The guy behind the checkout desk stood. He didn’t say a word. He just glared at me and made a circling motion with one beefy finger. He pointed at the door I’d just come in.
“Huh?”
Still wordless, he kept pointing. Boy, he really took “quiet in the library” to a whole new level.
Finally, I got it. “Oh,” I said. I backed out the door, then walked in. “Better?”
He just glared.
By this time, Ben and Olive were nowhere in sight. I turned in a complete circle, scanning the place—the adult department, the reference desk, the kids’ section where the graphic novels were shelved. I wondered briefly if the library had gotten any new titles…then quickly came to my senses. I looked over at the checkout guy. “Did a little girl with frizzy red hair come by here with Ben Fra—I mean, a guy who looks like Ben Franklin?”
He pointed down the hall toward the meeting room.
I walked down the hall and pushed open the door.
The room was packed with people sitting on folding chairs. At the front Mrs. Bustamante stood beside Ben. Behind them hung a banner that read:
I stood there, confused. What was going on? Then it hit me: Mrs. Bustamante and the others thought Ben was an impersonator. The wrong one, but still a Founding Father. And they expected him to give a program.
“Nolan! Hey, Nolan!” Olive waved at me from the second row, using a couple of library flyers as if they were pom-poms. She patted the empty chair next to her. “This is fun, isn’t it? Ben’s going to put on a show.”
I sat down next to her. “No, this is not fun,” I groaned. “This is definitely not fun.”
Mrs. Bustamante twirled up to the microphone. “Thank you all for coming to yet another presentation in our ongoing American history series. In past weeks we’ve met the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic and the homespun president who ended slavery. Today we make another historical acquaintance. Perhaps not the one we’d hoped for, but…well…without further ado, ladies and gentlemen…” She extended her arm toward Ben. “Meet Ben Franklin.”
The audience clapped.
Mrs. Bustamante nudged him toward the podium.
And Ben swept off his hat. “I confess I had not expected to address such a learned meeting when I arrived in the twenty-first century.”
The audience laughed. If only they knew it wasn’t a joke.
“Books and libraries are marvelous things,” continued Ben. “It is like I always say, reading makes a full man.”
“Abraham Lincoln said exactly the same thing last week,” a woman in the first row piped up.
“Abraham who?” said Ben. He shrugged. “Whoever he is, he stole that saying from me.”
The audience laughed again.
Olive jumped to her feet. “How about another story, Ben? About colonial days.”
The grown-ups around us smiled. It was like they actually thought my bigmouthed sister was cute or something.
Ben looked around the room. “It seems,” he said, smiling, “that I have a story suitable for this very occasion.”
And once again, as he talked, my mind filled with pictures.
I swear, Ben’s stories were almost as good as The Pirate’s Blood. The audience must have thought so too. They clapped and whistled like crazy.
“I’d almost believe it was Ben himself,” gushed the first-row woman to the man sitting beside her.
The man grumbled. “He’s too thin. And that hat makes him look like he’s wearing a squirrel.”
Mrs. Bustamante nodded in agreement.
I sat up taller in my seat. Maybe our secret was safe after all.
The door banged open. A man wearing a white wig, short pants, and a pair of loafers with fake buckles glued to them rushed in. “Sorry I’m late,” he panted. “I got caught in traffic.”
Mrs. Bustamante did a double take.
So did the audience.
So did both Founding Fathers.
“Who’s that guy?” asked Olive.
“Mr. Jefferson!” Mrs. Bustamante exclaimed.
I slid back down in my seat.
Thomas Jefferson pointed an accusing finger at Ben. “Hey, this is my gig. That guy’s a poser!”
Ben raised his eyebrows. “Good sir, I am standing, not posing.”
Jefferson took out a piece of paper and handed it to the library director. “Proof that I am who I say I am.”
Mrs. Bustamante scanned the paper. “This is the talent agency’s contract. But if you are you, who”—she turned to Ben—“are you?”
“An imposter impersonator!” cried Jefferson. “And a sad imitation. Just look at that costume. It’s all wrong!”
At the podium, Ben’s mouth quirked up at the corners, and his eyes twinkled. He sounded on the verge of giggling when he asked, “And what, sir, might be improper about my…costume?”
“The stockings. The jacket. That ridiculous beaver hat.”
“I thought it was squirrel,” said Mrs. Bustamante.
“Marten,” Ben corrected her. “It is marten fur.”
Jefferson snorted. “Benjamin Franklin never owned a marten fur hat in his life. You evidently know nothing about that great man.”
Ben stepped out from behind the podium. “You have convinced me, Tom, that you have a superior grasp of colonial America. Therefore, I concede the floor to you.”
The audience buzzed as Ben sat down on the other side of me. “I shall listen from here with rapt attention.”
“Yes…well…good,” said Jefferson with a sniff.
“After all, it is ill manners to silence a fool,” added Ben under his breath. He crossed his arms over his chest, ready to listen.
Jefferson pulled a stack of note cards from his breeches pocket. He cleared his throat. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he began.
“We should really go,” I whispered to Ben. Now seemed like our best chance to slip away. Mrs. Bustamante couldn’t yell at us, or call the police, in front of a room full of people.
We stood.
But just then, Mrs. Bustamante stepped up to the microphone. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Jefferson, but we’re out of time.”
“Wait…I…,” stammered Jefferson.
She continued. “Still, I hope you’ll all return next week to meet John Adams.”
“I already have,” said Ben.
“Now I invite everyone to join us for lemonade and cookies in the youth service department,” she concluded.
Her announcement cleared the room out pretty quick.
“Come on,” I urged.
“But cookies!” said Olive.
Oh, brother.
I hustled them both past the glaring man at the front desk, out the door, and down the stairs.
I didn’t relax until we reached the sidewalk.
“Not so fast, you three,” shouted Mrs. Bustamante. She rushed down the stairs after us.
“I think we should run now,” suggested Olive.
But the librarian was smiling. “I just wanted to say thank you to, er…Mr. Franklin.” She turned to him. “You were marvelous. Absolutely marvelous.”
Ben bowed his thanks.
She pulled Olive and me aside. “How long has your grandfather been like this?” she asked, her eyes full of sympathy.
Ben overheard her. “About three hundred years,” he replied.
And with that, we left Mrs. Bustamante standing there, her mouth opening and shutting.
WE HEADED TOWARD HOME, Ben poking his nose everywhere like a hound dog on a scent.
Cars. Bicycles. Sprinklers. Stoplights. Parking meters. Skateboards. Basketball hoops. Streetlamps. Trash cans. Motorcycles. Street signs. Lawn mowers. A fire hydrant. A Labradoodle sniffing the fire hydrant. Swing sets. Barbecue grills. Bermuda grass.
Across Tremont Street, two girls pointed at him and laughed. A passing car slowed and honked. A man carrying a grocery bag stared.
“Can we hurry it along?” I asked.
“Haste makes wa
ste,” said Ben.
We turned the corner. Rolling Hills Elementary came into view.
“Is this where you attend school, lad?” asked Ben.
“We both go here,” Olive butted in. “I’m going into second grade.”
“You both go? Boys and girls? Together?” Ben raised his eyebrows. “In my day, only boys attend school. Girls are taught at home.”
Olive made a face. “That stinks.”
“I am curious,” Ben went on. “Do boys and girls learn the same subjects? Latin, geography, diction?”
“Math, science, reading,” I said. “Social studies…”
“Swimming,” added Olive.
“That’s day camp, not school,” I corrected her.
“So what? I’m learning it, aren’t I?” She turned to Ben. “Someday I’m going to be as good a swimmer as mermaid princess Aquamarina.”
“Swimming lessons!” exclaimed Ben. “Imagine that.”
We crossed Kenton Avenue.
“I have long advocated the benefits of swimming,” Ben went on, “although, back home, the activity is considered dangerous and unsanitary. Few people know how to swim. But I love it. I once even considered starting my own swimming school.”
“You swim?” I asked. Ben didn’t exactly look like an athlete.
“Miles at a time,” he replied. “I taught myself as a boy from a book called The Art of Swimming. Besides the basic strokes, I learned a number of tricks.” He smiled. “And I invented a few of my own.”
As he continued to talk, pictures started popping into my mind.
“You know what we should do?” cried Olive when Ben finished.
Oh geez, uh-uh, no way. She better not say it.
“Let’s go swimming!”
She said it.
And then she took off down the sidewalk.
THE THREE OF US stood outside the tall fence that surrounded the community pool. From the other side came the sounds of splashing and laughter and the sharp tweeeeet of the lifeguards’ whistles.
Ben peeked over the chain links. “A pond made especially for swimming. What an extraordinary idea!” he exclaimed.
“It’s called a swimming pool,” said Olive.
“We are not going in,” I said. “We are absolutely not swimming.”
“Why not?” asked Olive.
I pointed at Ben. “Time travel? Return trip? Famous dead guy? Does any of that ring a bell?”
“But I want to swim with B-e-e-e-n,” she whined.
I tried a different argument. “You’re not wearing a bathing suit.”
“Sure I am. See?” Olive lifted her T-shirt to reveal her sparkly purple one-piece underneath. “Mermaids always wear their bathing suits.”
“What a coincidence,” said Ben. “So do I. During hot summer months I prefer to don my bathing garment rather than underclothes. One never knows, after all, when one may be struck with the urge to strip off one’s clothing and plunge into the water.”
Olive nodded. “I know, right?”
“One must be prepared for every opportunity,” said Ben.
“Totally,” agreed Olive.
Oh, brother.
Olive went around to the entrance. We followed.
The bored teenager at the front desk didn’t bother to look up from her phone. “Pass?”
“Right here,” said Olive. She pulled it out of her back pocket. “Olive and Nolan Stanberry…and one guest.”
I guess mermaids always carry their pool passes too.
Still ogling her phone, the teenager waved us in.
“Meet you on the other side,” said Olive as she headed into the girls’ locker room.
Ben and I went into the boys’.
Maybe, I hoped, without his goofy colonial clothes, no one would recognize him. Maybe he’d look like any other old guy in a bathing suit.
“Oh, this is a jolly lark,” said Ben as he kicked off his buckled shoes and peeled off his knee-high stockings.
I wrinkled my nose. Here’s a fact you won’t find in the history books: Benjamin Franklin had stinky feet.
Oh, and knobby knees.
He stripped down to his “bathing garment.”
My mouth fell open.
His trunks, if you could call them that, had flowers on them. Big red flowers. And that wasn’t the worst part. They reached to his knees, and were trimmed in…lace. Inch-wide, ruffly lace. It made his suit look like a pair of ladies’ long underwear.
Ben saw me staring. “My wife, Deborah, sewed this to my exact specifications,” he said, patting his potbelly. “I am pleased to say it is waterproof and seam-tight.”
“Boy, am I glad to hear that,” I said.
We padded out to the pool area. Everyone was there. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. About a million kids from school were splashing, diving, and floating around on inflatable rings. Brian Golladay and a couple of other guys from my class were goofing around by the showers, snapping towels at one another and basically acting like dorks. When they saw Ben they stopped. One of the guys pointed. They all started laughing.
“Hey, Stanberry!” C. J. McCabe called from the concession line. “What’s the matter? You forget to wear your tablecloth?”
The two girls standing behind him started to giggle.
“This is all your fault,” I said to Olive, who had emerged from the locker room.
“They’re just meanies.” She dropped her pile of clothes next to Ben’s on a lounge chair.
All eyes were on Ben as he and Olive headed for the water.
Oblivious to the pointing and staring, he stood at the pool’s edge. He did a series of knee bends. Down, then up, down, then up, with great big gusts of breath and lots of creaking joints. “For the blood, Nolan,” he shouted to where I sat hunched on the lounge chair. “And for the muscles.”
I could feel my reputation plunging toward geekdom with every knee bend.
Behind me the guys snickered.
Next Ben windmilled his arms above his head. Then he flapped them behind his back and in front of his belly.
“It’s a bird….It’s a plane….It’s Bloomer Man!” hooted C.J.
The girls giggled again.
Ben waded into the deep water and dove.
From where I sat, all I could see were the bobbing heads and flapping arms of the other swimmers, then—
“Ahhhhh!”
Ben burst from the water like a dolphin. He streaked up…up…up…until almost all of his body was out of the water. For a single second he seemed to hang there, before curving gracefully to his right and slipping back below the surface without even the tiniest splash.
“Oooh, he’s a mermaid,” squealed Olive.
“Whoa!” cried C.J. “Did you see that?”
Kids began moving away from the center of the pool, giving Ben room.
A moment later, his legs rose out of the water. Just his legs. They scissored, toes pointed. Then they disappeared to be replaced by Ben’s head and chest. He spiraled, his arms held gracefully above his head.
Everyone moved to the sides of the pool to watch. It was like a scene from one of those old black-and-white movies where some couple starts whirling all around the dance floor, and everyone else clears out of the way to stare and cheer.
With the pool to himself, Ben went crazy. He did upside-down splits and corkscrew twists. He spun on his back in tight circles and did leg lifts, backward rolls, handstands, and somersaults. Finally, he swam over to where Olive sat with her feet dangling in the water.
“Is that mermaid swimming?” asked Olive.
“Stunt swimming,” said Ben. “It is quite invigorating. And exceedingly healthful. In just minutes one can work all one’s muscles.”
“Will you teach me?” asked Olive.
“It would be my pleasure,” said Ben.
“And me?” asked David Nichols, who was sitting next to her.
“And me too?” asked his friend Jeter Smolensky.
“The more the merrie
r,” said Ben.
They gathered in the shallow end of the pool.
“We shall begin by learning to scull and flutter,” said Ben.
Within minutes, he had them spinning on their backs while floating.
“I wanna learn that,” cried C.J.
He jumped in and joined Ben’s group.
So did Brian and the other guys from my class, as well as the girls from the concession stand and the two lifeguards.
Even a group of grown-ups got off their towels and waded in. This was sort of amazing, considering most parents only came to the pool to chat with other parents and catch up on their reading. Until that day, I’d never seen one put more than his or her foot in the pool. But now there they were, learning to scull and flutter, spiral and scissor.
Soon both kids and grown-ups were floating in circle formations. Spreading their arms wide, they held one another’s hands, then stuck their left legs in the circle’s middle so their toes touched. On Ben’s count, they gracefully lifted their legs into the air.
“Like a blossoming flower,” instructed Ben. “That’s it. Lovely, lovely!”
Next, they rested their left ears against their left shoulders and glided all together to their left. They switched, and glided all together to their right. They switched again…left. They switched again…right.
“By Poseidon’s blessing, this is enchanting indeed!” cried Ben.
They rose and dove. They learned pinwheels, paddle kicks, pliés, and flips.
“Cross your ankles thusly,” coached Ben. “Swivel your torsos.”
Arms and legs waved. Tummies and torsos waggled. It looked like some crazy kind of water ballet.
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