Lawn Boy (4 page)

“So, before taxes, my percentage, and expenses, you grossed out at just over eight.”

“Eight what?”

“Eight thousand dollars.”

“Eight
thousand
dollars?”

“Yes. Of course, like I said, that's gross, and your net won't be anywhere near that. I think you should perhaps set aside a pretty good chunk for employee relief—perhaps twenty percent. At this stage. Naturally that will go up as they earn more. They'll appreciate it when the season ends.”

I had this sudden memory of when I was nine years old. Back then I thought that someday I might be a professional basketball player. This in spite of the fact that I'm fairly short and can't make a basket to save my soul. But I thought when I was nine that if I just had the right ball, a true professional ball made by Spalding, I would/could be good enough to be a professional player when I grew up. The problem was that the ball was expensive. There was no way my parents could spend that kind of money on one measly basketball, and I couldn't find a way to get enough money on my own. So I wound up with a cheap ball and (I thought) no chance at a professional basketball career.

How many balls could I buy with eight thousand dollars? Eight
thousand
dollars. I was only three years
older now than I had been then. True, it was a big three years. But after just three years I could afford all the Spalding basketballs I wanted.

I was rich.

Rich.

What a strange word that was; it didn't really mean anything in itself.
Rich.
Short for Richard? Why does
rich
mean having tons of money? How many Spalding balls could I buy, really, with eight
thousand
dollars? Say they're twenty dollars each to make it simple. Five balls for a hundred dollars. Fifty for a thousand dollars. Four hundred. I could buy four
hundred
Spalding basketballs….

“What do you mean?” I suddenly remembered something Arnold had said. “You said something about this being a small amount of money. Is that what you said? I don't know what you're used to having, but I can't think of eight thousand dollars as a small amount.”

“Everything,” Arnold said, “is relative. Taken in the whole scheme of things, eight thousand dollars, though significant, is not all that large. If Bill Gates, who owns Microsoft, for instance, could hold all his wealth in his hands and he suddenly dropped it, just
on the way to the ground it would make over forty thousand dollars in interest.”

“Hunh?” I tried to picture that. “Look, I understand that I don't have as much as Bill Gates. Still, I'm very satisfied with what I have. I honestly don't know what I would do with more money than that.”

“Seriously.”

“Absolutely. It's more money than I could even think of having. It wasn't that long ago I was wondering where to get enough money to buy an inner tube for my ten-speed. Now I could buy a whole new bike. I could buy a bunch of them.”

“Well then”—Arnold shrugged and sighed— “we have a bit of a problem.”

“Your problem,” Arnold said, “is both simple and a bit complex. More tea?”

“No. I'm fine.” Outside, the rain seemed to let up a bit, then came down harder. I could hear thunder way off somewhere. “What are you talking about?”

He took a sip of tea. “Man, I like this tea. It comes straight from India, you know. All the yogis drink it. I hear the Beatles used to drink it all the time.”

“Arnold …”

“Oh. Well, let's go back to when all this started, all right?”

“You bet. Please.”

“You remember that I had a cash-flow problem then and instead of paying you cash I started an account for you under my own name because you're too young to have an account.”

“Yes.”

“And we bought eighty shares of a coffin manufacturing firm for fifty cents a share.”

I nodded. “I'm still with you.”

“There's some risk, of course, with buying what they call penny stocks, which these were, but I thought with just forty dollars invested even if the company went belly-up the loss rate would not be unbearable.”

“I'm still here.”

“Well, the stock did not lose. After the second quarter of the year, it turned out the company had a great deal of land in northern Minnesota—upwards of two thousand acres of hardwoods—that they planned to use to make the coffins.”

Another sip of tea. I waited.

“This had not been reported initially, but the land with the valuable hardwoods was free and clear
and belonged to the company; it was part of their net worth that nobody knew about, and when word got out the stock rose dramatically.”

“How dramatically?”

“Normally I dislike these things because they give a wrong impression about the stock market. Ten, twelve percent a year is a good figure to think about making in the market. These explosions are very unpredictable and there is always an element of risk and one shouldn't plan on—”

“How big an explosion?”

“The first day it jumped to just over ten dollars and I thought of selling. Stock purchased at fifty cents and sold for ten dollars gives an excellent return. But the sudden surge caused a lot of interest and people started wanting to buy the stock and that drove the price up further, and still further, and I finally sold at a hundred dollars and ten cents a share. So your forty-dollar investment brought you just over eight thousand dollars, less my five percent commission.”

“You mean I have eight thousand dollars on top of the
other
eight thousand?” I dumped them together in my head. Eight and eight is sixteen. Sixteen
thousand dollars. Less commissions and those other things. Taxes. Less taxes. Sixteen thousand dollars.

“Well, not exactly. I assumed I had a rather free hand with your investment so I reinvested it and some of the other money you've been giving me, and frankly, I took a daring risk with one stock. I invested my own money at the same time and took the same risk.”

“What did you invest it in?”

“It was one of those freak software things. Believe me, normally I wouldn't give it a second thought—they're just too big a gamble. But the quarterly earnings looked good, they had a new idea about nationwide Internet use, something to do with vastly improving the speed. A company called Walleye. I bought you three thousand shares at sixty cents a share.”

“And we lost?”

“Oh my, no. The new Internet system they evolved swept the country and the stock jumped to ten dollars and split, which gave you six thousand shares at five, then went back up to ten dollars and split again, which gave you twelve thousand shares, which climbed back up to five-fifty a share, hung
there and flattened out. So I sold when it went back down to four dollars.”

He had, as they say, gone past my knowledge envelope about the stock market. “So you sold my three thousand shares for four dollars?”

“No, no.” He shook his head. “It had split and then resplit—you had
twelve
thousand shares at four dollars a share. I must point out that this kind of growth is unprecedented.”

The numbers were there. I knew they were, but they didn't register. It was just too much to understand, to believe.

I was twelve.

That morning my parents were having trouble deciding if they could afford a newer used car.

Five weeks earlier my grandmother had given me her old riding lawn mower and I'd started mowing lawns.

I was only twelve and Arnold had sold twelve thousand shares of Walleye for four dollars a share.

“Forty-eight thousand dollars? Is that right?”

“Well, less commission, of course.”

“Of course. Sure. Right. Uh … let me get this straight….”

“Sure. I know it's all kind of far-out.”

“No, wait. You're telling me that I started with an old lawn mower and I now have … what do I have?”

“Well, from all of your stocks and bonds right now, over fifty thousand dollars. It's less because I took out my commission, but I will of course reinvest it.”

“Of course.”

“All in solid, safe blue-chip stocks and government bonds.” He smiled. “Perhaps you'd better take a few deep breaths…. You seem to be weaving a bit.”

“I have fifty thousand dollars?”

“And change, plus the eight thousand from mowing.”

“And change?”

“You,” he said, smiling, “have had a very groovy month …”

But I didn't hear him finish the sentence.

I had fainted.

When I came to, there was a damp paper towel over my face.

“I'm sorry,” Arnold said. “I thought I eased into it but I guess the shock …”

I thought of a really important question.

“I …” I was still woozy. “I'm still not sure I heard you right. Did you say I now have over fifty thousand dollars?”

“Are you going to faint again?”

“No. I don't think so.”

“Then yes. You are now worth that.”

“Where is it?”

“In your account. Under my name, but in your special account.”

“Can I see it?”

“Of course. I have your account information on the computer.” He turned to his keyboard and tapped a few keys.

“No. The money. Can I see the money?”

He shook his head. “It's not like that. First you'd have to sell all your investments and get a check, then you'd have to take the check to the bank and cash it, and then, yes, you could see the money. And when you sell, you then owe taxes on your capital gains. At the end of the year, capital gains is what they call the profit you made from your initial investment.”

“Oh.” I didn't quite follow all that.

I thought.

“So I don't really have the money,” I said slowly. “I have a computer screen and numbers and stocks and things … but not the actual money.”

“That's right. That's how it works. You—or I, acting for you—will reinvest the money in safe stocks, which will give you what's called a diversified portfolio—so if one thing goes down another
might go up—to cover you. But it's all there, and you can cash it in anytime you want. Except …”

“Except what?” I smelled a rat.

“Right now the money appears to be mine because legally you can't invest in the market because you're too young. You have to go through an adult. And I'm a little uncomfortable with this because first of all, I'm not your legal guardian, and second, since the money appears to be mine the government will want me to pay taxes on it and that shouldn't be my responsibility—to pay taxes on your money.”

“So what do we do?

“Soon, very soon, we talk to your parents and get them involved.”

Mom, I thought, Dad, I have something to tell you. I've been mowing lawns … I've been mowing a lot of lawns and I have fifty thousand …

Please pass the green beans and by the way I have fifty thousand …

Breakfast. Over toast.

Mom, Dad, you know how I've been mowing lawns every day? Well, guess what? I have—no, we have—something like fifty thousand … and change.

“There's something else.”

What on earth could it be? How could anything in the world top this? “What is it?”

“As I said, I put your money into this Walleye stock, but I should remind you not
all
your money. I thought it might be good to do some investing for fun.”

It isn't fun, I thought, to have over fifty thousand dollars?

“So there was this kind of fund for people interested in sports and I thought you might like to invest in that….”

He trailed off and I studied him. “Is something wrong?”

He shook his head, looked out at the rain. I couldn't believe it was still raining, that it was the same day, that we had only been talking for an hour or so. Part of me was listening and part of me was imagining what the money would do to help my parents, what it would buy.

“I misread the explanation on the fund,” he said, and sighed. “Usually, in this kind of fund, a lot of investors pool their money and perhaps buy a baseball team, or help to build a stadium. But it didn't turn out that way.”

“How, exactly, did it turn out?”

“It turns out that you own one-hundred-percent interest in a heavyweight boxer who lives nearby.”

“I
own
him?”

“Not really the person, of course. You're sponsoring him, and if he does well you split the purse.”