Journey to an 800 Number

by E. L. Konigsburg

  Father came to the door with my burnoose and my badge, and the guard let me in.

  “Did you get Sabrina on the phone?” he asked.

  “She’ll stop by sometime tomorrow,” I replied.

  Father never asked why Sabrina had not stopped by, and I was glad he didn’t. I didn’t want him to get the notion that Lilly might want Sabrina to chaperone her when he was around. Of course, I’m not sure Father would get that notion, but I didn’t want him to think it, and I wasn’t sure why.

  Ahmed emptied his bowels once while Father went out for our supper. I scooped it up, and circled around the room so that I could walk by the door where the guard who would not let me back in before was posted. As I passed him, I said, “The badge is under lumps one and two,” and I walked on by. I carried it to the men’s room and flushed it down, and I didn’t even mention to Father about how helpful I’d been or about the shortcut I had discovered.

  We were more tired that second night than we were after the first when we had done much more. Father said that it was always that way. That as far as he could tell, newness was the best vitamin pill in the world. We went to bed immediately after settling Ahmed.

  The following morning I told Scotty Devlin that I had a friend who wanted to meet him. I told him even before I put on my burnoose. I twice approached the seven-foot man at the Air India Booth, but I didn’t bother to introduce myself. Seven feet isn’t so unusual. Not as unusual as three feet ten. To a basketball team, seven feet is almost basic. Besides, the man in the Air India Booth did not look at all talkative like Maurice or Scotty or Brumba. From where I stood he didn’t even look friendly.

  About a quarter to two Scotty, the Leprechaun, came over to our booth and said, “Where’s your friend, Max?”

  “She must have gotten detained,” I answered.

  “Well,” Scotty said, “they paid me, so I’ll be making my way out of here strictly at two.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I understand.”

  At five minutes to two, Sabrina appeared in our booth without Lilly.

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She had to check us out of the hotel and load up the car. We had a late lunch again. Mother didn’t want me to come, but I insisted. I came only because I promised.”

  I saw that Father was consulting with the men from Mideast Airlines for our pay. I said to Sabrina, “Wait here. Let me see if I can catch Scotty.” I started running toward the Irish Tourist Bureau booth. The man from Mideast called me and asked me to please return my burnoose and turban. I could understand his wanting me to. I could understand his thinking I was going to make off with them just as he was closing up shop. I could understand him. I really could. But I didn’t have to like it. I saw Scotty just as he was waving goodbye to the Irish Tourist Bureau and walking out the service exit.

  I ran back to our Mideast booth. Sabrina was sitting on the rolled rug. “You missed him,” I said.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “Here was your one chance to meet a real freak, and you blew it.”

  “I guess I did,” she said, “but I got to see Ahmed in all his finery. Aren’t you glad that it’s his now?”

  “What’s his?”

  “That saddle. Those beautiful saddle bags. Everything belongs to Ahmed now and forever.”

  I looked over at the two swarthy men from Mideast. They were speaking to one another in a foreign language. I didn’t understand what they were saying, but I knew that they were disagreeing about something. Disagreement is a universal language.

  Sabrina pointed over her shoulder. “One of them thinks the other should have charged your father more.”

  “How much did they charge?”

  “Five hundred,” Sabrina said.

  “But that’s two days’ pay for this gig,” I said.

  “It’s this last day they’re arguing about. The chief Arab over there says that your father should get only one hundred seventy-five for today since it was over at two o’clock, and your father says that he was promised two hundred fifty dollars for each of the days.”

  “How do you know which of those two swarthies is the chief Arab? I’ve been here two and a half days, and I don’t know which is the more boss.”

  “Where did you say you went to school?”

  “I didn’t. I said I was going to go to Fortnum. You’ve never told me where you go. I don’t even know where you’re from.”

  “I told you, Maximilian. I told you that Tours de Lilly is in Rahway, New Jersey. And, naturally, I go to school there.”

  “How did school in Rahway teach you which one of these two was the chief Arab?”

  She shrugged. “It’s after school where I learn those things.”

  “What’s going to happen? Will my father get two fifty or one seventy-five?”

  Sabrina tossed a look over her shoulder and said, “They’ll compromise at two hundred.”

  At that moment Father came toward us folding a check into his wallet. I would like to have been able to tell how much it said, but I could not, and I would not ask, for I was afraid that Sabrina would be right, and I did not mind her being right. I really didn’t. I just minded her being terribly right.

  Father said to Sabrina, “How did you get here?”

  “Taxi.”

  He told her that with so many people leaving at once, it would be difficult to find a taxi, and he would drive her back to the Fairmont. So Sabrina came with us to the sub-basement where our truck was parked. Father unbridled Ahmed and laid the new saddle down in the back of the truck, in the end where the worse thing Ahmed could do would be to spit on it.

  The three of us piled into the cab with Sabrina between Father and me. It was an awful ride. Because there was a question I wanted to ask Sabrina. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to look as if I wanted to know the answer. So the ride to the Fairmont was short and silent. I realized that I would have to get down out of the truck to let Sabrina out. I thought that when I did so, I could walk her from the curb to the door of the hotel and ask her for her address and ask her if she would write back if I wrote first. I wanted to tell her that I would watch out for news of Renee. But once we pulled around the driveway, a doorman opened the door of the truck cab and I got down, reaching my hand up to help Sabrina. She stepped down, her hair bouncing once and twice, prettier than she had a right to be at her age and size. She turned, waved her hand once, then twice, and walked into the hotel. Another doorman held the door for her, and she gave him a half-nod, as practiced as an heiress in a basic adventure story. I saw Lilly waiting just inside the door.

  We pulled out of the Fairmont’s driveway, and Father said, “I guess you can get in touch with her at Tours de Lilly in Rahway, New Jersey.”

  “What makes you think I’m anxious to get in touch with her?”

  “I thought that if you found out something about Renee, you might want to let her know.”

  There was no reason why my father, a man I hardly knew better than I knew F. Hugo Malatesta, should know what I was thinking. The fact that he did made me mad.

  “How much money did you get for this last day’s work?” I asked.

  “We settled for two hundred,” he said, “and Ahmed’s old saddle.”

  I didn’t say another word until Father asked me where I wanted to go for supper, and I said that I didn’t care.

  3

  From Dallas we headed for Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Tulsa State Fair is held there in Expo Square. It appears that Father and Ahmed did the Fair every year. Father charged $1.00 for kids and $1.50 for adults for a four-minute ride on Ahmed. I don’t know why he charged less for kids because it seemed to me that they were a lot more trouble, but I was not interested enough to ask. If you calculate that the Fair was open twelve hours a day and then calculate that he had a rider every four minutes (and allow one minute to load and unload the beast) and calculate that one rider every hour would be an adult, Father would make $150 a day, if we were kept busy every minute. The Fair la
sted five days, so the most, the very, very most that Father could make at the Oklahoma Fair would be $750, which is less than it cost Mr. F. Hugo Malatesta to become a member of the dining club on top of the First Guaranty Bank Building in Philadelphia. But I didn’t say anything.

  I found out Father had paid booth rent in advance, and for that we also had the privilege of hooking our camper up on the fairgrounds.

  We no sooner pulled into the fairgrounds and no sooner took Ahmed off the truck and tethered him to the hitch than a pack of kids came running over to Father calling, “Woody! Woody!” The smallest one made a running jump into his arms while the other three walked over to Ahmed and started stroking him and talking to him as if he were some kind of world-class animal.

  Father lifted the one who had leaped at him high in the air. “How is my friend, Emmy?” Father asked. So it was a girl. All four of the kids looked alike: color-coded to mark them as a set; each one only slightly different in size. All except the smallest had boys’ names: Manuelo, Iago, and—would you believe?—Jesus, pronounced Hay-soos. I wondered if he had gotten his name from some ancient Mexican Indian blindfold custom. I had to congratulate Father for being able to tell them apart when he introduced them to me one at a time.

  “Wait until you see what I got,” he said. He went to the truck and brought out Ahmed’s new saddle and bridle. Those four kids each took a step back and looked afraid to touch it like it was some museum piece never to be touched instead of something to throw over a camel’s back and sit on. The biggest of the four kids—who I thought was my age, but who I later found out was two years older-said, “Hey, Woody, did you keep the old one so that we can still ride?”

  “No,” Father said. “You still ride, but you ride the new saddle. Who’s first?”

  Emmy ricocheted out from a forest of legs and said, “Me! Me! Me!”

  Manuelo not only saddled up Ahmed, he also helped Emmy get up, and then he led Ahmed around the paddock, tugging on the bridle, clicking his tongue and saying soft words. Whatever combination of things he did was right, for Ahmed didn’t kick or spit. His stomach just rumbled, but nothing could stop that except a bullet to his brain.

  Father leaned against the door of the camper and asked the middle boy, the one I would learn to distinguish as Iago, how was his mother.

  “She’s good. She didn’t want to come this year. Said it was too much work. But we told her we wouldn’t have no vacation at all if she didn’t work the Fair. Emmy cried so much that Mama said her tears gonna make the tacos salty.”

  Father said to Iago, “Look, do you think you can unhitch Ahmed and settle him down for the night? I’m going to lie down for a few minutes.” Father started into the camper and called out, “Say hello to your mamma for me.”

  Iago and Jesus waved and said, “Sure thing, Woody. She says the same to you.”

  I leaned against the wall of the camper, my arms folded across my chest, thinking Father could have asked me to settle Ahmed. So what if I didn’t know how? He could have asked me instead of asking these strangers.

  Iago asked me, “This your first time at the Fair?”

  I nodded.

  “We come every year,” he said. “Our mama has a tacos stand.” He pointed in a general direction. “They keep all the food stands together away from the animals. Mama’s stand is called Rosita’s. That’s our mama’s name. Our mama makes the best tacos at the Fair.”

  The littler one, Jesus, kept nodding the whole time the other was talking.

  “Since you guys are going to close up shop, I’m going inside. You just put everything away, and I’ll see you around. Okay?”

  “You coming over to Rosita’s for supper? Woody always has first night supper at our place. You come, too.”

  “I’ll see,” I said, and went into the camper.

  Father was lying across my bunk, and I nudged him to ask him about supper. The minute I touched him, I felt that he was burning up. I pulled the blankets from the top bunk and covered him up and went back outside. Manuelo had just returned from leading Ahmed around the paddock. He commanded Ahmed to kneel, and Ahmed did so. He lifted Emmy from the saddle and said to Jesus, “You next.”

  I said to Iago, “I’m afraid my father has a fever. I think he’s come down with the same bug I had about a week ago.”

  Emmy walked over to us. She reached for my hand and said, “I like the new saddle. Can I ride tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Woody is sick. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  Iago put his fingers in his mouth and made a whistle that a steam locomotive could have envied. When he did, Manuelo turned Ahmed around and cut across the center strip to make a beeline for us. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “Woody’s sick.”

  Manuelo maneuvered Ahmed back into his kneeling position, and Jesus got off. He said to me, “I’ll put Ahmed in his stall and feed him. I know where the stalls are. Iago, you take the others over to our place and stay with them and send Mama back here. Tell her that Woody’s sick.” Then he looked at me. “Don’t worry, Max. You take care of Woody, and we take care of the rides. I can drive Ahmed as good as Woody can. Woody taught me hisself.” He thought a minute and then added, “Unless you want to run the rides. I’ll try to take care of Woody, but I’d be better at running the rides.”

  “If running Ahmed is your first choice, then you go right ahead and run Ahmed. I’ll take care of Father.”

  “You get the sign and set it outside the camper. I’ll carry it on over to the track tomorrow morning.”

  “The sign?”

  “Ahmed’s sign. The advertising one that tells how much to pay.”

  “I don’t know where Father keeps his sign.”

  “Under the table,” he said.

  “Oh. All right. I’ll do that. I’ll set it outside the camper tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s right. Outside the camper. Here comes Mama,” Manuelo said.

  Down the field, across the worn-out pasture came Mama all right. She looked like the person for whom the word Mama was invented. She had Mama glands the size of cantaloupes and a stomach that started early and ended late. She was wearing blue jeans, and as she approached I saw that she had an advanced course of eye makeup on. Her hair was sprinkled with single gray hairs that announced themselves loud against all the other black ones. Her hair was parted in the middle and pulled straight back and held with a rubber band. When she turned around, you could see that her hair reached below her waist, even below the whole double mound of where she sat down.

  “This is Max,” Manuelo said.

  She said, “Hi, Max,” and asked me what was the matter, and I told her, and I also told her what I thought caused it. She sent Manuelo away, and the two of us went inside the camper. She reached across my bunk and felt Father’s forehead. “Let’s get him undressed and sponge him down to bring the fever down,” she said.

  Mama Rosita was not at all embarrassed about undressing a helpless man. She was able to lift Father and sponge off his parts like he was a department store manikin that didn’t have any. She put her hand back on his forehead. “That brought his fever down some,” she said. “Do you think you can get him to take some liquids? Coke is good. And make sure when he takes aspirin, he takes a big glass of water. I’ll send Manuelo over with some supper for you.”

  I told her thank you very much, but I wished that there were some words that meant one degree more. I wished there was a special vocabulary that said thanks when thanks are deserved and not even asked for.

  Father did look pitiful. I stayed inside the camper making sure that he didn’t get uncovered and take a chill. He was perspiring as if he’d been given a government franchise for it. When his breathing became regular, and I knew he was sleeping soundly, I began to look for the sign. I looked under the table but found nothing. I expected to find nothing because I had noticed nothing in all the time I had been staying with Father. I opened all the cabinets (two) and looked in th
em, and in the oven and even inside the half refrigerator, where I knew it wasn’t. I found nothing. Then I decided to crawl under the table and feel around the floor boards and when I did, I looked up and saw that the actual underside of the kitchen table was painted, and the painting said:

  BE A CAMEL RIDER

  Ride AHMED

  Children $1.00

  Adults $1.50

  The colors were sand, purple and red. I got out from under the table and saw that there were hinges connecting it to the camper wall and another hinge at the opposite end that dropped down to make the table leg. I loosened the pins and separated the hinges and had the sign ready for Manuelo.

  He came with a bowl of chili that was a kind of spicy that was four beyond basic. I had to eat it slowly. Manuelo visited with me, and that’s when I found out that he was two years older than I. I also found out that he had been working the Oklahoma State Fair for seven years.

  “It’s our vacation,” he said.

  “Vacation?” I asked.

  “Yes, it wasn’t too easy to get away this year.

  It keeps getting more expensive.”

  “Do you stay at a hotel?”

  “What hotel? We stay in the camper. The front part is our taco and chili stand, and the back part is where we live.”

  “The five of you live in half a camper?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the five of you work the taco stand?”

  “Not Emmy. She’s only five. She’s too little to reach over from behind the counter.”

  “But you work?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “Okay.”

  “Why is it a vacation?”

  “Because we’re not picking melons and because it’s fun. You get to do a lot of different things. Man! We meet people like Woody and Ahmed.”