mom, but another part of me knows it's true. Her ending up in jail is proof of that.

“Good. Next time anyone says that to you, you tell them you just didn't go to school like you should and got behind. All right?”

“Yes sir,” I mumble.

“Well, all right then.”

We watch the boys riding bikes a while longer.

All at once, FJ says, “How about you ride out with me today? You've been working hard and could use a break. Matt can stay home and do the leaves. Since you've started sharing chores, the rest don't have as many to do.”

For one heartbeat, I wonder what Matt will think about having to give Freaky Slow Frankie Joe a turn. I'm sure he'll find a way to make me pay.

Still I say, “Yes sir, I'd like to go. But, what about Mrs. Bixby?”

“I'll talk to Lizzie, then tell Matt.”

I watch as FJ goes inside the house. When he returns,
he waves Matt to the curb. The two talk for a good bit. While I can't make out all their words, I'm certain more than just taking a turn is being discussed. One thing for certain, whatever else they're talking about is not making Matt happy. Even from the stoop, I can see his face turning red. But when I get the wave from FJ, I'm off the porch in a flash.

FJ climbs into the driver's seat of his work truck as I head for the passenger side. I have to go by red-faced Matt on the way.

“Kowabunga, dude,” I whisper in passing.

I stick my head out the window, looking at field after field of corn and soybeans. The sky is clear and bright blue, and the air, cool and fresh. The wind blows my hair back from my face, and the air fills my lungs so fast, I have to gulp to take it all in.

Freedom feels great! I want the day to never end.

“We're going to see a farmer named Puffin,” FJ says. “
Mr
. Puffin.”

I get it. Treat
Mr
. Puffin with respect because he grows corn and soybeans. And they pay the bills.

Roads running north and south intersect with others running east and west, straight as rulers. I feel like we're running a maze as FJ turns down first one road, then another. On every road, I see the same sign posted
at the end of rows. The sign has a picture of an ear of corn on it—the corn painted bright yellow; the leaves, bright green—and the word
AgriGold
.

“What's that mean? AgriGold?”

FJ glances at the sign. “That's a type of corn farmers around here plant. Good tolerance to disease, heavy producer. It's called that because it's a big moneymaker. You know,
agri
–culture and gold. Gold's another way of saying money.”

“Oh, I get it.”

He glances at me. “Grow more grain crops here than any other country. That's why it's called the Bread Basket of the World.”

Yeah, I learned that in kindergarten.

I regret telling FJ that I'm stupid. Now
he's
treating me like I'm slow.

We drive close enough to look inside the red barns I saw on the way up from Texas. FJ points out tractors and spreaders, pickers and harvesters stored inside. We get close enough to the missile-size blue silos to read the word
Harvestore
on their sides.

Cool
. Harvest + Store = Harvestore.

FJ looks at me, and I figure he's getting ready to explain it to me.

“I get it,” I blurt before he can speak. “Harvest plus Store equals Harvestore. I'm not
that
dumb.”

FJ gives his head a little shake. “I know, Frankie
Joe. We just talked about that. That's not what I was going to say.”

“It wasn't?”

“No.” He turns down a lane leading to a big white house. “Mr. Puffin's wife died last year, so be sensitive with what you say. He's still grieving.”

Now I do feel dumb.

An old man is waiting for us. He wears a sweaty ball cap, plaid flannel shirt, faded blue dungarees, and leather work boots. Behind him I see black-and-white cows behind a long row of bushes.

I pinch my nose as we get out of the truck. “Wow, what's that
stink
?”

FJ shakes his head.

What'd I do?

The old man laughs and points to piles of manure in the pasture. “You get used to it after a while. Except Mary never did. That's why she planted all them lilac bushes.” He waves an arm toward the row of shrubs next to the pasture. “Lilacs hide the smell of manure. Too bad they don't bloom year round.”

FJ shakes hands with Mr. Puffin and introduces me. “Frankie Joe's my oldest boy . . .”

Yeah, I think. The dumb, insensitive one.

“. . . and he's staying with us for a spell.”

I can see the curiosity in the old man's eyes, but he just holds his hand out to me so I can shake it.

“Pleased to meet you,” I say. “Sorry to hear of your loss.” I give FJ a how-was-that? look.

He gives me a smile, then looks toward the pasture. “When are you gonna give up these cows, Harvey? I doubt they're making you enough to pay for their keep.”

“Probably right, Frank. But I got nothin' better to do, now Mary's gone.”

I trail behind FJ and Mr. Puffin as they pull ears of corn off stalks, peel back husks, and talk about how the ears are filling out. Watching them puncture kernels with their thumbnails to test for moisture, I ask if I can try.

“Sure thing.” Mr. Puffin pulls another ear off a stalk and hands it to me. “You know why too much moisture's bad?”

“Frankie Joe's not from around here,” FJ says quickly, “so he doesn't know about such things . . .”

I feel my shoulders droop. I'm back to being dumb.

“. . . but I'm sure he'd like to learn.”

Mr. Puffin turns to me. “You don't want too much moisture 'cause then the corn has to dry before we can store it. You don't, it'll mold.”

“I know what mold is.” I think about of our refrigerator back in Texas. “Mold grows on food, and you have to throw it out. Except on cheese; you can cut it off of cheese.”

“That's right,” Mr. Puffin says. “What about shrink on corn? You know what that is?”

“No sir.”

“It's the weight loss that occurs during the drying process. It's better if the corn dries natural in the field, else we have to use mechanical processes to dry it out. That's costly, affects your profit.”

I push my thumbnail into a kernel to see how dry it is.

“Smell it,” he tells me.

“The corn?”

“Yeah. See if it smells musty or sour or garlicky.”

Garlicky? I take a sniff as he tells me about other things that can affect profit, like smut balls and insect infestation.

“Smut's a fungus that looks just like what it's called—black soot—but it's really a parasite.” He grins. “And I'm sure you know what bugs like to eat.”

“Corn and beans,” I say, grinning, too.

After the corn, we move to another field and do similar kinds of tests on soybeans. I learn how to pop open the shells and run my thumb inside the pale green pods to break the beans loose. I also learn about orange ladybugs that eat tiny insects called “aphids,” which suck the sap out of plants. We walk up and down rows of soybeans, eyeballing the leaves and plants for signs of fungus and insect damage, which can stunt the plant and affect yield.

“Good shrink on the corn, Harvey,” FJ says at the end of all the eyeballing and squeezing and smelling. “Beans look good, too.”

The old man looks pleased when FJ makes his final assessment. We walk back toward the house through corn so tall the sky all but disappears. The long leaves on the corn wrap around me, making me feel invisible.

A person could disappear in all this corn. . . .

Before I know it, I'm thinking about my plan to light out for Texas. Seeing my friends again. Telling Mr. O'Hare about the farm machinery inside the big barns. Describing the color of the ladybugs to Mr. Lopez. Talking to Mrs. Jones about blight and aphids on corn and soybeans. Being free to ride my bike any time I want. To smell mesquite. Taste the sand that blows in off the Chihuahua Desert. Spook up birds and deer, hunt space rocks—and be there to welcome Mom when she gets home.

I can just ride straight south on those ruler-straight roads and eat my way back home, I decide. As tall as the corn grows, I could even hide out in it to escape the real posse I'm sure FJ would send after me.

I'll need to be careful, not slip up. . . .

“These fields look like they run on forever,” I say, figuring this is a good chance to test out my escape route. “I bet they run all the way down the middle of the country.”

Mr. Puffin doesn't skip a beat. “Well sir, that's a fact.”

That's the best thing I've learned all afternoon.

“All your hard work's paid off, Harvey,” FJ says. “If it doesn't rain, you'll end up with a top-grade crop this year.”

“Well then, let us pray it doesn't rain. Don't need any hiccups now that would set the harvest back.” Mr. Puffin looks at FJ and asks, “Got time for a cup?”

“Been waiting all day for a cup of your good coffee, Harvey.”

The sun has begun to lower in the west when I follow Mr. Puffin into the white-painted farmhouse. I don't like that the day is almost over.