The Seventh Most Important Thing (17 page)

“
Y
ou're trying to save what?” Arthur's mom asked, looking confused.

Since Officer Billie hadn't been of much use, Arthur had decided to ask his mom and Roger for help. He was running out of time to pay the last fifty dollars of the back rent. The end of May was approaching fast. Squeak had offered the thirty dollars he was saving for college, but they would still be short, especially since they needed to come up with the rent for June now too.

So he'd waited until they were all sitting around the kitchen table for their usual Friday-night dinner. Arthur's mom was in the middle of serving a peach cobbler for dessert. It was a little burned on the bottom, so she was preoccupied with that, but Arthur decided he'd bring up Mr. Hampton's project anyhow.

“I'm trying to save something Mr. Hampton was working on before he died,” Arthur said, just to get things started. He didn't say it was supposed to represent heaven. Or that it was made of junk. He described it as a gold-and-silver sculpture built with a lot of different objects.

“It fills half of a garage. It's really spectacular,” he added, trying to make the work of art sound great.

Arthur's mom looked up from cutting the peach cobbler. “I didn't know Mr. Hampton was an artist. I thought he was more of a junk collector.”

Arthur nodded. “Well, yeah, some of the junk was for his sculptures.”

“Why would he make sculptures out of junk?” Barbara asked.

Arthur could tell the conversation was already getting off track. “Anyway, I'm trying to save his artwork,” he pushed on. “But the garage where he stored everything costs fifty dollars a month to rent.”

“Fifty dollars a month? For a
garage
?” Arthur's mom looked shocked.

“Oh, so that's why you went to the garage!” Barbara blurted out.

“Why is it in a garage?” Roger asked. “Couldn't it be moved somewhere else?”

“Somewhere that doesn't cost so much,” Arthur's mom added.

Arthur thought about all the delicate pieces—the hundreds of fragile lightbulbs wrapped in foil, the wings attached with pieces of coffee cans and nails and pins. He shook his head. “I don't think it would work—”

“Well, people can't expect you to pay for a garage by yourself,” his mom interrupted. “That wasn't part of your probation sentence. You're thirteen years old. We don't have that kind of money. Isn't there someone else who could take over instead? Officer Billie said Mr. Hampton had some family in South Carolina….”

“Nobody else is going to understand what he did. That's what I'm trying to tell you.”

Arthur could feel his frustration growing. Why didn't
anybody
get what he was saying?

“I'm the one he put in charge of everything. I'm the only one who really knows what it is.” His voice rose and he could see his mom giving one of her warning looks, but he couldn't stop.

“I worked on it for months,” he continued, even louder. “Every Saturday, that's what I did—I worked on collecting things and making things for it. In the snow and rain and everything.” Arthur's voice shook. “And if people don't get what it's supposed to be—and how important it is—they'll probably go and throw it out before anybody can say anything—”

Instantly, Arthur regretted those words.

A hurt look passed across his mom's face, and she stood up from the table and walked straight out of the kitchen.

Barbara's mouth was a little O.

Roger looked confused by the whole scene. Arthur wasn't sure how much of the story of his dad's hat and the brick he knew.

And honestly, the connection hadn't crossed Arthur's mind until it was too late. He'd just said the first thing that came into his head. Which was always a mistake.

“I better go see where Mom went,” he mumbled, feeling his face get warm as he slowly got up from the table.

“You're in big trouble,” Barbara said.

“Just shut up.” He glared at his sister as he walked out.

Arthur found his mom upstairs, sitting on her bed, holding a box of tissues in her lap. Her neck and cheeks had bright red blotches on them. She always broke out in blotches when she was upset. He felt like a total jerk.

“I'm sorry, Mom,” he said, standing awkwardly in the doorway, as if there were an invisible
DO NOT CROSS
line there. “I didn't mean what I said. I wasn't talking about you throwing out Dad's things. That's not what I meant.”

“It sounded like what you meant.”

Arthur sighed loudly. “It wasn't. I was just trying to talk about Mr. Hampton's work, and nobody was listening.”

“I was listening. I heard everything you said,” his mom insisted. “But you can't save everything, Artie. Sometimes in life you have to let things go.” She fidgeted with the tissue in her hands. “That's all I was doing with your dad's things. I was trying to let go of some things and start over. Maybe I didn't do it the right way, but I wasn't trying to hurt you or your dad. I loved him just as much as you did, you know?” She looked up at him, her eyes welling with tears, and Arthur wished he could disappear. He couldn't stand seeing his mom cry.

“Okay.” He tugged at his hair. “I get what you mean.” Then he added, “But I can't really let go of the stuff with Mr. Hampton. I kind of promised him I wouldn't.”

“And people expect you to save his artwork all by yourself?” His mom looked doubtful.

Arthur shrugged.

“I just can't believe that would be true.”

“Well, it is.”

“All right. Then here,” his mom said with an impatient sigh. Reaching into the tissue box in her lap, she pulled out two wrinkled ten-dollar bills. “You can have your birthday money early.” Arthur's birthday was in June. “It's up to you if you want to use it for the garage.”

“You keep my birthday money in a
Kleenex
box?” Arthur said as he took the bills from his mom. “Why?”

“Because you make me cry a lot, why else?” his mom retorted. Then a small smile crept across her blotchy face. “And that way I never forget where it is.”

For some reason, this made both of them crack up.

E
ven though they now had enough cash to cover the back rent with Arthur's birthday money, Squeak's college money, and Groovy Jim's fifty bucks, they still needed to pay for June. And what would happen after that? Arthur knew they couldn't keep renting the garage forever. So where would Mr. Hampton's work go?

School was impossible. In his notebooks, Arthur made lists of questions he wished he'd asked Mr. Hampton. He tried to come up with ways he could earn money to pay the rent. He sketched wings and stars all over his book covers. It was a good thing there were only a couple more weeks of school left and the teachers weren't giving out much work, because he probably would have failed everything.

In the middle of earth science one afternoon, Mr. C asked him a question about metamorphic rocks from a chapter they were reading in class, and Arthur looked up from one of his wing drawings and said, “I don't know and I don't care.”

This was the truth. He didn't give a crap about metamorphic rocks. All he cared about was Hampton's Throne, which was sitting in a crummy garage and could be destroyed in days—or weeks—if he couldn't find a way to save it.

Of course, his comment got him sent straight to the vice principal's office, without passing Go.

It was while he was slouching in one of the office chairs waiting on Vice that Mr. Hampton sent a message to him.

Well, not a real message—a subliminal kind of message.

Arthur was trying not to make eye contact with the secretaries, who were giving him random disapproving glares from their desks, when he noticed something familiar sitting on the counter nearby.

Most Important Thing #6: Coffee cans.

He'd collected dozens of them during the months that he'd worked for Mr. Hampton. The sides were cut into strips. Then the curved metal pieces were used like hinges to attach the cardboard angel wings to everything.

Arthur could see Mr. Hampton's idea for him almost immediately.

The coffee can in the office was decorated with red construction paper. On the front, in not very neat printing, it said:
Donate to the Band Uniform Fund
—with a bunch of musical notes drawn all over the rest of the paper. In the top was a slot where you could put your money.

One of the secretaries noticed Arthur staring at the coffee can. She stood up and moved it off the counter, out of reach.

“Don't get any ideas,” she said in a snippy voice.

“Sure,” Arthur replied, hardly able to hold back the big fat smile that was trying to slide across his face.

It was too late, he wanted to tell the secretary. He already had the idea he needed.

A
fter school the next day, Squeak and Arthur gathered all of the unused coffee cans Hampton had left in his garage, lined them up in the middle of the floor, and counted them. There were thirty-two.

If they only collected four or five bucks in each one, they'd have enough money to pay for June and July. And if they were lucky, maybe even August.

“That's nothing,” Squeak said. “We can do it.”

The hard part was deciding what message to put on them. Words were not Arthur's strength. He suggested “Help Us Save Heaven” to get everybody's attention. “Who could ignore that?”

Squeak tried to be diplomatic. “People might not understand what ‘saving heaven' means. They might think you're talking about some kind of religious experience.”

“Well, how would you describe it, then?” Arthur waved his arm impatiently toward Hampton's creation, glimmering gently in the light and shadows of the room. He felt like they were wasting precious time. They only had until supper to work on the cans.

Squeak was quiet for a moment, studying the captivating scene again. It had a power that was hard to describe, no matter how many times you saw it. “How about ‘Help Save a Unique Artistic Masterpiece from Destruction'?” he finally said.

“Get real.” Arthur rolled his eyes. “Nobody is going to read all that junk on a coffee can.”

Looking hurt, Squeak blinked fast behind his glasses.

“How about just ‘Help Save a Work of Art'?” Arthur suggested more gently. He knew Squeak was only trying to help—unlike Arthur, he had a big chemistry test to cram for that night.

“People probably aren't going to care enough about saving a work of art,” Squeak insisted. “It sounds…” He paused. “Ordinary.”

Arthur let out a frustrated sigh. “Well, then give me something better. You're the word person.”

“Unique. How about ‘Save a Unique Work of Art'?” Squeak suggested.

And then he continued tossing out words like a crazed word machine as he walked back and forth past the Throne of the Third Heaven. “Cool. Magical. Spectacular. One of a kind. Brilliant. Original. Priceless. Breathtaking. Intense. Sparkling. Awesome. Surreal—”

“Nobody is going to know what the heck
surreal
means,” Arthur interrupted.

“I do,” Squeak insisted stubbornly.

“Well, I don't.”

They ended up making each coffee can different.

Squeak wrote the words in marker on construction paper—borrowed from Arthur's sister—because he had neater printing and way better spelling than Arthur. Then Arthur glued the paper onto each can. It was hard not to think about Mr. Hampton while they were gluing and decorating. Arthur knew he would have liked the fact that they added bits of foil to the labels for some sparkle.

Each coffee can had a different message.
Save a Brilliant Work of Art. Save a Far-Out Work of Art. Save a Spectacular Work of Art.

You couldn't tell what would appeal to people, Squeak said. They even used
heavenly
on one coffee can.

Save a Heavenly Work of Art.

Surprisingly—or maybe not surprisingly—that was the coffee can that finally paid off.