Six Thousand Doughnuts

by Thomas Tosi

  “That don’t mean nothin’,” Mr. Paczki said. That’s just lawyer gobbledy…” He stopped when he saw Judge Sally giving him the death stare. It’s like her eyeballs were double‐dog daring him to say the next words. “That ain’t the point of the contest is all I mean…Your Honor.”

  When the judge finished reading, she looked at me and said, “Equivalent, right?”

  She gave me a wink. Judge Sally actually winked at me.

  I might not have thought she was very friendly, but she sure was smart. She got the cash equivalent thing right away without me even having to explain.

  I just nodded.

  Judge Sally held the card up toward Mr. Paczki’s team as though they could all read the tiny printing of the rules from that far away. “I would say that you and the Sweetly Crisp Corporation have some explaining to do.”

  There was a long, deep ooh from the audience.

  As the oohing died down, the great white whale stood up. Breaching is what I think you call it when whales in the ocean break through the surface of the water. When they do, you can bet they’re about to spout out a lot of stuff.

  “Thar she blows,” Celia whispered.

  “Your Honor, may I?” the great white whale asked.

  “I think you’d better.”

  The whale stepped forward and leaned in‐between Mr. Paczki and Marlene. He grabbed the metal neck of the microphone stand and tilted it up, his doughnut watch and rings catching the TV lights and sparkling as much as his belt buckle.

  “Your Honor, the Sweetly Crisp Corporation routinely runs contests and games solely for the benefit and entertainment of our customers at over three hundred franchise locations—”

  “And what about this cash equivalent rule?” Judge Sally adjusted the card back and forth in front of her glasses to get it to the exact distance from which she could read the rules again.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Cash…equivalent…one…twentieth…of…a…cent,” Judge Sally spoke slowly, word‐by‐word, like she was explaining to a kindergarten reading buddy at Green Hill Academy.

  “Of course, Your Honor, but—”

  “Is there a fault in the young man’s logic?”

  “Well,” the whale said as he stuck his finger into the collar of his shirt and worked it around to loosen it. “I disagree with his interpretation, but I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to say he is wrong.”

  “I would,” Mr. Paczki said.

  “Y’all never had any intention of payin’ up,” Celia said.

  “On the contrary,” the whale said.

  “Ha! Prove it!” Celia demanded.

  “Objection, Your Honor. Argumentative,” the whale said, wagging a finger at Celia. I bet he thought he was going to score brownie points by getting all fancy with lawyer talk, but Judge Sally looked pretty miffed about someone trespassing into her territory.

  The woman with the headset got a small and quiet aah out of the audience. Then the whole studio went silent.

  Judge Sally was thinking it over. I had time to realize how hot the lights were making me, and that sure wasn’t doing anything to calm my stomach down. It felt like when you put a straw deep down into a thick milkshake and start to blow bubbles that gurgle to the surface, plopping instead of popping. That’s what was going on in my gut.

  “Overruled,” the judge said, giving a nod toward our podium and Celia. “I’m with her. Prove it. Prove that you intended to pay the six thousand doughnuts if you lost.”

  Mr. Paczki slapped his hand down on the podium like this was some big moment he had been waiting for.

  “I think it’s high time we do what we come here to do,” he said to the great white whale. “Now?”

  “Yes, now,” agreed the whale.

  “Okay!” Mr. Paczki shouted, flapping his arms like he was stranded on an island and signaling a rescue plane. But he wasn’t signaling up to the sky—he was signaling toward the gaps between the fake courtroom walls.

  Something was in the air. I could smell it—sugar, fried dough, chocolate, and jams.

  From every opening, people in white pants, white shirts, and white paper hats with the Sweetly Crisp logo on them came into the courtroom pushing gleaming silver carts. And every single cart was overflowing with mounds and mounds of doughnuts.

  Dozens of doughnuts.

  Hundreds of doughnuts.

  Thousands of doughnuts.

  My doughnuts.

  The Whole Truth

  Behold, Your Honor—SIX THOUSAND DOUGHNUTS!” The great white whale raised his arms like the guy who plays Moses in that Ten Commandments movie when he’s going to part the sea.

  Sweetly Crisp workers and their carts full of doughnuts stretched completely across the front of the audience, up and down the middle and side aisles, and all across the back.

  Every cart contained a mixture of doughnuts—powdered, glazed, twisted, and filled.

  So, that’s what six thousand doughnuts look like.

  Two of the workers seemed awfully familiar. Brian and James had found Sweetly Crisp uniforms. They were pushing a cart with a lighter load—lighter because my twin brothers were woofing down doughnuts as they went.

  “Oh, my lord,” Celia said.

  “Proof enough?” Mr. Paczki asked.

  “That…is a lot of calories,” Judge Sally said.

  “You see, Your Honor, we have every intention of fulfilling our obligations,” the great white whale said, “whether those obligations are for one doughnut or six thousand.”

  “That there’s the smoking gun,” Celia said. “If they didn’t already know they was wrong, then why did they bring all them doughnuts?”

  “We ain’t wrong,” Mr. Paczki said.

  “If we are wrong,” the great white whale said, putting a hand to his chest and swaggering between the doughnut carts from their podium to ours, “then all these doughnuts will go to the young man.”

  He put his arm around my shoulder like we were best buddies or something. There was only one person I wanted to be buddies with, and she was still standing over by her podium.

  “But if we are not wrong,” the whale continued, “then all these delicious treats…” he dropped his hand from my shoulder and wiped it on his white pants like I had cooties, “will be distributed to the members of your audience here today. Compliments of the Sweetly Crisp Doughnut Corporation.” He winked at the camera lens. I swear that even his eyes sparkled.

  “It’ll be doughnuts for everybody!” the great white whale exclaimed, grabbing old‐fashioneds from the nearest cart and tossing them into the crowd.

  “Doughnuts for you…and you…and you!” he said, pointing out people in the audience as he went. They burst into cheers and whoops. And this time, the woman wearing the headset didn’t have to tell them to do it.

  “Then it all comes down to this game piece,” the judge said.

  I was relieved to see that she had put it back into the zip‐seal bag, but the thick plopping bubbles in my gut were working themselves up into a boil. Judge Sally held the game piece up at an angle so that one of the cameras could see it clearly.

  “You purchased the item—a cup of coffee—to which this winning ticket was attached, correct?”

  “My dad did.”

  “The ticket isn’t yours?” Judge Sally raised an eyebrow.

  “His father gifted him the prize piece, Your Honor,” Celia said quickly.

  “I see,” the judge said. “And then, on the basis of the printed rules, you attempted to purchase the doughnuts with your own money?”

  “Well, the three dollars came from my sister,” I said.

  “And did she gift that money to you?”

  “Not exactly.” I didn’t want to tell the judge about the agreement involving Mrs. Fuzzy Hair and the sleepover.

  I glanced back at Peg. She was sitting beside Mom like a stone.

  Judge Sally put down the zip‐seal bag and picked up her gavel. She studied me over the top of her gl
asses with the shiny gold chains.

  “We had a deal…” I tried to explain.

  “What sort of deal?”

  Be careful, Peg had told me. It’s not a good thing when someone makes you feel dumb.

  Boiling, flopping, gut bubbles.

  “I’d rather not say. If that’s okay.”

  “It most certainly is not okay.”

  “She asks somethin’, you gotta answer her,” Celia whispered to me.

  “I can’t.”

  Peg’s not dumb. She’s a great kid. I know it, and everybody that really knows her knows it. But she thinks she is. And if I tell about the sleepover on this show…

  “Counselor Cousin,” Judge Sally said to Celia. “Please explain to your client what contempt of court means.”

  I looked at Celia.

  “Means you could go to the hoosegow if you don’t answer.”

  “It means that you would be in very big trouble,” the judge said.

  Wasn’t I already?

  I didn’t want to be in very big trouble, and I didn’t want to go to the hoosegow, whatever that was. But what choice did I have?

  I turned to look at Peg, expecting she would be going nuts.

  She wasn’t.

  I don’t know how else to describe it, but it was like the rest of the audience—including Mom, Dad, and Faye—just kind of blurred. There was only Peg and me. And that’s when Peg did it.

  She heard the judge just like the rest of us, and she knew what I would have to say. She also knew I wouldn’t say it—not without her permission.

  And so, without Mrs. Fuzzy Hair by her side to give her courage, Peg let me know she wanted me to tell. She was ready for me to tell.

  Looking strong, Peg gave me one slow nod of her head.

  I turned back to the judge and opened my mouth.

  “The deal was that Peg would give me her three dollars and that I wouldn’t tell.”

  “Tell what?” Judge Sally said.

  My hands started shaking a little bit, so it was my turn to grab onto the podium.

  “Can I come up there and whisper it to you?”

  “You’ll tell me from where you are.”

  My cheeks were so hot that my eyes were making water to cool them off. Tears were coming down in front of the judge, my parents, the audience in the courtroom, everyone watching at home, and worst of all…Marlene.

  I had giggled at Marlene. That was a crappy thing to do—a big mistake. I didn’t want to make another. So, I made a decision. And making this decision calmed me down.

  I took one of Mom’s deep cleansing breaths.

  “I just can’t. That’s all there is to it.”

  Judge Sally spun her gavel like a top on the bench in front of her.

  “Do you really want to go to the hoosegow?”

  “No, I don’t. But if that’s what it’s going to be, then that’s what it’s going to be.”

  “Very well. bailiff—”

  “Wait a minute!” Peg stood up and shouted from her seat.

  The cameras whipped toward her. The big glass eyes twirled curiously.

  “It was Mrs. Fuzzy Hair! Abe promised not to tell that I still sleep with a dolly. Don’t send my brother to the whose‐cow.”

  Nobody said anything for a minute. Even the headset woman didn’t take the opportunity to make the crowd give out a big ooh.

  It was quiet. And quiet was bad. It would have been better if people were making a lot of noise. It was so quiet that the only thing I could hear was the little whirring noise in that glass eye of the camera. I think that was the real judge in the courtroom.

  “Oh, have mercy,” Celia said finally.

  I wanted to look over and see what Marlene was doing. But I couldn’t. I was too ashamed.

  “Promising not to tell something embarrassing in exchange for payment,” Judge Sally said to me. “Do you know what that’s called?”

  “I think my sister Faye called it blackmail.”

  “She’s exactly right. That is what adults in a court of law call that behavior. But do you know what we call it when it happens between a young brother and sister?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Bad manners.”

  She picked up the papers in front of her and began to organize them like she was wrapping things up.

  “And do you know what else blackmail is?”

  My throat was clamped tight, so I just shook my head no.

  “It’s illegal. Which means that the three dollars weren’t yours then—and aren’t yours now. You could never have legally made the purchase. The doughnuts could never have been yours.”

  “Ha!” Mr. Paczki exclaimed, slapping the podium again.

  “Dad,” Marlene said. “Don’t. Can’t you see he feels bad enough?”

  “Tell them they can start distributing the doughnuts to the studio audience,” the judge said to the bailiff. “But save a Boston cream for me.”

  The crowd went wild.

  “In light of the fact that the funds to purchase the six thousand doughnuts belong to your sister and not to you,” the judge said as the Sweetly Crisp workers passed out the doughnuts and the bailiff placed a Boston cream on her desk, “I therefore make judgment—”

  “Can I say something else?” Peg asked from her seat in the middle of all the cheering people.

  I don’t think anybody heard her except for me and the judge. They all had doughnut fever.

  “I said, can I say something else!”

  “Order!” Judge Sally banged the gavel. “The little girl wishes to address the court.”

  “C’mon up front, now,” the bailiff said, moving to clear a path through all the people for Peg to get up to where we were.

  The microphone on the podium couldn’t bend down low enough, so the headset woman brought over a different one that she held in front of Peg.

  “What is it you wanted to tell me?” the judge asked.

  “Would it be any different if I was going to give him the money anyway?”

  “You’d give him the three dollars even if he doesn’t have your secret anymore?”

  “Sure.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  Peg’s little eyes sparkled up at me.

  “‘Cause he’s my big brother.”

  I guess you could say that it was a television moment. Even before the headset woman could do anything, the whole audience went aw.

  But that didn’t stop them from continuing to pass the doughnuts down the aisles that were being handed to them from the carts.

  Judge Sally’s gavel slammed down again. I was thinking she was probably pretty great at whack‐a‐mole.

  “Freeze!” the judge said. “The three dollars belongs to the young man. The prize piece states that one doughnut is the equivalent of one‐twentieth of a cent; ergo, the plaintiff is entitled to purchase six thousand doughnuts for the sum of…three bucks. Stop passing out the doughnuts and take them back.”

  It is absolutely amazing how quickly aw can change to anger when a hungry audience is told that they have to give up their doughnuts.

  And Nothing but the Truth

  The Sweetly Crisp workers struggled to wrestle the doughnuts away from the audience. Brian and James had the only safe cart. They never passed theirs out. They stayed in the back of the courtroom, cramming doughnuts in their mouths.

  “Well, isn’t this just great!” Mr. Paczki was steaming from behind his podium at Celia and me. But the white whale pulled him back.

  “Your Honor,” the whale said to the judge. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “I assume you mean the countersuit?” Judge Sally sighed.

  “Yes.”

  The countersuit. Why had Marlene brought that up in the first place?

  When I looked over, she was just staring at the floor.

  “Oh no,” she said.

  Mr. Paczki tried to take her hand, but she yanked it away.

  “Marlene,” he said.


  She pulled back and dropped onto one of the seats behind their podium, scooching in beside her mom.

  “In the matter of damage to the Sweetly Crisp shop…” Judge Sally was trying to be heard over the audience.

  You’d think that that hungry mob hadn’t eaten in forever. They were still battling with the cart people over the doughnuts.

  The judge brought her gavel down hard again. This time, there was no loud crack—just a smoosh. I guess Judge Sally forgot about the Boston cream she’d asked the bailiff to put on her desk because she flattened it good. She swiped a little of the filling with her finger and stuck it in her mouth.

  “There’s no question that damage was done by the food fight,” the judge said, still licking the cream. “What’s yet to be determined in order for the countersuit to be resolved is who is at fault.”

  “Marlene, get over here,” Mr. Paczki said. Marlene simply squeezed in tighter to her mom.

  The judge held her gavel at the big end and pointed the handle at Celia. Chocolate and pudding were mushed all over it and dripping off.

  “It was you who splattered the jelly stick on the young lady’s shirt to start the fight,” the judge said like she was accusing Professor Plum of doing it in the library with a candlestick.

  “No sirree,” Celia said. “I didn’t start it. Check the police report, Your Honor. That’ll tell you it was her.” Celia pointed the finger at Marlene.

  “Get over here now!” Mr. Paczki shouted. He angrily pointed to the spot beside him where he wanted Marlene standing, but she wasn’t moving. She turned her face deep into her mom’s side like she was going to cry and wanted to hide it.

  When Peg had been crying, I knew that being her big brother meant that I was supposed to do something about it. So I promised her doughnuts. I also knew that when your buddy’s going to cry, you’re supposed to do something about that, too. But what if doing something about Marlene crying meant no doughnuts?

  Dude, you gotta make your own decisions in this world, Dewey had said.

  And so I did.

  “It wasn’t either of them, Your Honor,” I said.