The Thing About Luck

by Cynthia Kadohata

  Jiichan looked surprised. “Nothing wrong with gullible. How you be happy if not gullible?”

  Everyone looked at him silently for a moment, but he didn’t explain.

  “Some circles are not a mystery. They’re made by humans as hoaxes. But others are mysterious, to be sure,” Mick went on defensively. “Personally, I believe the earth is talking to us, but we don’t know what it’s saying.”

  “Tell her about that one couple, Micky,” Rory said.

  Mick set his fork on the table. “One American couple gave me a four-hundred-euro tip at the end of the tour. Can ya believe it? They said they were transformed, they did.”

  “Ya’re such an eejit,” Rory said. He hit the top of Mick’s head with his palm.

  “What’s an eejit?” I asked.

  “Ya know, an eejit. Someone who’s lacking in the brain department.”

  “Oh, an idiot.”

  “That would be himself.”

  Mr. Parker walked in. “How’d you sleep, boys?” he asked. “It was so windy, our camper was shaking. Hard to get a good night’s rest.”

  “Nobody can sleep, anyway, because Rory snores so loud,” Sean said, almost ruthlessly. “He’s useless, he is.”

  “He’s an excellent worker,” Mr. Parker said.

  “Ah, teacher’s pet,” Sean said to Rory.

  Mr. McCoy rambled in, looking seriously like he needed more sleep. I felt bad for him. He even swayed a bit as if he were going to fall over. He took three sausages, and then Mr. Dark came in and took three more. Then Mick asked for more. Unbelievable.

  Jiichan started chuckling. Everyone fell silent, again waiting for him to explain. But he didn’t say anything. Then he began laughing quite hard. Everybody was looking at him. “Got a good joke, then, Toshiro?” Mick said.

  Jiichan looked at Mick in surprise. “Joke?”

  “It’s just that ya were laughing so much,” Mick replied.

  Jiichan said, “Oh, I laugh because one day two year ago, I drive all the way to grocery store before I remember I no need grocery. I supposed to go to dentist.”

  “That no funny,” Obaachan said. “We have to pay dentist for missed appointment.”

  There was another brief silence at the table.

  Mr. Parker reached for four sausages. Finally, Mrs. Parker couldn’t stand it anymore. “How many sausages were cooked?” she blurted out.

  “We made thirty, like you instructed,” I answered.

  Robbie sat down and drank his coffee just like a grown-up.

  Obviously slightly annoyed with me, Mrs. Parker said, “Well, Robbie loves meat. It’s his favorite part of breakfast. For this one thing, I give you permission to alter the number of sausages specified.”

  “Yes, boys need meat. Very important,” Obaachan said. “It very bad tragedy if he no have meat for breakfast.” She shook her head. “Tragedy, tragedy.”

  I knew Obaachan was being serious, because boys needing meat was one of her most important rules in life. But Mrs. Parker couldn’t seem to tell if Obaachan was agreeing with her or mocking her.

  Mr. Parker pushed away his plate and said, “We’re in a tight situation here. One of our customers up in Oklahoma called this morning before dawn to say their wheat is ready to cut. And they’re expecting rain. We’ll need to work late tonight—probably until two again. If we don’t get up there soon enough, I’ll have to find other cutters to take our place, and I don’t want to lose that job.” He stood up and glanced around. Even though Jiichan hadn’t finished eating, he got up and stretched his back and neck to ready himself for work. Jiichan ate very slowly, so I was worried he hadn’t gotten enough to eat.

  Mr. Parker didn’t say another word, but all the other workers got up too and readied themselves to leave, taking along the sandwiches I had already prepared for them for lunch.

  Everyone left at once, except for Robbie. Obaachan got on all fours, resting the top of her head on the linoleum. This was something new. Robbie watched her with interest. I started stacking the dirty breakfast plates.

  “Obaachan, are you okay?” I asked.

  “No, I think I dying. This is it. Don’t forget make more meat next Sunday. If I die, I won’t be here to remind you.”

  Robbie was studying my grandmother. “Shouldn’t she go to a doctor?” he asked.

  “She’s gone to seventeen different doctors, six chiropractors, and three acupuncturists, and nobody knows exactly what’s causing the pain.”

  I turned to place the plates in the sink.

  “Don’t you ever stop working?” Robbie asked.

  I spun around and was startled by how close he was. He was about a foot away from me, right inside my personal space. “Cooking is supposed to be my grandmother’s job, but she’s got her horrible back pains. She fell on her back when she was a little girl, but she wouldn’t tell me how. Jiichan said, however, that she fell climbing out of a window. He didn’t enlighten me as to why she was climbing out this window, but clearly she had been a troublemaker.” I could feel my face in flames.

  He looked at me in a perfectly normal fashion, as if girls always blushed fiercely when they talked to him. I swallowed some saliva. Next he took out a quarter from his pocket, flipped it into the air, and caught it before slapping it on the table. He looked at the coin. “Heads. I guess I’m doing schoolwork.” He lingered a moment. “Are you going to cook Japanese for us one day?”

  “We’re doing shabu-shabu one day. Your mom said we could.”

  “What’s shabu-shabu?”

  “It’s thick noodles with thinly sliced beef and vegetables. I mean, the vegetables aren’t thinly sliced. You cook it in a pot in front of you, and after you’re done eating, you drink the broth, and, oh, I forgot to mention there are two sauces you dip everything in, and it’s just so good. We brought the sauces with us from home, and we’re going to cook it all on the stove before serving it. We even brought our special meat slicer. The reason we own a slicer is that my mother works cooking in a hunting lodge in the off-season, and a lot of the customers there like shabu-shabu, so we need the meat slicer for that. It’s a really good one. We paid, like, a million dollars for it, because we eat shabu-shabu once a week.” I couldn’t get myself to shut up. I was babbling like an eejit! I pressed down on my lips to keep myself from talking more.

  “I had some cooked sashimi once in Oklahoma. It was pretty good.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. Cooked sashimi didn’t make sense, because sashimi meant “raw fish.” It was like saying cooked raw carrots. But I didn’t want to insult him. “I mean, it’s kind of unusual, but unusual things are really cool because of their unusualness, even if they’re, you know, unusual.” I was sounding dimmer by the moment.

  “Do you want me to show you something amazing at the barn?”

  I glanced at Obaachan, the top of her head still resting on the floor. “Sure, yes.” I went rushing out the door before Obaachan had a chance to stop me. Thunder, as always, followed me.

  Was this a date? That thought made me take off my apron and stuff as much of it as I could into my back pocket. We strolled toward the barn, which was made of some kind of reddish wood. The roof was painted brick red. When we went inside, we stopped in front of a blond bull in a standing stock in the middle of the barn. “They’re going to enter him in the state fair,” Robbie said. “He’s one of those bulls they wash and blow-dry and all that to get them ready. They put a little rose water on him too, but just a small bit. They want him to smell good, but not girly. They even trim some of his hairs.”

  I wondered how Robbie knew so much about this bull. “My grandfather worked as a cattle fitter for a while. He’s a nice-looking bull,” I said. “But he’s not standing right.”

  “They hired another fitter to help with that,” Robbie said. I nodded. “But that’s not what I wanted to show you,” he continued.

  We passed a few stalls until he stopped at an especially big one. And there stood the tallest horse I’d ever seen. Maybe it was
an illusion, but he looked like he could be twenty hands. I knew he couldn’t possibly be that tall, because the tallest horse in history was about twenty-one hands. I had read that in my brother’s list of the biggest animals in history. He’d made the list when he was eight years old.

  “Cool, huh?” Robbie said. He rested his face on a metal bar. He seemed in awe.

  “I saw a huge shire horse at a county fair once, but this one is definitely bigger,” I said. This horse was black with white feet and a skimpy black mane. He eyed us calmly.

  “The height’s in his legs,” Robbie said. “They’re so long, he looks kind of gawky. Usually shires are stockier.”

  We stood awhile. I felt like time had stopped in here, like we were kind of floating in time. Robbie stepped back from the stall and touched my upper arm, making it tingle. “I better get to studying,” he said. “I have a whole algebra workbook I have to finish over the summer. I love algebra. I think about it all the time.”

  Ugh. Algebra. I mean, all I thought about was my family, Thunder, my friends, and mosquitoes that killed maybe a million people a year—a million people!—but struck about three hundred million. Did you ever wonder how many diseases are carried by mosquitoes? I never did, until I got sick, and now I sure as heck know. Besides malaria, dengue, and encephalitis, mosquitoes can spread a couple of disgusting worms: helminth parasitic worms and dog heartworm, like my previous dog, Shika, had had. But not every mosquito carries diseases. Many of them are kind of innocent, for mosquitoes.

  Anyway. We stepped back out into the sunshine, a warm breeze blowing into my face. Robbie was closing the barn door when I realized that Thunder wasn’t with us. “Wait, where’s my dog? We must have left him inside.” Robbie pulled open the door. I didn’t see Thunder, and there was nowhere to hide, just the long row of stalls, with the standing stock in the center. Still, I called out, “Thunder! Thunder, come!” I went back outside. “Thunder! C’mere, boy!”

  Robbie was scanning the yard. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

  “Weird. He’s very good about coming when I call. I trained him really well.” But as I said that, a feeling of dread hit me out of the blue. It was immediately followed by a ruckus that sounded like a bunch of chickens going crazy. I ran like mad toward the sound, but I already knew what I’d find.

  On the other side of the barn, chickens were squawking all over the place. And there was Thunder, holding a speckled hen in his mouth, shaking it wildly. He looked ecstatic.

  “No!” I shouted. “Down!” He pranced away. “No. Bad boy! Stay!” I stomped toward him and grabbed both sides of the chicken hanging out of his mouth. “No!” I yanked the chicken out and threw it down. Then I turned to assess the damage. It looked like there were three dead birds. “Bad dog! Bad, bad dog!” Thunder cowered and whined.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Robbie said urgently.

  He ran off, and I followed, holding Thunder firmly by the collar. This wasn’t the first time that he’d killed chickens—it had happened once at a neighbor’s farm back home. The farmer had said that the best way to cure a dog of killing chickens was to tie a dead chicken around its neck for a week and let the chicken rot. My parents had refused to do that, and fortunately, Thunder had not ventured into the neighbor’s farm again.

  But this was worse—much, much worse—because for a cook or a combine driver, the farmer was like the king. When we reached the campers, we came to a halt, looking around furtively.

  Robbie laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault,” he said. “It was all my idea.”

  “No, Thunder’s my responsibility. I should have kept my eye on him. I can’t believe I didn’t.” I thought of all the times my mother had said to me, “Summer, what were you thinking?” This time I knew exactly what I had been thinking—how cute Robbie was.

  “Okay, listen,” Robbie said, dropping his voice. “I didn’t see anyone else around. Unless someone saw us, it should be okay. Just don’t tell anyone.”

  “We have to tell someone! Someone has to pay for the dead chickens.”

  “Don’t—tell—anyone,” he warned. “I don’t want my parents getting in trouble.” He glared at me, then turned and walked away.

  “See ya,” I called out, but he didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I stepped inside our camper dragging Thunder with me while Robbie went wherever he went, probably to his camper to study and get ready for college. Obaachan was standing up, already boiling oxtails for stew. The remnants of breakfast were gone. She glanced at me and said, “You with Robbie. He no good for boyfriend. Anyone who think you can eat cooked sashimi have problem in head. He need psychiatrist.” She wanted to talk about sashimi now? Now when my entire life might have just been ruined? It was ruined because I knew I had to tell Obaachan or Jiichan about the chickens, and then Robbie would hate me. But I didn’t see why the Laskeys would be mad at Robbie’s parents. It wasn’t their fault at all.

  I just stood there and stared at her. I knew I had to confess to what Thunder had done.

  Jaz was working on his LEGO apartment building at the kitchen table, adding “Cooked sashimi?” He laughed lightheartedly. “Sometimes I’m glad you’re my sister. Your life is nutty.” He laughed more. Then he seemed to be thinking. “But why would anyone want to be your boyfriend?” he asked. He looked at me innocently. “Seriously.”

  “Why is every day Pick on Summer Day?” I asked.

  “No. No. I’m not trying to insult you,” Jaz said. “I was just curious.”

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a single reason why a boy would want to be my boyfriend. Some girls in my class already had boyfriends. They wore makeup and had cell phones and polished their nails. I tried to polish my nails once, and it smelled so horrible, I knew I could never do that again. Then I thought of one reason I’d make a good girlfriend. “I’m a good cook,” I said triumphantly.

  “Men don’t care about good cook until ready to get married,” Obaachan said. “You think fourteen-year-old boy want you to roast him chicken?”

  I pressed my lips together and looked at my flip-flops.

  Obaachan set down her stirring spoon. “What you thinking about?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “I know you thinking,” she said. “Remember, I can see inside your head.”

  “Well, I’m always thinking. I wasn’t thinking about anything special. If you could really see inside my head, you’d know I wasn’t thinking about anything special.”

  “I only see shapes and writing in your head, but I no can read the writing because it too messy. You tell me what writing say. I see shape of something bad.”

  I wondered if it was shaped like a dead chicken. I’d actually rather tell Jiichan than Obaachan, but Jiichan wouldn’t be finished working until two in the morning. I looked down at my flip-flops again. What if something terrible happened, like Obaachan made me get rid of Thunder?

  “Something happened,” I said.

  “Something happen every day.”

  “It’s really all my fault. It isn’t Thunder’s fault, and it isn’t Robbie’s fault. It’s all mine, one hundred percent,” I said passionately.

  “Tell me what it is,” Obaachan said. “But I warn you, you tell me something that give me heart attack, my death on your conscience forever.”

  I looked directly at Obaachan. “Well, I went with Robbie to look at a gigantic horse in the Laskeys’ stable. He was really huge. And I forgot all about Thunder, and he got to where the free-range chickens are . . . and . . . killed three of them.” I felt my eyes filling with tears.

  Obaachan snapped, “Tears don’t change my heart.” Then she got down on all fours again, the top of her head against the floor. “Hara tell me all I need to know about that boy,” she said.

  Hara means “stomach” or “gut.” Although Japanese do think with their hearts or heads like anyone, for them, thinking with your gut was a whole different level of thinking. My grandfather
was always telling me, “Think with your hara!”

  “Obaachan, it wasn’t his fault,” I exclaimed. It wasn’t. “I’m the one who should have been watching Thunder.”

  Thunder hung his head.

  “Nothing no happen without Robbie.”

  “That doesn’t make it his fault.” I watched her for a moment. I wondered if this getting on all fours meant her back was getting even worse. “Why are you doing that?”

  “Because my body tell me to. I no say it his fault. It your fault.” She pushed herself up with a grunt. “You tell the Parkers at dinner. Now you and Jaz do homework. When buzzer go, turn off oven and take out pie. Keep eye on stew. Turn off in four hour exactly to get all the taste into water. Make sure you exact, or Mrs. Parker fire us.”

  She pushed herself up and walked toward our bedroom, stopping to turn around and look directly at me. “You go study.”

  “Okay.”

  “I know what you thinking. You thinking about that boy. You thinking you find that boy. You thinking you do anything except study.”

  “Obaachan, I honestly wasn’t thinking anything. I didn’t have time.”

  “That what you were going to think, even if you didn’t think yet.”

  I rolled my head around. “Obaachan, it’s really not fair to get mad at me for something I didn’t even think yet.”

  “I know your brain. You study, or I put more grounding on list I keeping. For killing chicken, you get six-week grounding.”

  I turned to Jaz. “You better study too.”

  “What did I do?”

  I looked to the shelf where we kept Mrs. Parker’s binders. That’s where we also kept our schoolbooks. I picked out my math book and set it in front of me on the table. I moved my hands closer to it. I couldn’t open it, though. I willed my hands to open it. But I still couldn’t do it. Then I returned it to the shelf and took down my history book. I’ll bet all sorts of things happened in history that were more interesting than the stuff in this book. In fact, I was sure of it, because Jiichan was reading my history book once and said, “This not history. This public relation document.”