by Henry Clark
“There you are!” said Tom, grabbing me by the elbow. “Look what I got!”
He steered me between two tents and then out onto the midway, where there was more space and less chance of our getting trampled. He waved a book in my face.
“Dr. Lao gave it to me. He taught me how to read the I-Ching!” He pronounced it “ee-Ching.” The book was a thin paperback with a picture on the cover very similar to the one on Tom’s shirt. The picture looked like this:
Above this odd symbol it said If You Have an I-Ching, Scratch!, and below the symbol it said A Modern Guide to an Ancient Form of Divination, by Richard K. Philips.
“Uh, cool?” I said, not certain how he expected me to react. “He gave you this?”
“Well, after I paid him twenty bucks to have my fortune told. He had a stack of them.”
“Did you find out if your mother is ever going to take the lock off your TV?”
“Yes! She will! But not until after I’m married. That’s not important. I want to show you how this works.”
He dug in his pocket and pulled out a quarter.
“We have to flip a coin a few times—”
“Listen!” I said, clutching his hand before he could toss. “Something really strange just happened to me in the crystal ball tent—”
“AMBROSE!”
A familiar voice interrupted me from the direction of a cotton candy booth. Sheila Gurwitz, a girl in most of my classes at school, broke away from two of her friends and came running over. She had a furry pink mustache from the cotton candy she was eating. “I’m so sorry about your dad!” she blurted.
I froze. “What about my dad?”
Her hand flew to her furry mouth, and her eyes went wide. “You don’t know?” Her two friends came up on either side of her and looked at me sadly. “They let him go!” she announced, and her friends nodded like the bobblehead dolls on our math teacher’s desk. “McNamara called him into his office at the end of the day and fired him! Everybody was talking about it on the way here! I’m so sorry! Your dad’s a good teacher… except for that one… weird… thing.…”
I shoved past her. Sheila’s mom worked in the office, and I could only assume she was the reason everybody knew about what happened. Over my shoulder I said to Tom, “I gotta get home!”
“Right!” he agreed, snapping his book shut and keeping pace as I sprinted down the midway toward the entrance. There was a commotion up ahead, and my heart sank as I recognized one of the voices.
I broke through the crowd and there was my father. He was surrounded by a ring of some of the tougher high school kids.
“Hey, Mr. Brody!” one of them jeered. “Nice skirt!”
“It’s not a skirt,” my father explained. “It’s an apron.” There was a burst of laughter from the high schoolers, but my father kept talking. “The technical term is pteruges. The dangling strips of leather are weighted at the bottom and hang down in front, over the tunic, to protect the groin during a sword fight.”
They all laughed again when Dad said “groin.” Part of me wanted to run to him, but another part of me was too embarrassed. I hovered at the edge of the crowd, unsure what to do.
My father was wearing his Roman legionnaire costume. He had a crested helmet on his head, light armor around his torso, and sandals on his feet. A red tunic under the armor and pteruges ended an inch or two above his bare knees.
“Nice legs,” said a kid with ANTHRAX on his T-shirt.
“Thank you,” said my father, who never notices sarcasm. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find my son.”
Anthrax stepped in front of him and placed his hand on my father’s armored chest.
“Take your hand off my cuirass,” said my father.
“Apron” and “groin” had gotten laughs from the high schoolers, but “cuirass” gave them hysterics. Anthrax yanked his hand back as though he had burned himself. “Your queer what?” he asked.
“Cuirass,” my father enunciated more clearly. He tapped his chest with his fist, causing the metal to ring. “Let me pass.”
Anthrax stood his ground. “You failed me four years ago, Mr. Brody. I had to take summer-school English because of you!”
“And I was right there through that hot summer teaching it to you again, Mr. Killbreath,” my dad reminded him. “You finally passed it, with a D, as I recall.”
“If everybody had known back then that you were a nut job, you wouldn’t have been teaching!”
“Then somebody else would have flunked you and been forced to tutor you. My being a nut job wouldn’t have made you any brighter, Leonard.”
“It’s about time they canned you! Look at you! I wouldn’t want you teaching me! You shouldn’t be around kids!”
I launched myself at Lenny Killbreath. I was going to knock him down and beat the anthrax out of him. But a man in black stepped out of the crowd and caught me by the shoulders, holding me at arm’s length.
“Whoa there, young fry! No donnybrooks at my show, if you please!”
I looked up at him. He was wearing a black coat, a fancy green vest, and a tie like a huge floppy shoelace. He had messy black hair and an eye patch.
It was the guy I had seen in Madam Janus’s crystal ball.
“My name’s not Donny!” I said, and tried to get past him again.
“Manner of speaking,” he said, gently pushing me back. “A donnybrook is a contretemps.” As if that explained it.
He let go of me, took my father’s hand, and shook it. “Orlando Tiresias Camlo,” he said, “proprietor of Camlo’s Traveling Wonder Show, at your service. And you”—Camlo twisted my father’s hand sideways, to show the crowd the blue star on its back—“have had your hand stamped, so you paid to get in. This makes you an honored guest.”
Camlo bowed, let go of my dad’s hand, and turned, sweeping his gaze across Lenny Killbreath and his buddies. “I notice others here have not had their hands stamped. This makes you fence-jumpers—and unwelcome!”
Lenny and his boys melted into the crowd.
“‘The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them. Whither are they vanished?’” said Camlo, and I had no idea what he was talking about. Possibly he was calling Lenny a bubblehead. He certainly talked the way I imagined someone who owned a treasure might.
“Macbeth,” said my father.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Macbeth.” Camlo beamed. “It’s quite a coincidence, you being named Macbeth. I just quoted from a play of the same name.”
“I was identifying the play,” explained my father.
“Why would you do that? Did you think I didn’t know what I was quoting?”
“My name is Hannibal Brody,” said my father, sounding the tiniest bit annoyed.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Brody!” Camlo looked my father up and down. “Are you, perhaps, in search of the rest of your marching band?”
“I am in search of my son,” said my father, straightening and nodding in my direction.
“Who I presume is this feisty lad,” Camlo decided. “So you have found him, and I see that he, too, paid to get in—honest families are the axle grease of commerce—meaning my work here is done. Enjoy your visit! The briefness of our encounter has made it all the sweeter!” He turned on his heel and bubbled away.
“They fired you!” I yelled at my dad. And on top of that, I couldn’t believe he had shown up at the carnival after I had been there only half an hour. I hadn’t expected to see him before five. His Roman legionnaire outfit made him look like the bad guy in a gladiator movie.
He winced and put a finger to his lips. I realized I had shouted. The crowd surrounding my father had pretty much dispersed when the high schoolers left, but a few people lingered, as if they thought my dad might suddenly start juggling.
“I was hoping to find you before you heard it from somebody else,” my dad said, so quietly I had to get closer to hear him. “And I’m not exactly fired. It’s more of a suspension.”
“
Kids get suspended!” I snapped. “Teachers don’t!”
“Sometimes they do,” said my father apologetically. “I’m not fully fired. Not yet. They’ve called a special session of the school board for tomorrow night to review the case. Mr. Garlock will be teaching my classes until things get worked out.”
“I told you!” I sputtered. “You didn’t listen to me! You didn’t listen to Mom!”
“This isn’t really the place to discuss it. Maybe we should go home? You can always come back here later.”
“Sure! Fine! Whatever!”
I turned and headed for the exit. I knew he was right behind me from the squeaky sound of his armor, but I was so mad, I couldn’t look at him.
When we got to the car, I realized Tom was still with us. “You said you’d drop me off,” he reminded me.
“Hop in,” my dad said to both of us, and I think he was relieved to have Tom along. He slid into the driver’s seat, I got in beside him, and Tom squirmed into the back. The car’s sunroof was open, and the crest of my dad’s helmet stuck out and rippled in the breeze.
“You don’t have to do this!” I declared once we were on our way. “You could dress like a normal person!”
“I am a normal person,” my father assured me. “I just happen to be a trans-temp.”
“Mom says there’s no such thing!”
“Trans-temporals are a small but growing minority,” my father assured me. “As of this morning, we even have our own newsletter.” He reached between the seats and fished out a tablet, thumbed it to life, and handed it to me. The screen glowed with something called Out of Time: A Journal for the Trans-Temporal Community. The lead story was illustrated with a pattern showing how to make Napoleon’s underwear.
I scrolled to the credits. It was just as I expected.
“You’re the editor!”
“And currently the entire staff,” my dad acknowledged. “But it has fourteen subscribers, and it’s only been online for eight hours. Trans-temporals, or trans-temps,” he said over his shoulder for Tom’s benefit, not knowing I had already explained it to Tom way too many times, “are people who are not comfortable wearing the clothing of the twenty-first century and prefer to dress in the attire of other time periods. When they do this in public, they usually offer some lame excuse—‘I’m on my way to a Renaissance fair!’ or ‘I’m a Civil War reenactor!’ But then, sadly, when they don’t explain themselves in some silly way such as this, they are frequently persecuted. This persecution must stop! I am striking a blow for freedom of expression by publicly dressing in the manner in which I am most comfortable!”
I was reading the Out of Time’s editorial, which welcomed everybody to the first issue and went on to say, “Trans-temps will almost never come out of the closet, since they’re too busy trying on the older stuff in the back.”
“You could have stuck with the Mark Twain suit,” I said. “That has to have been more comfortable than something that clanks.” I punched my dad’s shoulder. The armor made a noise like the Tin Woodman.
During the weeks my father had taught The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he had worn the plain white suit Mark Twain wore in old photographs. His students had loved it, and the other teachers had said it was a good trick to hold the kids’ attention. My father had offered extra credit to any of his students who came in dressed as one of the characters from the book, and a few of them had. One had gotten beaten up by bullies. He had been dressed as Becky Thatcher.
“I’m sure I’ll wear Twain’s suit again someday—white is great for summer—but I feel the need to experiment with other time periods.”
“NO, YOU DON’T!”
“A copy of Shoeless Joe Jackson’s 1915 White Sox uniform arrived in the mail just today. It’s perfect, even though they forgot the shoes.”
“This was okay when you were only doing it around the house,” I said bitterly. “You don’t have to do it outside! You don’t have to dress weird at school! It’s my school, too, you know!”
“Most of the kids like it,” said Tom from the backseat. I whirled and glared at him. “We all look forward to seeing how you’ll dress next. I thought the fur trapper was cool.”
“I do believe most of the students are good with it,” agreed my father. “You’re still at an age when you’re open to new things. Most of you.” He gave me a look. “It’s the adults who are having trouble with it.”
“Like Mom?” I snapped.
My dad’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Your mother,” he said, “will come around eventually. I sent her roses this morning. She responds well to roses.”
“She’s not happy,” I said.
“She needs time.”
“The time she needs is the present, and she needs you to stay in it! Or at least dress for it!” I pretended to be interested in a passing lamppost. I would get too upset if we kept talking about my mom. And it was obviously not the time to ask if I could go out at nine to meet somebody from the carnival.
“Are you going to this emergency meeting of the school board tomorrow?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“And what are you planning to wear?”
“I was thinking samurai. Only not with the sword. That might be seen as threatening.”
“You think a samurai sword might be seen as threatening? Really?” My voice cracked. “OKAY! OKAY! I’M GETTING OUT HERE!” I fumbled with my seat belt as we rolled up in front of Tom’s house. I had to get out; otherwise, I knew I’d start hitting my dad.
I popped the door and jumped. “I’m sleeping over,” I informed my father. “Tom says it’s fine. Right? It’s fine?” I shot the question at my friend as he struggled out of the backseat.
He froze, saw my expression, then nodded emphatically. “Yeah, yeah, it’s fine—it was my idea. We study well together. My mom’s okay with it.”
I told my dad, “If you wear a samurai suit to the board meeting tomorrow, I swear I’ll move in with Tom permanently!”
“Whoa!” yelped Tom, and I jabbed him with my elbow. “I mean, woe! Woe to you, Mr. Brody, if you do the samurai thing! That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me!”
“I’d like to talk to you more about this, Ambrose, once you calm down,” my father said. “Do you have your cell?”
I shifted my book bag on my back so he could see it. “Yes.”
“Then call me when you’re ready to talk.”
“No!” I said furiously. “You call me when you’ve made up your mind to wear a jacket and tie to the board meeting. A normal jacket and tie! So you’re dressed the same as the board members! That would help!”
I slammed the door and stalked away from the car. Tom chased after me.
As I stomped through the open gate at the side of his house, out of the corner of my eye I saw my father slowly pulling away. He kept looking in my direction.
I felt awful. When I got to the backyard, I threw myself into a lawn chair.
“Your father is just being who he is, Bro,” Tom assured me.
“A lot of people hide who they are, if it helps them keep their job,” I said. “My mom can get really mad, but you never see it when she’s selling houses.”
Two years earlier, my mother had sold the Xui family their house. Tom and I had hit it off immediately. I especially liked the way he substituted some of our longer vocabulary words for curse words—he once called our gym teacher a figment and the school bully a pedestrian, and if he was angry, he might exclaim fiduciary! or paramecium! and then get all red in the face because he had used profanity, which, according to Tom, included words like cacophony and defibrillate and glabrous.
“I can’t believe he let them fire him instead of just wearing normal clothes,” I muttered.
“It’s certainly crepuscular,” Tom agreed, trying out his latest curse. “But maybe you shouldn’t think about it for a while. You said something strange happened to you in the crystal-ball tent?”
Tom’s mother popped her head out the back door and
bellowed, “Tom Xui! Why aren’t you practicing piano? March yourself right in here this instant! Hello, Ambrose. DID YOU HEAR ME? THIS INSTANT!”
We both jumped up.
It would be a while before I told Tom anything about hidden treasure.
CHAPTER 3
If You Have an I-Ching—Scratch!
Tom practiced piano for an hour. I sat next to him on the piano bench and turned the pages of his sheet music. It looked a little more complicated than trumpet music. I was glad I played an instrument that couldn’t hit two notes simultaneously.
“Of course Ambrose can stay over,” Mrs. Xui agreed when Tom asked her. “He is always welcome here. You can help each other study for next week’s math test. Ambrose is a good boy.” She patted me on the head and veered off into the kitchen.
I like Mrs. Xui, but she says odd things sometimes. I once heard her call me “Tom’s nice African friend,” which I thought was pretty funny. My mom is black, but she’s from Canada, and she can speak French because that’s the only way she could talk to her grandparents. My dad is Irish, and he says he’s the palest man in Ohio, which anybody who’s seen him in a toga would definitely agree with. Irish doesn’t describe me, and neither does African, although I do look more like my mom than my dad.
Tom stopped playing Chopin’s eleventh polonaise, held up a finger, and said, “Now!”
A moment later, a phone rang. Tom’s twin sisters, Dorcas and Yvette, catapulted across the living room and dived into the sofa. Yvette emerged with a phone from somewhere deep in the cushions.
“What did I tell you?” Tom asked, tapping the side of his head. “Psychic!”
I sat next to Tom’s great-grandfather at dinner, which was tacos and fajitas, in keeping with Mrs. Xui’s vow to always eat American, and Tom spoke with him in Chinese.
“Is that Mandarin?” I asked when they had finished. I had recently learned that the Chinese language had a bunch of subdivisions, and Mandarin was the most common.
“No,” said Tom. “It’s this dialect that practically nobody speaks anymore, from the province my Gee Gee Pa came from originally. My Mandarin is much better.”
