Crunch

by Leslie Connor

  Before he left, Macey repeated that he’d keep looking into the case of the twin’s bikes himself. It was nice to think that it mattered to him.

  Dinner was a little quiet right up until I suddenly caught sight of Mr. Spivey coming around the fence. He was leading Gloria Cloud through the gate and into our paddock.

  “What?” I gasped. I whispered to Lil. “Did you loan Gloria Cloud to the Spive today?”

  “No. Why?”

  I pointed. “He must have helped himself,” I said.

  “To your sheep? Aw! The nerve!” Pop banged his hand on the table. “I say, the nerve!”

  “But wait!” said Lil. “He’s making a little history here.”

  “What? Overcoming his dread of droppings?” Vince said.

  “No. He’s bringing her back! Without bothering us,” Lil said. “I’m telling you, this is history!”

  “I don’t know,” said Pop. “He took her in the first place. Could be time for that geezer-to-geezer chat.”

  Lil rolled her eyes. “Pop, don’t worry. We’re so used to him.”

  “Yep. Used to him like a tack stuck in your toe,” Pop said. “Egg thief. Berry snatcher.” The twins giggled, and Pop got louder. “Zu-cchini robber. Sheep bandit!”

  “Shh! Pop!” Mattie gave him an elbow and quite a look. “The Marrisses have an understanding with their neighbor. All is well.”

  “I’ll tell you what is well. Their neighbor is well fed, and his lawn is well trimmed, all thanks to the Marrisses.”

  Lil rose from the picnic table. “Well, Pop, we’re well fed tonight because of you. Thank you for the scallops and the crab, too.”

  “Pop always brings a little bit of crab,” Mattie said. Pop could not help laughing at that.

  That night, while Angus and Eva soaped dishes at the sink, I swept the floors. Lil had sent the dogs upstairs to “beg from above,” which meant they hung out on the balcony just above the kitchen table with their noses between the rails. Vince made a game of jumping up and trying to set dog treats under their noses. The danger was overfeeding. Old Goodness was a bit of a puker. But at least Vince’s athletics made us laugh and cheer a few times. Then Lil took the call from Mom and Dad.

  “It hasn’t been the best day,” I heard her say. “But we’re all right.”

  Apparently the first thing Mom and Dad did was ask Lil to please say those two sentences in the reverse order in the future. She’d given them both minor heart attacks.

  “I’m going to let Angus tell you,” she said. She let him dry his hands then gave him the phone. Eva closed in to listen with him. We could have delivered the next lines in unison.

  “Mom. Dad. Our bikes got stole.”

  I didn’t hear exactly what Mom and Dad said, but the rhythm of their voices seemed consoling. The twins kept nodding as they held the receiver between them. Then Eva suddenly said, “We are going back to Sea Camp tomorrow. Because we want to make history.”

  I looked at Lil. She scrunched up her face. Vince had an ear on the conversation too.

  “Like Mr. Spivey,” Eva went on. “He made history today. He stole Gloria Cloud. But then he brought her back when he was done with her. So the robber guys could put our bikes back at the pavilion. When they’re done with them.”

  Lil, Vince, and I had a collective heart dive.

  While Lil helped Angus and Eva get ready for bed, she explained to them that it was not likely that the bikes would be returned to Sea Camp.

  “That’s what Mom said too,” Eva said. “But I’m making a wish.”

  Later on, when our twins had fallen asleep, Lil asked, “Do you guys have any little bike frames in the shop?”

  “Sixteen inchers? Not a one.” I shook my head and let out a sigh.

  18

  “PSST! DEWEY. I NEED YOU TO GET UP.” LIL SHOOK my arm. I sat up in the attic bedroom and looked over at Vince. Unconscious.

  “D-did I oversleep? Do I have customers?” I squinted at the clock.

  “No, but heads-up. Change of plan.” She looked stern.

  Lil…taking charge. Of something. Now if only I could wake up…

  “I need you guys to meet me at Shoreland’s Market right after you drop off Angus and Eva. I’ve been watching the news. Trucks still aren’t moving. I did a cupboard check. I don’t like it. We need to get there this morning.”

  I whispered. “Are you kidding? Lil, I have to get into the shop. Vince does the camp drop now. Take him.” I jabbed a thumb toward my sleeping brother.

  “Yeah, right. Vince in the grocery store?” Lil whispered.

  She was right. Vince was a notoriously terrible shopper. He tried to follow the list, but he’d get off track and start picking up whatever. Then he’d come home embarrassed and bewildered by what was in the grocery sacks. And what wasn’t.

  “I’m going to have Vince babysit the bikes while you and I shop,” Lil said. “Last thing we need is another theft. You and Vince put the carrier on the tandem. Haul Angus and Eva to camp. Meet me, and then we’ll fill it with groceries for the way home. I’ve got the panniers and we’ll all bring backpacks,” Lil said. “Oh, and you have money, right?”

  Ah. Now she would understand about all those bikes in the shop. I reached below my bed and dragged out one of my work boots. I pulled a roll of bills out of it and thunked it into her hand.

  “Cripes! Dewey!” she squawked. That made Vince sit up. “Ever heard of making a deposit? How much is here?” She sniffed the wad. Must have been the smell of peppermint. Not essence of work boot.

  “A lot,” I said. “B-but it’s just because I held on to a bunch for the trip to Bocci. And Robert Deal paid cash for his bike.”

  “Negligent.” Vince yawned and fell back on his pillow.

  Lil wasn’t amused. “Unreal, Dewey. Staying on top of the banking is part of taking care of the Bike Barn. Dad would worry if he knew!”

  I felt my face flush. “Yeah, well, who was supposed to stay on top of the groceries?” I felt bad as soon as I said it and worse when I saw Lil’s face pink up too.

  She flipped through the bills instead of looking at me. “Well, I guess we’ve both been crunched, then,” she said. “We’ll have to do better. Meet me at Shoreland’s.” She gave my bed a hard bounce as she got up.

  I yawned and said, “It’s a plan.”

  19

  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.

  20

  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?”

  21

  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—”