Chapter 7

THE NEXT MORNING, we wake up to find ourselves on the front page of the newspaper.

Dad brings it into the house. “Hey, look at these kids down on the river. They claim to have started their own country. Isn’t that a hoot? Hey, look, Billy. These kids look just like you and your friends. Look, Ella, these kids look just like …” Dad pauses. “Oh my Lord!” Then he turns and stares at me as if I am an alien that has come from another planet and has been living undercover with our family all these years. “That’s you, Billy, isn’t it?” He holds up the paper.

I stare at it. The picture isn’t one of the ones we had posed for. Instead, it shows Sami gazing into the camera with a concentrated, kind of sad look on his face. Charlie is staring in one direction, and I’m staring in the other. We look like we are just waiting for something to happen. But Sami’s expression steals the show. He looks deeply thoughtful. Probably he was just trying to decide what to eat next, but it looks a lot more important than that. The headline at the top of the article says, RIVER KINGDOM OFFERS HOPE FOR BETTER WORLD.

“Billy, that’s you!” says Dad.

“I never knew that lady would put our picture in the paper.”

Dad sits down and reads the article. Mom stands behind him and reads it, too. She steals little glances at me while she does. I think she’s also trying to decide if I’m an alien. Then Dad holds up the paper and reads some of it out loud.

“Everyone is welcome,” say the boys. “We want our country to be a model of tolerance and freedom for the whole world.”

Mom is beaming now. “Billy, that is wonderful. I am so proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Merilee comes into the kitchen. Any time Mom or Dad say they are proud of me, Merilee can hear it from far away and will come to investigate. Usually she’ll find reasons not to be proud of me, but this time she takes a look at the paper, takes a look at me, and then doesn’t say anything.

“Look, Merki,” says Dad. “Your little brother made the news.”

Merilee takes the paper from Dad and reads the article lightning fast, then passes it back. “Hmmm.”

That can mean anything from “that’s crazy!” to “that’s amazing!” Probably it’s somewhere in between.

By late morning we’re back in our country. It’s sunny but cool for the end of June. Since our clothes are all wet from crossing the river, we are cold. We decide it will be a good idea to try to find a rubber dinghy, or maybe make a raft for crossing back and forth between Canada and the kingdom, or bring spare clothes. We have to run around the island to warm up. We notice a small group of people on one bank of the river watching us.

CHARLIE: “What do you think they want?”

ME: “Nothing. They’re just curious.”

SAMI: “We’re kind of famous now.”

ME: “I wonder if anyone will try to come over.”

SAMI: “What would we do?”

ME: “I don’t know.”

CHARLIE: “Charge them a toll.”

ME: “No way. We can’t keep charging people money, Charlie. We’ll get a reputation for being greedy. We don’t want people to think that our kingdom is a greedy place.”

SAMI: “Definitely not.”

CHARLIE: “I don’t see what’s wrong with charging money. Seems to me like a good way to get rich.”

ME: “But our country is not about getting rich, Charlie, it’s more than that.”

SAMI: “It’s way more than that.”

CHARLIE: “I don’t see anything wrong with getting rich while we’re at it. We could be millionaires before we’re twenty, and then we wouldn’t even have to work. We could just collect money from tolls and taxes.”

SAMI: “What’s that lady doing?”

ME: “What lady?”

I turn and watch as an old, white-haired lady steps into the river carrying something in her hands. She seems to know the shallowest place to cross, and she doesn’t stop when the river comes up past her belly. She walks slowly across the river and comes to the edge of our land, where she stops and waits for us to meet her, which we do. She has a strange expression on her face. It’s a smile and a serious look at the same time. She looks kind of sad, yet very determined. She holds up the thing in her hands and we see that it is a plant with tiny red flowers on it. She holds it out.

LADY: “A gift for the Kingdom of No Worries. Please accept my gift.”

I step into the water and take the plant. The lady looks very pleased when I do.

LADY: “Dig a little hole for it, and don’t overwater it. God bless you, boys.”

Then she turns around and walks back across the river. She never actually steps onto our land, so Charlie can’t ask her for a toll.

ME: “Thank you!”

I call it out after her, but she is concentrating on where to place her feet and never turns around. I carry the plant back to Sami and Charlie.

SAMI: “What are we going to do with that?”

CHARLIE: “Sell it.”

ME: “No, we’re going to plant it. This is the beginning of our garden.”

SAMI: “Awesome.”

I pick up the shovel and dig a hole. We pull the plant out of its pot and place it in the ground. Then we step back and stare at it.

SAMI: “It’s growing here now.”

Charlie and I nod our heads.

CHARLIE: “Yeah, it’s awesome.”

During the afternoon, three more people cross the river with plants. By suppertime we have dug seven holes and planted seven plants in the ground. Some of the people come out of the water and step into the kingdom but we never charge anyone a toll. Just before dark, when the sun is low on the horizon, and the light on the island makes a golden glow, which is when the kingdom looks its best, the lady in the canoe returns and takes more pictures. This time she tells us her name: Elizabeth. And this time she takes pictures of the plants and flowers.

The next day there is an explosion of people crossing the river with plants in their arms, and we spend the whole day digging holes in the ground and giving the plants a new home. It is a warm day, and people are crossing the river in shorts, t-shirts, and bathing suits. There are people on the bank with cameras and cellphones, too. There always seem to be at least one or two people, and sometimes a small group of people, and sometimes a small crowd. But in the evening, when Elizabeth comes down in her canoe, and is all by herself this time, there is another boat—a motorized rubber dinghy—and there are two police officers in it.