When I’m done talking, and feeling more than a little sorry for myself, Fleabottom pats me on the head and says, “That’s quite a story. I especially liked the part where you single-handedly defeated fifty bounty hunters and freed a thousand slaves.”
“There was others that helped,” I grudgingly admit. “Jebediah Brewster and Samuel Reed pitched in.”
“Sometimes the truth works best when simplified,” Professor Fleabottom allows, with a twinkle in his eyes. “Now then, having heard your amazing tale, I wish to make three observations. First, if you are still determined to find your brother, then we may be of use to each other, for I go where the army goes.”
“To fight in the war?” I ask, staring at his curled-up mustache.
He chuckles and shakes his head. “We go to turn a dollar,” he says. “The money is where the army is.”
“I’ve got money, if only we can find Mr. Willow.”
Fleabottom shakes his head, looking very serious. “Listen to one who knows, Homer,” he says. “That money is long gone. The pair you describe are professional thieves. There are many like them, working the ferry terminals and train stations, preying upon innocent men like your Mr. Willow. It is an old ruse. The marriage was undoubtedly phony, an excuse to pick his pocket. By now they will have taken the money and dispensed with him. Truly, I’m surprised he didn’t end up in the same crate as you.”
“Can you really help me find my brother?”
Fleabottom shrugs. “I can only promise to try. Because of the nature of my business, I have certain associates in uniform. I give you my word of honor. I will ask after Harold Figg, newly recruited, and we shall see what comes of it.”
I got my doubts about words of honor. Mr. Willow swore on a Bible, and pledged his word to Jebediah Brewster, and look where it got me. But I fear what Professor Fleabottom says is true. The money is gone. If I want to save Harold from the army I’ve got to find him on my own, or with whatever help I can manage.
“My second observation,” says Professor Fleabottom, “is that your experience living in a barn may be useful. The close proximity of a few small swine should be tolerable.”
“I don’t mind a pig,” I admit. “Unless it tries to eat me.”
“Ah! We will endeavor with all our powers to make sure that does not happen,” he promises grandly. “My third and final observation is that you need a proper bath. The pungent perfume of the pig is still upon you. The suffocating scent of the swine exudes from your person. In a word, sir, you stink.”
Professor Fleabottom guides me along the crowded waterfront, past gangs of men swarming over ships and barges, to where his wagons have been unloaded from a Boston steamship. Each of the three brightly painted wagons has a team of two horses, and the nags look none too frisky. I’d been hoping to see an elephant or at the very least a proper lion, but he explains that his is not a large animal show.
“We are small in everything but spirit,” he adds brightly. “The Fleabottom Caravan of Miracles is but a humble attempt to entertain our brave troops, providing temporary release from the horrors of war, and such medicines as are needed. In this we do our duty, as citizens of the republic.”
“What kind of medicine do you sell?” I ask.
“The best kind of medicine,” he says. “The kind that makes you smile.”
I never been to a real traveling medicine show because Squint naturally hates such things, but Harold saw one when our Dear Mother still lived, and said they had a mermaid girl with fish scales on her skin, and a two-headed snake in a jar, and a man that played the banjo with his feet. After the show they sold bottles of Neurotonic Nerve Elixir that was as powerful as sweetened rum, and smelled pretty much the same. Harold said it was a splendid good time even if Mother refused to let him sample the medicine.
“Minerva!” Professor Fleabottom shouts. “Show yourself, my dear!”
A wagon door opens and out comes a skinny woman with hair so red it looks like her head’s on fire. The fiery hair’s not the best thing about her though. She’s wearing a sleeveless, tight-waisted gown and every inch of her arms is covered with colorful ink drawings, right down to the fingertips. I never seen a genuine tattooed lady before, and it is truly an impressive sight. The drawings move up her arms like pictures in a book and make me want to know the story they tell.
“As a child of twelve, shipwrecked upon a cannibal island, Mini was taken as captive in the South Seas,” Fleabottom explains. “The savages marked her as one of their own.”
The red-haired lady rolls her eyes and says, “Save it for the pitch, Fenton.” Then she wrinkles her skinny nose and makes a face. “Whew! What did you step in? Best check your boots.”
“Pigs, my dear,” he says cheerfully. “Would you be so good as to see this young man gets a hot bath and fresh clothing?”
She gives me a cautious look. “Does he bite?”
“Only when provoked. Avoid poking him with sticks and you’ll be quite safe.”
“Hot water is ten cents a tub,” she says, sounding outraged about the price. “And five cents for soap!”
Professor Fleabottom reaches into his waistcoat pocket and hands her some coins. “Well worth the investment, as you shall see. The boy has talent, Minerva, real talent. His lies are as sweet as honey and twice as smooth. Clean him up and let’s get this show on the road!”
FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, taking a bath is sort of like drowning, with soap. Never could abide it, not since I was a little baby. Harold says our Dear Mother used to rinse me in a big tin pot under the water pump, like I was a potato, and it always made me holler. So naturally I try to persuade Minerva, the tattooed lady, to save the ten cents and buy us some taffy and licorice twists instead, and maybe a peppermint to improve her breath.
“Bath is a waste of time, money, and effort,” I’m saying as she drags me into an alley not far from the steamship terminal. The alley is a dim and narrow place of falling-down shacks and skinny buildings that lean toward the harbor. “A little dirt makes a person healthy,” I insist. “Look, all I got to do is spit on my hands and rub ’em on my trousers. See? Good as new.”
She gives me a look that would make a weasel die of shame. “One, it’s Professor Fleabottom’s money and we shan’t be spending it on candy. Two, hold your tongue or that will get a taste of soap, too. Understood?”
“What about three?”
“Three?”
“When a person says one something, and two this or that, usually they say three such and such. It’s never just one and two, there’s always a three.”
Everybody knows that red-haired folks tend to excite easily, and that’s certainly the case with the tattooed lady. Without another word — sputtering don’t count — she slings me over her hip like a sack of laundry and before I can count to four we’re inside a hot, steamy shack and she’s handed me over to the Indians for boiling.
The Indians plunge me into a big wooden laundry tub of hot soapy water and scrub me like a load of dirty shirts, and talk to each other in a language that sounds like a bag of bells falling down the stairs. Turns out they’re not Indians like we have in Maine, that mostly live in the woods and fish and hunt. These are Indians from China — similar eyes, but a different tribe.
“Best behave yourself,” Minerva warns, as they dry me off with fluffy towels, and dress me in clean clothes. “If I tell them you’re half pig, they might have you for supper.”
Apparently being shipwrecked on a cannibal island makes Minerva think all foreigners are cannibals.
“For your information, Indians don’t eat children,” I tell her. “They prefer full-growed females with red hair.”
I figure that will embarrass the tattooed lady, or at least make steam come out of her ears. But much to my surprise, instead of getting mad, she laughs.
“Fenton’s right,” she says, chuckling. “You are a funny one.” On the way back she buys me a bag of taffy candy, and a peppermint for herself. “To improve my breath,” she says, s
till laughing.
BACK AT THE STEAMSHIP terminal Professor Fleabottom has the wagons ready to go and seems mighty eager to be shut of this particular area.
“There are skulkers about,” he tells Minerva, his mustache all twitchy with nerves.
“You mean coppers,” she says brightly. “Where are they?”
“Not coppers,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Spies. All around. Here and there. They’re very clever spies.”
“Spies?” she says loudly. “And why ever would spies be interested in us?”
Fleabottom puts a finger to his lips. “Hush, woman. The world has ears.”
Then he notices me standing there, listening to every word.
“Bad habit of mine,” he says, clearing his throat. “Joking about this and that. What a ridiculous idea!”
He goes on for a while, laughing and pretending the stuff about skulkers and spies is just a prank, but I know a thing or two about stretching the truth, and Mr. Fenton J. Fleabottom, he’s a stretcher.
I decide to keep my eyes peeled, just in case.
PROFESSOR FLEABOTTOM lets me ride next to him, high up in the driver’s seat as the horses plod through the crowded streets, headed for the ferry terminal.
Never have I seen so many people in one place, all trying to get somewhere at the same time. Folks of all colors, white and black and mixed, and a bunch that look like the Chinese Indians, and others I never seen before. Men in fine suits and tall hats, and ladies with parasols and gloves, and men in rags, and poor, hunched-up old women begging as they shuffle along. All in a hurry. Makes me feel a little out of breath to think that if one more human being sets foot on this end of Manhattan Island, it may tip over like a dinner plate and slip into the sea.
Professor Fleabottom says there’s more people in this city than in the entire state of Maine, all jammed together with a hundred thousand horses, and more goats, dogs, cats, cows, and chickens than can be counted. All breathing the same smoky air and drinking the same water.
The horses, he says, are a special kind of problem.
“Multiply a hundred thousand horses by twenty pounds of manure each day, per horse, and what do you get?”
“A big stink?”
“On the nose!” he says, delighted. “Two thousand tons of odiferous delight. All of which makes me long for the fragrance of New Jersey.”
“What’s New Jersey smell like?”
“Grass and dirt, mostly, once we get past the swampy part. But first we must cross the river.”
Every now and then he looks behind, as if worried about being followed. I check, too, but there are so many people there’s no way to know who might be following us, or who might just be going in the same direction.
Wagons scrape by, heading the opposite way, and the big men driving the wagons crack their whips and shout abuse and make rude gestures.
Professor Fleabottom smiles and waves, and tells Minerva to stay out of sight inside the wagon, in case her tattoos might stop traffic altogether.
“Just drive, Fenton. I can take care of myself, as well you know,” she says, looking around.
Seems like even though she made fun of him for mentioning spies, she’s keeping an eye out, too.
As for me, I’m straining to catch a glimpse of the men driving the last two wagons in our little caravan. From what I can see, as we jounce over the cobblestones, they both look pretty normal. Just regular men with beards and floppy hats that hide their eyes.
“Sit down and quit messing about,” Professor Fleabottom says. “You’ll scare the horses.”
“What’s in those wagons?” I want to know.
The way Fleabottom and Minerva are acting, there might be something hidden in the wagons. Something way more exciting than a boy who pretends to be a pig.
“Ah!” Fleabottom says, his eyes glinting with humor. “You guessed, did you?”
“I guessed there was something, but I don’t know what, exactly.”
“Patience, young man. You will know all of our secrets by this evening. But not until then.”
No matter how much I beg, he won’t tell me the secret in the wagons, and finally I decide to shut up and bide my chance.
The ferry terminal is near as crowded as the streets, with a mob waiting impatiently to get across the Hudson River. Some are on foot, others in carriages and wagons. The ferries leave on the quarter hour, regular as clockwork. They have flat decks so you can drive straight aboard, and big steam-driven paddles on either side.
At the sounding of a steam whistle the gate opens and a man shouts, “All aboard!”
Ten minutes later, wagons and horses and all, we’re bound for Jersey City.
The river is thick with ferryboats and steamships and sailboats of every size. Looks like the whole world is on the move, crossing that water. Behind us the island of Manhattan starts to fade away, until it looks like it’s made of fog and sticks. The puffs of gray smoke tooting out of the ferryboat smokestack reminds me of Uncle Squint’s clay pipe. Makes me wonder if he misses us. Most likely he misses all the work we did.
Strange as it may seem, I sort of miss the farm. The barn that was our home, and Bob the horse, and Bess and Floss the milk cows. Can’t say as I miss Squint himself in particular. No surprise there. The real surprise is waiting on the dock in New Jersey, standing tall in his new blue uniform.
My brother, Harold, big as life.
SOON AS THE FERRY BUMPS the pier I’m off and running, thinking this surely is my lucky day. My adventures have barely begun and already I’ve found my big brother! It wasn’t so bad, just an abduction or two, and being robbed and thrown in with the pigs, and joining the Caravan of Miracles, and being boiled by Indians.
Already I’m improving the story in my mind, with the purpose of making Harold laugh. He don’t laugh that much, being a serious-minded person, but when he does, it feels like someone gave you a silver dollar, because it’s bright and shiny and rings true. I come all this way just to hear it.
“Harold! Harold! It’s me, Homer!”
I fight my way through a sea of young men in new uniforms. Dark blue, four-button coats and sky blue trousers and forage caps, and each man with a black canvas haversack to carry his food. Most of the Union Army seems to be milling about, waiting for trains to take them south. It’s like a blue wool forest that smells of sweat and boot polish.
Figure if I can get to Harold before he gets on a war train we can fix it so he don’t have to go. We being me and Professor Fleabottom, since he knows men in the army and can maybe help us.
“Harold! Harold!”
At last he turns to my voice.
Up close, the face is wrong. My stomach flip-flops something awful and I nearly trip and fall, because it ain’t Harold. It’s another boy who could be him, on account of his size and the way he stands.
“You’re … not … Harold!” I say, stopping to catch my breath.
“Private Thomas Finch, Fifteenth Massachusetts,” he says, voice cracking.
“Sorry. Looking for my brother. Harold Figg. Of Pine Swamp, Maine.”
Private Finch shakes his head. “I believe the Maine regiments that mustered here have gone ahead. Your brother may be among them.”
“Okay,” I pant, blinking the sweat from my eyes. “Thanks.”
I’m about to go find Professor Fleabottom and the wagons, when I’m struck by inspiration. “Private Finch,” I say, turning back to tug at his stiff woolen sleeve. “If you happen to come across Harold Figg of Pine Swamp, Maine, would you please tell him to get on home? His little brother, Homer, is dying. Will you tell him that?”
“If I meet him, certainly,” says Private Finch. “But it is a big war. How will I know him?”
“Looks a lot like you, except Harold is slightly taller and stronger and better looking.”
“Is that a fact?” says Private Finch with a toothy grin. “I’ll see what I can do, Homer. You are Homer Figg, right?”
I shrug. “Maybe I am.”
“Never mind that. Will you tell him?”
“Of course.”
After glancing around and grinning to himself, he snaps me a fine salute. “Thank you, Homer Figg. I am reminded to write a letter to my own dear little brother, who is slightly taller and stronger and better looking than you, and who would no doubt fake his own death to have me safe at home.”
He melts away into the blue wool forest.
A moment later the tattooed lady has me by the collar. She’s puffing like I am, from fighting her way through the crowd.
“Thought we’d lost you, boy!” She tips up my chin, looks me in the eye. “What’s this, have you been crying?”
I shake my head and she knows enough to say no more.
THAT EVENING THE CARAVAN of Miracles puts on the first show since I joined the company. We’re ten hard miles from the terminal in Jersey City, in low, weedy country not far from the sea, and come upon an army encampment. Must be a hundred white canvas tents set up in the tall grass, and the sound of rolling gunfire and shouting men just over the horizon.
“Is there a battle?” I want to know, standing up in my seat to see better. “Is this the war?”
“The war is still some great distance away,” Professor Fleabottom explains. “These are new recruits, training to fight.”
We set up our wagons in a little area surrounded by sandy bluffs, which he says is to keep us from the wind, but which also means we’re hard to see if you don’t know where to look.
“A medicine show is not always welcomed by the generals,” he tells me. “They think it distracts from the business of war. Whereas we believe that these young men deserve a bit of fun at the end of a long, hard day. Thus we strive to entertain, but with the utmost discretion.”
The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg Page 8