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bought a Weber barbecue at the Sierra City Thrift Store. She’d cleaned it and polished it and listened when Lincoln advised her never to use scavenged wood for making charcoal, because it could have chemicals like anti-termite poison in it. To Brigitte, a Weber in her yard—where everyone could see it—was solid proof of her California-ness.
    Brigitte had invited Lincoln, Miles and his grandmother Mrs. Prender, Short Sammy, and Dot for dinner on Monday to celebrate the first meal cooked on her good-as-new Weber.Everyone, adults and kids, knew not to talk to Sammy about his box. Even Miles, now that he was nearly six, understood about minding your own business . At the same time, Lucky worried and worried. She hoped that Sammy would bring up the subject of his box himself and explain that it wasn’t a casket at all.
    Dinner was ribs and corn on the cob served on paper plates, with lemonade to drink.
    “This is a very typical American-Californian dinner,” Lucky said, as a way to make Brigitte consider cooking it often.
    Miles showed Brigitte how to roll her corncob directly on the stick of butter, turning and turning until it was glistening and the stick of butter had a little dip of a saddle in the center.
    “We do not eat corn in this way in France,” Brigitte said. “While it is still attached to its cob. Are you sure it is polite to put your corn right on the stick of butter?”
    “Oh, for sure,” said Lucky, who loved corn on the cob and felt sad for French people not eating it. In a delicate, artistic way, she scraped the kernels off her cob to create a certain pattern, using her front teeth to eat around two somewhat crooked lines of bright yellow corn. When she was done, a wobbly number eleven stood out against the white cob. Then she ate those kernels too, wishing that turning eleven would make it easier to figure out things like mysterious big heavy boxes.
    Lucky had not told Brigitte her worries about Sammy’s box being a casket. He acted normal, not like someone who was getting ready to die, but Lucky wasn’t sure. She kept her worriesinside herself, because talking about them, she believed, would make something bad happen.
    After dinner they stayed around the Weber, lounging on the old Chevy and Ford truck seats that had been salvaged from the dump. The seats, neatly mended with duct tape so their insides wouldn’t smush out, were grouped by the barbecue in a side area apart from the outdoor tables of the Café.
    “Now for the surprise,” said Miles. “A very typical American dessert .” The sun had dipped behind the Coso Mountains, and light was beginning to seep out of the sky. But Miles’s face shone as if excitement came in a little tube and it had been rubbed all over him.
    “Ice cream?” Brigitte guessed.
    “Even more American,” Miles said.
    “Brownies?”
    “Even more American.” Lucky could tell that Miles loved having important information in his brain that wasn’t known by an adult. He had become an authority on typical American food and how to eat it. “And it’s a dessert we’re going to cook on the Weber!”
    Brigitte looked intrigued. “Tell me!” she said.
    Bouncing on the seat, Miles cried, “S’mores!” He ran to Mrs. Prender’s VW for the ingredients as Lincoln added a few more coals to the barbecue.
    Brigitte had never heard of s’mores before, so Miles put himself in charge of teaching her the finer points of making them.
    “First, each person has to cook their marshmallow,” he said in a teacherish voice, distributing metal skewers to everyone. “Not until it’s burned, just try to get it melty and brown.” Miles stood at the Weber, demonstrating his technique of turning constantly to achieve even brownness. “But if you get it too cooked, it’s okay, because the inside will still be good. Then you quick smear it onto the cookie part”—carefully he slid the marshmallow onto a graham cracker, dropped the skewer on the ground, and licked his