Trash Bash Read online

  Molly laughed at her father’s words. The picture of her marrying Roger in second grade was funny. Marrying Roger anytime was funny. If she married anyone in that dress, it would be Kevin.

  The next day Molly felt better. The wedding dress didn’t seem as important. When she tried it on again, it looked pretty funny.

  Maybe she would collect a few newspapers to save a tree. But just a few.

  She called Mary Beth, but Mary Beth had to go to her aunt’s house for a few days.

  “It’s a family reunion,” she said.

  But Sonny and Roger said they could use some help. Sonny’s new father, Larry Stone, said he would go along with them and let them load newspapers into his fire truck.

  “Maybe I’ll be better at collecting papers than I was at recycling,” said Molly to herself.

  “Remember to be polite,” said Mrs. Peters as the Pee Wees set out on Tuesday afternoon after their meeting. “Even if the people don’t have any newspapers, be sure and thank them.”

  “My dad is taking us,” said Patty. “In his truck.”

  “My dad is picking up our papers in the fire truck,” boasted Sonny.

  Molly went to the houses on one side of Elm Street.

  Roger went to the houses on the other side.

  Sonny said he didn’t like to knock on people’s doors except on Halloween.

  “We don’t get a newspaper,” said a lady at the first house Molly went to. “Bad news, that’s all that is in the newspaper. Bad news.”

  Molly wanted to tell her about the comics and the movie guide to family entertainment, but she remembered about being polite. So she just nodded. And said thank you. Then she went to the house next door.

  “We are collecting newspapers to make bags and notebooks out of,” said Molly to the man at the door. He looked as if he had been taking a nap. “We are saving the earth.”

  The man stretched. “There are some in the basement,” he said. He pointed to a door.

  Molly ran to get Sonny, and the two of them carried piles and piles of papers out of the house to where Mr. Stone was waiting.

  “We cleaned out his basement for him,” said Sonny. “I think that’s a good deed.”

  Roger lugged newspapers out of another basement. One lady sent them up to the attic.

  The pile of papers grew. It got higher and higher.

  “Is your dad going to put the siren on?” asked Roger.

  “Not unless the newspapers catch on fire,” said Sonny.

  Larry and the Scouts loaded the papers into his truck and drove to another street. They carried out piles and piles of papers.

  “Rachel is right, this is dirty work,” said Molly, looking at her black hands.

  “I’m pooped,” said Roger, throwing himself on someone’s front lawn.

  Larry loaded more papers into the fire truck. “Tomorrow morning you’ll have to tie them up,” he said. “I’ve got some rope down at the station.”

  Molly was hot and tired and dirty. Her mother ran a nice warm bath for her when she got home.

  “We got a lot of papers,” said Molly.

  “Maybe you’ll win this time,” said her mother. “And if you don’t, you’ll still get your badge.”

  Molly was too tired to care about winning. She was just glad she was helping to save some nice green trees. Trees that had swings on them for children to play on. And trees that made shade to sit under on a hot day. Maybe one of the trees she’d saved was the big oak in the park that the Scouts climbed in. Or the one in Kevin’s backyard with a tree house in it!

  In the morning Molly met Roger and Sonny and went to the fire station. Larry showed them how to stack the newspapers in small piles and tie them tightly.

  “This will take forever!” cried Roger.

  “The paper company won’t take loose papers,” said Larry. “They’d blow all over the place. And they couldn’t weigh them.”

  Molly sat and stacked and tied. Stacked and tied. Paper by paper. She read things out loud as she worked.

  “ ‘Man goes to jail for robbery,’ ” she read. “ ‘Interest rates go up in August.’ ”

  “Boring,” said Roger.

  “Not for the robber,” said Molly.

  Some of the other Pee Wees came by as they worked.

  They came in and tied up their papers too. Their hands got smudged from the ink.

  “Larry should get a badge too,” said Lisa. “For all the rope he got us.”

  “He’s got a badge,” said Sonny. “A fire badge. That’s better than a Scout badge.”

  The Pee Wees laughed. But Molly knew a Scout badge was just as important as a fire badge.

  The Scouts tied and tied, but there still were mountains of papers left. Papers were boring. Roger was right. They all looked alike.

  All of a sudden Molly came to a different kind of paper.

  It was smaller.

  It was cleaner.

  It had numbers on it.

  And it had names on it.

  Names of people, signed in ink.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Un-newspaper

  “Look!” said Molly.

  She held up the paper that was not a newspaper.

  Roger came and felt the paper.

  “It’s real paper,” he said. “Tie it up. It probably doesn’t weigh much, though.”

  “Just a minute,” said Larry. He took the paper from Molly and looked at it.

  Then he whistled.

  “This isn’t just paper,” he said. “It’s a government bond. It is worth a lot of money. Molly found an important paper.”

  Everyone looked at Molly with admiration. Her face turned red.

  “And Roger wanted to tie it up with the newspapers!” cried Tracy.

  Now Roger turned red. “I don’t know about government stuff,” he said.

  “I wonder who this came from,” said Larry thoughtfully.

  He tapped the paper on the table.

  “It must have been in with the newspapers you collected. But which house is it from?”

  “Maybe it was on Elm Street,” said Molly. “Roger and Sonny and I went up and down Elm Street.”

  “It came from Elm Street,” said Roger, nodding.

  “But it might have been in with the papers we collected!” said Lisa. “Our papers are all mixed together.”

  Larry went to get the phone book.

  “This bond is made out to Harold Gale,” he said, running his finger down the list of G’s.

  He shook his head. “There is no Gale,” he said.

  Everyone sat and thought about what to do.

  “It has to be from one of the houses we went to,” said Molly. “Maybe we should go back and ask all the people we collected papers from if they lost something valuable.”

  Roger groaned. “That’s a lot of houses. I’m not doing that all over again.”

  “There might be a reward,” said Sonny.

  Roger got to his feet. “I’ll check Elm Street,” he said.

  Larry laughed. “We can’t count on a reward,” he said. “We have to do this because this bond belongs to someone and it is valuable. It may be someone’s nest egg.”

  “It doesn’t look like an egg to me,” said Tim. “If it is, it’s old and rotten.”

  “We had a rotten egg in our refrigerator once,” said Sonny. “Yuck, it smelled awful.”

  Sonny held his nose. Then all of the Pee Wees started to laugh and hold their noses.

  “A nest egg is someone’s savings,” said Larry. “It may be all the money Harold Gale has in the world.”

  Molly began to feel sorry for Harold Gale. Maybe at this very moment he did not have any cornflakes or milk in his house. Maybe he could not pay his rent, and would go to jail.

  “We have to find him!” said Molly, standing up and ready to look.

  “I’ll give Mrs. Peters a call,” said Larry.

  Mrs. Peters came as soon as baby Nick woke up from his nap.

  Before long, the Pee We
es were back on Elm Street. They retraced their steps. They went to every house they remembered going to before.

  “Is your name Harold Gale?” said Molly politely, to every man who came to the door.

  They all said no.

  All the ladies said they never heard of Harold Gale.

  “Hey, we should wait till it rains,” said Roger when the Scouts met back at the fire station. “When it thunders and storms, there could be a gale!”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” said Kevin. “Very funny, White.”

  “Hey, if there is no Harold Gale, does Molly get to keep the money? Can she divide it with all of Troop Twenty-three?” asked Sonny.

  “We could buy lots of treats for our meetings,” said Tim.

  “We could buy trees to plant,” said Kevin.

  “I think we should get a car,” said Roger. “A real fast red race car so we could go to Scout camp in it.”

  “We can’t all fit in one car,” said Patty.

  “Then let’s get two!” said Kenny.

  Mrs. Peters and Larry both held up their hands.

  “The money belongs to Mr. Gale,” said Larry.

  “It’s up to us to find him and return it to him,” added Mrs. Peters.

  The Pee Wees sighed. A red car with PEE WEE SCOUTS on the side of it would have been fun.

  “There is no Harold Gale,” said Lisa. “We went to every house.”

  All of a sudden Molly remembered something. She hadn’t gone to every house. She hadn’t gone back to the sleepy man’s house. To the first house where she’d got papers. Could his name be Mr. Gale?

  He didn’t look poor. But he was thin. Maybe he had no food to eat because the Scouts had taken his money.

  “Just a minute!” said Molly.

  She raced back to Elm Street. She found the sleepy man’s house and ran up the steps. She rang the doorbell.

  No one answered.

  She rang it again.

  At last the sleepy man came to the door.

  He yawned.

  “I gave you papers yesterday,” he said.

  “Are you Mr. Gale?” asked Molly.

  The man shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I’m Jack Olson.”

  Molly’s face fell. This man was their last hope. If he wasn’t Mr. Gale, who was? Molly had found the government bond, it was up to her to return it.

  “Harold Gale is my uncle,” said Jack Olson. “Why do you want him?”

  Molly couldn’t believe her ears! How had his uncle’s money gotten in Mr. Olson’s old newspapers?

  Molly told him about the government bond.

  “It was in the pile of newspapers you gave us,” she said.

  Jack Olson didn’t look sleepy anymore. He was wide-awake now.

  “We’ve been looking for that bond for weeks,” he said. “We thought it was gone forever. We thought someone stole it.”

  Molly ran to get Mrs. Peters and Larry, and the other Pee Wee Scouts.

  “My uncle brought some papers over to my house to sign,” said Jack Olson, when the group returned to his house. “The bond must have been with them. Somehow it got in with the old newspapers on the table,” he explained.

  Jack Olson called his uncle on the telephone.

  “He wants to give you a reward,” said Mr. Olson.

  “No reward is necessary,” said Mrs. Peters. “It is a Scout’s job to help others.”

  The Scouts groaned. What was wrong with a little reward?

  Larry and Mrs. Peters and Jack Olson and the Scouts went back to the fire station. Molly handed over the bond she had found to Jack Olson.

  “My uncle will want to thank you himself,” he said. “But at least let me treat the Scouts to dairy cones.”

  “Yeah!” said Tim.

  “It’s not a red race car,” said Roger. “But it’s better than nothing!”

  Molly knew what kind of cone she would order.

  Vanilla with chocolate sprinkles.

  CHAPTER 7

  Batman Molly

  PEE WEE SCOUT DOES GOOD DEED, read the newspaper the next evening.

  “You are famous!” said Mary Beth to Molly on the telephone.

  “Good for you, Molly,” said Mr. Duff when he read it. “Mr. Gale said if you had not collected papers for your Save-the-Earth badge, he never would have found his money. Besides saving the earth, you did a good deed.”

  “Mr. Gale is donating money to the camp fund,” said Mrs. Peters, who called next. “We are so proud of you, Molly.”

  Next Tuesday at the Pee Wee meeting, all the Scouts had the news clipping with Molly’s picture in it.

  “It’s like being a movie star,” said Tracy.

  “My cousin was in the paper once,” said Rachel. “She was a flower girl in a wedding.”

  “This is better,” said Mary Beth loyally. “Because it’s for a good deed.”

  “It’s a good deed to be a flower girl,” said Rachel.

  The Pee Wees booed.

  “Mrs. Peters, isn’t being a flower girl a good deed?” asked Rachel.

  “I’m sure your cousin was a very pretty flower girl, but I’m not sure it is a good deed,” replied Mrs. Peters.

  Roger made a face at Rachel. “See?” he hissed.

  Mrs. Peters tapped a pencil on the table.

  “Today,” she said, “we get our Save-the-Earth badges.”

  Everyone cheered. “Yeah!” they called.

  “Everyone has done something to save our earth in the last few weeks,” she went on. “Some have done a little.” The Scouts looked around the room. “And some have done a lot.” The Scouts looked at Molly and Mary Beth and Tim. “But everyone has done something.”

  Mrs. Peters called out names and the Pee Wees got their badges. On the badge was a little globe with a tree in it. The Scouts pinned them onto their shirts. The badges were blue and green.

  “And now we have a little prize for the one who collected the most papers,” said Mrs. Peters.

  Mrs. Peters gave a package to Kevin.

  “That’s not fair, your mom works for a newspaper!” shouted Roger. “She brought those home from work for you.”

  “Is that fair?” cried Lisa.

  “It doesn’t matter where the papers came from,” said Mrs. Peters. “You all worked very hard, but Kevin did bring in the most.”

  The prize was another can crusher.

  Molly felt a little disappointed for the second time. But it was true, she had not had the most papers. And no one else got her picture in the paper. That was like a prize. And making Mr. Gale happy was a prize. She could always save her money and buy a can crusher.

  The Scouts played games and sang songs. They had chocolate cake and ice cream and played with baby Nick. They told the good deeds they had done.

  Before they left, Mrs. Peters said, “Now remember, boys and girls, we are not through saving the earth just because we got our badges. Saving the earth is a lifetime job. Keep recycling, keep planting trees, keep conserving water, and watch for polluters.”

  Molly felt tired. It was a big job. And it wasn’t over.

  Mary Beth and Molly and Rachel walked home together.

  “We’ve got a lot of badges,” said Mary Beth.

  “Yes, we have,” agreed Molly. What if Mrs. Peters wanted the Scouts to recycle them? Molly hoped not.

  “Look!” said Mary Beth. She pointed to a man in his yard. He was spraying his fruit trees with a little machine.

  “We have to stop him,” she said. “That stuff poisons the insects, and the birds eat the insects and get sick.”

  “We have our badges,” said Rachel. “I’m going home to sew mine on my blouse.”

  “You heard Mrs. Peters,” said Mary Beth, stamping her foot. “We can’t stop saving the earth just because we have a badge.”

  Molly knew she was right. But she felt like Rachel. She wanted to go home and forget the sick birds.

  “Come on,” said Mary Beth, dragging Molly and Rachel with her into th
e man’s yard.

  “Stop!” she called out to the man.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Stop spraying those trees,” she called. “That stuff poisons the insects and the birds eat them and they get sick.”

  The man kept spraying.

  “If I don’t spray my trees, the fruit will die,” said the man.

  “He’s right,” said Rachel. “He could have sick trees. That’s just as bad as a sick bird.”

  “I know a better way to save your trees,” said Molly to the man. “Get two hundred bats and let them loose and they will eat the insects and the birds won’t get sick and the fruit will be okay. I saw it on a film. Bats need to eat insects to live.”

  The man looked surprised. Then he began to laugh.

  “Two hundred bats, is it? You girls know a lot,” he said.

  “We are Pee Wee Scouts,” said Molly proudly.

  “Well, thank you for the advice,” he said.

  “You are welcome,” said the girls as they walked toward home.

  “He might not get the bats,” said Mary Beth.

  “Well, he stopped spraying, anyway,” said Molly.

  “I’m going swimming,” said Rachel. “See you tomorrow.”

  The girls waved.

  Molly could see it would be a long, hard job to save the earth.

  But then no one ever said it was easy, being a Pee Wee Scout.

  It was a lot of work.

  But it was a lot of fun.

  Scouts are helpers, Scouts have fun,

  Pee Wee, Pee Wee Scouts!

  We sing and play when work is done,

  Pee Wee, Pee Wee Scouts!

  With a good deed here,

  And an errand there,

  Here a hand, there a hand,

  Everywhere a good hand.

  Scouts are helpers, Scouts have fun,

  Pee Wee, Pee Wee Scouts!

  We love our country

  And our home,

  Our school and neighbors too.

  As Pee Wee Scouts

  We pledge our best

  In everything we do.