June Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny

by Rebecca Chace

  Climb a ladder to the top of the world

  Hug my oldest friend

  Eat ice cream for breakfast

  Take a ride on the La-Z-Boy express

  Let gonebyes go bye-bye

  Then there were those weird initials and numbers at the top:

  J.S. 2 R.B. 4 B.D.

  June wished that her mother was right here, right now, to let her know what all this meant. She looked at Indigo and sighed. June Sparrow was good at lots of things. Solving riddles was not one of them.

  They said good-bye to Miss Flores, who seemed slightly disappointed that they had only used the computer instead of taking out a book, but June assured her that she would be back soon. They headed back to the This ’n’ That shop, and though June still loved riding the tractor and Joe had the pedal to the metal, she wished it went faster than fifteen miles per hour. The Penny Book might be in the drop box right now! Somehow she felt certain that the Penny Book would help her to find the Big One, but at the very least she could confront Aunt Bridget with the torn-out pages and the entries leading up to them. They pulled up in the parking lot, and June slid off the back of the seat without waiting for Joe.

  “Moses! Moses!” she called as she slammed the back door of the shop. The radio was still playing, but Moses was nowhere to be seen. Indigo ran behind the counter and came out looking worried. “We haven’t been gone that long,” June said slowly. Indigo put his snout to the ground and started snuffling at the floorboards like a bloodhound. “Oh really, Indigo.” June rolled her eyes. “I’m sure he’s just gone out for a cup of coffee or something.” Indigo picked up his head and gave her a look.

  Ever since they had watched a cooking show about the truffle-hunting pigs of France, who sniff out the rarest and most expensive mushrooms in the world, Indigo took every opportunity to act like a truffle hunter. He snorted his way to the back room. Moses wasn’t in his recliner, but June heard voices from a room just beyond the sorting room. Indigo pushed forward triumphantly with June right behind him. It was a small, glass-enclosed porch, and Moses was in his wheelchair in front of a wooden loom.

  Joe must have gone directly there, and Indigo was running excitedly from one to the other, wagging his curly tail and acting as if it had been years since he had seen either one of them.

  “Were you worried about me, little guy?” Moses reached down to scratch between his ears.

  Indigo ran back to June, filled with pride, and June picked him up for a hug and whispered “Truffle hunter” into his little pink ear.

  Moses was sitting at the loom, pushing a piece of wood with some brightly colored material across a set of threads—back and forth, back and forth. There was an electric hum, and Indigo sniffed at two broad foot pedals below the whole contraption. They were hooked up to a small engine that kept them going back and forth automatically, like keys on a player piano.

  “You know how to weave?” June asked.

  “It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it,” Moses said, staying focused on the weave in front of him. “Things go well at the library?”

  June gave Joe a quick look. She didn’t want him to tell anyone, even Moses, about how much the Big One might be worth. “Great,” she said. “We found everything we needed.”

  She walked over to stand next to Moses, who nodded toward the loom while his hands kept moving. “I’ve got a couple of side businesses. There’s the bees, of course, to sell honey and make beeswax products in the winter. This here is for making rag rugs, but all the profits go to charity.”

  “What’s a rag rug?” asked June. The weaving on the loom in front of Moses was a blend of yellow, red, and orange, and each stripe was slightly different. There were hints of plaid patterns if you looked closely, and knobbly places where the material was soft and bunchy like a bath towel.

  “People used to make rag rugs by hand,” Moses said. “But the church committee invested in a loom for the shop, since it’s for charity. The congregation decides where to donate. Different place every year. There’s the pile of rugs that are done.” Moses nodded toward a plastic bin. “Believe it or not, I’ve got commissions!”

  June opened the bin and pulled out the top one. It was about twice as big as a bath mat, with fringes on both ends. The materials were different types, but the way the colors went together was just right. She had never seen a rag rug before and immediately decided that this was her favorite kind of rug in the world.

  “These are beautiful, Moses!” She pulled out one after the other. “How do you choose what material to use?”

  “That depends on what comes in,” he said cheerfully.

  “What comes in where?”

  “Here.”

  June looked at Joe.

  “Moses makes the rugs from what comes into the shop,” Joe said.

  “Right now I’m working with Mrs. Hanover’s bathrobe,” Moses said. “She was a lovely lady. Passed in August. Age ninety-three.”

  June dropped the rug she was holding. “You mean the material for the rugs comes from dead people?”

  “Sometimes,” Moses said. “After someone passes, a lot of their things come to the shop. If something catches my eye that looks like good rug material, we set it aside.”

  “I cut the material into strips for the rugs,” Joe said. “I’ve done a little weaving, not too much.”

  “You’re on your way,” Moses said. “You’ll have one for your mom by Christmas.”

  Mom. Christmas. “Wait! Moses, has my aunt’s friend Bob come in yet? With the Penny Book?”

  Moses and Joe exchanged looks. “No, I’m afraid not.” Moses stopped the loom to look at her. “But maybe later today . . .”

  “Can we check the drop box?”

  “I would have heard if anyone pulled up—”

  “But you might not have, right? With the radio playing and working the loom. You might not have heard—”

  “I’ve got a bell on the front door, June,” Moses said gently. “And the porch here faces out back, so if anybody drops something off—”

  “Please, Moses. Please give me the key so I can go check. Please?”

  There was a pause.

  “Okay, Joe, take her out there,” Moses said. “After that, I guess you’d better run her home like we promised.”

  Joe led the way to the parking lot, picking up Moses’s large key ring, which was sitting on the donations table. He and June went out the back door, and once they were out of earshot June said to Joe, “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird to use clothes from dead people to make the rugs? I mean, they’re like, zombie rugs.”

  “I don’t know.” Joe shrugged. “I don’t think it’s weird to wear clothes from the shop, do you?”

  “No . . .”

  “And maybe, I don’t know. Maybe it’s kind of nice that someone like Mrs. Hanover could give one last time to charity. That’s one reason Moses gets so many commissions: everyone knows it’s for a good cause.”

  June realized that, other than giving money to people on the street when she had spare change, she had never really thought about giving to charity. Mr. Mendax handled all that for her. She had never even asked which charities her parents’ donations went to every year, and now she didn’t have anything to give. Joe crouched down and fitted the key to the back of the drop box. When I track down the Big One, June thought, and move back to New York, I can give a ton to charity. I’ll commission forty rag rugs for Christmas.

  The metal door swung open with a creak, but the box was empty. June put her hand inside to feel around, even though she knew it was pointless.

  “Sorry,” Joe said. “It’s still kinda early—”

  Just then they heard a loud buzzing sound and stared at each other. The air around them was suddenly filled with bees. They ran toward the shop.

  “Moses!” Joe yelled.

  Moses was already on his way, wheeling himself down the ramp and pulling a helmet with a veil attached over his head. “They’re swarming!” He pointed to
a low-hanging tree branch near the back of his truck. There was a large black shape that looked like some kind of material draped over the branch until you looked closely—and realized it was moving. The black cloud was a swarm of honeybees.

  “Get me one of those plastic bins, Joe!” Moses went straight to the back of the pickup, squinting at the tree limb just overhead. Joe ran inside the shop, and June and Indigo shrank back in the doorway. Some of the bees were circling in a cloud over the parking lot, but more and more of them were gathering on the tree limb.

  “Moses! Be careful!” June yelled. Moses had on his helmet and veil, but he was right in the midst of them.

  “Don’t worry,” he called. “They’re really gentle. Floyd’s just a little upset right now.”

  June grabbed Indigo and debated going inside until it was all over, but she couldn’t help wanting to see what was going to happen. Joe came tearing out of the shop, carrying a big plastic bin with a lid on top. June saw him hesitate, but then he went right up to the back of the truck and handed the bin to Moses, who placed it on his lap.

  “Now step away,” Moses said, and Joe ran back to stand with June and Indigo. June held her breath as Moses positioned his wheelchair right under the bee cloud, then reached up and gave the branch a hard jerk. About half of the buzzing black cone tumbled into the plastic bin. Moses flipped the lid closed and started to back away from the swarm. The other bees were buzzing furiously around him.

  “Oh my gosh,” June breathed. “He’s going to get stung so badly—”

  “Watch,” said Joe. “Just watch.”

  Moses went over to the hive on the side of the truck, opened the top, and emptied the bin right into it. June gasped and pulled back as another cloud of bees rose up, but Moses stayed right in the middle of them.

  “He doesn’t even brush them off,” whispered Joe. “See? Even when they’re mad, they don’t sting Moses.”

  Moses went back to the tree limb with the empty bin and jerked the branch again. This time almost the entire black cloud came tumbling in, and he closed the lid and slowly—maddeningly slowly, as far as June was concerned—Moses made his way back for a second time and reached up to remove the board that rested on top of the hive. But he must have reached a little too far, because all of a sudden Moses lost his balance and fell right out of his wheelchair onto the ground. The bin flew open, the lid skittered across the parking lot, and bees swirled all around Moses, who sprawled onto the pavement.

  June and Joe both ran toward him. There were bees everywhere, and they couldn’t stop to swat at them or get the wheelchair. Joe grabbed Moses under the shoulders; June hooked her arms under his knees. He was heavier than he looked. She and Joe pulled with all their might toward the back door. The enraged bees were following, and even once June and Joe got Moses away from the truck, the bees still came after them.

  “Inside!” yelled Joe, and they half carried, half dragged Moses up the ramp.

  “Don’t hurt them!” Moses murmured as Joe pulled him through the door and June slammed it shut. The fastest bees followed them inside, and Joe slapped at them as June knelt down next to Moses.

  “Are you okay?”

  Moses pushed the hat and veil off the top of his head. He pushed himself up to a seated postion, patted up and down his legs, and looked at them.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “A little shaken up. But I’ll be just fine.” He took a deep breath. “Too bad I lost half the hive.”

  June stared at him in disbelief. She wanted to shake him for caring more about the bees than himself. Moses put out his arms and June collapsed into them, not knowing whether she was laughing or crying.

  Fifteen minutes later, Moses was back in his wheelchair (Joe had bravely gone back out to grab it) and June and Joe were both lying back in the recliners with cold cans of soda pop and slices of raw onion taped over their beestings. She had five stings and Joe had four. Moses had none, and said that raw onion was the best cure in the world for beestings. He always kept a few onions and a roll of adhesive tape handy. Strangely enough, June’s stings started to subside as soon as Moses taped on the onion slice.

  Indigo was the most dramatic of the three: he had wisely (if dishonorably) run inside when Moses fell down, then watched the rest of the drama unfold from the glassed-in porch. But just when things were settling down, one last angry bee had flown right up and stung him on the eyelid. Now he had one eye taped shut and was cradled in June’s arms, feeling extremely sorry for himself. He looked like a pirate and smelled like onion.

  “Best thing for beestings is a ride on the La-Z-Boy express,” Moses said as he pulled up his wheelchair between the two recliners.

  June popped up.

  “What did you say?”

  “Best thing for beestings—”

  “No, no, after that!”

  “The La-Z-Boy express?”

  “Yes! What is that, Moses? You’ve got to tell me!”

  Moses smiled at her excitement and patted one of the armchairs. “This here is the La-Z-Boy express. These recliners are also called La-Z-Boys. Didn’t you know that?”

  June stared at him.

  The La-Z-Boy express.

  “No. No, you didn’t tell me,” she said slowly.

  “Great name for it,” Joe said with his eyes closed. “Really takes the sting off.”

  Moses decided to close up shop early and told Joe to give June a ride home so she wouldn’t be late for Aunt Bridget. June and Indigo climbed up onto the tractor, and Joe started the slow ride home. Again they rode down Main Street, and again the women in the beauty shop watched them ride by, though this time June didn’t have the heart to wave. After all, she and Indigo had six beestings between them, and she couldn’t say a word about the list, which was all she was really thinking about. The beehive. The La-Z-Boy. And most of all: find metal that won’t stick to a magnet. Maybe her mother’s list was leading her to the Big One. But how could that be? Why had she written that list in the first place? If only June could get the Penny Book back, it might explain everything.

  The sky was overcast, and the horizon was one long smudge of charcoal. It was nearly October and the temperature had dropped abruptly since midday. She wondered what winter in South Dakota was like, and all she could imagine was what she had read in Little Town on the Prairie, which might not be the best source since everything in that book took place about a hundred and fifty years ago.

  Indigo was tucked inside the Dalmatian sweater, with his little pink snout sticking out and twitching when they rode past a particularly pungent barn. Some of the cornstalks beside the road were starting to turn brown, and June thought they looked strangely familiar, though she couldn’t imagine why. Then it hit her: these were the very same kind of cornstalks that the grocery stores in New York would stack in bundles next to the pumpkins. She had seen them on the steps of brownstone buildings around Halloween and Thanksgiving. She had never really known what they were before! They were just old, dried-up cornstalks tied together in a bundle. She always thought they were some fancy dried grass that people used for decoration!

  She laughed out loud, and Joe yelled over his shoulder, “What?”

  June waved her hand in the air. “Tell you later!”

  But she wasn’t actually sure she would. Indigo stuck his head out and gave her a wink with his one good eye.

  When June woke up the next morning, she had to admit it was kind of nice to see the sun streaming in the window onto her mother’s Indian-print bedspread with the smell of coffee drifting up from the kitchen. She yawned, stretched, and looked around for Indigo. Her door was slightly ajar, so he must be up and out already. She wondered why Aunt Bridget hadn’t woken her up, and then she realized this was Sunday.

  June wandered downstairs in her mother’s pajamas. Aunt Bridget was in the kitchen, reading the Sunday paper and making waffles. The waffle iron was set up within reach so that she didn’t have to take her eyes from the paper as she ladled in the waffle batter. “Good morn
ing,” she said gruffly. “Help yourself.”

  June felt like she could eat three breakfasts, though she had eaten a perfectly good supper of chicken and biscuits after she came home last night. She and Aunt Bridget had both been too tired to revisit their argument from the afternoon, and she hoped that the beestings seemed like enough of a punishment. June decided not to mention the Penny Book, and to keep up her investigations on her own. Moses would keep an eye on the drop box, and she had pored over the list again last night before finally tucking it under her pillow and hoping everything would come clear to her in the morning. No such luck. Even Indigo didn’t have any ideas, though she read it out loud to him three times in a row while coloring his eye patch black at his insistence. (If he was going to look like a pirate, he thought that he might as well go all the way.) But she was hungry, and Aunt Bridget clearly had a Sunday-morning routine. June wondered if this extra-big breakfast was for her benefit or if her aunt did it like this every weekend: waffles, bacon (at least Aunt Bridget didn’t seem to be thinking about Indigo that way anymore), canned blueberries from a Mason jar, and best of all, warmed-up maple syrup in its own little brown pitcher. Breakfast is brain food, June reminded herself, and piled her plate high (minus the bacon). Indigo was back in his snoozing spot in front of the heater in the living room, no doubt sleeping off his own farmhouse breakfast. Aunt Bridget handed June a section of the paper.

  June was grateful that her aunt was not a morning talker. She couldn’t stand morning talkers, and she immediately flipped to the classified section. Lots of yard sales, used tools, and farm equipment, and quite a few notices for firewood and brush hogging. June wracked her brain but couldn’t imagine what this last one meant. Was it like a medieval boar hunt, with hogs let loose in the brush? She was just gathering her courage to break the silence and ask about brush hogging when her aunt put her coffee cup down abruptly and asked, “Are you churchgoing?”

  “Excuse me?”