Lucy’s “Perfect” Summer (23 page)

Mr. Auggy stayed for supper. Inez left with a special nod for Lucy. After Mora inspected her cell phone, she told Lucy she rocked. Inez had a hard time getting her out the door, and she only went after Lucy promised to tell her the entire story on Monday.

That was, as soon as Lucy knew herself. She still didn’t know exactly how it had all come together, so the version she told Dad and Mr. Auggy at the table was like a puzzle with a bunch of the pieces missing.

But it seemed to be enough for them. When she was finished, Dad turned his face to Mr. Auggy, and Mr. Auggy looked back at him like Dad could see him, and they had one of those conversations adults had without even saying anything.

“I’m proud of you, Champ,” Dad said finally. “And I think you’ve shamed us.”

“I’ve ‘shamed’ you?” Lucy said. “I didn’t mean to — honest!”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Mr. Auggy said. “It just means you did something brave and hard, and we should have been able to do the same thing in our situation.”

Lucy thought she might know what they were talking about, but she still said, “I need more information.”

“We told you we didn’t have enough proof to delve further into this situation with the soccer field.” Dad tilted his head back, as if he were looking at the ceiling. Lucy knew he was just seeing his next words. “But I think we’ve realized that shouldn’t have held us back from doing what was right. You showed us that, champ.”

Lucy poked at her burrito and wriggled in her chair and just generally didn’t know what to say.

“So about that award!” Mr. Auggy said. “I think it calls for a celebration — tomorrow night at Pasco’s — the whole team.” His small smile grew very big. “The grilled cheese sandwiches are on me.”

“I thought he was selling the cafe,” Lucy said.

“It’s still his until they close the deal. He has a few more weeks.”

That wasn’t long enough for Lucy. She had to talk to J.J. They had to fix this.

17

The sun didn’t sink behind the mountains until almost 8:00 on those summer nights, so there was still plenty of light when Lucy begged Dad to let her go see J.J., with a promise to be back before dark.

J.J. was already hanging out at his front gate, as if he knew she’d be coming. He was glaring at the stuff in his yard as if he hadn’t been living with it for twelve years and had just noticed it was all there. At least, all that his father hadn’t taken with him last Sunday. That seemed like a long time ago to Lucy now.

“We goin’ somewhere?” he said.

“Soccer field,” Lucy said.

J.J.’s face darkened. “Why?”

“I just want to see it. I want to tell it we can fix it.”

He shrugged and lifted himself over the fence light as a hawk feather, but his brows were still stuck together in a frown.

“How come you don’t want to go?” Lucy said as they hurried down Granada Street toward the highway. “Too sad there?”

J.J. grunted.

“That’s a no, isn’t it?”

He didn’t even grunt this time, but Lucy let it go. She had to stay focused.

The tops of the mountains were turning orange when they took the curve in the dirt road past the bridge, and Lucy expected to see the bent frames of the bleachers and the refreshment stand casting crooked shadows across the sad field.

But there were no frames.

Now even the metal was strewn about in pieces, like the toys of an angry, bratty child after a tantrum. Lucy couldn’t help herself. She screamed out loud. Maybe it was a scream she’d been needing to scream all day — she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she couldn’t stop until J.J. picked up a piece of the metal and forced it into her hand.

“Throw it,” he said.

“What?”

“Throw it, or you’ll never stop yelling. Throw it.”

Lucy stared at the metal as she sobbed, and then she pulled it back like she was putting a ball back into the game and hurled it as hard as she could. When it thudded to the ground, the dust around it startled and settled. So did her screams.

“Come on,” J.J. said, and he led the way into the mess.

It didn’t seem to scare him the way it did Lucy. She wondered if that was because it looked a lot like his front yard. She herself stepped carefully around the random hunks and tried not to put her foot on any bolts . . .

Lucy stopped and squatted down. There were a
lot
of bolts lying around, all separated from the pieces of metal. And the metal itself didn’t look any more mangled than it had the last time they were here.

“J.J.,” she said. “I think somebody took it apart.”

He glanced up from the chunk he was nudging with his foot and gave her a “du-uh” look.

“No, I’m serious,” she said. “Not like they did before — like they did it with tools or something this time.”

She heard her voice trail off, felt her eyes pop. J.J. didn’t look surprised at all. He just stood up, a metal rail in his hand, and yanked it back as if he were going to thrust it like a spear. And then he let it fall with a thunk to the ground beside him.

“So they finally turned you into a wimp.”

Lucy jumped at the voice that growled from the shadows of their lone cottonwood. And then she froze. J.J.’s father stepped out with the ugly smile splitting away from his yellowed teeth. He didn’t seem to see Lucy. His eyes were on J.J. as he walked right past her, close enough for her to see his jaw muscles twitching.

“I thought you’d wanna pick that up and waste somebody with it,” he said, jerking his head toward the metal piece J.J. had dropped. “Somebody messed up your precious soccer field, son. Don’t you want make him pay?”

You!
Lucy wanted to scream at him.
You’re the one who did this! With
your evil tire iron and your nasty old tools!

But she didn’t have to. Mr. Cluck was already driving his thumb into his own chest.

“Bring it on,” he said. “Don’t be a wimp. Fight back like your old man.”

J.J. shook his head.

“No? You don’t want to fight me?”

“No,” J.J. said. “I don’t want to be like you.”

His voice was like a thread in the wind. J.J.’s father stepped toward him, his hand cupped around his ear.

“I didn’t hear that, did I? I didn’t hear you say that to me.”

He took the last step and pulled back his fist.

“No!” Lucy screamed.

Mr. Cluck whirled around, his eyes wild as they searched the almost dark for Lucy.

“Run!” J.J. shouted at her. “Run like a mad dog!”

His father whipped back toward him, where J.J. was picking up the metal rail at his feet.

“Leave her alone,” J.J. said, and this time his voice was loud enough for all of Los Suenos to hear. Lucy stayed rooted into the ground as J.J. swung the rail out in front of him.

“You think you’re gonna hit me with that, son?” Mr. Cluck said.

“I’m not your son!”

“Oh, yes, you are. You’re my flesh and blood, and you’re just like me.”

J.J. looked at the rail and he looked at his father, and then he looked at Lucy. His eyes were brave, but they had tears in them. He didn’t want to do it. And she didn’t want to make him.

“Hey!” she shouted.

Mr. Cluck turned to her, and she pulled back her leg and kicked at the dirt like it was a soccer ball. A spray of dust came up from the ground and caught him full in the face.

“Run!” J.J. yelled at her.

This time she did, away from the swearing voice that split open on J.J. In terror she looked back over her shoulder, and saw J.J. hold out the rail just in front of his groping father’s shins. The man ran straight into it and smacked face fist into the ground, barely missing a hunk of his own handiwork.

J.J. let go of the rail and tore toward Lucy, throwing both hands out to tell her to keep going.

Pretend you’re going for the goal,
Lucy said in her head. That and
‘God, help! Please help us get away!’

She didn’t hear the footsteps behind them until they were across the newly-repaired bridge and tearing toward the highway.

“Faster!” J.J. cried.

Lucy nodded, but she could feel her legs slowing down no matter how hard she pumped. J.J. put his hand on her back and pushed her forward, almost into the path of a car pulling out of the side street.

Sheriff Navarra’s car.

His tires squealed at about the same time his door flew open. He was out of the cruiser before it came to a complete stop.

“Mr. Cluck — !” Lucy said.

But the sheriff just grabbed them by their arms and shoved them into the front seat of the car and slammed the door. J.J. tumbled on top of Lucy and she had to fight her way up to look out the window. The sheriff stood face to face in the road with Mr. Cluck, hands out to stop him. But J.J.’s father wasn’t going anywhere. His chest heaved and his face was the color of the last of the sunset.

“He’s the wimp,” Lucy said as she started to cry. “Not you, J.J.”

J.J. looked away and Lucy didn’t say anything else. She just let him blink away his tears.

It took a while to get it sorted out.

There was the full examination from Dad, who, even after going over every inch of her, still wasn’t convinced that Lucy didn’t have a scratch on her.

And there was the five-million question session with Sheriff Navarra, who made her repeat everything until she was practically hoarse. And then of course there was the lecture about going to the soccer field when he’d told them not to. Lucy managed to tell him that he needed to be more specific about his orders from now on. He didn’t seem to appreciate it.

Finally somebody asked him how he happened to be there when the kids were trying to escape from Mr. Cluck.

He planted his beefy hands on his hips and looked at Lucy the way Gabe did sometimes. “Somebody called in and said they heard a kid screaming over there,” he said. “I assume that was you.”

“Thank the Lord,” Dad said.

The sheriff made a huffing sound. “I never took you for much of a screamer,” he said.

She wanted to scream right then. With all of the questioning and the grilling and the lecturing, she hadn’t had a chance to talk to J.J. alone, and that was all she wanted to do.

But nobody would let her until the next morning. She was up with the sun, and she and Mudge were outside the gate almost before J.J. stopped throwing pebbles against her window. Mudge didn’t even growl at him when he came around the corner. It was like he knew J.J. had had enough creatures growling at him to last him for the rest of his life.

“You okay?” Lucy said, though she knew he wasn’t. His eyes were puffy, and his mouth looked like he couldn’t trust it not crumple on him.

“No,” J.J. said.

“He’s really gone now,” Lucy said. “My dad said — ”

“He wrecked our field.”

“I know.”

“I always knew it.”

J.J. slid down the fence and sat miserably with his feet stuck out onto the dirt path. Lucy joined him.

“You knew it was his tire iron that first day?” she said.

“Yeah. And I saw the prints in the mud from his boots.”

Lucy thought of the sheriff squatted by the refreshment stand. That must have been what he was looking at, too.

“So he came to your house to get the tools to finish the job last Sunday,” Lucy said. “That’s why he was all smiling.”

“He never smiles.”

J.J. parked his forearms on his knees and let his hands and his head hang. Lucy sat up straighter.

“Stop it, J.J.,” she said.

“What?”

“Stop acting like it’s your fault. It’s not.”

“He’s my dad.”

“No, he’s not. You said that yourself, right to his face.”

“But he is.”

“Nuh-uh.” Lucy shook her head so hard it hurt. “A dad’s somebody that would do anything for you and you would do anything for him. Mr. Cluck-Face might have given you a last name, but he’s not your dad.”

Lucy wasn’t sure where all that had come from, but she was glad it had. J.J. brought his face up and looked at her. There was something like a smile in his eyes.