Authors: Jack Gantos
“Mercy me,” said Mr. Pagoda. We all crawled away in a daze on our hands and knees as if leaving a car wreck.
Suddenly Mr. Pagoda jumped to his feet. “That's just
the kick in the butt I needed,” he hollered. “I'm not finished yet. I'm going to mount a comeback!”
“With what?” Mrs. Pagoda asked wearily. “We're broke from the election, and the remodeling, and the cars, and can't sell any more Pet Pads after Mr. Woody did us in, and God only knows what trouble Gary has caused.”
Mr. Pagoda scratched his head. “I need a new pet product to sell. Something new to market.” He looked out at all of us who were standing around him. “Now, which one of you has a good idea?” he asked.
And that's where I stepped in like the bigmouthed idiot I am. “I've got an idea,” I said. “How about a dog coffin?”
Mr. Pagoda looked at me with wide eyes. “Brilliant!” he shouted. “Sensational! That's a million-dollar idea, son. Why didn't I think of that?”
I was so caught up by his enthusiasm I said, “I have one at home already designed and everything.”
“Great,” he said, and clapped his hands together. “Bring it over and we'll work on the details.”
“We've got to split the profits fifty-fifty,” I insisted, striking a deal while it was hot.
He stuck out his hand and we shook. I was grinning from ear to ear. I'm going to be a millionaire, I sang to myself. Then I danced a little dance as if I were doing a jig around a pot of gold.
“Now you've got the Pagoda spirit,” said Mr. Pagoda.
About ten minutes later, as I rode my bike home, a police car drove by with Gary in the back seat. I wasn't much help to him after all, I thought. Neither was his therapy
tape. He was going to have to straighten up all by himself.
Now, as I sat in the dark backyard, breathing English Leather cologne through a handkerchief, I knew I couldn't dig BeauBeau back up, not for any amount of money. BeauBeau was dead and buried. It was time for me to leave him rest in peace. And time for me to move on.
The weird thing about the Pagodas, I thought, is that our family was like theirs. Not in the small ways, but in the big ways. There they were, having
made it
, having some money and some chance to do something different. Something better. But they didn't. Just like us, they could figure out how to make money, but they couldn't figure out how to use that money to change their lives. Not just by buying a bigger house or fancier car, but changing who they were, how they behaved, what they wanted to become. That was our problem, too. Dad could sometimes figure out a way to make money, but it never really changed us, or solved our problems. And so somehow, just as he figured how to make it, he also lost it. Just like the Pagodas. Maybe it wasn't about money at all. It was all about ideas. About who you were, and what you wanted to do with your life, what you wanted to become, and how much you love being yourself.
I stood up, held my breath, and quickly spread the dirt back over the grave. I tamped it down with my foot, my
foot with the dog-tattooed toe. “I've changed my mind,” I whispered.
I returned to the garage, stripped down naked, and threw my smelly clothes in the trash. I tiptoed through the house and into the bathroom, where I took a long hot shower to wash everything away. Tomorrow, I said to myself, I'm going to wake up and everything is going to be exactly the same, except for me.