Dodger for Sale (7 page)

Eventually, Rodger ended the practice by claiming that his arm was getting, and I quote, “sore, weary, fatigued.”

Then the three of us sat on the edge of the locker behind the backstop and Dodger said, “Now that we’re all mellowed out, tell us again about the thing with James Beeks.”

So I told the story again. Then Dodger said, “You know, dude, maybe James didn’t tell his dad to buy the forest.”

“What are you talking about? Of course he did. First he was obnoxious about saving the forest, and then the next thing you know, his dad is buying it. What else could it mean?”

Rodger said, “Well, maybe he told his father about the project innocently, without evil intent. Perhaps James was just telling his father about the events of his day, and when the father heard about the forest, he got the idea to buy it on his own. For all you know, James feels terrible, awful, wracked with guilt about this.”

I snorted. “Beeks feeling guilty? I don’t think so.”

Dodger said, “Or maybe the whole thing is, like, a coincidence. James happened to know about the forest, but his father found out about it some other way. I mean, if I eat a banana, and you already knew that bananas were a food, that doesn’t mean I heard about them from you.”

“Uh, that’s a good point, but … he’s James Beeks. He
lives
to mess up other people’s plans. Plus, why are you both sticking up for him? He picks on me all the time, and now he’s going to help destroy this whole place.”

“I don’t know,” Rodger said. “I think that there is more to James Beeks than meets the eye. I think he has invisible depths, secret pains, hidden troubles. Anyway, what are you going to do next in your quest to save the forest?”

“Well, my dad wrote this book about how to be an activist, and Lizzie and I have been trying to follow the steps. The next one is Tell Truth to Power.”

“Oh,” Dodger said, “so you have to, like, sit in front of a light switch and confess all the bad things you’ve done?”

“No—it means you have to face whoever’s in charge and tell them that what’s happening is wrong. You know, like Martin Luther King did. Or the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. So I think we’re going to invite the mayor to a student council meeting and talk to him about the woods.”

“Dude, I remember those meetings with Thomas Jefferson and those white-wigged guys!”

“Wow, I still can’t believe you were there when the Declaration of Independence was written! What was it like?”

“Well, you know, it was made of yellowish paper, about a foot tall, with black ink all over it.”

“No, I mean what was it like to
be
there?”

“Oh, you know: talk, talk, talk, write, write, write, talk, talk, talk, vote. Kind of ruined my July Fourth that year, actually.”

“Yeah, but what was it like?”

“Mostly I remember wishing there were more snacks. Take my advice, Willie, if you want this mayor guy to listen, you have to have excellent munching items. I recommend a little chocolate, some fruit, and maybe something in a nice corn chip. If only those independence guys had stocked up beforehand, I wouldn’t have been out on a food run when they were all signing the paper. And then John Hancock wouldn’t have written his name so big right in the spot I was supposed to sign.”

“So,” I said, “that’s the best advice you two have? James Beeks isn’t so bad, and snacks are good?”

“Pretty much,” Dodger said. “Hey, got any bananas? All of this high-level political discussion really works up the old appetite.”

“No bananas, sorry. How about you, Rodger? Any other words of wisdom?”

“Hmm … I’d say be careful when you brush your teeth. You have to really be sure you spend adequate time cleaning the back molars—a lot of people think the front teeth are most important, but you actually need all of your teeth to be healthy. So scrub, scrub, scrub! Buff, polish, rub, scour! Rinse! Spit! All right?”

“Rodger, how is brushing thoroughly going to help me save the woods?”

“It probably isn’t. But there’s no point to losing our home
and
having painful, unsightly cavities, is there?”

I guess he kind of had a point. I said good night and headed for home. As I stepped into the trees, I heard Rodger’s voice calling after me: “And floss! You don’t want to leave any disgusting, revolting, slimy particles of decaying foodstuffs to rot slowly between your teeth!”

When I got home, dinner was ready. But strangely, I wasn’t all that hungry.

T
HE NEXT DAY,
Lizzie and I decided to pay a return visit to Lasorda. My mom almost didn’t let us go there alone, but then I reminded her that she was supposed to be allowing me to express my independence. She said, “I just don’t like knowing you and Lizzie are going downtown to an adult’s office alone.”

“Well,” I replied, “what if I bring your cell phone and call you right before we go in and right after we come out? And if you want, we could even do errands for you while we’re out, or something.” I could tell she didn’t exactly love the arrangement, but she agreed. Every once in a while, those New Year’s resolutions came in handy.

Anyway, when Lizzie and I entered the waiting room, we could hear two voices through the door that led to the inner office. Lizzie was just about to knock, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her away. We sat down in a couple of chairs next to the door and listened for a while. It didn’t take us long to figure out that the other voice belonged to Mr. Beeks. Here’s what we heard:

L
ASORDA
You’re sure you can pay cash for the property?

M
R. BEEKS
Absolutely.

L
ASORDA
And you plan to leave it as open space, right?

M
R. BEEKS
I never said that.

L
ASORDA
Yes, you did. When you looked at the land, you said,
I’m picturing nothing but green as far as the eye can
see.

M
R. BEEKS
I didn’t mean green like plants, I meant green like money.

L
ASORDA
Hmmm. Surely you don’t plan to destroy everything. After all, you’re calling the development Woodland Acres.

M
R. BEEKS
That’s traditional. Every builder I know does it—you name your development after whatever you knocked down to build it. My last three projects were called Piney Hills, Cherry Orchard Estates, and Stillwater Springs.

L
ASORDA
Well, it appears I did not fully understand your intentions.

M
R. BEEKS
Are you trying to back out on me, mister? Because if you are, my lawyers will be all over you in a heartbeat. Since my grandfather, the first James Beeks, started our company, nobody has ever backed out of a deal with the Beeks family.

L
ASORDA
No, I am not backing out on you. Unfortunately, I have some … business debts to settle, so I have to sell the land.

(Just then someone knocked on the waiting room doorway from outside. Lizzie and I scrambled into a coat closet by the door and closed it behind us almost all the way. We could still hear the conversation, and through the crack in the door we could even see who had just walked in: James Beeks!)

M
R. BEEKS
Good. You’ll get your debts paid off, I’ll get my new businesses going, and my lazy, worthless son will have a place to practice baseball.

L
ASORDA
And why did your son need his own private set of batting cages, again?

M
R. BEEKS
Because last year, he choked in the clutch and blew his team’s season.

L
ASORDA
I don’t mean to pry, but isn’t the boy only eleven years old? And didn’t you tell me he only struck out once, in his last at bat of the season?

M
R. BEEKS
Why, yes. But none of that matters. All that matters is that he failed. And the Beeks family does not believe in failure. So, next season he will not fail.

L
ASORDA
Is baseball really that important?

M
R. BEEKS
Oh, it’s not just baseball. He ran in his school election and lost, too. He needs to learn to be a winner before it’s too late, and baseball is as good a place to start as any. The sooner those batting cages get built, the sooner I can make a man out of James.

(I couldn’t believe James was standing there hearing this. He looked like he was about to cry.)

L
ASORDA
I … see. And are you sure the town government will allow you to flatten the woods? Will there not be protests from concerned citizens or environmental groups?

M
R. BEEKS
Oh, there will be complaints. In fact, my son’s little student council friends are planning to protest to the mayor and the town council. But they’ll never win.

L
ASORDA
How can you be so sure?

M
R. BEEKS
Because the mayor owes me some favors, just like everybody else who does business in this town. He’s a good friend of mine. So I’ll send the mayor to talk at the school. He’ll listen to the little kiddies, he’ll say thank you for your concern, I appreciate your citizenship, kids like you make me proud to be an American, blah, blah, blah. Maybe he’ll even give the kids an award for community involvement or something. I have to admit, the mayor has a bit of an anger management problem, but how hard can it be to flatter a bunch of schoolchildren? Anyway, he’ll listen to everything the kids have to say. But then, a few days later, the town will grant my building permit, anyway. By the time anybody figures out what happened, my bulldozers will have come and gone. And then nobody will say a thing about it—because I am a winner. I make things happen. I make money. And when I make money, this whole town makes money.

L
ASORDA
Is money really that important, Mr. Beeks?

M
R. BEEKS
Would you be standing here talking to me now if it weren’t?

At that moment, James turned and walked out of the waiting room. He slammed the door behind him, and Lasorda must have heard the noise, because he and Mr. Beeks stopped talking and stepped out of the office into the waiting room. They shook hands and said they would be in touch. Then Mr. Beeks left.

“You can come out now, children!” Lasorda said. Lizzie and I both jumped about two feet. Then Lasorda snapped his fingers and the closet door swung open. “Did you two hear that entire conversation?”

We both nodded. I mean, when an ancient, powerful genie busts you eavesdropping, what are you supposed to do?

“Good,” Lasorda said. “
Very
good. Things are going just as I’d planned. I will pay off the leprechauns, and Dodger will still be in
my
debt. Although I do wish—oh, never mind!”

“What is it, Lasorda?”

“Well, it’s just that sometimes I almost find myself wishing that Dodger still worked for me.”

“Maybe you could talk to him and work something out,” I said.

“I am the Great Lasorda,” he replied. “I do not just
work something out
with my former employees.”

“Hey, do you know who you sound like?” Lizzie asked him.

He thought for a moment, then flashed a tight, wicked grin. “If you say ‘Mr. Beeks,’ I may have to turn you into a tree or something. Now begone!”

Jeepers, just a second ago, Lasorda had been acting almost nice. Some people are
so
moody.

T
HE NEXT STUDENT
council meeting was a disaster. All week long in class, Mrs. Starsky kept hinting that we would have a special guest. She even took Lizzie, James, Craig, and me aside and warned us to be on our absolute best behavior for the meeting. I guess that made sense based on how much Lizzie and I usually argued with James and Craig, but ever since we had overheard that ugly conversation at Lasorda’s office, I wasn’t really mad at James anymore. I mostly just felt sorry for him. Anyway, we did try to behave at the meeting, but none of us could have known that there would be not one but two special guests.

Everything started off normally enough. I banged the gavel and called the council to order. Next Mrs. Starsky announced her guest. None of the other kids could believe it—she had gotten the mayor of the town to come to our meeting! Not only that but she promised we could make a presentation at the next town council meeting about why nobody should be allowed to build on the forest. I saw James Beeks mumbling under his breath when Mrs. Starsky said that, and Craig trying to calm him down. I glanced at Lizzie and saw that she wasn’t paying any attention to Beeks and Flynn, because she was messing around with one of the school’s laptop computers. That day for a science lesson, we had been making webcam videos about measurement, but I knew something had gone wrong with the
RECORD
button on the computer she was using. It was a shame, because the computer had an awesome built-in camera that let you record in any direction just by clicking on the track pad. If she could get the camera working again, it would really help her science grade. I didn’t think she should be working on that right in front of the mayor, though—especially if he had anger issues. What if he got mad at us?

I forgot all about Lizzie’s computer problem when the mayor walked in. He strode through the door to the front of the classroom and immediately started in on a whole big speech: “It’s great to see you kids taking an interest in our town’s future, because you
are
the future. … If we all work together, we can accomplish miracles … blah, blah, blah.” I don’t know if it was just because of what Mr. Beeks had said about the mayor, but to me, the guy sounded even more phony than our principal. Except at least she didn’t have a massive bald spot covered by the world’s fakest-looking toupee. Still, he had our attention—until the really bad thing happened. All of a sudden, just as the mayor was saying, “If you apply the lessons of today, we can all have a brighter tomorrow,” I saw a blue head pop around the corner of the doorway.

Oh, no
, I thought.
Dodger, don’t do this to me!
But then Dodger stuck a sign into the doorway. It said:
SNAKS
! Jeepers. Was he trying to tell me there were snakes in the room? Ugh, I hate snakes. But I looked around and didn’t see any. Maybe he meant that there were snakes on the way to attack us? But I had never heard of snakes joining into a pack and swarming an elementary school. I shrugged at Dodger, just as the mayor was saying, “And I know you all love our wonderful country, right?”