On his desk he usually kept notebooks and school supplies, and under it there was usually a dog—Judge. No one would ever know Judge’s age or where he came from, except that he came from the dog pound and was once within twenty-four hours of being put to sleep, forever. Theo had rescued him in Animal Court two years earlier, gave him a new name, and took him home, where he slept peacefully through the night under Theo’s bed. During the day, Judge roamed quietly through the rooms and offices of Boone & Boone, occasionally napping on a small bed under Elsa’s desk near the front door, or under the large conference table if the lawyers weren’t using it, or hanging out in the small kitchen in hopes someone might drop some food. Judge weighed forty pounds, and though he ate human food, he never gained an ounce, according to the vet who saw him every four months. Judge preferred saltier foods—chips and crackers and sandwiches with meat—but he rejected almost nothing. When there was a birthday he expected cake. If someone, usually Theo, made a run to Guff’s Frozen Yogurt, Judge expected his own scoop, preferably vanilla. And Judge was perhaps the only member of the law firm able to choke down the dreadful oatmeal cookies brought in at least one dark day each month by Dorothy, Mr. Boone’s secretary.
About the only food Judge did not like was dog food. He preferred to eat what Theo ate, which was Cheerios for breakfast with whole milk, not skim, then whatever the rest of the family had for dinner, with a few random office snacks thrown in during the day while Theo was at school.
Because he was surrounded by lawyers, Judge knew that time was important. Appointments, conferences, court dates, meetings, schedules, and so on. Every member of the firm kept an eye on the clock, and the clock seemed to rule everything. Judge had his own clock, and he knew that on Wednesdays, as on most days, Theo arrived after school around 4:00 p.m. For this reason, Judge parked himself under Elsa’s desk promptly at 3:30 and went back to sleep. But it was dog sleep, the kind that’s not too deep, more of a light nap with the eyes half open and the ears listening and waiting for the sound of Theo bouncing up the front steps and securing his bike on the front porch.
When Judge heard these sounds, he stood and began to stretch as if he hadn’t moved for hours, then waited with great anticipation.
Theo came in the front door with his backpack and said, “Hello Elsa,” the same thing he said every day. Elsa jumped up and pinched his cheek and asked him how his day had been. Just okay. She straightened his button-down collar and said, “Your father said you were outstanding during the debate, is that so?”
“I guess,” he said. “We won.” Judge by now was at Theo’s feet, tail wagging, waiting to be rubbed on the head and spoken to.
“You look so cute in a real shirt,” she said. Theo was expecting this because he was usually greeted by some comment dealing with his wardrobe. Elsa was older than his parents, but she dressed like a twenty-year-old with strange tastes. She was also like a grandmother to Theo, a very important person in his life.
Theo spoke to his dog and rubbed his head and asked, “Is Mom in?”
“She is and she is expecting you,” Elsa gushed. The woman had incredible energy. “And she is very disappointed she missed the debate, Theo.”
“No big deal. She does have a job, you know?”
“Yes she does. There are some pecan brownies in the kitchen.”
“Who made them?”
“Vince’s girlfriend.”
Theo nodded his head in approval and walked down the hall to his mother’s office. The door was open and she waved him in. He took a seat and Judge plopped down beside him. Mrs. Boone was on the phone, listening. Her high-heel shoes were parked off to the side, which meant she had had a long day in court. Marcella Boone was forty-seven, a little older than the mothers of most of Theo’s friends, and she believed women lawyers were still expected to dress at a higher level when they went to court. Office attire was more casual, at least for Mrs. Boone, but court dates meant a sharper outfit and high heels.
Mr. Boone, upstairs, rarely went to court and rarely cared how he looked.
“Congratulations,” she said, hanging up. “Your father says you were magnificent. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there, Theo.”
They talked about the debate for a while, with Theo detailing the good points made by the team from Central and the counterpoints made by his side. After a few minutes, though, his mother detected something else. Theo was often amazed at how his mother could sense something was wrong. Often when he tried to play a joke on her, or fool her with some silly gag, he got nowhere. She could look at his face and know exactly what he was thinking.
“What’s the matter, Theo?” she asked.
“Well, you can forget about me and the cello,” he said, then told the story of the music class that no longer existed. “It doesn’t seem fair,” Theo said. “Mr. Sasstrunk was a great teacher. He was excited about the class, and I think he needed the extra money.”
“That’s awful, Theo.”
“We talked to Mrs. Gladwell, and she explained all the budget cuts that have been ordered from the home office. Coaches, janitors, cafeteria workers. It’s really bad and there’s nothing she can do about it. She said we could complain to the school board, but if the money’s not there, then the money’s not there.”
Mrs. Boone swung her chair around to a small sleek cabinet and began searching for a file. Upstairs, when Mr. Boone searched for a file, he simply began rummaging through the stacks of disorganized papers piled in some unknown order on top of his desk. He also kept stacks of materials under his desk, beside his desk, and it was not unusual to see documents that had simply slid off the piles and onto another spot on the floor. Mrs. Boone’s office was intensely modern and neat, with nothing out of place. Mr. Boone’s was old, creaky, saggy, and a mess. However, as Theo had witnessed many times, Mr. Boone could find a file almost as quickly as his wife.
She swung back around to her desk and looked at some paperwork. “This young woman came in last week for a divorce. Very sad. She’s twenty-four, with one small child and another on the way. She doesn’t work because she’s busy being a mom. Her husband is a rookie policeman here in the city, and there’s only one paycheck. They are barely surviving as a family, and there’s no way they can afford a split. I recommended they see a marriage counselor and get serious about working things out. She called yesterday to inform me that her husband just learned he is being laid off by the city. The mayor has ordered every department to cut their budgets by five percent across the board. We have sixty policemen, so that means three will lose their jobs. My client’s husband is one of them.”
“What’s she going to do?” Theo asked.
“Try and hang on. I don’t know. It’s very sad. She told me it seems like yesterday when she was in high school and dreaming of college and a career. Now she’s terrified and not sure what’s going to happen.”
“Did she go to college?”
“She tried, but her financial aid was cut.”
“All these cuts. What’s going on, Mom?”
“The economy goes up and down, Theo. When times are good, people earn more money and spend more money, and this leads directly to more taxes being paid to the city. More sales taxes, more property taxes, more—”
“I’m not sure I understand property taxes.”
“Okay, it’s very simple. Your father and I own this building. It is known as real property. Land and buildings are real property, whereas cars, boats, motorcycles, and trucks are known as personal property. They get taxed, too, but back to this building. Each year the city places a value on this building. It’s currently valued at four hundred thousand dollars, which is a lot more than we paid for it many years ago. After the city determines the value, it applies a tax rate to that value. Last year the tax rate was about one percent, which meant about four thousand dollars in taxes. The same thing happened to our home, but homes have a slightly lower tax rate. Anyway, we paid about two thousand dollars in real property taxes on our home. As for the personal prop
erty, we have two automobiles and the taxes were about a thousand dollars. So that’s seven thousand dollars we paid into the city last year.”
“Where does the money go?”
“Schools get the biggest chunk, but our tax dollars also pay for such things as fire and police protection, the hospital, parks and recreation, street maintenance, garbage collection. It’s a long list.”
“Do you have any say in how the money is spent?”
Mrs. Boone smiled and thought for a second. “Maybe a little. Not directly, but we elect the mayor and city councilmen and in theory they’re supposed to listen to us. In reality, though, we just pay the money because we have no choice, then hope for the best.”
“Do you resent paying the taxes?”
Another smile at another innocent question. “Theo, no one likes to pay taxes, but at the same time we want great schools, lots of well-trained policemen and firemen, beautiful parks, the best health care at our hospitals, and so on.”
“I guess seven thousand dollars a year is not that bad.”
“Theo, it’s seven thousand dollars just to the city. We also pay taxes to the county, the state, and Uncle Sam in Washington. And since the economy is going through a slump, all levels of government are facing budget cuts. It’s not just happening here in Strattenburg.”
“So things are bad all over?”
“We’ve seen worse. Again, it’s up and down. But it seems more severe when it affects people we know, like Mr. Sasstrunk and this young client of mine. When people we know lose their jobs, then the problem is suddenly more serious.”
“Does a bad economy affect good ole Boone and Boone?”
“Oh yes, especially your father’s business. When people aren’t buying homes and building things, the real estate business suffers. But it’s not something to worry about, Theo. We’ve been through this many times.”
“It just doesn’t seem fair.”
“It’s not, Theo, but then no one ever said that life is fair.” Her phone buzzed with a message from Elsa. “I need to take this call, Theo. I think your father would like to see you.”
“Okay, Mom. What’s for dinner?”
What a joke. It was Wednesday, and Wednesday always meant Chinese carryout from the Golden Dragon. Mrs. Boone was too busy to spend time in the kitchen.
“I’m thinking of sweet-and-sour shrimp tonight,” she said.
“Sounds good to me,” Theo said as he and Judge got to their feet and left the office.
Chapter 4
At the last minute, Theo decided against sweet-and-sour shrimp, opting instead for crispy beef. It was one of Judge’s favorites. His father got the Chinese takeout, and at precisely 7:00 p.m. the Boones took their places behind their wooden TV trays in the den and prepared to eat. Mr. Boone blessed the food with his standard “thanks-be-to-God,” and the meal was on. Judge sat beside Theo’s chair, waiting patiently but also ready to eat.
The remote control was in the possession of Mrs. Boone. Months earlier the family had hammered out a truce, then an agreement that rotated use of the remote each Wednesday. When one person had the remote, there could be no complaining from the other two. After a few bites and a few comments about the great debate, Mrs. Boone finally turned on the television and began surfing aimlessly, with no destination in mind. The volume was off. The only sound was Judge scarfing down the crispy beef. If Mr. Boone or Theo had the remote, they would go straight to their favorite show, Perry Mason reruns. But Mrs. Boone just surfed along, not really interested in anything. She watched little TV and had always tried to keep Theo away from it.
She finally stopped at a show called Strattenburg Today, a badly run news recap of the hot stories in town, if in fact there were any hot stories. Usually there were not. She hit the volume, and suddenly they were looking at the plastic smiling face of their governor. The voice-over from an unseen reporter said: “Governor Waffler was in town today to announce a new plan to finally build the Red Creek Bypass, an eight-mile loop around the city that will cost two hundred million dollars and has been hotly debated for many years. Governor Waffler was joined by local business leaders and elected officials who have been pushing the bypass. He announced that he has directed his transportation secretary to make the bypass a priority and designate enough money to build it.” The camera pulled back for a wide shot of the governor talking into a microphone while a crowd of serious men in suits stood behind him.
“I can’t believe this,” Mrs. Boone said.
“What’s a bypass?” Theo asked.
She said, “Well, in this case, it’s a road to nowhere that will cost at least two hundred million dollars and allow truckers to save about five minutes as they travel through Strattenburg.”