by Eric Bower
“Texas?!” I gasped.
My mind immediately tried to form a map of the country, to figure out how far from home I was. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a particularly good map. It was a big splotchy picture, shaped sort of like a pie, with Pitchfork in the dead center. The inaccuracy of my mental map wasn’t entirely my fault. If we spent more time studying maps and less time on silly oral reports in school, then I’m sure I’d be better at geography. The shape of my mental map would be more accurate and a lot less pie-shaped.
I didn’t know quite where Texas was, but I knew that it was far from home, and that I was in a lot of trouble.
“That’s right, kid,” Lefty Also told me as he patted me on the back. “Good old Texas. The Two Star State, as they call it. I can tell from the way that your eyeballs have grown that you ain’t been to Texas before. This must be really exciting for you!”
“Hah hee!” Lefty cackled.
“Hah hee!” Lefty Also echoed.
“Hah hee,” I echoed sadly.
Exciting was not the word I would have used.
“I don’t suppose you know when this train stops next?” I asked the two merry drifters.
“Good question, kid,” Lefty Also said.
“Thanks. I’m terrible with answers, but I’m usually pretty good with questions.”
“This train won’t stop until it reaches Chicago,” Lefty explained. “We still have a long ways to go until then, ya little scamp. We still need to pass through Oklahoma Territory, Kansas, and Missouri.”
Chicago? I knew where Chicago was. I had traveled there once before with my family, and I knew firsthand that it was very far from home. It took several hours to get there by flying house, which meant it would take even longer to get there by train.
“But I need to get off this train now!” I cried. “I can’t go to Chicago! I need to get home to Pitchfork! I’m missing several very important meals!”
“Sorry, scrappy, you won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, except where the Old 44 Express takes you. Why don’t you kick back and relax? Put your feet up for a spell.”
How was I expected to kick back and relax when I was stuck on a train that was quickly traveling all the way across the country, and I had absolutely no idea how I’d ever get home? How could I put my feet up for a spell when my situation was literally getting worse by the second?
“Isn’t there anyone I can talk to? Someone who can stop the train so I can get off? Maybe I can find someone in one of the other cars who can help me, like the train conductor.”
Lefty and Lefty Also each raised an eyebrow at me as their toothless smiles quickly melted into gummy frowns. Suddenly, they didn’t look so friendly.
“Kid, we ain’t exactly on this train legally, if you know what I mean,” Lefty said quietly. “And neither are you. No one in this train car has a ticket. That means you should avoid the train conductor, understand? If you go off in search of him, and he kicks me and Lefty Also off this train, we’re not going to be very happy with you, understand?”
I nodded quickly. I understood perfectly well.
I was trapped.
I had no money, which meant that when the train finally stopped in Chicago, I wouldn’t be able to pay to send a message to my family. The only people I knew who lived in Chicago, Shorty and her folks, were currently staying in Pitchfork, so there was no one in the city who could help me. And I wasn’t clever enough to think of anything else to do. I had no way home. I would have to become a merry traveler like Lefty and Lefty Also, hoping that one day I’d sneak onto a westbound train that happened to pass through Pitchfork. I wondered if by the time I finally got home, I’d have holes in my shoes, a long grey beard, and a wacky laugh, just like the Leftys. Knowing my luck, I probably would. Mine would probably be extra wacky.
“Good lad,” Lefty said, as he patted me on the head. “I knew you were smarter than you looked, shanny. Now, I think it’s time that Lefty Also and I showed you how we like to pass the hours while we’re riding the Old 44 Express across the country.”
Lefty looked over at Lefty Also and winked. Lefty Also winked back. They both hopped up and dusted off their incredibly dusty jackets, which made me cough for almost a minute straight. And then they started to sing.
“A-one, and a-two, and a-one-two-three . . . the Camptown ladies sing this song, doo-dah! Doo-dah! The Camptown racetrack’s five miles long! Oh de doo-dah-dey! Goin’ to run all night! Goin’ to run all day! I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag! Somebody bet on the grey!”
The merry travelers started dancing up a storm while singing “Camptown Races,” a song that used to be one of my favorites.
Used to be.
I’d heard that song so many times that I never wanted to hear it again. I’d grown quite sick of it. And even before I’d grown sick of it, I wouldn’t have wanted to hear it sung the way that Lefty and Lefty Also were singing it. It turned out that the merry travelers were even worse singers than they were inventors, which gives you an idea of the agony I was in as I sat there and listened to them screech and howl off-key, searching for a tune which they couldn’t find with both hands and a map, no matter how hard they tried. They also didn’t know all the words to the song, so they just repeated the first two verses over and over and over again, slapping their knees, kicking their feet, then slapping their feet and kicking their knees. The Old 44 Express chugged along as we sped further away from my home and closer to a nightmare that was already looking unbearable.
When the merry travelers started the song over again for the forty-fifth time, I finally did something crazy. I had to. Their singing was turning my brain to mush. The sliding door to the train car was still wide open. I looked out at the rocky field that we were speeding through at a phenomenal pace. And then I looked over to the tone-deaf merry travelers, who didn’t seem as though they were going to stop singing “Camptown Races” until we reached Chicago.
I screamed as loudly as I could, and I jumped.
I hit the ground and bounced, flipping end over end as my exhausted body met the grass and dirt and rocks, bouncing and tumbling and spinning and rolling until I was so dizzy that the dancing pink and purple squirrels I saw out of the corner of my eyes looked as though they were getting seasick. As I tumbled, I could still hear those horrible singing voices—“Camptown Races” echoing in the back of my brain like an off-key bell. When I finally stopped my somersaults and backflips, I looked up and saw the Old 44 Express riding off into the distance, chugging along without me, on its way to Chicago.
“Farewell, Lefty and Lefty Also,” I muttered. “The memory of your kindness will live on in my heart. And the memory of your singing voices will live on in my nightmares.”
Well, I had done it. I had escaped the train and survived the fall. I stood up on legs that felt as though they were made of melting butter and looked around. I was in a wide-open prairie, and when I say wide, I mean w i d e. There was nothing for miles except for more prairies, endless stretches of tall grass and dirt and rocks and bushes. It was late morning, the sun having already completed its trip over the horizon. As I looked around at the empty landscape, a cold breeze blew through my hair. Birds cawed, lizards scuttled, insects buzzed, and I was alone.
When I’m in a terrible and hopeless situation (which happens far too often, in my opinion), I sometimes find that the best thing to do is to pretend to be someone else, someone who is much smarter than me. Why do I do that, you ask? Well, because being far from home with no money or horse might seem like a hopeless situation for silly little W.B., but it wouldn’t be a problem for my brilliant father. What if P was in my situation? What would he do? How would he save himself? If I could think like my brilliant and creative father, then I could come up with a way to get back home.
I mussed up my hair into pointy spikes and pretended that I was him.
I looked down and spotted a little prairi
e dog and was immediately overwhelmed by the urge to make it a hat.
Hmmmm. Maybe I shouldn’t pretend to be P, I thought. He might be brilliant, but he’s also terribly silly and easily distracted, and, without someone like my mother there to guide him, he wasn’t going to be much help.
Next, I pretended to be my mother, though I had to stop pretending to be her after only a few minutes because I kept feeling so disappointed in W.B. for his lack of interest in science, as well as his ridiculous obsession with pie.
Then I pretended to be Aunt Dorcas, and after I had finished yelping and crying and screaming like a hyena with diaper rash, I realized that I wasn’t making much progress towards fixing my situation. It’s really not very productive being Aunt Dorcas. I promised myself to tell her that if I ever saw her again.
I also pretended to be Shorty, B.W., Miss Danielle, and Magnus (our old horse). None of those were helpful either, though pretending to be Magnus gave me the idea to eat some of the tall grass surrounding me, so I wasn’t quite as hungry as I was before. Good old Magnus. I missed that horse.
As I scanned my brain for another person to pretend to be, I couldn’t help but think of the person who had, until recently, been a very close friend of mine, someone whom I admired greatly: Rose Blackwood.
Rose. I still couldn’t believe that she was in jail. The Rose Blackwood that I knew wouldn’t harm a fly. I thought about the time when she had saved my life. It was several months earlier, and we were traveling across the country in our flying house. I was about to be stomped by a pack of wild pigs, and Rose had used her only bullet to save me. She had fired her gun straight into the air instead of shooting at the wild pigs because she didn’t like the idea of hurting them either. She didn’t have to do that. But she did. Because Rose Blackwood wasn’t a killer, nor was she evil, or capable of harming people who didn’t deserve it.
The more I thought about her, the more I wished that my family and I had taken the time to listen to Rose’s side of the story. And I really wished that we had defended her from the accusations hurled at her by the people of Pitchfork. Rose had told us that she considered the Barons to be her family, and I knew for certain that I thought of her as an older sister, and family was supposed to stick together. We were supposed to give each other the benefit of the doubt. And I was ashamed of the fact that we hadn’t.
As I stood beside the train tracks, thinking about Rose and what my family should have done after the explosion at the Pitchfork Fair, my mind was so distracted that I didn’t notice the sound of the westbound train approaching.
The conductor and engineer must have been blowing the horn repeatedly as the train chugged towards me, but I didn’t hear it. Sometimes, when I’m deep in thought, I don’t notice anything that’s happening around me, and sometimes that gets me into trouble. Like the time when I was deep in thought while roasting a hot dog on a stick and ended up with my arm catching on fire. Or like the time when I was cooking pancakes while deep in thought and ended up with my arm catching on fire. Or like the time when I was pickling eggs while deep in thought and both of my arms ended up catching on fire.
But this time, being deep in thought managed to save my life. As the train roared by, the railing of the caboose snagged my suspenders, lifting me up into the air, and pulling me along for the ride. Before I knew what was happening, I was on my way home, bouncing halfway across the country on my backside.
I’d Bet My Big Toe on It
I don’t know how much time passed before the westbound train finally arrived in Arizona Territory. I was black and blue from bouncing along the tracks. The lower half of my body had gone numb. My hair was a mess of dirt and leaves and twigs. My face was covered with a thick layer of soot. Every time I coughed, a cloud of smoke puffed out of my mouth like I was a miniature steam engine.
I had screamed for most of the train ride home and finally lost my voice somewhere around New Mexico Territory. It was for the best. I was getting pretty sick of the sound of my screams by that point and needed a little peace and quiet. When the train finally pulled into the Pitchfork train station, and I recognized where I was, I was so overjoyed and relieved that, after I unhooked my suspenders from the railing of the caboose, I did my family’s happy dance.
My family’s happy dance is a very silly dance that we do when we’re happy. It feels good to do it, though I’ve been told it makes us look like freshly caught fish that are desperately trying to get back into the water. As I happy-danced, a few people who were walking by dropped some coins into my cap, which had fallen off my head. I realized that they probably thought I was a street performer, who was putting on a show for them. I continued to dance, and a few more people dropped some coins into my cap and smiled at me.
Hmmm . . .
I figured if I kept dancing, and people kept giving me coins, I might be able to make enough money to pay a horse and carriage driver, so I wouldn’t have to walk all the way back to the Baron Estate. Maybe I’d be able to afford a decent meal in town too—it felt like ages since I’d had a decent meal. So I kept dancing, putting my heart and soul into it, doing all sorts of fancy dances that I’d seen performed around the world, dances like “the purple German,” “the swollen kneecap,” “the one-man polka,” “the itchy fish trot,” and the infamous “stinky onion,” dancing with more energy than I ever had before, spinning and whooping as I moved to the strange rhythms in my mind.
“That poor boy,” I heard one lady whisper to another, as they each placed a penny in my cap. “Hopefully, with that money, he’ll be able to see a doctor who can fix whatever it is that’s wrong with him.”
“I know,” the other lady responded. “Perhaps he’ll be able to afford a decent haircut as well.”
I took the money from the hat and stuffed it into my pockets, and then stuffed my head into my cap. I no longer felt like dancing.
“What’s wrong with my haircut?” I muttered to myself, as I pulled a bit of cacti from my cowlick.
I set about crossing the desert, following the long and lonesome road through the sandy dunes which led back to the Baron Estate. I was exhausted, and shivering, and, more than that, I was starving. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Well, actually, I could. It was the beans and crackers that Lefty and Lefty Also had given me on the train, followed by the tall grass I’d eaten when I was pretending to be our old horse Magnus. But that was barely a snack, and I was a growing boy who needed to eat six or fifteen square meals a day to survive. As I trekked through the desert, I began to see food everywhere. Cacti began to look like hot dogs. Rocks began to look like fried chicken. Sand dunes began to look like mashed potatoes. My hand began to look like a ham sandwich. My feet like a pair of dill pickles. My knees like a pair of cabbages, which I don’t particularly like, though they might be tasty if eaten with my ham sandwich hands. If I hadn’t spotted the white picket fence surrounding the Baron Estate, I might have done something really weird, which I would have regretted.
I was so excited to be home that I forgot all about my appetite for a moment (well, sort of—I planned on running inside and greeting everyone while swiftly making my way to the kitchen, where I’d make a sandwich so large that it would take three or four plates to carry), and I started to jog towards the house.
I made it about halfway there before I spotted something that made my heart stop.
Geoffrey the horse galloped around the corner of the Baron Estate. And on his back, was me.
Yes. Me. That wasn’t a typo.
I stared at myself riding on the horse with ease and wondered how I’d managed to overcome my clumsiness. Normally, I couldn’t ride a horse longer than a few minutes before I’d somehow fall off or get tangled in the saddle or end up with my head lodged in the horse’s mouth. But then I realized that the person sitting on the horse couldn’t possibly be me, because I was me, or at least I was pretty certain that I was me. If I wasn’t me, then I’
d definitely have some explaining to do to myself.
The me sitting on the horse then spotted the me that was me. I made eye contact with myself, and for a moment, neither of me moved.
The W.B. sitting on the horse looked exactly like me, right down to my funny cowlick. He was even dressed in one of my collarless shirts, with suspenders that were slightly tangled. I looked down and saw that the suspenders I was wearing were slightly tangled as well. At least I had an excuse. I doubted that the W.B. on the horse was just dragged halfway across the country.
Finally, because I didn’t know what else to do, I waved to myself.
“Hi,” I said in a choked voice. “Looking good.”
My voice was choked because I was exhausted, and because I was thirsty, and because I had inhaled a lot of dust, dirt, smoke, garbage, and bugs while I was being pulled by the train. I also might have been coming down with a cold. You know how you’re supposed to wear a jacket when you go out at night to avoid getting sick? Well, you should also definitely wear one while being dragged across the country at fifty miles per hour.
“Hi,” said the me sitting on the horse, who, after giving me a mysterious little wink, turned towards the house and screamed. “Hey! M! P! He’s back again! The person who’s been watching me! Hurry!”
I stared at myself in confusion, wondering what me meant by that, when suddenly my parents came bursting through the front door. My mother had a broomstick in her hand, and my father had a large pot and a wooden spoon. They rushed towards me with anger in their eyes.
“Hi,” I croaked. “Any chance I could get a sandwich or six?”
“Get out of here!” M shouted as she swung her broomstick. “You get out of here now, or I’ll get the sheriff!”
“Huh?”
“Get away from here!” P cried, banging the pot with the spoon as he shouted. “You’re not welcome!”
