The Fight for Kidsboro

by Marshal Younger

He sat down in a chair and put his feet up on my desk. “I was thinking about maybe becoming a citizen myself. Where do I sign up?”

  For the first time, I looked directly at him. My veins turned to ice. If Jake became a citizen, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. I would be constantly looking over my shoulder and checking behind trees.

  “You know, it’s pretty hard to get in,” I said. “You have to go through a screening process, and you have to win an 80 percent majority vote in the city council. It’s not really up to me.”

  “I see,” he said. “So, you don’t think I have a chance?”

  “Well … you’re new here. I don’t really know you, and I don’t think anyone else on the council does either. It might be a long shot.”

  “But you’re the mayor. You can make things work out for me, right? Or don’t you want to?” I didn’t answer. “You know what? I’ve got something that might make you want to. Come with me.”

  “Look … Jake, is it? I don’t have the time. Maybe …”

  “I think you’re gonna want to see this.” I looked up and saw him smiling. He had me. I didn’t know how, but he had me. I was compelled to follow him. Without a word, he headed for the movie theater. Pete was setting up for that night’s feature. We stepped across the series of extension cords that led from the woods to Whit’s End and approached him.

  “Ask him if we could use the video projector for a bit.” I did, and Pete agreed. He turned the power on, and then went back into his office/house. Jake and I were alone.

  Jake pushed a videocassette labeled “Tenth Birthday” into the projector. “After our last little encounter, I did some research. I had my mom send me this video from California. I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

  The screen lit up and showed a birthday party. The cake said Happy 10th Birthday, Jake, and in the background was a 10-year-old Jake. He puffed up his cheeks and blew out the candles as everyone clapped. Then the camera panned and caught a little boy wearing a purple superhero shirt—an eight-year-old me. The person operating the camera said, “Jim! Make your funny face.” The eight-year-old me scrunched up his face as though he had just eaten a box of lemons. Jake pressed the pause button, crossed his arms, and glared at me.

  “You know,” Jake said, “that kid looks … like … exactly like you. But … they called him Jim. I wonder why.”

  “I guess his name is Jim,” I said as calmly as I could. “I admit, he sure looks like me. Thanks for showing me that. It was interesting.” I started to head back to my office.

  “You want to see another coincidence?” he said, stopping me in my tracks. He pressed a button and the video started up again. I was still making faces, and there, coming up from behind me, was my mom. She hugged my neck. Then she looked right into the camera and the two of us smiled. Ten-year-old Jake came into the picture and called her “Mrs. Bowers.”

  “You see, that’s what’s weird,” Jake said. “That kid’s mother looks just like your mother. And yet her name is Mrs. Bowers. Can you believe that coincidence?” He paused for effect. “No. You don’t believe that’s a coincidence. And neither will anybody else. Can you imagine how awful it would be if, for some reason, this tape accidentally got switched with the tape Pete’s going to play at the Cineplex tonight? You would have a lot of explaining to do, huh?”

  The tape was still rolling. There were only five or six kids at the party that day. Jake was not real popular. He had invited me only because he had very few other friends. My mom and I were sitting together as we watched Jake open his presents. I got excited when he opened the one I gave him—one of those super water guns. Jake immediately ran to the bathroom to fill it up. I smiled at my mom and said, “I told you he’d like it.” Times were much simpler then.

  “So what’s your story, Jim? Why are you hiding out here with a bogus name? It’s not because you’re scared of me, is it? Surely you don’t think I’m still mad about that whole detention center thing.”

  Just a few months after that birth day party, Jake had taken me out to the woods and showed me his father’s gun. I got scared, and I ran and told my mom. She called the police, and they came and picked him up. Of course, the gun episode hadn’t been the only reason Jake had been sent away, but I sensed he blamed me anyway.

  “Surely you didn’t move away just because I had to spend the next three months in a juvenile detention center.” Jake said. He was telling me now, four years later, that he wasn’t mad about it. But I couldn’t imagine that he had put it behind him. I was sure he wanted revenge.

  “You know what? I don’t think that’s it,” he said. “This is a long way to come just to get away from me. I think you ran away from California for a different reason.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “It was a weird thing. Nobody in our old neighborhood could figure it out. You and your mom just suddenly disappeared. Not even your father knew where you were.” He smiled. “I think you were running away from him.”

  He knew it all. When I was eight, my mother and I gathered up our belongings and left the house in the middle of the night to escape an abusive husband and father—my dad. If he had known we were leaving, or where we were going, he would’ve found us and maybe hurt us even worse than he had before. He was an alcoholic and we never knew how violent he would turn at any given moment when he was drinking. So we left that night and went to an abuse shelter, where they helped us start our lives over. They gave us new names, a new address thousands of miles away, and a new life. They told us not to tell anyone in Odyssey about our past, not even our closest friends. Now … my worst enemy knew.

  “Jake, you can’t tell anybody.”

  “Oh, I don’t plan to. You know, as long as you keep me happy.”

  He had me. I had to give him whatever he wanted.

  “What do you want?” I asked him.

  “I want to be a citizen.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t gotten to know many people here. I think it’d be nice to settle down in a small town …” This part I believed. Jake was never one to make friends easily. But I didn’t believe This was the only reason he wanted to be a part of my town.

  “I told you, it’s not completely my decision,” I told him.

  “Then you’d better hope your friends follow your lead and vote for me.”

  “They don’t even know you.”

  “Tell them about me. Tell them what a good pal I’ve always been to you.” In other words, lie.

  “I can’t guarantee anything,” I said.

  “Sure you can.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  But don’t ask me any questions, I thought. You don’t need to know anything else.

  I rolled back over onto my stomach. I could never sleep on my stomach, but I wasn’t sleeping anyway. I thought about waking Mom up and telling her everything, but I didn’t want her to panic and insist that we move out of Odyssey. I liked it here.

  I also considered telling Mr. Whittaker. He was the only person in Odyssey besides my mom and I who knew the truth about our situation. When we moved to Odyssey, we immediately knew he was a person we could trust. He helped us out a lot, and was responsible for my mother and me becoming Christians. I wanted to tell him, but I knew he would want me to tell my mom, and I didn’t want her to worry. Why did Jake have to show up and ruin everything?

  I couldn’t imagine Jake being a citizen of Kidsboro—to look across the way and see Jake eating a donut from Sid’s Bakery, attending a movie at the Cineplex, talking with all of my real friends. I would be constantly wondering what the topic of conversation was …

  I would have to look straight into the faces of the city council members and tell them that Jake would be a wonderful asset to our community. I had no choice.

  I called a city council meeting first thing the next morning. Everyone was there—Scott, Nelson, Alice, Jill, and me. None of them knew why I had called the meeting.

  “I want to vote in ano
ther citizen,” I said, my stomach turning.

  As I expected, Jill immediately objected, “I thought we were going to stop at 30 for the rest of the summer.”

  “That’s right. We did say that at the last meeting,” Alice agreed.

  “Then someone must be leaving,” Nelson said.

  “Who’s leaving?” Scott asked.

  “No one’s leaving. There’s just someone I think we should consider.”

  “Who?”

  I took a long breath. “Do you guys know Jake Randall?” I got blank stares.

  “Never heard of him,” Scott said.

  “He’s from California. He’s visiting for the summer—staying with his grandmother or something.”

  “He doesn’t live here?” Jill asked with an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders.

  “No, he doesn’t. But I think he could turn into a very valuable citizen.”

  “Why?” Jill asked.

  “Because,” I could tell that I hadn’t rehearsed this well enough. “Because … he’s … smart …”

  “That’s it? He’s smart?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  Jill wasn’t going to let up. “Well, you’re going to have to make a better case for him than that. None of us knows the guy. How do you expect us to vote for him?”

  Alice spoke up. “Can we ask some questions about him?”

  “Sure.”

  “Does he have a record?” she asked, without a hint of a smile.

  “You mean, is he a criminal?” Did Alice have a sense about these things, or was this just a standard question? I didn’t answer.

  “Do you mind if I do a check on him?”

  “Um … no, go ahead.”

  Alice wrote something down in the notebook she kept in her shirt pocket.

  “You say,” Nelson said, “we could benefit from him being a citizen. How?”

  “How? Well … like I said, he’s smart. I could see him starting a new business.”

  “We have tons of new businesses.”

  “True. You’re right, we do. But … his business could really …” I looked around at the confused faces around me. They weren’t buying it. I didn’t want to resort to this, but I had run out of options.

  “Listen,” I began, swallowing a lump in my throat, “do you think you could maybe just … trust me on this one?” Jill and Nelson exchanged looks while Alice and Scott stared at me through squinted eyes. “I can’t explain right now. I just … need for you to vote for this guy. Okay?”

  There was silence as I scanned the faces of my friends. Jill looked down, fiddled with her ear, and finally said, “Okay. I trust you. I’ll vote for him.”

  “Me too,” Scott said. Nelson and Alice followed.

  “All right then,” I said sheepishly. “Jake’s a citizen.” I let out an unintentional sigh of relief and Jill glanced at me. “Thanks. Meeting adjourned.”

  “Do we get to meet Jake at some point?” Jill asked.

  “Sure. Um … he’ll be around. I’ll introduce him.” We all filed out.

  As I headed back to my office, I noticed that Jill and Scott had remained in the meeting hall. When I looked back, they saw me, and their conversation came to an abrupt halt. They both gave me an awkward smile and pretended, badly, that nothing was going on. I turned back around and tried to act like I wasn’t affected by this scene, but I had a feeling that their level of trust in me had taken a hit.

  I hadn’t attended the Kidsboro Community Church for several weeks, but I decided to go, hoping that Reverend Joey might say something to inspire me. When I arrived, he and Mr. Whittaker were the only ones there. Joey preached, banged his fist on the music stand a couple of times, and led us in a couple of songs. With the Fourth of July coming up, I think he preached on appreciating America. To be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention. It was when he asked if anyone wanted to come to the altar to pray that I woke up.

  I walked up to where Joey had laid out a couple of milk crates for an altar. I knelt down and almost started to cry. I felt terrible for deceiving people that I really cared about.

  “Lord, please forgive me for lying. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to keep lying, but I can’t tell them the truth, either,” I whispered.

  Mr. Whittaker startled me with a tap on the shoulder. “Are you okay, Ryan?” I wanted to tell him everything, but I couldn’t.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Would you like me to pray with you?”

  “No. I’d just like to pray alone for now.”

  “Okay, Ryan. But let me know if you need to talk.” He hesitated, waiting for me to take him up on his offer. Seeing that I wasn’t going to at this point, he slowly backed away.

  I finished my prayer with one more sentence, “Please, God, show me what I can do.”

  I didn’t get an answer immediately, but I figured one was coming. God had never let me down before.

  Jake was all smiles when the city council greeted him as the newest citizen of Kidsboro. He was building his house very close to my office, and the sight of it gave me an instant headache. I stood at a distance while Jill, Scott, Nelson, and Alice shook his hand, one by one.

  The only good thing about this scene was the fact that Jake’s house would be the second to use tarp, thus continuing the demise of Max’s chokehold on the city.

  Even though Jake was now a citizen of Kidsboro, I couldn’t help but smile when I saw how far the town had come in such a short time. Everywhere I looked, people were involved in businesses of various kinds. Pete had no problem finding investors for his movie. Just as with Nelson’s cars, we all knew the movie would make a lot of money. Everyone figured that people would pay to see it simply to watch themselves on-screen. Pete raised 40 starbills almost immediately. That would be plenty to pay all the actors and crew members.

  But I also noticed that something disturbing was going on. People who couldn’t get investors for their businesses were borrowing money from each other. I didn’t like this going on between friends, because if someone couldn’t pay a friend back, it might hurt the friendship.

  So I discussed an idea with the city council: We needed to start a bank. “People will put their extra money in the bank, so they can earn interest. Interest is money the bank pays you because it gets to use your money for a while. It’s a form of investing. I figure people will go for it because they will be making money for doing nothing,” I explained.

  “On the flip side, people can also borrow money from the bank if they want to start new businesses. On a loan, they’ll have to pay interest. The longer they take to pay back their loans, the more money they’ll have to pay back. Hopefully, once the borrowers get their businesses going, they’ll be making enough money to pay back their loans pretty easily.” Everyone on the city council agreed it was time for Kidsboro to open a bank.

  As soon as we announced the opening of the Kidsboro Savings and Loan, people began to gather up their extra cash and deposit it in the bank. I appointed Marcy to be the bank teller. She had always had trouble finding a job, plus she had a laptop computer, so she was a natural choice. Nelson brought his newfound wealth and deposited all of it. Before lunch, a total of 182 starbills had been deposited into the bank. Once there were funds in the bank, people were able to take out loans to start their own businesses. And from the crowd of people outside the bank that first day, it looked like the bank was turning out to be a good idea.

  5

  THE GOLDEN ERA

  I TOOK A LOOK AT Pete’s movie script before the filming started. Not that I could’ve stopped him from making the film, but I told him I wanted to see the script so that I could decide whether or not I could support it as mayor. I didn’t want the citizens of Kidsboro imitating Hollywood morals in one of its own productions.

  I was pleased to discover that everything in it seemed harmless. The plot was fun and exciting. It might not be a classic, but I wouldn’t withhold my support just because I thought it wasn’t going to win any awards.<
br />
  Pete held auditions for all the roles in his film. He told everyone that it was an action/adventure movie and that there were plenty of parts to audition for. Anyone who did not get an acting role could be hired as a crew person—cameraman, assistant director, sound technician (microphone holder, as it turned out), and so on. Practically everyone in Kidsboro showed up to audition. I sat and watched part of it, though I didn’t audition myself. Pete sat in a director’s chair. He had on sunglasses and held a megaphone, though it was an overcast day and he was only 15 feet away from the actors.

  “Next,” Pete said through his megaphone. Scott stepped to the front. “Name?” Pete asked.

  “You know my name,” Scott said.

  “Name?” Pete insisted.

  Scott rolled his eyes. “Scott Sanchez.”

  Pete wrote something down in his notebook. “Is that with an S?”

  “Yes, two of them.”

  “And what part will you be reading for?”

  “I’ll be reading for the part of Rock Bockner.”

  “Oh …” Pete said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I’ve already cast that part.”

  Scott instantly objected, “Well, excuse me for using up oxygen, but am I not the first guy to audition? How could you have cast the part already?”

  “It was a pre-production decision. Why don’t you try out for Dead Guy number two?”

  “Who got the part of Rock?” Scott demanded. At this point, other guys who were waiting their turn moved in to see what was going on.

  Pete noticed the sudden invasion. “Would all other auditioners wait behind the curtain, please?”

  “We want to know who got the part of Rock!” one boy demanded.

  “Rock Bockner is …” Pete began quietly, then with all the confidence he could muster, he looked him straight in the eyes. “Me.”

  The boys immediately burst into hysterical laughter. Pete looked offended. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Rock Bockner is not a four foot nine, 87-pound ostrich. He’s a big, tough guy. With muscles and … a cool haircut,” somebody responded.