Dodger for Sale (8 page)

Dodger pulled the sign back behind the door for a moment, and I realized the mayor was glaring at me for shrugging at the exact wrong moment.
Great
, I thought.
Now the mayor thinks I don’t love my country
. Then Dodger’s sign reappeared, with more words on it:

Oh
, I thought.
Not snakes—snacks!
Dodger was right: I had totally forgotten to bring any snacks for our special guest. What was I going to do now? Dodger had obviously been serious about his thoughts on feeding people at meetings, but I had no idea he would actually show up at this event. Nobody but me and Lizzie could see Dodger or his signs, but if we didn’t do anything, he might start making noise. And believe me, everybody can hear Dodger, even if they can’t see him.

“Not now!” I hissed. Unfortunately for me, the mayor had just asked, “Will you all pledge to support your town, your state, and our beloved U.S. of A.?” The mayor and everybody else stared at me. “Excuse me, son?” the mayor said. “Did you just say you won’t support your town, your state, or your country?”

“Um, sorry, sir,” I said. “I was just, uh, talking to someone else.”

The mayor frowned, shook his head, and continued his speech. Meanwhile, Lizzie was elbowing me. “Get Dodger out of here,” she whispered. I nodded. When Dodger peeked around the door frame again, I tried to shoo him away by gesturing with my hands under my desk.

Yeah, like Dodger was going to take a hint. Instead of leaving, he wrote another note:

Yikes! What was I going to do? If Dodger started throwing food to me, I was a dead man. Mrs. Starsky would completely flip out on me, the mayor would go ballistic, Beeks would never let me live it down, and I’d probably get kicked out of student council. Lizzie saw the note, too, and gasped.

I tuned in to the mayor for a second, and apparently he was reaching the climax of his patriotic speech. “Our flag,” he said, “should always fly from the highest heights! Long may it wave over mountains and rivers, valleys and streams! Long may the Stars and Stripes look down upon us from the blue sky, giving us strength and courage!”

Oh, brother
, I thought.
This is exactly what Mr. Beeks said would happen. But what does any of this have to do with saving the field?

Dodger, meanwhile, was now holding some kind of cream pie. It looked like he was getting ready to lob the pie at me. Lizzie mouthed,
No, Dodger
. Then she pointed at the floor and said, “On the ground!” That wasn’t a bad idea. At least if Dodger slid the pie on the ground, the kids behind us wouldn’t see it. Plus, that way, I wouldn’t be able to miss, and have the pie splatter everywhere. I reached down below my desk with both hands, preparing for Dodger to slide the pie my way.

Sadly, the mayor had just asked, “And where does our beautiful flag belong?”

Oopsie. Major oopsie. The mayor, and everyone else, turned toward Lizzie and me. I was still all bent over so that nobody could see my arms under the desk, and Lizzie was looking over the mayor’s shoulder at Dodger. The mayor started to step over to us. His foot was in the air as he said, “Young lady, I don’t know what is wrong with you and your friend there, but it will stop now! I will not have our country and our flag mocked like this. What is wrong with you? Where is your respect? And is that a foreign accent I hear?”

Lizzie looked like she was about to faint.
I wonder what she’s going to say to that
, I thought. I never got a chance to find out, though, because just then, Dodger pushed the pie across the floor. The mayor’s foot came down right in the middle of the spinning pastry, and he lost his balance. His foot slid out from under him, flinging the pie up in the air. Mrs. Starsky had been hurrying over to see what was going on—and she arrived at my desk just as the pie did.

SPLAT!
We now had a teacher dripping with pie—banana cream pie, judging from the smell—and a very, very angry government official doing a split on the floor. The mayor spoke first, probably because he didn’t have to spit out a big gob of whipped cream before he could make a sound. “You two are exactly what’s wrong with America today. Foreigners and disrespectful brats!” He pointed at Lizzie and continued. “You come here and take our jobs. You don’t respect our flag, our traditions, or our laws. If I had my way, everyone who wasn’t born in the U.S. would be sent back to their own country! Or thrown in jail forever!” Then he turned to me. “And you! Aren’t you the president of this group?” I nodded weakly. “I came here because you wanted to save the forest and preserve the environment. Well, you know what? Nobody elected me to protect a bunch of trees! I couldn’t care less about the environment! If it would help the most prominent citizens of this town to make money, I’d go out there and chop down those stupid trees myself!”

With that, the mayor stood up, dusted himself off, and stormed out of the room. As he reached the doorway, he turned and said, “If these students are the kind of leaders you produce here, I think this school should be closed down!”

I looked around. Most of the kids looked horrified. Except for James Beeks, who was grinning.
It figures
, I thought.
The second you start feeling sorry for a guy like Beeks—BAM!
Meanwhile, Mrs. Starsky was standing over Lizzie and me, with wads of banana pie goo dripping from her hair and face. “What on earth do you have to say for yourselves?” she demanded.

I gulped. There really wasn’t much to say, was there?

I looked at Lizzie, who was looking down at her desk. No, I realized, she wasn’t looking at the desk—she was looking at her laptop computer. And then I saw that the red
RECORD
light was blinking on her screen.

M
RS.
S
TARSKY SENT EVERYBODY
other than Lizzie and me home, told us not to go anywhere, and went to the bathroom to get cleaned up. When she came back, she looked mostly normal—well, other than a little splotch of banana custard in her left eyebrow. But she was really, really angry at us.

At least, until Lizzie showed her the video of the speech on the laptop computer. Then Mrs. Starsky became really, really angry at the mayor. On the tape, you couldn’t hear anything Lizzie or I had said, but you could tell we hadn’t flung the pie. You could also see that the mayor had gone completely bonkers for very little reason. Mrs. Starsky made us swear that we hadn’t thrown, pushed, bought, or even brought the pie (which was strictly true, anyway), and then apologized for the mayor’s behavior. By the time we got out of there, Mrs. Starsky was just about ready to storm Town Hall by herself.

I hoped she’d get her eyebrow cleaned up first.

At dinner that night, Dad was really proud of himself. He was wearing a “Kiss the Cook” apron, and had made roast beef with potatoes and carrots on the side—the first time in my life I had ever seen him make anything other than eggs, toast, or grilled burgers. He told us he had even scrubbed off the top of the stove and washed the pots and pans already. Mom said, “Wow, that’s some excellent manly housework!” Of course, that got Dad onto the topic of how our resolutions were going. I complimented Mom for letting me express my independence by going downtown with Lizzie to meet with Lasorda. Then I told the family about the upcoming town council meeting. Dad was thrilled that we were using his book as a guide for becoming activists, and wanted to know whether we had found a rare animal yet. I said we were working on it and that Lizzie and I planned to spend that Saturday morning searching the forest for endangered shrews, turtles, and squirrels. That was when the conversation started going downhill.

“Can I go? Huh? Huh?” Amy said. One thing you have to say for my sister: She never, ever gives up. Once she gets an idea, she’s like a pit bull.

I had already tried yelling at Amy to make her stop following me and Lizzie around. I had even said mean things to her, and in fact, Amy hadn’t talked to me for a few days. She probably didn’t even want to spend time with me now, but she wanted to keep snooping. So she was trying to get my parents to make me take her along. The worst part was that they would probably fall for it.

“Mom, Dad,” I pleaded. “Don’t I deserve some privacy?”

“Ooh, Willers wants some privacy to be with his Lizzie-poo!”

“Be quiet, Amy!”

Amy smirked at me, but then put on her most innocent face and asked Dad, “But I want to help. I have a right to help. And aren’t I supposed to stand up for my rights, Daddy?”

He looked unsure for a moment. Amy pushed on. “I mean, won’t it be good for your book if I keep following my resolution?”

“Dad,” I said, “you can’t make us take her along! This is supposed to be
my
quest!”

“Then why are you taking Lizzie?” Amy said triumphantly.

That was it. I didn’t have to sit there and listen to this. “Amy,” I shouted, “you—are—not—going with us into the woods! You will never, ever be welcome to tag along with us! Now, for the last time, LEAVE ME ALONE!” Then I stormed upstairs. I don’t know where all that grumpiness had come from all of a sudden. Maybe I was spending too much time with the mayor.

That Saturday morning was clear and beautiful. I put on some scruffy clothes and a pair of beat-up sneakers, in case we had to crawl around chasing animals. Then I met Lizzie at the edge of the woods, and we set out looking again for interesting creatures. I didn’t see any Least Shrews, Flying Squirrels, or Bog Turtles, but I did see some strange flashes of green between the trees. When we got to a clearing, I stopped. “Lizzie,” I muttered, “don’t look, but I think we’re being followed by leprechauns.”

She giggled.

“I’m serious,” I said. “I keep seeing green out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn around, they’re gone.”

“Hmm,” Lizzie said, “maybe we can try to talk with them.”

“Talk with them? Why would we want to do that?”

“Oh, come on, Willers. Think about it: If the forest gets chopped down, they’re in a lot of trouble. Plus, Lasorda is only selling it so he can pay them back. Maybe we can get them on our side.”

“I don’t know, Lizzie. Dodger said they’re tricky. And I happen to know they don’t like it when people go looking for them.”

“And how do you know that?”

“My mom read me this fairy tale once, and the prince in it tried to—”

“Willie, do you honestly mean to tell me you’re afraid of leprechauns because of a fairy tale you once heard?”

Jeepers, when she said it that way, it sounded kind of wimpy. “All right,” I said, “we can talk to the leprechauns. But how are we supposed to do that?”

“I dunno. Maybe we should make them an offering.”

“An offering? Like what?”

“Let’s see … what do leprechauns like?”

This was a really ridiculous conversation. But I actually did know something that leprechauns were supposed to like. I bent down, took off my right sneaker, and hopped into the middle of the clearing. I carefully placed the sneaker on a flat rock, hopped backward away from it, and sat down in the shade to wait.

“A sneaker?” Lizzie asked as she sat next to me. “Why would a magical forest creature care about your sneaker?”

“Ah,” I said, “it’s not just any old sneaker. It’s a sneaker with a broken lace and a worn-out heel. Leprechauns fix shoes.”

“Why?”

“It’s what they do, that’s all.”

“So you’re leaving them a smelly old piece of athletic footwear—damaged athletic footwear. That sounds kind of crazy, don’t you think?”

I thought for a second, then burst out in a fit of giggles. Here we were, trying to save a forest so that our magical chimpanzee friend wouldn’t lose his home. The land was being sold by a genie, and now we were attempting to lure a leprechaun into a meadow. And Lizzie thought the broken sneaker was the crazy part?

Lizzie said, “I don’t really see what’s so fu—” Then she had to stop talking, because the giggles overcame her, too. We laughed until we were doubled over, gasping for breath. When we finally recovered and sat up again, there was a little man standing next to my sneaker. And when I say little, I’m serious; the guy must have been a foot and a half tall. He had bright red hair and was wearing a very old-fashioned green suit with black buckle shoes and a matching buckled hat. He was studying the sneaker the way a doctor looks at an injury: peering at it from all angles, poking around it gently, and saying
hmmm
… a lot.

I cleared my throat. The little man jumped back a step and shouted, “Hark! Who dares deface this meadow with such an unflattering, odorous specimen of low-quality footwear?”

“Well, sir, I didn’t mean to offend you with it. My name is Willie, and this is my best friend, Elizabeth. We just wanted to meet you because … well, we’re trying to save this forest from being sold and destroyed. We thought maybe you, uh, wee people might want to help us.”

“Wee people? Wee people? Ye think we are wee? Well, we are not wee, are we? Nay, lad, we are the large, powerful, and mighty leprechauns. I am known as Big Pat Clancy, but if that’s too much to say, ye can just call me Big.”

“Um, okay, Big. Would you like to help us save the forest?”

“Wait a moment, son,” Big said. He had taken a little pair of eyeglasses from his vest pocket and slipped them on. “I just need to concentrate so I can operate on this sorry excuse for a shoe.”

Sorry excuse for a shoe? That shoe happened to be the exact same model worn by my absolute favorite basketball player. I knew because I had seen the commercials. I didn’t say anything, though.

The examination continued. “Uh-huh, cracked leather here. Worn rubber down there. And is this some torn … plastic? Honestly, how shabby. Even back in the days when I was but a large and formidable apprentice, I knew better than to make a shoe out of plastic. Would ye make a wedding ring out of tin? Would ye make a cake out of rocks? Would ye make a rainbow out of bubble gum?”

“Um, no, sir?”

“‘No, sir’ is right!”