The Big Bazoohley

by Peter Carey

  “No,” said Sam, “I’ve had enough.”

  “Just let me get you clean.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Muriel …”

  “I’ll phone his folks,” Muriel said, “if that would calm everybody down. I’ll phone them so no one needs to worry. What’s your name?” she asked Sam. “Sam Kellow? I’ll phone them now. George will phone them. He’ll tell them you’ll be back as soon as you’re clean.”

  While George was out of the room, Muriel stood and looked at Sam. First she was kind of bad-tempered-looking, and then something in her softened. She put her head to one side and squinted her eyes as Sam had sometimes seen his mother do when she was looking at one of her paintings.

  “George,” she called. Her voice was different, quiet, almost a whisper, as if she did not wish to disturb the beautiful thought that was now suspended in the air in front of her.

  “George,” she said again, not taking her swimming goldfish eyes off Sam. You could see her creeping up on the thought like a hunter with a net.

  “George Bear,” she whispered. “Come here to Mama.”

  In a moment George was back, sticking his long sad nose around the bathroom door.

  “Georgey Porgey,” said Muriel, gently folding up the wet washcloth. “Georgey Porgey, do you know what I am thinking?”

  “You’re thinking he should have the chicken pox, not Wilfred.”

  “Aside from that,” said Muriel. She was acting quite differently, shyly even. She lined up all her Perfecto brushes and Perfecto soaps on the countertop in a shy and girlish kind of way.

  “You’re thinking we just lost the ten thousand dollars.”

  “I’m thinking,” Muriel said, turning to her husband with her round tight face all red and shiny with excitement, “I’m thinking that our visitor scrubs up quite well.”

  “You got him nice and clean, it’s true.”

  “I’m thinking” Muriel said slowly, raising her thin black eyebrows, “that the grub is really quite a butterfly.”

  “True.”

  “I’m thinking”—a bright red smile stretched across her face—“that the chicken pox needn’t stop us from winning the prize.”

  “What prize?” Sam asked.

  “The Perfecto Kiddo Prize.” She turned on Sam. “Which we would have won if you hadn’t given Wilfred your chicken pox.”

  For a moment there was total silence in the room. Sam saw George swallow and suck in his cheeks.

  “Muriel,” said George in a hushed tight voice. “Be fair….”

  “I am being fair,” snapped Muriel. “I’m thinking that I’m going to give him a chance to make up for what he’s done. That’s fair. That’s very fair. You lost us ten thousand dollars,” she said to Sam.

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Oh, yes you did, you little grub.”

  “How?”

  “I told you,” she said. “You gave him your chicken pox. Comprende?”

  “Yes,” said Sam. What he understood was that Muriel was more than peculiar. She was crazy.

  “Good.” Muriel smiled. “So now I’m going to let you get it back for us.”

  But if Muriel now looked more relaxed, George looked more alarmed. “I think, sweetie, that the boy is right. He really should be home in bed.”

  “But you talked to his parents,” said Muriel. “Isn’t that so?”

  “Y … e … s,” said George.

  “No you didn’t,” Sam said. “You don’t even know their names. You couldn’t have.”

  “It’s Bellow,” piped up Muriel. “You told me.”

  “Yes, it’s Bellow,” George said. “You told my wife.”

  “You told the Bellows,” Muriel said, “that their son was safe and sound with us?”

  “Oh, Muriel, please …” George said.

  “You told them we were considering entering him in the competition? You did say that to them, George?”

  “Muriel,” George said, “you really must be calm.”

  “I am calm” she said. “I am perfectly calm.”

  “You can’t just steal children.”

  “For heaven’s sake!” she shouted. “I am only borrowing the little beast. Until noon tomorrow,” she said. “That’s all. It is only fair.”

  The door out of the hotel room was just on the other side of the bathroom door, on the other side of George’s spindly legs.

  Sam was going to walk out that door the moment he got a chance.

  “Fair’s fair,” he said, and waited for his kidnappers to relax their guard.

  SEVEN

  WHEN MURIEL WOUND a sheet around Sam’s shoulders, he did not even make a face. When she started coating his wet hair with pink sticky goo from a big pot, he stayed so still that Muriel called him “little lamb.”

  At five past one, the two peculiar grown-ups were winding curlers into his hair, bumping into each other, arguing, pulling his head this way, pushing it the other. He watched them share their pack of M&M’s. It was now four hours past his bedtime, but Sam Kellow was wide awake, as cunning as a fox.

  In this way he learned that his kidnappers were professionals in the Perfecto Kiddo game. If there was a contest in Rome or Vienna, they were there, buying the Perfecto products, collecting the coupons, filling out the forms in German or Italian, dressing up their child in grown-up clothing, making all their money from chubby little Wilfred, who had gone back to sleep in his foldaway bed. They were like circus owners with a performing bear, and the bear was their child.

  “It’s one-thirty and we’re only halfway through.” George yawned. “We’re crazy to do this now. We should do it in the morning.”

  Sam craned his neck to look at what they’d done to him. But when he caught sight of himself in the big gold-framed mirror, he hardly recognized himself. He looked like a woman who’d gone to the supermarket with her hair in curlers.

  “There’ll be no time in the morning,” Muriel said,

  “Muriel, sweetie pie, just relax.”

  “Relax?” Muriel’s face started to go red.

  George began to sigh and pat his hands in the air as if this might calm her.

  “Relax?” Muriel’s voice became a shriek. “If we were both as relaxed as you, we’d still be entering dog food contests.

  “Relax!” she muttered and unzipped a big canvas bag. Out of it she wheeled a big domed-looking thing. It was like a big plastic hat, like a huge egg on a shining metal stand. It was like something you would see in a space movie, for stealing your thoughts or letting you see into the future.

  They wheeled this over and fitted it over Sam’s head. His skin prickled. His heart thumped. Now, for the first time, he was scared.

  Muriel turned on a switch, and a loud roaring noise filled Sam’s ears. He nearly panicked. He almost slid out from under and ran. Then he felt the heat and realized the big dome was a hair dryer, the kind his mother sometimes sat under in the beauty salon.

  “Relax,” he told himself as the hot air circled his head.

  Indeed, it was kind of nice inside the hair dryer. For one thing, he could not hear George and Muriel. If he shut his eyes, he did not have to look at his nasty red nose and her goldfish eyes.

  Eyes closed, he thought of happy things, things far from here. In his mind he went back to the door marked CLEANING 201. He opened the door. But this time he walked along a white-tiled passageway. And then he was asleep, lost in a happy dream where his mother and the molelike Mr. de Vere were eating Bombe Alaska at a glass-topped table.

  It was the silence that woke him. The hair dryer was turned off. He opened his eyes to feel Muriel lifting the hair dryer off his head. He shut his eyes again, but the dream would not come back. Muriel was removing the curlers from his hair.

  “There,” she said. “Now, don’t you want to see your handsome face?”

  Sam opened his eyes as Muriel held up the mirror.

  He looked into the glass. Wilfred looked back. Except it was not Wilfred, it was Sam Kellow, and his hair w
as big and curly like the choirboy in the Perfecto commercial. They had turned him into a Wilfred.

  “He’s beautiful,” Muriel cooed. “The little grub is beautiful!”

  Crazy Muriel and Droopy George embraced each other. They did a sort of dance around the room.

  “Oh, you’re a genius,” said George. “You’re a genius.”

  “I am,” said Muriel. “I am. I am a total genius.”

  Sam looked across at Wilfred and saw he was awake. He was watching his parents dancing around Sam and two big tears ran down his cheeks.

  “He’s going to win my money,” he said. “That’s what’s happening. He’s going to win my money.”

  It was then, while watching the tears course down Wilfred’s spotty face, that Sam saw he did not need to find Mr. de Vere.

  One door had shut, but another had opened. His dad had been right. Sam had found what he had been looking for: the power to win ten thousand dollars. The Big Bazoohley.

  EIGHT

  THE TWO BOYS LOOKED so much alike it was scary. True, Sam had Sonic the Hedgehog on his pajamas, and Wilfred’s pajamas were a cream-colored sort of flannel, but when George and Muriel tucked the two boys up together into the grownup bed, you could not see the pajamas, just these two twin faces.

  They were not perfect twins, of course. Wilfred’s nose was a little broader than Sam’s. Wilfred had spots, Sam did not. Wilfred was asleep, and Sam was lying under the covers, wide awake, thinking about the Big Bazoohley.

  Of course, Droopy George and Nasty Muriel planned to keep the prize money for themselves, but he figured he would deal with that when the time came. Now all he thought of was the good part.

  If he had ten thousand dollars, he could take that scary look off his father’s face. He could pay the bill for the hotel room. He could hire a private detective to find Mr. de Vere. If he had ten thousand dollars, he could take his mum and dad to a funny movie and make them laugh again.

  Soon he was lying on his back, happily snoring.

  It seemed like only a moment later he heard Wilfred say, “Mommy, what are you doing to my clothes?”

  “Be quiet,” Muriel said.

  Sam opened his eyes and saw that the curtains were open and it was morning. Great fat flakes of snow were swirling in the sky outside. Muriel was sitting on the end of the bed, snipping with her scissors. George was asleep sitting up in a straight-backed chair.

  “You’re cutting my velvet suit,” Wilfred whined.

  “I am not cutting it,” Muriel said. “And do not scratch or you’ll get scars on your face and look ugly forever.”

  But Sam could see that Wilfred was not scratching. He had just woken up and was rubbing his eyes.

  “You’re cutting my velvet suit,” he said to his mother.

  “I am not,” she said.

  But she was. She had a big pair of scissors and was going snip snip snip.

  “You are.”

  “Do you want to wake him?” Muriel said. “Why do you think your parents have spent the night sleeping in straight-backed chairs? We want him to sleep. We don’t want him to go in the competition with circles under his eyes.”

  “I want a baseball cap like his,” Wilfred said. “And one of those sweaters with the numbers on the back.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” his mother said. “What sort of idiot goes to bed in a baseball cap?”

  “I wouldn’t sleep in it,” Wilfred cried. “I’d never wear it to bed. I’d just wear it when I was outside.”

  Muriel looked up from her sewing and Sam saw something in her soften.

  “I’m sorry, my darling,” she said, “you’re just not that sort of boy. I’m sorry I have to hurt your lovely clothes, but we need this little grub to win the prize. No one will know it isn’t you. He’ll have your name. I have to alter your clothes so they will fit him.”

  “Then I can have his baseball cap.”

  “You can’t have my baseball cap,” Sam said, sitting up in bed. “And no one,” he said to Muriel, “can call me Wilfred. I’m Sam. Sam Kellow.”

  “You’ll do what you’re told,” said George, stretching his long, stiff, storky legs. His face looked blotchy and pasty, and he needed a shave. He stood and rubbed his eyes and went to stare down at the snowbound city.

  “Come and look at this, Wilfred!” he called. “It’s pretty as a postcard.”

  George and Wilfred now had their backs to him at the window. Muriel had her head down over her scissors. Sam could have run right out the door, right there and then.

  Instead he yawned and snuggled back under the covers. What he had in mind was a nice nap, and then ten thousand dollars just in time for lunch.

  But this, it seemed, was not to be.

  “Wakey, wakey,” Muriel said briskly. And pulled the covers off.

  “But you said the competition wasn’t until twelve.”

  “There’s lots to do before twelve,” said George. “First we have to teach you table manners à la Perfecto.”

  NINE

  “SIT UP STRAIGHT,” said George.

  “Use your fork,” said Muriel.

  “Do you want to end up with peas on the floor?” hollered George. “Do you know what happens if you have peas on the floor? Every pea,” he said, “they subtract fifteen points.”

  “Do you have any idea,” Muriel said, “what five little green peas could mean?”

  “Seventy-five points,” said Sam, quick as a flash, although there was not a pea in sight and he was sitting with an empty white plate in front of him. “Five times fifteen equals seventy-five.”

  “This is not a math contest,” said Muriel nastily. “If you dropped five peas in front of the judges, you would have no hope of being Perfecto Kiddo, It wouldn’t matter how perfecto your hair was. Not even Wilfred’s hair could save you. You would be a disgrace, and I would be so angry with you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “You’d pull his nose,” Wilfred said.

  Sam looked up from the little table George had set up for him to practice at. He wished he was Wilfred. Wilfred was lying on the king-size bed with Sam’s baseball cap perched on top of his shining, curly head.

  “Actually,” said Muriel, “I think I’d twist his ear.”

  “But Mom …” Wilfred said. “He’s trying. He’s trying really hard.”

  When Wilfred said that, Sam stopped being mad with him about the baseball cap (although he wished he was wearing the baseball cap himself and not this nerdy velvet suit and this ridiculous bow tie).

  “Now we have to practice for the spaghetti test,” said Muriel. “Chop, chop, come along. We can’t leave anything to chance.”

  “He can’t practice for spaghetti without real spaghetti,” said George.

  “Sweetie bear,” said Muriel, smiling through clenched teeth, “he can’t eat spaghetti now. If he eats real spaghetti now, he’ll ruin his appetite for the competition. Don’t you remember what happened in Madrid?”

  “That, my precious pretty footsie,” said George, who was starting to go a little red above his collar, “that is what I mean. How can we have him practice his spaghetti-eating without real spaghetti? Nothing is as slimy as real spaghetti. Nothing is quite as splattery as real spaghetti sauce.”

  “Maybe they won’t have spaghetti,” Wilfred said. “Maybe they’ll have tough steak instead.”

  “They had spaghetti in Tokyo,” said Muriel. “And in Paris. Oh, you were so good in Paris, Wilfred. It was your most perfecto win. Remember, George, how they had the four-foot-long spaghetti strands? Those horrid judges. Those horrid, horrid French judges. But Wilfred wound that long, long strand on his fork, and not a drop, not a drop did he spill.”

  “My mum cuts up my spaghetti for me,” said Sam.

  “Your ‘mum’ will be nowhere near you,” said George, “and I am going to teach you how to eat spaghetti like an adult.”

  “How?”

  “With string,” said George, slipping an M&M into his mouth, “and soap.”
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  “Not to eat,” said Wilfred. “He doesn’t mean eat. He means wind it around your fork.”

  Five minutes later Sam was sitting at the table with a sheet wound around him. In front of him was a bowl of slimy tangled soapy string. As Sam looked on. George unscrewed the cap off a bottle of blue ink and poured it over the top.

  “Not a splatter,” he said. “Not a drop.”

  “I can’t do that,” Sam said. “I know I can’t.”

  “Oh, yes you can,” said George, taking a fork in his long bony fingers. “Now watch me, laddie, watch me closely.”

  Sam watched him. It was not a pleasant sight.

  TEN

  THEY PRACTICED THE spaghetti and (because they wished to take no chances) they practiced holding elbows against your side when you cut tough steak, and just when Sam thought it would go on forever, George and Muriel declared themselves done.

  “Now it is quiet time,” Muriel said. “It’s nine o’clock and we have to present ourselves to the judges and do the paperwork.”

  “We’ll take him with us,” George said, “I’m not letting him bolt at this stage.”

  “No, George,” said Muriel. “I really don’t think we can afford to take the risk. I don’t want them looking at Wilfred’s photograph and—”

  “Comparisons are invidious,” sniffed George.

  “Precisely,” said Muriel.

  “What’s invidious?” asked Wilfred.

  “It’s what will happen to you if you let him escape.”

  “Oh, I’ll be here,” said Sam, “but don’t you think it would be sensible if you let me write a note to my mum and dad so they wouldn’t worry?”

  “If they’re going to worry, they’re worried already.”

  “Oh, no,” Sam said. “It’s a Saturday. They won’t wake up until ten.”

  “Really?” Muriel wrinkled her nose and her eyes swam in amazement. “How extraordinary. What peculiar people they must be.”

  “I think my note should say that I’ll be back after the competition,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t want them worrying or calling the police or anything.”