Lucky Breaks by Patron Susan

Author:Patron, Susan [Patron, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2009-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

16. a jackhammer

The mail truck pulled up at the Hard Pan post office each week-day at ten fifteen, and everyone hung around outside, waiting for the Captain to distribute the mail to the P.O. boxes. This gave people a chance to get the latest news and check around to see who might have whatever they needed to borrow.

When HMS Beagle and Brigitte met Lucky at the bus drop-off after school, and Lincoln and Miles went in search of a soccer ball, Lucky discovered that Chesterfield had visited more than one Hard Pan resident. Brigitte reported what she’d heard at the post office that morning.

It turned out that the burro was front-page headlines in Hard Pan, and it wasn’t his first visit. He’d come around before but usually didn’t bray; normally he was pretty silent. Some people were concerned that he would eat their gardens or destroy their property, others were worried that he would bring some weird disease-carrying flies into town, and everyone agreed that his braying this time was loud enough to raise the dead.

Short Sammy, who Lucky felt sure would have defended Chesterfield, had been at work during this post office discussion, clearing litter from his adopted highway. But his absence gave the other residents a chance to compare notes on Sammy’s mysterious box once the topic of the burro had been thoroughly hashed over.

“I am going to speak to him about this,” Brigitte told Lucky now as they walked toward home along the deserted main road. “To everyone who ask him, Sammy will say only that it is a surprise. But I want to be sure he is okay.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of musical instrument,” Lucky said, thinking of how much Short Sammy enjoyed playing his guitar, wanting the box not to be a casket.

“Non. It cannot be a musical instrument.”

“Why not?”

Instead of taking the short cut across the rear of the Captain’s property, vacant lots sprouting low bushes, they continued walking the long way, on the paved street. Brigitte met Lucky at the bus stop most days if it wasn’t too hot, so she could use up calories as a way of not getting fat.

“Because he ask to borrow the jackhammer of Klincke Ken.” Klincke Ken lived on disability, which meant he got a check every month on account of his bad back and not being able to get a job. Lucky figured his parents must have been kind of confused, because his first name, which you pronounced “Clinky,” sounded like some brand of tool, and his last name, Ken, made you think it was a first name. Anyway, no one ever called him plain Klincke or plain Ken, they always called him by both names, Klincke Ken. Before his back went bad, Klincke Ken had been a handyman-carpenter, and he still had a shed filled with tools that he loaned out to people in exchange for a six-pack of Bud Light or a homemade pie.

“What’s Short Sammy need a jackhammer for?” Lucky asked.

“This is what Klincke Ken ask him.

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