The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization
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"It's really a real ghost?" Seamus Finn asked Charley.
"It's a ghost," Charley said. "You know, it appears, it vanishes. Would you say that was real, or not real?"
"When my father comes out of the bar, tell him I went with Neddie," Seamus said. "My father is the guy with the biggest cowboy hat."
"I know. Dart-Onion," Charley said.
CHAPTER 12
In the Ghost Room
I went with Seamus Finn to room 107.
"It's a little crummy," Seamus said.
"Do you smell that funny smell?" I asked. "Do you think that's a ghost smell?"
"I think it's a crummy-room smell," Seamus Finn said.
It may have been a little crummy. The furniture was sort of scuffed, and the rug was worn, and there was that crummy smell—but it was my own personal hotel room, and I was pleased with it.
"Take a seat," I said to Seamus Finn. He sat in the beat-up chair. "May I offer you a glass of water?"
"So, how come you're traveling on your own?" Seamus Finn asked.
I told him all about missing the train, and Mr. MacDougal, and how he was going to try to get me on a train to Los Angeles, only it was going to be difficult.
"There are lots of soldiers, and cowboys and families on vacation," I said. "I'm kind of hoping he winds up putting me in the crew car—or maybe I could ride in the engine."
"That would be neat," Seamus Finn said. "But I just got another idea. My father and I are going to drive back to Los Angeles pretty soon. I could ask him if you could come along with us."
"That would be great!" I said. "Nearly as good as riding with the engineer. I mean, driving with Dart-Onion and all."
"It's not all that interesting," Seamus Finn said. "I mean, he doesn't have a sword or anything. But we're going to the Grand Canyon tomorrow. I'll ask him. I'm sure he'll say yes."
"Ask him if I can come too," someone else said.
We both jumped straight up in the air. There was someone else in the room! We had forgotten all about the ghost for a minute.
"I'm serious. I take up hardly any room. Ask your father." The person doing the talking was a bellboy. I had only seen bellboys in movies and cartoons, but I knew what they looked like. This was a kid, maybe a little older than Seamus and me—he had a short red jacket with brass buttons and shoulder straps, one of those round bellboy hats, and a pair of white gloves under one shoulder strap.
"How'd you get in here?" I asked the bellboy.
"I just came in. My name is Billy. So, how about it? Will you ask your father if I can come along?"
I was noticing something about Billy, and Seamus Finn was noticing it too. He was just a little bit transparent. Seamus said, "Billy, is it my imagination, or can I sort of see through you?"
"No, it's not your imagination," Billy said. "I'm a ghost, as if you didn't know. I'm the Phantom Bellboy, and thanks for not screaming or acting like an idiot."
"So ... you're ... uh ... dead?" I asked Billy.
"Well, I'm a ghost. You figure it out."
There was a long silence. Seamus sat in the chair, I sat on the bed, and Billy the Phantom Bellboy stood there, being slightly transparent. It was a weird feeling, being in a room with a ghost.
Seamus Finn was less uncomfortable than I was—probably came from growing up around movie stars and all that. "So, what, do you, uh, just haunt?"
"Pretty much," Billy the Phantom Bellboy said. "There doesn't seem to be much else to do. The truth is, it's fairly boring. That's why I'd like to come with you to Los Angeles."
"I'd have to ask my father," Seamus Finn said.
"I'm no trouble," Billy said. "I don't eat, don't take any space, and I'm very polite. At least take me with you to see the Grand Canyon."
Billy the Phantom Bellboy told us that what he did, day in and day out, was knock on the door of room 107 and then disappear. Sometimes he would let the guests get a glimpse of him, and sometimes he just wouldn't be there when they opened the door. "And that's it. That's the whole routine. Tell me, how long would it take you to get bored with a job like that?"
"Are you able to leave the hotel? I thought ghosts had to more or less stay in one place."
"I go across the street to the bakery sometimes," Billy said. "They have good sweet rolls."
"I thought you didn't eat," I said.
"I like to sniff them," Billy said. "Take me with you. I've had it with this town."
There was a knock on the door. I opened it and there was Aaron Finn, looking like a movie.
"Father, this is Neddie Wentworthstein," Seamus Finn said. "He got left behind by the Super Chief and is trying to get to Los Angeles. I told him maybe he could come along with us."
"I don't see why not," Aaron Finn said. "But I'd need to speak to someone in charge of you."
"You can tell Mr. MacDougal at the railroad station," I said. "And my parents will be at the Hermione Hotel in Los Angeles tomorrow morning."
"We'll give them a call," Aaron Finn said. "And, if it's all right with them, you're welcome to come with us. And who is this?"
"This is Billy," Seamus Finn told his father. "He's the Phantom Bellboy. He's a ghost."
"Really?" Aaron Finn said, peering at Billy. "A ghost, eh? I do see he is rather transparent. This is excellent. I've never met a ghost. I might have a part as a ghost sometime. So you're a ghost, are you?"
"Dead as a doornail," Billy said.
"Billy wants to come with us too," Seamus Finn said.
"Absolutely! Welcome, Billy. I seem to remember there was a script with a very good part for a ghost. I suppose you know all about being one, do you, Billy?"
"I know what there is to know," Billy said. "I'm the real thing. Do you think I could find something to do in Hollywood, Mr. Finn?"
"Oh, yes—technical advisor sort of thing, I'm sure. You come with us, young man—or is it old man?"
"I'm fifty-seven, if you count from when I was born," Billy said.
"Imagine that," Aaron Finn said. "Well, let's discuss this at breakfast."
"I'm not supposed to go into the dining room," Billy said. "It upsets some people."
"I can't imagine why," Aaron Finn said. "Well, in the morning then. We'll make arrangements for Neddie here, and then it's off to the Grand Canyon. Very pleased to have met you both."
Aaron Finn and my new friend Seamus Finn went off to their deluxe room, Billy the Phantom Bellboy went to do some haunting, and I turned in, in my very own hotel room.
CHAPTER 13
On the Road
It had all gone perfectly. After a very good breakfast (I had oatmeal with raisins, toast, orange juice, milk, and scrambled eggs, $2.50—I signed for it, and Aaron Finn showed me how to add 25 cents for the tip), Aaron Finn put in a call to my father at the Hermione Hotel.
"Mr. Wentworthstein, this is Aaron Finn, the actor," Aaron Finn, the actor, said. "My young son has made the acquaintance of your fine boy, Neddie, and we would be most happy to deliver him to you in Los Angeles in two or three days. In the meantime, we are going to explore the Grand Canyon, the local Indian ruins, and natural wonders."
My father was delighted. He asked to speak to me, and I told him that the railroad had advanced me fifty dollars, and that Mr. MacDougal said it would be hard to get me on a train. My father was perfectly happy with the arrangement. "I don't suppose any harm can come to you if you're traveling with Dart-Onion," he said.
We stopped off at the railroad station, where Aaron Finn explained everything to Mr. MacDougal, and then we were off in Aaron Finn's huge Packard convertible, which was about as big as a double drawing room.
Billy the Phantom Bellboy was pretty near invisible outdoors in daylight. You could just make him out if he stood in the shadows and you squinted—and even then, you'd have to know you were looking for him. He was very quiet as we drove out toward the Grand Canyon. I think he was happy.
Billy sat up front with Aaron Finn. Aaron Finn was wearing his French foreign legion hat, the kind w
ith the little brim in the front and the handkerchief attached in back—he had saved it from the foreign legion movie he'd been in, March or Don't. Seamus Finn and I sprawled out in the back seat, and talked, and watched the landscape go by.
It was a whole lot different from looking out the windows of the Super Chief. For one thing, windows on trains don't open, so there's always a piece of glass between you and whatever you're looking at. You can't feel the air, and you can't smell it. Also, the train is sort of high up—you're above the land. In the car, you're lower down: you're in it. It's not like a picture sliding past. You can taste the dust, especially in an open car.
There was plenty of dust. Also, beautiful mountains in the distance, and all the sorts of things I had seen from the train, except we could have stopped and gotten out anytime we wanted. It was only eighty-one miles to the Grand Canyon, and we only stopped once, so Billy the Phantom Bellboy could go behind a rock. None of us felt like asking him why.
During the ride, I told Seamus about life in the neighborhood, and the Nettelhorst School, and the usual things I had done. I was surprised that he thought it all sounded really nice, and he wished he could live in a place like that. Seamus Finn went to a boarding school, which meant he slept there, and ate there, and saw his parents only once in a while. His school was called Brown-Sparrow, and it was a military school. His mother lived in New York, and he'd visit her a couple of times a year, and a few times she would visit him. His father was always off acting in movies, so it was the same with him.
Actually, it sounded great to me. I had really loved staying in my very own hotel room the night before, and I loved traveling without my family. Brown-Sparrow sounded more interesting than the Louis B. Nettelhorst Elementary School. The kids wore uniforms, fancy ones, and marched around like soldiers. He told me the place looked more like a college, with nice big buildings with ivy growing on them, and everything was fancy and first-class. You didn't bring your lunch in a greasy paper bag or get horrible slop in a hot, steamy cafeteria—they had a big dining hall, and ate off china plates. They had a band that played every day while they marched to lunch.
Seamus explained that military schools had been popular about twenty years before, and there were still quite a few around. People in the movie business made lots of money, and liked to show off, so they sent their kids to these places. A couple of retired movie actors named Brown and Sparrow had started his. All the male teachers were dressed up as captains and majors, and everybody had to salute each other and say "sir." I told Seamus that it sounded like fun, and I wished I could go there.
"Well, BS—that's what we call it—is not that bad," he said. "But sometimes you get tired of it and wish you could just live with one or more parents. If I went to the Nettelhorst School, I would bring salami sandwiches every day, like that Luigi kid you told me about."
One useful thing Seamus Finn told me was that there was a movie house on Hollywood Boulevard called the Hitching Post that sounded exactly like the Julian, only maybe better.
"Do you go there on Saturday mornings?" I asked him.
"Always," he said.
"Neat. I'll be seeing you there," I said.
CHAPTER 14
Grand Canyon
It had been less than two days since I had left Chicago. In that time, I had ridden on a deluxe streamlined train, talked with an old gunfighter and a lot of other people, seen all kinds of landscape I'd never seen before, been given a stone turtle by an Indian shaman, seen cowboys, and been left behind in Flagstaff, where I had my own hotel room, made a friend, and met a ghost and a movie star.
Standing on the south rim of the Grand Canyon topped all those experiences put together. I couldn't believe it! I mean, I couldn't believe it. It was so big, and so complicated, and so beautiful, and so unexpected that I had a hard time accepting that it was real. Seamus Finn said it hit him the same way. He said he kept thinking it was some fantastic big painting, or a movie set. There was a little building put up by the park service, with a model of the Grand Canyon made out of plaster and painted to look real. It had little cards on it, telling you what was Bright Angel Trail, and what was Point Sublime, and what was Mooney Falls. In some strange way, looking at the model was more comfortable than looking at the actual thing. After looking at the model for a while, we went outside and found we were able to deal with the real canyon a little better.
Besides being un-understandably big, and having all the amazing colors, and having such clear air that everything stood out sharper than real, the thing the canyon made you want to do was go down and be inside it. We wanted to just step over the edge of the rim and start climbing down, which people do—there are trails and you can hike down, or ride down on mules. Billy the Phantom Bellboy, being a ghost, didn't need a trail and was already a couple hundred feet down the side, and having a wonderful time.
Aaron Finn had a better idea. He was arranging for us to take an airplane ride. We whistled and hollered for Billy to come back, which made us look crazy to the tourists, because they couldn't see him in the bright light. Then we piled into the Packard and headed for the place where the airplane would take off.
I had never been up in an airplane. I was pretty sure this was turning out to be the best day of my life. Then I saw the airplane and I was completely sure. It was a Ford Tri-Motor, the smartest airplane ever made.
Let me tell about the Ford Tri-Motor, or "Tin Goose." They started making them around 1929, and only ever built about two hundred of them. As the name suggests, it has three motors, one on the nose and two mounted below the wings. They are all 450-horsepower Pratt and Whitney Wasp R-985 ninecylinder radial engines. The fuel tanks hold 355 gallons, and the plane uses about 80 gallons per hour. It is a high-wing monoplane, with fixed landing gear, just under fifty feet long, with a wingspan of seventy-seven feet, ten inches, and can carry fifteen passengers and two crew. I knew all this because it was printed on the box my model airplane kit of the Tri-Motor came in. And, I might add, it is the greatest airplane ever built, and smelly and noisy with lots of vibrations—which just makes it better somehow.
We all started smiling when we saw the aircraft. Just looking at it was enough to make us happy—knowing we were going to take a ride in it, and through the Grand Canyon to boot, was almost too much to deal with. Billy the Phantom Bellboy said this was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his whole death.
CHAPTER 15
My Yiddishe Shaman
It was going to be a few minutes until the plane took off. They were waiting to see if any more people besides us turned up. So we stood around the little airport, looking at the airplane and at the nifty souvenir tickets we'd been given. There was a guy, a mechanic or something, Indian guy, not tall, not short, not young, not old, not handsome, not ugly—just this guy. I looked at him. He looked at me.
"Melvin?" I asked.
"Sheldon," he said.
"Oh. You look like a guy named Melvin."
"I know. And you're the kid with the turtle."
"You know about the turtle?"
"Take good care of it. It's important. I see you're taking Billy for an outing."
"Wait! You know Billy?" I asked.
"Sure, Melvin knows me, and I know Melvin," Billy the Phantom Bellboy said.
"It's Sheldon," I said.
"Did you tell him your name was Sheldon?" Billy asked.
"Yes." Sheldon smirked. "Just fooling with his mind."
"So you're really Melvin?" I asked.
"No, I'm really Irving," Sheldon/Melvin said.
"Does he know about the turtle?" Billy asked.
"He just knows to hang on to it, and it's important," Sheldon/Melvin/Irving said.
"You know about the turtle?" I asked Billy.
"It's important. Hang on to it," Billy said.
"Wait. What...?"
"Time to board the plane," Sheldon/Melvin/ Irving said. "Have a great flight."
CHAPTER 16
Down in the Sky
The pilot was Jack Lacheln. He was handsomer than Aaron Finn, and had a leather jacket, a white scarf, and sunglasses. When he saw him, Aaron Finn whipped out a little notebook and sketched a picture of him—obviously so he could be made up to look like him if he ever played a pilot in a movie.
We were the only passengers on the plane, except for an evil-looking little guy. This guy wore a hat with the brim turned down all around, had a greasy mustache, wore a black suit, and smelled like lilacs. He introduced himself to us. His name was Sandor Eucalyptus. Before we took off, Sandor Eucalyptus asked Jack Lacheln if he could have a parachute.
"There are parachutes under the seats," the pilot told him. "But you have no need to worry. The aircraft is completely safe. We've been flying it for twenty years, and it works perfectly." Good old Ford Tri-Motor.
"Just the same, I would prefer to wear my parachute," Sandor Eucalyptus said.
"Really, it isn't necessary," Jack the pilot said. "If we were to crash, which is just incredibly unlikely, you'd be safer going down with the plane than trying to use a parachute if you don't know how."
"Just the same," Sandor Eucalyptus said. "In my home country, the Duchy of Botstein, it is required by law that all passengers wear their parachutes, and I am simply used to it—if you please."
"Well, if you insist," Jack said.
"It's Botstinian custom," Sandor Eucalyptus said, strapping on his parachute. Aaron Finn was sketching Sandor Eucalyptus.
"I must ask you for that drawing, señor," Sandor Eucalyptus said, reeking of lilacs.