The Seventh Most Important Thing

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2015

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Chapters 26-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 26 Summary

The following Saturday, Arthur arrives at the garage to find the cart missing and no notes left for him. The side door of the garage is open, and after hesitating, Arthur goes inside. Arthur knocks and calls out. In response, a noise comes from inside, putting Arthur on edge. He enters slowly and finds a light switch. He flips it on and is blinded by the “dazzling vision that awaited him” (123).

Chapter 27 Summary

Inside the garage, Arthur finds glittering piles of silver and gold. Looking closer, Arthur notices that “everything had its own pair of sparkling wings” (125). He remembers Mr. Hampton’s note about how he took Arthur’s dad’s hat for the wings.

A moan from the other side of the garage catches Arthur’s attention. Mr. Hampton is lying on the floor, and it looks like he fell and hit his head.

Chapter 28 Summary

Arthur runs to Mr. Hampton’s side to help. Hampton asks who Arthur is. When Arthur gives his name, Hampton says Arthur’s “the one who saved me” (126).

Arthur brings Groovy Jim to the garage. Hampton is still alive but says he’s ready to die. Groovy Jim tells him it isn’t his time yet and says the stuff in the garage is pretty cool. Hampton corrects him: It’s not stuff. He and Arthur “have been busy building heaven” (129). Arthur explains he’s been helping Mr. Hampton collect the seven most important things—junk, essentially. Mr. Hampton replies “What else do you think heaven would be made out of?” (129).

Chapter 29 Summary

Arthur goes with Mr. Hampton to the hospital. On the way, he thinks about the creation in the garage and about his dad. Arthur has always pictured Heaven as a place with motorcycles and things to fix so his dad would have things to do. Arthur has “never imagined finding heaven in a garage in Washington, D.C.” (131). Arthur wonders why Mr. Hampton is building Heaven, and the chapter ends with Arthur asking himself “what if Hampton died before he found out?” (132).

Chapter 30 Summary

At the hospital, Arthur waits for what seems like forever. Finally, a nurse takes him to see Mr. Hampton. In contrast to the man Arthur remembered from court, Mr. Hampton looks old and frail, and his skin resembles “rain-soaked and sagging cardboard” (136).

Mr. Hampton tells Arthur he’s “building the Throne of the Third Heaven” because no one else has built heaven (139). Lots of people have created Hell because Hell is easy, but Heaven is more difficult. Mr. Hampton says he still has a lot of work to do but can’t while he’s stuck in the hospital. He asks if he can trust Arthur to continue collecting “the building blocks of heaven” while he’s gone (140). Arthur agrees and takes the keys to the garage. He calls Officer Billie to get a ride home, since his mother’s busy and there’s no one else he can call.

Chapters 26-30 Analysis

Arthur gets his first good look at Mr. Hampton’s sculpture in Chapter 27. The sculpture represents “One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure,” both literally and figuratively. Literally, the sculpture is trash that has been turned into something that glitters like a pile of treasure. Figuratively, Mr. Hampton used trash to create something he treasures above all else. The sculpture also solves the mystery of Mr. Hampton’s note in Chapter 7. Everything on the sculpture has a set of wings, which explains why Mr. Hampton took the motorcycle cap.

Heaven becomes a concrete place for Arthur in these chapters. At the beginning of the story, he struggled to believe in the abstractness of heaven. Having heaven (or at least Mr. Hampton’s version of it) displayed before him gets Arthur thinking about his dad being in heaven. Arthur realizes he had an image of heaven that coincided with his dad’s interests—a place where his dad could fix things. Mr. Hampton’s image is very different, which aligns with Mr. Hampton’s later discussion about how all angels have different wings. Every person and angel is different, and heaven might look different for everyone.

In Chapter 30, Mr. Hampton asks Arthur to continue collecting the seven important things while Mr. Hampton is in the hospital. Arthur agrees, and his earlier observation that he was becoming the “junk man” comes to pass. Arthur doesn’t hesitate to help Mr. Hampton by collecting trash, even if it means he’s now the “junk man.” Arthur doesn’t realize it here, but he’s starting to not care what labels people give him or what others think of him.