by Eric Bower
The Baron Estate is a two-story house with a work garage attached, which is where M and P typically build their inventions. We also have a little barn in the backyard where we keep our horse, Geoffrey. There is extra room in the barn for some of my parents’ larger inventions, like their horseless carriage, which is exactly what it sounds like—a carriage that moves without horses.
I’ve recently heard that our horseless carriage has inspired a lot of other inventors in the country to try and build horseless carriages of their own, but I doubt they’ll be successful. I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents’ invention was the only successful horseless carriage ever built. Take it from me, W. B., when I say that you’ll never have to worry about a bunch of horseless carriages clogging up the roads.
I crossed the final desert hump and spotted the white picket fence surrounding my family home. I looked at the cover of The Hilarious Mis-Adventures of the Ridiculous Baron Family, and then back at our house. It wasn’t just my family that was being portrayed poorly by the book. Our house was being portrayed poorly as well. The illustration on the cover showed a tall and rickety shack with peeling paint, rotting floorboards, and a cracked chimney that looked as though it was slowly trying to tiptoe off the rooftop. It was nothing like the real Baron Estate, which was always in tiptop shape. For some reason, that made me madder than anything. You should never insult anyone or anything that can’t defend itself. Like a house. Or a tree. Or a cow. Or Mr. Bessie, the crazy, old local grocer, who for some reason always calls me “Julia.” It’s just not right.
Shivering lightly from the wintertime chill, I ran up the front steps (stopping a couple times to catch my breath), tore open the door, and rushed inside.
“OWWWWWWWW!” Rose Blackwood bellowed.
“Sorry, Rose,” said P, “but I warned you not to move.”
Rose glared at me.
“I wouldn’t have moved,” she told him, “if W. B. hadn’t dashed into the living room like a wild animal and startled me!”
“I’m not a wild animal!” I growled (but in the way that a human growls, not a wild animal). “I just wanted you all to know that someone has been wr—what on earth are you wearing, Rose?”
Rose’s cheeks turned as red as the rose she normally wore in the band of her hat. She was standing on a footstool in the living room dressed in an incredibly long and poofy white dress. It was the fanciest thing I’d ever seen her wear, the sort of thing you’d expect to see worn by royalty or by a dead person.
If you knew Rose like I did, then you’d know that seeing her wearing a fancy white dress was sort of like seeing a gorilla . . . which was also wearing a fancy white dress. She rarely wore anything other than her black hat, black shirt, black pants, and red boots. She once told me that she had nothing against dresses, but she also had nothing against badgers, and she wouldn’t want to wear one of them either.
“Hold still, Rose,” P ordered. “I haven’t finished this seam yet.”
My father had about a half-dozen pins clutched tightly between his teeth. He had a tailor’s measuring tape wrapped over his shoulders like a scarf, and he was carefully sewing a long strip of see-through material (which looked sort of like a tail made of spider webs) to Rose’s backside.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the see-through fabric.
“That’s the train!” P stated proudly. Rose nodded excitedly.
I was confused. I must have heard him incorrectly.
“Train? Like, choo-choo, all aboard, train? I don’t understand how you could use that as a train, unless of course all the train passengers were the size of fleas. Which you probably wouldn’t want to have on your backside in the first place.”
“It’s the train for my wedding dress, you chowderhead,” Rose said as she rolled her eyes. “Mr. Baron was kind enough to sew my wedding dress for me. You do know what a wedding dress is, don’t you?”
I rolled my eyes back at her even harder, which was a mistake, because it sort of hurt.
“Of course I know what a wedding dress is. I just don’t understand why it needs a locomotive attached to it.”
P finished his final stitch before turning to me.
“We aren’t talking about locomotives, son. A train on a wedding dress is the material attached to the back of the dress that trails behind the bride as she walks down the aisle.”
“That’s right,” Rose said with a nod.
P continued his explanation.
“The purpose of the train is to make the bride look like a ghost that’s hovering across the floor, haunting the wedding ceremony. You can’t have a wedding without a person dressed like a ghost. It’s just not right. It’s a tradition. How do you not know any of this, W. B.?”
“What? Who told you that?” Rose asked P. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Of course I knew that,” I lied to P, not wanting to look like an ignorant fool on the subject of weddings. “I was just kidding. Everyone knows that brides are supposed to look like ghosts. That’s why they have veils that cover their faces. It makes them look extra frightening.”
“But that’s not true—” Rose started to interrupt.
“Quite right, son,” P said with a nod of his pointy head. “That’s why it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding. He might mistake her for an actual ghost and run away screaming.”
“You two have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rose groaned.
“That’s also why there are usually two or three men standing next to the groom during the wedding ceremony, isn’t it?” I said to P. “They’re there to keep the groom from running away in case he gets scared of the ghost.”
“I’m leaving,” Rose muttered. She hopped off the stool and made her way to the kitchen, slowly shaking her head, and mumbling to herself.
“Correct,” P told me as he patted me on the shoulder. “That’s why at the beginning of the ceremony, the first thing the groom should do is lift the veil from the bride’s face to make sure that she’s not really a ghost. You can never be too careful about that. I’ve heard several cases of a groom waiting until after the wedding to lift their bride’s veils, only to find that he’s been married to a horrible demon instead.”
“Weddings are pretty spooky, aren’t they, P?”
“Yes, son. Yes, they are.”
I called a family meeting to discuss what I’d discovered at the bookstore that morning. Everyone gathered in the kitchen. Normally, we gathered in my parents’ work garage for our family meetings, but I told them to gather in the kitchen instead because I was hungry.
While I explained to them how we had become the punchline to Pitchfork’s newest and cruelest joke, I snacked on the leftovers from last night’s supper. There actually weren’t too many leftovers left, since last night I’d had four servings of the hearty stew, sweet potatoes, buttered peas, and the blackberry crumble that P had prepared. So, when I finished what was left of the leftovers, I made myself a few ham and cheese sandwiches to tide me over until supper, or at least until my next snack.
Being angry tends to make me hungry. I also get a bit snackish when I’m sad. And a little peckish when I’m happy. And a bit tummy-rumbly when I’m in a silly mood. And I get absolutely ravenous when I’m frightened or confused or tired or bored or concerned or thoughtful or bitter or enthusiastic or anxious or weary or stressed or uncomfortable or comfortable. I suppose the only time I’m not really hungry is when I’m asleep, though I’ve had enough donut-based dreams to know that this might not be the case.
“So as you can see,” I told them with my mouth full of cheese, while gesturing to the terrible book that M, P, and Rose were slowly thumbing through, “we clearly need to do something about these terrible books. Otherwise, the good Baron family name will be ruined, forever besmirched by these ridiculous rumors that we are loony, evil, clumsy, and eat far more cheese than we should.”
I belched into my fist and stumbled, bonking my head against the kitchen cabinet.
Alright. If I’m being perfectly honest with you, I should mention that I’m a bit of a klutz. So, I suppose the writer got that part of the book correct. But the rest of it was utter nonsense.
I belched again.
I’m not quite sure how I expected my family to respond to the news that we were being openly mocked by everyone in town, but I certainly didn’t expect them to do what they did next. It started with M, who tilted her head back and closed her eyes. She pinched the bridge of her nose and her shoulders began to shake.
“Please don’t cry, M,” I told her, quickly finishing the last of my sandwiches, as well as the six cookies I was holding, so I could give her a reassuring hug and a pat on the back. “It’ll be alright. I promise. We’ll figure out what to do.”
But as I crossed the room, I was shocked to find that she wasn’t actually crying.
She was laughing. Uproariously! My mother was laughing as hard as she could, as though it was some other mother’s kid on the cover of the book with a pathetic and frightened look on his chubby face, dressed in brightly colored patchwork clothes, his shoelaces dangling loosely because he wasn’t clever enough to tie them, and with a haircut so awful that it looked as though it had been given to him by a blind enemy with shaky hands and dull scissors.
“You’re laughing!” I accused. She tried to deny it, but she couldn’t. She was laughing too hard.
And since laughter is contagious, it spread to Rose Blackwood next, who read a passage in one of the chapters which tickled her so tremendously that she started to snort with laughter. And since she was terribly embarrassed by her snorts, the snorts were interrupted by silly little giggles that turned her cheeks pink. Rose snorted and giggled pinkly until she looked as though she was about to burst.
Then my father began to laugh in long, loud guffaws. My father is a very strange man, so it only made sense that he had a very strange laugh as well. Most strange people have strange laughs. I don’t know why. But it’s true. P’s laughter sounded like someone bouncing up and down on a giant accordion. It was a loud blasting sound, followed by the shrill hiss of him taking in a deep breath, in order to make another loud blast. As he laughed, he slapped the table so hard that I thought he might chop it in half.
Every time it seemed as though they would finally stop their ridiculous bout of uncontrollable laughter, they would glance at one another and start again. It was madness. From outside, I could hear Geoffrey the horse whinnying and braying with laughter as well, which I thought was pretty stupid, since he obviously had no idea what was going on. There was no way he could have read the book cover from all the way out there.
It seemed as though everyone in the Baron Estate found the book to be pretty darn funny, except for me . . . and except for one other person as well.
Oh, crumbs.
I suppose I’ll have to mention her, even though I really don’t want to. Just remember, I’m not very happy with her at the moment. You’ll find out why soon.
As Rose and my parents continued laughing their clever heads off in the kitchen, a woman with a permanent frown painted on her face waddled in. She was wearing one of her old fashioned high-necked dresses, with puffy sleeves and ruffles down the front. Her hair was piled on top of her head like a hastily packed picnic lunch. Her face was a very unique color, a color that can best be described as “zorple.” And I dare you to look at her without thinking of an egg. Go on. Try it. You can’t, can you? I told you so.
“What’s going on here?” my eggy Aunt Dorcas demanded. “You’re all cackling like a bunch of flatulent hyenas!”
And then she happened to notice the copy of The Hilarious Mis-Adventures of the Ridiculous Baron Family lying on the table.
She picked it up and stared at the cover.
“Not bad,” she said with a nod, “but the artist didn’t get W. B.’s hairstyle right. In the illustration, it simply looks like someone attacked him with hedge clippers. In real life, he looks as though he gets his hair cut by angry squirrels.”
LIKE A SNEEZE IN THE WIND
Once Rose stopped giggling and snorting, she explained to Aunt Dorcas what the book was about, and how it painted us as brainless jesters whose adventures were nothing more than accidents and embarrassing mishaps. Aunt Dorcas remained silent as Rose spoke, but her eyes grew smaller and smaller as they squinted in anger, until it looked as though they had completely disappeared from her face.
“And you’re all laughing about this?” she asked quietly when Rose had finished.
“Well, W. B. isn’t,” M said, removing her wire-rimmed eyeglasses and cleaning them with her handkerchief. “He needs to learn not to take himself so seriously. Otherwise, he could end up like—”
I could see M’s mouth start to say the name “Dorcas,” before she noticed the ugly look on her zorple-faced sister’s countenance. My mother quickly coughed into her fist before changing the subject.
“Why didn’t you buy one of your Sheriff Graham novels instead, W. B.?” M asked.
“Because no one reads those novels anymore!” I told her. “They’re all too busy reading stories about us! Terrible stories, stories that make us look dumber than a box of string! String!”
“I don’t understand why you’re so upset about this, W. B.,” Rose told me as she mussed up my already mussy hair. “I honestly think the whole thing is pretty funny. Who cares if people laugh at us? They’re just silly books. They can’t do us any harm. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that no one will even remember them in a few weeks.”
But that’s where Rose was very, very wrong.
“What do you mean, you’re no longer interested in buying our inventions?”
Mr. Pyles nervously fiddled with his tie and then with his glasses. He was the most nervous and fiddly person I’d ever met. Mr. Pyles was always nervously fiddling with something or other: his tie, his glasses, his hair, his collar, his sleeve, his nose, his ears, your ears, the strange little wart growing out of his chin. He was a man who was utterly uncomfortable in his skin and felt the constant need to fiddle. It almost seemed as though he was worried he might explode if he didn’t constantly fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. I once asked him if he had any relaxing hobbies outside of work. He nervously explained to me that he liked to go home and play the fiddle.
I should have seen that answer coming.
But as nervous and fiddly as he was, Mr. Pyles was very important to us, because he was one of the businessmen in Pitchfork who paid my parents for their inventions. Most of M and P’s fantastic inventions (like their flying machines and submarine) were too strange, terrifying, and expensive for Mr. Pyles’s taste, but he was always excited to learn when my parents had invented a new automatic butter-smearer, or a hat that washes your hair for you. And he would pay good money for those inventions. My parents often joked that Mr. Pyles was only interested in useless and silly gadgets, ignoring their impressive and significant inventions because he was afraid of anything he couldn’t understand. But it appeared that he wasn’t interested in anything anymore. At least, not anything that had been invented by someone named Baron.
In fact, no one was interested in my parents’ inventions anymore. The previous day, the other local businessmen who bought inventions from my parents had come by the Baron Estate to tell us that they were no longer interested in purchasing any inventions, though they wished my parents good luck in the future. In fact, they all made quite a big show about wishing them good luck, as though it was the greatest gift they could give.
I don’t know about you, but my family needs money to survive, not luck. Luck won’t buy you a ham sandwich. Neither will well wishes, words of sympathy, respectful head nods, polite pats on the shoulder, and tickle-fights. The man at the Pitchfork sandwich shop had made that quite clear to me.
But that’s all anyone was giving us: well wishes that didn’t seem particularly sincere.
> “I mean . . .” Mr. Pyles stammered, as he fidgeted and fiddled with his eyelids, “. . . times being what they are . . . I mean, since I don’t really need . . . uh, I mean, you see . . . inventions are no longer . . . uh, I mean . . . the ostrich is a funny bird . . .”
“Oh, stop your fiddling and just tell me the truth!” M snapped at Mr. Pyles in a very rare moment of losing her temper. “You no longer want to do business with us because of those stupid books. Just admit it. You think we’re fools now, just like everyone else!”
Mr. Pyles began to nervously fiddle and fidget so much that he actually started to look like a blur. It was as though my mother was talking to a smudge at the kitchen door instead of a person.
“I mean . . . perhaps that might be . . . one of many reasons . . . but . . . you see . . . eucalyptus . . . and . . . wishing you luck . . . best of . . . sympathy . . . and wishing wells . . .”
My mother shut the door in his face. There was only so much fiddling and fidgeting you can stand to watch before it starts to make you a little seasick.
“Well, that was our last buyer,” Rose said glumly. “What are we going to do now?”
“I’m not quite certain,” M replied with a helpless shrug. “I suppose we’ll have to reach out to new people who might want to purchase our inventions. We could travel across Arizona Territory and sell some of our smaller inventions door-to-door. We could visit county fairs and give demonstrations. Or maybe we can try to sell some of our larger and more expensive inventions to the government. They always show quite a bit of interest in our large inventions, even if we don’t necessarily approve of the ways that they’d like to use them.”