The Kingdon of No Worries by Roy Philip;

Author:Roy, Philip;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ronsdale Press

Chapter 10

LONG AFTER WE GO home and climb into bed, the music, laughter, and dancing continue on in the kingdom, and enough people stay right through the night to prevent anyone from tearing up the garden again or knocking down the flagpole. When we arrive the next morning, we expect to find the police there, but we don’t. Instead, we are greeted by a handful of weary-eyed partygoers who are just now on their way home to bed. The kingdom is filled with chairs, coolers left behind, the two portable toilets, and a whole bunch of umbrellas stuck in the sandy soil or folded and lying on their side. Sami, Charlie, and I walk around and fold the umbrellas so they won’t blow away, and we pick up garbage and tidy the chairs. But we leave a few umbrellas up because it’s nice to have shade from the sun. We still expect to see the police, but they don’t show up. By noon, we start receiving visitors of a different sort.

The first is a man in a dark suit. He walks down to the riverbank and waves to us from there. He’s carrying a sign and a bag in his hand. He keeps waving and hoping we’ll cross the river to talk to him, but Sami says we should stay here and let him come to us. Charlie agrees with that so I agree, too, though I’m certain the man will never enter the river in his suit.

I’m wrong. Once he realizes we aren’t coming over, he takes off his shoes, socks, and jacket, rolls up his pants, rolls his socks neatly into his shoes, and steps carefully into the water. Holding the sign and bag above his head, he crosses the river in his bare feet. We all stare, bewildered, wondering what he wants.

Judging from his sign, he’s from the Bank of Ontario, which we can see from our seats in the shade of an umbrella. Stepping out of the water, he comes over with a friendly but a kind of forced smile.

BANKER: “Hi boys!”

SAMI & ME: “Hi.”

BANKER: “Nice day, hey?”

ME: “Not too bad.”

BANKER: “This is a terrific experiment you’ve got going here, boys. Very interesting to see.”

CHARLIE: “What do you want?”

The bank manager smiles.

BANKER: “I can see that you boys have a strong sense of what’s what, so I won’t beat around the bush. I’m from the Bank of Ontario.”

He points to his building.

BANKER: “As we have noticed, you boys are receiving quite a bit of attention for this experiment you’ve got going here …”

CHARLIE: “It’s not an experiment; it’s a country.”

BANKER: “My apologies, your country. As you are receiving quite a bit of attention, we at our bank are wondering if we can make a deal with you.”

SAMI: “What kind of deal?”

BANKER: “We are willing to offer you boys a small sum of money if you would allow us to place our sign on this island in a strategically visible spot.”

CHARLIE: “How much money?”

BANKER: “Two hundred dollars.”

We don’t know what to do.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.