The Seventh Most Important Thing (20 page)

O
n the last Saturday in July, Arthur decided to take one more walk to Mr. Hampton's garage.

He knew he didn't have to go there at all. His probation was over. The judge had suspended the rest of his sentence for good behavior, and Officer Billie had officially released him from being one of her kids—with another tin of caramel corn as a gift. The landlord had rented the garage to a new tenant, and the museum people had already finished packing up Hampton's Throne. They'd been working in the garage all week, according to Groovy Jim.

But Arthur wanted to see the place one last time.

It was a beautiful summer morning. Arthur couldn't help thinking that it would have been a great day for collecting the Seven Most Important Things. In the brilliant sunlight, he could see the world as perfectly as if it was outlined. He kind of felt like he was outlined too. Arthur T. Owens against the bright blue sky.

The sun warmed Arthur's neck. He thought about how almost a whole year had gone by without his dad. He felt like a different person. It felt like a different life.

Would the judge call this redemption? He wasn't sure.

He was definitely taller and stronger now. Maybe that was what pushing a grocery cart through the snow and sleet for months did to a person. A lot of his clothes didn't fit anymore. He was starting to get pale wisps of hair on his upper lip, he'd noticed, and that was funny and weird at the same time.

A lot of things were funny and weird to him these days. Like being the Director of Special Projects for the State of Eternity. He'd never told anyone about the title Mr. Hampton had given him before he died—not even Squeak—but remembering it always made Arthur feel secretly proud, as if he had a superhero side nobody knew about.

Maybe because he was so lost in his own thoughts, the walk to the garage seemed a lot shorter than it usually did.

In no time at all, Arthur was standing outside the familiar corrugated door with the drippy address numbers. The morning sunlight had just reached the garage. It glinted off the three glass bottles of Nesbitt's soda still pouring out their guilt and regrets onto the ground. Arthur was glad to see that the landlord hadn't gotten rid of them yet.

Taking a deep breath, he pulled Mr. Hampton's keys out of his pocket and opened the door. He knew the garage would be empty when he switched on the lights. He had prepared himself for the emptiness. Still, it was a shock to see almost nothing left in the space where Hampton's shimmering, heavenly creation had once been.

The first thought that whispered through Arthur's mind was that maybe it had never been there. Maybe he had imagined the whole thing.

Don't be stupid,
he told himself. Of course it had been there.

He walked slowly across the cement floor, noticing how his footsteps—even his breathing—seemed to echo loudly in the emptiness.

The museum people had left a few things piled in one corner of the garage. There were some boxes of broken mirrors and bottles and lightbulbs Mr. Hampton hadn't used. And his office chair. And the familiar grocery cart.

It was the shopping cart that got to Arthur the most.

It's a chariot,
Mr. Hampton had told Barbara.
You just can't see the horses.

Arthur knew there was no way he could leave the rust-bucket cart behind. Not after he had pushed the thing around the neighborhood for months. Not when he knew exactly where to kick the right front wheel to make it turn. Not when he had finally figured out how to get the bone-rattling noise to stop by putting heavy stuff in the bottom of the cart first. (Surprisingly, a couple of bricks came in handy for this.)

Arthur tugged Hampton's chariot from behind the boxes.

He knew his mother would have a fit about keeping a rusty grocery cart in their garage. He'd have to come up with some excuse about storing his basketballs in it or something.

As Arthur pushed the cart across the cement floor, he took one last look around.

It was hard to leave the place, even if it was just a run-down garage at the end of an alley.

He wished he knew whether he'd done the right thing. He wished Mr. Hampton had given him more directions before he died, or told him what to do. Had he saved the artwork or ruined it? he wondered. Would anybody ever see Mr. Hampton's unbelievable creation again?

And that was when Arthur noticed the square piece of cardboard in the middle of the garage floor.

It looked like the torn flap of a box.

He shook his head, thinking there was no way the cardboard was a message from Mr. Hampton. It was just a scrap that had been left behind by the museum people when they were packing up. Some piece they had forgotten.

Still, he couldn't resist picking up the piece and looking at it. Just to check. Just to be sure.

On the other side, he found seven letters carefully cut out of silver metallic foil and glued on the cardboard, which had been covered with purple paper. Arthur's breath caught in his throat as he read them.

The seven letters spelled out two words:

A
rthur didn't want to wear a suit to the reception. His mom insisted.

“This is a big deal,” she said. “I don't care if you are too grown-up for me to fuss over anymore. I want you looking nice. I want to be proud of you.”

She tugged on the sleeves of the new dark blue suit jacket and smoothed the fabric across his broad shoulders. He was twenty-one now and as tall as his father had been, and he had his father's stubbornness about getting dressed up for anything.

“There. It fits you perfectly. Look.” Arthur's mom spun him around to face the mirror in the bathroom. “You are handsome enough to make me cry.” Her voice trembled a little, and Arthur rolled his eyes.

“Please, Mom.”

“Roger, Barbara—come look at Arthur,” his mom called before he could stop her.

Of course Roger had to stick his head in the tiny bathroom, with Barbara right behind him. They were both decked out for the occasion too. Barbara was wearing a yellow dress with a big summer hat and white gloves—which Arthur thought was a little over the top, but she was fourteen and you couldn't tell her anything these days.

“Now all you need is a nice girl to marry, Artie,” she teased.

“Oh, you be quiet,” his mom scolded.

Actually, Arthur did have a nice girl he was dating. Her name was Carol, and he'd met her at the city college where he was taking a couple of classes in design and architecture. But he wasn't spilling the beans about going out with her. Not yet.

Which was typical of Arthur.

“Jiminy, everybody looks awfully sharp,” Roger said. Like Arthur, he was wearing a suit—the same one he'd worn when he'd married Arthur's mom at the courthouse four years before. Arthur had been his best man.

“Are you sure I look all right?” Arthur's mom peered anxiously into the bathroom mirror. She was wearing too much blue eye shadow and her hair was piled kind of high on her head, but Arthur told her she looked perfect.

The four of them got into Roger's white Cadillac to go to the reception. He'd had the whitewalls scrubbed and the leather seats cleaned. The car smelled of lemons. Arthur would have preferred to drive there himself, but his mom wanted all of them to arrive together. He suspected she was afraid he wouldn't show up on time. The reception started at six, and Arthur was always late.

The first person Arthur spotted when they pulled into the parking lot downtown was Squeak, which made him relax a little. Arthur had invited him, and he'd driven down from Boston to be there. He was heavier and rounder now, with thicker black glasses. But he was still Squeak. Once Roger had the car safely in the space, Arthur leaped out to flag him down.

“Squeak! Squeak!”

Squeak looked confused, then embarrassed.

“You made it!” Arthur said, pounding him on the back. “Good to see you, man!” They hadn't seen each other much since the end of high school. Squeak was going to Boston College, majoring in physics. Of course.

“Reginald. Not
Squeak,
” Squeak said, smiling wider. “I wouldn't have recognized you. You look like a preacher or something in that fancy suit.”

“I know.” Arthur grinned. “I feel like an idiot in it.”

“So, you excited for tonight?” Squeak pointed at the entrance of the art museum, where a crowd of well-dressed people was already lined up on the wide steps, waiting for the reception. A colorful banner saying
HAMPTON'S THRONE, OPENING SOON
flapped in the warm evening breeze.

“I'm not sure yet,” replied Arthur. Which was the truth.

It had been seven years since he'd last seen Hampton's Throne. Seven years since he'd been a juvenile delinquent with a probation officer. Seven years since he'd gone around the neighborhood collecting the Seven Most Important Things with a grocery cart. More than seven years since his dad had died.

It was so long ago it didn't even feel like his own life when he thought about it.

But he knew there would be a few people at the reception to remind him.

Groovy Jim was there. Arthur had called the shop to let him know about the event, and he could already spot him in the crowd—a tall, hippieish guy with his mop of curly hair pulled back in a neat ponytail.

Arthur's mom had tracked down Officer Billie, who was now working as a security guard. “She did a lot to help you,” Arthur's mom reminded him. “I think we should try to let her know.”

Officer Billie told Arthur's mom she'd already heard about the exhibit opening.

Of course, Arthur thought. She knew
everything.

Officer Billie said she was pretty sure Judge Warner would be there, because he was a board member of the museum. But Arthur couldn't believe the story when he heard it from his mom. A board member? Judge Warner had seemed like the last person on earth who would be interested in art.

The rest of the people in the crowd were strangers to Arthur—museum staff and patrons and guests. People who had a lot of money to spare, by the looks of their stylish clothes and jewelry.

Arthur was suddenly glad his mother had insisted on the suit.

The museum had asked Arthur to be part of the ribbon-cutting group for the opening of the exhibit. There were five people in the group. One of them turned out to be Judge Warner. He was introduced as the Honorable Philip Warner, a board member and lifelong friend of the museum. Just as Officer Billie had said.

“From brick throwing to ribbon cutting,” the judge whispered to Arthur with a half smile as he handed out the scissors to everyone. “Now, that's what I call redemption.”

Even seven years later, he could still make Arthur nervous.

On the count of seven—Arthur's suggestion—they cut the silver ribbon across the entrance to the exhibit. Cameras flashed as the bits of ribbon fluttered to the floor. The crowd watching in the hallway clapped.

And then it was time to walk through the wide marble doorway to see Mr. Hampton's masterpiece on display for the first time.

This was the moment Arthur had been most afraid of.

He was worried Hampton's Throne would look smaller and less spectacular than he remembered, the way things from your past often did. Had the pieces really filled half of a garage once? Would people understand why heaven had been made out of junk? Would they see what Hampton had been trying to do?

He didn't need to worry.

As the crowd entered the room behind him, there was a soft gasp. Arthur's breath caught in his throat. Mr. Hampton's masterpiece looked far better, far more beautiful, than he remembered.

In the darkened room, the red chair Arthur had found for Mr. Hampton years before filled the center like a radiant throne. Around it, the foil-wrapped tables and chairs and pedestals and pillars sparkled in the spotlights. Metallic wings stretched outward. Stars caught the light. And at the top of it all—above the glittering thrones and tables and pillars—was the small cardboard sign Arthur wanted everyone to see:
FEAR NOT.

For a long time, Arthur stood at the side of the room watching as the museum guests filed in. He noticed how they spoke in hushed whispers as they entered the darkened space, and how they stepped forward to look at the intricate pieces more closely—then back, as if trying to grasp the scene from a distance. Forward and back. Forward and back. Like a dance.

Arthur found it hard to resist pointing out to people that there was no way of seeing everything—no matter how close or far away you were from Mr. Hampton's work. Or how many hours you stared at it. Some things in this world were meant to remain a mystery.

The line to see Hampton's Throne stretched out the door and down the hallway. It moved slowly.

And just as Mr. Hampton had said, the people kept coming.

At the reception later, Officer Billie came over to give Arthur a round metal tin. “I've switched from caramel corn to cookies,” she told him. “Chocolate chip. Hope you like them.”

“Thank you,” Arthur said, remembering to make eye contact and sound grateful. He'd learned a few things from Officer Billie seven years earlier.

Groovy Jim stopped by to tell Arthur and Squeak that they should come and get a tattoo at his shop sometime. “I can always use the business,” he joked.

“Hey, I just got one,” Squeak said, rolling up his sleeve to show it off. “Look.”

Groovy Jim and Arthur had to squint to see what it was. It looked like a tiny smudge of letters on his biceps:
F = ma.

“Newton's second law of motion.” Squeak prodded Arthur: “Force equals mass times acceleration. Remember that from high school?”

“Oh yeah.” Arthur laughed. “Man, I cannot believe you did that. I thought you were going to get something big and scary. That's what you always said.”

Squeak grinned. “Trust me, getting this little thing was scary enough.”

Arthur and Squeak stayed until the end of the reception. It seemed like everybody had heard how they were the ones who had saved the Throne. People kept coming over to ask them what Mr. Hampton had been like and what they'd done. Arthur figured he and Squeak must have told the story of the coffee cans ten or fifteen times.

When Arthur and his family finally left the museum that night with the last of the guests, it was dark outside. As they came out, he couldn't help noticing the big flock of city pigeons that had gathered on the museum steps for the night. There must have been fifty birds, he thought.

As the group started down the steps, the flock suddenly took off together, moving upward like one big cloud. Everyone stopped to watch them. You could hear the beat of their noisy wings lifting into the night sky—dozens upon dozens of metallic-paper wings rising over the city.

Arthur smiled as he watched the birds disappear into the darkness, remembering his dad again, remembering what Mr. Hampton had said:

Some angels are like peacocks.

Others are less flashy. Like city pigeons.

It all depends on the wings.