Delia stood in the middle of the dirt lawn, gripping the handle of a rake so new the white bar code label glowed in the dim light. “You didn’t wake up you-know-who, did you?”
“Nope.” Socko sat on the front step to put on the shoes he’d carried down the stairs so he wouldn’t wake up you-know-who. A wasted effort. “If his own snoring didn’t wake him up, nothing can.”
Delia waved a hand. “I’m thinking flower beds along the driveway.”
It was so dark out, Socko could barely see the driveway.
“And my hedge right about here.” She scratched a line in the dirt with the rake handle. “Everything else is going to be lawn.”
“Do you know how to plant a lawn?” he asked.
“The bag’s got instructions.”
Socko read the print on the back of the bag by the light over the front door. “We don’t have a spreader or a roller, and it’s summer. It says right here, ‘plant in late spring.’”
“It is what it is.” Delia handed him the rake. “Here. Fluff up the dirt.”
“Fluff up the dirt,” he mumbled. But he figured helping her might convince her to do something more than “try” to check on Damien, so he scrabbled the tines of the rake across the ground. The dust rose. He sneezed.
Delia followed him, flinging seeds into the air. “See? Who needs a spreader?”
When all the seeds had been flung, Socko consulted the bag again. “To ‘ensure good contact between seed and soil,’ we need a roller filled with water to make it heavy.”
“We’re heavy,” said Delia. “We’ll stomp the seed in.” They took baby steps back and forth across the yard, stomping the seed in.
“Are you gonna find out about Damien today?” Socko asked, mincing toward the road.
“Yeah, yeah. Keep stomping.”
Delia and Socko were heading in opposite directions on their stomping mission, so at first only Socko saw the truck.
“Why are you not stomping?” she called over her shoulder.
“Mom?”
Delia turned and was caught in the truck’s headlights. “Take a look at that!” She came and stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. “That moving van is huge. No one owns that much stuff!”
The behemoth moving van stopped right in front of their house. Socko remembered the General’s comment about Santa Claus. But with a series of high-pitched beeps, the truck backed into the driveway of the house across the street.
The man in the passenger seat got out, unfolded a piece of paper, and smoothed it against the side of the van.
“They’ve got so much stuff they need a map to show where to put it,” Delia whispered.
The first thing the men pushed down the ramp was huge and wrapped in padded blankets. It had three thin black legs. Although the men moved it carefully, when it hit the hard surface of the driveway, it boomed a hollow note. “You think it’s a grand piano?” Delia breathed.
A china cabinet followed the piano down the ramp, then a cushy leather chair, then a dozen cartons so big a couple of homeless guys could have slept in them with room to spare.
“So they have a lot of stuff.” His mother squeezed his shoulders. “We’ll have a lawn before they do. Keep stomping.”
Socko continued to stomp, but not with the same vigor. The parade of stuff kept him distracted. And stomping seed in front of the moving guys was embarrassing.
“Sweet,” said Socko, watching the men carry a flat screen TV as big as their picture window down the ramp.
“Study,” said Delia, still stomping. Delia’s recommended route to everything he wanted had been reduced to that single word.
He threw up his hands. “What’s wrong with ‘win the lottery’?”
“Hey,” said Delia as the men carried a Ping-Pong table into the house. “Maybe these people got a kid your age.”
Yeah, a kid with tons of stuff. All Socko had was a stop sign with a bullet hole through the O. Impressive.
Computers … a hutch … three more armchairs …
A sound from inside his own mostly empty house caught his attention. The General was at the window, slapping the glass with his palm.
“I’ll see what he wants.” Socko let himself into the house.
The General pointed at the thick king-size mattress the moving men were carrying. “I want to live over there.”
“Me too.”
“What are you and Delia Marie doing out there, anyway? An Indian rain dance?”
“Gardening.” Socko nuked a mug of water, added coffee crystals, and stirred. He handed it to his great-grandfather. “You want something to eat?” He was in no hurry to go back to looking stupid in front of the moving van guys.
“No, but if you get me my electric razor I’ll cut off those girl curls of yours, give you a GI haircut.”
“Thought you were a cook, not a barber.”
“In the armed services you do a little bit of everything.”
A GI haircut would drive Delia nuts. A shaved head or a buzz cut so short it was more scalp than hair was popular with Rapp’s gang. “I better let Mom cut my hair.”
“If she doesn’t do it soon, we’ll have to change your name to Betty.”
Socko went back outside.
“Take over.” Delia pumped the front of her blouse in and out with one hand. “I’m running late and I’m sweaty as a fry cook.”
Great. Now he got to look stupid all by himself.
The last thing to come out of the truck was a basketball hoop. It took both guys twisting it back and forth on its heavy base to walk it up the driveway. They looked over the papers on a clipboard, then locked the house. “Keep up the good work,” the driver called to Socko as he swung himself up into the cab.
“Whatever it is you’re doing,” added the second mover as he hopped in on the passenger side.
The van pulled into the street and turned right.
Socko listened until the engine’s growl became silence, then sprinted across the street to get a better look at the new people’s stuff. The sun was fully up now. He shaded his eyes with one hand and peered up at the basketball hoop. It had a glass backboard and a shot clock welded to the pole. It was easy to see that a street-bunged basketball had never swished through its white net.
Socko was a city kid, and he knew he should be slick at shooting hoops. But he wasn’t. The court at the park was Tarantula territory, so he didn’t go anywhere near it if he could help it.
He pictured the scene in his near future when the kid who owned the hoop challenged him to a game of H-O-R-S-E and he embarrassed himself completely.
Man, he hated this place.