"Now I can stop worrying that Sandor Eucalyptus will catch up with me and pick my pocket, or pull a gun on me," I said. "What do you think about that stuff about a hero defeating the powers of evil and the world ceasing to exist?"
"Well, legends always have stuff like that in them," Seamus said. "It sounds good. But there's obviously something magical about the turtle, and Melvin the shaman did give it to you."
"He also said to take care of it," I said. "I wonder if that meant I should keep it on my person, or just keep it safe. I took a chance that he meant to keep it safe—and I think it's safer where I put it."
"We could ask Sergeant Caleb for an opinion," Seamus Finn said. "He already knows about the turtle. You want to do that?"
"No, I think I did the right thing," I said. "Let's keep it between ourselves, and trust no one."
CHAPTER 36
A Car Ride
Saturday morning, outside the Hitching Post, Al Crane asked us, "Well, what's it going to be? The movies, or are you coming with us?"
"You asked us every day at school," I said. "We're coming with you."
"Great!" Al said. "Come up to the apartment. I'll show you my stuff and you can meet my parents. We'll be leaving soon."
We went across the street, through a little door, and up a flight of stairs. Al's apartment was above the shoe store. He had an excellent collection of comics, and some good model airplanes. There were lots of paintings of clowns on all the walls. His parents were friendly—father sort of fat, and mother sort of thin.
"Have you had your breakfast, boys?" Mrs. Crane asked.
We had, but she insisted we have a doughnut apiece anyway.
"I'm bringing some comics to read in the car," Al said.
"Let's roll. Time's a-wasting," Al's father said.
It was a big green sedan. There was plenty of room in the back, and the three of us read comics, looked out the windows, punched one another, and made funny noises, while Al's mother and father talked to each other in the front seat. It was a nice day, and we were driving way out in the country. We were all in a good mood.
We got into an area where there were nice-looking little farms, barns, fenced fields, little farmhouses, some cattle here and there, and horses. "We'll be there pretty soon," Al said.
"To where your father works," I said.
"Right," Al said.
"It's a farm?" I asked.
"Sort of."
I was looking at a neat farmhouse, white with a red roof, and grazing next to it, where you might see a cow or a donkey, was a llama. I was just going to mention that when Al's father turned the car into the long driveway. In the distance, I saw a couple of camels.
"We're here!" Al said.
"Where your father works," I said.
"Right."
"Is that an elephant?" I asked.
"That's Big Louise," Al said.
"This is where your father works?"
"Yes."
"As a business manager?"
"Right."
"Of?"
"Of the Gibbs Brothers Circus," Al said. "The second-biggest circus in the world. This is the winter quarters—they keep all the animals here and train them up for the season. Circuses only travel in the summertime."
Seamus Finn had an expression of complete surprise and complete happiness. I must have looked the same way.
Mr. Crane pulled the car up in front of the farmhouse. "Okay, boys, we're turning you loose. Listen for the lunch bell, and don't upset the animals too much."
"Let's go and see if they're working with the cats," Al said. "I like the cats best."
Al led us to a big cage, as big as a basketball court. Inside there was a guy wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, with a pistol in a holster, holding a whip—and eight lions.
"That's Fred, the assistant lion tamer," Al said. "Of course, in the show the lion act is done by Clive Montague. Fred does the training, though. It's not really taming—they're wild lions—he just trains them."
"Oh, hi, Al," Fred said. He walked up to the bars and Al introduced us. The lions were all sitting on drum-shaped platforms. "How are you doing at school? See my new lion over there? This is his first week. His name is Ferdinand."
While Al was talking with us through the bars, one of the lions dropped down off his platform and came across the cage, fast, right at Fred. Before any of us could say a word, Fred spun around, pulled out his pistol, and fired a shot. The lion stopped. Fred cracked his whip. "Get back up there, Ferdinand," he said in a calm, friendly voice. Ferdinand looked confused. Fred took a step toward him. Ferdinand took a step back. "Be a good boy—get on your perch," Fred said. Ferdinand did it.
"It's blanks in the gun," Al said. "Just to get their attention. And he never hits them with the whip either, just pops it."
"I have to get back to work, boys," Fred said. "I'll see you at lunch. Hang around if you like."
Seamus Finn and I were in a state of extreme joy. Also amazement. The amazement was mostly at Al Crane. Here he was in a school where everybody was the son of a big shot and all they did was brag about their fathers. Crane was the only kid whose father actually had a job anyone would be impressed by, and he never said anything about it. We knew without his saying anything that we were not to mention any of this when we got back to Brown-Sparrow.
"Hey, is that Al?" someone was shouting. "If you have a minute, come over here and help me out! Bring those other kids with you." It was Bobby, the elephant trainer, big fat guy, sort of like an elephant himself. After introductions were made, he explained what he wanted. "I need riders. It would be a big help if you kids would ride these elephants for me. If you don't mind."
We didn't mind. Al knew all about how to ride, and how to steer, an elephant—and he showed Seamus and me what to do.
"Just take them all around the farm," Bobby said. "Practice right turns and left turns, and backing up. Don't let them get away with anything—they'll take advantage of you if they can."
My elephant's name was Sadie, and while she was lifting me up onto her head, with her trunk under my sneaker, I had a look into her wise brown eye and fell deeply and forever in love. She fell in love with me at the same moment. I don't know how I knew that, but I did. It's that way with elephants and a lot of animals. They know right away if you're a friend of theirs. I spent that morning being in the one place on earth I wanted to be, swaying on top of Sadie, telling her to go left and right and back—and she was just as happy as I was, moving through the fields of the Gibbs Brothers Circus winter quarters. Al told me later that if I didn't see Sadie for another ten years, she would remember me, and we would still be friends whenever we met again.
CHAPTER 37
Death
We had lunch in the farmhouse. All the trainers and animal keepers and farm workers were there, along with Al's mother and father, and us three kids. There was a big kitchen, with a long table, and that's where we ate. The cook, Miss Mildred, had been a circus cook for fifty years, and she was great. There must have been fifteen or twenty different dishes, plus three kinds of pie, and everything was good. All the workers were strong-looking guys, and they disussed how the training was going, and told stories about the animals. Some of them had really neat scars, and they told about how they had gotten them. I sort of wished I had a scar from being clawed by a tiger or a bear.
"You know, I work with the circus in the summertime," Al said. "I get paid and everything."
Seamus and I admired Al like crazy. He had the best life of any kid we had ever heard of.
At the end of the meal, the men wandered off, back to work, and Al took Seamus and me out to see more things around the place. We saw a couple of guys leading a nice old brown horse. They took it down into a little pasture with a tree in the middle. Under the tree, one of them took out a pistol, and shot the horse in the head! It pitched over, dead! I felt all cold and sweaty all of a sudden, and like I was going to lose my lunch. Seamus was looking white.
The men had picked
up tools that were leaning against the tree and were busy cutting up the nice old horse that had been alive a couple of minutes ago.
My mouth was dry, and my voice sounded funny to me.
"They ... killed that horse," I said.
"I don't like it either," Al said. "But what did you think lions eat? You want to go see them get fed?"
"Please, no," Seamus said. "I mean, no, thanks. Can we go hang out with the elephants some more?"
"Yes, can we do that?" I asked.
CHAPTER 38
It's a School
Brown-Sparrow seemed different after visiting the Gibbs Brothers Circus winter quarters with Al Crane. For one thing, I was more aware of the way Al was treated by the other cadets. Everybody was polite to everybody, and I can't say they were mean to him—but it was clear that he didn't count as much as some of the other kids, the ones whose fathers were famous movie stars, or big men in the movie studios, or just very rich. They didn't ask Al's opinion about things, or listen when he talked. It was subtle—the way they stood when he was around, sort of not making a space for him in the group. If I had asked anybody, they would have said he was a good kid, and they liked him, but I knew they didn't think he was very important.
It didn't seem to bother Al—but why would it? He rode elephants, and knew lion tamers, and worked in the circus. To him, the other cadets must have seemed fairly silly. Of course, neither Seamus nor I ever said a word about the circus, and keeping that secret made us separate from the other cadets, and being separate made us look at them slightly differently.
Then there was the military thing. The every-body-looking-alike thing. This went beyond looking sharp on the parade ground. There was a feeling you were supposed to be a certain kind of person.
I was all right, of course, because I was friends with Finn and his father was a big actor. But if it weren't for that, I thought, I would probably have been treated the same as Crane.
One of the kids in my class, Stover, said to me, "You know, they watch people like you." I didn't ask him what he meant—it just gave me an icky feeling. Stover was a corporal—the highest rank of anybody in our class. He was always kissing up to teachers, older cadets, higher ranks. I knew if he ever saw me breaking a rule he would turn me in. He was the one watching me. He knew that I could be a rule breaker.
I still liked the school. Miss Magistra was a good teacher, and class was always fun. I liked the marching and the military stuff too, especially the band. Seamus was in the junior band, not the one that played on the parade ground—and he really wanted to get good enough to be promoted. The school had a great hobby shop in the basement, with all the tools anyone would want, and balsa wood, and glue, and plastic, and paint, all free of charge. Seamus and Al and I often spent time there after school, working on our model airplanes. There was even a hobby shop teacher, Mr. Resnek, the mechanical drawing teacher, a nice guy who was there from two to five every day and would help cadets with their projects.
Brown-Sparrow had a lot of good points. What I was realizing was that it just wasn't a warm and cuddly sort of place—but maybe that's how a military school is supposed to be.
The only other person, besides Seamus and Al, who seemed to understand my mixed feelings about the place was Sergeant Caleb, who I was pretty sure was really Melvin the shaman—only, how could he have been? Sometimes he would say things to me when I walked past his post at the gate, sort of as if he were breaking into my thoughts. "There are idiots wherever you go, Wentworthstein," he might say, out of a clear sky. Other times, he would say things like "Put your hat on straight, Wentworthstein" or "Don't slouch, Wentworthstein—you're walking like an armadillo."
CHAPTER 39
One Night at Home
"How are things going at school?" my father wanted to know.
"It's good. It's good, Dad. It's a good school."
"Neddie is doing well in class, and the cadets like him," Seamus Finn said. "I'll be happy to clean the parakeet cage after supper."
"You're a fine boy, Seamus," my mother said.
"I need you to sign a permission slip so I can be in a play," Eloise said.
"I found a new supermarket, just three blocks away," my mother said. "That's where I got these lamb chops."
We had gradually stopped being visitors and tourists and were simply a family living in Los Angeles. My father had taken to going around and visiting shoelace dealers, and shoelace warehouses, and shoe stores that sold shoelaces. He had also made friends with a guy who worked for the costume department at one of the movie studios and specialized in authentic period and historical shoelaces—he had a sort of shoelace museum in his house, and owned a shoelace that had belonged to Robert E. Lee. My father had mentioned that maybe he would ask to borrow it, to put in a display case, if he should open a West Coast office of Wentworthstein Shoelaces.
My mother spent her days rearranging the furniture, buying things we needed, and talking to ladies she met at the market and around the Hermione Hotel. "There is a very nice family living here," she said. "They have a daughter who's Seamus and Neddie's age. I told them we would watch television with them in the lobby this evening."
There was a television set in the lobby of the Hermione. It was a fancy lobby, 1920s-style, with lots of comfortable furniture. The television set was coin operated—you dropped a quarter in the slot and got a half-hour. Back in Chicago, Ronnie Wolfspit's parents had gotten a television set shortly before we left, and several times we had been invited over to watch. Everybody sat in the living room and squinted at the little screen, and Ronnie Wolfspit's mother served snacks. It was the first television set I had seen in private hands, though I had seen one on a trip to a museum.
My father said that his friend in the movie business, the shoelace collector, had told him the studios were worried that with television catching on the way it was, the movies would go broke. I couldn't see that happening until someone invented a television with a screen bigger than ten inches.
CHAPTER 40
Watching TV with the Birnbaums
When we went down to the lobby, the family my mother had met were already in place before the pay TV set. The mother was a neatly dressed little woman about my mother's age. The daughter looked to be the same age as Seamus and me, but taller—she had on a frilly dress, those black shoes that girls wear with the little strap that goes across, and a ribbon that went over the top of her head. She had blond hair, and she looked like one of those girls who thinks boys are icky, and cries a lot, and worries about getting her clothes dirty. The father was a good deal older than my father, had flowing white hair, and was really handsome. Seamus and I recognized him at once—it was Captain Buffalo Birnbaum, one of the great old-time cowboy actors! Captain Buffalo Birnbaum was the real McCoy—he had been a real cowboy, a real marshal, and an officer in the United States Cavalry, and he was a famous expert on Indian cultures and languages. Even Seamus, whose own father was a famous movie star, and who had grown up going to birthday parties at movie stars' houses, was impressed to meet Captain Buffalo Birnbaum.
"These are the Birnbaums," my mother said. "Nancy, Captain Buffalo, and little Yggdrasil." Yggdrasil is pronounced "Ig-druh-sil."
"Do people call you Iggy?" I asked little Yggdrasil.
"Yes, they do—once. Then I pop them in the nose. Care to give it a try, military school boy?" little Yggdrasil said.
Appearances can be deceiving.
"I think you may know my father," Seamus said to Captain Buffalo Birnbaum.
"Aaron Finn! I see the resemblance. I taught him to ride," Captain Buffalo Birnbaum said. "Nice young fellow." Captain Buffalo Birnbaum had a steely gaze, a straight nose, thin lips, and a powerful jaw. You got the impression that everything he said was true, and that if a grizzly bear suddenly appeared in the hotel lobby he would have dealt with it without breaking a sweat. "I've already fed the television a quarter," Captain Buffalo Birnbaum said to my father. "The next round is yours."
We settled down to w
atching. It was a variety program—people got up and sang, and there were comedy skits, and a lousy ventriloquist. I was bored in five minutes.
"This stinks," Yggdrasil Birnbaum said. "Come on," she said to Seamus and me. "Let's look around the hotel."
We left the grownups watching television and followed Yggdrasil to the back of the lobby, where there was a little door. It was locked. Yggdrasil looked over her shoulder and took a key out of her pocket. "This is a master key—it opens every door in the place," she said. She opened the door, and we slipped through, into a sort of utility space behind the lobby.
"We've lived here for years," Yggdrasil said. "This hotel is old. Used to be a hot address in the silent movie days, when my father first came to Hollywood. Now it's just apartments, so lots of it isn't used anymore. There are rooms and rooms closed up and nobody ever goes there. And it has ghosts. You have a problem with ghosts?"
"We have a personal friend who's a ghost," Seamus Finn said.
"I'll show you the restaurant," Yggdrasil Birnbaum said.
She led us down a hallway and unlocked another door. When Yggdrasil switched on the light, we saw a whole restaurant, with chairs and tables, and fancy chandeliers, and lots of fancy woodwork, weird-looking arches, and snakey-looking decorations. "It's Moorish," Yggdrasil said. "Moorish and Arabian stuff was a big fad. There was this movie where Rudolph Valentino played an Arab sheik—huge movie, and the whole country went crazy for this kind of decor. Valentino lived in this hotel. Sometimes I do my homework in here."
"What a neat place!" Seamus said.
"Isn't it?" Yggdrasil said.
Yggdrasil told us there was a second swimming pool, and tennis courts, out behind the hotel and hidden by weeds and bushes, and also a bowling alley.
"And there are secret rooms that got closed off when they remodeled. You have to go in through the windows. I might show you sometime. Also, I have a lot of fireworks hidden away—just waiting for the right time to set them off. But that's enough of you two for now. Let's go back and see what the adults are doing."
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