The Several Lives of Orphan Jack

by Sarah Ellis

  Jack dusted himself off and sat up tall and proud on the pumpkin pile.

  He began to notice stone markers at the side of the road. Aberbog 3. Aberbog 2. Aberbog 1.

  Then he smelled it. Fishy and salty and wet.

  The smell of the sea. He gulped it in and called out to the solid back in front of him.

  “Are we nearly there? Are we nearly at the sea?”

  Abe nodded.

  Around the next curve in the road, the cart creaked to a halt at the top of the hill, and there it was.

  Gray and green and white. Flat and huge. In the near distance a tidy town and beyond it the sea. Waves, sails and no end to it.

  “He didn’t tell me,” said Jack. “Cook didn’t tell me that it made you big inside just to look at it. Bigger than big. Vast.”

  Abe clicked to his horse and they started down the hill. Jack balanced on his pumpkin seat and stared and stared, at sky and sea and the dancing gulls.

  Views, vicissitudes and vastness, he said to himself. That’s the life of a bird of passage.

  Chapter Nine

  THE SIGHT of town gave Abe’s horse new enthusiasm, and in a few minutes they were there, clopping along a cobbled road to the town square. All around the edge of the square there was a flurry of unloading. One of Abe’s carefully hoarded words suddenly made sense to Jack.

  Of course!

  Fair. A town fair.

  Abe edged the cart into an empty space, swung around and stepped in among the pumpkins.

  “Down,” he said to Jack.

  Jack jumped out of the cart and took the pumpkins as Abe handed them down to him, creating a neat pile on the ground. When the cart was empty, Abe reached into an inside pocket of one of his layers of coats and brought out a piece of bread and an onion.

  “Eat,” he said, handing them to Jack. Then he grabbed a bucket from under the seat and loped off toward the fountain at the center of the square.

  Jack sat on the largest pumpkin and dined.

  ABOUT BLINKING TIME, said his stomach.

  Never was a sultan at a feast a happier man than Jack with his lunch. The chew of the bread, the crunch of the onion. Jack made it a four-course meal. Bread. Onion. Bread and onion. Onion and bread. And never was a sultan’s entertainment more lively than what met Jack’s eyes as he looked around the square.

  Here was a shoemaker unpacking pairs of glossy brown boots. There was a woman arranging jars of spices on a square of carpet. Jack heard the screech of a parrot and spied the caravan from the road. Two children were hanging shiny pots and pans along its sides. Baskets appeared with mountains of potatoes, beets, apples and squash. Strings of onions hung from poles. Jars of jelly glowed in the sun.

  A man walked by with lengths of ribbon and lace fluttering from every part of his clothing. There was yelling and hammering, babies crying and young men whistling, the sound of a flute and the complaining of chickens.

  From behind a rack of sheep fleeces came a voice so loud that it cut through all the other sounds.

  “Buns, buns, buns! One a penny, get ’em hot. Buns, buns, buns!”

  A skinny girl appeared carrying a wooden tray around her neck.

  “Buns, buns, buns!”

  Jack stared. He couldn’t believe that huge voice came from that skinniness. She wandered over close to Jack and leaned against the pumpkin cart while she fished a stone out of her sandal. She gave him a curious stare.

  “I’m Lou,” she said. “Who are you?”

  “Other… I mean, Jack,” said Jack.

  “What you selling, then?”

  “Me? I don’t have anything to sell.”

  “Ah. No money for the merchandise. There’s a story I know for sure. That’s rough. What about gathering? Windfalls? Cress? Winkles?”

  Jack just shook his head.

  “Entertainer then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  The girl frowned. “Juggler? Tumbler? Sing, do you? Punch and Judy show?”

  “No, I don’t know about any of those.”

  “Just as well. This isn’t the place for that sort of merriment. Well, then, you’ll have to have a job.”

  “I know about being a scullery boy and bookkeeping, but I’m not doing that again. That’s not my fortune.”

  Jack pulled himself up over the back and tumbled into the pumpkins.

  The skinny girl laughed. “Not much use here anyway! Minding horses, running messages, sweeping out wagons, loading and unloading — that’s what they need hereabouts. Better look sharp.”

  Jack didn’t know if she was talking to herself or him, but he didn’t get a chance to find out.

  “Buns, buns, buns!” and she was gone.

  Abe returned with a bucket of water and started to unhitch his horse.

  “Need a hand?” said Jack.

  “Nope,” said Abe. “You’re done.”

  Jack picked up his bundle and began to wander around the market. Boots and bells, spices and cloth, perfumes and potions and pancake flippers. The sellers were almost ready, and the buyers were arriving.

  Jack stared at the townspeople. They were as clean and polished as schoolteachers. All of them, even the children. The pant legs of the boys went right down to their ankles and no farther. The partings in the girls’ hair were as straight as a plow line in a field. Not a rip or a patch or a stain to be seen. Their clothes were sparrow-colored, gray with brown and brown with gray. They spoke in soft voices and not one of them smiled.

  “Here!” said a voice. Jack turned around. A woman buried in layers of shawls grabbed his arm in a pinch.

  “Mind my patch, will you? Matty’s gone off somewheres with her young man and my eggs.” She pointed to a faded rag rug on the ground. “Sit there and there’s a penny in it for you.” Without waiting for a reply she wandered off, muttering something about a “gatless girl.”

  Jack plunked himself down on the rug. He thought about the penny.

  PENNY BUYS A BUN! said his stomach. Then he thought about merchandise and pulled out his dictionary. Merchant. Merchandise. Goods, stock, things, stuff. What does a traveler have to sell? What does a traveler make or grow or find or glean?

  Ah, well, at the moment he wasn’t a merchant but a minder. And there was plenty to look at.

  He took a deep breath. Behind it all, behind the horses and the cinnamon and the dust was the smell of the sea, like the blue that lies behind a blue sky.

  Sights and sitting, he said to himself. That’s the life of a patch minder.

  Chapter Ten

  “WHAT ARE you selling?”

  Jack looked up with a start. It was a young woman looking down her nose at him.

  “What’s your merchandise, sir? Air?”

  Jack stared at the young woman. Something in the scorn with which she said “air” reminded him of somebody.

  Oh, yes. It was Sophie, one of the big girls at the school. When Sophie was twelve she was apprenticed to a hat-maker. Overnight she changed from a normal human orphan or foundling to a look-down-your-noser Lady Muck, all comments and scorn and la-di-dah ways. She was so full of herself that she hadn’t room for one new thought. She was perfect for teasing.

  This was another Sophie, right enough.

  “I sell whims,” he replied.

  The young woman wrinkled her nose and put her finger on her chin.

  “Whims? That’s silly. Who would buy a whim?”

  “They’re bought by people who have run out of whims,” said Jack. “People who have used up their whole supply. People whose whims are worn out, or moldy, or out of style.”

  The young woman frowned. Then she made a little “hnuh” sound in her nose and turned on her heel.

  Jack was just about to let out the laugh that
was building inside him when she turned back.

  “Out of style?”

  “Yes,” said Jack. “Most people like to replace their whims every season. The better people, anyway.”

  Jack’s customer looked as though she were rooted to the ground. “How much do they cost?”

  Jack did some fast thinking. This was better than any Sophie tease.

  “One apple.”

  The young woman’s mouth fell slightly open.

  “Just a minute.”

  Jack watched, holding in his giggles, as she went to the fruit barrow across the square. She returned holding a large red apple streaked with gold.

  “One whim, please.”

  Jack and his stomach had a fast little conversation.

  It was just supposed to be a joke.

  TAKE THAT APPLE!

  I’m not really a merchant.

  TAKE THAT APPLE!

  What if I get in trouble?

  TAKE THAT APPLE!

  Jack took the apple and gazed out across the market. In the background he heard the rhythmical tap of someone hammering.

  “All right,” he said. “Here’s a whim, latest style. If you glue little pieces of metal to the soles of your shoes, you can make music when you dance.”

  “But I’m not allowed to dance,” protested the young woman.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Jack. “You don’t have to do it. It’s just an idea, after all.”

  “Oh… ” said the young woman. “Well, then… ” And she wandered away.

  The crunch of the apple was like music. The juice ran down Jack’s chin, and he could barely chew for laughing.

  His life as a minder was cut short, however, by the arrival of the gatless girl’s mother, reclaiming her spot. She was laden with eggs and full of a long story about the foolishness of young love. Jack got his penny and went to find Lou. His ears led him straight to her.

  Lou gave him the special two-for-a-penny rate and told him a thing or two about Aberbog while he munched.

  “You’d find more lively company in a crew of clams,” she said. They don’t go in for smiling nor laughing nor passing the time of day. And did you see the over-good children? I don’t believe they are children at all. I think they are shrunk-down grown-ups. They don’t know what fun is. Last fall the market people got up a bit of a party on the last night of the fair. We went down to the beach and there was music and dancing. And, would you believe it, the mayor of Aberbog — you’ll likely see him, he’s got a face like a potato — came round and said we were rowdy and made us be quiet.”

  “Why do you come here, then?”

  “Well, they’ve got lots of money. These Aberbogians, they work hard and they are the saving kind. They buy lots of buns. Can’t afford not to come to the Aberbog Fair. Hey! What’s up with that stuck-up crew?”

  Lou was looking across the market at a group of girls who were staring and pointing in their direction. Jack recognized his whim customer surrounded by others of her ilk.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Here’s something to look at then,” yelled Lou, and she stuck out her tongue. She grabbed Jack’s arm. “Come on, you.”

  Lou found Jack a job with the farrier, holding the horses while the farrier put on their new shoes. For a few hours of horse-holding, Jack earned a hoop of sausage, which he ate on the spot.

  Finally in agreement with his stomach, Jack left the fair and made his way down steep, narrow streets to the sea. He stood at the edge of the beach leaning into the small steady wind that blew against him.

  It was late afternoon. From all around the bay the fishing boats were heading home. Some had already been pulled up onto the sand, with men beside them packing sails and mending nets. A man in big black boots crunched past Jack. He was carrying two buckets full of slippery silver fish.

  Jack hurried down to the water’s edge. He squinted as the sun glinted diamonds on the water. Waves rattled the pebbles on the shore. He picked up a handful of crunchy seaweed and shells and sea-smoothed wood from the ribbon of treasures that the tide had left. Even the quiet-loving Aberbogians could not silence the gulls, who wheeled around the incoming boats, screaming.

  He listened to the slap of the waves in the darkness.

  Jack spent the rest of the day visiting with crabs, collecting shells — each more perfect than the last — counting the colors of sand close up, lassoing boulders with ropes of kelp and soaking his feet in the waves. As the sun did a slow dive, the fishermen went home to their dinners and Jack ate his sausage and read a very good part of R from his dictionary. Then he curled up under some sails on the dock and listened to the slap of the waves in the darkness. He grinned and wondered what the scornful girl was doing with her whim.

  Waves and whims, he said to himself. That’s the life of a man of the sea.

  Chapter Eleven

  MORNING saw Jack trudging back up the hill to the fair. His stomach pronounced a firm NO on seaweed for breakfast. He hoped the farrier needed help again.

  No sooner had he stepped into the square, however, than a large woman in a snowy white apron grabbed his arm.

  “Here he is,” she called.

  Everything that Jack had ever done wrong flashed through his mind.

  RUN!

  But the woman’s hand was big and strong.

  “Are you the fellow with the whims?” she asked.

  Jack gulped.

  SAY NO! SAY NO!

  But Jack’s head nodded.

  “Good,” said the woman. “It’s him,” she called out.

  A knot of people appeared and surrounded Jack.

  “Now, let’s get down to business,” said the woman. “What have you got today?”

  “Um… ideas?” said Jack, his voice cracking a bit.

  “Right, then. What sort?”

  “Well, I’ve got whims, of course. And…” Something streaked across Jack’s brain, some kind of shooting star of words. “I’ve got thoughts, concepts, plans, opinions, impressions, notions and fancies.”

  “How much are impressions?” said the woman.

  BREAKFAST!

  “They cost a small round of cheese,” said Jack.

  “Fair enough,” said the woman. “Alice!”

  A pale girl appeared. “Cheese, Alice. Small round. Look lively!” Alice sped off.

  Jack put his chin on his hand and stared up at the sky. He looked down at the ground. He saw a sprinkling of flour across the woman’s sturdy black shoes. Then he stared at the hills behind the town where the morning mist was just starting to burn off.

  A panting, pale Alice arrived back carrying a small yellow cheese.

  Jack hummed a bit. “One impression. The hill in the middle is a giant carrot pudding just out of the oven.”

  The woman stared, too.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is. The very thing.”

  The woman told her friends and they told their friends and soon there was a steady stream of customers.

  The fisherman with the bucket of silvery fish appeared with an identical twin brother. They hung about the edges of the crowd of customers, nudging each other.

  “You go, Perkins.”

  “No, you go, Snik.”

  Jack remembered Ned at school. Ned could only speak late at night in the dark, when you couldn’t look at him.

  Carefully looking in the opposite direction from the fishermen, Jack called out, “Special! Ideas special! Notions about the sea! Going fast! Get them while they’re hot!”

  There was a small cough just over his left shoulder.

  “We’ll have one,” said a voice.

  “A well-made one,” said another.

  “Right,” said Jack, addressing the air. “
One well-made, fresh, first-class notion about the sea. To a man of the land, seaweed smells like the sea. To a man of the sea, seaweed smells like the land.”

  “He’s right there.”

  “Dead right.”

  The day wore on. The line of customers never got shorter. Jack’s supply of merchandise never got smaller. All the ideas he had had in the hours scrubbing pots, stirring soup and lying in his bed too cold to sleep. They were all ready and waiting to be custom-made into words and offered for sale. He felt as though he were opening the windows of his head and letting the sun shine in and the breezes blow through.

  By evening Jack had had three good meals. His stomach was quieter than it had ever been in his life. He had new boots that were roomy and smooth and hugged his feet softly. He had an umbrella, the promise of a bed at the inn, a whittling knife, a tin cup, a new cap in discreet brown, a bottle of medicine to cure what ails you, a packsack with straps and pockets, a jar full of pennies, a dictionary with all the letters, and his own piece of rug to sit on.

  As he began to roll up this rug at the end of the day, he noticed a small pumpkin tart that he had overlooked in the flurry of trading. His stomach suggested that he transport it inside himself, so he popped it in his mouth. It was creamy and spicy and rich.

  Plans and pumpkin pie, he said to himself. That’s the life of a fellow of fortune.

  Chapter Twelve

  JACK WAS LATE at the market the next morning because the night before he had discovered an entirely new pleasure. Reading in bed. A full stomach, a soft mattress, a feather comforter, a pillow, a long candle and nobody to tell you what to do. Jack felt that heaven must be something like that. He read his favorite part of the T’s, a new part of B and all the words beginning with “ex.” He barely had the wits to blow out the candle before he fell asleep.