Lucky for Good

by Susan Patron

  8. depending on your point of view

  Lucky wasn’t sure which way it happened. Either Klincke Ken adopted the old burro who had wandered into town one day, or Chesterfield the burro came to Hard Pan and went around checking everyone out until he found Klincke Ken, and then the burro adopted the man. It all depended on your point of view.

  But even after they adopted each other, Chesterfield kept wandering around, making himself unpopular by sampling flower and vegetable gardens, and people blamed Klincke Ken because now it was his burro. So Lucky and Lincoln went over to help him with a special project. He had to take time off his dolly-and-tow-truck-building work for moving Dot’s cabin down to the Café, because this new Chesterfield-related enterprise was urgent. It was to put up a fence, made of salvaged old metal bedsprings, all around his property.

  People always said Klincke Ken, never just Klincke (pronounced Clinky) or just Ken, which was his last name even though it sounded like his first name. He’d worked as a handyman/carpenter until his back went out and he had to go on disability, though it was known that Klincke Ken could still fix anything, and if he didn’t have the right tool for the job he could make one.

  The burro was so tame he probably had once lived with people, although by the shaggy, rough state of his coat and the jutting-outness of his ribs, everyone agreed he’d certainly lived in the wild before moving to Hard Pan. But he’d gotten old, and Lucky figured that when he came upon the town he stopped a moment and then his tired legs didn’t want to keep on. He was probably worn out from having to find his food and water on his own. She knew, of course, that burros would have no concept of “retirement home” or “assisted living,” which is a more scrutinizing type of place where old human wrinklies live so they can take it easy and get reminded when it’s time for their pills. He didn’t know it, but that was exactly what this burro found.

  Klincke Ken told the story as they all trooped out back to his storage shed for the bedsprings. “I’d gone out to the dump to see if there was anything to salvage, same as always on a Tuesday. Left the door open so Kirby could go in or out; that cat’s got a nice temper if I ever forget that.”

  Lincoln laughed. “Cats rule,” he said.

  “HMS Beagle loves Kirby,” Lucky put in. She looked back toward the house, where she could see the Beag spread out on the porch and the little ginger mouser apparently massaging the dog’s belly.

  “So Kirby must have invited Chesterfield inside,” Klincke Ken went on, “because soon’s I come back and get me a Bud Light out of the fridge, I know something’s different. Could feel it in the house. So I go looking for Kirby where she mostly naps. And good thing I got me a double bed because, yep, there she is and next to her is Chesterfield, spread out on his side with his hooves sticking over the edge. ’Course he’s got his head on my pillow.”

  Lucky was a little bit curious about whether Klincke Ken changed his pillowcase afterward, but she didn’t think it would be polite to ask. And besides, deep down she guessed that he wouldn’t see any reason to change it.

  “Well, I couldn’t throw him out after that,” Klincke Ken continued. Lucky agreed that you couldn’t kick out a nice old burro like Chesterfield and still call yourself a decent member of the human race, and she wished it had been their place he had chosen. But she knew Stu Burping and the county health department would have found another regulation, something like Regulation Number 8472: Burros Not Permitted Within One Hundred Feet of a Café, Including Old Burros in Need of Kindness, not that Lucky could have persuaded Brigitte to let him stay anyway.

  They reached the shed. From a bucket of worn-out work gloves, they each picked out a mismatched pair: Lucky’s were much too big but nicely broken in and had no holes. The shed where Klincke Ken kept his salvaged stuff was famous: It was wonderfully organized and orderly and crammed with useful things. Peering around, Lucky saw a shelf of carefully labeled, dusty glass jars. One of them was marked STRING TOO SHORT TO HAVE ANY USE.

  Short Sammy was waiting for them when they returned with the first two bedsprings. He had already sunk postholes and driven in posts all around the property, each the distance from the next of a standard bed’s length. That was the most difficult part of the job, because the earth of Hard Pan is as hard as cement, which was how the town got its name. Short Sammy himself did not believe in fences, and preferred living in a former water tank rather than a usual type of house. But because Klincke Ken had helped install Sammy’s corrugated tin roof he owed him a favor, so he sank the postholes.

  Shade looked as if it had been spilled on the sandy ground beneath a big Chinese elm where Short Sammy waited, and there were four seats salvaged from old VW vans, so everyone decided they should take a break before starting in on the work. Klincke Ken went inside for refreshments, returning with four canned drinks.

  “You’re giving that stuff to kids?” Short Sammy asked.

  Klincke Ken shrugged. “Won’t hurt ’em.”

  Lincoln picked up a can. “Ensure? What is it?” He had in his other hand a sturdy small loop he had designed like a noose from strips of braided leather—it was going to be the latch for the new gate.

  “It’s normally for folks like me who can’t chew,” Klincke Ken explained. “Stuff gives you all the vitamins and nutrients and whatnot.” Lucky had noticed before that his teeth were mostly gone. If he had to smile or laugh, he covered his mouth with his hand.

  Short Sammy took a swig. “It’s not bad, man. A little sweet.”

  “I liked it at first, but now I’m sick of it,” Klincke Ken confessed.

  “What about getting new teeth?” Lucky asked.

  Klincke Ken stared at her. Finally he said, not as a question but as a statement, “New teeth.”

  “You could, man,” Short Sammy said.

  Lucky said, “That Ensure stuff, it looks really . . . thick.” She did not think she wanted an entire can of liquid vitamins.

  Lincoln, who was always hungry, took an enormous gulp. “It is,” he said. “Thick and vitaminy. Must be pretty good once in a while, but I can see why you’d get hungry for regular food.” Lincoln’s full name was Lincoln Clinton Carter Kennedy, and he had not yet broken the news to his mom that he didn’t want to grow up to be the president of the United States, as she hoped he would. But Lucky marveled, as always, at how diplomatic and presidential he just naturally was.

  “What I’d miss,” Short Sammy said, “would be those real thin pork chops fried in bacon fat, when they get almost crunchy.”

  “New teeth,” Klincke Ken said again, like it was an interesting new flavor in his mouth that he’d never tasted before.

  “You can even choose what color you want, man,” Short Sammy said. Lucky was impressed at how much he seemed to know about false teeth. She tasted a little sip out of Lincoln’s can and decided privately that the stuff was awful and resolved to do a way better job of brushing her own teeth so she wouldn’t lose them when she got old.

  Suddenly Klincke Ken stood up. “I want a steak,” he said, “and pork chops and peanuts and apples and corn on the cob. And I want some fancy cooking. Lately it’s got so I can’t hardly stand how good it smells down there at Brigitte’s Hard Pan Café on weekends.” His face took on a fierce expression. “I’ll do it,” he said. “And I’ve got what I need out in the shed.”

  As he trudged back there, Lucky looked at Short Sammy with large, wondering eyes. “He doesn’t have some old false teeth that he salvaged?” she asked him.

  Short Sammy laughed. “Never know, man,” he said. “He can fix anything, that’s been proven. And he never gives up on a project once he gets started.”

  Klincke Ken carried an old paint can when he re-emerged. Dried paint drips covered most of the label, but the name of the color, Grizzle White Enamel, could still be read. “Enamel,” he said, “you know, the word ‘enamel,’ that’s what reminded me of teeth enamel and paint enamel when Sammy talked about color. But I don’t want anything too flashy or too white, so that if m
y new teeth get a little stained it won’t show too much. I’m taking this empty can to give to the dentist and see if they can match this exact color.”

  Grizzle White Enamel was a shade or two less yellow and a bit more gray than the color of Chesterfield’s big chompers, but Lucky thought that the old burro and the old man would have nicely coordinated smiles once Klincke Ken got his new teeth.

  Klincke Ken put a hand to his mouth and smiled behind it. They could tell by his eyes that he was smiling. “Gonna put some of my disability money aside and have myself lunch down at the Café, regular every Sunday, once I get fixed up. I owe all this to Chesterfield and to you,” he said to Lucky. “Me, I’da never thought of new teeth.”

  “Well,” said Lincoln. “Let’s get this fence put up before Chesterfield wanders off again.”

  So Lucky put on her worn-out gloves, the sweet taste of Ensure at the back of her throat. The metal bedsprings were all different; they came in a variety of curlicue patterns, each of them beautiful and quite strong. In Lucky’s opinion the new fence added a distinctive, unusual look to Klincke Ken’s place; even Short Sammy admired it.

  Dot dropped by just as they finished. She squinted at the fence and said, “Those are bedsprings. I thought fences are supposed to be made out of wood or chain link or even chicken wire, but I never heard of one made out of junk.”

  “Well, Dot,” Lincoln said. “From Chesterfield’s point of view, because he was used to living wherever he wanted, this fence is how he knows what’s home and what isn’t home. It’s a good fence if it keeps him out of trouble, right?”

  “Sure,” Dot said, because she was the kind of person who wanted to be agreeable, “I guess it’s good.” Then, because she was also the kind of person who wanted to have the last word, she added, “If you like bedsprings.”

  9. ollie martin

  Nobody sat on the splintery unroofed official bus-stop bench in front of Sierra City Elementary. Instead the Hard Pan kids and the Dale kids waited for Sandi the bus driver on a low, wide concrete wall nearby. It was a handy, convenient wall for hanging around on—you could straddle it, face-to-face with another person, to have a private conversation, or you could lie on it and gaze up into the leafy ceiling of a cottonwood tree. But if you sat facing front in the normal way, like on a regular bus stop bench, you would be staring at your future: Einstein Junior High, right across the street. Everything about Einstein worried Lucky, from its name (which made you think you had to be a genius to go there) to its student population. Those students were all bigger and older and what Paloma called, in one of their many discussions of the pitfalls and dangers of junior high, way more experienced.

  On that warm late April afternoon, two girls from Dale straddled the wall knee-to-knee, playing a fast hand-clapping game; Miles organized his Old Testament trading cards; and Lucky lay on her back, reading a very good book about the love aspect of Charles Darwin’s life. She hoped Lincoln would hurry up; he was discussing with Ms. Baum-Izzart a project he wanted to get school credit for during the summer in England. If the project was about nooses, Lincoln should not emphasize that aspect to the principal, in Lucky’s private opinion. Nooses were just knots to Lincoln—well, as he’d explained, not just knots, but very special, specific knots that had to be done right the first time—but a principal would probably be creeped out about the idea of nooses and not understand his interest in the technical aspect. As Lucky thought about this, she noticed a boy across the street at Einstein, heading toward them. He carried a skateboard.

  Lucky was surprised to see that it was the nephew who had been in Stu Burping’s truck at the town meeting. When he got to the curb, he threw the skateboard down, jumped on, and spun it around. Then he leaped the curb, got up speed, reversed direction, and made the board spring up into the air, as if it were glued to his feet. The board landed on its side, so the underneath was visible; like the top, it was decorated with elaborate, colorful designs. And written on it in multicolored puffy-graffiti letters was the name OLLIE MARTIN.

  “Hey, I need to practice some tricks on that wall,” he called out, flipping the board up with the toe of his sneaker. “You guys clear off.”

  The Dale girls, who were third graders, swung their legs over and moved obediently to one side. But Miles looked up from his trading cards and said, “This is our school’s wall.”

  “Well, no,” Ollie Martin said with mock patience and mock friendliness. “Right now, that wall is my wall.”

  “Look,” Lucky said, “the bus’ll be here in a minute, and then you can have it all to yourself.”

  The skater rocked his board, clacking the pavement, and pulled a stick of Juicy Fruit from his pocket. “Oh, right,” he said conversationally, like they were just old friends shooting the breeze, “the bus that goes”—he paused, smiled, and threw the gum wrapper on the ground—“to the outlying areas.” He said “outlying areas” in a sarcastic way that stung Lucky, as if underneath that official teacher phrase lurked some awful meaning.

  “Just Dale and Hard Pan,” Miles explained.

  “Oh! Just Dale and Hard Pan,” the boy repeated, still with that fake niceness, as if he knew so much more, as if they were babies. He smacked his Juicy Fruit. It was becoming more than Lucky could bear.

  She said, “So, Ollie, were you actually named for a skateboard trick or what?”

  Ollie Martin didn’t hear the little jab of irony in Lucky’s voice, or if he did, he chose to ignore it. “Actually, yeah,” he said. “My dad was a world-class skateboarder.” Everyone stared at him; you couldn’t top that for dad coolness. This annoyed Lucky further; Ollie was just plain showing off. He pulled out another stick of gum and peered down the street—no bus was coming—then made a sweeping gesture that clearly meant, Get off the wall now. Lucky ignored this; she turned to the next page in her book. Miles stacked his cards.

  Ollie narrow-eyed Lucky, dropping the second wadded-up gum wrapper onto the ground. He flipped his board up in the air, caught it, and examined the underside as if to double-check his own name. He said, “I’ve been to Hard Pan. That’s where some illegal immigrant got busted by the health department.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “Everyone’s heard about that, because, like, the whole town is full of trailer trash and welfare losers. Same kind of people who make hardworking Americans lose their jobs.” Ollie whacked the board hard against his thigh, sending the wheels spinning. “So in the loser town of Hard Pan this woman opens a restaurant, and what was that specialty on the menu?” Ollie didn’t ask this as if he expected an answer. He asked, Lucky knew, because he wanted to answer it himself. “Oh, yeah, ground-up ratburgers. Just add a lotta garlic, and they say it tastes almost like chicken.”

  “What is wrong with you? Shut up,” Lucky said, but she knew she couldn’t make him, and Ollie Martin knew it too. He wore skateboard scrapes and road rash on his big-boned arms and a cooler-than-you-can-ever-hope-to-be expression on his face.

  Ollie rolled his eyes, signaling he was out of patience. “Listen, children, this is wasting my time. Why don’t you two go play over there with the other little girls.”

  Lucky blazed as if she’d been set on fire. “We are not children!” she shouted, even though they were children. What she really meant was, Quit acting like you’re better than us! He gave her his little gum-smacking smile, and she yelled, “Get out of here, big red-nosed creepo!” Not a very good insult, but it was all she could think of.

  “I know who you are. I saw you.” Ollie moved close to Lucky, looming over her; he smelled like gum and the oil on his skateboard wheels. “You were with the ratburger lady. I heard the county got there just in time before she poisoned the whole town.”

  Suddenly Lucky clambered up so she was standing on the wall. Now she was taller than him. “Yeah, I was with her, and don’t you dare call her that. She happens to be my mother, and she’s a professional chef and she cooks better than you can even imagine, so back off!”

  Instead of backing off, though, O
llie sneered again in his cool, horrid, junior high way, as if he’d just scored a point. “Oh, give me a break. Tell her, fine, be a professional chef, but stay in her own country instead of coming here and putting Americans out of a job. Come on, figure it out; it’s not that complicated. She’s working the system.”

  Lucky didn’t know exactly what this meant, but it sounded bad and insulting. She said, “She’s a naturalized American citizen!”

  Ollie ignored this. He added yet another stick of gum to the wad in his mouth, flicking the crumpled wrapper toward Lucky. “So where’s your father? I bet you don’t have a clue.”

  Maybe because it was a question she could not answer or because she was sick of Ollie Martin’s attitude, and sick of the way he made Hard Pan seem like a dump, and sick of how he’d attacked Brigitte without even knowing her, and sick of his gum. So, without realizing it, she drew her hand back and then rammed it forward with mighty force, punching him on the jaw. She felt the impact of it all the way to her shoulder and heard a hard thud, like a bag of wet sand dropped on the ground. Then almost immediately her arm was being yanked hard behind her. She was shoved down and pushed onto her stomach, her cheek raking the dirt.