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that she bought you. And the serving spoon. Mam's going to have a fit when she see's all this. Hey! The iron egg skillet."
    Larry slid down toward the Three Wise Men. "That's not all," he said, standing and lifting up one of the figures. '
    "Your fortunes from the fortune cookies, and Grandma Mary's rosary beads, and her knitting needles." I turned to Pap, who was looking down on the objects with a strange, wistful smile.
    "Pap, Mam would have let you keep these if you wanted. We don't have to get rid of all of Grandma's stuff."
    He looked at me, his face brighter, his plump cheeks red from the sun. "Oh, I don't want to keep these, anyway."
    "No, he doesn't want to keep them," Larry agreed, chuckling to himself and lowering the figure. He made his way, crawling, back up to us.
    "I told you, I'm the Three Wise Man."
    "Yeah?" I said, waiting.
    "These are my gifts of treasure for the Baby Jesus, of course, James Patrick, and you should know that."
    I smiled, looking over Pap's head to Larry. "Yeah, of course," I said.
    The phone rang in the house. We all paused and listened. It stopped ringing after three rings and I asked, "Is Mam home?"
    Pap stared down at his feet and nodded. There was a long silence and then we heard a scream. It got louder. Mam came running out of the house from the porch and screamed again. By then I had figured it was a scream of delight, an
Ahhhh!
kind of scream. The three of us stood up. Mam looked up, surprised to find that now we were three. Then she raised her fists in the air and screamed again.
    "I won! I won the house. I won!" She started jumping and skipping, ignoring the stay-off-the-grass sign.
    "I did it! I won the house! I won the contest!"
    The three of us cheered and slid down the roof to the edge to get off.
    When we'd all reached the ground, Mam stopped jumping around and ran to us, hugging the three of us, and we all laughed and cheered, and they jumped around in a circle as if they were playing ring-around-the-rosy bunny-hop style, while I looked on, the upsets of the morning forgotten. Even I felt victorious. Maybe Mam was right. Maybe this was exactly what we needed. We could move to New Hope and settle down to a new life, one without Grandma Mary but still a good life. Three cheers for us!

Chapter Six
    T HE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT of the winner came out the next day, August first, just as the ad had promised. Our local newspaper's reporters showed up at our house to photograph us and to get a story. Half the neighborhood got in on the picture. Nothing this great had ever happened to any of us, and it was a celebration for us all.
    I caught Bobbi Polanski watching the action from her porch, half hidden by a post and peeking out from behind it, gnawing on a fingernail. I felt so full of goodwill, I almost called her to come on and get in the picture, but I caught myself in time and didn't.
    Pap, who had spent most of the night in agony from his sunburn, still wore the wet washcloth that Mam had folded and placed on his forehead, pinning the cloth to an old apron string and fitting it to Pap's head so it would stay on without his having to hold it Aspirin and the wet washcloth kept him cool and quiet His nose had blisters on it. The newspaper reporter took Mam aside and asked if Pap were Mam's brother
and did he have to be in the picture? Mam called to Pap, put her arm around him, and said he was her husband and that he would stand right next to her for the picture, washcloth and all.
    I felt proud at that moment and wished Dr. Mike had been there to hear it. But then when they wanted a picture of just me, Mam, and Pap, I couldn't do it. I couldn't be in a picture with Pap looking like that, with the caption identifying the man in the washcloth as my father. I managed to wander out of sight for a while and then wander back around when they had given up on the idea of a family photo.
    Mam had notified Dr. Mike that she had won soon after she had come out screaming to us. He said he'd meet