by Ann Hood
“What in the world . . . ,” Maisie began, for once again she could not believe what she saw.
Felix was walking toward her, flanked on each side by one of the Filipino natives. Except, the man and woman were only about two feet tall. And even more strange, they were dressed like a bride and groom.
“That is Juan de la Cruz and his sister, Miss Martina,” the woman explained. “They were born in the village of Tanlalgan in Capiz, a province of our country. Their parents, their three brothers and sisters, all of them are normal size. But these two are the smallest adults alive in the world.”
“Wow,” Maisie managed to say.
“These little people have everything we have. Every limb and muscle and bone and organ.” The woman smiled. “Although they may be more intelligent than some of us. They speak three of the dialects of the Philippine languages: Tagalog, Visayan, and Pampangan. And Spanish and English.”
As the trio approached, Maisie stood on her wobbly legs, towering over Miss Martina and Juan. Still, she reached out, shook their hands, and said, “Pleased to meet you.” Juan’s hand was so small that it felt like a little boy’s. He appeared to weigh no more than fifteen pounds. But when he spoke, his voice was as deep as a man’s.
“We found your brother wandering the village,” he said, smiling.
Maisie glanced at Felix, who had a bewildered look on his face.
“Yes, Juan,” Maisie said. “Felix tends to wander.”
Felix looked even more bewildered.
“How do you know his name?” Felix asked Maisie.
“She told me,” Maisie said, cocking her head toward the woman. “And his sister is Miss Martina.”
Miss Martina chuckled. “People always think we’re married to each other,” she said. “What a relief for someone to know our true relationship. In fact,” she added with a twinkle in her eye, “his wife, Gregoria, is as tall as you.”
“Really!” Maisie said.
“Wait a minute,” Felix said. “Are you actually having a conversation with them? I don’t get it.”
Maisie rolled her eyes. “Of course! Why wouldn’t I? You’re the one just standing there, being rude.”
“Rude?” Felix said, exasperated.
The woman who had helped Maisie smiled. “Would you like Miss Martina and Juan to lead you out of the exhibit?”
Maisie waited for Felix to answer.
“Well?” she said after he just stood there, staring stupidly.
“Well, what?” he demanded.
“What is wrong with you?” Maisie asked him. “Should Miss Martina and Juan get us out of here? Even though we don’t know what’s on the other side of that fence?”
Felix’s gaze followed where she was pointing. A wooden fence lined the periphery beyond the thatched-roof huts.
“I mean,” Maisie continued in a lower voice, “I don’t know why she keeps calling this an ‘exhibition.’ Do you?”
“How do you know what she calls it?” Felix shrieked.
“Because I’m paying attention, unlike some people!”
“Wait,” Felix said more calmly. “Beyond that fence there’s a big building with a white roof. Almost like a mansion or a museum or something. Look.”
Maisie stared harder.
“You’re right,” she agreed.
“What did you say she calls this place?” Felix asked.
“An exhibit,” Maisie said. “You’d know that if you just listened to her.”
Again, bewilderment washed over Felix’s face.
“It doesn’t seem possible,” he said slowly. “But do you think these people are in a zoo?”
“People? In a zoo?” Maisie said dismissively. “No, I do not think they are in a zoo.”
“Would you like to eat with us before you leave?” the woman asked Maisie. “You must be hungry.”
Maisie was in fact very hungry.
“What . . . what is that you’re cooking?” she asked.
The woman smiled again. “Dog,” she said as if that were the best possible answer.
Maisie’s stomach lurched and for an instant she was afraid she was going to throw up again.
“No,” she said. Then she remembered to add, “Thank you.”
“Now what’s wrong?” Felix asked her, seeing her face grow pale.
Maisie sighed. “I don’t want to eat roasted dog. Do you?” she said, frustrated.
“Dog!” Felix repeated, his eyes wide.
“What is wrong with you?” Maisie asked him again. “Didn’t you hear her? She invited us to eat that dog they’re roasting over there.”
“How do you know that?” Felix said, equally as frustrated.
Maisie studied her brother’s confused face.
“You really can’t understand her?” she asked him.
“How could I understand a bunch of clicks?” he said, throwing his arms up. “And more important, how can you understand them?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Maisie said. “But they are all speaking in perfect English.”
“No they aren’t,” Felix insisted.
The woman touched Maisie’s arm. “The exhibition is opening soon. If you aren’t staying, then it’s best that Juan and Miss Martina escort you back out before the crowds arrive.”
“All right,” Maisie said.
The woman looked at Felix sadly.
“Such a shame your brother doesn’t speak Tagalog like you do.”
“Tagalog? I don’t speak Tagalog!” Maisie said, suddenly as confused as Felix.
Miss Martina waved her arm at Maisie and Felix.
“This way,” she said.
And a baffled Maisie and Felix followed Miss Martina and Juan through the Philippine village to a large gate.
“Good-bye!” Miss Martina and Juan said.
“Thank you,” Maisie said—in English.
They seemed to understand her because they answered, “You’re welcome. Enjoy the Exposition!”
Maisie and Felix stood outside the gate, watching as it closed.
“Did you understand what she said?” Maisie asked her brother.
He shook his head. “Unlike you, I don’t speak Tagalog.”
Before Maisie could puzzle over this new strange turn of events, a little girl eating an ice-cream cone walked by with her parents and little sister. She was about six and had strawberry blonde hair and a face sprinkled with freckles.
She looked right at Maisie and Felix, took a big lick of her ice cream, and grinned a gap-toothed grin.
“This is ice cream!” she said as if it was the most marvelous thing in the world.
“I know,” Maisie answered grumpily.
“You don’t have to be so rude,” the girl’s mother said. “Maybe you’ve been here long enough to taste it, but this is her first-ever ice-cream cone and she’s excited.”
With that, the woman said to her daughters, “Come on Meelie, come on Pidge. Some people can try to ruin even the most perfect day.”
As the family walked away from them, the freckle-faced girl turned around and stuck her tongue out at Maisie. Then she broke into a fit of giggles and skipped to catch up with the rest of her family.
“Imagine never having ice cream until you’re six years old?” Felix said.
Maisie brightened.
“You understood all of that?” she asked him.
Felix scowled at her. “Well, I do speak English, you know.”
“I don’t know where we’ve landed,” Maisie said with a sigh. “But it’s definitely someplace very strange.”
Felix agreed. He took a moment to look around and try to figure out where this strange place might be. What he saw puzzled him even more.
In the distance, a very tall clock stood. Its face and even the numbers appeared to be made ou
t of flowers.
Above everything loomed a Ferris wheel, maybe the biggest Ferris wheel Felix had ever seen.
But if they were at an amusement park, why were all those Philippine natives fenced in?
As if she read his mind, Maisie said, “Remember when we met Harry Houdini? The freak show?”
Felix nodded. “Do you think that’s what that village is? People go in there to gawk at everyone?”
“Maybe,” Maisie said. “Let’s walk around and try to find out.”
They headed off in the direction of the Ferris wheel. The crowds grew thicker as they walked. The women they passed wore dresses with lots of ruffles and flounces and oversized floppy hats. The men sported summer suits, bow ties, and straw hats. The clothes were different enough that Maisie decided it had to be later than the 1890s when they’d been to Coney Island and met Harry.
“Imagine!” Maisie overheard a woman say, “Iced tea! Who would have ever thought to drink tea over ice?”
“As for me,” her male companion said, “I found what they call a ‘club sandwich’ to be perhaps the most delicious sandwich I’ve ever eaten. Toasted bread, turkey, more toast, lettuce and tomato, more toast, and bacon with mayonnaise!”
“Where did you get that?” the woman said as if he’d just described the most remarkable thing. “I ate a spread made out of ground peanuts that I didn’t care for. So thick!”
“Ground peanuts?” the man repeated, surprised.
“Are you listening to these two?” Maisie asked Felix.
“Where are we that introduces food like this?” Felix wondered out loud.
“And when are we that iced tea and club sandwiches and peanut butter are new to people?”
“And ice-cream cones,” Felix said, remembering the little girl.
“Well,” Maisie said, “maybe we’re in Minnesota, after all. Maybe Minnesota didn’t get regular food until later than everybody else.”
“Maybe,” Felix said, even though he didn’t believe that for a second. Why wouldn’t Minnesota have ice-cream cones when every place else did?
“We should keep an eye out for Charles Lindbergh, right?” Maisie asked eagerly.
“Right,” Felix said, scanning the crowd as if Lindbergh might be somewhere nearby.
Maisie noticed that many people held maps, which they checked frequently.
“Excuse me,” Maisie said to two women who stood side by side in pale, ruffled dresses, each studying a map. “May I take a look at one of those, please?”
“It is confusing, isn’t it?” the woman in the white dress said as she handed Maisie her map. “We’re on the Plaza of St. Louis, that I know for sure because there’s the statue of St. Louis of France right over there.”
“Uh-huh,” Maisie said, trying to make sense of this information.
Felix pointed to the heading at the top of the map.
“The Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” he read out loud. “We’re in Louisiana?”
The woman in the white dress laughed.
“The exposition is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a continental United States by purchasing the Louisiana Territory.”
Her friend, a confection in pale yellow ruffles, added, “And to honor Lewis and Clark’s journey west.”
“Okay,” Maisie said, frustrated. “We’re not in the Philippines. We’re not in France, even though that statue is of some guy from France. And we’re not in Louisiana even though the name of this . . . exposition . . . is the Louisiana Purchase.”
The women laughed.
“Stop teasing us!” the one in yellow scolded playfully. “You know you’re in St. Louis, Missouri, at the 1904 World’s Fair.”
Maisie and Felix looked at each other, their hearts sinking.
“Missouri?” Felix said. “Not Minnesota?”
“Silly!” the one in yellow laughed.
“Let’s go to the Palace of Transportation next, Myrtle,” the other one said.
She glanced down at Maisie and Felix and her map.
“They have all one hundred and forty automobiles that have been driven to the fair under their own power in there,” she told them.
“Under their own power?” Maisie asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means a man got into one of those automobiles and drove it here!” the woman exclaimed.
Maisie and Felix looked at each other.
“Okay,” Maisie said.
“They drove from as far away as Chicago!” the woman said.
When Maisie and Felix didn’t look impressed, she added, “And Philadelphia! And Boston!”
“Wow,” Felix said, to be polite.
“Harumph,” the woman said, taking back the map. “Considering that just last year someone drove an automobile all the way across the entire country, I find it impressive that all of a sudden men are driving them everywhere.”
With that, she and her friend started down the six-hundred-foot-wide plaza.
Maisie peered at the monument that rose at the other end. One hundred feet high, a winged sculpture sat on top of a big globe. On a hill at that end, people streamed into a building with a giant, gold-leafed dome.
“Let’s go down there and see what’s going on,” Maisie suggested.
But before Felix could reply, a group of teenagers rushed by them, shouting: “Geronimo! Geronimo!”
One of the boys paused long enough to grab Maisie’s arm.
“He’s on display in the Ethnology Exhibit!” the boy said excitedly. “Autographs are only ten cents!”
Maisie let herself get swept up in the group of teenagers.
Reluctantly, Felix followed, trying to figure out how Geronimo, the famous Apache war chief, could be on “display.” After Maisie and Felix had met Crazy Horse, Felix had read a lot of books about Native Americans. He knew that Geronimo had led fierce attacks in the West after soldiers killed his mother, wife, and children. Eventually, he’d surrendered and became a prisoner of war for the rest of his life. Were prisoners of war on display here? Felix wondered.
Soon enough, they arrived at a giant tepee. In front of it sat a very old man with a face almost as wrinkled as Penelope Merriweather’s. He had on a baggy black suit and a black fedora, but he was posing with a bunch of arrows pressed across his chest. Photographers snapped his picture, but his expression stayed completely stoic, with no hint of emotion. Felix suspected that if this old man was Geronimo, he must feel humiliated to have to sit there like that and have everyone gawk at him and take his picture.
“He doesn’t look fierce at all,” one of the teenage girls said, disappointed.
“Well, he’s old now,” Felix said.
The girl sighed and got in the line waiting to buy Geronimo’s autograph. “I guess I’ll get his autograph, anyway,” she said.
“Do you think he’s an imposter?” her friend asked.
The girl shrugged. “General Christiaan de Wet was much more impressive,” she said.
“Was he one of the soldiers who made Geronimo surrender?” Felix asked.
The girls laughed.
“Twice a day over in the Anglo-Boer War Concession they reenact major battles from the Second Boer War,” one of them explained. She had fat brown banana curls that bounced when she talked.
Felix made a mental note to look up Anglo-Boer War when he got home. He had no idea what that war was.
“It takes about three hours,” her friend continued, “but it’s worth it.”
“They have more than six hundred veterans from both sides doing the reenactments,” the other girl said, growing excited as she talked and sending her banana curls into a frenzy. “But at the very end, Boer General Christiaan de Wet escapes on his horse and leaps into a pool of water from fifty feet high!”
“Maybe not fifty fe
et,” her friend said. “But very, very high.” She sighed. “It’s very dramatic.”
Felix stood on tiptoe, trying to catch a glimpse of Maisie. There she was, right at the front of the line, talking to Geronimo.
When she turned to leave, she scanned the crowd until her eyes settled on Felix. Maisie waved a piece of paper and pushed her way to her brother.
“I got his autograph,” she said proudly.
The two girls Felix had been talking with asked to look at it, but Felix thought the whole spectacle was terrible.
“Honestly, Maisie,” he said. “How could you? The poor man is being treated like an animal in the zoo. Just like those people in that Philippine Village.”
“No,” Maisie said. “He’s making lots of money selling autographs and photographs.”
She pointed at a teenage boy walking by, smug beneath a black hat just like Geronimo’s.
“He even sells his hats,” she said. “He’s getting rich!”
“I bet they don’t even let him keep the money,” Felix said.
“Who’s they?” Maisie asked, tucking the autograph into her pocket.
“The US government!” Felix said. “He’s a prisoner of war!”
Maisie glanced over at Geronimo carefully signing his name for someone.
“He doesn’t look like a prisoner of war,” she said.
“Well, he is!” Felix insisted.
“Fine!” Maisie said, exasperated. “Let’s go see something else.”
“Maybe Charles Lindbergh is in that fancy building over there,” Felix said, trying to be hopeful.
“Is Missouri anywhere near Minnesota?” Maisie asked, wishing yet again that she’d paid more attention in social studies class. All those M states mixed her up.
“I don’t think so,” Felix said. He tried to picture the map of the United States, but the middle was just a big blank to him.
By the time they reached what turned out to be Festival Hall, the crowd had entered and the massive doors had been shut. But the sounds of a band made their way outside.
A man in a bowler hat grinned.
“Why, that’s the March King himself playing ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’” the man said to no one in particular.
“Who’s the March King?” Maisie asked him.