Jack on the Tracks (7 page)

I handed it to him. He opened the metal clasp and shook out the single penny and a piece of paper with “Planting Instructions.” He looked suspiciously at the penny, then back at me. Then Mom and Dad and Betsy stared at me. They did not seem pleased with my choice of gifts.

I snatched the Planting Instructions out of his hand. “It reads, ‘Plant in fertile soil and water six times daily until a penny tree grows.’”

“Will it actually grow?” he asked.

“Oh yeah,” I shot back. “Absolutely. It’s guaranteed. Says so right on the directions.”

“Wow!” he shouted. “This is the best gift ever. When the tree grows I’ll have enough pennies to buy an entire real train.”

“Sure you will,” I said, with my generous imagination getting away from me. “You could even buy the old Santa Fe Railroad and ride it across the desert.”

Then he ran out the back door to go plant his seed.

‘Jack,” Mom said, “I hope you haven’t started something you will regret. Your brother believes everything you say, so don’t you dare let him down.”

“Don’t worry,” I said to Mom. “It’s under control.”

As soon as she was out of the room I turned to Betsy and stuck out my hand. “That will be one thousand pennies, please.”

She gave me ajar of change and a few bills. “Mark my words. When you mess this up, this money is coming right back, plus another ten.”

“We’ll see,” I replied.

The next morning Pete woke before me. When I got up I peeked out the kitchen window. There he was, watering his seed. I smiled to myself as I poured milk on my cereal. What an incredible gift, I thought. This was definitely the smartest thing I had ever cooked up. It only cost me one free cent, and on top of it I made a thousand more from Betsy. I felt like a genius. As I ate, I began to imagine what dog items I’d buy next for the cat.

When Pete came in he was excited. “I think it is growing already,” he said.

“Could be,” I replied. ‘Just remember, water it six times a day or else it will shrivel up and die.” I figured he’d never be able to keep up the six times per day schedule and sooner or later I’d have to announce the death of the penny tree. And I will be blameless. It was perfect.

But the first warning I had that Pete’s generous imagination was bigger than mine was when he came running up to me holding the windup alarm clock in his outstretched hands.

“How many hours apart is it if I water six times per day?” he asked.

I did the math in my head. “Four,” I replied.

“Then set this for four hours from now,” he said.

I did. When I handed it back to him he grabbed his little plastic play chair and went outside. When I looked out the window again he was sitting in his chair, reading a book with the alarm clock on his lap and the watering can at his side. Cute, I thought. Very cute. I should take a picture.

“Where’s Pete?” Mom asked. “We have to go to the store and get more train track.”

“Out back,” I said, and pointed toward the window.

She looked out. “Oh, that is precious,” she said. But then her voice grew serious. ‘Jack, you know your brother still believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy. It would be awful of you to burst his bubble.”

“He’s a little brother,” I said. “It’s a law that older brothers have to burst the bubbles of little brothers.”

‘Just don’t hurt him,” she warned me. “Or there is a parent’s law that says there might be consequences.”

That was her favorite warning, “There might be consequences.” This always got my generous imagination worked up. Usually I pictured myself wrapped in chains and handcuffed to a post in our spider-filled attic.

That night the alarm went off at midnight, and again at four in the morning. Each time, Pete hopped out of bed, turned on his flashlight, and ran outside to water his penny tree. Each time, I had to set the alarm for him.

By morning, I was beginning to feel the “consequences” creeping up on me.

       All the next day Pete kept up his watering routine, and I kept my mouth shut. That night we were sitting in the living room reading. Pete had pulled out his old copy of
The Carrot Seed.
He knew the story by heart and flipped through the pages over and over. “This is the greatest book ever,” he shouted. “The little boy plants a carrot seed and waters it and waters it and even though everyone in his family says it won’t grow he still waters it because
he
believes it will. And then,
boom,
overnight it grows into a giant carrot. That’s just how it is going to be with my penny tree because
I
believe in it!”

I peeked over the top of my book. Mom, Dad, and Betsy were peeking up over their books—and they were glaring at me. I smiled back. They didn’t.

Suddenly, I was beginning to feel bad about myself. Maybe I had gone too far. Maybe Pete was too delicate for my scheme. “I’ll be right back,” I announced, and put my book down. I ran to the garage and got a garden spade. Then I went over to Tack Smith’s yard and dug up a plant that sort of looked like a little tree. Then I replanted it where Pete had planted his seed. I sneaked back into my bedroom and got a handful of pennies and some tape, then went back outside. Quickly, I taped a few pennies on the branches. “This will make him happy,” I said to myself, “and then we can forget about the penny tree.”

The next morning Pete woke me by jumping up and down on my bed and shouting. “It grew! It grew! I’m rich. Come see.”

I hopped up and followed him outside. “Wow,” I said, and made my eyes get real big. “It worked.”

He bent down and held one in his hands. “Why are they held on with tape?” he asked.

“That’s not tape,” I said. “Those are penny stems.”

“Cool,” he said. Then he asked a question that I gave the wrong answer to. “If I leave them on the tree will they grow really big, like huge penny hubcaps?”

“Nah,” I replied. “They’ll turn into nickels.”

Pete’s eyes bugged out. “Nickels!” he shouted. “Then I’ll wait to pick them.”

Oh no, I thought. I did it again.

       Everything went downhill fast from there. And the more broke I became, the happier everyone else was. First, I had to sneak out in the middle of the night and change the pennies to nickels. And of course Pete was thrilled. When he saw them he danced a little dance around the yard and then announced that he would wait for them to become dimes. Once again, I dug into my piggy bank and got dimes and later sneaked out and put them on the tree. The following morning Pete went nuts. He did somersaults across the yard and drooled all over himself. Then he decided to hold out for quarters. That night, I changed the dimes to quarters. The next day Pete went screaming wildly around the back yard until he was so dizzy he fell over and announced he would wait for fifty-cent pieces. I had seen it coming, so I’d gotten Mom to exchange the money I’d won from Betsy for half dollars at the bank. That night I did the changeover. The next day he was bonkers. I tried to get him to pluck the half dollars off the tree, but no, he was holding out for the dollar bills. That night, I gave the half dollars back to Mom for singles. I taped ten bills all over the tree, and when I finished I said to myself, “Okay, I’ve broken even—this madness has got to stop. I started it, so I’ll finish it.”

I got a small pair of scissors and cut off all the leaves from the tree and left them scattered under the tiny branches.

The next morning Pete and I got up together to water the tree. On the way out of the house he said, “Maybe after the single-dollar bills there will be five-dollar bills, then tens, then twenties, then hundreds …” I stopped him. “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched,” I warned him, sounding like my father.

When we arrived at the tree Pete gasped and dropped to his knees. “It died!” he shouted. “All its leaves fell off.” He began to cry.

“But dollar bills are still left on the bare branches,” I pointed out.

“Why’d it die?” he blubbered. “I loved this tree.”

“It’s not dead,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulders. “It’s just that winter is coming. The penny tree has a short growing season. You know, like oranges and limes.”

Pete wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Then he thought about what I’d said. He thought about it for so long that I knew I was in trouble.

“You mean it will return next summer?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course it will.”

“That is so cool!” he shouted. “I’ll be rich all over again.”

He was ripping the dollar bills off the tree as I stood up and slowly walked back to my room. I shook my piggy bank. It was empty. I better start saving now, I thought. That kid’s generous imagination is going to cost me every red cent I can get my hands on.

H
alloween didn’t wait until dark to be spooky. It was a rainy Saturday morning and Pete and I were watching a
Hogan’s Heroes
rerun on TV. Sergeant Carter had just set off explosives in an important Nazi railroad tunnel and was now dodging German patrols when suddenly a local TV announcer came on and said, “We interrupt this program to bring you an important news flash from the Dade County Sheriff’s Department.” But before he could deliver the news, there was a big bang and the house jumped as if hit by a truck. Mom screamed in the laundry room, and on television the announcer’s face began to cloud over with wisps of white smoke that seemed to be leaking out of his shirt collar as if he were the devil’s newscaster. Then the picture vanished, but the smoke stayed and gathered into a cloud as dark and thick as the ones above our house. I leapt forward and yanked the plug out of the wall just as Mom dashed into the room.

“We’ve been hit by lightning,” she said breathlessly.

“The TV blew up!” Pete shouted, pointing at the smoke that was seeping, like an escaping ghost, out of the speaker at the front of the set. “We were going to get special news and it blew.”

“Well, they were probably going to warn us of a lightning storm,” Mom said. “I hope nothing else got zapped.” She left the room to check.

I didn’t think the Sheriff’s Department would warn us about lightning storms. It had to be something else. Something menacing, like a runaway train full of deadly nerve gas, or a foreign invasion, but now we wouldn’t know. I hopped up and looked out the window to see if UFO’s were landing, or if a tidal wave was about to squish us like a giant hand. But I didn’t spot anything abnormal, so I patrolled from window to window to see if the outside of the house was on fire from the lightning strike. I hoped it wasn’t. I had big, all-day Halloween plans. Tack and I were going water skiing. His older brother, Jock, who Tack called Jock Itch, had bought a used car and said he would take us with him. I had never water-skied before and wanted to try it, but since it was storming out I knew Mom wouldn’t let me go. I peered through the back window, up at the sky. The clouds were still heavy and gray as stones, but they were breaking up. The sun was peeking through the cracks and the rain had stopped. Just then there was a knock at the door.

“That’s for me,” I yelled. I sprinted down the hall, across the living room, and whipped the door open. It was orange-haired Miss Fry and she thrust Miss Kitty II right up into my face. I knew this was going to be another car problem. Miss Kitty II loved cars. She had jumped into car windows, dropped into truck beds and convertibles from trees, and even chased them down the street like a dog.

“Is this your cat?” Miss Fry barked. She knew it was.

I casually reached for the tag around Miss Kitty II’s neck, and examined it. “Yeah,” I said.

“Well, I wish you would keep her from sleeping in my car. I got in just now and she crept up on my neck and batted my earrings and nearly scared me half to death. I thought a car-jacker was in the back seat. I almost had a coronary.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, staring at her miniature handcuff earrings. “But she really likes cars.”

“Then maybe you should
buy
her one,” Miss Fry suggested. She must have thought she said something very clever because her hips started to gyrate as if she were spinning an invisible Hula Hoop.

“Buying her a car is a good idea,” I replied, snapping out of my trance and sticking to my manners. I really wanted to say,
Maybe I could buy that rusted piece of junk you keep up on cinder blocks in your front yard!
But I knew if Mom overheard me being rude I’d get instantly grounded and I wouldn’t be able to go waterskiing.

“Don’t let it happen again!” Miss Fry ordered. “Or else!”

I didn’t want to know what she meant by “Or else.” Miss Fry was a security guard at the high school. Once the mailman delivered her mail to our house by mistake and in with her letters there was something titled
SECUR-I-GARB: The Catalog Serving Security Professionals.
Inside were pictures of SWAT team outfits, knives, handcuffs, bulletproof vests, and lots more cool stuff. I wanted to keep it but Mom made me put it back on her front porch.

“It won’t happen again,” I replied as sweetly as possible to Miss Fry. I didn’t want her to arrest me.

After she stormed off, Betsy yelled out from the kitchen, “Who was that?”