“Go away. Let an old man live out what’s left of his life in peace.”
“Oh, please. You’re not dying any sooner than we are. Well, maybe a little sooner. But all the more reason you should want to help. It’ll give new meaning to your old age.”
She’s not captain of the debate team for nothing.
Mr. Kalman’s eyes narrow and his nostrils flare. “You are an insolent sixteen-year-old who belongs in a house of corrections!”
“Seventeen. And there’s no such thing anymore, Mr. Kalman. It’s the twenty-first century. Why don’t you step outside and live in it?”
Anger sweat glows on his upper lip.
“If I were your grandfather, I’d take my cane to your backside.”
“If you were my grandfather, you’d be using that cane to march into court to defend the rights of children.”
This time, when his door closes, the deadbolt slides shut too.
6
The Mailbox Wars
Sadie goes online and searches retirement homes within fifty miles of our zip code. She clicks on “request brochure” and types in Mr. Kalman’s name and address.
By Friday he’s getting a flood of mail from places like the Golden Villa, Sunset Hall, and Garden of Palms. He’s carrying so many brochures from his mailbox to his front door that I’m afraid he’ll fall. Then Sadie will be responsible for a broken hip, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean to take things that far.
Meanwhile I try the opposite approach. Guilt. Since I’m not allowed back in school until Monday, I go over and tidy up his front walk. I figure when he sees me raking leaves and clipping wild branches in his yard, he’ll feel he has to do something for me. Like be my lawyer.
And after three hours of hard physical labor, which I make seem like four by exaggerating my grunts and sighs near his window—“Oh, man, that’s a heavy bag of leaves!” Or, “Phew! Sure is hot out here, even in all this shade!”—the door opens, and I think Mr. Kalman’s going to offer me a glass of cold water, maybe a snack.
Instead he leaves me a present on his front stoop.
A bag of trash.
And next to that he puts a box of old newspapers with a note on it: “Blue Bin.”
Now I’m his gardener and his garbage boy. Soon I become his television repairman, too.
“I’m not getting PBS,” he says through the window.
“It’s channel twenty-eight, but your TV has to be on three,” I tell him.
“It is on three. If you don’t believe me, come have a look.”
I go inside, past the piano that hasn’t been played in years, and notice a collection of framed photographs on top of the piano. There’s one of Mr. Kalman as a much younger man dressed in a suit and tie, with Mrs. Kalman in a fancy white dress. In other pictures, I see him standing with children and teenagers—not his own, I think, because they don’t look at all like him. Unless they’re adopted. There are Asian kids, black kids, Hispanic kids, white kids. All of them dressed up, too, like for graduation.
“Your kids, Mr. Kalman?”
“Friends. From long ago. Now, why isn’t my TV working?”
I look at his TV. The cable box is set to 3 and the TV is on 28.
“You’ve got them backwards,” I say, beginning to wonder if he’d be the best lawyer after all. “The TV stays on three.”
I set things straight for him and flip on the TV just to be sure. It’s a weekday morning, and Arthur is on.
“I used to love that show,” I say. “Reminds me of the good old days when I didn’t have homework!”
But I’m suspended and probably shouldn’t be watching Arthur, so I shut it off.
“When you want to turn off the TV,” I remind him, “do it at the set. This is just for channels.”
I hand him the remote and start to go.
“It won’t work,” he says.
“It will if you promise to leave the slider switch all the way to the right, on cable.”
“I don’t mean the TV. I mean all of this. The chores. The unsolicited help. It won’t get me to take your case.”
He pulls out his wallet.
“You’ve done a little over three hours of work around here. At the proposed California minimum wage of fifteen bucks an hour, that’s forty-five dollars.”
He holds out a fifty-dollar bill to me.
“I don’t want your money, Mr. Kalman.”
“I don’t want your charity, Sam. Take it. And stop coming over here.”
Mr. Kalman has blue eyes. Blue eyes can be warm and sparkly and remind you of the sea on a clear day. Or they can be a pair of icicles that make you want to look away.
I look away.
But first I pluck the fifty from his hand.
“Now go on home,” he says.
“That’s exactly where I’m headed. See . . . I’m walking out your squeaky door . . . picking up my dad’s tools . . . heading down your crumbly path . . .”
I swing open the gate.
“Through your wobbly gate now . . . stepping over the paint chips . . . past your crooked mailbox . . . across the street . . . and home!”
I slam our front door. Lucy and Mollie start to yip. I hope they keep it up all the way through his nap.
I spend the rest of the day plowing through to the end of Alistair’s Homework Hit List. By the time Mom comes in to say good night, my brain is exhausted, my butt is exhausted, my hand is exhausted.
“Did you write the apology to Mr. Hill?”
“I will, Mom,” I say. “I promise. But right now I need to sleep.”
I tap my cell phone. The Meditation Lady tells me to breathe.
Saturday morning, something—I don’t know what—wakes me early. I look out the window, across the street, to Mr. Kalman’s. Since I trimmed his branches back, you can see his fence, and it’s looking pretty shabby. I guess nobody’s touched it in five years.
I put on my shoes and walk the dogs around the block. All the other front yards
