Boomtown (35 page)

A
bout a month later, we were packing to leave for Seattle. I'd been offered a pulpit in the city and accepted—but not before days and days of crying and complaining on the part of my family.

I could hardly blame them. In the short time we'd been residents of Boomtown, they'd fallen in love with the people just as the townspeople had fallen in love with us. This is where Holly had joined our family. This is where Janice had found so many new friends, but not half as many as Ruth, Jonny, and Sarah. They didn't want to leave;
of course
they didn't want to leave! Boomtown was a playground, the perfect place for a kid to grow up. Every day was a new adventure.

No, it wasn't Janice or the kids.
I
was the one with the problem. It was during a morning in late August when I made up my mind. I stood in the window of our front room staring blindly at the turning leaves. I counted the buttons on my favorite sweater, over and over again, absently repeating the poem I made up in my head:

One
—This isn't any fun;

Two
—What should I do?

Three
—Why is it me?

Four
—I can't take any more.

Five
—I'm lucky to be alive.

Six
—I'm in a tight fix.

Seven
. . .

I stopped and looked down. The seventh button on my sweater had popped off. It was lying in my hand, staring up at me like an omen of things to come.

“Seven,” I murmured. “Time to go to heaven.” That was the final straw.

The next morning we held a family meeting. I sat at the head of the table with my temples throbbing and surrounded by hostile faces.

“Dad! We
can't
go. What about my friends?” Jonny was almost on the verge of tears.

“You'll make new friends in Seattle.”

“I graduate from high school this coming year,” Ruth said. “I just got a job at the Boomtown Bookstore. I was saving money for college.”

“I know that, dear. I'm really sorry.”

Sarah kicked my shin under the table.

“Ow!
Sarah!
”

“It's not fair! I'm starting the sixth grade. I get to build a rocket this year.”

“Janice, help me out here.”

“What do you want me to say? I've made a lot of friends too. That's always been hard for me, being the pastor's wife, to make any real friends. People always treat me differently, especially other women. But not here in Boomtown. They've helped me fit in. I love it here. So do the kids.”

“But just look at me! Red circles under my eyes. Face as white as a sheet. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I'm afraid to go out-side. I'm afraid to stay inside.”

I held out my hand. It twitched like the last leaf on a winter branch.

“Just the other day, I was in my office at the church and Ingrid dropped a stapler. A
stapler
! I hid under my desk like a frightened rabbit. It took Ingrid thirty minutes to coax me out of there.”

Janice was sympathetic and patted my hand. “I know, dear. Things have been hard on you. But look at the bright side. Other than a sprained wrist, you've never really been badly hurt.”

“Are you kidding?
I've been knocked unconscious
twice
. You've almost been a widow
six
times! We've got a new baby and three other children. What are you going to do if a tree drops on my head? What if I fall down the stairs and break my neck? What about a tornado or a stampede?”

“Now you're just being silly. Boomtown has never had a tornado.”

“There's always a first time.”

We spent hours arguing about it, but I wouldn't listen. I wanted to tell them what I was really feeling, but I didn't know how. I thought after the trial things would be different for me, but as the days went by, I regressed backward into my earlier trepidations. What could I say? I was
embarrassed
by my fears.

I was supposed to be a man of faith; I preached about courage and facing life's troubles; but all I could think about was running away. So when a congregation in Seattle called, I jumped at the chance. They'd heard about me because of the publicity surrounding the trial and begged me to accept. Of course, the search committee from Boomtown Church was very upset. I met with them after my final Sunday and we talked.

“I'm really sorry. It has nothing to do with any of you. We love Boomtown and all the members of our church. But I've got to leave—before I
can't
.”

“But, Reverend, we were just starting to get used to you! It was hard at first, but now we can't get along without you. We've
never
had this much excitement in our church before.”

“That's exactly why I'm going. Too much excitement! I was chased by a rocket, nearly crushed by a barber chair, blown up by Santa Claus, mangled by a runaway bicycle, shot by a bank robber, and buried alive in a cave-in. My heart can't take it anymore!”

“But what are we going to do?”

“Look at it this way. You shouldn't have any trouble finding a new minister, not with all the fame and fortune you're enjoying. Besides, you'll have broken the curse. I'll be the first minister in seventy years who's
walked
out of the building instead of being
carried
out! Just think what that will mean to the next minister you find.”

“Hey, you're right!”

As soon as they started thinking about it that way, they felt much better and were ready to start looking. They finally hung my picture up in the hallway with a plaque underneath that said “Served 1949–1950, Still Alive and Kicking.” They threw a going-away dinner in the park attended by nearly every person in town. All of our new friends were there: Burton Ernie, Helga, Gramma Edna, Matthieu and his thirteen kids, the Beedles, Fred Cotton, Lazy Gunderson, Walter the Butcher, even Denk and his children. They all came out to say good-bye. Reverend Platz and Reverend Tinker said a prayer. Everyone shook hands and we all cried and laughed and told stories about everything that had happened.

Of course, I've forgotten to say what happened after the trial, what Jonny found in the tunnel, and what happened with Xian. So here are the final details, and then I'm finished.

All charges were immediately dropped against Xian; that should come as no surprise. After the gold was found, no one was willing to prosecute. Xian was set free, and Mayor Tanaka gave him the key to the city.

Horatio Hooke gave up his dreams of a life in politics and went back to Stickville to prosecute parking tickets. I don't think he ever got over the humiliation and disappointment. He nursed a grudge against Boomtown from that day forward. It came back to haunt the town, but that happened years later.

George Rigdale tried to fade back into anonymity, but the newspapers and radio stations wouldn't leave him alone. There was talk about nominating
him
for governor. A parking space was reserved with his name in front of the Boomtown courthouse for whenever he stopped by for a visit. He was a frequent visitor at Mabel's Diner.

Burton Ernie became famous as the lawman who cracked the case, even though the only thing he'd really done was drink bad coffee and drive around town looking for clues. He did, however, organize the digging crew that pulled Chang's statue out of the hole and clear all the debris from the chamber that lay hidden underneath. All those years, and no one knew a massive fortune had been right under their feet waiting to be discovered.

Xian explained what some of the other letters had revealed, that Chang had stumbled across a large vein of gold while digging for sulfur. He kept the discovery secret because he knew what would happen if word spread that gold had been found under the streets of Boomtown. It would trigger another gold rush. Fortune hunters would flock to the area like crows in a cornfield. They would bring guns and liquor and gambling and corruption along with their insatiable appetite for wealth—something Chang would not allow. So he kept his discovery secret as a way of saving the home he loved.

He sealed off the entrance to the tunnel and allowed the trees and bushes to overgrow the abandoned warehouse. He told no one about his discovery. Instead, over the years he continued to mine the gold and refine it in secret, storing the growing treasure in the hidden chamber.

When Chang found out he had a son and grandchildren living in China, he dreamed of the day they would come to claim his family's fortune—but he didn't live to see it. He was killed in the explosion that turned Boomtown upside down. It buried the tunnel and his secret. It lay hidden for almost sixty years until Xian came and tried to dig it up.

Jonny explained what had happened on the night of the first day of the trial.

“Busy and me wanted to take one more look in the tunnel, just in case we missed something. We got all the guys together and decided to sneak out that night.”

“I really wish you'd stop doing that, Jon, I really do,” I sighed.

“Sorry, Dad, but it worked out, didn't it?”

“That's not the point.”

“Okay. So anyway, we used Chang's statue like a ladder and climbed down into the hole. We were looking for maybe another door, maybe another place where Chang could have hidden the treasure. It was dark, but we had flashlights and shovels if we needed them. But we didn't find anything and pretty soon it was morning.

“When the sun came up, it shone on the back side of the hole, right on the note Chang had painted on the wall. We couldn't read it, but we saw something we hadn't seen in the dark. It was covered in mud until we wiped away some of the dirt. It was a gold medallion with a picture of Chang on it.”

“Busy had a jackknife and he tried to pry it out of the wall, but instead it
pushed in
, like a button! The whole wall opened up—swung open like a gate! And that's when we found it!”

The “it” Jonny and his friends had found was a huge pile of gold bricks—more than a person can even imagine. Over the years, Chang had managed to assemble nearly five
tons
of gold—almost two hundred gold bricks weighing fifty pounds apiece. In 1950, gold was selling at an average of $35 an ounce; that's about $560 a pound. That made the total fortune worth more than five million dollars!

Xian honored Chang's wishes. He kept half of the money for his family; they were already on a ship to America to join their incredibly wealthy father. The rest of the money was divided evenly among the remaining eleven hundred seventeen residents of Boomtown. It put a total of $2,506 into the pockets of every man, woman, and child who lived in the town. My family collected more than $15,000. It was the money we used to move to Seattle, buy a house, and put Ruth through college. Needless to say, things were booming in Boomtown!

The day finally came for us to say good-bye. Burton Ernie and his wife, Laverne, and their young son, Vernon, were the last to see us off. We stood next to the car exchanging hugs and handshakes. Vernon was nice enough to hold Holly while we did.

“Here, Vernon, give her to me,” Janice said, holding out her hands. But Holly wouldn't let go. She kept clinging to Vernon, both of her little arms wrapped firmly around his neck. Holly cried when Janice tried to take her.

“That's strange,” she said. “She doesn't usually act like that. She must really like you, Vernon.”

Vernon smiled happily. “I like her too. I wish she didn't have to go.”

“We'll come back for a visit,” I said politely. I meant it at the time, I really did, but I never kept my promise. But
Holly
did—she and Vernon—it's strange now that I think back on it. Strange how things come full circle. It was almost like Holly
knew
something we didn't, something that drew her back to Boomtown—and it's a good thing that it did. But that's another story.

We decided to take the long way around as we left. We cried as we drove down Boom Boulevard, past the hole in Town Square that had changed our lives forever, past Lazy Gunderson's place, past the powder plant and the fireworks factory, across Ifilami Bridge, and on to our new life in Seattle.