The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky (12 page)

“Gus!” I shout, racing toward the house with the old motor in my hand. “Can you make this thing work again? Think about how it could make our company come to life!”

While Gus is busy trying to figure out how to make the Widow Hollis's old motors—gas
and
electric motors, from lawn mowers and vacuum cleaners and carousel microwaves and Weedwackers—cough back into working order, I use springs from her garage to add leaves to flowers and antennae to a giant new monarch butterfly that both ripple when the winter wind skips past.

We're attaching the butterfly to the bouquet on the chimney when Lexie and Victoria ride by, their bicycle tires making gravel pop. When Victoria and Lexie pause to eyeball our latest additions, I remember that we're getting deep into December, closer to the reevaluation the House Beautification Committee promised. And I feel like the time I have left to work on my house is too small—like a crowded elevator, filled with hard walls and elbows and umbrellas that jab your ribs if you're not careful.

As soon as Gus lets out a triumphant whoop, announcing that he's figured out how to raise the Widow Hollis's motors back from the dead, I jump at the chance to start dreaming up new figures—powered by far more than just the wind, this time.

Together, we make a girl who's wearing a wig as silky and straight and perfect as Victoria's hair, and her little motor allows her to constantly twirl her hair around her finger. We make a man sitting on an old bicycle—like Weird Harold's dad—and hook up a motor that makes his feet turn the pedals. We make two people with napkins tucked into the tops of their shirts, who are fighting over a wishbone; motors make their arms shift back and forth in their struggle.

My favorite of all our moving people are the three girls who are jumping rope, because looking at them reminds me of recess. Two girls are holding the ends of the long rope, and their motors constantly raise their arms up and down while the third girl waits for the perfect moment to come racing in. I can almost hear the songs they'd chant while jumping.

As time marches still closer to Christmas, Gus and I add white lights to the railing on our porch and a wreath with a red bow to the gate on our fence. The rest of the neighbors stop sprucing up their own houses long enough to light candles in their windows. They put down hammers and drills and pick up knitting needles in order to make mufflers for gifts. They pick up whisks to stir cookies, glue guns to make ornaments.

Irma Jean sews about twenty red felt hats, like the one Santa wears. When I eye her, confused, she says, “For the figures in your yard,” in a way that lets me and Gus both know how much she's been enjoying watching our yard come to life.

On Christmas Eve, I put on Mom's latest gift—a red velvet dress with long sleeves and a plaid sash—and Gus and I head to Montgomery, where the all-purpose room is completely decked out for the service. Chuck has even gone so far as to put up a Christmas tree, decorated with red ribbons and white lights. The smell of pine fills the room—it's almost the same smell as paint, I think. Like Montgomery has been fixed up, even though the school board said it would take too much money.

Chuck seems a little quiet tonight. But he brightens when he sees me and Gus. He shakes Gus's hand, and they share a few happy words about the holidays. When Gus asks, “Will we be seeing some rebuilding in the new year?” Chuck's face falls behind a shadow.

“I've tallied up the earnings from the rummage sale. But I'm still waiting to hear back from some businesses I've appealed to. Construction companies, that sort of thing,” Chuck admits.

Chuck's tone gives me an awful off-kilter feeling. But before I can say anything to Gus about it, Chuck waves his arms, encouraging us all to come in close together, like a giant hug. Soon, we're standing, and we're all holding hands, and we're singing “O Holy Night.” Everybody's voices blend together like drops of water, until the carol forms a river. As we're singing together, we float happily, straight toward Christmas day.

Gus and I unwrap our Christmas presents—new drawing paper and pencils for me, along with cologne that makes me feel grown-up and beautiful. And the new small toolbox I bought with my saved-up allowance for Gus—the one with the smooth wooden handle. And a picture I drew of the two of us, which looks a little like the pictures hanging in Ms. Dillbeck's hallway. I've put the picture in an old frame I found in the Widow Hollis's shed and painted up fresh, a different color on each side. Because everyone knows that pictures in frames are special.

Gus likes the picture the best and rushes to hang it in our living room, over the couch.

He keeps pausing to admire it the next few days, even as we're back up to our eyebrows in making new figures. He cocks his head and stares at it in a way that always makes
me
pause, because I love to watch Gus's face melt into pride and pure happiness.

As the year starts to behave like a windup toy grinding down to a halt, I hear a bicycle bell that makes me shove my face right in the window of our front room. Looking outside, I realize Lexie's leaning against our fence out front, staring at the Widow Hollis's old aluminum kitchen table, which is now the site of a birthday party—like the party I had back in the fourth grade. The entire table is surrounded by a group of friends, all of them with cone-shaped party hats on their heads. One boy at the table has a motor that raises his arm to his mouth as he eats a big triangle of pepperoni pizza. Another is blowing a noisemaker. Yet another is so into his birthday cake, he's got bright blobs of icing smeared all over his cheeks.

I wonder, for a moment, if Lexie recognizes herself at the table—she's the girl with the giant twists of wild, coiled rope for hair. I want to tell her, so I race out the front door.

She's so into looking at our company that she doesn't realize I'm standing on the porch.

I smile as her head moves from one area of the yard to the other, taking in the newest members of our company. She eyes a circle of kids sitting cross-legged, because they're in the midst of a round of duck, duck, goose. She stares at the boy made of old copper pipes, whose motor raises his body to his feet as he starts to chase the girl running at full speed, her pigtails flying behind her, because she has named him the “goose.”

She stares, too, at the old corrugated tin we've used to create a group of girls holding hands as they jump around in a circle, because they're playing ring-around-the-rosy. And at the old chain-link fence and a whole collection of rusted tools we've used to build two teams who are having a tug-of-war with a thick rope.

Lexie tilts her head, eyeing a man and a woman we've made out of twisted bed rails, who have their arms wrapped around each other because they're dancing. And two coatracks that have become a couple holding hands, stacks of oil cans that are now the body of a boy who's whispering sweet confessions into a girl's ear—the girl who's listening has wide eyes and her lips are in a big round
O
because she's so surprised.

The way she eyes my work makes me feel even prettier, somehow, than my new dress from Mom did on Christmas Eve.

“Lexie!” I call as a flash causes both of us to jump. From the side of the yard, Victoria takes another picture, making her flash wash over our yard again.

“Hi, Auggie,” Victoria calls as she drops her camera into her backpack and starts to peddle away.

Before she steers her own bike away from the house, Lexie's eyes go right back to the party at the table, and I swear, she zeroes in on the girl with the hair. I think she knows it's her. And she gets this look on her face—the kind of look I haven't seen since the two of us used to spend time at our wishing spot.

“It really looks like she's painting,” Weird Harold tells me on the last day of winter break. He's leaning against our front gate, staring at our yard. His breath explodes out into the air as he talks.

“Thanks,” I say, beaming like a thousand-watt lightbulb. Somehow, getting a compliment on my company is better than having a teacher tell me I'm clever, or overhearing a couple of girls in the bathroom saying that I really am kind of pretty, despite my crazy hair.

The last person we added, just yesterday afternoon (the same one that Weird Harold is staring at in admiration), is a girl who loves to paint the outdoors. She's standing in front of an easel that holds a big tile with an outdoor design on it. Gus and I have put a piece of wood cut like an artist's palette in one of her hands and a paintbrush in the other. I've even added an old beret to the top of her head.

“I love the way that none of the people in your yard look like they've ever wanted to be anywhere else,” Weird Harold says. It's the prettiest thing he's ever said to me. Right then, everything seems calm and perfect, for a little while.

But then, Harold nudges me. “You get your mail yet?”

The warm cocoa he'd put in my stomach turns into a popsicle. “Why?”

“It came. To my house,” Harold confesses.

“The reevaluation?” I screech.

He nods.

“It's already come?” I remember the flash from Victoria's camera, and get hot and cold all over. I hadn't expected the reevaluation to be just another picture taken back to the committee. Somehow, I'd been expecting something loud and full of trumpets—like a parade.

He doesn't even get his entire second nod in when I start to race across the street, to our mailbox, where I find our own notice from the House Beautification Committee. My throat feels clamped off as I tear open the envelope:

 

ATTENTION
AUGUST JONES

An Individual Residing at 779 Sunshine Street
Willow Grove, Missouri

Following our reassessment, we have deemed the property located at the above address to be in violation of the following city ordinances:

1. Inoperable Machinery on Premises

2. Improper Maintenance of Property

3. Abundance of Trash on Property

The previous twenty-dollar ($20) per-day fines have accumulated to nine hundred dollars ($900).

Due to additional violations and recent accumulation of trash, Mr. August Jones, property owner, will hereby be fined one hundred dollars ($100) each day the property remains in violation.

Payment can be made at City Hall.

Thank you,

The House Beautification Committee

(Making our city beautiful, one house at a time.)

 

I feel sick. Trash? They think we live around
trash
?

I glance back at my front yard, at the painting girl that Harold had just been admiring. How can this be?

“Trash?” I ask Harold, finally managing to say the word out loud. “Trash is stacked up, piled high—like at McGunn's. How can figures like ours, that we've turned into something wonderful, be trash? And we
don't
have inoperable machinery—look! Our motors move! According to this, they even fined us during all that time they were reevaluating. How can that be fair?”

Weird Harold takes a deep breath. “You're finally starting to ask some of the right questions,” he tells me.

Our doorbell starts ringing like crazy early the next morning—the first day I'm headed back to school. It feels like a finger jabbing into my stomach, waking me from a sleep so deep I have to stagger down the stairs.

When I get to the open door and lean groggily against Gus's side, I find Mrs. Pike standing on our glittering walk in her chenille robe. “Have you
seen
this, Gus?” she asks, rattling her copy of the morning paper. On the front page of the Local section is a picture of our house. And the headline, “House Beautification Committee Targets Eyesores.”

My shock over the story is a ripple that starts at the top of my head and races straight down to my toes. My eyes widen and my heart revs; I'm completely awake now.

“I got another note yesterday—
charging
us fines, this time,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I keep the toys in the garage. I painted the swing set. Irma Jean made new swing cushions and even some curtains for the little windows in our garage door. I don't know what they want. It's not like I can go buy brand-new everything.”

I slide the paper out of Gus's hands. I groan, instantly too sick to my stomach to read so much as the first sentence. Because our house is pictured right there on the front page. And I wonder how Mom would ever want to come back to this, her childhood home being called an eyesore.