Poppy said, “We’re very proud of you.”
Chloe asked, “Will you buy me a car?”
Poppy laughed his big-belly laugh, releasing the tension in the room. And a small fart. We all burst into laughter.
“I’m still in the testing phase for my product,” I told them. Everyone looked at me, wondering what I was going to do. “So, well, I better get out there and continue testing,” I said.
TOWN OF REDHEADS
I brought my blender down from the lab and stayed on my front porch until dark, doling out what the bald men called their “dream come true.”
I made clear to them that the formula was only good short term; that when it was manufactured they would have to use it every day; that this was just a sample of things to come; that I would create more in the coming weeks; that very soon they would have forever what they thought they could never have again: hair. Real, live, healthy, growing hair. And red hair, at that! We were going to be a town of redheads! (About 1 to 2 percent of the population of the world has red hair.)
I wouldn’t accept any money. I figured this was a good chance to research my product on different scalps and a good opportunity for the men to experience having hair again, if only for a brief time. I recorded the characteristics of each man and how much Hair Today I gave to them, as this was my first group study.
I dug into the blender, scooping out Hair Today, smearing the hair-raising substance onto the bald heads of friends, neighbors, and strangers. I wore latex gloves so that the formula wouldn’t touch my hands and grow hair on my fingers again.
After I massaged the last man’s head, Officer Hernandez rolled up the yellow caution tape. Before he left, he bashfully approached me.
“I lost my hair at the age of twenty-three,” he said. He removed his helmet, knelt and presented his hairless head before me. I felt like I was knighting him as I rubbed Hair Today onto his barren dome. He said, “Bless you,” put his helmet back on, and zoomed off on his motorcycle, leaving me on my front porch on my first night of fame. On the eve of great personal prosperity. Alone. Except for a dozen scattered red whiskers growing on my latex gloves.
I saw the drapes being pulled closed in Robin’s window. I wondered what was going through her mind. I wished I could share all this with her. I wished I could convince her to make hair with me.
Poppy opened the front door and said, “It’s getting late.” He drifted outside and looked up at the sky. “Ah, a night full of stars.”
He sat down on the top step of the front porch and drew in a deep breath. “You are one of them today, Sparky. A real star.”
“Thanks, Poppy,” I said.
I sat down next to him, admiring the night sky. “If you tried to count all the stars in our galaxy at a rate of one every second, it would take around three thousand years,” I said.
“That puts us in our place, doesn’t it?” Poppy said.
I noticed a black stretch limousine parked in front of Robin’s house. The tinted window in the backseat was slightly open, out of which I could see smoke from a cigarette waft into the night.
“So, how did it go out here?” Poppy asked.
“Good. They’ll all have hair tonight. But they may not by tomorrow. It doesn’t last.”
“Nothing does. That’s what makes the present so precious.”
I turned to Poppy. He was looking up at the heavens. “You miss Grandma, don’t you?”
“I’d do anything to have one minute back with her.”
“I wish I could invent a time machine for you.”
“Start working on that, will ya?” Poppy had tears pooling in his eyes. “There’s a wise, old Irish saying—”
“Wait,” I said, as I took out my McCorder. I switched it on. “Go ahead, Poppy.”
“Love is the only thing . . . and everything. One day you’ll understand that,” Poppy sniffed. “You’ll do anything for the person you love.”
I looked up at Robin’s window and wondered if the feelings I felt for her were love. They must have been, because I would’ve done anything for her.
I picked up the blender of Hair Today. “I have a couple drops left,” I said.
“Nah,” Poppy said. “Thanks anyway.”
“Why not? It’ll make you look younger.”
“I’m not younger. No matter what I look like.”
“But maybe they’ll hire you if they think . . .”
“I wouldn’t want to work for someone who doesn’t want to work with somebody my age.”
We both just sat there, listening to the crickets. (By the way, female crickets do not chirp.) After a few moments, Poppy asked, “Have you protected the idea?”
“What do you mean?”
“The formula. Have you registered it with anyone official? Or taken out a patent or anything?”
“Gee. No. Not yet.”
“Without a patent, you can’t prove it’s your idea. If someone got their hands on your formula and took out a patent before you . . .” He looked off. “Well, you wouldn’t want that to happen.” Poppy stood up. “Let’s go in. It’s time for dinner.”
When he opened the front door, Poppy turned to me, pointing to my blender. “Do you have any mustaches in there? I’d take one of those.”
I smiled. “One mustache coming up!” I coated my finger with the last of the formula and ran it across Poppy’s philtrum, over his top lip, under his bulbous nose.
“In all my years, I’ve never had the patience to grow a mustache,” Poppy chuckled and went inside the house. (McStachtoids: In a deck of cards, the King of Hearts is the only King without a mustache. Since William Taft in 1909, all US presidents have been clean-shaven. Some people call mustaches “mo’s,” “caterpillars,” or “crumb catchers.”)
I heard a car engine turn on and saw the limousine on the other side of the street begin to move. Its headlights remained off as it crept suspiciously out of the cul-de-sac, the cigarette smoke lingering behind.
I followed Poppy into the house and locked the door.
MILLION-DOLLAR MIRACLE MIXTURE
It was 3:26 a.m. There was loud rapping on the front door of our house. Mom turned on the lights as my whole family gathered in the foyer and groggily staggered toward the doorway. Our next-door neighbor’s dog was barking loudly.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But I don’t like visitors in the middle of the night,” Dad said.
Chloe was the first to notice that Poppy had grown a thick, red handlebar mustache overnight. “Lookin’ pretty hip, Poppy-pops,” she said.
Poppy stroked his new mo. “I got a good deal. I know the inventor,” he said.
My father stood at the front door and cautiously looked through the peep hole. “Yes?” Dad said.
“My good man, is this the McCracken household?” a male voice with a British accent asked.
“Yes, who are you?”
“I’m from Johnson & Myers, the pharmaceutical company. I’m here to talk about the miracle mixture.”
“At this hour?” Dad said.
“We’ve been traveling all night,” the man said. “We wanted to be the first to make a proposal.”
My dad opened the door. Three men stood there under the porch light, each wearing a pinstriped suit and each holding a stainless steel briefcase. We could see a taxicab waiting at the curb, its motor idling. The tallest man spoke for the group. “First of all, I wish to apologize for coming so early. It appears we may have awakened you,” he said, his breath visible in the cold night air.
“Is anything wrong?” my mom asked.
“No, everything’s right,” the man said with a pleasant smile.
“Nothing’s right about three-thirty in the morning.” Chloe yawned. (The average yawn lasts six seconds. Seeing, thinking, or reading about yawns can trigger a yawn in 50 percent of people. Have you yawned yet?)
“I don’t think you’ll mind being up once I tell you why we’re here,” the Englishman said. He wai
ted to be invited in, but Dad didn’t offer.
“My name is Dr. Fredrick H. Duncan. I’m the CEO of J&M,” the man continued. Then he looked straight at me. “And you must be the genius inventor everyone’s talking about.”
“I’m Morgan McCracken. You can call me Morgan.”
“Well, this is your lucky day,” Dr. Duncan said. “Because today, Morgan, I’m going to give you a ton of money.” (A ton of one-dollar bills amounts to $908,000.)
We all looked at each other. Dad said, “Please, come in.”
There we were. Five McCrackens. All wearing bathrobes. We sat around the dining room table with the Brits as Poppy served the men tea, sizing each of them up.
One of Dr. Duncan’s aides opened his metal briefcase, revealing a bulky, leather-bound book on which was emblazoned, in gold lettering, the word Contract. Dr. Duncan began his presentation. “I’ll make this fast so you can go back to bed and we can go back to England. Young Mister McCracken here has come up with a nifty little product.”
“Little?” Poppy mumbled to himself, twirling his new “mo.”
“And I’m here to purchase it outright. Simple as that,” Dr. Duncan said, opening the Contract to the last page and turning his attention to me. “Sign here, son, and before the ink dries you’ll be the richest man in this town.”
I looked to my parents. They were looking at each other. I looked at Chloe. She was nodding wildly, like a bobblehead doll. I looked to Poppy. He was just looking back at me.
I didn’t know what to do, what to think. I had never been faced with this sort of situation before. It had all happened so fast. My heart started pumping loudly. I tried to calm myself down with these random facts: On the average, sixty-one thousand people are airborne over the United States in any given hour. Marie Curie’s notebooks are still radioactive. And Donald Duck never wore pants. But whenever he got out of a shower, he would always put a towel around his waist.
“Uh. Well, it cost me a lot to come up with the right formula,” I said, wanting to make sure that I sold Hair Today for enough money. “I mean I had to buy a lot of ingredients.”
“I’m sure you did,” Dr. Duncan said.
“For example, I went through a whole case of Tabasco sauce.”
“Tabasco sauce. I see.” Dr. Duncan said with a sly grin.
“And I spent a week’s allowance on kumquats.”
“Well,” said Dr. Duncan, “Would one million dollars cover your expenses?”
As we all sat in shock, Dr. Duncan’s second assistant swiftly snapped open his briefcase, which contained ten thousand brand new one hundred dollar bills. There on our dinner table—a million bucks. (If you counted one dollar at a time, every second, for twenty-four hours a day, it would take you twelve days to count a million dollars.) My big moment had come. I was one signature away from being a millionaire. (Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, was twenty-four years old when he became a millionaire.)
“Immediate prosperity. Immediate fame. Immediate happiness,” Dr. Duncan said, guiding the briefcase full of cash across the table to me. “Congratulations, son.”
The aide handed me a diamond-encrusted fountain pen and said, “Write your name on the last line, give us the formula, and we’ll get out of your hair, so to speak.”
Chloe couldn’t take her eyes off the money. Mom gave a concerned look to Dad. Dad gave a troubled look to Poppy. Poppy gave a puzzled look to me. I held the pen an inch from the paper. It was heavy. My hand was shaking. (I’m left-handed, just like Babe Ruth, Alexander the Great, and Bart Simpson.) My mouth was dry. (There are more bacteria in your mouth than there are people in the world.) My head was spinning. (Your brain is sending and receiving six trillion messages every minute in order to keep your body working right.)
“A million dollars . . .” I said softly.
“You earned it, Morgan McCracken,” the aide said.
“That should pay for the kumquats,” the other aide added.
“It’s a very generous offer,” I said.
“I’m sure it will change your life. And that of your family,” Dr. Duncan said, adjusting his bowtie.
“One. Million. Dollars,” I said, wiping my brow.
“Go ahead now,” the Englishman said. “Sign your name, so you can take the money. And start spending it tomorrow.”
I began to write my name. Then, after the letter “k” in “McCracken,” I hesitated.
“You’re doing great, Morgan . . . McCrack,” said Dr. Duncan. “Just two more letters, son.”
“Give us an E! Give us an N!” Chloe yelled like a cheerleader.
Just as I was about to finish signing for a million dollars, my hand stopped. Something didn’t feel right. I wasn’t sure what it was. I lifted the tip of the pen off the paper.
“I can’t,” I said.
HOOKED LIKE AN EARTHWORM
Dr. Duncan and both his aides, sitting at our dining room table, gasped.
Chloe gave a little scream of frustration.
“Surely you know how to write your name,” one of the aides said, becoming restless.
“I can’t agree to anything until I consult my partner.”
“Nobody mentioned anything about a partner,” Dr. Duncan said, shifting in his chair, searching his assistants for an answer. They shrugged their shoulders.
“Robin Reynolds, from across the street,” I said. “She spotted the fuzz on Taxi.”
“Spotted the what on what?” Dr. Duncan was becoming impatient.
“I have to talk with Robin,” I said, growing in confidence.
“She isn’t your wife,” Chloe said. “Just sign the darn contract, so we can be rich! And so we can go back to sleep!”
“Robin’s my associate. We have to decide these matters together.”
“Associate? She’s just a chick you have a crush on,” Chloe said.
“She’s a friend.”
“She’s a friend you have the hots for.”
“She’s smart,” I said.
“You mean she’s pretty.”
“I mean she’s pretty smart.”
“Then what’s she doing hanging with you?”
“She’s not anymore!” I didn’t know what more to say, except to come up with a fast fact. “Baby robins eat fourteen feet of earthworms every day.”
Dr. Duncan rolled his eyes. “Uh, can we—”
“Admit it, Bro,” Chloe said. “You’re hooked, just like a fisherman’s earthworm.”
“We have a working relationship,” I shot back.
“Like I believe that.”
“Like I care.”
“Guys, this isn’t the time,” Dad said.
“Robin’s done a lot for me,” I said.
“Yeah, up there in your love lab,” Chloe said.
“Mom . . .” I whined.
Dr. Duncan couldn’t believe what he was hearing in the middle of this life-changing, million-dollar business transaction.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Mom said.
Dr. Duncan took a deep breath. “I understand. Not a problem. Just run across the street, get your fellow scientist and hurry back. Both of you sign, both of you split the money, and we’ll have ourselves a deal.”
He held up the diamond pen. “And if the two of you are back in three minutes, you can keep this pen. It’s worth a hundred thousand dollars. Call it a signing bonus.”
I got up and started toward the front door, when Dad stood. “It’s too early to wake Robin’s family,” he said. Then he turned to the men. “It’s none of my business, Dr. Duncan, but I think we should discuss all this among ourselves and get back to you.”
“You’re right,” Dr. Duncan said, as he rose from the table.
“Thanks,” Dad said.
“It’s none of your business.”
“Well, let me put it to you another way,” Dad said. “Morgan isn’t signing anything until he’s ready.”
“He sounds ready to me,” Dr. Duncan said. “He just needs his little
friend to co-sign.”
“We need more time,” Dad said. “We won’t be pressured into making a decision of this magnitude in the middle of the night . . . in our pajamas, no less.”
Dr. Duncan looked Dad up and down, readying himself for a hard-nosed negotiation. “We’re flying back to London in two hours, Mr. McCracken. There’s no time for further deliberation.”
“We wish you a safe flight,” Dad said.
“With all due respect, this is the boy’s invention. This is the boy’s decision,” Dr. Duncan said.
“Morgan is a minor. And he’s my son. He—”
“All right,” Dr. Duncan interrupted. “I think I know what you’re really saying—what you’re really asking for.” He slid the third stainless steel briefcase across the table to my dad.
“I simply want everyone to be happy,” Dr. Duncan said with a smug smile.
We all looked at Dad. He set his jaw and slid the case back across the table, unopened, to Dr. Duncan. “No, thanks. When it’s time, my son will make the right choice. And I’m sure your offer will still stand.”
“Wrong. This is my last offer and your last chance to accept it,” Dr. Duncan said, popping open the third case and revealing a stack of shiny gold bars. It was like a treasure chest had been unlatched. I heard a choir of angels sing in my head. (Gold is the only metal that doesn’t rust.) Dr. Duncan pushed the open case across the table once again to my dad. I just stood there, stunned. Those gold bars must have been worth, well, their weight in gold.
Poppy broke the silence. “Like my son said, we’ll think about it.” He shut the case, pushed it back to Dr. Duncan. “Sorry, gentlemen.”
Dr. Duncan closed the case of gold and the case of cash. “You’re making a big mistake. You won’t get a better offer. I’ll leave my card. When you change your mind—and you will—call me.”
Dad held the front door open for the three men, who stormed out without saying another word.
Chloe’s face dropped. Mom smiled. Poppy left to wash the teacups. I sank into the couch feeling woozy. The McCracken family had just turned away a bloody fortune.
The McVentures of Me, Morgan McFactoid Page 9