Lawn Boy (7 page)

I knew, or thought I knew, what was coming.

Joey had gone into the porch slowly, closing the
screen door quietly behind him. By that time we were close to the house. If the front door was locked it didn't slow him down. He hit it with his shoulder, took it off its hinges, and was out of sight.

There was a muffled, thumping sound. Oh no! Rock or his men might have a gun! Later I found it was just the sound of one of the men having his head jammed into a dishwasher. Without opening the door on the washer.

After the thumping, there was a second or two of silence, followed by a scream, and one of the men was thrown out the front door so hard he took the porch screen off its hinges and was propelled into the yard riding the screen on his hands and knees like it was a body board.

Until he hit the elm next to the walkway. The elm was probably a hundred years old, very big, and didn't give a millimeter when the man plowed into it facefirst.

A few seconds later, Joey came out with Rock in his right hand and another man in his left, carrying them like cats by the backs of their necks. The first man was still in the kitchen jammed into the dishwasher.

Later I found out that Rock and three others had
been in the kitchen with Arnold tied to a chair. They thought Arnold had told me to come to his place, and they'd been planning to force me to give them money when I came.

“I told you,” Joey said, “to leave the sponsor alone or I would pinch your head.”

“Please, Mr. Powdermilk.” Mom was standing by the sidewalk, a half horrified, half admiring expression on her face. “Couldn't you just give them a stern talking-to?”

“Yes, but I did that before, when they made trouble the first time. I told them that I would pinch their heads if they came back. They came back anyway. Talking to them again won't help. Pinching their heads will.”

Grandma was nodding.

“I won't come back,” Rock said. “I promise this time. I really do. You don't have to pinch my head, really. I'll do what you say.”

“See, Mr. Powdermilk?” Mom nodded. “I think he means it.”

Joey stared at Rock in one hand, then studied the man in his other hand. He peered over at my father, who shrugged and said, “He seems to be telling the truth.”

Then Joey turned to Grandma, who said, “Probably not the best move, young man, although personally, I'd like to see you pound the snot out of them.”

Joey sighed and looked back at my mother. “If you really don't want me to …”

She shuddered. “I would really rather you didn't.”

“All right. But if they come back, I'll have to take care of things my way.”

“I understand. And
they
understand—don't you?”

Both men nodded enthusiastically.

“Then please let them go, Mr. Powdermilk,” Mom said.

He dropped them and it was like watching those cartoon scenes where a dog or cat is held off the ground and his legs start moving faster and faster until he's dropped and he shoots away.

They disappeared in half a second.

We all went into the kitchen and found Arnold tied up but not gagged. I introduced him to my parents and Grandma while we untied him.

The man slumped against the dishwasher was regaining consciousness. Joey picked him up by the neck and threw him the length of the hallway and out the front door.

Arnold was none the worse for wear and made a pitcher of his special iced tea for us. We all had a glass while Arnold explained how he wanted to set up my account with Mom and Dad, and Grandma asked if Arnold could find her a boxer to sponsor too. Then my mother held her glass up and said, I think, a line from Shakespeare:

“All's well that ends well.”

Except.

That wasn't the end.

We all went to the fight Saturday night.

It was a huge auditorium with a ring in the middle and a bunch of fat men smoking cigars that smelled like dog poop when a hot mower blade hits it. Women with not a lot of clothes on were hanging on to the men.

Because I was a sponsor, I had ringside seats for Arnold and my family, and when we arrived it was pretty exciting. Joey came out in a big red robe, followed by his manager in a red T-shirt. He took off the robe and pumped his arms in the air. He had on red trunks. The ring announcer introduced the
fighters and we cheered like crazy. Grandma blew kisses, which made Joey blush and look away. The other man wore green. When the bell rang the fighters came out of their corners and took a stance in the middle like they were going to box.

Only they didn't.

The man in green swung at Joey and Joey ducked a little and used his right to hit the other guy so hard it sounded like somebody had slammed a melon with an ax.

The other boxer slid backward, already out cold, until he hit the ropes, then slithered between the bottom rope and the mat and out of the ring to land in the lap of a fat man smoking a cigar. We all jumped up screaming, “Joey! Joey! Joey Pow!” He waved a glove at us.

The fight lasted four and a half seconds.

That was it.

The purse was five thousand dollars and I was due for half. Wow. This was just the start for Joey; he was going to have many more fights. When I went to bed that night I had a dream about him doing a whole bunch of four-and-a-half-second fights until he became world champion.

It was a great dream, in color, with Joey wearing
the red trunks for luck and with a lot of action, and because it had been such a late night at the fight I slept hard. When the phone by my bed woke me up the next morning I was still in the dream.

“It's me,” Arnold said. “We have a new development.”

“Don't worry…. As long as he keeps wearingred trunks we're bound to win.”

“What?”

The dream was hard to shake. “As long as he keeps wearing red trunks …”

“Wake up. It's me, Arnold!”

“Oh.” I shook my head, scattered the dream. “All right. So what's the problem?”

“It's not a problem. You remember the Walleye stock?”

“Sure. The one that made me rich.”

“That's the one. Well, I put in the sell order back when I said I did, and the records said it sold for four dollars a share and you came up with forty-eight thousand dollars …”

“And change.”

“Yes. And change. Except the sell order didn't go through like the computers said it did and the stocks didn't change hands the way they're supposed
to. Some kind of technical foul-up. So for all of this week you have still owned Walleye stock. In fact, you still do. And there have been some massive shifts in the value—”

Even half awake I could feel a sinking in the center of my stomach. “How much,” I said, though I didn't want to know, really, “did we lose?”

“Oh my. No. The stock didn't go down, it went up.”

“Up?”

“Yes. There was a secondary merger of some stature and a larger software company took the whole thing over. They're always doing things like that, these high-risk software stocks. I remember when—”

“Arnold—how much?”

“Oh. Well, the merger triggered more interest, so the stock jumped to forty dollars a share. You have twelve thousand shares at forty dollars a share….”

Numbers.

More numbers. Twelve times four. Forty-eight. No, not forty-eight, but …

“Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars?”

“Yes. Of course, there will be fees and commissions and the like, but still, it should be just a little
under that figure. Now listen, please. It's Sunday and the market is closed, but I heartily recommend that tomorrow morning when it opens we sell the stock and put the money in something solid and long-term.”

I didn't faint.

This time I didn't faint.

But I did hang up and I got out of bed and went down into the kitchen, where Mom and Dad and Grandma were making a late breakfast, and without thinking about telling them to sit down I gave them Arnold's news and found there must be a weak male gene in our family because Dad fainted.

We put him on the couch.

“He's coming around.” Grandma patted his hand. She turned to me. “You know, dear, Grandpa always said, take care of your tools and they'll take care of you.”