by Philip Roy
LADY: “Hello there!”
Her friend doesn’t say anything.
ME: “Hi.”
CHARLIE: “This is private property. You have to pay a toll if you want to get out of the canoe.”
LADY: “Private property? Are you sure?”
She smiles but looks confused.
SAMI: “It’s a new country. It’s called the Kingdom of No Worries.”
He points to the flagpole.
SAMI: “That’s our flag.”
She smiles even more. She is very friendly.
LADY: “I like your flag. And I love the name of your country. How much is the toll?”
CHARLIE: “What?”
We haven’t decided how much it will be yet.
SAMI: “For a canoe it’s two dollars.”
The lady turns around and looks at her friend who’s sitting in the back of the canoe and isn’t smiling.
LADY: “Have you got two dollars?”
He reaches into his pocket, finds a coin, and tosses it towards Charlie. Charlie picks it up like it’s a piece of gold and puts it in his pocket.
CHARLIE: “I’ll put it in our bank.”
We look at each other because we know that we don’t have a bank yet and will have to make one.
SAMI: “Okay, you can come and stay now.”
LADY: “Great! Can I take pictures?”
She steps out of the canoe. She’s wearing a camera around her neck.
Charlie looks at me, and I know he’s thinking we should charge her for taking pictures, but I shake my head because that’s too much.
ME: “Sure. Take all you like.”
LADY: “Can I take pictures of the three of you, standing in your new country?”
We grin at each other.
ME: “Sure. Why not?”
So we stand together in front of our country name, and we stand in front of the flag. We stand with our arms crossed and try to look important, and we stand with our hands in our pockets and smile. The lady takes a lot of pictures. She asks us our names and a whole bunch of questions about our country, and then she thanks us and gets back in her canoe and leaves. We think that is it and we’ll never see her again. But that’s when it all begins.
Chapter 7
THE NEXT MORNING, we wake up to find ourselves on the front page of the newspaper.
Dad brings it into the house. “Hey, look at these kids down on the river. They claim to have started their own country. Isn’t that a hoot? Hey, look, Billy. These kids look just like you and your friends. Look, Ella, these kids look just like …” Dad pauses. “Oh my Lord!” Then he turns and stares at me as if I am an alien that has come from another planet and has been living undercover with our family all these years. “That’s you, Billy, isn’t it?” He holds up the paper.
I stare at it. The picture isn’t one of the ones we had posed for. Instead, it shows Sami gazing into the camera with a concentrated, kind of sad look on his face. Charlie is staring in one direction, and I’m staring in the other. We look like we are just waiting for something to happen. But Sami’s expression steals the show. He looks deeply thoughtful. Probably he was just trying to decide what to eat next, but it looks a lot more important than that. The headline at the top of the article says, RIVER KINGDOM OFFERS HOPE FOR BETTER WORLD.
“Billy, that’s you!” says Dad.
“I never knew that lady would put our picture in the paper.”
Dad sits down and reads the article. Mom stands behind him and reads it, too. She steals little glances at me while she does. I think she’s also trying to decide if I’m an alien. Then Dad holds up the paper and reads some of it out loud.
“Everyone is welcome,” say the boys. “We want our country to be a model of tolerance and freedom for the whole world.”
Mom is beaming now. “Billy, that is wonderful. I am so proud of you.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Merilee comes into the kitchen. Any time Mom or Dad say they are proud of me, Merilee can hear it from far away and will come to investigate. Usually she’ll find reasons not to be proud of me, but this time she takes a look at the paper, takes a look at me, and then doesn’t say anything.
“Look, Merki,” says Dad. “Your little brother made the news.”
Merilee takes the paper from Dad and reads the article lightning fast, then passes it back. “Hmmm.”
That can mean anything from “that’s crazy!” to “that’s amazing!” Probably it’s somewhere in between.
By late morning we’re back in our country. It’s sunny but cool for the end of June. Since our clothes are all wet from crossing the river, we are cold. We decide it will be a good idea to try to find a rubber dinghy, or maybe make a raft for crossing back and forth between Canada and the kingdom, or bring spare clothes. We have to run around the island to warm up. We notice a small group of people on one bank of the river watching us.
CHARLIE: “What do you think they want?”
ME: “Nothing. They’re just curious.”
SAMI: “We’re kind of famous now.”
ME: “I wonder if anyone will try to come over.”
SAMI: “What would we do?”
ME: “I don’t know.”
CHARLIE: “Charge them a toll.”
ME: “No way. We can’t keep charging people money, Charlie. We’ll get a reputation for being greedy. We don’t want people to think that our kingdom is a greedy place.”
SAMI: “Definitely not.”
CHARLIE: “I don’t see what’s wrong with charging money. Seems to me like a good way to get rich.”
ME: “But our country is not about getting rich, Charlie, it’s more than that.”
SAMI: “It’s way more than that.”
CHARLIE: “I don’t see anything wrong with getting rich while we’re at it. We could be millionaires before we’re twenty, and then we wouldn’t even have to work. We could just collect money from tolls and taxes.”
SAMI: “What’s that lady doing?”
ME: “What lady?”
I turn and watch as an old, white-haired lady steps into the river carrying something in her hands. She seems to know the shallowest place to cross, and she doesn’t stop when the river comes up past her belly. She walks slowly across the river and comes to the edge of our land, where she stops and waits for us to meet her, which we do. She has a strange expression on her face. It’s a smile and a serious look at the same time. She looks kind of sad, yet very determined. She holds up the thing in her hands and we see that it is a plant with tiny red flowers on it. She holds it out.
LADY: “A gift for the Kingdom of No Worries. Please accept my gift.”
I step into the water and take the plant. The lady looks very pleased when I do.
LADY: “Dig a little hole for it, and don’t overwater it. God bless you, boys.”
Then she turns around and walks back across the river. She never actually steps onto our land, so Charlie can’t ask her for a toll.
ME: “Thank you!”
I call it out after her, but she is concentrating on where to place her feet and never turns around. I carry the plant back to Sami and Charlie.
SAMI: “What are we going to do with that?”
CHARLIE: “Sell it.”
ME: “No, we’re going to plant it. This is the beginning of our garden.”
SAMI: “Awesome.”
I pick up the shovel and dig a hole. We pull the plant out of its pot and place it in the ground. Then we step back and stare at it.
SAMI: “It’s growing here now.”
Charlie and I nod our heads.
CHARLIE: “Yeah, it’s awesome.”
During the afternoon, three more people cross the river with plants. By suppertime we have dug seven holes and planted seven plants in the ground. Some of the people come out of the water and step into the kingdom but we never charge anyone a toll. Just before dark, when the sun is low on the horizon, and the light on the island makes a golden glow, which is when the k
ingdom looks its best, the lady in the canoe returns and takes more pictures. This time she tells us her name: Elizabeth. And this time she takes pictures of the plants and flowers.
The next day there is an explosion of people crossing the river with plants in their arms, and we spend the whole day digging holes in the ground and giving the plants a new home. It is a warm day, and people are crossing the river in shorts, t-shirts, and bathing suits. There are people on the bank with cameras and cellphones, too. There always seem to be at least one or two people, and sometimes a small group of people, and sometimes a small crowd. But in the evening, when Elizabeth comes down in her canoe, and is all by herself this time, there is another boat—a motorized rubber dinghy—and there are two police officers in it.
Chapter 8
ELIZABETH KNOWS THAT the officers are coming, because she arrives just before them, hops out of her canoe, and takes pictures of them as they step into the kingdom. She makes the police a little nervous, I think, but she doesn’t care. She waves hello to us first, and then starts clicking away.
The police officers look around first, as if they aren’t even interested in us. They stare at our garden, and one of them takes a pad out of her pocket and writes something down. Then she looks up at our flag and writes something else. Finally, she and her partner come over. I’m feeling nervous. Charlie isn’t.
CHARLIE: “This is our country. You have to pay a toll for docking your boat. It’s two dollars.”
I can’t believe he has the nerve to say that. The police officers look at each other and smile.
OFFICER: “It’s getting dark soon, boys. You’d better be getting home.”
ME: “We will, officer.”
OFFICER: “Boys. This is city property. You can’t just plant what you like here. You have to get a permit.”
I hear Elizabeth’s camera clicking and see her write something down. One of the officers takes out another pad and starts writing on it. He asks us our names, ages, addresses, and phone numbers. Then he tears a paper from another pad. It’s a ticket!
OFFICER: “You’ll have to remove that flagpole tomorrow, boys, and all those plants. You must apply to the city for a permit before you can plant anything here. Do you understand?”
He steps forward and hands me the ticket.
OFFICER: “What you’ve done here is a violation of city property. This is just a warning. The next time it’ll be a fine.”
SAMI: “This is our country.”
Sami looks upset. The two officers just stand and stare for a while. I can tell that they aren’t sure what to do.
OFFICER: “Remove these plants by tomorrow or face a fine. Take your skateboards to the park, boys, or go play baseball, but leave city property alone.”
Then they get into their boat and motor away.
I feel crushed.
All night I toss and turn. In the morning I meet Merilee in the kitchen and tell her what happened.
“I don’t think they can make you take the flagpole down or dig up the plants.”
“Really?”
“No, I don’t think so, because they don’t have the right to force you to do something. That would be oppression. What they can do is prevent you from doing any more of something that is unlawful, which is what you’re doing in their minds. And probably it is. Certainly the city will assume the island is its property, which means that it belongs to all of us, which means that the police force, who represent all of us, and are here to protect us, have the right to kick you off, and in so doing, protect you from yourself.”
“That sounds crazy.”
“I know, but it isn’t if you think it through.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do? I don’t want to go to jail.”
“Pretty unlikely you’ll go to jail. I suppose they could put you in a correctional institution though, if you misbehave enough.”
“That’s the same thing to me. Can’t we do anything?”
“Hmmm … it’s conceivable that if you confront the police with an act of civil disobedience, which raises enough support from local citizens to put political pressure on the city, which controls the police force, then you could potentially make the police stand down. But that’s a long shot. I mean, it happens, but it’s rare.”
“What’s civil disobedience?”
“Organized defiance with a political agenda.”
“Which means ..?”
“I’ve got an essay about it by Henry David Thoreau. It’s upstairs. It will tell you all about it.”
“That’s okay. Dad works for the city. Do you think he can help us?”
“I doubt it. More likely he’ll just get caught in the middle.”
I watch Merilee eat her cereal. There’s such a sense of purpose in everything she does. But the food she eats is fuel to keep her going, nothing else. I wonder if it ever occurs to her that eating can be fun.
“Can I ask you something?”
She takes a bite and answers with a full mouth.
“What?”
“How come you know so much?”
She gives me her long beak stare, which now looks like a pelican that has just swallowed a fish.
“I read.”
Dad’s out in the garage. He’s reading the paper, and we are in it again. He has a kind of sad look on his face. I’m waiting for him to tell me to get down to the river quick and tear up those plants and pull down the flagpole. Dad doesn’t like confrontation. He prefers to get along with everybody, which sometimes just means getting out of their way.
But that’s not what he says. What he says makes me feel ten feet tall. And he speaks to me in a way he never has before.
“You made the paper again, Billy.”
I go over and take a look. The picture shows the two police officers talking to us, and once again Sami’s face is in the front, and it is upset and a little angry. The police are towering over us, pointing to the plants. The headline reads, KINGDOM OF NO WORRIES ORDERED OUT!
Dad’s expression is a little angry, too. I’m surprised. But it’s the words he says next that really surprise me, and they stay in my mind all day.
“Keep your head up today, Billy. Looks like you’re in for a rough ride.”
“Thanks, Dad.” My spine tingles as I step out of the garage.
It turns out that Dad isn’t the only one who’s upset by the newspaper. When I meet Sami and Charlie, and we cross the river, we see a small crowd on the other riverbank. They are carrying more plants than the day before, and some are carrying posters that say, “Save the Kingdom of No Worries.”
Wow.
People cross the river to bring us their plants, but it isn’t long before two more police officers show up, though they don’t come in a boat, and don’t come to the kingdom. They stand on the riverbank and speak through a megaphone.
“You are in violation of city property. Remove those plants and take down that flagpole. I repeat: remove those plants and take down that flagpole.”
Now I’m really nervous. I don’t want to get arrested. I remember Merilee saying that they can’t make us do things; they can only prevent us from doing things. Suddenly some of the people who brought plants pick up our shovels and start planting. The police stand by and watch. Now they won’t have to arrest just us; they’ll have to arrest a whole bunch of people, which they don’t look ready to do.
Soon even more people come, and some are carrying drums and folding chairs. They approach us, shake our hands, tell us their names, which we can’t remember, and say that they are drummers from Senegal. Would we mind if they performed in our kingdom? We say that would be great. In a few moments we hear hands slapping on drums, which is a sound that makes you want to get up and dance.
And so, while the police watch from the riverbank, people start dancing to the music of drums, and a wonderful energy fills the kingdom.
Chapter 9
THE DRUMMERS FROM Senegal are still drumming when Sami, Charlie, and I go home. It is way past our bedtime,
but Mom and Dad know where I am, and Charlie’s parents know where he is, and Sami’s parents don’t care.
I climb into bed with the beating of drums still echoing inside my head. It was so nice when the moon came out and the silhouettes of a hundred people were standing around, or sitting, or gently dancing to the music. We had no idea our kingdom would become so popular. Elizabeth showed up, too, and took photos and films of everything, and interviewed the drummers.
In the morning we make the front page once again. Well, Sami, Charlie, and I don’t, but the kingdom does. There is a picture of the drummers and people waving their hands in the air. The headline reads, SENEGALESE DRUMMERS ROCK THE KINGDOM.
Before Merilee leaves for school, she glances at the paper, and then asks me a question. I know she is going to ask it before she does. Sometimes I can read her mind; I just can’t always understand it.
“Have you read The Republic yet, Billyboy?”
“No, but I’m going to. I just didn’t get a chance to yet.”
“But you’ve been carrying it around in your pack like twenty-four-seven. Why don’t you take it out and read it?”
“I know. I will. I’ve just been very busy lately.”
She gives me her best bird-swallow-the-fish look. It gives me chills. It’s actually really scary if you dare to imagine you are a fish.
“You can’t run a country if you don’t understand its politics. Someone will take it all away from you and you won’t even know what happened. You have to read, Billyboy. Haven’t you ever heard that knowledge is power?”
“Yes, but …”
“I have to go.” She grabs a banana, looks into my eyes, and says one of the nicest things she’s ever said to me. “In spite of our differences, you are my little brother. I’d hate to see them take it from you just because you’re wandering around in a fog. There’s a reason why they say the pen is mightier than the sword. Why don’t you do yourself a favour and read the book?” Then she taps me on the shoulder and goes out the door.