“I can’t drive it anymore,” Mr. Bradshaw admits. “It’s been parked out here so long, the tires have rotted. The fluids inside have turned to acid and started to eat through the hoses. It’s rusted pretty bad. Turns out there’s only so much a few tarps can do to protect a car.”
“We might have been able to sell it,” Harold admits quietly, “if we’d put it on blocks in a garage like we should have. But now, it’s not worth anything.”
“When I first parked this car out here, I wasn’t really sure how much I’d wind up using my bike,” Mr. Bradshaw explains. “I parked it and started using the bike to save money on gas. Figured that I could keep this old car just in case, but—it’s been so long since I’ve driven it, it’s fallen apart. I’d started to think the thing was completely useless. Until you started working on your house.”
“For the house,” I repeat, shocked.
Mr. Bradshaw shakes his head sadly as he stares at his car. “I wish I could make the thing move again,” he admits. “That’s what a car is for, isn’t it? Moving?”
That gives me an idea.
“Gus!” I shout, racing toward the front of my house. “Gus! Wait till you see this!”
• • • 24 • • •
“Nothing wants to come to an end,” I tell Gus, borrowing the words he’d used to describe storms. “Not a man, not a plant, and not a car, either. A car doesn’t want to get squashed. A car wants to keep moving,” I insist, now borrowing Mr. Bradshaw’s words. “Think of it, Gus—all those gears and wheels and spinning parts. Those beautiful, shining bumpers! Think of what we could make!”
Gus stares at me, his face a blank space on a test sheet. He’s still deciding what he thinks.
“Wind chimes, Gus!” I shout. Because it would be so much fun if our house also sounded pretty.
Gus rubs the stubbly whiskers on his chin, thinking. When his face starts to disappear beneath one of those Cheshire grins, I know I’ve got him.
Gus and I pull the fan from the engine. He drills holes in the blades, and we hang springs and gears and nuts and bolts from long threads of wire. Together, we hang the finished wind chime from the top of the porch. The fan spins and the pieces knock against each other, making notes that sound like they’ve come from a xylophone. It’s like the wind has grown fingers, and I’ve given it an instrument to play.
We make three more wind chimes. We use a hubcap, a license plate, and the steering wheel to dangle the metal Monte Carlo symbol pried from the trunk, the door handles, the radio antenna, the hood ornament, even pieces of the grille Gus has sliced with his cutting torch. Together, all four chimes play a tune that reminds me of some of the songs I can hear the Widow Hollis play on her piano when she has her front windows open.
So much of the car is still left over. Only four days stand between us and our open house.
“More flowers—but not little flowers, this time, Gus!” I shout. “Enormous flowers! Tall as a man!” Because if the rest of the car isn’t going to move anymore, at least it will stand tall and proud. Besides, the metal flowers we already have are so small, it’s a little hard to see their details from the street.
Gus fires up his torch again. I’m holding up metal pieces, saying, “Why don’t we use this bumper as a stem?” or, “These window cranks could be the thorns on a rose!” or, “Couldn’t we cut these two hubcaps to look like unopened buds?”
I start to wonder how you know for sure if something really is your shine. When did Irma Jean officially know she was a good seamstress? When did Lexie realize she could come up with all those wild hairdos? Did they ever trip up and have to start a new skirt or a braid over again—or does a shine always come easily?
I don’t have enough time to think too much about it, not with all these new ideas popping up everywhere I look.
“Headlights,” I tell Gus. “The headlights can be the centers of giant sunflowers!”
His grin is so bright I can almost see it glowing behind his welding mask.
For the next few days, we work on a whole slew of flowers, modeling most of them after the pictures in a book I’ve checked out from the library: orchids with their big fleshy petals. Gladiolas with three or four blossoms on the same stem. Carnations with folds and folds of petals inside. Blooms of baby’s breath as big as Gus’s head. We even make a few mums—just like the ones I saw out at Burton’s house.
When we’re finished with the flowers, the smallest ones come all the way up to my chin. Most are as tall—or taller, even—than Gus. But they’re heavy and they keep falling over every time we try to “plant” them.
Gus tugs on his bottom lip, thinking. “We need to find something solid that we could tie them to.”
My eyes scan our house. They stop when they hit the chimney.
The neighbors cluster across the street—some of them with binoculars pressed up against their eyes—as Gus helps me off the ladder and onto the roof.
“They’re worried about you,” he says. “I’m worried about you.”
“Oh, Gus,” I say. “I’m not going to fall. Promise.”
I whistle to myself, until Gus finally follows my lead, adding harmony to my tune.
“Pass me that hammer, there, Auggie.”
“You got it,” I say, reaching for the tool with one hand while holding an enormous pansy up with the other. The way I have to bend myself around, it’s like I’m playing a game of Twister up there on the roof.
We hammer nails through the holes Gus has drilled into the bottoms of the metal flowers, then use bright red rope to attach the flowers to the chimney. We tie the rope in a gigantic bow, so that it looks like a red ribbon holding a bouquet of flowers together.
It reminds me of the fancy bouquets inside the door of the Super Saver grocery. The bouquets Gus and I can never afford because we’re always needing more boring stuff like bread and milk and flour. Now, we’ve got the biggest, brightest bouquet of all!
With the xylophone clank of wind chimes filling the air, and a bouquet on the roof, and the rainbow of colors swirling across the front of our home, I feel like we’re officially ready for tomorrow’s open house.
• • • 25 • • •
Friday is sheer torture. I swear there’s a lasso on the minute hand on the clock in Ms. Byron’s class, and it’s holding time back, keeping it from passing like it should. The time between the first bell and lunch lasts longer than my whole summer break did. The afternoon feels even longer.
When the final bell does ring, I feel a little stuck in my desk, for a minute. Like I can’t quite believe the time for the open house is finally here. When Victoria pauses at my desk, looks down at me and asks, “We’re still on for this afternoon, right?” I finally jump to my feet and nod. My heart burns hotter than a chunk of charcoal in a barbecue.
Old Glory scoops up Lexie and Harold and me from the Dickerson parking lot. But nobody’s really talking much. We drop off Weird Harold, who smiles back at us nervously before heading through his door. Gus has just pulled Old Glory into our drive when Irma Jean tells me, “Don’t go inside yet, Auggie. I have something for you.”
Irma Jean sprints for her house while I lean against Old Glory, giving my weight to her front fender. I’m trying to ignore the way my blood flows through my body with the force of storm rains when I catch my reflection in her chrome bumper. I work on my face, trying to figure out how not to look worried or afraid.
I jump when Irma Jean’s front door bangs open. “Auggie!” Irma Jean shouts as she comes running toward me with a pair of jeans folded up in her arms. When she hands them to me, I recognize the wear on the waistband and the small chocolate stain on the front pocket.
“These are mine,” I say. “Where’d you get—” I hold them by the waistband as the legs tumble down. And I realize that Irma Jean has embroidered the ankles. Both of them. Right over the white circles.
“I asked Gus for a pair of your jeans the day we decided to have an open neighborhood,” Irma Jean confesses. “So th
at when Lexie and Victoria come over, we won’t be branded. That’s what you said, right? That the circles branded us?”
I could cry looking at what Irma Jean’s done. “But you—”
“I did a pair for me,” Irma Jean says. “Harold says he wants to wear the same khakis he usually saves for church.”
I give Irma Jean a hug and race inside. I tear through my closet, until I find a shirt that goes with the embroidery on my jeans—a deep, rusty red that also matches the nervous feeling in my chest.
Once I’m dressed, I pace the living room so quickly, I figure I could wear a hole straight through the floor before anybody shows up.
Finally, Irma Jean appears in her own embroidered jeans, with a new blouse she’s made out of one of Anna Beth’s dresses. And Weird Harold comes over with his hair gelled across the top of his head. He’s left his baseball hats with all his wild messages at home. He doesn’t even do that when we go to church.
“Refreshments!” Gus shouts, carrying a fresh pitcher of sweet tea and caramel apples, perfect for fall.
I can tell by the look on his face that he wants just as badly as the rest of us for the committee to be impressed by all our hard work. In the quiet that falls through our living room, the squeak of the front gate blares through our front window like a trumpet.
“They’re here!” Irma Jean hisses, and we all race for the door at once.
Lexie and Victoria have dropped their bicycles on the sidewalk in front of our gate. They’re both still wearing the same clothes they had on at school, like this isn’t really all that special to them. Not like it is to us.
My eyes scan the street as I look for a car that’s out of place, new. Something that Mom might be driving up in. There’s no sign of her—not yet, anyway. But there’s still time.
“Hello, Mr. Jones,” Victoria says, nodding at Gus.
“Gus, please,” he says, holding the tray of apples out to Victoria.
“No, thank you,” she says. Even though her words are polite, they still feel sharp and cold.
She pulls a camera out of her backpack, and it makes a funny electronic sound when she turns it on. She starts taking pictures at the same time that Lexie wanders up the front walk.
Lexie’s eyes fly open wide as she takes in the wind chimes and the paint and the glitter at her toes. “I can’t believe this place!” she shouts, smiling at me as she climbs up onto the step. “It’s incredible!”
Right then, Lexie kind of reminds me of a long-lost pet that’s found its way home. Here she is, coming back like she’s never been away—she plops down in the exact same spot that was always hers, the second step from the top, on the right, next to the railing. When Gus offers her an apple, she instantly takes one off of the tray and starts crunching.
I could jump with happiness.
“Aren’t the colors on Auggie’s house beautiful?” Harold asks Victoria, who keeps snapping pictures while Lexie helps herself to a tea.
I smile, waiting for Victoria to agree. She has to agree.
But Victoria’s only response is to snap another picture.
“Victoria?” I say. “What do you think of our house?”
Victoria lowers her camera. I want her to take another look, so I nod up toward the porch, covered in rainbow swirls and decorated with flower boxes filled with metal daisies. We just stand there staring at each other. Why isn’t she saying anything?
“Come on, Lexie,” Victoria finally mutters. “We should get the rest of the pictures done.”
“The rest?” I ask.
“Sure. The whole neighborhood.”
“You mean like Irma Jean’s curtains!” I say. “And Harold’s yard—”
“Right. We’ve got it. Thanks, Auggie.”
Lexie slowly puts her apple down, half-finished, and she follows Victoria straight back toward the gate.
“Wait a minute,” I try, because Mom hasn’t even shown up yet, and the open house suddenly doesn’t feel friendly at all.
Lexie and Victoria straddle their bikes, raise their kickstands, and take off.
But you liked it, I want to shout at Lexie.
“What was that?” I ask, turning toward Gus.
“I don’t know, Little Sister,” he says. “I’m not sure at all.”
The two of them stop peddling in front of Irma Jean’s house. When Victoria’s flash hits the Pikes’ front window, I notice the way the light settles into the giant crack down the glass.
• • • 26 • • •
That Saturday, Gus and Weird Harold’s dad rattle a couple of ladders against the Bradshaw place. In exchange for giving us their Monte Carlo, Gus has gathered some surplus shingles and has offered to help Mr. Bradshaw patch up the places where their old roof has started to shed shingles like hair.
I envy them being able to see the Bradshaws’ garden and even Montgomery from so high up. I figure that from up there, the garden in the backyard must look the same way that fields of corn look from an airplane.
But Gus has a job for us on the ground—me and Weird Harold both. He’s rigged a kind of pulley to raise and lower a bucket along the side of the Bradshaw house. When Gus and Mr. Bradshaw need a tool or some nails or a sandwich or a can of soda, Weird Harold and I put it in the metal bucket and shout, “Ready!” so Gus knows he can start pulling the bucket back up toward the roof.
It’s all clicking along like a clock, until Gus calls down, “Auggie, I’ve got some screen in the back of Old Glory. You can take it across the street to Mrs. Shoemacker.”
My stomach knots up because Mrs. Shoemacker sets me off balance. It’s not like I’m really afraid of her. I just don’t understand the way she stands in her front window, looking out at all of us.
“I need to help you here,” I insist.
“Harold can help us,” Gus says.
“She called you? She asked for screens?”
“Didn’t have to call. You can see those screens around her front porch need help. Covered in holes. Don’t think the committee will like those holes much. Besides, it’d be a nice place to sit, if she didn’t have to worry about bugs.”
There’s no arguing with Gus. So I head straight over to the house next door. Before I even climb the front steps, I can hear Mrs. Pike scolding Michael Nicholas for eating crayons. I step over Anna Beth, who’s lying across the porch on her stomach, smearing on lipstick and staring at herself in a compact mirror, and knock on the door.
The chaotic music of the Pike house keeps trickling out onto the porch as I hear a flurry of stomping feet and voices calling out to Irma Jean, telling her she has company.
Her wide eyes fill the gray screen of the front door.
“Help me carry some screen to Mrs. Shoemacker?” I ask, pointing once over my shoulder.
Irma Jean makes a face as she crams the last of her peanut butter sandwich into her mouth. I figure she’s going to start shaking her head as hard as her mom shakes dust out of the living room rugs. But she opens the door and steps outside, and I feel myself finally exhale. When my lungs fill up again, it’s not just with air but with gratitude.
Together, we each grab an end of the roll of screen from the back of Old Glory. “Have you heard anything?” Irma Jean asks.
“Not a squeak,” I admit, because I know right off what she’s talking about. It feels awful, not knowing for sure what Victoria really thought about the house. All that work, and now—a tight, uncomfortable quiet. The kind of quiet you feel your ears stretching through, like they’re trying to go ahead and find the awful explosion that’s bound to hit.
“Do you think you could call Lexie?” Irma Jean asks.
I don’t think my voice is welcome on Lexie’s phone anymore. But admitting it makes my chest feel squashed flat. So I act like I’ve really got to concentrate on keeping a good hold on the screen.
We knock on Mrs. Shoemacker’s door, and hold our breath. Sure, she comes to Montgomery for church, and when she’s in public, she looks as normal as anybody else. But this
is her house. And the way she always throws her eye in between the slats in her venetian blinds tells me she keeps watch over it like a guard dog. I have this awful sinking feeling that when she answers my knock, it will be with a voice as vicious as a Rottweiler’s, because all she wants is to be alone.
My legs get itchy, like they’re begging me to run. I’m ready to grant their wish when Mrs. Shoemacker shows up in the front door. It’s the first time I’ve ever looked her square in the face. Now that I’m looking, she seems really young. Not much older than Anna Beth Pike.
When she sees us standing there on her step, happiness pops through Mrs. Shoemacker’s eyes. Her grin makes her mouth look big enough to fit a whole loaf of bread inside it all at once.
“Girls!” she exclaims.
“We brought screen—for your porch—” I start, but she’s already opening the door and ushering me and Irma Jean into a house that’s got more pictures than Ms. Dillbeck’s place. Only, instead of drawings, they’re photos—of Mrs. Shoemacker and a man in a uniform.
She disappears into the kitchen, runs some water and clanks some mugs. “You two like hot chocolate, right?” she calls. Her microwave starts dinging as she punches its buttons.
I share a look of complete shock with Irma Jean as we prop the roll of screen against her living room wall.
“Do you two know yet what you’re going to be for Halloween?” Mrs. Shoemacker shouts, her voice a little too loud and a little too excited for such an everyday conversation. You’d think she was talking about going on a fancy vacation to Hot Springs—or the moon.
I’m so shocked. This isn’t who I thought Mrs. Shoemacker was at all. But I manage to answer, “A mechanic. I’m going to smear grease on my face and wear a pair of Gus’s grimiest zip-up coveralls.”
“I’m going to be the Mad Hatter. I’m sewing the whole costume—even the hat!” Irma Jean says in such a happy way that it makes me wish, all over again, that I had a shine like hers. It’d be nice to wear something I could say I’d made myself, I think.
The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky Page 7