The heel of Moses’s boot came down on X-Ray’s glasses; then he and Felix headed back to their car, crossing paths with Jack Dunlevy coming the other way.
“Sorry, man,” X-Ray said. “I’m really sorry. The only reason I told him about the letter was because I was trying to explain how no one got hurt by the phony tickets.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes you talk too much,” said Armpit.
“I do,” X-Ray agreed. “I do talk too much.”
Armpit picked up X-Ray’s glasses. The frames were bent and a lens had popped out, but there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed.
“Well, you just do what you think is right,” X-Ray said. “Don’t worry about me. If I go to jail, it’s my own fault.”
Jack Dunlevy came toward them. “I’m not paying you to stand around and talk to your friends,” he said, but didn’t sound especially angry.
“I fixed the leak,” Armpit told him. “I was just waiting for it to dry so I could test it.”
His boss looked around at the relatively undisturbed lawn.
Armpit told him about the mountain laurel.
His boss smiled, then turned to X-Ray. “See, that’s why I’m giving him a raise and a promotion. He’s got more than a strong back. He’s got a brain, too.”
The meeting had been a success. Jack Dunlevy told Armpit he got the contract to landscape the performing arts center. He was going to have to hire a whole bunch of new people. And he wasn’t kidding about the raise and promotion. “You’ll have your own crew. We start this weekend.”
He turned back to X-Ray. “So what happened to you? Was it those guys?”
“I’m okay.”
“You wouldn’t like a job, would you? Six-fifty an hour?”
“Sounds good,” X-Ray said, much to Armpit’s surprise. “But I want to be up-front with you straight off. I’ve got a record.”
Jack Dunlevy considered a moment. “You at Green Lake too?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. That’s where I met Theodore.”
Armpit almost laughed. It sounded strange to hear X-Ray call him by his real name.
“In that case I’ll make it seven dollars an hour,” said Armpit’s boss. “You guys are the fastest diggers.”
27
Armpit’s economics teacher once told the class about a donkey standing exactly halfway between two identical haystacks. Since it had no reason to choose one haystack over the other, it just stayed in the middle until it died of hunger.
Everyone in the class argued that a donkey wouldn’t really do that, but that wasn’t the point. Actually, Armpit couldn’t remember what the point was. Like a lot of what he learned in economics, it didn’t make sense in the real world.
But the image of that donkey remained in his head all year. He couldn’t get rid of it. Its long ears drooped and its head hung low as it became thinner and thinner. He wanted to scream at it. “Just pick one and go eat!”
Now he was beginning to understand what it felt like to be that donkey.
He didn’t study for his economics test. He didn’t call Felix. He didn’t tell his parents about Kaira DeLeon inviting him to San Francisco. He didn’t tell his boss that he couldn’t work this weekend.
Armpit figured that Felix would probably sell the letter on eBay. He’d heard about a piece of gum chewed by Madonna going for six thousand dollars.
Just what Kaira wanted—her personal letter read by millions of people over the Internet. But if he didn’t sell Felix the letter, then X-Ray would go to jail. Maybe he would too. If he went to San Francisco he’d fail economics.
And so he remained, paralyzed by indecision, a donkey between two haystacks.
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