Hit the Road, Manny: A Manny Files Novel

by Christian Burch

  The woman walked from behind the counter, and I noticed that she had on ruby red slippers just like Dorothy’s. She also had two braids in her long gray hair. I’ve never seen somebody that old wear braids in her hair. Buns yes, but not braids.

  “Glamour Don’t,” India whispered into my ear from behind me.

  The woman with the braids said, “Well, L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Chesterton way back in 1900. We even have a festival every year to celebrate. People come from all over the world and dress up as the characters. I always go as Dorothy. The festival is Chesterton’s claim to fame.” And she clicked the heels of her ruby red shoes.

  Our town doesn’t have a “claim to fame” unless you count the streaker every year at the fair. Every year during the final rodeo a man strips naked and runs across the arena with the police chasing him. The audience laughs and cheers, but there are always letters to the editor about it in the newspaper the next week. Lulu wrote one about how nudity is inappropriate anywhere but the shower. It got published, and Lulu cut it out and put it in her achievement scrapbook right next to the results of her eye test: 20/20.

  The woman went back behind the counter because Mom was going to pay her for a T-shirt she had picked out for Belly. I suggested to Mom that she get Belly the one that said “Wicked Little Witch,” and Mom told me I was being “catty.” She told Uncle Max he was catty once when he pointed at her puffy-sleeved dress and told her that the eighties were over. I think “catty” must mean “clever and funny.”

  Mom didn’t buy Belly the T-shirt that I suggested. She got one that said “I Represent the Lollipop Guild” in big rainbow-colored letters. The manny bought a bag of candy corn. Candy corn doesn’t have anything to do with The Wizard of Oz, but he loves them. I bought postcards.

  We thanked the museum woman and walked out onto the yellow-brick-road sidewalk. Belly didn’t walk. Dad had to carry her kicking and screaming away from the television. She was pretending to cry, but there weren’t any real tears. Mom laughed when I said that she really should have gotten Belly that other shirt.

  When we were in our seats, the manny gave himself a hug and smiled and said, “It really is never too late to have a happy childhood.” Then he smiled at me, and he had the yellow parts of two candy corns stuck on his front two teeth like big yellow buckteeth. Then he added, “I hope you kids realize how fun being a kid is. It gets complicated when you get older.”

  Complicated is when things are confusing. The manny’s life doesn’t seem complicated at all. Maybe he was joking.

  Dad started the RV, and the manny put in a CD and turned it up. It was Elton John. He started waving out the window at the museum while the music played. “So good-bye yellow brick road. Where the dogs of society howl. You can’t plant me in your penthouse….” Belly was still screaming and crying, only now there were real tears running down her face and her bottom lip was pushed out and quivering. She was waving to the museum too.

  On a postcard with a picture of Glinda the Good Witch, I wrote to Uncle Max:

  Dear Uncle Max,

  We just visited the Wizard of Oz museum in Chesterton, Indiana. The drive is pretty boring, but Lulu reads out loud to us from To Kill a Mockingbird, and it makes it better. I don’t know how she doesn’t get carsick.

  The manny just choked on candy corn, but he’s okay now. Mom took away the bag.

  Because of the wonderful things he does,

  Keats Rufus Dalinger

  Dear Sarah,

  This is a picture of the Wizard of Oz museum. The lady who runs it is really nice. The manny asked her if she sold courage, but she said no. And he said, “Oh, that’s too bad, I have to get back into an RV with these lunatics.” She didn’t laugh. The manny said it’s because his sense of humor was too suffocated. I think that means when something is so funny that you laugh so hard you can’t breathe. Lulu said it was because it just wasn’t that funny. The manny threw water on Lulu to see if she would melt.

  She didn’t.

  Keats

  9Son of a Biscuit

  Belly stopped crying after a little while. Well actually, she cried herself to sleep, and she was still sniffling even though her eyes were closed. She had put on her Lollipop Guild T-shirt and had her thumb up next to her mouth like she was going to suck it, but she wasn’t. Lulu told Belly that sucking your thumb is for babies, but that’s not what made her quit doing it. She quit after India told her that sucking her thumb would give her buckteeth like a beaver. Belly stopped sucking her thumb immediately. Mom says that Belly is vain. She told me that vain is when you care too much about how you look.

  “Like when you wear that mud mask on your face to get rid of the lines around your eyes?” I asked her, touching the tiny little lines next to Mom’s eyes. She calls them crow’s-feet because it looks like a crow landed on her face and tried to scratch out her eyes with its feet.

  “No. That’s necessary hygiene, like brushing your teeth,” Mom said, slapping my hand away from her face. “Vain is more like when your uncle Max tries on jeans and asks the saleslady how the rearview is.”

  I’ve been with Uncle Max when he shops for jeans. If the saleslady answers his question with “Great!” or “Fantastic!” Uncle Max usually buys the jeans.

  Belly is really vain. She dresses herself for preschool and sometimes changes her clothes three times a day. The manny calls them costume changes between acts. He said that Madonna probably does that at home too. Belly puts on outfits and says things like, “HER LOOKS BEAUTIFUL,” and, “EVERYONE LOVES HER IN THIS PRINCESS DRESS.” She even wears a crown to preschool sometimes. Her teacher, Mrs. Read, says that the other kids treat Belly like she’s a real princess and ask if they can do things for her. Throw away her trash. Brush her hair. Carry her out to recess.

  Belly woke up when the manny started singing, “‘Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, not Louthiana, Parith, Franth, New York, or Rome.’” We were driving through Gary, Indiana, the town where The Music Man takes place. The Music Man is a musical that has a little redheaded boy with a lisp who pronounces an s like a th. I watched it with Uncle Max once. I pretended I had a lisp for a few days after that. I thought that it sounded kind of cool and cute. I stopped after I told Dad that I wanted “thpaghetti and meat thauth” for dinner and he said, “I tawt I taw a puddy tat. I did. I did tee a puddy tat,” like I was Sylvester the Cat.

  “You woke Belly up!” India squealed. “You’re going to get in trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for ‘pool’!” That’s another song from The Music Man.

  Mom and Dad didn’t care that the manny woke Belly up. We were almost to Chicago, where we were going to spend the next two nights, in a hotel instead of in the RV. Mom says that we’ll get plenty of time in the RV and we should stay in hotels when we get the chance. She says that it will help us keep from driving one another crazy. It’s too late for Lulu. She’s been watching her masking-taped-off area like a hawk. She even got mad at the manny because his feet smelled bad when he took his shoes off. They did smell a little bit bad, kind of like the feta cheese that Sarah’s mom uses to make Greek salad with. She gave the manny a warning and not a conduct mark. I don’t have any conduct marks so far either. I want to keep my record clean, even though it’s only Lulu. Mom says it’s because I’m a people pleaser. She says I inherited that from her and not from Dad. Dad has a conduct mark for singing “Come On Eileen” while we drove through the Dairy Queen drive-through. He also got a free Dilly bar from the drive-through lady because she thought he was charming. I want to be charming like Dad when I grow up. I love Dilly bars. The red ones.

  We’re staying at a hotel with an indoor/outdoor pool and with room service. I’ve never had room service. I almost did when I went to New York City with Grandma, but we went out to eat instead because Grandma wanted to show off her new shoes. When the hostess at the restaurant asked what name our reservation was under, Grandma said, “Manolo Blahnik,” then she shook her foot out in front of
her for the hostess to see. Manolo Blahnik is a kind of fancy shoe that Grandma had a pair of. The hostess laughed and showed off her own shoes. They were black slingbacks. Probably Prada. That’s what India said. She knows things like that.

  The reservation was really listed under “Keats Dalinger.” Grandma thought it would be fun for me to hear them call my name out at the restaurant like I was a grown-up. It would have been too, except they called out, “Kate Dalinger, reservation for three, Kate Dalinger. Do we have a Kate Dalinger?” India stood up, pointed at me, and said, “Kate’s right here.” She called me Kate for the rest of the night.

  “Kate, have you decided what you want for dinner?”

  “Kate, could you pass the salt?”

  “Oh, Kate, you have spinach stuck in your teeth.”

  She stopped calling me Kate after I told the waitress not to bring anything with dairy in it to India because it made her gassy and bloated. It wasn’t true, but it made India stop calling me Kate.

  Dad started grumbling when we finally reached Chicago. It was rush-hour traffic, and the cars were almost stopped on the freeway. People were honking their horns and pumping their fists into the air, which smelled like car exhaust and hot dogs.

  A white-haired lady in a navy blue Chevrolet was right next to us and motioned for my dad to roll down his window. When he rolled it down, the woman yelled, “Let me into your lane, you son of a biscuit!” Belly laughed and waved at the lady. She was really angry, but Dad slowed down and waved for her to move in front of him. She didn’t even wave and mouth “Thank you” like Mom does. Only, when Mom’s driving, she usually waves and mouths the word “Sorry.” Lots of people honk at Mom when she’s driving. Dad calls her a “weaver.”

  Dad looked flustered. His face was red, and you could see the vein on the side of his head that comes out when he has a bad day at work or during tax season. I saw the vein once when Belly had taken all the toilet paper in our house and thrown it into the trees to make a pretend winter wonderland. When he sent Belly to her room, she screamed, “YOU’RE NOT HER FRIEND ANYMORE!” and slammed her door so hard that it shook the pictures on the walls. She didn’t even come down for dinner. She fell asleep early and didn’t wake up until the next morning. It was like I was the youngest in the family again. Mom even read Goodnight Moon to me before I went to bed like she used to when I was little.

  The traffic was moving so slowly that I could see the people in their cars. One man in a silver Mercedes was reading the newspaper while he was driving. A car full of businessmen passed by with all of them on their cell phones, probably talking about stocks and bonbons. A red-haired lady in a Suburban drove past with five golden retrievers hanging out of the windows. She must really love dogs, because even her license plate said WOOF. She was singing really loudly to a song about being born to run. The manny recognized the song and said it was by the Boss.

  “The boss of what?” I asked.

  He didn’t know.

  The hotel was right off the interstate. Dad stretched his arms above his head and let out a big sigh. The vein faded away and his wrinkled forehead smoothed out. Dad parked, and Mom got out to go check into the hotel. Belly and I were too excited to stay in the RV, so we went in with her, trying to see the indoor/outdoor swimming pool. I held Belly’s hand so the woman at the front desk would think we were cute. Belly and I have gotten good at being cute. On airplanes, when the flight attendants think you’re cute, they give you wing pins or extra peanuts. At restaurants they bring you a box of crayons or a crown for your head. At banks they give you those little Dum Dum suckers. I always hold my Dum Dum sucker up next to Belly and say, “You’re such a dum-dum!” and then I claim to be talking to my sucker and not to Belly. She whines to Mom anyway.

  The hotel woman looked at us from behind the front desk and smiled while Mom signed some papers. I think she thought we were cute, because after she told Mom what rooms we would be in, she held a bowl of candy down for Belly and me to reach. It was the kind of candy that India calls “grandmother candy.” She says that grandmothers don’t usually have Swedish Fish or Sour Patch Kids in their purses. They usually have Brach’s red-and-white peppermints and yellow butterscotches, the kind that you scoop out of bins and put into little sacks at the grocery store. I took two butterscotch candies from the bowl, one for me and one for the manny. I made it look like I had taken only one by putting my whole hand over the bowl instead of using just my fingers. The lady didn’t notice. Mom would have noticed if she had been paying attention. She notices everything.

  Last year Mom even noticed when I tweezed my eyebrows. I saw a guy get his eyebrows tweezed on a makeover show on television. Someone showed him how to shape his eyebrows. He called it “contouring.” They also made him get his back waxed because he looked like he was getting attacked by squirrels. I hope I never have to get my back waxed. Tweezing my eyebrows hurt bad enough, and the guy screamed and almost started crying when they ripped the wax off his back. He did look better, though. Red and rashy, but better.

  Belly took a peppermint from the front-desk woman’s bowl. She winked at the woman and said, “THANKS, SON OF A BISCUIT!” Mom nearly signed her name all the way off the paper and onto the desktop.

  “Belly! Don’t talk that way!” Mom said with her “stern look.” That’s what Lulu calls it when Mom arches her eyebrows and purses her lips. Belly kept smiling at the lady like they were long-lost best friends. She even twinkled her eyes at her. She didn’t know that there was anything wrong with what she had said.

  The woman behind the front desk looked shocked, like she might put her hand up to her chest and say something like “Oh my” or “Why, I never,” but she didn’t say anything. She just put the bowl back where it belonged and frowned at me like we weren’t as cute as she first thought. Belly was still kind of cute, though. She had licked the peppermint and stuck it on her forehead. The manny taught her that trick.

  Mom mouthed the words “I’m sorry” to the woman, just like she does when she’s driving, and we walked out of the front doors to go get our luggage. When I looked back at the woman at the front desk, she smiled a fake smile at me, and her glasses were down half of her nose like she might call the police or the Department of Family Services when we were gone. They always call the Department of Family Services on the crime shows on television when the parents have to go to jail.

  I clenched my palm to hide the two pieces of candy.

  When I gave the manny his butterscotch candy, he licked it and stuck it on his forehead, just like Belly had done. I put my piece in the front pocket of my jeans to save for later. I love a hard candy after a meal. It cleanses the palate. I heard someone say that once.

  In the hotel room there were two postcards with a picture of the hotel on them. There was also a Chicago fact sheet that I copied onto Uncle Max’s postcard.

  Dear Uncle Max,

  Chicago is right next to Lake Michigan.

  The average temperature is 49.8 degrees.

  It gets an average of 33.18 inches of precipitation a year.

  Remember how Lulu wouldn’t go to the bathroom at home because she didn’t want to lose her seat? We stopped for her to go at a gas station, and when she got back to the RV, we were all stacked up in her seat on one another’s laps. Dad, the manny, Mom, India, me, and Belly. It was so funny that we all had to go in and use the restroom.

  …And all that jazz,

  Keats Rufus Dalinger

  Dear Sarah,

  You can swim inside and outside in the same pool at our hotel. You just have to swim under a wall. It’s so cool. The manny swam with us. Lulu was scared because when he went to get ready, he said, “Let me go put on my Speedo!” But he didn’t wear a Speedo. He wore red swim trunks. We ordered room service for dinner, and then we ordered chocolate malts as a late-night snack. My stomach kind of hurts. I love vacation.

  The manny says tomorrow he’s going to try to meet Oprah. She lives here, and the manny says he wants to marry her. Don
’t tell Uncle Max.

  Keats

  Her Was Being Good, Stupid!10

  Chicago is a busy city with lots of museums, parks, and shops. The sound of car horns is all you can hear, and at night you can’t see any stars, only blackness above the tall buildings. Mom and Dad looked through a copy of Chicago magazine that was in the hotel room to decide what we should do. Dad kept suggesting things like baseball games and history museums. Lulu and the manny really wanted to go see a taping of the Oprah show. I watched an Oprah show with Mom after school once, and Oprah gave away new cars to everyone in the audience. She jumped up and down, pointed to people in the audience, and yelled, “You get a car! You get car! You get a car!” about a hundred times. The audience was screaming, and one lady was crying and shaking like she was having a nervous breakdown, the same way Belly cries and dry-heaves when she doesn’t get her way. At dinner that night Mom was imitating Oprah by pointing to each of us and saying, “You get a taco! You get a taco! You get a taco!” India screamed and pretended to be faint with excitement over her taco. They were good, too. Mom used taco seasoning.

  The manny looked up the number for Oprah tickets and called, but they weren’t taping because Oprah was on “holiday.” That’s what the lady on the phone told the manny. She called it holiday instead of vacation. The manny said that holidays are the same thing as vacations except you take a private jet and get seaweed body wraps and hot stone massages. I want to go on a holiday.

  “I bet Oprah is in Africa building schools to empower girls and women,” said Lulu.