“Think that will work?” I asked Billy Backus.
“I see no reason it shouldn’t.”
“Are you going to repeat the announcement?”
“Either they got it or they didn’t,” Billy said. “Did you do everything we talked about?”
“I went and saw Mr. Winnick.”
“And he said he’d handle things?”
“He didn’t say anything definite.”
“Well, nothing to do but wait and see what happens,” Billy Backus said. He pulled a folder out of a sort of bookcase for long-playing phonograph records, and slid two discs out of it. “Symphony Number 3, by Gustav Mahler,” he said. “Takes about an hour and a half. Then I’ll tell Carlos to put the uniform on.”
It was nice music. Leni and I gradually slid out of our chairs and fell asleep, curled up on the carpet. Billy Backus leaned back in his radio announcer’s chair and snored quietly.
40.
“WAKE UP, GIRLS, the symphony is finished,” Billy Backus said.
Carlos Chatterjee had put on his Sergeant-Major-in-the-British-46th-Regiment-of-Foot-circa-1775, uniform, complete with boots and tall pointy hat. He looked good. The big clock on the wall showed it was 7:55 P.M. The studio was soundproof, but I thought I could hear drums outside.
Leni ran downstairs and opened the door. The sound of drumming got louder. It wasn’t a military rhythm. “That sounds sort of like a calypso beat,” I said.
“It’s actually mento,” Billy Backus said. “Which is similar to calypso, but comes from Jamaica, whereas calypso comes mostly from Trinidad.”
“You’d better come down and see this,” Leni called up the stairs.
There was quite a lineup of people in the street. First there were four adorable children holding a banner that read, Kingston, New York Salutes Kingston, Jamaica. Behind the children were the androidal flesh-robot redcoats, each holding a torch. Behind the torch-bearers were mento musicians with drums and banjos and trumpets, and dancers wearing some pretty fancy costumes, with a lot of feathers and bright colors.
It seems there are a fair number of people from the island of Jamaica living in Kingston, and others from different places in the Caribbean. Others have no personal connection with the islands, but they just like them, and apparently some of them possess costumes, or can play music. Somehow Mr. Winnick had gotten word to everybody to come and take part in the Kingston Honors Kingston nighttime parade.
Carlos Chatterjee, with the keg on his shoulder, took his place at the front of the line, and barked some orders at the troops. They snapped to attention. Then he told them to light their torches. They took out Zippo lighters and did so. Then Carlos lifted the arm that was not steadying the keg on his shoulder as though he held an imaginary sword, and shouted, “Forward! March!” The soldiers stepped off smartly, holding their torches in the air.
The drummers drummed, the players played, the dancers twirled and strutted, and the whole combination moved off down the street, and turned left at Broadway. We marched alongside on the pavement. Kingston policemen, stationed at the intersections, held up traffic as the parade passed by.
A little distance behind, three or four guys in greasy double-breasted suits followed along. They looked like gangsters, which of course they were.
41.
THE PEOPLE OF KINGSTON had finished their suppers, and were watching television, or playing a game of cards at the kitchen table, or just sitting on the steps of their houses, enjoying the evening air. They heard the drums and the playing and singing, they saw the light of the torches, and they came forward to have a look.
I have to say, I was proud of the Kingstonians. They applauded the music and the dancers, and they insulted and objected to the soldiers with torches.
“Phooey!” they shouted. “Go home, lobsterbacks!” “Down with the redcoats!” “We don’t like torchlight parades!” and “No taxation without representation!” I doubt they even knew the intention of the troops with the torches was to burn the place down, they just didn’t like the image.
The music was good, and lots of people marched along Broadway with the parade, like we were doing. There was a lot of cheering and clapping and hollering, and some of the citizens joined the dancers and became part of the show.
When the parade, and the crowd that was going along with it, came to Wurts Street, where there’s a little park, we saw that the lights on the baseball diamond had been turned on, and what should be there, at home plate, but the Papaya King mobile unit? I say we saw it, but we smelled the hot dogs, tastier than filet mignon, first. And there was a flashing electric sign on top of the mobile unit: Free!
The parade and the onlookers dissolved into a seething mob of happy people munching hot dogs and experiencing papaya juice. Except the redcoats. They remained in formation and under orders. Carlos marched them off in the direction of the Rondout Creek. The gangsters shuffled after.
“May I offer you a papaya juice?” I asked Leni.
“Why not?” Leni said. “And isn’t Carlos doing a perfectly splendid job?”
“He is. He’s getting two Dwergish coins after this night’s work.”
“Shall we stroll down to the cave and be in at the finish?”
“Yes, let’s.” And sipping our juices, we strolled.
42.
BY THE TIME WE REACHED the entrance to the cave, Carlos was emerging, holding one of the torches.
“It can’t be over already!” I said.
“Over and done with,” Carlos said. “It was easy.”
“Tell us everything!”
“Well, first I marched my troops all the way down in the cave. This is some cave, it goes on and on. When I found a nice dry area, that looked like nobody has been there in decades, I had them unroll their regulation blankets and sit down in a neat row along the wall, tucked up nice and warm. Then I ordered them to take out their tin cups, and I poured everyone a drink from my keg. The gangsters who’d been following us had come in close, probably expecting we were near the gold, so I offered them drinks too. They didn’t have tin cups, but I had some Dixies in my knapsack, it wasn’t historically authentic, but sometimes you can’t help it. Then we all drank a toast to the king. I didn’t drink, of course. Then they all went to sleep, and I left them there, snoring happily. As I understand it, they’ll wake up in twenty years, like old Rip.”
“You know, Carlos, when I first met you, a nice enough fellow, but really just a shopkeeper on 86th Street, I would never have guessed that you’d wind up being the hero of the story.”
“You can’t tell how things will work out, and it was my pleasure to be of use.”
“What I’m wondering now,” Leni said, “is what happens when they wake up twenty years from now. Will they still be programmed to do arson?”
“If you guys are still in the neighborhood when that happens, you’ll know how to deal with it,” I said. “As for me, it won’t be my problem. I have to leave this place now.”
“You’re leaving?” Leni asked. “Where will you go?”
“Poughkeepsie.”
“Poughkeepsie? You’ll go nuts in that town! Why there?”
“A witch told me it was my destiny.”
About the Author
DANIEL PINKWATER is the author and sometimes illustrator of more than one-hundred (and counting) wildly popular books, including The Neddiad, Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, and the picture book The Big Orange Splot. He has also illustrated many of his own books, although for more recent works that task has passed to his wife, illustrator and novelist Jill Pinkwater. Pinkwater is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and appears regularly on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, where he reviews kids’ books with host Scott Simon. Pinkwater also contributed to Wondertime, and has in the past been spotted on the pages of the New York Times Magazine, OMNI, and many other publications.
Pinkwater lives with his wife and seve
ral dogs and cats in a very old farmhouse in New York’s Hudson River Valley.
About the Illustrator
AARON RENIER is the author of three graphic novels for younger readers: Spiral-Bound, The Unsinkable Walker Bean, and The Unsinkable Walker Bean and the Knights of the Waxing Moon. He is the recipient of the Eisner Award in 2006 for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition, and was an inaugural resident for the Sendak Fellowship in 2010. Renier teaches drawing and comics at universities in Chicago
Adventures of a Dwergish Girl Page 9
