I was sitting in the bathroom soaking my toe in a jar of warm water. I knew I couldn’t get rid of the tattoo, but I was trying to get the swelling to go down and keep it from being infected. Another day with Gary Pagoda, I thought, and I’ll be checked into a mental institution. I balanced my diary on my lap and wrote, “Maybe I am really as dumb as Mr. Ploof said I was. I can no longer deny the facts. I haven’t written the blockbuster novel I set out to write. I haven’t made a fortune and moved to Paris. And even Frankie Pagoda is smart enough to test out of Sunrise. Dad was right. Brains will only get in the way for me. I should build a career based on physical labor.”
Just then Betsy yelled my name. ‘Jack, Jack! Come here quick!”
I hopped up and knocked over the jar of water. I yanked on my sock and ran into the living room. Betsy pointed at the TV. It was a Mr. Woody commercial. He was holding a Pagoda Pet Pad and saying, “… my opponent claims he is anti-pet tax, and pro-pet. But you be the judge.” He set the pad on the ground, plugged it in, and a lab technician set a dog on it. Mr. Woody turned the pad on and the dog yapped out in pain, did a little dance, and jumped off. “A vote for Pagoda is a vote for pet abuse,” said Mr. Woody, as the dog licked its tender paws.
“Pagoda is finished,” Betsy announced. “The Pet Pad is his Achilles’ heel.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “People know that dogs need negative reinforcement. It’s no worse than a little tap on the butt with a newspaper.”
Betsy scoffed. “If you want to see negative reinforcement,” she said, “you should see Mr. Woody’s other commercial. He has a senior citizen testifying that he accidentally stepped on a Pet Pad and it zapped the pacemaker in his heart and he almost died.”
She was right. Mr. Pagoda was finished unless he had a secret weapon I didn’t know about. Maybe he had one more invention to help him fight off Mr. Woody’s ads.
That night Gary Pagoda tapped on my window.
I pulled back the curtain. I could barely see him because he had covered his face with black shoe polish like some kind of Marine commando. But the streetlight reflected off his gold tooth and I recognized him.
“Come out,” he said. “I need to talk with you.”
“Just get out here,” he ordered. “Dad has sent us on a mission.”
Suddenly I was getting a very bad feeling that Gary was Mr. Pagoda’s secret weapon. As I got dressed in dark clothes, I wondered what we might do. Maybe we could take undercover photographs of Mr. Woody selling dogs and cats to medical researchers where their hair would be shaved and their heads drilled and filled with wires. Maybe Mr. Woody had a mansion built with the tax money he had collected to help cats and dogs. Now, if we could get those kinds of pictures, Mr. Pagoda would have a fighting chance. Otherwise, he was doomed.
I slipped out the front door, trotted across our front yard, and climbed into the mobile home.
“What’s our mission?” I asked, as we pulled away. “Where are we going?”
He removed a cassette tape from his top pocket and pushed it into the tape deck. I expected to hear our top-secret orders from Mr. Pagoda. Instead, a woman’s voice came on. It was Gary’s therapist. “Gary,” she said very calmly. “Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Relax and breathe deeply.”
I glanced at him. His eyes were closed, and he was still driving.
“Gary,” she said. “Remember to center yourself.” I wasn’t sure what she meant but we were driving down the middle of the street.
When we began to drift toward the curb I reached forward and pressed the button to eject the tape.
“Hey,” he snapped and grabbed my hand. “That was helping me focus.”
“Focus on the road,” I suggested, and pointed to a telephone pole lined up in our headlights.
He steered to miss it, then snatched the tape and tossed it out the window.
“Now, why did you do that?” I asked.
“It wasn’t helping,” he said, like some weary zombie warrior. “Nothing is going to help anymore.”
I didn’t like the way he said that. “I was thinking that your dad needs an invention, like a secret weapon that can turn negative publicity into positive publicity,” I said.
Gary leered at me. “I’m his invention,” he said, confirming my fear. “I know how to wipe out Mr. Woody’s lead.”
“I mean, is there a button you can push and Mr. Woody’s lead evaporates? Something like that?” I said. “Something scientific and brilliant, like a pro-Pagoda brain wave?”
“I’m the button,” Gary said. “And I’ve just been pushed.”
I hoped he hadn’t been pushed over the edge. But he had.
Now he was driving the mobile home through the streets with the lights off. Then he cut the engine and we began to coast down Wilton Manors Boulevard.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Hunting,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“Signs,” he replied. “When we reach the corner I want you to jump out and grab all of the Mr. Woody signs and throw them in the back.”
“Isn’t this against the law?” I asked, knowing that it was. But I was trying to remind him.
“This is war,” he replied. “You saw those Mr. Woody commercials. A guy like me can’t just stand back and take this kind of abuse.”
“Don’t you think you are taking this too far?” I asked. “We could be arrested and they could send you away for a long time.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Gary said. “I’ve tried to go by the straight and narrow, but nobody plays fair.” He dodged a dog that had wandered into the street.
“That’s not the point,” I said. “We all know that politicians don’t play fair.”
“Then why play? I’d rather just do what I want. I’d rather be a political assassin, or a flaming kamikaze.”
“I think you’re losing it,” I said, taking a chance that he might get even more angry. “Maybe we should turn around and try to find your tape.”
‘Just do what I tell you to do,” he said like the old Gary, the one who loved to sharpen knives all day and throw bowling balls off highway overpasses. “Or else.”
I could just imagine the evening news with a policeman saying, “We are searching for a suspect who killed a young man late last night. The body has not yet been identified. But there is a tattoo on one of his big toes of a dog named Yo-Yo.” Eventually Savage Sam would identify me, and my parents would bury me in BeauBeau’s coffin.
Gary tossed me a flashlight. “Now get going,” he said.
“I’m supposed to be a good influence on you,” I replied, trying one last time to reason with him. “Not your partner in crime.”
“Hey,” he said menacingly. “If I wasn’t here with you, I might set this thing on fire and run it right through Mr. Woody’s picture window. So see, you have been a good influence. I’m only pulling up a few signs.”
I jumped out of the mobile home and ran into the field where a bunch of signs were nailed to wooden stakes pounded into the ground. I flicked on the flashlight and looked for Mr. Woody’s face. I felt as if I were burglarizing a home. When I spotted a sign I grabbed it and pulled it out of the sandy soil. This is all wrong, I thought. Dad might be cynical about politics, but what I was doing was criminal. Then I thought, if I don’t do it Gary will take one of the wooden stakes and drive it through my heart.
“Come on,” he yelled. “Hurry up. We got a million more of them to pull up by sunrise.”
I grabbed a bunch of signs and carried them to the big side door of the mobile home. Gary opened the door and I threw them in.
“We’ll burn these later,” he said.
We drove to the next corner and I pulled up a few more. When we got to a billboard Gary jumped out of the mobile home with a can of spray paint. He went around to the back of the billboard and climbed up the ladder. When he stood on the platform he wrote MR. WOODY SUCKS.
“Can’t you be more clever than that?” I yelled up at him.
“What’s wrong with what I wrote?” Gary barked back. “He sucks! That means don’t vote for him.”
“It does not,” I said. “It sounds so immature.” I knew the moment I said the word “immature” that I was dead meat. When he climbed down the ladder he ran and lunged at me. I fell over backward and he sat on my chest with both his huge hands around my neck.
“I didn’t mean it,” I choked out, thinking, Here comes my death.
“I won’t kill you ‘cause you been nice to me,” he said. “But if you say one word to the cops I’ll have Savage Sam tattoo Jack sucks’ on your forehead. So just keep your mouth shut.”
“Okay,” I croaked.
Then he jumped up and ran back to the mobile home.
I hopped up onto my feet and watched as he coasted down the road like a silent ballistic missile searching out a target.
That was the last anyone ever saw of him for forty-eight hours, until election day.