The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [25]
"I don't know why, but the gas line gets clogged every so often. There must be dirt or something in it. You have to suck on this end until the line gets clear and the gas comes out." He held the line out to me. I backed up and shook my head.
"If you're going to use the tractor, you have to be able to keep it running."
I looked around. My cousins were staring at me with their eyes bugging out, watching to see if I would take the hose. I really wanted to say no, but I knew I couldn't ask anyone else to do it.
"All right," I said weakly.
I put the hose in my mouth. It tasted like a terrible combination of rubber, oil, and dirt. I closed my eyes and sucked. Suddenly my mouth filled up with a burning, awful-tasting liquid. I dropped the hose and spit. Bending over, I kept spitting to try and get the taste out of my mouth. I wanted to throw up.
When I looked up again, my uncle was putting the hose back into position.
"Very good," he said, "now just stick it back in and screw it tight."
"Is swallowing gas bad for you?" I gasped between spits.
"Oh, probably. It hasn't killed me yet," he said without much concern. Amy, Sam, and Michael looked down on me with sympathetic eyes. Amy tried the tractor again, and it started right up.
"Thanks, Daddy," she called.
***
My mouth tasted like gas for the next two days. We made good progress on the branches, though, especially on Saturday when Lisa and Jennifer joined us. Sam kept pestering Amy and me to teach him to drive the tractor, and finally during our afternoon Shasta break we agreed. The other kids all wanted lessons too, but we said the cutoff age was eleven, mostly because we didn't want Michael driving.
After his run-in with the Barracuda, Sam proved to be a very careful driver. He was always a little nervous and would drive so slowly, the rest of us would become impatient. Amy pulled him out of the seat before any long trips to the drop-off area.
Sam was driving the tractor into the orchard's last row with a few hours of sunlight left. Before he could pull up close to a pile of branches, the tractor sputtered a little and then the engine cut out. Instantly my stomach hurt. Amy turned to me and put her hand on my shoulder. I moved reluctantly toward the engine.
"What's he going to do?" asked Jennifer, who hadn't been around for the first gas line episode.
"You don't want to know," Michael answered solemnly.
I unscrewed the hose and pulled it out. When I put the hose in my mouth, the taste of gas came flooding back. I tried sucking very quickly then pulling the tube away so the gas wouldn't have a chance to fill up my mouth. Nothing happened. I tried sucking a little longer. Still nothing. I sucked until my cheek muscles hurt and still nothing happened.
"Amy, can you go get your dad?" I said in a defeated voice.
Ten minutes later she was back with Uncle David.
"I tried sucking really hard, but I just can't get anything to come out," I explained, holding up the tube.
Uncle David pulled off the gas cap and looked inside the tank. "That's because you don't have any gas." He stood back and looked at all of us, shook his head, and laughed. "You look like a bunch of war orphans living in the forest or something. If I had some gas, I would give you some just because you look so pitiful." We did look ragged. Almost everyone had a runny nose and scratched-up skin. Sam and Michael both had on "Hang Loose—Hawaii" T-shirts that were almost shredded. My sisters had tiny apple branches stuck in their blond hair.
My uncle thought for a moment. "Jackson, follow me. I'm going to teach you a little trick your grandpa taught me."
I followed him alone out of the orchard. He found a two-gallon gas can sitting near one of his cars and then a four-foot length of garden hose. We walked over to my house.
"I don't think your daddy would mind you borrowing a little of his gas, do you?"
We ducked behind the car my dad drove to work, and he unscrewed the gas cap. He slid the hose down the pipe that led to the gas tank.
"This is what we call siphoning. You've got