by Henry Clark
“Who? Ninja Lady?” I was totally confused. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”
“If I told you, you’d both start acting weird, and it would jeopardize the mission.”
“We’re already acting weird,” Tom pointed out.
“Weirder, then!” Frankie clarified. She turned to the door, lifted the ring in the brass door knocker’s nose—the knocker was the face of the wind, with puffed-out cheeks and puckered lips—and rapped loudly.
“The two of you shouldn’t say anything,” she said over her shoulder. “These are women. They’ll be more likely to spot boys in girls’ clothing than the colonel was. Let me do the talking.”
She rapped several more times and nobody answered. We heard laughter from the far side of the house and followed it.
Around back, in the center of a garden, five women sat at a table under the shade of an enormous oak. Books were scattered on the tabletop around a punch bowl and plates of tiny sandwiches. The women looked up at our approach, and the largest—she looked like an opera singer—stood and faced us.
“May I help you?” she asked.
Frankie curtsied. Tom didn’t realize we were stopping and collided with me. I shoved him back to keep my balance, and we flailed at each other until we realized we might not be making a good first impression. We froze.
“I am so sorry to bother you,” said Frankie, “but I am Shofranka Camlo. I am working my way through boarding school by representing the American importers of a wonderful new Parisian fashion sensation that promises to be the must-have accessory of the fall season. Since you ladies have the reputation of being the trendsetters of the town of Freedom Falls, we have searched you out before making our offer to any of your neighbors. I hope we are not intruding.”
“You are… selling something?” Opera Singer sounded intrigued.
“I prefer to think of it as providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“What boarding school? And who are they?” Opera Singer waved her hand at Tom and me.
“Miss Evangeline’s School for the Gifted but Destitute. This is Thomasina, and this is Rose. I speak for them.”
“Have they no command of English?”
“Alas, madam, no one knows. They are mimes.”
“Mimes?”
“Yes. They do not speak.”
Tom and I shook our heads sorrowfully. Tom pretended to zip his lips, which made absolutely no sense, since I was pretty sure the zipper hadn’t been invented yet.
“Mimes!” gasped Opera Singer. “How awful! You poor dears!”
Tom bugged his eyes and nodded enthusiastically, and I realized he was imitating the silent comedian Harpo Marx, from the old Marx Brothers movies that he loved but his mother couldn’t see the value of. He raced over to the table and acted like he was eating an invisible hamburger.
“Are you hungry?” asked a lady in a lavender dress, who held up a plate full of sandwiches. Tom held out his apron and emptied the entire plate into it. Then he threw in some cupcakes. He sat on the edge of the table and began eating out of his apron, flashing Harpo’s squirrelly look from the depths of his bonnet. A couple of the women looked appalled, but the others raised fans to their faces and giggled.
“You said something about an opportunity?” Opera Singer asked.
Frankie, who didn’t look all that pleased by the demon she had unleashed, flashed a forced smile and said, “We are taking pre-orders for the biggest advance in fashion since the crinoline! I am talking about nothing other than the Fantastic Transparent Plasteek Clutch Purse!” Frankie dramatically waved a Ziploc bag over her head.
There was a sharp intake of breath from around the table. I sat down in Opera Singer’s chair and helped myself to the sandwiches, which turned out to be cucumber. Everybody else’s eyes were on Frankie. She moved close to the table and displayed her plastic bag. The ladies stared as if she were showing them diamonds.
“Tired of rummaging in your reticule for that thing that always seems to be at the bottom?” Frankie asked. I supposed reticule was an old-time word for handbag. “Rummage no more, with this miracle of the age! See where everything is at a glance! Let others know the high quality of your combs and brushes; the size of your homes by the number of keys on your key rings; how beautiful your embroidered handkerchiefs are without ever having to sneeze!” She plucked a butter knife off the table, placed it inside the bag, zipped it, flipped it, and shook the sealed bag to show the contents wouldn’t fall out. The ladies gasped and said “Oh!” as if she had done a magic trick.
Frankie handed the bag to Lavender Lady. “Feel it. Hold it to the light. It is waterproof down to two fathoms, and you know how your river loves to flood!”
“It’s so smooth!” declared Lavender Lady. “And the weave is so fine, I can’t even see the thread!”
“The thread is silk from silkworms owned by mystic men of the Far East who breed their worms to have great clarity of mind. This clarity can be seen in the silk. Or not seen, perhaps I should say,” Frankie explained, with a remarkably straight face.
I couldn’t help but enjoy Frankie’s performance. I suspected she was showing off her carnival-schooling.
As the bag got passed around the table, I ladled myself a lemonade from the punch bowl. A glance around the garden reminded me how far back in time we had traveled. The ceramic gnomes were beardless.
“This, of course, is a salesman’s sample,” Frankie explained. “Pre-order price is only two dollars per purse. In Scupperville”—she named a town farther up the river—“twenty-seven of the town’s most refined ladies pre-ordered a total of thirty-three purses. One of those ladies, I should perhaps not mention, bragged about how Scupperville is always ahead of Freedom Falls when it comes to fashion.”
Opera Singer bellowed “Marigold!” at the house, and a parlor maid bustled out.
“Marigold! Please bring me two dollars from the top drawer of my vanity.”
Marigold turned, but Frankie raised a hand and stopped her.
“That will not be necessary. We are accepting no money at this time. You will pay upon receipt. I will take down the names of any of you who wish to place an advance order.”
A portable writing desk sat on one corner of the table. Frankie helped herself to a piece of paper, dipped a handy feather pen into an inkwell, and looked up expectantly at the ladies. All of them gave their names, and two of them wanted to pre-order more than one bag.
“You ladies are ever so much more gracious than the ladies of Scupperville.” Frankie sighed. “It seems such a pity they will be receiving their purses before you.”
“Is that absolutely written in stone?” asked Opera Singer, who turned out to be Ethel Mordred. “Just because they ordered before we did?”
“I am afraid that is how it works,” said Frankie, in a voice full of regret.
“Perhaps if we offered you a little more money per purse? Or if we gave our money in advance? You might move us to the top of the list?”
“Alas, I would not be comfortable doing that,” said Frankie. “However…”
“Yes?”
“Is that the new book everybody is talking about?” Frankie pointed to the table. “The one about the evils of slavery? I have been meaning to read it, but all the booksellers seem to be sold out.”
“Why, I’ve finished reading mine,” said Lavender Lady, who had identified herself as Lavinia Moon. She picked up both volumes of the book and handed them to Frankie. “Please take it as a gift. I am sure you would find it particularly edifying. Considering.” She waved a hand at Frankie’s face. Frankie cocked her head to one side.
“Why, thank you so much! You know, I do believe the Scupperville orders might accidentally find their way to the bottom of the pile!”
The ladies beamed. Frankie placed volume two of Uncle Tom’s Cabin into her Fantastic Transparent Plasteek Clutch Purse and sealed it shut. That’s when an unearthly howl came from the direction of the river. The eeriness of it rais
ed the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Oh, dear!” cried Mrs. Mordred. “I do hope Joe Sawyer has not gotten his cravat caught in the lumber mill’s band saw again!”
I squirmed, wondering what part of Joe Sawyer’s body his cravat might be.
“Well, ladies,” said Frankie, “we will not take up any more of your time. We have miles to go before we sleep. You can expect your new purses to arrive from Paris sometime before Christmas. I will deliver them personally and you can pay upon receipt. It has been such a pleasure to have met you!”
Frankie gave meaningful glances to Tom and me, and we followed her out to the road.
“That was absolutely amazing,” I conceded. I was genuinely impressed. “You sold those women something anybody else would have thrown away as trash.”
“You’ll notice I didn’t take any money from them,” Frankie said primly, sticking the other volume of Cabin into the second of her two Ziploc bags and putting them both into her tiny backpack. They fit with very little room to spare. She took the trombone case from me, jammed it against my chest, and popped the lid. “That howl we heard was Mr. Ganto, signaling he’s back in range. I want to use the Shagbolt before he gets too close.”
“You don’t want Mr. Ganto arriving at the same time we do?” Tom guessed, echoing my own thought.
“No, I don’t,” admitted Frankie. “It would be better if he showed up a few minutes after we do. If we all arrive at the same time, the first thing he’ll do is take the Shagbolt away from us.”
“Because he’s under orders from your father,” I said.
She nodded and raised the trombone to her lips. “I want all of us thinking of that ghastly middle school of yours, about ten minutes after we parked the golf cart behind the Dumpsters. If we do this really well, we’ll wind up sitting in the cart. I’ll drop you two off at home, and then I’ll take the cart back to the carnival.”
“Wait!” said Tom, putting his hand up.
“What?”
“I don’t suppose you could leave me here?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I don’t mean forever,” Tom hastened to explain. “I just mean for a day or two, and then you could come back for me. I love this stuff—it’s what I really want to study—and I could use a break from Puma Ma. I’d like to look around some more.”
Tom ran away from home, on average, every two weeks. The first few times it happened, his mother had called the cops. As it got to be a regular thing, she grew less concerned. At first, he had hidden out at my house, but when that became the first place his mother would look, he found other places he could disappear to. His favorite was the back room of the Freedom Falls Historical Society, which had a window with a loose latch.
“No,” said Frankie. “I like history as much as anybody, but this particular time and place is way too dangerous for us. Besides, neither of you can imagine how leaving somebody behind could totally screw up the future. We’re all going back together!”
She gave the trombone’s slide a loosening wiggle. “Now, don’t distract me. The last thing I want to do is play that final note flat.” She grinned. “You’ll know I’ve messed up if we all get run over by a herd of buffalo!”
She put the mouthpiece to her lips and pumped out the first six of the seven notes she had taught us earlier, and I was pleased to find I remembered them perfectly. The seventh note was an F, and she played it clear and sharp.
For the second time in my life, I felt myself turn to dust in the wind. The individual grains of me blew away, spiraled through a tunnel, and put themselves back together in a brand-new place.
It was not the place we were trying to get to.
CHAPTER 14
Not the Middle School
We were not outside. And we were definitely nowhere near a golf cart. We were in a large, high-ceilinged room that somehow felt familiar. A massive desk in front of a throne-like chair occupied the center, with benches facing the desk on either side of a wide aisle, and I was reminded for a moment of the courtroom set for The Crucible, until I noticed the statues.
There were two of them, one on either side of the aisle farthest from the desk, near the double-door entrance to the room. We had arrived closest to the statue on the left. It stood on a pedestal engraved:
JUSTICE
SEES THE DIFFERENCES
The statue was a woman holding a set of balance scales. She was wearing an ankle-length dress, a pearl necklace, and the kind of eyeglasses I had once heard my mom call cat’s-eye, which flared up at the top corners. With her free hand, the statue held a pair of binoculars halfway to her face.
HARMONY
DISPELS THE DIFFERENCES
declared the pedestal on the right side of the aisle, which supported a statue of a man in a business suit, striped tie, and narrow-brimmed hat. He was holding a briefcase in one hand and a rolled-up newspaper in the other, and stared blindly into space with a self-satisfied look on his face.
“Where are we?” I asked, getting a very bad feeling about it all.
“Look at the ceiling,” said Tom, a touch of fear in his voice.
I looked, and I knew where we were. The ceiling was tarnished tin, with the image of an eagle hammered into its center. The bird’s wings were spread, and lightning bolts shot out from between its talons, like really painful toe fungus. We were in a room I had been in numerous times before, but it had never looked like this.
“We’re in the school library,” I said flatly.
“This is your library?” asked Frankie. “It’s not big on books, is it?”
No shelves, no worktables, not a book in sight. No sign of Ms. Butler, our helpful school librarian, either.
A buzzer went off and the lights got brighter. Footsteps clomped on the other side of the door. We scrambled and hid behind Justice.
The doors flew open and two men entered, dragging another man who had been stripped to his T-shirt and undershorts. He was handcuffed and had a gag in his mouth. The two men quick-marched him down the aisle and stopped in front of the desk, then did their best to stand at attention as their prisoner struggled to break free of their grip.
Tom nudged me frantically, and I nodded to show him I had seen the same thing he had.
The prisoner was our school principal, Clyde McNamara.
Nothing happened for a moment. Then a door behind the throne opened and Quentin Garlock walked out. The man we knew as a substitute teacher was wearing a suit identical to the one Harmony was wearing and had an annoyed look on his face. He made a big show of consulting his watch and snarled, “You’re almost ninety minutes late! I’ve sent staff home, waiting for you! This facility does not—should not—accept new inmates past the hour of five. You could have put him in a holding cell in town and brought him here tomorrow.”
I climbed up on the pedestal and peeked around Justice to get a better look. Tom tugged urgently on the hem of my dress, like he thought maybe this wasn’t the smartest thing I had ever done.
“Holding cell’s full of drunks, celebrating Killbreath’s fourth inauguration,” one of the men said apologetically. “Your clerk said—”
“My clerk said you could bring him here, but that was almost two hours ago! All right, let’s get this over with.” Garlock snatched a sheaf of papers off the desk and glanced at them. “Clyde McNamara, this is your second offense. Court trial is waived as superfluous; you’ve had the one—no need to burden the system and the taxpayers any further. You have been caught once again wearing a garment called a kilt.”
The man on McNamara’s left produced a piece of plaid cloth and tossed it onto the desk. Garlock glared at the guard. “I just said—there is no trial. Meaning there is no need for evidence. Take that filthy rag away!”
Before the guard could retrieve it, McNamara lunged forward and snatched it up with his cuffed hands. He clutched it to himself like a security blanket.
At first I had hoped they were rehearsing some sort of skit, but then I decided they wouldn’
t have cleared the library for it, and the red on McNamara’s cheek looked too much like real blood. I chinned myself up on Justice’s binoculars to get a better look. Tom sputtered below me.
“Certainly an admission of guilt,” said Garlock. “Remove his gag. Do you have anything to say before I pass sentence?”
McNamara spat out the gag the moment it was loosened.
“This is the tartan of my people—the clan McNamara!” he said defiantly. “We have worn it proudly for centuries! I wear the kilt only once a year, in the privacy of my own home, every January twenty-fifth, on the anniversary of the birth of Angus McOffal, the inventor of haggis, the national dish of Scotland. It is a tradition!”
“Haggis is a football stuffed with sheep’s guts,” said Garlock, looking a little queasy.
“You think it was easy coming up with a recipe like that? Only my people could have done it! I have a right to wear the kilt!”
I remembered that my father owned a kilt. He wore it sometimes, but he said it was too modern for him to be truly comfortable in. It was news to me that McNamara wore one. It shouldn’t have been something you got beaten up over.
“Wearing it makes you a trans-temp—a cross-time dresser—wearing the clothes of an age other than your own. It is disruptive to the society in which we live, and it is expressly prohibited by the Uniform Uniformity Act of 1964, except in the case of sanctioned theatrical performances glorifying the state.”
“The kilt has never gone out of fashion!”
“Only in your head, sir! The world eagerly awaits the day when the kilt will be eradicated and join the burnoose, the kimono, and that abomination known as lederhosen in the dustbin of history! Some might pity you, but I say you’re sick, and it makes me wish capital punishment wasn’t reserved only for the genetically inferior! As it is, I sentence you to the maximum for a second offense—three years in the prison laundry, where every day you will be subjected to proper, if revoltingly dirty, apparel. May it rub off on you!”
