PET PARADE
Justin had expected that with Mom working only six days a week at Mr. Hashimoto’s nursery instead of the seven she had worked at the dairy, they would see more of her. But it hadn’t turned out that way, because weekends were the busiest time at the nursery. She worked all day on Saturdays and Sundays, then had Mondays off, when they were in school. Justin didn’t mind, because he was old enough that he didn’t need his mother around every minute. And one really good thing about her new schedule was that she didn’t have to leave for work until 8:30. That meant that he and Kate no longer had to fix breakfast and get Chip ready for school.
Now that Mrs. Martin and Luther’s grandfather worked at the nursery, Chip, Luther, and Lily had started going over there after school as soon as they’d finished giving the goats their treats. That was another big plus, because while the younger children played at the nursery, Justin and Kate had quiet time to do homework.
Schoolwork had been a struggle for Justin ever since he started ninth grade. By working extra hard before Christmas, he’d brought his grades up enough to meet the academic requirements for the varsity baseball team. But just barely. He knew that once the after-school practices started, he wouldn’t be able to play ball every day, mind Chip morning and afternoon, and get his assignments turned in on time. Mom’s new job had started just in time to take the babysitting chore off his hands.
Today, though, Chip, Luther, and Lily were lingering at the goat pen longer than usual. Justin could tell when he walked by that something was going on, because the three of them were hanging on the corral fence chattering like monkeys.
Justin headed for the house to get started on his homework, then changed his mind and started across the road. He wanted to talk to Mom again about the bike. If he waited till supper, Kate and Chip would rattle on nonstop and he wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgewise. There had only been one car in the nursery parking lot. Even in Florida not many people put out spring plants in February. Maybe he could catch Mom between customers and ask her to loan him money for a bike until he found a buyer for Little Billy. After-school practice started next week, and he had to have a bike by then.
The cashier’s counter at the nursery was under an open-air shed filled with potted plants and early-blooming flowers. Just as Justin approached, Lily, Chip, and Luther dashed past him like a trio of midgets and lined up at the counter.
“Can we take the triplets to the Pet Parade?” Chip asked.
“All three?” Mom asked. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“One?” Lily asked.
“Maybe one,” Mom agreed.
“Little Billy!” Luther shouted.
“What about Old Billy?” Mom asked.
“Grandpa says no,” Luther explained. “Old Billy’s too ornery. Only grown-ups can make him pull the cart, and grown-ups aren’t allowed in the Pet Parade.”
“Oh.” Mom looked from one kid to the other. “Is that what you all had in mind? Little Billy pulling a cart in the parade?”
“Yes ma’am,” Chip answered. “Come on!” he shouted to the others.
The three of them darted off together in the direction of Mr. Wilson, who was on the other side of the nursery watering plants. Lily stopped and backtracked when she saw her father heading for the cashier’s counter.
“Hi, sweetheart.” Mr. Hashimoto gave her hug. “How’s my girl?”
“Okay, Daddy, and guess what? Next Saturday’s the Pet Parade and I—”
“No pets!” he said sharply. “You know how I feel about dogs.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “I know. And cats poop in the potting soil, and you can’t stand to see rabbits in little cages. But the Martins have goats and, well, come, I want to show you—”
“No goats!” shouted Mr. Hashimoto. “Lily, if you have brought a goat into this nursery—”
“No, Daddy! I just want to ask you something!”
Justin and his mother watched as Lily led Mr. Hashimoto toward the front of the nursery. There by the main entrance was a small, brightly painted cart filled with flowers. Chip and Luther were already there with Mr. Wilson.
“Looks like they have in mind putting Little Billy in the Pet Parade pulling that small cart,” Mom said. “Of course, Little Billy does belong to you, Justin. Do you mind?”
“Not really,” Justin said. “Only I was thinking—”
Just then Mom spotted a customer gesturing to her for help. “I’ll be right back, Justin,” she said. First the man asked for prices on some potted plants, and then he started asking a million gardening questions. Mom had only worked at the nursery for a short time, but she knew a lot about plants. She had planted a garden at their house for as long as Justin could remember. He hung around awhile, but finally gave up and went home.
Needless to say, the only topic of conversation at dinner that night was the Pet Parade. Mr. Wilson was going to make a harness for Little Billy and—Justin should have guessed—Mom assigned him to go to town on Saturday and get them entered in the parade. Justin sighed, wondering when he was ever going to be able to live his own life.
“I couldn’t care less about that stupid Pet Parade,” Justin grumbled to Mom later, after Chip had gone to take his bath. “I really need to sell that goat so I can get my bike.”
“Well, a lot of people come out for that parade, and all of them are animal lovers,” Mom reminded him. “Maybe somebody will see Little Billy and want to buy him.”
Justin shrugged, figuring she was just saying that to make him feel better. After the parade, he planned to scope out the prices at Mr. Richey’s bike shop.
Getting Little Billy to town was a lot easier than Justin had expected. Kate and Ruby had deliveries to make, so they walked ahead with Old Billy hitched to the big white cart Mr. Wilson had built. It was filled with boxes of chocolates wrapped in white with gold bows, and Ruby’s trademark, a dime-store ruby, glued in the middle of each bow. Little Billy followed eagerly, either because he trusted Old Billy, who was his father, or because he hoped to get a taste of the candy.
Once in the parade, Little Billy was a sensation. The miniature cart he pulled, which was painted all over with flowers, rolled smoothly, and the bells Mr. Wilson had sewn onto his harness jingled gaily. Luther walked on one side, Chip on the other. Lily marched along in front of Little Billy, slipping him corn chips to keep him following close behind her.
Everybody oohed and aahed and even cheered when they went by. If it hadn’t been for the little girl with six kittens in a doll carriage, each one in a doll dress of a different color, Little Billy surely would have taken first prize instead of coming in second. Justin thought that was pretty good, considering how many pets there were in the parade, but it bugged Lily, who said dressing kittens in doll clothes was stupid. Naturally Chip and Luther agreed.
By the time the parade was over, Ruby and Kate had finished their candy deliveries. Justin asked them to keep an eye on Lily so he could take Chip and Luther to the bathroom.
While he was waiting outside the gas station bathroom, he heard somebody call his name.
“Hey, Justin!”
His friend Brad came screeching up on what was possibly the most beautiful racing bike Justin had ever seen. It was metallic gold, with every bell and whistle you could think of.
“Wow!” Justin exclaimed. “Where’d you get that?”
“From my dad.”
“But you already had a bike! The one your mom got you for Christmas.”
“You know how they are,” Brad said. “Whatever one gets for me, the other one tries to top.”
“But two bikes?” Justin still couldn’t believe it.
Brad pushed a handful of floppy brown hair out of his eyes. “Dad was really mad when Mom thought of a new bike before he did. And she started screaming when he brought this one over. But he said he had it on order from way before Christmas and couldn’t send it back.”
Brad looked miserable. Much too miserable, Justin thought, for a boy who had two bikes.
“Mom called him a liar, and he called her a—well, you know how they’ve been since the divorce. They fight about everything.”
“What’re you going to do with your old bike?” Justin asked.
“That’s what I came to tell you. Mom said I could sell one of them, and I could use the money to buy whatever I want.”
“How much you asking?” Justin held his breath, hoping it would be an amount he could afford. Brad’s other bike was barely two months old. It wasn’t as flashy as the new one, but it was way better than anything Justin had thought about buying. Bright blue, with a chrome passenger seat on the back and a bike computer that showed how fast you were going and how many miles you’d ridden.
“I don’t know,” Brad said. He thought for a moment, then added, “I need seventy-five dollars to buy the new binoculars I’ve been wanting.”
Justin knew that even used, the bike was worth way more than that. But seventy-five dollars was also way more than he had. “What’re you going to do with binoculars?” he asked.
“For bird-watching,” Brad said promptly. “So, do you want to buy my old bike?”
“I’ll think about it,” Justin said. “I’ll let you know.”
“Cheerleaders, too,” Brad said.
“What?”
“Cheerleaders. With binoculars, we can watch them practice from my bedroom window.”
Justin grinned. “So what’s this crap about bird-watching?”
“I watch birds, too. A pair of mockingbirds has a nest in the orange tree in our back yard.” Brad wiggled his eyebrows in a comic way only he could do. “Come over sometime. I’ll show you.”
Brad zoomed off on his glittering gold bike. Justin stood there, imagining himself sailing along beside Brad on the other bike, the blue one. But where would he get seventy-five dollars? Would anyone pay that much for his little goat?
When Chip and Luther finally came out of the bathroom, they all went back across the street to join up with the others. The lady at Brenda’s Boutique had said that she would let Ruby and Kate put samples of their one-of-a-kind clothes designs in her shop window, and that’s all they talked about all the way home: clothes and clothes and more clothes. Lily, who was still mad about losing first place to the dressed-up kittens, said she hated girly clothes and told them she wished she had just one pair of stretchy soccer shorts that she could wear from now till she was sixteen.
Justin could hardly wait till suppertime to tell his mother. “Guess what, Mom?” he said. “Brad’s got an almost-new bike he’ll sell me for seventy-five dollars. You think I could get that much for Little Billy?”
The moment he finished his question, Chip let out one of his piercing screams. “Nooooo, Justin! You can’t! They’ll turn him into goat-burgers!”
“Justin,” Mom groaned, “can we talk about this later?”
Chip kept howling as if they were talking about selling him instead of the goat. “Pleeeease don’t, Justin! Promise you won’t! They’ll kill him. They’ll eat him!”
“Not necessarily,” Kate said, squeezing Chip’s arm to get his attention. “There was that guy in town who wanted to buy a goat for show business.”
When they all turned to stare at her, Kate said to Justin, “Oh, I guess you didn’t see him. It was when you took Chip to the restroom.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Justin asked in disbelief.
“I forgot. But he gave me his card.”
“What kind of show business?” Mom asked.
Kate stood up and pulled a business card out of the pocket of her jeans. “Shopping malls and other stuff, I don’t remember. We told him Old Billy wasn’t for sale, but he still gave us his card.”
She handed the card to Justin. “It was Old Billy he wanted, to pull a cart. The parade was over by then, and I guess he didn’t see Little Billy. Anyway, Little Billy’s not really trained. He just followed Lily because she was feeding him corn chips.”
“Any goat can be taught to pull a cart, as long as it’s the right size,” Mom said, leaning over Justin’s shoulder to read the card. Corky Grimsted, Shopping Mall Entertainment Specialist. “Why don’t you give him a call?” she suggested.
“What kind of a guy was he?” Justin asked.
Kate shrugged. “I don’t know. Just a normal-looking person. He smiled a lot, and cracked a few jokes. I thought he was funny, but Ruby wouldn’t talk to him. She just walked away. She told me later she thought he was trying too hard.” Kate gave Justin an encouraging smile. “But maybe that’s because he wanted a goat really, really, bad. Go on, Justin. Call him.”