Crunch Read Online Free PDF Page B

a creel on the front. She had her backpack on, and two long loaves of bread stuck up out of it behind her head.
    Lil ran to greet them. She was happy to see Pop and Mattie, but she was still mad about her class being called off. “But I’m starting something here,” I heard her say as I got closer. “I’m not giving up just because of this rotten crunch.”
    Suddenly Pop called out, “Oh boy, here it comes! Quadruple trouble!” Goodness andGreatness came wagging. Angus and Eva followed. They climbed straight up onto Pop Chilly’s seniorcycle.
    “Hello, stinkers!” Pop said. “Don’t tip me over!” (Impossible. The trike was as stable as a mountain. The thing had running boards .) Pop took one twin onto each knee and hugged them up. Old Goodness stood by politely woofing under his breath while Greatness licked Pop’s ankle.
    “What’s that on my foot?” Pop said.
    “That’s Greatie’s tickle torture,” Angus said.
    Mattie laughed. “We’d have to debate who’s being tortured there, I think.” She shrugged her way out of her backpack. I stepped up to take it from her and the smell of French bread reached all the way down to my hungry gut.
    “Hey, hey!” Vince called. He came striding out of the house with a jug of iced tea and set it on the picnic table.
    “Hey, hey, yourself!” Mattie called back.
    Pop Chilly hefted the clam bucket down from the trike before any of us could offer to help. “Strong as an ox, I am,” he said, and it was true.
    Lil set to chopping onions. Pop sat scrubbingpotatoes over a bucket while Eva clung to his back and talked in his ear. Mattie, Vince, and I set to checking the clams for a tight seal.
    Twice I had to stop, wash seawater off my hands, and log in bikes for repairs. “Is there any chance I can pick up tomorrow morning?” one guy asked. Vince rolled his eyes at me from behind the guy’s back.
    We had the onions sizzling in the bacon fat when one more person arrived. But this guy didn’t bring a broken bike with him. He came dragging in on foot like a lost dog come off the highway. But he wasn’t lost. He meant to be right where he stood, five feet in front of me.
    “Dewey,” he said. “Dewey Marriss. Do you remember me?” He held up a Marriss Bike Barn business card in one hand, and I knew I ought to know him. But his face was tomato red from the heat. His shirt was soaked at the pits and open at the neck. His sleeves and pant legs were rolled to catch the breeze. I looked at the raw, purple scrape on his shin.
    “Dewey,” he said. “I need to buy that bike.”
    “Oh!” I said. “Robert Deal!” I turned to Vince and said, “Hey, it’s my hitchbiker .”

12
    I INTRODUCED ROBERT DEAL TO EVERYONE. Well, more like I explained who he was, and he and Mattie recognized each other from the beach a few years back. But I couldn’t help thinking that he was not quite the same Robert that I’d met on the highway that morning. That Robert was a pretty cool lifeguard dude. This guy was burned toast. Then I realized he must have just walked twenty-something hot miles from Elm City. I think he was trying to smile at us. But his lips stuck to his teeth and made him look like a ferret.
    Pop poured a glass of iced tea and held it out to Robert. “Drink this, son. Down the hatch. Right now. Whole thing.”
    Robert obeyed, taking gulp after gulp. Helooked like a fish trying to put out a fire in its own belly.
    “We should dunk him in the trough,” mumbled Pop.
    “I dunked in the trough once,” said Angus.
    “Yeah,” Eva said. “And remember? Mom said, ‘Angus! Ahhh! The trough is not for boys!’” Eva waved her hands over her head. I thought Pop was going to fall over.
    Robert looked up at us between swallows of tea. I felt bad for him. All of us were laughing, though not at him, and now, a salt-hungry Marriss dog was going in for a lick on his bare leg.
    “Greatie! Leave him!” I called. But Robert leaned down to pat her before he took another