The Dollar Kids

by Jennifer Richard Jacobson

  “That’s Coach!” said Joey, looking over his shoulder. “You are goo-ood, Lowdown! How come you haven’t drawn for us before?”

  The nickname wasn’t lost on Lowen. Lowdown. He liked that.

  Other members of the team came over to admire his drawings; some asked if he would do one of them, and he might have if Coach hadn’t told them to stop dilly-dallying and get changed. They were playing in the middle-school finals that weekend and every minute of practice counted.

  “Grover!” Coach yelled as the others hustled to the locker room. “Get over here. Let me see your drawing.”

  Lowen walked slowly. Clearly someone had ratted him out. Would Coach think he was making fun of him? Being disrespectful? He wished he hadn’t made Coach’s ears so big, his smile so crazy wide.

  Coach snickered. “Not bad, Grover. But next time have me doing something exciting with that ball, you know, like knocking it down.”

  Maybe it was the relief that came from drawing again, or maybe it was the new nickname — Lowdown — that had quickly caught on and made him feel like part of the team. Whatever the reason, practice went better that afternoon. Coach divided the kids into two groups for drills. While sitting on the bench waiting for his turn to do a shooting drill, Lowen began to notice, for the first time, how the ball bounced off the rim. He started to imagine lines that would demonstrate the ball’s course — like the lines he drew to show action. He found that after a few rounds of watching the other group, he could predict, with some accuracy, where the ball would come off — what direction it would take. Later, when they scrimmaged, Lowen positioned himself where he expected the ball to land. Several times he was there for the rebound.

  “Whoa, Lowdown! You must have had your Wheaties this morning!”

  For once, he’d found his focus.

  Lowen couldn’t wait for school the next day. He had spent a good deal of time drawing caricatures of famous people the night before and hoped there would be an opportunity to show them to the guys. Maybe Joey or Kyle would ask him to draw them again, and then he could turn the pages of his sketchbook slowly, searching for a blank sheet of paper, giving them a chance to ooh and ahh over his other pictures.

  Unfortunately, by the time he arrived, they were already huddled around Kyle, who had just announced that his family was moving out of Millville. Apparently his parents found good-paying jobs in the southern part of the state, where mills were never part of the economy.

  “I can’t believe it, man!” Joey cried. “You’ll at least wait until after the basketball finals, right?”

  “We leave the weekend after finals.”

  Joey shook his head in disbelief. “But we were in kindergarten together. Kindergarten!”

  “Back when there used to be three kindergarten classes,” said Taylor. That there was more than one class for each grade here in Millville seemed impossible to Lowen, but he’d seen all the empty classrooms.

  “We’re really going to miss you, Kyle,” Lily said.

  The kids all nodded in agreement, even Lowen, who had gotten used to their class being, well, their class.

  “My mom keeps talking about us moving, too,” said Amber.

  “I think everybody’s family talks about moving,” said Taylor.

  “Can we not talk about this?” asked Dylan.

  No one knew what else to say then. Whereas most kids’ families probably lost income from the closing of the mill and had to cut way back, Dylan had somehow lost his house and, as far as Lowen could tell, both his parents.

  The bell rang and kids strode to their lockers, seemingly eager to put the conversation behind them. But Lowen felt lousy. He realized that Dylan might have been asking him about Abe that day in the gym because he’d had someone close to him die, too. That all this time they’d had this thing in common and he’d shut Dylan out. His insides began to grip the same way they did whenever he thought of Abe. How could he be such a jerk without even trying?

  He strode over to Dylan’s locker and waited for Dylan to acknowledge him, but he seemed to be searching for something. “Hey,” Lowen started, figuring Dylan could hear him fine. “Hey, you know that day . . . that day I . . . well, I’m sorry I said there wasn’t a heaven. I didn’t know.”

  Dylan lifted his head out of his locker and stared at Lowen. “Didn’t know what?”

  “About your mom.”

  “What about my mom?”

  “I didn’t realize . . . I didn’t know that she died.”

  Dylan slammed his locker shut. “What are you talking about? My mother didn’t die. Who told you that?”

  “No one. I just . . . Sorry,” he said, meaning it, but not sure if it sounded as if he meant it.

  “I said she’s gone. She’s gone to North Carolina, where my aunts and uncles live. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Lowen remained still.

  “You know,” said Dylan, “if you want to get to know someone, you could just put in a little time. Hang out. Talk about stuff. You might find out that a lot of the things you guessed, a lot of the things you think, are just plain wrong.” And with that, Dylan walked off toward homeroom.

  Dylan hadn’t laid a finger on him, but Lowen felt sucker punched just the same.

  It was hard to believe that basketball season was winding down. No doubt Lowen would have been nervous during the first finals game between the Millville Cougars and the Jeffer Grizzlies even if his family weren’t sitting in the bleachers. It was the finals! But the finals were held on weekends and that meant that not only was his mother present, but so was his father, and that made it harder for Lowen to just let go and let his body recall how to dribble, pass, and shoot. Instead, he tried too hard to think about all he had learned, and that made his efforts clumsy and awkward.

  Right after Coach’s halftime huddle, in which he told the boys to calm down and have more fun, Lowen gave himself a pep talk: You don’t have to think when you draw. Your hand knows what to do. So stop thinking so much. You’ve been practicing! Trust both hands. Trust your feet. Be the rebound king!

  And it worked! As he dribbled down the court, he repeated these words: Trust your hands; trust your feet.

  He made a chest pass to Joey, who moved in for a layup. Swish!

  He leaned in for a rebound and was fouled. He went to the line to take his free throw. You’ve been practicing. Trust your hands.

  Whoosh!

  “Go, Lowen!” he heard Anneth yell from the stands.

  The second shot bounced off the rim. But at least he’d made that first shot!

  In the fourth quarter, the Grizzlies were up by one. Joey was called on a foul, and as their center took careful aim in the circle, Lowen stood at the ready in the bucket. He was the closest member of his team to the basket. Feet balanced, knees slightly bent, calves tight, he was a cougar ready to pounce.

  A voice in his head: Get ready to fire.

  The Grizzly sunk it.

  Again he positioned. Again he heard, Get ready to fire. Abe’s voice. Get ready to fire.

  I got it, Abe, Lowen thought. I got it. He tightened again. Waited, waited, waited . . .

  Bam! The ball bounced off the rim and into action. Lowen fired. He grabbed the ball, dribbled.

  A Grizzly was coming toward him. He swiveled. Kept the ball. Swiveled again.

  The guard was all over him.

  He passed the ball from one hand to the other, broke free, dribbled to the basket, and shot. Score!

  Lowen turned and noticed that all of his teammates were clustered at the other end of the court. They weren’t shuffling to get into a defensive position. They were banging themselves on the head.

  The Grizzlies, on the other hand, were cheering — bent over laughing.

  Lowen had scored, but in his excitement he’d shot the ball into the Grizzlies’ net. Jeffer was now up by a solid four points.

  Lowen glanced up into the stands. His father held his head in his hands. Mum gave him a weak Mum smile.

 
Then his glance moved down. Anneth was showing her friends her phone. Had she filmed the moment? Perhaps, but maybe not. She might not have cared enough.

  His eyes moved lower still to the spot on the bleachers, now empty, where Clem had been sitting with friends just moments before.

  The buzzer sounded. The basketball season for the Millville Cougars was over.

  No doubt Abe was laughing.

  For the next week, life in Millville was one humiliating encounter after another. Everywhere Lowen went, folks ribbed him about the game. First, they’d tell him (with a big grin) that they’d seen the tournament. Then (after he made some self-effacing remark) they’d jibe him by saying he needed a map, a compass, or a GPS. Finally they’d ask him if he’d seen the video a spectator took (if it was Anneth, she wouldn’t say) — a clip of the exact moment when Lowen turned himself around one final time and sunk a shot for the Jeffer Grizzlies.

  So on the following Saturday, when Ms. Duffey walked into Mum’s shop, he responded to her “Hello, Lowen” with “Yes, I scored for the other team. Yes, I need a compass. And yes, I’ve seen the video — and so has everyone else in Millville, given how many times it’s been viewed.”

  “Lowen!” said Dad. He was in the front of the shop, washing the big window.

  Ms. Duffey made a very sympathetic face and said, “Oh, my. I hadn’t heard.”

  “Well, I think you are the only one in Millville,” said Lowen.

  She patted him on the shoulder. “It can feel that way in small towns. I often feel like an anomaly since I don’t spend my evenings at basketball games.”

  Mum appeared from behind the back shelves and greeted Ms. Duffey. “What can I get you?”

  Ms. Duffey looked up at the wall where the menu was posted on the chalkboard. “What’s a Dad Chillin’?” she asked.

  “Pardon me?” asked Mum.

  “What’s in a Dad Chillin’ pasty?”

  Lowen burst out laughing. His mum had taken the caricature he’d drawn of his father and taped it to the sandwich shop wall, just beneath the menu board.

  “It’s a steak and cheese,” improvised Mum, smiling.

  “That’s my favorite!” Dad called from the window. “Don’t know where it got that name, though. I sure haven’t done any chilling since we moved to Millville.”

  Mum and Lowen shared a conspiratorial smile. Dad could be so blind sometimes.

  Just then Coach walked into the shop.

  “Hello, Barb,” Coach said to Ms. Duffey. “What are you up to?”

  “I’m having myself a Dad Chillin’,” she said, pointing to the picture.

  Coach turned to Lowen. “Where’s my picture? How come it’s not on the wall?”

  “You drew a picture of Coach?” Mum asked as she cut a pie. “Let’s see it.”

  Lowen had been revising a caricature of Mum, but he turned to the picture of Coach, as directed, and held it up.

  “Oh, we definitely need to have this picture on the wall, too,” Mum said.

  “And I want a pie named after me,” said Coach.

  Dad chuckled.

  “Let’s see,” said Mum. “Coach’s favorite is chicken potpie. Can you come up with a caption for this picture that matches that one, Lowen?

  He thought for a minute. “How about Kickin’ Jump Shot Pie?”

  Coach loved it. So did Mum and Dad.

  “Would you draw me?” asked Ms. Duffey. “I’d like to have a pie named after me.” She sat down at the table across from Lowen and waited.

  Well, this was awkward. The tricky thing about drawing a caricature was that you were supposed to take a person’s most prominent features and exaggerate them. This didn’t exactly create the most flattering picture. What if he hurt Ms. Duffey’s feelings?

  Nevertheless, Lowen began sketching. He drew the librarian with a long neck, high cheekbones, and a warm (but slightly tired) smile. She was sitting on top of a pile of books.

  “What’s your favorite pasty?” asked Lowen.

  Ms. Duffey took a bite of the Dad Chillin’ that Mum put in front of her. “This one is going to be hard to beat,” said Ms. Duffey, “but I’ve been meaning to ask if it would be possible to add lamb and mint to the menu? It’s one of my favorite combinations of flavors.”

  “Lamb and mint pasties are wonderful!” said Mum. “It’s one of my favorites, but I just haven’t been daring enough to put it on the menu here. You’ve inspired me. I’ll order lamb this week.”

  Lowen wrote the caption: Sweet Bleat.

  Dad gave him an approving nod. “Go put it on the wall.” Then his father changed the subject. “We still on for that double date tonight, Coach?”

  Ms. Duffey raised her eyebrows at Lowen.

  Lowen shrugged. This was the first he was hearing of any double date.

  “Rena can be ready at six thirty,” Mum said. “She just wants a little time after work to clean up.”

  “Of course,” said Ms. Duffey, nodding at Coach. “You and Rena.” Like it was the most obvious match in the world.

  “Now, don’t go getting any ideas,” said Coach. “It’s taken her months to say yes and it’s only dinner in Ranger.”

  The pictures of Dad, Coach, and Ms. Duffey were only the beginning. Rena’s (Upstyled Tomato and Cheese) went on the wall next, followed by Sami’s (Sporty Artichoke) and Carter Hobbs’s (Prime Buck). From then on, business really picked up. People stopped in to get a peek at the “pasty gallery,” and asked Mum to create unique pasties so Lowen would draw them. (To keep the pasties in the realm of the possible, Mum put a list of ingredients she was willing to combine on the blackboard.) And with basketball season over and baseball season not yet begun, the tailgate boxes were no longer an issue. For the first time since they moved to Millville, it looked like the shop would succeed.

  Perhaps that’s why, one afternoon in March, when Clem was out in the garage with Luna, and Anneth was helping Rena, and Lowen was putting the finishing touches on a caricature of Dave (who loved rutabaga), Lowen looked out the window and saw Mr. Corbeau, husband of Virginia Corbeau, taking pictures of the Albatross, with the peeling paint, the boarded window, and the gutter resting in the melting snow in the front yard.

  “I was afraid this was going to happen,” Clem said as he popped in the house for two glasses of water and some cookies. “Looks like they’ve given up on shutting down the Cornish Eatery, and instead they’re going to run us out of town for not making the repairs.”

  Clem called the shop to tell Mum, but Mum was too frantic to talk. Apparently Dylan hadn’t come in to make deliveries.

  On Saturday, when Dylan hadn’t shown up for a third day in a row, Mum called home and asked Lowen to come down to the shop. “Dad’s helping me make pasties, I need you to do the deliveries,” she said.

  So much for working on his drawing. It made him more than annoyed than ever at Dylan. Where was he? And why wasn’t he doing his job?

  As Lowen helped Mum pack up a rather big order, which included one big chicken potpie and several pasties, Dylan came running into the shop with ratty slippers on his feet.

  “Hey,” said Lowen, about to make a crack about the footwear. But Dylan ignored him.

  “Mr. Grover,” said Dylan, “Something’s wrong with my grandfather.”

  Dad nodded and jumped into professional mode — rushing to the sink to wash his hands. “Come with us, Lowen,” he said. “I may need your help.”

  The inside of Mr. Avery’s house was fussier than Lowen would have predicted. Dainty furniture tiptoed on flowered rugs. Curtains were frilled. Photographs in silver and gold frames covered many of the surfaces. It was nothing like the Grovers’ home.

  Equally surprising was the kitchen, which was a total mess. Blackened pots and pans, some with crispy chunks of food stuck to the bottoms or sides, littered the sink and the counter. Greasy spatulas and serving spoons pointed to plates of untouched food. Wrappers were scattered over everything. It smelled like days-old garbage.

  Dyla
n led them through the living room and into a nearby bedroom.

  “Gramps,” said Dylan tentatively.

  Mr. Avery rustled. “Leave me alone,” he slurred. His voice reminded Lowen of his uncle Morgan, who usually got drunk at family gatherings and began to lash out at everyone.

  “Has your grandfather been drinking?” Dad asked Dylan quietly.

  “No,” said Dylan. “He never touches alcohol.”

  “And you said that he’s been like this for a couple of days? Coming in and out of sleep?”

  Dylan nodded.

  Mr. Avery finally noticed Lowen and his dad. “What in tarnation are you two —” he started to say.

  “Mr. Avery,” Dad interrupted, calmly and slowly, “I think you’ve had a stroke. We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “I told the boy. No doctors! No hospitals!”

  “Lowen, call 911.” And then to Mr. Avery: “You need to get better — if not for yourself, then for your grandson,” said Dad.

  Mr. Avery collapsed back against the pillows. Resigned.

  As Dad waited for the ambulance to arrive, he arranged to borrow Rena’s car so that he could take Dylan to the hospital, too.

  “Can I come?” Lowen asked.

  “This isn’t a field trip. . . .”

  “But Dylan might need a friend,” said Lowen, acutely aware that up until now, he hadn’t been one.

  Dad nodded for Lowen to get into the backseat.

  Sure enough, Mr. Avery had had a stroke and was required to stay in the hospital for a few days for observation. Dylan was invited to stay with the Grovers. Mum borrowed a camp cot from the Kellings and set it up next to Lowen’s bed.

  “Does it feel weird to be back in your old room?” Lowen asked as they got into bed. It was the first time they’d been alone since Lowen and his dad had followed Dylan home.

  “Yeah, especially since I’m down here, and you’re up there where I used to sleep,” Dylan kidded.

  “Do you want to swap?” asked Lowen. “It doesn’t seem right, somehow.”

  “Nah, it’s right,” said Dylan. “It’s not the Firebrand house anymore.”