‘The Luck’

"Good luck."

Momah's words echo down the street.

“It’s Like finding a tack in a haystack.”  

We were on a mission to find that lucky one with the four leaves. My Momah told me it would bring me ‘The Luck.’ Whatever that means.

Dadbob tells Momah she will get lucky every time she wears those short skirts and paints her mouth and eyes.

My Momah knows what ‘The Luck’ is. Guess she is the smart one cause Dadbob told me I’ve only made it four times around the sun. I think he’s silly. I see the sun come up every morning when I look outside. S-U-N is how you spell it. It comes up over Johnny’s house and down over Maggie’s daily. And it was bright and hot today. My fingers taste like salt when I brush the water off my forehead. 

“I’ll give you a snail penny for those flowers. The white fluffy ones.”

I think this fat slug is worth $100, which should cover those flowers’ cost.

The snail looks like the booger stuck in Jason’s nose. Snail boogers are constantly crawling in his nose unless they’re running down his face. His momma, Carol, calls him the boogie man.

Those white bunnies with the bushy tails eat those little flowers, and it’s their fave. But I don’t think chop’n their feet off makes them very lucky. My ‘lil sister, Thara, found one, and Dadbob said it’s a lucky foot. That’s just gross.

‘The Luck’ is out in the overgrown sea somewhere. I am never going to stop searching till I find those four leaves. My fingers are too chubby. It's challenging spreading all these soldiers apart. I even have ten of them hand hotdogs. One has a dot on it. My Momah told me that mark meant I was a beauty. That dot’s different from the ones on my nose. Those came from the sun when it kissed me. That sun must love me. It’s always kissing my nose.

“Whatcha gonna wish for Jason when we find The Luck?” He’s not listening to me; he’s got his head on the ground with his nose in the grass. He must think he's going to sniff out 'The luck.'

Jason has red hair, somewhat orange, like a carrot but redder.

I have honey-blond hair, and Dadbob tells me that’s why the bees like me. 

The sun likes him way more than me. He gets kisses on his face and even on his arms. He lives across the street, so it doesn’t take long if I sprint. Momah says I need to get neck bends in and look right, left, left, right before crossing. It takes a little bit longer if I skip. I can’t get the skip jump down.

Jason taught me how to play football. He said I was Moses, and he was always Grant. We build hut huts all day long. Some days, we go a mile high to play.

The mountains that stand way up in the clouds behind Mag’s house look purple today. Sometimes they are green or black. Once, they were bright red with lots of smoke, like that one-time Dadbob burned the pork chops. He said we’re shit out of luck. But Dadbob told me not to say the shit word.

We must pack our bags and be ready when those mountains turn red. Wonder if that sun made the mountains change all the colors? The sky is blue. B-L-U-E.

Jason tells me his wish when we find ‘The Luck’ is to be best friends forever. Then he karate kicks me, misses, and falls on his tush. He’s always a ninja and I am Mary Lou Retton.

“Do you believe in God? I think he lives on that cloud.” I asked, rolling over onto my back and waiting for him to talk. That’s when the cloud turned into a dinosaur. Wonder if that’s God’s pet.

He finally told me he didn’t believe in an imaginary man walking on the clouds. Even though he’s not even paying attention cause, he’s picking at the booger snail.

“So you don’t think there’s a heaven above these clouds?” I asked him while he ate that booger, so I gave him the eye roll, and said he was ewe.

Momah said the dirt and the butterflies are heavens. She says it all is, all the surrounding stuff. Guess even that poop Mr. Dax just left on my grass is. Heaven is gross.

Claire, my big sis, said we were Cadillacs. We went every Sunday, and that was on the 7th day when we had to wear dresses and memorize the ten condiments. The talking fellow at the front says that God rises from the gravy yearly when the Easter bunny comes, and I bet the clouds are fluffy mashed potatoes.

Dadbob takes a snooze at the church, and Momah hits him on the leg and tells him he’s pressing his luck.

I like to sing songs from the enormous book everyone holds, it has all the notes that make words. Dadbob tells Momah she sings like a dying parrot, I think more like a mad cat meowing.

 I got to play God in our Christmas play this year. Everyone wanted me to be the baby in the haystack, and I told them size doesn’t matter to God. You could be a boy or a girl, short or tall, or skinny or fat. Just didn't matter. I was lucky that day to play God. Sept, everyone laughed at me. Sept Momah, she cried.

I watched an ant crawl up Jason’s arm, and he smacked it. I think he just killed God.

Jason shreiked and made me jump like Captain Kangaroo. He yanked a clover with four heart-shaped leaves straight out of the ground. We looked at our perfect emerald jewel with wide eyes and high-fived each other. Then he crammed it into his torn jean shorts. He said he would put it in our box of treasurers under his bed. We’ve been filling that box with treasures for years, and it’s almost overflowing.

The sun is playing hide and seek with a big black cloud and goes from blue to gray, looking like the color of the smoke. It tries to cheat and peeks a couple of times.

I laid on Jason’s lap, which was lumpy. He said he had rocks in his pockets we found earlier in the cow patch up the street.

 I was excited about using ‘The Luck’ today. I already told Jason I’d be his friend forever with his luck. 

That black cloud suddenly got enormous, and many started floating above our heads. The biggest one started whistling at us like it was mad. We watched the maple tree sway back and forth. We built a fort in that tree this spring, and it just threw my stuffed bunny, Roo, out the window over the fence into Carl’s yard. 

The angry clouds started spitting at us, making us wet. They began growling like Jason’s pitbull Rex, probably because they forgot to eat breakfast. The tops of the Ash trees looked like they were doing the Argentine tango. As Dadbob and Momah do on the nights, she’s getting ‘The Luck.’

God was bowling, even. Every once in a while, he got a strike and took all of the pins down. 

Jason said he thinks a storm is brewing. I didn’t even know God liked beer. I bet he likes the same one Dadbob drinks all the time. That beer makes him angry too.

The wind chimes on our porch started singing all the songs while the trees danced. There are weeds even tumbling down the street doing cartwheels. Last week, I taught Jason how to do a cartwheel and showed him how to somersault, and he looked like that tumbling weed.

Jason and I started playing thumb wars, ignoring the storm, trying to sneak in and ruin our day. When Jason declared his victory, a bomb simultaneously exploded in the sky, and a lightning bolt flew down in the cow pasture at the end of the road. Smoke made the cows moo, and they started gallopping down the hill toward Mr. Belview’s farm. That bomb made my heart feel like a butterfly running from a cheetah and made the hair on my arms stick straight up like Momah’s hair in the morning. Jason even jumped on top of me and knocked us over.

The boom scared us, and the next thing we saw was Momah, Kat, and Stevie running out of our house like gremlins were chasing them.

Momah was shouting at me to get in the car, but I barely heard her cause the raindrops on the roof sounded like Ronnie Tutt beating his drum on the tin top. It was louder than Dadbob blasting Neil Diamond when it would shake the house. The wind started howling like a hungry werewolf as Momah threw my sisters in our Chevy and slammed the doors.

I am scared and wish I had ‘The Luck’ right now.

My whole body starts sleeping, and I can’t even move it. It feels like an ice cube cracking in a tray. Jason has a look on his face like he has to fart or like that one time we lost Snickers, his cat. He went on an adventure but finally came home after two weeks. Momah says he’s lucky and only has eight lives left. Those are the only times I’ve seen Jason’s face look like that. I don’t like this feeling.

Momah started running at me, and she has rain falling down her cheeks, and her bare feet were moving fast. She yanked me like that four-leaf clover right off the ground, scooped me up like a giant flower bouquet, and tossed me over her shoulders like a bag of potatoes.

I think right now I should use ‘The Luck.’ But Jason has it shoved into his pocket. And he’s just sitting there crying.

My DadBob opened the front door, and he put his arms up. His shoulders filled the doorway, and he looked like the Hulk. He yelled at Momah and said, “Your luck is running out, woman.”

I was screaming at Jason to bring me ‘The Luck’ in his pocket, but Momah threw me into the backseat of the Chevy and slammed the door in my face.

My sisters were crying, even Momah, and she drove that car away like we were in the 500.

I crawled to the back of the car and watched Jason start chasing after us. He turned into Superman, and I knew he would catch up to us.

I see myself in the reflection of the back window, and the rain blends in with the same stream of tears running down my face.

Jason starts getting blurry the faster Momah speeds. She turns the corner so fast that I smack my face against the window and leave my nose and cheek marks smeared on the glass. 

At that instant, all hope of ‘The Luck’ and Jason disappears. I never want to see a four-leaf clover again. Those bunnies can have them because they don’t carry ‘The Luck.’ 

We drove for hours until everyone fell asleep except Momah, who was still choking on her tears and murmuring something about Dadbob.

I don’t think I believe in God anymore. God would never take Jason away from me. That luck must’ve escaped his pocket. I held back my tears when I realized we were the two tacks in a haystack separated by 'The Bad Luck.'