We were sitting there, each one of us getting in a few words now and then between the others’ words and also between bites of food, which was certainly good. I had decided to eat Lunch de Carne Vienesa, which was meat loaf, brown gravy, rice, fried bananas, roll, and butter. That was the first time I’d ever eaten fried bananas.
“We’ll show you a banana plantation,” the missionary said and looked at me with a friendly twinkle in his eye. I decided that he was just like any ordinary person who liked boys and who wanted to get the boys of Palm Tree Island to become Christians as well as boys in our own country.
Pretty soon our plates were empty, and we went back to the hotel to take a siesta.
“What’s a siesta?” Little Jim wanted to know.
“It’s an after-dinner nap,” I said, wondering if I was right.
“What? A nap in the daytime? I’m not sleepy,” Circus said. He looked disappointed, as if he wondered if the missionary thought we were a bunch of little guys.
“Everybody on Palm Tree Island takes a nap right after the noon meal,” the missionary said. “It’s the custom here.”
We walked back to the hotel, and I noticed that some of the big stores—they didn’t have any doors, only chains or ropes or grilled gates across their entrances—had all their counters covered with long dust covers, and nobody was selling anything.
“If we rest in the daytime, we’ll have plenty of pep for the rest of the day, I’ll bet you,” Poetry said and yawned, and several of us did the same thing.
Soon we were back in Gran America, and Poetry and Dragonfly and I were in our room, where there were three beds. We didn’t even have any windows. There were doors instead, and we could step right out onto a little balcony, which was protected by iron grillwork about as high as our belts. The ceiling was very high. The floor was of cool, different-colored tile.
We stepped through the open doors and out onto the balcony and looked across the street to the flat roof of a large building. On the roof of that building, which was a little lower than where we were on the fourth floor, were three big ugly-looking dogs that looked different from any dogs I’d ever seen.
Just then I heard barking off to my left, and I looked across to another balcony, which opened out from somebody else’s room in our hotel. And there was Circus, barking and bawling like a hound at the dogs across the street.
As quick as anything, those ugly hounds on the flat roof roused themselves and let out a lot of long-toned bawls at Circus, and for a minute they barked back and forth at each other. Circus knew all about hounds because his dad kept a lot of them and used them in the wintertime to catch different kinds of animals to make a living for his great big family of almost all girls.
Well, that’s about all the interesting things that happened that day. The next morning we had one more strange adventure, which was very important and also gave me something to write home to my parents about. In fact, if it hadn’t happened, this whole story would have been spoiled.
I could hardly wait until tomorrow because I wanted to get out into what is called the “interior” to see the native people I’d heard so much about. So far I hadn’t seen anybody who looked like I thought people who needed missionaries ought to look. I certainly hadn’t expected electric lights and radios and everybody dressed up even more than Americans. And I certainly hadn’t expected the people to be dressed better than the people who lived at Sugar Creek, but most of them were.
But here goes for the adventure.
It happened because Dragonfly had parents who were superstitious. He not only believed that a black cat running in front of your path meant bad luck, but he was always believing in things that were supposed to mean good luck, too, such as four-leaf clovers and horseshoes and things like that. Just before we left Sugar Creek to go to Miami, he had found an old rusty horseshoe under a board in their barn. His mom hung it up over the entrance to their kitchen and said to him, “You’re going to have some very good luck, Roy. I have been afraid to let you go to Palm Tree Island, but your finding this from our old Topsy horse who died ten years ago means something special, I’m sure.”
Dragonfly believed it and was looking for good luck all the time we were there.
“Maybe I won’t be allergic to flowers,” Dragonfly said, “because of that horseshoe.”
“That’ll depend on your nose,” Poetry said, “not on a ten-year-old rusty horseshoe.”
I said the same thing, but Dragonfly grunted and said, “Just you wait and see. Look here—”
I looked, and he pulled out of his pocket a lottery ticket! We were in our room at the time, and Circus was still barking at the hounds across the street, and they were still standing there looking across and up at him savagely and barking back. They would stop now and then and look lazy and disgusted with him for interrupting their sleep.
“Tomorrow this will win at the lottery,” Dragonfly said.
“What lottery?” I said.
He said, “Barry is taking us to see how the government makes some of its money at what is called the loteria. He told us about that while you were lost yesterday.”
“We weren’t lost,” I said. By that time Poetry and I had made up our minds that we really hadn’t been, and we both said so.
In a little while we had breakfast in the dining room of the hotel. We were waited on by a man in a black suit—there not being any girl waitresses in Palacia, except in a very few cafes. Right after breakfast we all got on a streetcar and went down to what is called the old Treasury Building to the loteria. As soon as we got inside, we went into a large room that had in it a table long enough to reach from one end of the room to the other. Sitting behind it were a dozen or more important-looking men with serious faces. They looked like the men in a picture I’d seen of the Supreme Court of the United States. In front of each man was a notebook, a lot of papers and pens, and other things.
At the edge of the room was another table about the same length and width, and behind it sat another row of important-looking men, each one looking very solemn and what my dad would call “dignified.”
“Look!” Dragonfly said. “See those two big worlds!”
I looked and saw two big balls, one of them as tall as my dad and the other about as big across as Little Jim is tall, which is about four feet. It looked like both balls were made out of brass and had a lot of fancy grillwork on them.
“What do you suppose they’ve got inside of them?” Circus wanted to know.
The missionary who was with us said, “There are thousands of marble-sized balls in each one, and on each marble there is a number. The numbers on the marbles in the large globe represent the numbers on the lottery tickets that are sold all over the island. And the numbers on the marbles in the smaller globe tell how much money each ticket is going to win.”
I looked at Dragonfly. He had his hand in his coat pocket, and I knew that he was holding onto that lottery ticket he had bought yesterday. I also knew that he was thinking about the rusty horseshoe that was hanging over the kitchen door of their house back in Sugar Creek.
All kinds of people were there, including some important-looking Americans, who probably were in Palacia for winter vacations.
All of a sudden two big men rushed out from somewhere to the big brass globe and grabbed it by the two handles that were sticking out from behind it. Then, as if they were doing the most important thing in the world, they began to turn that globe over and over and over. Everybody in the room was very quiet, even the Sugar Creek Gang. Maybe two hundred people were there, and nearly every one of them was holding a lottery ticket or a whole bunch of them, watching with eyes that looked the way a boy’s eyes look when he is sick and has a fever.
The globe turned around and around and over and over, and for a minute even my brain went around and around, and I thought, What if Dragonfly wins? At the very same time, another man was standing beside the smaller globe and turning it. And all the little marbles inside the two globes were rattling an
d rattling with a roar that made me think of a terrible rainstorm on the shingled roof of our barn.
Then, with my hardly noticing how they got there, two little boys stood at each globe. Quick as a flash each boy pulled a lever at each globe, and out tumbled a marble from each one. The marbles rolled into a long brass trough and went kerploppety-plop into a bright cut-glass bowl like the one on my mom’s sideboard at home.
Then, while everybody kept still, one of the little boys called out in a very high-pitched voice, which sounded like one of the Sugar Creek Gang in swimming, a long number in Spanish. As soon as he’d called it, the boy beside the smaller globe called out another number.
“What’s the long number for?” Dragonfly wanted to know.
The missionary said, “That’s the number on the lottery ticket that somebody somewhere has bought.”
“Then what’s the little number for?” Dragonfly asked, and there was a feverish look in his eyes.
“The second number,” the missionary said, “tells how much money was won by the ticket whose number was just called.”
Dragonfly’s head was ducked a little at that time, and I could see that he was looking down into his pocket to see what his number was. The boys read each number in Spanish, and each time Barry translated for us just for fun.
Well, it was a very interesting sight for a while. Somebody won something every time, although most of the people who were winning were not there. They would probably find it out when the newspaper was printed later in the day, or else while listening to the radio. Everybody’s ticket that wasn’t any good would be thrown away.
We were getting ready to leave and go to Chinatown when the little boy at the large globe called out a long number. Barry translated, and Dragonfly gasped as if he had been shot. His nervous voice hissed to me, “That’s my number!”
Almost before I had a chance to think—in fact, I couldn’t, I was so excited—I heard the boy at the small globe call out, “Con cien pesos.”
Barry said, “One hundred dollars,” which was the number many of the balls had on them. And I knew Dragonfly had won $100.
Boy, oh, boy! I thought. One hundred dollars! Dragonfly has won!
And he had. Instead of being glad though, he had a terribly scared look on his face.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, not waiting for him to say anything.
He said, “What’ll I do with a whole hundred dollars?”
I knew what I’d have done with it, I thought. First, I’d buy a great big two-pound box of chocolate candy for my mom. Then I’d buy a sled for my baby sister, Charlotte Ann, and a new teakettle for Old Man Paddler to use to make sassafras tea for the Sugar Creek Gang when we came up to see him. I might buy a baseball glove for Dad, who didn’t have any and always had to use my old one whenever he and I played together.
I didn’t even have time to finish thinking about what I’d do with $100, because right that minute I heard the missionary say to Barry, “That’s something our new Christians give up for Christ—gambling with the lottery. All these old sins just drop off the new Christians like snow melts off a roof back in the United States when there is a fire in the house.”
Dragonfly heard him say that, and so also did others of us, so Dragonfly was afraid to let anybody know he had a winning ticket. He sidled over to me and said in a low voice, “I don’t see why it’s wrong. I’m going to get the hundred dollars anyway!”
“Like fun,” Poetry said, who had overheard him.
About that time we had it decided for us that it was time to go someplace else—to Chinatown first and later to get on a bus and go out into the country to the mission farm, where the gang was going in swimming. Palm Tree Island was certainly a very warm country even in the wintertime.
“Might as well tear it up,” I whispered to Dragonfly as we were on our way out of the old Treasury Building.
He stopped, looked at me with his dragonfly-like eyes, and said, “I certainly will not. I’m going to keep it for a souvenir. Going to paste it into a book when I get home—in fact, I’m going to put it in a picture frame on the wall of my room, and it’ll always mean good luck in my life, I’ll bet you. Say, when my mom sees that—”
“It won’t mean good luck,” I said. “It’ll mean bad luck—like it does today.”
“It will not,” Dragonfly said, and he began to get a very stubborn look on his face.
I knew he wouldn’t change his mind, so I said, “All right, then. Forget it.”
“I won’t even do that,” he said. “It’s a souvenir.”
Anyway, it was that old lottery ticket that had a lot to do with getting us into another escapade out on the mission farm and which shoved us all of a sudden into one of the most interesting and exciting experiences that could ever happen to a boy.
7
We didn’t stay long in Chinatown—only long enough to notice that the very interesting-looking Chinese looked just like the Chinese did in Chicago. Little Jim nudged me once when we were waiting for the missionary and Barry to get through talking to a storekeeper. He said, “I wonder if there are any missionaries down here from America who are having Sunday school for the Chinese boys and girls.”
“I don’t know,” I said. Then we found out there were thousands and thousands of Chinese boys and girls on this island who not only didn’t go to any Sunday school but didn’t have any Sunday school to go to.
When we heard that, I looked down at Little Jim, and he had his fists doubled up, and for a minute he had an expression on his face like he’d once had in a gang fight on Bumblebee Hill back in the United States.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him.
He said, “I’m mad!”
“Why?”
He said, as if he was just ready to sock somebody, and there were tears in his voice, “Why doesn’t somebody come down here and start a Chinese Sunday school?”
A little later, when we were all on our way back to the hotel, Little Jim was still looking angry. But he looked sad too, and he said to me something kind of strange. It was, “How old do you have to be to be a missionary?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer him, but I knew he was thinking something very important, as he always is.
We enjoyed the bus ride of about a half hour out to the mission, and we also enjoyed the dinner in a very pretty house with a red-tile roof. The dinner was a funny potato-like food called yucca, with rice, fried bananas, coconuts, chicken, and goat’s milk.
As soon as dinner was over, the gang got together. It was the first time in a long while that we’d been together without some older folks along. We took a walk down along the edge of a sugar cane plantation, each one of us in our old clothes, which our folks had made us take along so we could play a little on the farm.
We were all chewing on stalks of sugar cane when pretty soon we came to a very pretty coconut palm. And the next thing I knew there were only five of us on the ground. Circus had disappeared, and there he was on his way up that tree. Seconds later he was up to where the coconuts were growing, his face right beside one of them, and for a minute he looked almost like a monkey.
Some of those coconuts must have been ripe, because two of them let go and came crashing down. One of them hit me on the right foot without hurting me.
It was an interesting hike, and we planned to do it again the next day if we could. We decided to collect different kinds of flowers and leaves and press them and take them back for our folks to see and for us to talk about when we got home, as people do when they take trips and want other people to know what a good time they had. Also we were going to pick up different kinds of shells and things along the pretty little creek.
“Know what a creek is called in Spanish?” Big Jim asked the rest of us when we were getting ready to go swimming that afternoon.
“What?” some of us said.
He said, “It’s called a riachuelo.”
It was a safe creek for boys to swim in, without any dangerous holes. Every b
oy in the world needs to have sense enough not to go in swimming in just any old place without first knowing if it is safe, and also not to go in any swimming pool without a lifeguard on duty. This place was as safe as our swimming hole in Sugar Creek, so we all had a grand time, making a lot of noise as we nearly always do.
That night we all slept at the mission farm under mosquito netting on very hard mattresses, which were on very hard springs.
Poetry and I had to sleep in the same hard bed. When the carbide lights were out—which were the kind used out there in the country-he and I crawled under the mosquito net, let it drop down on each side of our too narrow, too hard, too noisy bed, pulled up a nice clean sheet and also a blanket over us, and started to keep still.
The rest of the gang was scattered in different missionary cabins on the school farm, although Dragonfly had a cot of his own across the room from us.
Pretty soon Poetry noticed the sky, which was showing through the bars of the window of our room. (There not being any windowpanes in our cabin. In fact, there was hardly any window glass anywhere on Palm Tree Island because of there not being any flies or other flying insects—only some very small mosquitoes.)
Anyway, Poetry started to quote:
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.”
Just that minute I heard someone go “Ker-choo!” and it was Dragonfly on his cot across the room, sneezing. Then he sneezed again, and I knew he was allergic to something in that room.
I sat up and listened and strained my eyes to see if I could see him in the moonlight, and I could. He was sitting up, pushing his mosquito netting higher, because it was close to his head, and I said, “What’s the matter?”
He said, “I’m allergic to this mosquito net.”
Well, when a person is allergic to something and can’t breathe very well, it’s probably a terrible feeling. Anyway, Dragonfly said across the moonlit room, “I’ve got to get out from under this crazy net.”
Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Page 12