right side, and we shuffle up the driveway like three pallbear-
ers at some kind of weird fitness funeral.
“Where do you want this?” I gasp, and my grandma motions
for us to follow her inside. We struggle up the steps and take
out a chunk of the doorframe with the corner of the machine.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Just watch the walls,” my grandma says, and then heads
up the stairs. “Follow me.” Stairs. Of course. We adjust our
grips and follow her.
Scrape. “Sorry.” Thump. “Sorry.” Scratch. “Sorry.” Nick.
“Sorry.”
It wasn’t pretty, but when you think about it, two good
things just happened: We got the Pilates machine returned
and I got a great idea for my grandma’s Christmas gift.
After a few more hugs and promises to drive safely, my
grandma releases us and we pile into the van. It takes a couple
of tries, but the engine finally starts, farting a grosser than
usual plume of greasy smoke. I guess this trip is starting to
take a toll on all of us, including the van. I whip out of the
driveway and floor it.
“It’s ten fifteen,” I say. “My parents are less than two hours
from home, and Sara said the records go on sale when the
fund-raiser starts at noon. Let’s roll.”
I’m hunched over the wheel. (I don’t know why. It seems
like it makes us go faster, I guess.) Hector is riding shotgun. I
slow at a stop sign and glance at my phone screen,
then over at Hector, who is staring at his.
“Navigator?”
“We’re forty-six miles away from your house,” he
says. “Allowing for headwinds, we should be there
in fifty-eight minutes.” Excellent. That’s almost forty minutes
ahead of my parents. All I have to do is mess up the kitchen
a little so it looks like I’ve been home for a while. No prob-
lem. My mom claims that I can destroy a room by just walking
through it.
Pierce is checking in with the vet’s office about
Lucifer, and Hector is calculating shortcuts that
might shave a few seconds off our route when I feel
the first little jolt. Is it my imagination, or are we
slowing down?
Okay, it’s not my imagination. Hector looks over at me
with a sense of doom in his eyes that I’ve only seen when
the orcs are closing in on level seven of Shoot and Blow
Stuff Up II.
“Dude, what’s going on?” he asks.
“Pull over,” says Pierce. “I smell something.” I limp off the
road onto a wide gravel patch. The engine shudders a couple
of times and then dies. Hector and Pierce rush to the back of
the van. I jump out and tear after them.
“I smell it, too,” says Hector. This is bad.
“What do you smell?” I yell. “Smoke? Melting rubber?”
“I knew it,” says Pierce, kicking at the dirt.
“Knew what? What is it?” I say.
“Indigestion,” says Pierce.
“Machines don’t get indigestion!”
“Dude,” says Pierce. “This engine has been guzzling
Chunky’s hot wing oil for the past two days.”
Hector belches and then agrees. “It’s indigestion.”
Pierce starts pacing and thinking out loud. “This engine
needs french fry grease, and it needs it bad. Who do we know
around here that can help?”
“Around here?” Hector says. “As in, the cornstalk, porch-
sitting, tractor-infested capital of nowhere? Gee, let me check
my contacts.”
“What about calling your grandma?” Pierce asks.
“Great idea,” I say. “In that electric golf cart she drives, she
should be here no later than Wednesday. Look, if I’m not home
by noon, it’s going to take my mom half a second to figure out
that we’ve been driving all over the Midwest for the past two
days. And I can’t lie to her.”
“Take your voice down a couple of octaves and let me
think,” says Pierce. And then he climbs up on top of the van
and sits down.
I’m leaning against a wheel, Pierce is
still on the roof, and Hector is taking a
“Why couldn’t this be a potato field?” Hector says as he zips
up. “Then Pierce could build a potato peeler out of windshield
wipers and seat springs and we could make our own french
fries!” I laugh bitterly and plop down on some weedy grass by
the field and close my eyes.
What seems like two seconds later, I look at my phone and
announce the obvious.
“If we don’t get help soon, we’re screwed,” I say,
and flop back down on the grass.
“Unless . . .” Pierce says.
“Unless what?”
“Unless that happens to be what I think it is.” And
then he scrambles to his feet and points. Way off in the dis-
tance a tiny cloud of dust rises from the road. As it gets closer,
we can see it sort of looks like a car. Or a haystack . . .
“What DO you think it is?” Hector asks. And then it skids
to a stop next to us, spraying gravel and grease everywhere.
I’m not totally sure that I ever believed in miracles, but now
I could be talked into it. I mean, how often does a person wish
for french fries, and then have them show up in a Buick con-
vertible driven by a guy in a hazmat suit? Not that often, I bet.
The guy behind the wheel starts waving his arms, giving
the international signal for “Help! Get me out of these french
fries!” Hector pulls the door open and hazmat guy tumbles out
in an avalanche of golden brown spuds. We drag him over to a
shady spot under a big tree, and he motions for us to give him
a hand. Velcro straps and buckles are released, and I yank the
hood off his head.
Pierce runs over, gives Tim a big, greasy hug, and then
turns to Hector and me and holds up his phone.
“I had one bar of service, so I took a shot. I figured Tim’s
uncle’s house was nearby when we passed the Now Entering
the Middle of Nowhere sign.”
“You guys are lucky that I was still there spraying for
roaches,” says Tim. “No way I would get in a car full of fries
without this suit on.”
In just a few minutes Hector and I have squeezed enough
french fry grease into the fuel tank to get the van running
again. Pierce has been duct-taping old drinking straws
together into a long hose. He feeds one end of it into the fuel
tank, then tapes our fuel funnel onto the other end and fishes
it through the window. Motioning for me to drive, he climbs
in the back with Hector. We all give Tim one final salute, and
then I floor it.
There’s no time to fill up the tank. This is midair
refueling. Pierce and Hector commence french fry
milking into the funnel, and the oil dribbles drop by
drop down the straw hose, out the window, and into
the fuel tank. I watch the fuel gauge shudder back and forth
between Empty and One Drop Above Empty. The odds of this
working are ridiculous. It reminds me of the game Hector and
I used to play when we were kids. We’d imagine an impossibly
huge enemy force, and then one of us would say something
like, “We’re outnumbered, out of time, and the fate of the uni-
verse is in our hands.” Then we’d run around the yard blowing
up the enemy with laser-guided nuclear think rays and other
pretty cool ideas. Then I’d always picture a beautiful girl like
Sara saying something all mushy and flattering about us.
I know exactly where we are now. There’s a sec-
tion of town up ahead where we have to go through
a lot of intersections, and I can’t take the chance
of hitting stoplights. Back when I was learning to
drive, my dad and I would come to this area early on the week-
ends because the huge parking lots are all connected and you
can drive through them without dealing with traffic lights.
“You guys hang on back there,” I yell over my shoulder.
“There may be a couple of turns coming up!”
We pop out of the last parking lot and back onto
the boulevard just as the light behind us turns yel-
low. Yes! The stench of fried potatoes is so thick in
here that I roll down my window to clear my head.
“How’s it going back there?” I yell. No answer.
“Guys?” I take a quick look back and can see Hector squeez-
ing the last drops of oil out of the last handful of fries into the
funnel. He looks ill. Pierce is lying on the floor on a bed of
wrung-out potatoes, his fingers cramped up from milking all
the fries.
“We’re out of fries!” Hector says. “Are we there yet?”
I glance at the clock
and then at the fuel gauge.
“Almost!” The light up ahead turns red, and as I brake, I
notice a blue hybrid two cars in front of us that looks way too
familiar.
“Don’t. Anybody. Move,” I say. When the light turns green,
my dad’s car accelerates through the intersection, and then,
unbelievably, turns into the McDonald’s. I roll past as qui-
etly as a veggie-oil diesel-powered vehicle can, and then dip
behind a cupcake truck for cover. I throw my phone back to
Hector and say, “Quick! Text my mom as me!”
Hector hesitates and then says, “What do you want me to
misspell?”
The last half mile to the school is going by in a blur. I lean
over the wheel like a jockey on a racehorse. Hector is jumping
up and down and Pierce is yelling like a maniac. I come up on
the left of a Subaru and pass him in no time. Then I downshift
and slip to the outside of the pack. I thread between a Chevy
and a Volvo running neck and neck in the middle lanes and
break into the clear. Now I can see the school on the left and I
make my move. Cranking the wheel hard to the left, I send the
van into one of those über-cool sideways drifts and we squeal
to a perfect parallel-parked position right next to the sign-in
table. Pierce busts open the van doors and says,
Some kid across the street at Connor Mattson’s party points
at us and yells, “WAAAUUGHHH!” which roughly translates
into “That was pretty amazing!” D’ijon grabs a disk and slaps
“Frecklestein” on our turntable, totally drowning out the lame
DJ that Mattson hired. Pierce was right. Our song on vinyl
sounds warmer than the digital techno-crap they’re playing
over there, and everybody can hear it. One by one the people
at Mattson’s wander over until his whole party has defected
to our dance, leaving Connor standing in the driveway with
his mom. People are grabbing records as fast as Sara can sell
them. I reach over to give her a squeeze, but some guy waves
a twenty in the air and she almost takes my arm off lunging for
it. Right. Business first.
When the last chords of
“Frecklestein” fade out, every-
body starts cheering and yelling
for us to play it again. You don’t
have to ask Goat Cheese Pizza
twice. Sara, D’ijon, and Autumn
told us to expect to play a set
sometime during the dance, so
when they borrowed my mom’s
banquet table, they hauled our
amps and equipment out here,
too. With help from a couple of
guys, Pierce heaves his drum
kit onto the roof of the van while
Hector and I tune up. The whole thing reminds me a little of a
video my dad showed me once of the Beatles playing on a roof
somewhere a century or so ago. Pierce gives us a count-off
and we lay into the first public performance of “Frecklestein.”
Thought I found a girl, her smile was superfine,
Eyes of sparkling green, her hair like clementines,
Dancing in the dark her moves were serpentine.
Asked her if she’d be my sunshine valentine.
Lying in the night, her body comes to mind,
Tracing dot to dot pale skin along her spine,
Darkness was to her a fragrant ruby wine,
But the rays of sunshine stung like turpentine.
Never saw it coming,
Caught me from behind,
Took her to the beach,
She spread on calamine.
Kissing in the dark,
She gave her lips to mine.
In the light of day,
Her eyes read Quarantine!
Chorus:
Sun bad! I’m Frecklestein.
Sun bad! I’m Frecklestein.
Sun bad! I’m Frecklestein.
Sun bad! I’m Frecklestein.
Once the summer’s rays were warming and benign,
But my love they pierced like quills from porcupines,
Patterns on her epidermis byzantine.
Now I’m in such pain I need an anodyne.
Look it up!
Look it up!
Look it up!
Look it up!
Chorus:
Sun bad! I’m Frecklestein.
Sun bad! I’m Frecklestein.
Sun bad! I’m Frecklestein.
Sun bad! I’m Frecklestein.
Come out in the sun,
Come out in the sun,
Come out in the sun, sweet polka dot,
Come out in the sun and play!
The crowd goes semi-nuts. I guess they liked the studio
version better. Or maybe they’re telling us how crappy we
sound without a bass player, but, whatever. D’ijon jumps up
on the van and kisses Pierce tenderly, Autumn wraps herself
around Hector, and the party closes in around us, cranking
the energy up another notch. Somehow I find Sara and pull
her close to me, which seems like an excellent idea until I feel
the sharp corner of the cash box digging into my ribs.
“Sorry, but I’m the treasurer, and there are hundreds of
dollars in here,” she says with a shrug, and then leans in and
plants a big wet one right on my lips. “Thank you, baby. We
rocked this fund-raiser.” I look around the place and it feels
good, like the dawning of a brave new world—a world where
analog music and freckled children are free to frolic together
in the sunshine.
EPILOGUE
hunky continues to punish customers with his hot wings
in Bloomington,
Indiana. He received his free copy of the
C
record, played it once, and then removed Kickstarter from his
computer browser’s bookmarks.
Fnu Lnu left the record business and found work making
other flat, round things that make people happy.
Thanks to the return of her Pilates machine, Grandma
buffed up in time to place third in the Senior Bodybuilding
quarterfinals.
Dad still talks about his Golden Bite Stick Award with any-
one who happens to be nearby or temporarily wired in place.
He finally decided that he didn’t have a weight problem, he
had a formal wear problem, and solved it by buying a spandex
tux on sale.
Hector’s prize shredder occupies a place of honor in his
room, and occasionally helps out shredding lettuce for his
mom’s chalupa dinners.
After expenses, the fund-raiser made almost eight hun-
dred dollars, which, to our guidance counselor’s delight, Sara,
D’ijon, and Autumn presented to the director of operations at
the Freckled Children’s Home.
Thanks to his old college buddy who works at an ortho-
pedics company in Warsaw, Indiana, Lucifer’s veterinarian
designed, built, and successfully implanted a replacement
hamster hip. Since it would not have been possible to make the
“Frecklestein” record without Lucifer, all but eighty-six of the
one hundred forty-three thousand eight hundred fifty dollars
of the Kickstarter money went toward the operation. Worth it.
Grandma called the night Dad got his award to congratu-
late him and to gently remind him of the times his own dad
had let him off the hook when there was a good reason for it.
Walt took the hint, and in one of the great all-time karmic pay-
backs, he decided to donate a new odometer to the van, which