The Seventh Most Important Thing (4 page)

A
rthur kept hearing Officer Billie's words in his head as he walked to James Hampton's house on the first Saturday in December.
Don't mess up.

A miserable, pebbly white sleet was coming down from the colorless sky. Arthur had told his mom he wanted to walk. It was only a few blocks to the address on the paper, he'd insisted. Plus, he knew they didn't have the money to waste on gas.

Arthur wiped his cold and already-running nose on his sleeve. Stupidly, he hadn't thought to wear gloves or bring a hat. He'd just wanted to get out of the house that morning and get his first four hours over with. At least there would only be 116 more to go after that.

He had no clue what to expect. Would Mr. Hampton have him running errands or cleaning toilets or what? He wasn't even sure
who
to expect. The crazy Junk Man with the ragged tan coat and fogged eyeglasses? Or the polite, soft-spoken man in the brown tweed suit?

He pulled Officer Billie's paper out of his pocket and checked the address again. On the back of the same page, Arthur's mother had drawn a pretty lame map of how to get to Seventh Street, where he was supposed to go.

Arthur shook his head. It wasn't like he needed a map. His school bus drove past these neighborhoods every day, although he'd never actually walked around in them. At the next street, he had to make a left.

Arthur squinted at the numbers as he walked. Unlike his street, where the small bungalows and square yards were almost all the same, the houses on Seventh Street were old two-story ones, jammed together like mismatched puzzle pieces. Some had porches in front and leaning garages in the back. Others had only a narrow patch of yard with a gravel driveway between them.

Scattered along the street were some neighborhood businesses that looked as if they'd been there for years: A gas station on the corner. An auto repair shop with a couple of rusty cars in its side lot. A tattoo shop called Groovy Jim's Tattoos. And a small grocery store.

The only thing missing was the address he was trying to find.

Arthur walked up and down both sides of the street. There wasn't much traffic for a Saturday morning. A few city buses drove by without stopping. He folded and unfolded the paper in his pocket, checking it over and over again, until the ink was smeared and the sleet had turned the page into a soggy mess. He was freezing and losing time.

The closest address to the one on his page was the tattoo shop's. He remembered Officer Billie's warning:
No excuses. I don't care whether you get lost, sick, tired, or your dog dies.

He decided to pull open the door of Groovy Jim's Tattoos.

A blast of warm air hit his face. The weird antiseptic smell of the place made his eyes water. He blinked, trying to see if anybody was around. Hawaiian-sounding ukulele music was playing somewhere. A black-and-white cat came over and rubbed against his ankles.

“Can I help you?”

All Arthur saw at first was a frizzy mop of hair behind the counter. Then the rest of the guy emerged from where he'd been sitting. There was no question this was Groovy Jim. Arthur didn't even have to ask. The guy wore a T-shirt with the words
Ban the Bomb
across the front. Green tattoos spiraled up his skinny white arms.

Reluctantly, Arthur pulled the scrap of paper out of his pocket, wishing he didn't have to look so stupid in front of a stranger. With the way his eyes were watering, he knew the guy was probably going to think he'd been crying.

“I'm trying to find this address,” he mumbled, holding the page toward Groovy Jim. “You know where it is?”

The guy glanced at the paper briefly and handed it back to him. “So how long have you been looking?”

Arthur stretched the time only a little bit. “About an hour or two.”

That was what it had felt like, anyhow.

The guy laughed. “That's all?”

Arthur couldn't tell if he was joking. When he didn't smile, Groovy Jim gave him an odd look. “Okay.” He motioned toward a door at the back. “Follow me. I'll show you where it is, kiddo.”

Arthur didn't really like being called kiddo, but he didn't think the guy meant it as an insult. Groovy Jim seemed like the kind of person who probably called everybody kiddo. Even the cat.

He also didn't appear to be in much of a hurry. He moved through his shop as if he was on a Sunday stroll in the park.

None of this was helping Arthur get his four hours started any sooner.

When they finally reached the back of the shop, it took Groovy Jim another few minutes to unlock and push open the metal door. A gust of cold air rushed in.

“The place you were trying to find is in the back. See the garage?” As he leaned against the heavy door to keep it open, Groovy Jim pointed to a small brick building standing by itself at the end of the gravel alley. “That's the place you're looking for.”

A garage? Arthur balked. He hadn't expected a garage. Had he been given the wrong address? How was a garage somebody's house?

Groovy Jim glanced at him curiously, maybe wondering what was up. “You know Mr. Hampton, right?”

“Kind of,” Arthur replied, tugging at the jagged front of his hair uncertainly. He looked at the garage again, making sure it really was a garage. There were no front doors or windows or anything, were there?

“Does he live there?” he asked.

Groovy Jim shook his head. “Don't think so. He just comes here to work. I see him a lot in the evenings, carrying things in and out with his grocery cart. I guess he builds or fixes things or something back there.”

“What kinds of things?”

Groovy Jim shrugged. “Don't know. Never asked.” He waved a tattooed arm at the garage. “Go ahead and knock. If he's there, I'm sure he'll answer. He seems like a nice enough guy. But I gotta go back inside. I'm freezing out here, kiddo.”

“Okay, thanks.” Arthur forced a smile.

“Good luck.”

The door closed behind Groovy Jim with a hard slam, and Arthur was left on his own in a swirl of spitting snow.

A
garage. Arthur still had no idea what to do.

He wandered slowly down the gravel alleyway toward the building. It was your typical brick garage with one of those big corrugated metal doors. Someone had painted the address over the door, but they hadn't done a very good job of it. Long drips ran down the bricks, so the numbers almost looked as if they were melting. Since none of the address was visible from the street, Arthur wasn't sure why anybody had bothered.

On the far side of the garage, Arthur noticed another door. It had a real doorknob, at least, which gave him a little bit of hope. Maybe if he knocked on it…

As he stepped over broken bits of concrete and coils of rusted wire to reach the side door, he tried not to think about how dangerous all of this seemed: An out-of-the-way garage. A run-down neighborhood. Nobody around. He knew he should probably go back home and call Officer Billie or the judge or somebody.

But if he complained, it was possible—no, extremely likely—that they'd send him back to juvie. And which was worse: wandering around deserted alleys or having rusty razors held to your neck?

He knocked on the side door cautiously. Just a few knocks to see if anybody answered.

No one did.

He pounded on the door a little harder and tried the doorknob.

It didn't budge.

Feeling more irritated, he walked around to the front of the garage and banged his fist on the corrugated door—which turned out to be a really dumb idea, because the door was freezing cold and a lot more painful to hit than you'd think. He could hear the hollow thumps of his fist echoing inside the building. If James Hampton was working inside, he was either completely deaf or ignoring him.

Arthur didn't spot the grocery cart until he was about to give up and leave.

It was sitting at an odd angle, jutting out from the side of the garage nearest the street. As he stepped back from the corrugated door, he saw it out of the corner of his eye. He was pretty sure it was the same cart the Junk Man always used when he came through the neighborhood. The same one he'd been pushing when Arthur hit him.

There was something taped to the front of it. Arthur walked over to see what it was.

Just like the note he'd found underneath his father's hat a few days earlier, this message was written on a scrap of cardboard. It couldn't have been there long, because the cardboard was mostly dry and the ink hadn't smudged yet.

Arthur didn't need to guess whether the note was meant for him; someone had already written his name at the top—misspelled Artur—followed by the words
Please Collect.

The rest of the note was a list. In square capital letters, like a kindergartner's printing, it said:

That was when Arthur began to realize he hadn't just been sentenced to work for the Junk Man. He'd been sentenced to
be
the Junk Man.

A
rthur stood there for a long time staring at the sign, trying to decide what to do. Snowflakes melted on his head, and his nose ran. Officer Billie had said no excuses, but nobody could expect him to do a crazy job like this, could they?

The list didn't even make sense. Collect cardboard—one of the seven most important things. In what? The world? The
universe
?

Along with
coffee cans
?

And
foil
?

No way. He wasn't doing it.

So he left the cart right where it was and headed back down the alley, kicking the gravel hard in front of him as he walked.
What a joke,
he thought.

But he had only gone a short distance before his pace began to slow.

He thought about having to tell his mother that he'd screwed up again. That he'd given up on his probation sentence before he'd even started it. That he'd quit and come home. He was sure she'd probably start crying, which would make Barbara cry.

Then there would be Officer Billie to deal with (and who knows what Officer Billie would do if he was her first kid to screw up). And he'd probably have to face the judge again.

And juvie's bad food and bad showers and bad kids…

The more he thought about it, the more Arthur knew he couldn't stand to deal with that mess again. Reluctantly, he turned back toward the garage.

The cart and list were still there waiting for him.

Of course.

As Arthur wrapped his fingers around the grimy metal handle of the cart, he tried to tell himself that pushing a rusty grocery cart around the neighborhood wasn't the worst thing that had happened to him in the last few months. Or the worst thing that could happen to someone in life.

He'd already been through that.

He tried to convince himself that maybe this was just a test. Maybe Judge Warner and Officer Billie wanted to find out how he'd react. They probably figured he'd see the stupid list, give up, and go home.
Just what we'd expect from a no-good kid like Arthur Owens,
they'd say.

Arthur started pushing the cart down the gravel alleyway, determined to prove them wrong. Determined to show he could collect a bunch of junk for a crazy old man.

Ten minutes later, he couldn't stand the test any longer.

The rattling din of the cart was worse than the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. The jangling noise rang in his ears. It set his teeth on edge. It made his head hurt.

Plus, after he'd gone only a block, one of the front wheels stuck.

Wouldn't budge at all.

Arthur had to lift the cart halfway off the sidewalk and shove it forward. But instead of going straight, the empty cart veered wildly to the right and tipped over in someone's snowy yard. Wheels spun crazily in the air.

He yanked it upright. Hauled it back to the sidewalk. The same wheel stuck again. He kicked it. Hard.

Which actually worked.

For a minute, Arthur was kind of proud of himself. Maybe he had some of his dad's mechanical talent after all. He started moving down the street.

The wheel stuck again.

Arthur swore under his breath. He was sure the people who lived in the houses nearby were laughing their heads off as they watched him wrestle the Junk Man's busted cart a few hundred feet down the block. He noticed one guy standing on his front porch, smoking a cigarette. From the smirk on his face, Arthur could tell he was probably the guy's main entertainment for the morning.

Finally, Arthur half pushed, half dragged the cart back to Groovy Jim's and shoved it into the alley next to the shop. Nobody had said he had to use the useless thing for his sentence. All he needed was some kind of bag to collect the stuff on his list. He'd ask Groovy Jim.

He pushed open the door of the tattoo shop again. Got another blast of antiseptic smells and Hawaiian music. Tried not to look as angry and frustrated as he felt.

“Hey, kiddo.” Groovy Jim looked up from where he was sitting behind the counter, feet up, reading a book. “Back again? You found your guy?”

Arthur shook his head and mumbled, “No, he wasn't there.”

“Musta just missed him.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Arthur glanced around, trying to come up with a good story. “You got any spare bags?” he said finally. “I'm, uh, collecting stuff for a school project.”

“Sure.” Groovy Jim pulled his feet off the counter. “I've got a couple of burlap ones from the grocer across the street. How many you need?”

“Just one.” Then another idea occurred to Arthur. “And what about some cans or, uh, glass jars?” he added, thinking of the Seven Most Important Things. “You have anything like that?”

Groovy Jim nodded. “Sure. I'll see what I can find.”

After Groovy Jim disappeared into the back room, Arthur couldn't help feeling a little guilty for lying to a guy who'd been nice and helpful so far. But how could he tell him that he was collecting garbage because he'd thrown a brick at a person's head? And even worse, that it was a person Groovy Jim knew?

Arthur had never been a good liar. Not even about silly things, like pretending to believe in Santa Claus for Barbara at Christmas. And not when it had come to serious things, like covering up for his dad's drinking sometimes.

Christmas.

The sudden thought of what they would do for Christmas without his dad hit Arthur like a fist in the stomach. This was the kind of stuff he still couldn't deal with. He'd been in juvie for Thanksgiving, so he hadn't had to face his first holiday without his dad. But how would they get through Christmas?

And not just this Christmas either. His dad would be gone
every
Christmas. And every birthday. And every holiday from now on.
Forever.

Thinking about it all, Arthur couldn't breathe.

Fortunately, the clattering crash of a half-dozen ginger ale cans hitting the floor and rolling in all directions snapped him back to reality.

“Jeez oh pete!” Groovy Jim glanced helplessly at the cans he'd dropped on the floor as he came back into the room. “Man, sorry about that!”

After they'd picked up the cans—and Groovy Jim added an empty Skippy jar he'd been using as a pencil holder—Arthur forced himself to focus on the Seven Most Important Things. To not think about his dad. Or the future. All he had to do was find a few more things to keep the Junk Man happy and he'd be done for that Saturday.

Only 116 more hours to go.

“Good luck with your school project,” Groovy Jim called out as Arthur left. “You should ask Hampton for some stuff if you see him. He's always collecting things.”

“Okay, yeah, I will,” Arthur said over his shoulder.

Yet another lie.