The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [4]
"Oh, Dan," Mom said. "Don't sound so mean. You're going to give your own son a complex."
"I'm just trying to do what's best for him. My dad never let me just lay around."
"I'd be happy to have a job," I broke in, "but does it have to be at the scrap yard?"
"I don't care where it is, but you'll have to find someone who'll hire a fourteen-year-old. Slim's the only one I know."
The orchard popped into my head, but I didn't want to say anything about it. My mind raced through other potential employers anywhere near my house. "What about that snow-cone stand by the school?"
"That guy's got all his kids working there. Nah, this weekend we'll go talk to Slim and get things lined up."
I stayed quiet the rest of dinner, stewing about the scrap yard. If I put up a big fight and refused to go, my dad would make life at home miserable. And if I went along with him, Slim would be more than happy to make my time away from home miserable. Either way, I was bound to be miserable. I had to find something else, almost anything else.
Chapter 2
Saved from the Scrap Yard
In only a matter of hours, my life had accelerated uncontrollably. My only worries had been homework and girls, but all that seemed in the distant past. My future depended on a choice between two terrible jobs I didn't need. I realized I didn't want to feel grown-up anymore.
I hadn't decided anything until lunch at school the next day. I watched Slim's son Skeeter cut in the cafeteria line and then punch the kid behind him who protested. Skeeter was a grade ahead of me but a couple of years older. He was built like his dad and maybe even meaner. The proudest moment of his life was when he made a substitute teacher run out of his class crying. While the sub was gone, Skeeter lit the garbage can on fire and then peed it out, bragging he was "saving the class."
I stared at Skeeter and realized he'd be at the scrap yard all summer too. Maybe he'd even be my boss. That afternoon I knocked on Mrs. Nelson's door right after getting off the bus.
"Ah, Jackson. I thought you'd be back," she said when she answered the door. "Why don't you come in again?"
I shuffled over to the same chair I'd sat in the day before. Mrs. Nelson sat across from me again looking more composed. The tears were gone and all her hair was neatly in place.
"I've been thinking about the orchard," I began, "and I think I'd like to do it. There's just one little thing."
"Oh? What's that?"
"Could we maybe agree on a way to split the money from the apples? Say, you get a certain percentage and I get a certain percentage?"
"You're still worried about the money, are you? Remember, that's not what's important to me. I could just go hire anyone off the street if I wanted to make money. After you left yesterday, I realized I was really looking for the orchard's true heir." She said that last sentence as if she were reading from a book of fairy tales.
I wasn't sure what to say about the "true heir" stuff. All I wanted was to get some number or percentage out of her mouth. "I promise to work super hard. But maybe if I had a goal to shoot for, it would help keep me going."
"I told you I'd take care of you. You'll get rewarded according to how you work."
"Yes, but if there was just something specific, I think it would be better. You know, if I do this and this, then you do that."
"Ah, don't you trust me? Think I'm not really serious?"
"No, it's not that—it's just..."
"Fine. Let's be specific," she said, cutting me off. "You get that orchard running and pay me a certain amount, and then you can have the rest of the money and more importantly the orchard."
"Okay," I said cautiously, "how much?"
"Let's see," she said with a look of disgust on her face, as if the very thought of money was repulsive. "From what I remember my husband making, I'd say $8,000 would be about right."
"Eight thousand dollars? That's impossible!" I gasped almost involuntarily. I hadn't imagined making even a tenth of