The Zippy Fix Page 4

  I looked at Willy, who shrugged.

  “Guess not,” I said.

  “Never mind.” Uncle Scoop waved us toward the back of the truck. “It’s easy. Come inside. I show you.”

  “You mean I can work, too?” Willy asked.

  “Sure. I need good men in here.”

  Willy flexed his muscles.

  Uncle Scoop chuckled and handed me and Willy thin vinyl gloves, then turned on the ice machine. Within minutes, we were experts. “This is easy,” I said, pouring strawberry syrup over a cone that Willy had just packed with ice.

  A few minutes later Uncle Scoop nodded toward the beach. “Here they come.”

  Hunger drove starving swimmers up from the beach like carpenter ants. In minutes we had our hands full. Uncle Scoop cooked up hamburgers, hot dogs, and plate lunches. Willy and I packed one shave ice after another—red, yellow, green, orange, blue, purple, and three-color rainbows.

  An hour later, the crowd started to thin out.

  “Whew.” Uncle Scoop took off his cap and dabbed his sweating forehead with a paper napkin. “Can you two watch the truck for a minute? I need go bat’troom.”

  “We can do it, Uncle Scoop.”

  “Sure,” Willy added.

  Uncle Scoop took his apron off and headed over to the pavilion, where the bathrooms were. For a moment I imagined that Willy was my partner, and the Lucky Lunch was our business. I liked it.

  Two boys walked up and ordered shave ice, one yellow and one red. It took us less than a minute to make them. We were pro salesmen now.

  “That will be two dollars,” I said, as if I’d been in the shave ice business all my life. I took their five-dollar bill and gave them three dollars back. “Thank you. Come again.”

  The boys raised their chins like, Yeah-sure.

  “I never made change before,” I said, more to myself than to Willy. It was so easy to make money with a lunch truck. Maybe when I grow up I might have one, too.

  A cackling laugh snapped me out of my daydream.

  “Bwahahahaha…” Snort-snort. “Bwaaahaha! Look what Uncle Scoop wen’ drag up! Bwaha-haha…” Snort!

  “Aw, man,” I mumbled.

  17

  Two Reds and

  One Blue

  Tito almost choked on his own cackle.

  He slapped his leg and staggered around, laughing and snorting and pointing at me and Willy. Bozo and Frankie Diamond were laughing, too, but not like somebody with a golf ball for a brain.

  I glanced toward the pavilion, hoping to see Uncle Scoop coming back.

  No such luck.

  Tito finally got control of himself. “Hey, let’s have a shave ice,” he said to Bozo and Frankie Diamond. “I never had one made by midgets before.”

  Bozo bounced on his toes. “Yeah cool, Tito, cool. Hey you midgets, make me one blue one. Put plenny juice on top, too, ah, no cheat.”

  Frankie Diamond half snorted.

  I didn’t get Frankie Diamond. He didn’t seem like a Tito-Bozo kind of guy. He didn’t seem that dumb.

  “I’ll take a red one,” Tito said. “What you like, Frankie?”

  “Red.”

  Tito turned back to us. “Two reds and one blue, and make um good like Bozo tell.”

  Were they serious, or just joking around?

  “Hey, Coco-cans,” Tito said. “Whose birfday you was talking about back at the store? You going buy um cake and pointy hats, or what?”

  “Pointy hats!” Bozo cackled, cracking up. “Pointy hats!”

  Dingbats.

  “It’s for Stella,” Willy said. “Not that you’d know her.”

  Tito looked at me, his face brightening. “Stella? You mean the girl who live with you?”

  Tito had met her once, and flipped over her.

  I ignored him.

  “Stel-lah,” Tito said again, dreamily. “What day’s her birfday? I might bring her something, too.”

  Oh, no! Stella would kill me if he showed up again. Last time, he brought her a bag of cuttlefish. She thought they were bugs. “It’s Monday,” I said. “But don’t come over. We won’t be there, we’re going to… uh, a movie.”

  Tito nodded. “Monday. Good. I come then, say happy birfday, bring her something nice. She likes me, ah? Remember?” Tito flicked his eyebrows.

  “Whatever,” I mumbled.

  “Whatchoo waiting for? Where’s that shave ice?”

  I turned the ice shaver on and stuck a hunk of ice on it. Willy packed the shavings into three cones that sat in a cone holder. We made two reds and one blue.

  I handed them down. “Three dollars, please.”

  Tito gave me a squint. “What? You don’t make um free for friends?”

  I pointed to the price list. “One dollar each.”

  Tito frowned and pulled out a wad of dollar bills.

  A huge wad of dollar bills.

  My face felt suddenly hot. I could almost feel fire flaming out of my ears. Tito had all that money and he had to steal ten of my cans?

  He peeled off three one-dollar bills and started to hand them up to me. But then he stopped and folded the money back into his fist. “Oh, look,” he said, making a surprised face. “I wanted blue, like Bozo’s. You made mines wrong.”

  I shook my head. “No, you said red.”

  Tito smiled. “No, I said blue.”

  Bozo giggled. Frankie Diamond turned away, shaking his head.

  I looked at Willy, who shrugged. “Just make him another one.”

  No way, I thought. “You said red, Tito. Two reds and one blue, right, Willy?”

  Willy shrugged again. “That’s what I heard,” he mumbled.

  Tito stepped closer and whispered, “You don’t make it right, I ain’t paying you nothing, how’s about that?” He stuffed the three dollars back into his pocket.

  I made him another one. Blue. And while I made it, Tito nipped big hunks off his red one.

  I handed Tito the blue shave ice.

  Now he had one in each hand.

  “Three dollars,” I said again.

  “Hey, Bozo. Pay um for me, ah? My hands are full.”

  Bozo took his own fat wad of dollar bills out. He peeled off three of them and paid Willy.

  Now my face really got hot. All that money! “You should pay for that one, too,” I said, pointing to the red one. “Since you’re eating it.”

  Tito cocked his head, pretending he was considering my suggestion. “I don’t think so, Coco-dork, because listen … if you make a mistake, you should pay for it yourself, right? Not the customer. You never heard of the customer is always right?”

  Bozo nudged Tito with his elbow.

  Tito turned.

  Bozo nodded toward the pavilion.

  Uncle Scoop was coming back.

  “We go,” Tito said.

  They hurried off.

  Frankie Diamond glanced once over his shoulder as I took a dollar out of my own pocket and put it in the cash drawer.

  When I looked up, Tito, Bozo, and Frankie Diamond were nowhere in sight.

  18

  Cost of Doing Business

  “How’d it go?” Uncle Scoop asked, climbing back into the lunch truck.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Make any money?”

  “Some.”

  Uncle Scoop put one hand on my shoulder and the other on Willy’s. “You two have quite a knack for working with people.”

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to shake off the junk feeling of getting robbed, twice. Seemed I had a knack for that, too.

  “Hey,” someone said. “Mr. Scoop.”

  When I saw who it was, I got steamed all over again.

  Frankie Diamond. Alone.

  He glanced over his shoulder as he walked up.

  Uncle Scoop grabbed his order pad. “What can I get for you?”

  “I don’t want anything. I just need to … to say something.” He glanced over his shoulder again.

  Uncle Scoop rested his arms on the counter. “W
hat’s up?”

  “Well… see … a few minutes ago, you weren’t here, but those two were, and I was here with two guys and we ordered three shave ice. My friend said they made his cone wrong and made them make it again.”

  Uncle Scoop nodded. “Okay.”

  “But they didn’t make it wrong,” Frankie went on. “They made it right… so my friend got two shave ice for the price of one.”

  “I see,” Uncle Scoop said, keeping his eyes on Frankie Diamond.

  Frankie pointed his chin at me. “That kid there? He paid for the second shave ice out of his own pocket.”

  Uncle Scoop raised his eyebrows. “Why are you telling me this, son?”

  Frankie shrugged. “Because I seen that kid pay with his own money.” Frankie looked at me, then back at Uncle Scoop. “I guess I just thought you should know that.”

  Uncle Scoop reached down to shake Frankie’s hand. “You’re right. Thank you for telling me.”

  Frankie hesitated, then reached up and shook. He left quickly.

  Uncle Scoop watched him hurry away. “Now, that’s something you boys won’t see every day.”

  When Frankie got to the end of the lane he looked back once, then slipped around the corner.

  Uncle Scoop took a dollar out of the cash drawer. “This is your money, not mine.”

  “But—”

  “Call it the cost of doing business. Sometimes you lose a little money. But you did exactly the right thing, Calvin. A customer complained and you fixed it… but you sure didn’t have to pay for it with your own money.”

  I looked at the dollar bill, which I needed… a lot. I stuffed it into my pocket. “Thanks, Uncle Scoop.”

  Uncle Scoop yawned. “I think I’m going to pack it in, boys. So let’s see … how long did you work?”

  I turned to Willy. “An hour?”

  Willy shrugged. “I forgot to look at a clock.”

  Uncle Scoop waved it off. “Doesn’t matter. I give you five bucks each. How’s that?”

  “Wow!” That was way more than I’d expected.

  “Double wow!” Willy said.

  Uncle Scoop gave us each a five-dollar bill from his cash drawer. “You boys come help me again sometime, huh?”

  “For sure! We like to work, right, Willy?”

  “Yeah. Lucky we ran into you, Uncle Scoop.”

  Uncle Scoop laughed. “I don’t call this rat-trap Lucky Lunch for nothing.”

  19

  Scratching Out

  the Numbers

  Willy and I headed over to where the stream spilled its rusty water into the clean turquoise bay.

  I shook my head, studying the crisp five-dollar bill Uncle Scoop had given me. “Can you believe he paid us this much?”

  “We’re rich!”

  Willy and I slipped down a sandy hill into the shallow water. Dusty river silt puffed out around our feet as we dragged them along the bottom.

  Willy pulled his five-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Here. Add this to what you have.”

  “No, Willy, that’s yours.”

  “Take it. You can pay me back later.”

  Ho, I thought. This new kid was going to be one of my best friends ever, like Julio, Rubin, and Maya. “Thanks, Willy. Thanks a lot. But it’s just a loan, okay?”

  Willy nodded toward shore. “Let’s go home and add it all up.”

  We headed back to our street, and to our fort in the jungle across from my house. It was a sand pit covered by jungle trash, and nobody but me, Willy, Julio, and Maya knew it was there. We slid down into it and lit up the candle.

  I took all my coins and crumpled bills out and set them on the cardboard box we used as a table.

  “Fourteen dollars and sixty-six cents.”

  “Ho, man, did we get rich today! Not too much more to make eighteen dollars.”

  “Yup.”

  We headed back to my house.

  Willy had never seen my room before. He’d been in our kitchen, our yard, and out on the river in my red skiff. But my room was brand-new to him.

  “Cool,” he said. “I like it.”

  It wasn’t much, but one wall was made of lava rocks, which you don’t always see. It was full of cracks and crevices where centipedes hid when it rained. The other three walls were wood. But that wall was bug city.

  “It used to be part of the garage.”

  “I like it.”

  “I got every kind of bug you can think of in here.” I closed the door and locked it. “Plus it’s private.”

  “How come you locked the door?”

  “Girls.”

  “What girls?”

  “Okay, one girl.”

  Willy scrunched his eyes. Huh?

  “Trust me,” I said.

  He shrugged and picked up the glossy black-and-white photo of Little Johnny Coconut, my dad. Just like Stella’s picture of her mom, it was autographed: Love ya, big guy, Dad xo.

  “You look like him … sort of.”

  “He lives in Las Vegas.”

  “Why?”

  “He and my mom split up. He’s an entertainer.”

  “My mom said he’s a big star.”

  “I guess.”

  Willy put the picture back. “So, how much more money do you need?”

  I found a dull pencil and scratched out the numbers. “Three dollars and thirty-four cents.”

  “Well, we still have tomorrow.”

  I nodded. “Yeah … but I’m out of ideas.”

  We both flinched when someone pounded on the door.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! “Open up!” The doorknob rattled. “I know you’re in there!” Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  20

  Can’t Hide

  “Now you see why I lock it?”

  Willy stepped away from the door.

  Bam! Bam! “Open up, or I might have to give you some Texas Nice!”

  “What’s Texas Nice?” Willy whispered.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Open this door!”

  I sighed. “All right, all right, cool your jets.”

  “Who is it?” Willy whispered.

  “Stella.”

  “Is she mad about something? What does she want?”

  “To spout off. Watch.”

  I unlocked the door and opened it.

  Stella was leaning into the door frame. She smirked, as if saying, You can’t hide from me, you little ant.

  “What?” I said.

  “Your mom just called. She has to work an extra hour. Which means I have to make you dinner and feed your disappointing body. You have to go find Darci and bring her home … now. Any questions?”

  “No.”

  Stella looked over my shoulder at Willy. “You again. Who are you, anyway?”

  Willy stood frozen. “Uh …”

  “He’s Willy Wolf,” I said. “He’s from California.”

  Stella’s eyebrows went up. “Well, at least he’s from someplace you wear shoes.”

  Willy gulped.

  Stella squinted at him a moment, then turned back to me. “So what are you waiting for, honey, go find your sister.”

  She winked and smooched out her lips.

  I closed the door and locked it. “That is why I lock my door.”

  Willy’s mouth worked like a fish, as if the words inside were afraid to come out until they were safely out of Stella’s range.

  I laughed. “Don’t worry. I got her wrapped around my little finger.”

  Willy ran a hand over his face. “She’s scary.”

  “Sssstf” someone hissed.

  We turned and looked behind us. Julio was leaning into the window screen, his hands cupped around his eyes. “Who’s in there?”

  “Heyyy,” I said. “You’re back.”

  “Yeah. Come out.”

  I inched open the door and peeked into the garage. When I was sure Stella wasn’t there, we slipped out to join Julio.

  Out on the road we came across two dead toads, flattened by cars and
dried by the sun. I picked one up and flung it like a Frisbee. It sailed out and clattered back onto the road twenty feet ahead of us. “So, Julio, how’s your day been?”

  “Boring.”

  “Too bad. Me and Willy had a good one.

  Hey, you seen Darci anywhere?

  I have to find her.”

  “Reena’s house. In the yard.”

  I wasn’t in any hurry. The longer I took to bring Darci home, the less I had to listen to Stella.

  “So what was so good about today?” Julio asked.

  I patted my back pocket, where one day I would have a wallet filled with money. “We got rich.”

  “What?”

  “Rich, like money. I have to buy Stella a birthday present.”

  When we reached the dried toad, Julio kicked it, and it clacked farther up the street. “How rich?”

  “Fourteen dollars and sixty-six cents rich.”

  Julio whistled.

  I stopped and grabbed his arm. “Hey, you got any pop cans at your house?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s go look.”

  Four. They were in a grocery bag in Julio’s garage. Rinsed. Clean. No roaches, no ants.

  “Twenty cents’ worth,” Julio said. “You can have them.”

  We headed back to Kalapawai Market to cash them in. Just before we got there I stopped. “Julio, go inside and see if Tito’s there. If he’s not, wave us in. If he is, tell him to have a nice day and run.”

  “What?”

  I shoved him toward the store. “Be brave.”

  21

  WeedS

  “The next day, Sunday, I got up around noon. Luckily, Tito hadn’t been at Kalapawai, and my pile of cash had grown twenty cents higher.

  I yawned and stretched. Making money sure took a lot out of you. I went into the house.

  Mom was in the kitchen peeling a tangerine for Darci. “Well,” she said. “I was just about to go out and see if you were still on this planet.”

  I scratched my head and grabbed the orange juice from the fridge.

  “Use a glass.”

  I found one on the counter.

  “That one’s dirty.”

  I looked into it. A curve of dried milk edged the bottom. Clean enough. I poured juice into it and gulped it down.