June Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny Read online

  “But there’s plenty of farms, still,” June said. “Nothing but farms.”

  “Nothing but,” Moses repeated.

  June realized that the houses were getting farther apart now that they were past the silo and the grain elevator. They hadn’t seen one other person after they passed the coffee shop and hardware store. The whole town seemed dusty and deserted, which made it look even more like an old movie or TV show, maybe a gunslinging Western.

  “When are we getting downtown?” June asked.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” Moses grinned. “That was downtown. Now we’re headed out again.”

  June turned around in her seat. “But there wasn’t even a gas station.”

  “Nope.” Moses swung the truck around to the left. “Gotta go to Masonville for gas. People used to have their own gas pumps on the farm, you know, for the machinery.”

  “Cool.” June loved the idea of pumping her own private gas, not that she’d ever pumped gas in her life. “How come they don’t anymore?”

  “It’s against the law.” Moses parked the truck at the back of a one-story building with white siding. “Those gas tanks crack when they get old and make underground oil spills. Bad for the crops and bad for the bees. What’s bad for them is bad for people too. The canary in the mine, that’s what you are, my friend.”

  June realized that Moses was speaking to the bee on the visor, though she had no idea what he was talking about. The bee started buzzing around the cab again and June pulled Indigo close.

  “It’s all right.” Moses pushed open his door with a loud squeak. “You can come out now, Floyd.”

  “Floyd? You name them? How can you tell them apart?” asked June as Floyd buzzed out the door.

  “I can’t,” Moses whispered, as if he didn’t want Floyd to hear him. “I call all of them Floyd, except for Her Majesty, of course.”

  “Her Majesty?”

  “Her Majesty, the Queen.”

  June laughed and reached for the passenger door. Now that Floyd had left the vehicle, things felt a lot less risky. She knew that she was never supposed to get in a car with a stranger, but it wasn’t her fault that you couldn’t get a taxi around here. June walked to the side of the truck. Now that she was closer, she saw the beehive built into the side of the truck under the window box. It was a fairly large rectangular box with a narrow opening at the bottom for the the bees, who were beginning to fly out. June tried not to panic, but she soon realized that all the Floyds seemed quite intent on getting to work and paid no attention to June and Indigo.

  “That’s a good smell, isn’t it?” Moses called out from the other side of the truck. “Can you smell the honey?”

  June could smell something—she just hadn’t known what she was smelling. It wasn’t exactly the same as honey from a jar; it was sweet and somehow warming, even though the day was cool.

  “Leaping Liberace,” June said slowly. She took a step closer, and Indigo sniffed loudly and put his nose in the air the way he did when she scratched behind his ears.

  “Good, huh?” Moses said. He came around to their side of the truck and when June saw him she couldn’t help but stare—Moses was in a wheelchair!

  “You— You—” Indigo nudged her in the stomach. She didn’t mean to be rude!

  “I’m in a wheelchair.” Moses smiled. “Surely they have those in New York City?”

  June flushed. “Of course, I’m sorry, it’s just that . . .” Moses didn’t look offended, so she took a deep breath and went on. “You were driving.”

  “I’ve driven since I got my license at fifteen and a half, and I’ve been in a chair since I was five years old and got polio.” Moses turned his chair around and went back to the driver’s side. “Come over here and I’ll show you how this rig works.”

  Moses opened the door and pointed at the steering wheel. “Do you know how to drive yet?”

  “No,” June said. “I’ve never even tried.”

  “Well, this truck is made special order for folks like me. See that handle next to the steering wheel? I can do everything with my hands: gas, brakes, the works!”

  “I don’t even know how to drive with hands and feet,” said June.

  “I’ll tell you what’s even better than being able to drive with my hands,” Moses said. “This wheelchair carrier!”

  Moses pointed out some hardware mounted behind the driver’s seat. “I strap my chair in behind the seat when I’m driving. Then I can just take it down when I arrive. Those hooks are operated by remote control, so I just hook up the chair and guide it out. The motor lowers it out of the truck, no problem.”

  “No problem?” June asked.

  “It’s actually kind of fun.” Moses reached up for a remote control that she now saw was attached by Velcro to the side of his seat. He pressed a button, and one of the straps started to lower so that he could reach it easily. “It works the same way in reverse. I can run the whole operation from the driver’s seat. The wheelchair folds up and fits back there. I’ll show you later if you’d like.” Moses pressed another button, and the strap whirred back into place. Then Moses shut the door and turned his chair to face June. “I’m kind of like a turtle,” he said. “I live in the cabin on the back of the truck, and keep everything I need right inside the shell. Designed the whole thing myself.”

  June and Indigo looked at each other, impressed. Moses wheeled around to the beehive and sat directly in front of it, watching the bees go in and out.

  “That hive needs to be emptied pretty soon,” Moses said, as June and Indigo joined him (keeping a few feet back from the bees). “Too much honey and they’ll leave the hive. Swarm. Once a bee colony fills a hive with honey, they figure that their work is done. But they seem to like it here pretty well. It’s the only mobile beehive in the state, far as I know.”

  June and Indigo looked at each other. It was true—they had just traveled inside a beehive. All of a sudden June felt like she had no time to lose.

  She turned to Moses. “Where’s the drop box?”

  “Right over there.” Moses pointed at a large metal box near the back door that looked like a giant’s mailbox painted yellow instead of blue. June ran over with Indigo skittering behind her. She pulled on the handle, which opened easily. She went up on her tiptoes, but just like a real mailbox, it was pitch-dark inside. Moses was watering his window box with a small tin can attached to the truck by a string.

  “How do I get inside?” June yelled across the parking lot. “I can’t see anything!”

  Moses didn’t answer. She ran over to him, “Please, Moses. I have to get in there. Something of mine got put in there this morning and I have to get it back.”

  “Happens all the time,” Moses said. “People don’t clean their rooms, and Mom threatens she’s going to put it in the trash. But of course, she doesn’t—not the first time, not the second time, but the third time—”

  “My mom’s dead,” June said flatly. “She and my dad both died when I was three.”

  Moses looked at June, then up at the clouds stretching a thin layer of horsetails across the sky. “There I go again, Moses the Bigmouth, rattling on when I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about.” He gave a big sigh and tugged on his suspenders, which hung loose against his shirt front. Moses looked June right in the eye. “Will you forgive me for being so foolish?”

  “Of course, of course I will,” she said, wishing he wouldn’t make such a big deal about it. “They died a long time ago. It’s just—” June stopped talking and Moses waited. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell him. “It’s just that my mom’s Penny Book got put in there by my aunt, without my permission, and I have to get it back.”

  “Her Penny Book?” Moses raised an eyebrow. He stowed the watering can inside a metal storage box built into the side of the truck. “See you later, Floyd,” he said to the bees, and wheeled toward the back door of the building, pulling a ring of keys from his pocket. “We can get into the drop box, don’t worry, in fa
ct we have to—that’s one of my jobs. Before I leave for the day, always sort through the drop box.”

  Moses went up the ramp and opened the back door of the shop, and when the light flicked on overhead, June saw a jumble of garbage bags with clothes spilling out under a long table. Moses gave her an embarrassed smile. “I’m not quite as meticulous as the bees, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s fine,” June said impatiently. “Please, Mr. Moses—”

  “Moses. Everyone calls me Moses.”

  “Do you have a key to the drop box, sir? Moses? Can we just look?”

  “Sure we can. I’ll just open up the front—” He looked at her face. “Well, maybe we’ll open a little late today.”

  It seemed to take forever for Moses to go back across the parking lot and fit another key from his enormous key ring into the slot at the back of the drop box, which opened the back like a miniature door. The lock was a little sticky, and Moses reached down to push against the bottom of the door in a familiar way to open it. Loose clothes were crammed on top of one another, along with a pair of boots, the mud still damp. Moses started piling everything into a plastic bin he had brought back out with him.

  “Muddy boots?” June asked, when Moses tossed them to the side so that they wouldn’t get mud on the clothes donations.

  Moses shrugged. “Some people feel pretty free to leave strange things in a box in a parking lot.” He glanced over at the boots, lying on their sides on the asphalt. “Nothing wrong with ’em. One wipe with a damp rag and they’re good to go.”

  June started pulling clothes out, a little afraid of what she might find, but she wasn’t about to let Moses do all the work. More clothes, a torn paper bag filled with plastic toys, another grocery bag with paperback mysteries spilling out, and toward the bottom a layer of pamphlets from the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  “Do you resell all this?”

  “We sort it, try to put it to good use. What we can’t sell goes one place or another.” He gave a sigh. “Some has to go to the dump in the end. But there’s people picking over the dump as well, and lots of great finds end up in the town dump.” He brightened. “That’s where me and the Floyds park the truck every night, up the hill off Dump Road. People like to tease me about living at the dump, but I get first dibs on everything, and unless the wind’s blowing wrong, it doesn’t smell a bit!”

  June had never been to a town dump in her life. In New York, at least at the Dakota, the garbage just sort of disappeared. Maybe it went to New Jersey or out to sea. Either way was kind of awful to think about, and it made her feel funny that she had never really thought about it before. They had reached the end of the pile of clothes and the drop box was empty. She started clawing through the bin again. Maybe she had missed the Penny Book, maybe . . . no.

  She looked at Moses. “Aunt Bridget said she put it in here this morning.”

  “I’m sorry.” Moses looked down at the pile of donations. “If she said this morning, it should be in here, that’s for sure.”

  June froze. “She’s a liar,” she said slowly. “She’s a liar and she hates me.”

  Indigo and Moses both looked shocked.

  “She has to be lying!” June insisted. “It would be here. She just doesn’t want me to have it because she hated my mother and she hates me.”

  “That’s three ‘hate’s in a short amount of time,” said Moses.

  “Then why isn’t it here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I do know that you usually have to know someone pretty well to hate them. How long have you been living with your aunt?”

  “Three days,” said June.

  Moses looked surprised. “I never got around to asking your name.”

  “June Sparrow. My aunt is Bridget Andersen.”

  “Of course! She lives on the farm out by where I picked you and your little buddy up.”

  June nodded. “I just got here.”

  Moses looked surprised. “All the way from New York City on your own? That’s a long trip.”

  “Not that long,” June said, but something about the way Moses was looking at her made her have to glance away. She stared at the pile of clothes in the bin.

  “How about if you help me sort through this stuff and I’ll make a couple of cups of Postum,” said Moses. “I’ve got a kettle in there, and there’s nothing like Postum on a cold morning.”

  “What’s Postum?” June managed. There was an undeniable lump in her throat, and her voice didn’t sound quite right.

  “It’s a brown liquid some of us drink around here instead of coffee,” Moses said a little ruefully. “Not bad, though, when you add Carnation.”

  June looked at the empty drop box and then at Indigo, who was shivering. What did she have to lose when she’d already lost everything but him?

  She wrapped her jacket around Indigo and followed Moses into the back of the store.

  The front of the store had racks of clothes and shelves with glassware and kitchenware. Along the side wall was a series of shoe racks where hard-worn cowboy boots tilted over onto almost new strappy sandals; children’s sneakers and flip-flops were shoved in everywhere. Moses unlocked the front door and turned the “Closed” sign around on its string to “Open.” He flipped on the lights and turned the thermostat up, but it was still cold inside the store.

  “Grab a sweater,” he said cheerfully, pointing at the clothes racks, and when June hesitated, he added, “Don’t worry, you can work off the price.” June felt a lot less cheerful than Moses when she looked through the clothes. Everything here looked huge, and she felt a little funny about looking through other people’s used clothing.

  Logically, it was exactly the same thing as shopping at a vintage store, but right now she was freezing and tired. Indigo hadn’t stopped shivering since they got out of the truck. She stopped flipping hangers at a chunky black sweater with a big-eyed Dalmatian puppy appliquéd on the front. June held the sweater up against herself and looked in one of the mirrors that were nailed to the wall at random locations. The sweater hung almost to her knees and looked a little bit like a craft project that had gone on vacation to Disneyland. Maybe if she belted it . . . She had to smile just a little. Who was she trying to impress, anyway?

  “Postum’s ready!” called Moses from the back of the store.

  June looked at Indigo for his opinion on the Dalmatian sweater, but he seemed oblivious to fashion for once, so she pulled it over her head. She had to admit it was cozy.

  She wanted to sneak a look at the rest of her mother’s list, which was still tucked safely in her pocket, but she didn’t want Moses to wonder what she was doing. Besides, poor Indigo was so chilled that his snout was starting to drip, so she tucked him underneath the sweater and headed to the back room. In one corner were a coffee table and two oversized armchairs. Moses was sitting in one of them, his wheelchair parked next to it, and there were two steaming cups on the table.

  “Come into my office,” Moses said grandly.

  June picked up Indigo and perched on the edge of the other armchair.

  “That’s no way to relax,” said Moses. “Push on back.”

  “Push on back?”

  Moses grinned and pushed back in his seat. June gasped as the armchair tilted almost all the way horizontal and the bottom popped up like a footstool supporting his legs.

  “It’s a recliner,” said Moses, laughing at her expression. “Don’t they have those in New York?”

  June shook her head.

  “Well, it won’t bite you. Push ’er back!” Moses said again.

  June leaned back but nothing happened.

  “Okay, I gotta admit I was fooling with you. Reach down next to the cushion on your right—feel that handle?”

  There was a handle tucked just out of sight. Moses seemed to live in a world filled with surprise handles and levers.

  “That’s right—now pull the handle toward you.”

  June pulled back with all her strength. The chair suddenly popp
ed back, and she found herself staring at the ceiling as if she was in a dentist chair.

  “Wow!” She started giggling, and Indigo poked his head over the side—the floor looked both close and far away from this position. “How do I get back?”

  “Just give a shove in the other direction,” Moses said. “Show her who’s boss.”

  June leaned forward hard, and the armchair folded right back up again. She pulled the handle—sure enough, it popped into dentist-chair position. She leaned forward into armchair position.

  “Holy Saskatchewan Sunday!” She turned to Moses. “That is the most awesome chair in the world!”

  “Sure is,” he said. “We’ve got a few things out here that may surprise you yet.” He reached for her mug and poured in some cream-colored liquid from a small can.

  “See what you think of Postum with Carnation.”

  “What’s Carnation?”

  Moses held up the can for her to see. “Carnation evaporated milk,” he said proudly. “Sweet as sugar and thickens it up a little.”

  He handed her the mug and she prepared herself for the worst. Back home she had an espresso maker, and she loved to use the milk steamer to froth up some milk, then add a drop of almond or vanilla extract as a treat. She distrusted all powdered- and canned-milk products, and the one time she had tried a sip of Shirley Rosenbloom’s coffee, she hadn’t been able to stomach it. But Moses was giving her such a hopeful look, she closed her eyes and swallowed. It was definitely not coffee. It was a little weird, very sweet, and in fact . . . kind of perfect. She opened her eyes and smiled.

  “Thank you,” she said. “This is delicious. I never had it before.”

  “Two firsts!” Moses said, leaning back with his mug of Postum like an expert (he went horizontal without spilling a drop).

  “Now,” Moses said, “tell me about your mother.”

  June wondered if there was truth serum in the Postum, and by the time each of them had a second cup, she had told Moses everything: Mr. Mendax losing all her money, the last-minute flight to South Dakota, the trouble with Aunt Bridget, and of course, the Penny Book. Moses listened without interruption, though he did raise his eyebrows a couple of times and cocked his head to the side just the way Indigo Bunting did when he was paying close attention. The only thing she didn’t tell him about was the list. For some reason, that felt like a secret she was supposed to keep. After she finished there was a long pause.