The Trouble Begins (23 page)

My hands are so cold they won't fold as fast as I want them to. Plastic bags won't open right. They slip off the piles I make. To warm up I run down the street with ten papers. At least I know the houses on our street. I get the papers near the door. My melted shoe is still a little damp.

I come back. The pile of papers looks just as big as before. A light goes on in Mr. W.'s kitchen. His front door opens. He shuffles down the porch and across the lawn. I don't want him to know I am doing something foolish again. He will tell me it can't be done, to deliver all these papers by seven. I don't look up.

“Quite a job,” he says.

“I guess,” I say. He doesn't say anything else. He starts folding papers with me but he's slower than I am. He picks
up the route sheets. “I'll go fix this,” he says. “Get me out of the cold.” He takes the route sheets with him into his house. I'm not ready for them anyway. I fold and fold and fold. I think I'll run out of plastic bags but there are just enough. I need the route sheets.

“Here you go,” he says. I didn't even see him come out, I was so busy folding. He hands me the sheets. He has drawn a map of the streets on a piece of paper on top. He has circles and squares and squiggles around the different houses that are near each other. On the map I see that some houses are across the freeway. He hands me a big shopping bag. I load it with papers. I run off to the next block. The sky is not so dark. I will never deliver all the papers by seven. I run faster as the bag gets lighter.

Now there are cars on the street and a few people out. It's still dark. Two more papers in this bunch. At the corner I see a kid out already in a red jacket on a skateboard. “Hi, Dude,” he yells happily. It's Todd. “I got a skateboard for Christmas. I'm trying it out.”

I wave. “I'm delivering papers,” I yell. “I gotta finish by seven.” He skateboards along behind me.

I run home for papers. From down the block I can see Mr. W. bending over the piles of papers. He's stuffing them all in grocery bags with the route sheets on each bag. “Deliver to the houses across the freeway,” he says. “That's the hardest.” I get a bag in each hand. Todd grabs one. He leaves his skateboard on my porch. We run slowly and breathe hard because the bags are heavy. They bounce
around in their slippery plastic bags. We're both panting and slowing down with three blocks more to the freeway bridge.

A truck pulls up next to us. “Hey, what's happening?” It's the Mexican guy who fixes trucks down our block.

“Delivering papers,” I yell.

“Jump in. I'll drop you off.” He opens the door of the truck. Todd and I heave the newspapers on the floor of the cab. We climb in. I show the guy the map. We are across the freeway in a few minutes.

“Thanks a lot,” Todd says when we jump out. I remember that is what Americans say all the time. I remember the clock on the dashboard too. Twenty minutes after six. We can never finish in time. My dad will lose the job. Still I run. Todd is running with me. He is having fun but I feel like the first day of American school when I knew nothing would work out right. Try as hard as you can but it will not be right. Why the heck did I say I'd do this?

We deliver all the papers across the freeway. We are good now at throwing them near the door. My arm aches. We run for home and more papers. It's too late. The clock at the 7-Eleven says 7:05.

I'm looking at my feet as I run. My foot hurts in the burned shoe. Maybe nobody'll notice if the papers are a little late. We run down the middle of the street. We run between the parked cars. We run panting to my house. I stop so fast Todd bumps into me.

The papers are all gone. The bags are all gone. Somebody
stole them. Todd runs up the steps to check his skateboard. I sink down on the steps. I will have to tell my dad.

Mr. W. is gone. No light comes from his windows. He should have stayed to protect the papers. A second later I know this isn't fair. Mr. W. helped me in the middle of the night. He didn't have to help at all. It's my own fault. Todd sits down next to me.

“Nobody wants to steal a bunch of newspapers,” he says. True. They read it once. They throw it in the trash. Maybe the delivery guys came and took their papers back. Cars pass along our street now.

I am tired and hungry and my arm aches and my foot hurts in the melted shoe but I don't care about any of that. I'm sad because I couldn't deliver the newspapers. I'm sad even if my dad never finds out. I almost did it. If they were here I would deliver them all just a little late. But they aren't. I don't even care that Todd sees that I'm sad. He sits next to me spinning the wheels of his skateboard. Not saying anything.

“Du!” I look up. My dad's car is in the street next to the parked cars. He's yelling at me.

“Here we go,” I whisper to myself. I drag over to the car. My dad rolls down the window. I look at him. I am face to face looking at him like an American kid. He is grinning. This must be the way he looks when he wins the pot gambling with my uncles during Tet.

“Hey! Way to go!” he says, also like an American. Then he switches to Vietnamese. “We did it,” he says, grinning.
“It's seven o'clock and they're all delivered.” I can't believe it for a minute. Why is he here? How does he know about the delivery time? He laughs at my confusion.

“Who do you think saved you by delivering the rest of those papers?” he asks proudly. I know it was him.

“How did you know?” I ask.

“Grandma called me at four-fifteen. She said you were doing the paper route and it was a big job. I drove home in less than two hours. No traffic.”

“When I got here I saw those bags of papers stacked all over the sidewalk with the man next door here watching them. He showed me the delivery route maps he made. I delivered all of them.” He laughs. “You were gonna run your shoes off getting yourself in trouble, lazy boy.” He is proud of the work I did, of how hard I tried. “Grandma always said you were just like me when I was young in Vietnam. At first I didn't believe her.” He's not laughing anymore. “Now I see. You do it your own way. Like me. That neighbor says you were brave in the fire and helped him. He thinks you're quite a kid.”

“How come I'm like you in Vietnam?” This is what I want to hear. How can my grandma say this? How can it be true? I thought my dad and me were as different as birds are from fish…or water buffalo from reindeer.

He's laughing again. “You're up at three in the morning.”

“Did you deliver papers?” I ask.

“No,” he laughs. “I got up to go fishing.”

“Fishing is more fun,” I say.

“And you're a little crazy. You think you can do anything, like me,” he answers, but he laughs again and looks proud. “Together we did the job.”

A car honks. It is stuck behind him in the narrow street. “Don't wake Grandma,” he says. He hands me a couple of dollars. “You and your friend get some donuts.” He doesn't give away money but he believes in paying for work done. The car honks again. “I'll go back to Orange to get the others.” As he pulls away he shouts back, “Du, you and me have a paper route.”

Todd lets me ride his skateboard partway to the donut shop. I'm not bad at it but I'm going to get better. I can make a board if I can find some wheels. The donut shop is warm. It smells wonderful. We get a box of donuts. We eat them as we walk down the street. We'll go see if Gil and Martin are around. We save two donuts for them. I'll take them all to see Cat later. Mr. W. won't mind. I'll thank him for his help like an American kid.

In the afternoon I go home so I'll be there when they come from Orange. I forgot to tell my dad about Mr. Vronsky calling too. Thuy and Lin and Vuong come up the front walk like they're so tired they can hardly stand up. I jump off the porch to check out their bags. Even though we don't do Christmas they have some presents, sweaters for all of them, and Thuy and Lin have some earrings. My mom gives me a bag from my uncle with a football in it. I'm going to trade it
for a soccer ball. Everyone asks me about the fire. I tell them about the apartment building and the people outside and the trucks and the flames. “I had to get that cat and her kittens out of the shed” is how I end.

Vuong looks at my wrecked shoe. “You're crazy, Du,” he says. “Just like that bearded guy said.”

I remember how my dad was so mad when the bearded dad told him what I'd done to get the free chickens and hitting Andy's sister. Vuong can read my face. “I told him how it really happened on the way to Orange,” Vuong says. “Lin told him about that math contest you won. You have to find a good time to tell him stuff.”

“Is it a good time now?” I ask. “Because I've got something to tell him.”

Vuong laughs but I'm not laughing. “Try him and see,” says Vuong. I go help my dad take bags and boxes of stuff out of the trunk.

I decide the best way is to just say it right out. “Mr. Vronsky called,” I say. “He wants you to call him the minute you get home because he has a job.” I wait. I don't look at his face but I see his hand tighten and the jerk he gives the box he's lifting.

“You know what we're going to do with our paper route money?” he asks. I shake my head. “We're going to put it in the savings account I started for a van. It's going to be my own plumbing van and I'm going to say good-bye very soon to Mr. Vronsky. And when it's not a plumbing van there'll be plenty of room in it for everybody to go to Orange with us.”

I'm glad we'll all be able to go to Orange together but I'm happiest my dad won't have to work for Mr. Vronsky anymore. I'm happiest that I'm the one helping him get the van.

“After that we'll buy a bike,” he adds. I shrug but I hear him. We take the bags and boxes inside. It's a good day. Everything turned out okay and I've got a lot of stuff to do.