As soon as we get to the garage I see Harold’s feet sticking out from under a Toyota Tacoma. I give his boot a kick and he drops his wrench on the cement floor and slides out from under the truck.
His hair is thick, dark brown, and wild. He lets it stick up all over his head like he just woke up, and that’s only one thing I like about Harold.
“What do we have here?” he asks, standing up and wiping his hands on his jumpsuit. “Shouldn’t you be in school, Robbie?”
“Got in trouble.”
“Trouble is no place to be,” he says.
“Better than school.” I sit on the stool that has the one shorter leg that I can always get rocking really good. From here I have a perfect view of all four bays, and right now each bay is full. And each car has something wrong with it, and I bet I could figure out as fast as anyone how to fix every last one.
“Got busy here this afternoon,” Harold tells Grandpa.
Harold is my grandpa’s left-hand man. That’s because everyone knows I’m Grandpa’s right hand. But left-hand man or not, I don’t want a lecture from him about school and working hard and being good. He sometimes does that, pulls up a stool and sits down next to me and looks at me right under the brim of my Dodgers hat, right in my eyes, and tells me how I need to get through school and be my best self. Grandpa says it’s because Harold and his husband, Paul, are adopting a kid and he’s practicing being a dad.
Harold is regular dad age. I bet he hopes when he and Paul get their kid she’s not like me. Someone who doesn’t get all red hot inside, who doesn’t punch stupid boys’ noses, even when they deserve it, someone who doesn’t make him shake his head for anything.
“So what happened?” Harold asks.
“Had to take care of this boy and his crappy attitude.”
Harold tugs one of my braids. “I thought you were working with that counselor at school on not getting so angry. Counting to ten and stuff like that.”
“Her name’s Ms. Gloria. And I am working on it.” Harold was there when Grandpa signed the papers to let me start seeing a counselor at school. That was the last time Grandpa was in the office, and I promised myself I’d never make the school drag him back there. Stupid Alex Carter. “But even if I counted to ten today I still would’ve slugged him.”
He hits the brim of my Dodgers hat, which I usually hate but don’t really mind when Harold does it. “Always my little spark plug.”
And I know what Harold means, but I’m not his little spark plug. I’m all Grandpa’s. He’s the only person I’m related to, which is maybe turning out to be a raw deal for him.
Harold throws his arm around my shoulders. “Listen, kid.” And I know he’s going in for the whole practice dad talk. “When you’re out there in the world, you’re representing your family. And I know you weren’t raised to be fighting.”
I nod my head and keep teetering on the stool, hoping that Grandpa has a job for me.
“Little spark plug like her . . .” Harold starts.
“From an old codger like me,” Grandpa finishes. That’s one of the jokes they’re always saying. Like who could ever believe that I came from my grandpa?
We still get that from time to time, even in a town this small, where almost everyone knows us. Long looks and scrunched-up faces trying to solve our family puzzle.
Sometimes Grandpa reminds me that I’m one-quarter black, even though you can’t tell by looking at me. “And that one-quarter comes straight from yours truly,” he says, jamming his thick thumb to his chest. It doesn’t matter that you can’t see it right off, he tells me. That one-quarter is still in me, beneath my surface, deep at my core.
When I was little and didn’t understand, I used to picture a shiny, silver twenty-five cents quarter deep in me, next to my heart. Most grandpas pulled quarters from behind little kids’ ears and let them go to Dean and Walt’s country store for penny candy, and it made me feel better to think that Grandpa’s quarter was somewhere deep in me, and worth something more than candy. Worth keeping.
“Up off your duff, Robbie.” Grandpa claps his hands twice to get me moving. “We’ve got work to do.”
Harold gives me a fist bump, picks up his wrench, and slides back under the truck. Grandpa tosses me my work gloves, which are just like his but smaller, and points in the direction of the closest bay. I nod and toss my baseball glove on the stool.
“What we’ve got this afternoon is a 2003 Toyota 4Runner,” Grandpa says. But I know that without anyone telling me. I know cars like I know baseball.
I pull on my gloves and Grandpa shows me a box of replacement headlight bulbs.
“You remember how to do it?” he asks.
“Yup.” And I know Grandpa remembers too, because even if he sometimes forgets that he already had his morning cup of coffee, or that it’s winter so he’ll need his jacket, he never forgets cars. That’s one place where his memory isn’t tired at all. And that’s a good thing because I don’t need Harold raising his eyebrows and looking long at Grandpa. Harold’s too busy to notice anyway. He’s always under a car or thinking about his new baby coming soon.
“Ready?” Grandpa asks.
“Ready,” I say.
I slide my fingers under the hood of the car and find the lever. When I pull on it, the hood pops up fast like it’s been waiting to burst all day. I know what that’s like.
Grandpa tests me on the basics before we get started. This is our warm-up. He points. I name.
“This one.” He’s pointing to a round cap in the middle.
“Check and change oil.”
He moves his finger to the right.
“Transmission fluid.”
“And here?” His finger points toward the back and I have to stand up on my toes and lean in far to see.
“Washer fluid.”
I know them all.
Grandpa pulls on his gloves too, which means we’re ready to start the job.
“First?” he asks.
I turn my Dodgers hat backward and look into the hood. I see the connector lock release. “Disconnect the light,” I say. Then I do it. Pressing down on the lock release makes a small pop like a short bunt, and I like that. When I pull at it a little, it disconnects from the old, burnt bulb.
Grandpa’s hovering over me, making sure I do it right. “Good,” he assures me. “Now what?”
“Retaining ring.” I stick my head in closer to find it. The faint smell of plastic and metal and oil rise up to my face, and I like that smell. When I find the ring I twist it to the left and detach it from the headlight assembly. Then I take the burnt bulb from the retaining ring and give it to Grandpa. He throws it in the trash.
“Good, Robbie.”
I still have the retaining ring around my finger. Grandpa puts the new bulb in my other hand, and I put it exactly where the other one was in the headlight assembly. Then I twist the ring back and it’s in. It feels good when everything pops in and fits just right.
“Last?”
“Plug her in!” I shout and reach for the connector socket.
“Ta-da!” Grandpa cheers. “A-plus.” An A-plus from Grandpa in the garage is better than any other A-plus ever.
“Now the other one,” he says. And I do it all over again, but this time Grandpa doesn’t say anything because I know the steps by heart.
When I finish, Grandpa squeezes my shoulder, but in a good job kind of way this time, and Harold comes over to start the car and turn the lights on. “Looking bright, Robbie,” he says, and reaches out for another fist bump, which is kind of our thing.
I’m not feeling all hot and mad and like I could burst anymore.
In the bay next to us, an intern from the technical high school down the street is working. It’s his last day, which is good because he’s taking my jobs. Right now he’s jump-starting a Honda Accord. I know how to do that too. That’s even easier than changing headlights. Grandpa doesn’t let me use the word easy in the garage, though. He tells me it seems easy because I’m good at it. “If it was easy, why would all these people bring their cars in here to have us do it for them?” he says. I guess that makes Grandpa a genius, then. And me too.
Sparks shoot from the Honda’s battery like little tiny fires, and Harold rushes over to help. I know that the little fires mean the intern attached a negative to a positive by accident. Either that or he didn’t connect the jumper cables to the dead battery first. Grandpa says that’s really important and that those sparks can catch fast. I know how that is too.
But right now I feel pretty OK. Far from Ms. Burg and Alex Carter and his clicky-heeled mom.
There are only three places in the whole world that make me feel like this, like I’m not sparky at all. Third base, where Jackie Robinson played; our sugar maple trees in the backyard; and in Grandpa’s garage, fixing something that’s broken.