Chapter Four #2
I smiled. “That’s great.” Lucille was Nana’s insulin pump.
She had been a Type 1 diabetic for as long as I could remember.
Mom and Dad helped pay for Lucille a couple of years ago when Nana’s other pump kept malfunctioning.
Nana fought tooth and nail against it, but after a couple of bad hypoglycemic episodes, she gave in.
Nana opened the fridge and took out some raw vegetables, placing them near the sink and a cutting board before staring at me. “Well, don’t just stand there.”
I brought the lettuce over and started shaving it off at the sides.
“What in the world are you doing, Reed?” she asked.
“Making a salad.” I kept shaving the lettuce. Wasn’t this how you did it?
“Honey, you keep cutting the lettuce like that and that salad won’t be ready till next week.” She laughed and smacked my arm with the spoon. “Don’t you know how to make a salad?”
“Usually, we dump a bag of it in the bowl.”
Nana placed a hand on her chest. “Dear Jesus. I’ll have to have a chat with your mother—”
“No, no, no.” I turned around. “She makes salad. But we don’t have a garden like you. Remember? Plus, I’m not home for dinner a lot.”
Nana raised an eyebrow. “A boy needs to make time to eat dinner with his family. You hear?”
“Loud and clear.” What I didn’t tell her was that I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t home a lot for dinner.
Dad supervised a lot of the trainings at the base, and Mom, well, she didn’t like coming home to an empty house.
So she waited until one of us texted before she left the library where she worked.
Nana chopped the lettuce in half and then chunked the rest before tossing it all into the bowl. Next, she pulled out a peeler and a small knife. “Peel those carrots into the compost bucket near the back door.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you guys got a garbage disposal for your sink?”
She huffed. “Foolish to replace good composting with one of those fancy gadgets. You’ve been away from this farm for too long.”
She showed me how she went away from her hand that held the carrot when she peeled. “Nice and slow. And then cut them into small pieces about the size of a nickel. Got it?”
I kissed her cheek right underneath one of her light brown age spots. “Got it.”
She went back to stirring the sauce. The smells of garlic and some kind of herb made my stomach growl. “So did you see your dad’s old rocking chair in the corner of the barn yet?”
Here we go. “I saw it.”
“Think you can find some time to finish it?”
“I dunno, Nana. That B Field is a holy wreck. Needs a total overhaul. And we played like shit—sorry, crap—the other day.”
“It’s one chair, Reed. Would mean a lot to your granddad. And to me.”
Ouch.
Never underestimate a nana’s ability to throw a good gut punch.
“I’ll take care of it,” I said.
“Good.” She went back to stirring as a trumpet solo began in the music. “You know your daddy played the trumpet.”
He did? I swallowed over something hard. “I didn’t know that.”
“Mhmm…he was real good. Always wished he would play in college, but baseball took up a lot of time. Then the army called him up…”
And for the last eight months he fought in the city of Who-Knows-Where, Middle East, doing who-knows-what with zero weeks of contact.
I guess that’s why they called it black ops. It put the families left behind in the dark.
Nana placed some bread in the oven and set a timer. The clock in the living room started to chime the hour. “He’d be so proud of you helping your granddad with this season. Walkin’ in his footsteps.”
Jesus. Between Nana and Ben’s not-so-subtle pressure, I was going to need a ton of antacids this summer.
Suddenly, the sound of a tractor backfiring made us both jump, and a moment later, the kitchen door banged open.
Granddad went straight to the sink and wet a paper towel before wiping off his forehead and neck. “Smells good.”
Ben stumbled in after him. Dirt covered his face, and he had grass stains on his pants and a ripped shirt sleeve.
I stifled a laugh. “Rough afternoon?”
He scowled and trudged over to the sink where he filled up a glass of water.
“Ben wanted to try to use the old tiller.” Granddad winked. “It, uh, got away from him.”
“How exactly does a tiller get away from you?” I asked, tossing Ben a towel.
“Don’t ask,” he replied.
Nana brushed some dirt off Granddad’s hair. “The mail’s on the hallway table, honey.”
“What can I do to help?” Ben asked her.
Nana looked him over head to toe and pointed toward the hallway. “Shower.”
The three of us laughed as Ben left. “Don’t use all the hot water!” she yelled after him.
I started chopping the carrots when Granddad walked back into the kitchen a couple of minutes later with a frown. “I get so goddamned tired of reading about Will Crowley every other day in the paper. Is there no other news out there?”
“Language, Louis.” Nana waved her spoon at him.
Granddad grumbled and dropped the mail next to me. The bright red lettering of “FINAL NOTICE” on one envelope. Final notice? I thought the farm was doing okay?
I stopped chopping. “Granddad, what’s this—”
“That paper will start printing our names soon, you’ll see.” He smacked the refrigerator. “That tournament is the best answer to all our problems.”
“Right, but did you really have to put forty percent of the farm sales on the table?” My eyes wandered to the overdue bills.
“First off, he didn’t put that on the table, we both did,” Nana said. “Secondly, if we can’t afford it, then we’ll figure it out, the same way we always do.”
“But—”
“Will Crowley putting the stadium up for grabs is a blessing,” Granddad added.
A blessing?
What about “Never trust a Crowley,” the Fulton motto that had been drilled into my brain since I was ten?
Granddad patted me on the back. “Charlie would’ve been proud of the two of us, Reed. Putting a team together like this for the Legion League. The Fulton dynasty at it once again.”
“Charlie sounded like a good guy. Wish I could’ve met him.” I began chopping some cucumber.
“My brother was a lot like you. Tall as a tree, proud, focused.” Granddad rolled up his newspaper and tossed it into the recycling. “Honestly, it was a good thing he wasn’t around to see us lose that stadium years ago after all the work we did to get it up and running.”
He marched over to the junk drawer near the fridge and took out a case of darts. Newspaper clippings with “Crowley” in their headings were tacked onto the top half of the laundry room door.
He started throwing darts.
Nana groaned. “Honestly. Must you do that every day?”
“The doctor said I need to find better ways to de-stress, Joyce. Drinking beer doesn’t count—apparently—so that leaves darts. Or would you rather I shoot my rifle off the back deck?” He tossed two more and hit the eyes of a black-and-white photograph of Will Crowley.
“Darts it is,” Nana mumbled, running a hand through her curls. “You’re bringing my wisdom tinsel out in full force. I’ll be all silver soon.”
“I’ve always said I liked your hair more silver than brown anyway.” Granddad turned to me. “Wanna have a go, Reed? It’s been a while, but you probably still got a decent throw, right?”
Uh. “Sure. Why not?”
A few minutes later, all my darts framed the outside edges of the photographs.
Apparently, even though I could throw a mean fastball, I sucked at darts.
As I plucked them out, I noticed a smaller headline and article underneath the latest picture of Will Crowley: “THE LYRIC’S SUMMER PRODUCTION OF ‘ROMEO & JULIET’ BEGINS ITS REHARSALS. ”
Eliza.
“Let me know when you need me to set the table, okay?” I said, leaving the kitchen. “I’ll be out front.”
The old porch creaked under my weight as the South Five’s corn moved with the humid wind. Yesterday, Granddad had me feel a couple of husks to remind me of the color and texture I should hope for.
Mickey barked at the screen door. I opened it and then sat on the front steps, where he placed his head on my lap. That article said the first tech rehearsal was tomorrow, which meant Eliza would definitely be there.
I still had her mask, so that gave me two clear options.
Option one: I could burn it. Call it retribution for what she did to my Autobots.
Option two: I could take it to her and stick around just long enough to ruffle her prim Crowley feathers.
By my math, I had hundreds of days of Operation Reed Bothers Eliza to make up for.
Raking the infield could wait.