by Betty Hicks
He didn’t know what the big deal was about the shirt he’d had on earlier, but if it meant he could eat at the cafeteria, changing clothes was worth the trouble.
As it turned out, it was worth it big time.
ERIC
Journal Entry #171
Rock-Paper-Scissors is a little kid’s game with big adult potential.
What if world leaders made compromises that way?
Wouldn’t that be better than no decision at all?
Parker
When they arrived at the cafeteria, Parker flung open the doors and ran straight toward Papa Bud.
“Parker!” exclaimed the old man. He was wearing a blue sport coat and a tie. He had white hair, cropped neat and short into a crew cut. “How’s my—”
“My name’s Mud Boy now,” Parker interrupted, keeping his face serious so Papa Bud would know that what he’d just said was important.
“Mud Boy!” exclaimed the old man happily. “How’s my little buddy today? Third grade treating you right?” He wrapped one large arm around Parker and squeezed.
Lily rushed up and slipped under his other arm. “Hi, Papa Bud!”
Frank slapped him on the back. Mom kissed his wrinkled cheek. Eric hung back with his hands stuffed in his pockets, acting interested in the pictures hanging in the lobby.
“You young’uns are a sight for old, sore eyes!” drawled Papa Bud.
“Shake his hand,” Frank hissed toward Eric.
Eric stepped forward quickly, and stuck out his hand.
“Well, look at you! You’ve grown a foot,” greeted Papa Bud, pumping Eric’s hand like it was the best thing that had happened to him all day.
Of course, that’s what Papa Bud did. He greeted people. The owners of the Spicewood Cafeteria actually paid him to do it. Parker thought it might be the coolest job on earth.
“They pay him to be friendly?” he’d asked his mom.
“It gives the place warmth,” Mom had explained. “You know—he makes customers feel at home.”
“And where’s that pretty new niece of mine?” Papa Bud asked Mom.
Parker looked all around for V, then finally spotted her, already in the food line, reaching forward to pick up her tray.
Mom and Frank exchanged looks, as if they were both embarrassed about something. Parker glanced down to make sure that he really had changed his shirt. They weren’t ashamed of his blueberry stain, were they?
“Papa Bud,” said Parker, stuffing his shirttail into the front of his shorts. “What’s the deal with all the cicadas?”
Parker listened to Papa Bud’s answer while everybody else filed ahead to the food line.
By the time Parker caught up, everyone had gotten their food and found a table, except Frank, who was waiting by the cashier to pay for Parker’s meal.
“Where’s your vegetable?” said Frank.
Parker proudly pointed at his jiggling lime Jell-O.
“Just because it’s green,” said Frank gently, “doesn’t mean it’s a vegetable.”
Parker pointed at the limp piece of lettuce under his square of Jell-O.
When Frank slipped into his seat at the table, he eyed Mom and said, “Jell-O? A vegetable?”
She shrugged and smiled. Which meant, let it go, honey. She picked up her fork and skimmed some coleslaw from her white, single-serving minibowl.
“I found out about the cicadas,” Parker announced excitedly. “Only Papa Bud calls them July flies, and this year we have a lot, but nowhere near the billions and billions other places got, and we probably won’t either, but it’s called Brood X, and they only show up once every seventeen years, and if we want to get rid of the ones in our yard, he says we can eat them because they’re high in protein, low in fat, and, guess what? No carbs.”
Parker aimed this last bit of information at Mom and Frank. Then he gulped air to get his breath back.
“Gross,” said V.
“Cool,” whispered Eric, reaching his black-sleeved arm across the table to swipe one of Frank’s French fries. “What do they taste like?”
“Nutty,” said Parker.
Mom lowered her fork. “Sweetie,” she said softly, “I think Papa Bud was pulling your leg.”
“Nuh-uh.” Parker shook his head firmly. “He has recipes.”
“Right,” said Mom, scooping up another bite of coleslaw. “Cicada soufflé with a side of fish scales.”
Parker grinned. “Nuh-uh. Monkey brains.”
“Eye of newt,” said Eric.
“Dragon tails,” added Parker.
“Sasquatch fur,” said Eric, laughing.
“Horse manure!” roared Parker, pounding the table.
“Stop them!” shouted V. “Before I throw up.”
“Okay, boys,” said Frank, eyeing Eric and laying special emphasis on the boys part, “that’s enough.”
“Let’s talk about something nice,” said Mom.
“My sunflower is about to bloom,” said Lily. “It’s grown so fast, the stalk is as tall as I am. And it has a bud—”
“What do ghosts spread on bagels?” asked Parker.
“Let Lily finish,” scolded Frank.
“Scream cheese,” Parker answered, pounding the table again.
Eric laughed. Everyone else groaned, except Lily, who said, “I can’t wait to see what shade of yellow it is. The seed packet says it’s—”
“What did the nut say when it sneezed?” interrupted Eric.
“Cashew!” exclaimed Parker.
Even V and Mom laughed out loud.
This is so fun, thought Parker. Having a big family is awesome.
Frank laughed, too, but then he stopped and shot a wicked look at Eric. Next, he turned to Lily and said, “Sorry, Princess. What were you saying?”
“Lemon Leopold. That’s the color on the pack—”
“Princess!” V practically spit the word onto the table along with the pieces of cornbread she was chewing.
Lily blushed.
Frank looked confused, then guilty.
Everyone stared down at their plates. Even Parker knew that “Princess” was what Frank called V. It would be like Eric calling someone else Mud Boy. That was his name.
“Well,” said Frank, reaching over and squeezing V’s arm. “I guess you’re both my princesses now. Aren’t I the lucky one?”
“Yes, honey. You are,” said Mom, her voice a nervous quiver. Then she turned to Lily. “What were you saying, honey?”
“Nothing,” answered Lily quietly.
“Well, then,” Mom chirped, still sounding weird. “What’s up with you, Eric?”
Eric stared blankly at her for a minute. Then he brightened and sat up straighter in his chair. “Guess what kind of car I want,” he said.
“A car?” asked Frank. “Who says you’re getting a car?”
Eric glared at his dad. “Not now. When I’m sixteen, Dad. In four months. Remember?”
“Of course I remember, but we haven’t decided you can have a car. We need to talk about—”
“I’ve saved up my own money,” said Eric flatly.
Frank sighed. “Son,” he said seriously, “you worked hard last summer. And I know it paid well, but a car costs a lot more than—”
“Yay!” shouted Parker. “What’re you getting?” He was popping up and down like a Jack-in-the-box.
Eric turned to Parker and grinned. “A hearse,” he said.
“A hearse!” they all exclaimed, so loud that a lady with chicken grease on her chin lowered her drumstick, turned, and looked at them from the next table over. Two kids at the table to their right stared. Their parents cut their eyes away, but leaned left, obviously hoping to hear more—maybe about dead people or something.
“I’ve located a silver 1981 Buick Electra conversion,” Eric said calmly, aiming this fantastic news directly at Parker. “It’s by Armbruster/Stageway. Twenty feet long. V-eight engine. Sells for a mere $650.00.”
Eric crossed his arms over the dried-up f
ace of some bearded old-guy on the front of his black T-shirt, and leaned back in his chair. “Sweet,” he added.
Parker thought it was about the best news he’d ever heard. His brother was going to drive a hearse. His friends would be jealous. No. They’d be excited. Just think of the carpool possibilities.
Parker had always loved the Spicewood Cafeteria, but tonight was the best ever. He got to eat not one, but two strawberry shortcakes and a piece of apple pie because Lily, Frank, and V had all lost their appetites.
V
If the Spicewood Cafeteria were a body part, it would be an armpit.
The lobby has frumpy faded furniture with framed pink sunsets hanging above them that look as though they came straight off the bargain aisle at Kmart.
And the smell! Gobs and gobs of overcooked food. Old people scarfing it down like candy. The green beans are cooked away to mush with disgusting pieces of fat mixed in with them.
Mary Beth said, “Relax, that’s just ham hock.”
Ham what!? It sounded to me like a piece of pig somebody threw up.
This town is so weird. One night we go to a sushi bar and get scrumptious delicacies, then the next week to a fifties diner with gross brown gravy dumped over something called country-style steak. Only it doesn’t look like any steak I’ve ever seen. It’s dark mystery meat that bears a scary resemblance to cottage cheese, dyed brown.
When we were living in Chicago, I couldn’t imagine moving to North Carolina. Isn’t that where they make those movies with poor people living in the mountains? The ones where everybody plays a banjo and nobody has any teeth. Don’t they have dentists? Would everyone wear shoes?
I admit, I was worried. But then we moved into a nice house, on a pretty street, and the neighbors seemed normal enough. There were plenty of dentists and the phone book was big and fat—not like Chicago, but big enough. Uptown, it even has skyscrapers.
Good shops. Lots of cool clothes.
Two things are actually better than home. The growing season is longer, so Dad and I can plant more vegetables. And I made the soccer and the tennis teams, because this school is smaller.
But just when I thought everything here was normal, I stumble on a place like the Spicewood Cafeteria. The only things worth eating there are apple pie and cornbread. With butter, it’s really good.
But the weirdest part is that they have a greeter. That’s a man who says “Howdy” to everyone who walks through the door. He’s an old man, always wearing the same baby blue polyester sport coat and too-yellow tie. Hair grows out of his ears and he calls everyone under thirty “young’un.”
The worst part is, I’m related to him! He’s Parker and Lily’s great uncle, and therefore—my great uncle.
His backyard has a clothesline in it.
With underwear flapping in the breeze.
Where anyone can see it.
Not that many people do. He lives in an old white farmhouse way outside the city—between Mint Hill and Locust. You have to drive on a dirt road to get to it. Dusty jars of homemade jam line his kitchen counter, and his nearest neighbor is a half mile away.
When his wife died last year, he was so lonely, he got a job being friendly to strangers. I’m trying not to be a snob, but honestly, the whole idea gives me the creeps. The job and the underwear.
So, I have two great uncles now. One in North Carolina, and one in Ohio whom I never see.
And Dad has two princesses.
Lily
“Where is my fiery Lily?” says Mom, standing in front of the kitchen sink and smoothing my hair with one hand and tilting my chin up with the other.
I wish I knew.
Parker runs through the room bouncing a basketball.
“Not in the house!” shouts Mom, still stroking my head. I wish my hair worked like hers does. She can twist it up or wear it down, and she always looks good.
I soak up the soft touch of her long, thin fingers. They’re graceful—not like my stubby ones.
“My willy-nilly Tiger Lily,” she says.
“Don’t call me that in front of V or Eric,” I beg.
“My little go-getter,” she continues, as though I hadn’t even spoken. “The girl with so many projects, so many opinions.”
Gone, I think. Buried. Six feet under bossy V and abnormal Eric.
All my opinions get shot down. Ka-pow!
By V. Her Majesty Miss Know-Absolutely-Everything.
But she doesn’t know everything. Until she moved here, she’d never even seen a dirt road. And ha! It just so happens, pizza is Italian. I looked it up on the Internet.
And projects? I try to think of some of my old ones. Like scrapbooking all of Mom’s photographs. I organized a July Fourth parade once, and wrote a neighborhood newspaper. For three whole months I fed an injured baby squirrel with an eyedropper and learned a ton about how to release animals back into the wild. Last year Cassie and I put on an awesome mystery play for Parker and his friends. We painted a backdrop for it using ideas from the board game Clue. Professor Plum, in the ballroom, with a dagger.
Only now, I know Eric could act out something ten times darker and creepier that Parker would like fifty times better. And V would have a hundred reasons why we should all do it some other way.
Mom wraps her arms around me and pulls me close.
I hug her back. She feels tense, and the usual padding on her bones is missing. Has she lost weight?
“I wish I knew where my days go,” said Mom with a sigh. “If only I had more time. With you. With everybody.” Wearily, she drops her arms, then pushes her hair back. “Maybe you and I could plan something fun. And V. I bet she’d love—”
“Actually,” I remind Mom, “I do have a project.”
Her eyes light up.
“A sunflower,” I say.
Mom’s shoulders relax, as though somebody just cut a rope that’d been holding them stiff.
“Of course,” she says. “You told us about it at dinner last week. Has the bud opened yet?”
“Yes!” I shout. “And Mom, it’s beautiful. Can you believe it grew so fast? Come see!” I tug on her arm.
“Oh, sweetie,” she slumps. “Not now. I’ve got to start dinner. Later, though.” She gives my shoulders a love-you squeeze, scoops a vegetable peeler off the kitchen counter, and scurries off toward the potato bin.
Wham! The back door.
Eric is home.
I ease out of the kitchen, down the hall, through the front door, and into the yard. I walk around back to the garden to water my sunflower, which doesn’t need watering because I soaked it an hour ago.
I’m not in the mood for Eric. Sometimes he scares me.
I mean, he wants to buy a hearse!
And everything he owns is black. Shoes, shirts, toothbrush. Where does he find a drugstore that carries black toothbrushes? CVS Gothic?
A tiny jolt tweaks my brain. Before I had an older brother and sister, I’d never even heard of Gothic. Am I turning cooler?
Probably not.
Is Eric cool? Or just weird?
He hardly ever smiles, and he takes showers so hot that the bathroom curtains wilt and so long that he’s late for dinner.
Mom would never let me do that.
He doesn’t have friends—at least none that I’ve ever seen. Unless you count three smelly guys who were here about six months ago. They haven’t been around since, which is fine with me, because they filled our whole den up with hairy legs, evil laughs, and B.O.
But the most wacko thing about Eric is that he reads while he walks. No kidding. He ambles into the house reading, opens the refrigerator reading, wanders down the hall reading. He even takes out the trash reading.
How does he do that? Without running into a wall, I mean.
Why would he even want to do that?
And, he’s so old, he shaves—once a week, because Frank makes him do it. The rest of the time he grows gross scratchy stubble on his chin and looks like a convict.
I whisper
, “Hi,” looking up and searching for my sunflower blossom. I notice that V has left her cicada-clearing rake leaning beside my plant.
My flower.
Then I see it.
Hanging. Broken. Dangling like a dead face from its tall, thick stalk.
ERIC
Journal Entry #172
Tolstoy’s “Master and Man” is an awesome short story, but reading it makes me deep-down cold—the kind of iciness that only a long, hot shower can fix.
Does it ever get warm in Russia?
One guy had icicles hanging off his nostrils and hoarfrost all over his eyeballs. He was dead. The lucky guy with him—lucky because he didn’t die—had to have three toes whacked off after they froze solid.
How important are toes? Not as bad as losing your eyes or an arm, but still …
If I lost three toes would I walk funny?
Would girls go out with me? They don’t notice me now with toes.
I bet they’d notice if I drove a hearse.
Will Dad let me buy one?
Does he think I’m still a stupid kid because I goof around with Parker? Like the baby boy who named his new puppy Snowman 11 years ago?
What would I name him now? Something tough. Rambo? That sounds nothing like a slightly chubby white dog.
Yeti?
Hoarfrost?
What the heck is hoarfrost anyway?
Breaking News: Journal Entry #173
V smashed Lily’s sunflower. Wham. Just like that. Instant compost.
My sister.
Why would she do that?
Because Dad has two princesses?
Maybe that hurt her pretty bad, but still. Killing that flower was almost murder.
Lily was quiet before. Now she’s totally soundless.
And everybody else is screaming.
Dad to V: You’re grounded!
V to Dad: I swear—I didn’t do it!
Mud Boy to Lily: Come on. It’s just a flower. Please, talk to us!
Dad to V: Don’t lie to me!
Mary Beth to Mud Boy: Don’t shout at your sister!