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Chapter 12
Timothy had deduced he could pretty much count on B’s without doing homework. Since B’s seemed acceptable enough to his mom these days, the choice not to do homework wasn’t a hard one.
This said, the deadline for the Bicentennial report was fast approaching. He’d been so preoccupied with the investigation that he hadn’t even started. He didn’t care so much about the prize, but the report would have to be read in front of the whole class, no faking that.
Timothy dumped the contents of his knapsack onto the dining room table with a dramatic flair. Whenever he did something academic, he always did it noisily and made sure his mom or Cathryn saw him doing it. This way they might think he actually did some homework once in a while.
“Working on your report?” Cathryn asked, wandering in to look over his shoulder.
“Yup, got a lot of research to do,” Timothy replied studiously.
“Well, lemme know if you need any help,” she said. “I always hated doing reports.”
“Okay, thanks.”
He hated to admit that what Cathryn said was actually kind of cool, not so much the offer of help, but that she hated doing reports. You’d never hear his mom admitting anything like that.
Timothy spread out the books he’d taken out of the school library. “Boston Tea Party: The Protest That Became a Nation” was the newest, with the most pictures. Seemed the logical place to start.
Scanning the opening chapter, he sketched out the “Five W’s” like Mrs. Brenner had taught them in school:
Who: the colonists
What: dumped tea in the harbor
When: Dec 16, 1773
Where: Boston
Why: something about taxes
That was a pretty good start. Time for a snack.
He went back into the kitchen to see if anything had materialized since the last time he checked. No luck. He settled for a couple of stale cookies shaped like little windmills that tasted vaguely like molasses. Why couldn’t his mom just buy Twinkies like all the other moms?
Returning to the table, Timothy procrastinated by skimming through the book and looking at the pictures. There were, of course, the same standard illustrations of the Sons of Liberty dressed up like Indians as they ransacked the old frigate. Mrs. Brenner had shown them these in her general overview of the Boston Tea Party during social studies.
But as he dug deeper into the book, he began turning up some interesting tidbits that Mrs. Brenner had failed to include in her lesson.
For example, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who led the tea party, were both actually tea smugglers, that sounded kind of cool and dangerous. Also, it wasn’t a quick operation like he’d imagined. It took something like three hours to get the job done because there was something, like, a million dollars worth of tea.
And they didn’t just throw the crates overboard, either. The men in Indian costumes used tomahawks to hack the chests open individually before dumping their contents into the harbor.
This last detail made Timothy stop to think for a moment.
He was pretty sure tea wasn’t toxic, his mom and Cathryn drank quite a lot of it in the evenings while they were watching television.
But wouldn’t dumping all that tea at once do something to the water? Did it just float away, or did it brew the whole harbor into a giant vat of tea? Did it turn the shoreline brown? Can fish survive in tea?
There were a lot of questions that had nothing to do with the Bicentennial or the American Revolution. But, given their current investigation of what he knew to be happening to Tannery Brook, could he possibly leave this point unaddressed?
# # #
On Saturday, Timothy was helping his mom clean the house while Cathryn was working at the hardware store.
When the phone rang he answered it hoping it would be Charles, but it was Greg Hathaway from his mom’s office.
“Hey big guy, is your mom home?” Greg asked.
“Yea, just a sec.”
Timothy made like he was going down to the basement to get the sheets out of the dryer, but he hung by the top of the basement steps so he could listen in.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” his mom said to Greg. “Yes, I know the case is being heard Monday afternoon, but I should have time Monday morning to...yes, I know there’s more paperwork than usual but...”
Timothy couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but it seemed like Greg must be being particularly pushy.
“Okay, give me a few minutes, I’ll come over...” his mom finally said, hanging up the phone with resignation.
“What was that about?” Timothy asked.
“It was just Greg, he needs me to come over and make some copies.”
“On the photocopier?”
“Yes, on the photocopier.”
The last time he’d been to his mom’s office and watched her use the copier was well before the dawning of the investigation and he barely knew what he was looking at. Now seemed an excellent opportunity to do some technological research. If he could see the thing in action, maybe he’d learn something important.
“Can I come?”
“No, it’s better if you just hold down the fort. I won’t be long.”
Timothy thought quickly.
“If I could copy just one or two pictures for my Boston Tea Party report, it’d make the whole thing look a lot more professional...it’d make a big difference, please?”
She had a fatigued look on her face and seemed about to dismiss the suggestion entirely, but she paused momentarily and appeared to consider it on a deeper level.
“Actually, yes,” she said. “Maybe it’s a good idea if you did come along.”
# # #
Cathryn had taken the Calico Chrysler shopping, but the office was right uptown, so it was only a four block walk.
The straps of Timothy’s knapsack cut into his shoulders as they walked, he’d crammed in every last book he could think of, figuring he’d sort it out once they got there.
His mom’s office was in the Elmendorf House, one of the older stone houses on Green Street, dating to the late 1600s. Going in was a bonus, even though the law office had been remodeled in recent years. It now had wood paneling and industrial carpeting. Once you were inside, except for the creaky floors and low ceiling, you’d never know you were in a building that was older than the nation, but it was still pretty cool.
Greg Hathaway smiled at his mom as she walked in. His face crinkled slightly when he realized Timothy was right behind her, but he recovered quickly.
“Oh, hey big guy,” he said, “coming to help Mom?”
“Yep, coming to help Mom,” Timothy readily agreed, a convenient explanation for his presence other than riding Mom’s coattails to use the office copier.
Greg led them to a desk in a back room where sat a manilla folder with some legal papers in it.
“Well, here they are,” he said, tapping the folder. “Just one of each and we should be all set.”
It was a thick folder, but really not that thick. Even Timothy had to wonder why this couldn’t wait until Monday morning, or why Greg couldn’t do this himself since he was already here.
“You can just wait at my desk until I’m finished,” his mom said to Timothy.
“I’d rather watch you do it, if you don’t mind.”
She shrugged, like, suit yourself.
The copier was in a little alcove underneath the stairs where there wasn’t much ventilation. It definitely smelled like chemicals. If only he had some kind of test kit so he could sample the air.
One by one, his mom laid the legal papers on the glass plate, shut the lid, waited while the light scanned the paper from underneath, then waited even longer while the printer geared up and slowly spit out the copy.
“What happens if you leave the lid open?” Timothy asked.
“It won’t work, the copy won’t come out.”
“Can we try it?”
“It’s bad for your eyes,” his mom said.
Timothy couldn’t tell if this was one of those mom rules, like no swimming for 45 minutes after you eat, or if this were a real and present danger. He had to remember to jot this down in his notes just the same.
“Oh damn,” his mom said, looking at one of the finished copies, then called out, “Greg, it’s happening again!”
Greg appeared quickly. She showed him the copy, which was half-faded and unreadable in places.
“Okay,” he said, “Let’s see if I can work the old Greg magic...”
He rolled up his shirt sleeves and popped open the front of the copy machine. Oh man, if only Timothy had the Instamatic with him now. Look at all those interconnecting parts.
Greg unlatched a few things, then slid this black tube out and started shaking it like he was making a martini.
“Is that the toner?” Timothy asked.
“Uh, yeah, something like that,” Greg said, surprised, “how’d you know that?”
“I’m sort of interested in copy machines at the moment.”
“Smart kid,” Greg said, after a pause, like he’d almost accidentally said “weird kid” but caught himself in time.
Greg slid the tube back into the machine, reversed the sequence of levers he’d clicked to extract it, then shut the machine. He ran it once himself and had a bit of a self-satisfied look on his face when the copy came out perfectly.
“Voila,” he said.
“Thanks, Greg,” his mom said, flatly, attempting to neutralize the heroic moment so she could just get on with her work.
“I’ll be in my office when you finish,” he said.
“Oh, and Greg? Timothy would like to copy one or two pictures for a school report, would that be okay?”
Timothy cringed. Why’d she have to tell him? He figured he’d just slip in there quietly, now he felt like he’d been caught red handed.
“Sure thing, big guy, copy all you like.”
Well, that wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
“Uh, thanks,” Timothy said.
When his mom got to the last few copies, she said to Timothy as she pressed the button, “So, you know how to work this thing, right?”
“Easy peasy,” Timothy said.
Taking all the copies she’d just made in both hands, she tapped them sideways on the table like a giant deck of cards to stack them into a neat pile.
“Okay, I just have to file a few things, then we’ll get out of here.”
And just like that, Timothy was left alone with the IPM copier.
He didn’t have much time. He would just have to make a few copies, like he said, and maybe somehow he would learn something along the way.
He popped open the illustrated Tea Party book to the obvious illustration, the one with the patriots in their Indian garb whooping it up all over the deck of the ship.
Placing the book face down on the glass plate, he couldn’t get it to lie flat. Even when he pressed down on the cover and heard the spine of the book making a little cracking sound, he still couldn’t get the cover to close all the way.
It was now or nothing. He pressed the button and squinted, trying not to look directly at the seductively bright light while it scanned the book, hoping he wouldn’t be blinded.
When the copy rolled out, it was kind of dark, and the image got wavy where the original was sewn into the middle of the book. Was there a way to adjust it? There were several dials, but Timothy couldn’t tell what they did.
He thought about Steven at school, the kid whose dad had his own IPM photocopier at home. Steven would probably know all about how to lighten up the image, but Timothy couldn’t begin to figure it out. Still, even though it was dark and wavy, it was pretty darn cool that he had a photocopy to include in his report. He might be the only kid in class to have thought of this. Except, probably, Steven.
What else should he make a copy of? There was another illustration he’d seen somewhere that he liked, an engraving of the moonlit night. Where had he seen that, was it in his social studies book?
As he pulled the textbook from his knapsack, a small piece of paper fluttered out and onto the floor. Timothy bent over to pick it up--it was the blank late slip he’d scored from the main office at school, the morning he’d been late because he was running errands for the prostitute.
Timothy looked at the slip, then looked at the copier.
Was there ever a purer moment when the universe aligned more perfectly than this?
He peeked out of the alcove to make sure neither his mom nor Greg were coming, then placed the official late slip on the glass plate. The lid closed perfectly. He pressed the button.
When the copy came out, it looked exactly like the pass itself. You could not tell the difference.
Timothy hit Copy again. And again. And again.
Gingerly placing the original along with the facsimiles back inside his social studies book, Timothy packed everything into his knapsack and buckled it all up.
This was definitely a time to quit while he was ahead.
Walking softly toward the back of the office, Timothy found his mom crouching in front of a metal filing cabinet, trying to file what she had copied, while Greg hulked over her, speaking in low tones, more-or-less trapping her in the corner.
Timothy didn’t like the way this looked.
“Mom,” he said, “you ready to go?”
“Oh, hey big guy,” Greg said, turning around when he realized Timothy had come in, “just helping your mom here.”
His mom used the opening to close the drawer, push past Greg, and get out of the corner.
“I need to get something upstairs, then we’re going,” she said to Timothy.
Greg watched her walk away. Suddenly left alone in the room with a ten-year-old boy, he tried to make polite small talk.
“So, Timothy, whaddah think of that copy machine?”
“She’s a beaut,” Timothy said.
The room got quiet again because Greg couldn’t quite think of how to respond to this.
Timothy broke the silence.
“So, you know my mom knows karate, right?”
“She does?” Greg said, genuinely surprised at this revelation.
“Oh yeah. She’s, like, basically a black belt...saw her take down a full-grown man twice her size once, very embarrassing situation...”
“I had no idea...”
Timothy’s mom walked back into the room briskly.
“Okay, we’re going.”
Greg looked at her like she was a new sort of animal. He said nothing as she and Timothy walked out of the office, and neither did they.
They were halfway home when Timothy started chuckling out loud.
“What are you laughing about?” his mom asked, actually wanting to be let in on the joke to help soothe her nerves.
“Oh, nothing,” Timothy said, still snickering, trying to picture his scrawny mom delivering a surprise elbow strike to the face.
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I was very tense for this one ...
“So, you know my mom knows karate, right?”
funnnnnny...