The Fight for Kidsboro

by Marshal Younger

  We found Leo at Whit’s End, talking to Eugene Meltsner. Eugene was trying to work on a computer program, and Leo was obviously interrupting him. Leo was holding his reporter’s notebook—a legal pad of paper exactly like the kind we’d found in my file at the Barnacle.

  “Yes, he conceives of all of the inventions himself,” Eugene said, agitated. “I simply assist him in the process of research and development.”

  “So, all he comes up with are the ideas?” Leo asked.

  “No, we work together. I believe we went over this once already.”

  “I just find it hard to believe that a 12-year-old kid could come up with some of this stuff on his own.”

  He was obviously trying to dig up dirt on Nelson.

  Eugene had clearly had enough. “I apologize if I cannot give you the answer that you want. The truth is all that I can offer you.” He looked at us as if we might be able to save him.

  “Hey, Leo,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “What do you want?” he asked sharply. I don’t think he’d ever forgiven me for not letting him into Kidsboro.

  “Did you write that article about me?”

  “Sorry. Can’t reveal that information.”

  “Why not?”

  “Barnacle policy.”

  “Who wrote the policy?”

  “Me,” he said with pride.

  “Then you can change it. I need to know who wrote that article.”

  “Never mind, Ryan,” Scott jumped in. “Come here.” He motioned for me to follow him, and we walked 10 feet away, out of earshot.

  “Leo wrote it,” he whispered.

  “How do you know?”

  “While you guys were talking, I checked out the notes on that legal pad he’s holding. Same handwriting as we saw on that paper at the Barnacle.” Scott’s detective agency really should have been more successful. The kid had a knack for this stuff.

  We walked back over to Leo, armed with this new information. “I need to know who you interviewed to get that story.”

  “I thought you knew it was Jake.”

  “Well, now I know it wasn’t.”

  “You mean you punched the guy in the face for nothing?”

  “Yes. Could you at least tell me if I’m right? It wasn’t Jake, was it?”

  “No can do. A good reporter never gives away his source.”

  “A good reporter? That’s what you call yourself?” Scott said. I gave Scott a sharp look. We were trying to convince him to help us; insulting him wouldn’t help matters.

  “How about this,” Scott said. “I was at Miller’s Ravine a month ago when Charlie Metzger got hurt. Tell us what we want to know, and I’ll give you an interview and tell you everything.”

  “That’s right. You were there, weren’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  A month before, Charlie Metzger and Scott had been playing around at Miller’s Ravine, and Charlie fell in and had to go to the hospital. But the rumor got around school that It wasn’t an accident, because just the day before Charlie’s fall, he had told on Rodney Rathbone, leader of the worst gang in Odyssey, the Bones of Rath. Rodney got into trouble with the school principal, so after he found out that Charlie had ratted on him, everyone expected Rodney to seek revenge. Of course, when Charlie had to go to the hospital, word got around that the Bones of Rath did it, even though Scott was there and told the doctors that It was an accident. But the kids at school didn’t believe Scott or Charlie, thinking that the two were just making up the story because they feared that the Bones of Rath would come after them again.

  Scott had told me the whole story of how Charlie had simply slipped and fell. Now he was using the incident to tempt Leo to give away his information about me.

  “You’ll tell me everything?” Leo said.

  “Everything,” Scott replied. Of course, Leo didn’t realize that Scott had already told everyone everything. This article would definitely be weak.

  Leo licked his lips, scanned the room to see if anyone was watching, and then let it all spill. “The guy I interviewed was a reporter for the Odyssey Times.”

  “The guy that’s been asking people about Kidsboro?” I asked.

  “That’s the one. We traded stories. He gave me the story about you, and I answered questions about Kidsboro. Now, give me the scoop, Scott.”

  “Later, I promise,” he called out as we rushed off.

  The Odyssey Times was amaze of gray cubicles, copy machines, and wastebaskets filled with bad ideas. I only knew one person at the Times—Dale Jacobs, the editor. I figured he was busy, but we would wait for him to have a quiet moment.

  He was in a glassed-in office along the back wall. I could see him inside. He was on the phone and the door was closed. I waved, and he lifted a finger to tell us that he would be with us in a minute. We waited outside on a bench. A secretary approached us. “Can I help you?”

  “I just need to ask Mr. Jacobs a question,” I said.

  “Does he know you?”

  “Yes. My name’s Ryan Cummings.”

  “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ten minutes later, Mr. Jacobs poked his head out the door of his office. “Hi, Ryan, Scott. Did you guys need me for something?”

  “Just to ask one question. Who’s doing the story on Kidsboro?”

  “What story?”

  “There was a reporter in Kidsboro a little while ago, asking questions. I figured you were doing a story on us.”

  “I’ve been thinking about doing a story on Kidsboro, but I haven’t assigned a reporter to it yet.”

  Scott piped up. “Could a reporter do a story on his own, without you knowing about it?”

  “If a reporter was doing the story for us, I would know about it.”

  Scott and I exchanged confused looks.

  “What makes you think this person was from the Odyssey Times?” Mr. Jacobs asked.

  I had never thought about that possibility. What if this person was not really a reporter? Maybe it was someone who was just trying to get information about me. But who would know all of that stuff about my past? There were only two people—my mom, who I knew wouldn’t reveal any of that stuff … and my dad.

  Could my dad be in Odyssey?

  “What did he look like?” I asked Scott.

  “The reporter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Um… he had black, spiky hair, kind of short. And he had a mustache.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. My dad had red hair and was rather tall.

  “No,” Mr. Jacobs said. “That doesn’t fit the description of anybody here.”

  It didn’t fit the description of anyone I knew either. Who could it be?

  6

  THE DANGEROUS

  REUNION

  AS MUCH AS I DESPISED the thought, I knew there was something I had to do before I returned to Kidsboro.

  I found Jake at Whit’s End again. He was sitting in a booth with Max. He saw me approach and sat up in his seat. Maybe he was expecting me to deck him again. I stopped in front of him.

  “What do you want?” he growled.

  “You didn’t leak my story.”

  “I know.”

  “I thought you did,” I said, hating every minute of this. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have hit you. I’m sorry.”

  “How considerate of you, Jim. You always were the polite one on our street. My mother always said, ‘Why can’t you be nice like Jim Bowers?’ I always told her that no one can be nice like Jim Bowers. Jim Bowers is not real. Jim is fictional. Hitting me in the face was the only real thing you’ve ever done. In a weird way, I was proud of you.”

  “I didn’t come here to be made fun of; I came here to ask for your forgiveness.”

  “Oh, I’ll more than forgive you. I’ll shake your hand in congratulations. I mean, I won’t forget what you did. I’ll definitely get you back for that. But I congratulate you because you deserve congratulations. You split open m
y chin. Let’s just say I was impressed.”

  I turned around and headed for the door. I wasn’t really expecting the forgiveness part, but the apology had to happen. As humiliating as that had been, at least now I could get on with my life.

  The moment I stepped onto Kidsboro property, I could hear an argument going on. Then I saw three people outside Nelson Industries, yelling at each other. Nelson was one of them.

  “I was here until six o’clock every night last week!” said one boy.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” Nelson replied.

  “We had a contract!” the other boy said.

  “There was no contract,” Nelson argued.

  “Well, there was an understanding!”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I just can’t afford you any more,” Nelson said.

  “You can’t afford two more employees?”

  “Not with so much of our profits going to taxes.”

  “You could keep us on if you really wanted to.”

  “No, I can’t. I’ve crunched the numbers every way I know how. I simply can’t afford four employees any more.”

  “Great.”

  “Listen,” Nelson said, pleading, “maybe I’ll be able to hire you back someday. You’ll be the first people I call.”

  “No, thanks. I’d like a job that I can count on.”

  The two boys left. I didn’t want to look Nelson in the face, because I knew he would blame this on me.

  “You had to fire them?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I knew this would be devastating for them. Working for Nelson Industries was one of the best jobs anyone could have. Nelson was always very fair in paying his employees.

  “I can’t pay the taxes,” Nelson said, glaring at me, then turning to his two remaining employees. “Okay, guys. We’ve got work to do.”

  “Are you kidding me?” One of them said. “We could barely keep up with all the orders with five of us. Now we have to do it with only three?”

  “Don’t worry about it. With everyone else in town having to pay taxes too, there’ve been cancellations.” He glanced at me one more time, and then disappeared into his clubhouse.

  This was bad. Nelson Industries was the most successful business in town. If it was in trouble, the whole town was in trouble.

  A crowd of people was gathered on the edge of town, and I ran over to see what was going on. Joey, the African-American preacher at Kidsboro Community Church, was on the ground in the middle of a two-layered circle of people. I could barely see him through their legs.

  “What’s going on?” I asked whoever might be listening.

  “Joey’s been blinded!” came the reply from an unknown source.

  “What?” I scrambled in between the bodies and made it to the center where James, the doctor, was trying to look at Joey’s eye, while Joey was covering it with his hand. There Was blood on the top of Joey’s shirt and on the back of his hand.

  “What happened?” I demanded.

  “He was hit in the eye by a rock,” said James, the expert at the scene.

  “It’s not my eye,” Joey said, without looking up. “It’s my forehead.”

  “Let me see, Joey,” I said, kneeling down.

  “I’ll move my hand if he promises not to touch me,” Joey said, pointing to James.

  “Step back, James,” I said.

  “I took a first aid course!” James shouted. “I know what I’m doing!”

  “Just step back.”

  James rolled his eyes and moved back six inches on his haunches. Joey lifted his hand. The crowd pressed in to get a closer look. There was a gash above his left eye. It had bled some but was stopped for now.

  “Does anybody have a tissue or something?”

  “I’ve got bandages!” James yelled before anyone else could even process the question. He opened his black doctor bag, and, for the first time in his medical career, he was able to use something from it for a real medical purpose. In two seconds he’d found a package of sterile gauze and flipped it to me.

  I carefully opened the package and gave the gauze to Joey. “Just press this against the wound. It may need stitches. We should get you to a doctor.” Looking up I said, “Somebody go to Whit’s End and call his mom.”

  I heard someone run off. “Come on, Joey.” I helped him up. He swayed a little bit when he got to his feet, as if he were dizzy, so I didn’t push him too fast.

  “Okay, how was he hit with a rock?” I asked the crowd.

  “Slingshot,” said Scott, who I now noticed was part of the crowd.

  I felt my face get hot. “Whose?”

  “Ben’s.”

  “It was an accident,” I heard Ben say. “It got away from me.”

  “This is not a designated slingshot area.”

  “It was shot from one,” he said. “It just didn’t land in one.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Pete, the lawyer said. He stepped to the front of the crowd. “This is an outrage. Joey, you need to sue this man!” he said, pointing to Ben.

  “We don’t need this, Pete,” I said.

  “Joey’s gonna need stitches. He’s entitled to damages.”

  “Stop it!”

  Pete turned to Joey. “You could sue this pea brain for all he’s worth.”

  “Hey!” shouted Ben. “Get outta here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Ben. And I would suggest you get your own lawyer.”

  Ben made a swim move past two bodies in front of him and came at Pete. Pete dropped his briefcase and lifted his arms to defend himself. Ben pushed him, sending Pete sprawling to the ground.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  “Come on, Pete,” Ben yelled. “You want to sue somebody? How much do you think you can get if I break both your arms?” The crowd egged both of them on.

  Pete didn’t get up. “Oh, real smart. Pushing me in front of 15 witnesses. I could take you for everything.”

  Ben moved to kick him, and I stepped in front. “Ben!” Scott and I grabbed him and pulled him back. He Wasn’t a very big guy, so It wasn’t terribly difficult to get him away from the scene.

  “That’s it!” I shouted. “Ben, go home and take your slingshot with you. Pete, no one’s suing anybody. You can go home too. Everybody, mind your own business. I’m taking Joey to Whit’s End now.”

  I turned to Joey, who didn’t seem to be taking any of this in. “You okay?” He nodded. “Ready to go?” He nodded again.

  I put my arm around him and led him away. As we walked away, I turned around briefly. The crowd had not dispersed. They just stared at the two of us. I couldn’t tell if they were concerned for Joey, or if they blamed me for the whole thing happening in the first place.

  We met Joey’s mother at Whit’s End. Mr. Whittaker looked at the wound and kept pressure on it until he was ready to go. Then Joey’s mom took him to the doctor.

  When I got back into town, there was still an uneasy buzz in the air. The walls of a strong city were beginning to crumble, and it felt like it was only the beginning.

  I picked up a copy of the Kidsboro Chronicle, which had just come out, and skimmed through the first few pages. There Was a lot about the changes the city council had made, as well as the effects of the changes. Jill had written the articles and usually she was very fair in her writing. But there was an edge to these, as if she disagreed with every decision that had been handed down. I knew this couldn’t be true, though, because she had been involved in those decisions herself.

  I turned the page and discovered that I wasn’t imagining things. The headline on the editorial page was “Mayor and City Council Give In to Special Interests,” by Jill Segler. What? Give in?

  In the article, she took responsibility for herself in saying that she was a member of the city council, and she’d made a mistake when she allowed the budget to pass. But she kept referring to it as “the mayor’s proposal” and “the mayor’s budget plan.” One line that particularly bothered me was, “The mayor’s budget plan ignored
the true needs of the city in order to please a few people.” She went on to criticize “the mayor’s decision to hire an assistant that he doesn’t need.”

  I couldn’t read on. I threw the paper down and stormed over to the newspaper office. I pushed open the door without knocking. Jill was sitting at her desk.

  “What are you doing?” I asked harshly.

  “You think you’re the first political leader to get criticized in the press?” she replied calmly.

  “But those things you wrote—”

  “Were all true.”

  “Mine was not the only vote in the city council.”

  “I messed up too, but it’s your name on the budget proposal.”

  “You’re on the city council. You’re supposed to back me up.”

  “I have to print the truth. There’s no loyalty in journalism.”

  “What kind of a motto is that?”

  “I have a responsibility to my readers to print the truth. We caved in to all those groups. Slingshots? Vegetables? Why are we paying for these things? And why do you need an assistant?”

  “You’re a supporter of the group that wanted me to create more government jobs for girls. You wanted me to hire an assistant!”

  “But why did you listen to me?”

  I was all ready with my next response, but her question caught me by surprise. All I could come up with was a quiet “What?”

  “You used to be strong. You used to stand up to people. You didn’t care about popularity or making everybody happy. You did what you thought was best. I don’t know what happened to you, but you’d better find your spine or this town is going down the tubes.”

  I was quieter, but no less angry. “You didn’t have to vote for this proposal. I wrote it, and I handed it to you. This town is just as much your responsibility as it is mine. If I’m going down, you’re going with me. I’m writing a rebuttal to your article, and I expect you to print it.”

  I didn’t wait for her to respond. I left, slamming the door behind me. Smoke was coming out my ears. She was irresponsible, thoughtless, reckless, wishy-washy …