Summer on the Moon (15 page)

He still felt funny about the hug. And smelling her shampoo.

Those three stupid seconds of hugging Livvy had changed things, big-time. Now, when she knocked and the General made his usual your-girlfriend’s-here remark, Socko felt his face flush.

The knock had come early this morning.

The General wheeled his chair around. “Your girlfriend’s here—”

“Cut it out!” Socko whispered, his face burning. He got to the door first and opened it.

“Hey, Socko.” Livvy was standing there, wrapping a strand of blonde hair around one finger. Her face was kind of red too. She hurried past him and walked over to his great-grandfather. “Good morning, General.”

He glared first at her, and then at the plate in his lap. “Get a load of this breakfast!”

Livvy took a long look at the cold burger and fries on the plate in front of him. “Guess what
I
had for breakfast?” she asked, sitting down on the floor at the old man’s feet.

“What?”

“Matzo ball soup.”

The General snorted in surprise, but recovered fast. “At least you get some variety. Nothing but reheated burgers and fries around here, with an occasional bowl of Styrofoam and milk thrown in.”

Socko grabbed his Nintendo and fell onto the couch.

“Doesn’t anyone cook anymore?” the General grumped.

“My parents sure don’t. They say they’re too busy.”

“It’s not like it’s hard. Heckfire, during the war I fixed grub for a whole company—that’s four platoons, which is, oh, about a hundred and twenty men. If I can do it, anyone can do it.”

“Then why don’t you?” Socko mumbled, pushing buttons.

Livvy scooted closer to the wheelchair. “Teach me how to cook. I’ll cook for both of us.”

Socko waited for the old man’s excuse—he already knew the answer would be no.

“Nah. I’m too old to take the heat in the kitchen. And I got too much arthritis in my hands.” To demonstrate, he made a fist and winced.

Livvy jumped to her feet. “Tell me what to do. I’ll do everything.” She ran to the kitchen. When she came back, she folded her legs under her and sat back down on the floor with a pencil in one hand, a scrap of paper bag pressed against her knee with the other. She looked up expectantly. “What ingredients do we need?”

“Depends on what we want to make, doesn’t it?”

“Apple pie?” Livvy suggested. “Fried chicken?”

The General raised his wiry eyebrows. “Let’s start with something simple, like SOS.”

“What does SOS stand for?” she asked, her pencil hovering.

The old man snorted. “Let’s just call it ‘Slop on a Shingle.’”

Livvy wrote down the ingredients the General rattled off: chipped beef, milk, white flour, salt, pepper, and white bread.

It sounded to Socko like the makings of a school lunch.

“Anything else?” Livvy turned the scrap of paper so the General could read it.

Feeling invisible, Socko left the Nintendo on the couch and slid out the front door.

He was spending too much time with Livvy anyway. Besides, he had things he needed to think about, like coming up with a genius idea to get back to the old neighborhood so he could see Damien—having Livvy around all the time was distracting him.

He jumped on his skateboard and was rolling down the road when
he heard the ring of sneakers on the pavement behind him.

“Wait!”

He stopped and let her catch up. “Thought you were taking cooking lessons.”

“Later. We need ingredients.”

He popped the board up and carried it. They turned down the next unexplored street on the circle, Lunar Lane. “Are we going anywhere in particular?” Livvy asked.

“Nope.”

“Okay.” She walked along beside him.

When Socko realized he might get caught watching her, he began looking intently at anything that wasn’t her—which was pretty much the usual. Houses. Pavement. Dirt.

The houses on Lunar Lane looked as vacant as any of the others they’d passed, but these were more complete than most. Socko was scanning a gray house when an unexpected glint of metal caught his eye. Fear zinged from his scalp to the soles of his feet—it was the rear bumper of a maroon Trans Am.

It had taken a while, but Rapp had come after him. Had Delia gone back to “messing with Junebug”?

Livvy touched his shoulder. “Socko? You’re hyperventilating.” She followed his gaze. “What’s a car doing back there?” She took a step toward the house. He grabbed her arm.

“What?”

“Wait a sec. Let me think.” He focused his eyes on the ground. Staring at Rapp’s car made his brain seize.

“Ohmygosh!” she gasped.

Sure that the next thing he’d see—possibly the last—would be Rapp, Socko raised his eyes slowly.

A baby in a sagging diaper had toddled out from behind the house, mosquito bites all over its pale arms and legs. Hugged to the baby’s bare chest was a gray stuffed dog that had probably once been blue. The baby gave them a gummy smile and held out the toy. “Daw-gy.”

“Emily?” a hushed voice called from behind the house. “Em, where are you?” A woman in shorts and a stained T-shirt rushed around the
corner of the house and swept the baby into her arms. The woman was small and looked very young. Suddenly seeing them, her eyes grew wide. “Oh … hi,” she said. “We didn’t hurt anything.”

“It’s okay.” Socko didn’t know why, but people always said that when things were not okay, and it wasn’t hard to tell things here were definitely not okay. Still, Socko was breathing easier. When he looked again, the car behind the house was just an ordinary maroon car, not Rapp’s chariot of fear. It wasn’t waxed and shiny. It wasn’t even a Trans Am. Only the color matched.

Livvy reached for the cell phone in her pocket.

“What are you doing?” Socko asked softly.

“Calling my dad. They broke into that house.”

“It’s a baby and a mom,” he whispered back. “And so what if they broke in? What could they steal, the doorknobs?”

Livvy inhaled sharply. “Socko … look!”

The man who had stepped from behind the house was big and had several days’ growth of beard. His jeans were filthy, his hands black with grease.

Livvy took a step toward him. “My dad owns this house. If you leave now you won’t get into any trouble.”

The woman glanced at the man, then she turned to Socko and Livvy. “We can’t leave. Something’s wrong with the car.” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“Not now, Ceelie,” the man said gently. “Listen, we don’t want any trouble. I’m fixing the car. We won’t be here long.” He closed his hands into fists.

Livvy looked at the clenched fists, then over at Socko.

“He’s nervous,” Socko whispered. “They’re in a jam, Livvy.” He raised his voice. “Can we help?”

“We’ll be fine,” said the man. “We’ll be out of here as soon as I get the car running.”

The woman sat down on the ground, the baby clutched to her chest, and let out a sob.

Socko stopped the small group at the end of his own driveway, watching the frown on the face at the window deepen. “Hold on a sec.”

Livvy threaded her arm through Ceelie’s. “We’ll wait out here.”

“Yeah, let me go in first,” Socko said. “I need to explain things to my great-grandfather.”

The door was barely open when the old man started. “Looks like somebody dumped a litter of kittens.” His one good eye pinned the family huddled at the end of the driveway.

“They’re in a jam,” Socko said. “Luke lost his job and they’ve been camping in one of the vacant houses.”

“Luke? Is that big guy some old friend of yours?”

“No. I just met him, but—”

The General hacked loudly and spat into the wastebasket he kept parked beside his chair. “Last I heard, houses are private property. Oh, but I’m sure there was a welcome mat out at the one they’ve been ‘camping’ in.”

“Come on, General! They don’t even have water.”

The old man turned his chair away from the window and stared into the kitchen. “I’m too old for all this mess!” he shouted at the refrigerator. “All I want is to die quiet and on my own terms—not in some drool palace surrounded by geezers who are all off their nuts. Is that too much to ask?”

“Don’t you think the baby looks hot?”

“Tarnation!” The chair turned,
click, click, click
. The General took a look and then glared at the baby’s parents. “Any fool knows you cover a baby’s head in the sun if you don’t want its brains to fry.”

Socko’s nails bit into his palms. “Are you going to let that baby’s brains fry?”

The General pressed his lips together.

Socko turned away from the family standing in the hot sun and faced his great-grandfather. “It’s up to you, sir. Can they come inside?”

“All right, all right!” the General sputtered. “But these are my terms. They take showers. We feed ’em supper. They call their relatives, and then they vamoose! Am-skray! No pajama party, no listening to their sad story. We put their relatives on the case, and they move on.”

“I’ll call Mom and get her to bring extra burgers.”

“
You
dial.
I’ll
talk.”

Socko punched in the number and handed the phone to his great-grandfather. He wanted to invite the family in out of the heat but he had to hear what the old man would say to his mother; he didn’t quite trust him.

Phone to his ear, the General pointed a gnarled finger at the scrap of paper Livvy had dropped on the floor and clicked his fingers. Socko handed it to him. “Put Delia Marie Starr on … No. I can’t hold until the fries are up.” He poked at the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “Delia Marie. We have company for supper. I’m cooking.”

“
You’re
cooking?” mouthed Socko.

The General covered the phone. “We’re finally getting up to numbers I can handle,” he snapped. “Besides, Livvy’ll pester the daylights out of me until we cook something together. SOS is so crappy she’ll never ask again.” He uncovered the mouthpiece. “Delia Marie? Write this down.” As he read the list of ingredients, he glared at the woman and baby at the end of the driveway. “Better pick up a package of those paper diapers too … What size? I don’t know. The kid’s about as big as a good-sized turkey.”

When Socko and Livvy ushered the family inside, Luke walked right over to the wheelchair. He held out a hand, then seemed to notice how greasy it was and hid the hand in his pocket. “Luke Olson. Thank you, sir. These are tough times and we appreciate your help.”

“Tough times, hah! I lived through the Great Depression, son. My mother made soup out of twice-cooked bones. I know what hard times are and this little hiccup is nothing.”

“Feels like a pretty big hiccup to me.” Luke ducked his head. “Anyhow, thanks for the help.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Ceelie whispered.

Socko signaled Livvy into the next room. “The General said they could take showers … but we don’t have enough towels.” Not only did they not have enough, but the towels they had were thin and bald, with most of the fuzz worn off.

“Be right back.” Livvy returned in a few minutes with a pile of
royal blue bath towels so thick she had to keep them from spilling out of her arms by holding the stack steady with her chin. When she passed them to him, Socko couldn’t believe how cushy they were or how good they smelled. Had they ever been used?

He showed Luke and Ceelie to two of the three and a half bathrooms and grandly gave each of them a couple of towels.

When Delia got home, Socko intercepted her in the driveway. “Tell me what’s going on,” she said. Her smile grew as he explained. “Is the old man having a niceness attack?”

“If he is, it’s temporary,” Socko said. “He’s kicking them out right after supper.”

When Luke saw the diapers in the top of one of the bags Socko carried in, he looked stunned—then embarrassingly grateful.

“Give the vittles here,” the General ordered, commandeering the two bags of groceries. He balanced them in his lap. “Come on, Livvy. We’ve got cooking to do.”

“I’ll be your sous-chef!” said Livvy.

The General grimaced. “I worked with a cook named Sue in the army, a guy. Army cooks all had strange handles.”

“What was yours?” she asked.

He clamped his mouth shut and rolled into the kitchen.

She hurried after him. “Come on … Tell me!”

The sound of splashing and a voice singing about the eensy weensy spider filtered down from an upstairs bathroom. Delia smiled and grabbed the package of diapers. She headed up the stairs, leaving Socko and Luke in the living room with nothing to look at but each other.

Luke shoved his thumbs into the back pockets of his jeans. “We don’t want to put you all out any longer than we have to. But we can’t go anywhere ‘til I get the car running, and I can’t do it without a little help.”

“I’ll help,” Socko offered, “but I don’t know anything about cars.” Fixing cars was one of the things he’d missed out on by not having a father—he didn’t know much about sports either.

Luke grinned. “You don’t have to
know
anything. You just have to have strong hands.”

Socko liked standing next to Luke, their heads under the hood. And it turned out his hands were plenty strong.

Twenty minutes later Luke said, “That should do it.” He had Socko sit in the driver’s seat. “Okay,” he called, head still under the hood. “Crank ‘er up!” Socko gripped the key. They cheered when the engine turned over.

Luke pushed the hood shut with both hands.

Before driving to Socko’s, they gathered up the blankets and everything else that was on the floor of the house and piled it in the already-overflowing backseat. Luke relocked the house. “Go on,” he said, climbing into the passenger seat. “You drive. It’s an automatic.” He showed Socko how to put it in gear and leaned back in the passenger seat.

Socko’s pulse hammered. He drove as slowly as the General, the wheel slick with his own nervous sweat, but he didn’t drive over any curbs or mow down any street signs. When he pulled into his driveway, Luke cuffed his shoulder. “That was pretty smooth!”

By the time they got into the house, Ceelie was putting the last few pieces of silverware on the table.

“Grub’s ready,” the General announced. “Sue?” he called, and Livvy traipsed out of the kitchen holding a steaming pot. Her face was pink and sweaty, her normally board-straight hair wavy from the steam.