Escape to the World's Fair Page 6

  Miss DeHaven seemed to enjoy the attention. “As a matter of fact, Edwin,” she said. “I know of some orphans who would be perfect students. It’s been so very hard finding an ideal placement for them. They have an unfortunate tendency to run away.”

  Alexander froze in his seat. Was she talking about them? He wasn’t sure. Either way, he knew he had to get out of the room. He stood, but stayed crouched behind the chair.

  “Well, I’ll make sure they don’t run away from the canning factory,” Mr. Adolphius remarked.

  “Yes, but I’ll just have to find them first,” Miss DeHaven replied. “They absconded from a farm near Bremerton. . . .” She was no longer trying to speak in a pleasant voice.

  And now, Alexander knew she was talking about them. How did she know we left the Careys’ farm? he wondered. He tried to stay hunched down as he moved toward the doorway.

  “. . . but I have reason to believe they’re still in Missouri,” she added.

  He was close to the doorway now. Just a few more steps. He could just make out the outline of Miss DeHaven from the corner of his eye. She’d had her head turned in the opposite direction a few moments before, and if she stayed that way, he’d be safe.

  He just needed to make sure . . . he turned to look, just for a second . . . and found that Miss DeHaven was staring right at him.

  He darted out the door, his face hot. She didn’t recognize me, he told himself. It was just for a moment. Right?

  Alexander could hear Mr. Adolphius, his voice too loud as usual. “We’ll find them!”

  The words rang in Alexander’s ears as he ran down the stairs and all the way back across the lower deck.

  11

  THE FRUIT OF THEIR LABORS

  The mood on the lower deck had changed now that Alexander was elsewhere and there was no more work to be done in the cargo hold. The sun hung lower over the river and they could all hear piano music clinking gently from one of the upper decks. The older boys formed a little square as they sat cross-legged on the deck playing cards, while Frances stood with Harold and Eli at the railing, taking in the view.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” Frances murmured. The river was one wide stripe of silvery blue, and then above it the deep green stripe of the riverbank trees, and finally the brighter blue of the sky.

  “It’s so slow,” Harold said listlessly. “Not like the train.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. Frances had seen him do that twice already today, and she was starting to worry that he was getting one of his colds again.

  “Sometimes slow is good,” Eli said. “Remember Ora, back at the Careys? Well, she used to tell all about a rabbit and a Mississippi mud turtle that ran a race. . . .”

  “Yeah?” Harold said, perking up a little as Eli began to tell the story.

  Frances had read Harold every poem or tale in the Third Eclectic Reader at least four times, so she was grateful that Eli had all these new stories and could tell them so well, even doing different voices for the animal characters. The tale he was telling now was so entertaining that the older boys put down their cards and scooted closer to listen.

  Frances looked around for Jack. She found him sitting on the deck against one of the trunks, out of sight of the older boys. As she sat down next to him, she noticed he had taken out the medallion that Zogby had given them and was turning it over in his hands, studying it.

  “Can I look at it, too?” she asked. Jack nodded and handed it to her.

  She spent a long time peering closely at the little images carved in gold—the bird on one side and the beast on the other side. Was it a cow? An ox?

  “This thing is so weird,” she said. “I wonder what it’s for.”

  “Telling fortunes, maybe?” Jack suggested.

  “We should rub it and ask it about the future or something,” Frances said. She didn’t really believe in that sort of thing, but she thought maybe if she just knew the medallion’s purpose she wouldn’t think it was so creepy. “Should we ask it about California?” She laughed.

  But Jack didn’t answer or even laugh. And when Frances had said California he’d looked away. What’s going on?

  “Okay, Jack,” she said finally. “What is it?”

  “Maybe . . .” Jack began. “Maybe I won’t go to California with the rest of you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I’ve just been thinking it might be better if I went back to New York,” Jack said. “It seems like the more I try to save other kids, the worse things get, and I don’t want them to get bad for you too.” He was talking faster now, the words tumbling out. “I could look for my family. Maybe my father would want me again.”

  Frances looked him in the eyes. “Jack. Stop thinking this way. Are you sure you want to leave? Or that your folks would want you back?”

  “No,” Jack said. “I’m not sure at all. But the only way I can be sure is if I go.”

  Frances shook her head. She knew what it was like to be all on your own in New York. And there was a good chance that this could be Jack’s fate as well.

  “It won’t be the same there, Jack,” she said.

  “I suppose,” Jack replied. “But maybe after the Fair I could find a train back to New York and—”

  Another voice spoke up. “And you’ll what?”

  Frances turned to see Eli standing there. He must have been walking over to see them and had overheard the conversation.

  “It’s nothing,” Jack started to say. “I was just thinking . . .”

  Eli cut in. “Yeah, well, I was thinking, too. Thinking about whether I ought to look for my mama’s cousins in St. Louis. ’Cause even though I don’t know them so well they’re part of the family I was born to. But the thing is,” he said, looking straight at Jack, “I thought Wanderville was going to be my family now. Everyone in it, I mean. Is that still true?”

  “Of course it’s true,” Frances said. “Isn’t that right, Jack?”

  Jack didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he took a deep breath and nodded. “Right,” he said. “We’ve got Wanderville, no matter what.”

  That seemed to satisfy Eli. But Frances suspected Jack wanted to say more: We’ve got Wanderville, but . . .

  Instead, though, Jack changed the subject. “And we’ve got this, too!” he exclaimed, grabbing the medallion back from Frances and grinning big. “Our ticket to the World’s Fair. It’s really something, isn’t it?”

  Frances tried to smile back. “It sure is,” she said.

  Only now she wished for real that the medallion could tell them the future. That way she’d know what Jack was going to do.

  • • •

  Jack still didn’t quite trust the older boys, but at least they had gotten friendlier as they all whiled away the afternoon in the luggage hold. The boys had liked Eli’s stories, and then Owney volunteered to tell one, too—a cowboy story from a dime novel he’d heard read aloud at the broom factory. It was a pretty exciting tale about bank robbers making a daring escape.

  “The robbers ordered everyone out of the stagecoach,” Owney told them. “Then they took their trunks and emptied them out right there on the road!”

  “Why’d they do that?” Harold wondered. “That’s mean!”

  “So they could have a place to hide the gold they stole from the bank,” Owney explained as he tugged at a loose thread on his patchwork trousers. “And then the robbers could disguise themselves as regular old stagecoach drivers.”

  “Oh,” Harold said, wiping his nose on his sleeve again. He seemed to be thinking. “Do you think anyone is hiding gold in those?” he asked, pointing over to the trunks they’d just stacked.

  Chicks laughed. “Naw, probably not. But someone sure could hide something in those if they really wanted to.”

  Jack couldn’t help thinking there was something very strange about those empty trunks. But he didn�
��t know what, exactly. He was about to say something when suddenly Frances stood up in surprise.

  “Hey! You’re back!” she said.

  Jack turned to look behind him. There was Alexander, nodding slowly. He was slightly out of breath, and he looked a little sick, too. Not green in the face, exactly, but ashen. Like he’d seen a ghost.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked him. Alexander never looked that grim unless it was about something big.

  Alexander shook his head.

  Frances stepped closer. “Alex, what’s wrong?”

  “I just saw . . .” Alexander began. But then he shook his head again. He took a deep breath. “Nothing’s wrong!” he said, his voice suddenly brighter. “Look!” He reached up his sleeve and pulled out an orange. “See what I found!”

  Finn’s eyes got wide. “Oranges? Where’d you get those?”

  “Never had a whole orange before,” said Owney.

  “Well, here you go,” Alexander said, tossing the fruit to Owney. Then he pulled out two more oranges, giving one to Harold and handing the other, with an elegant bow, to Frances.

  Dutch had his unlit cigar clenched in his teeth again, and he pushed it to the other side of his mouth so that he could sneer. “I suppose you went a-begging on the upper decks?” he asked Alexander. “Sang a little song, did you?”

  Alexander seemed to tense up. “Not at all,” he replied. He turned to take a quick look behind him, then he lowered his voice. “Look, there’s plenty more oranges where those came from. I’ll . . . I’ll show you.”

  “What if we get caught?” Chicks asked, glancing at his brother.

  “We won’t,” Alexander shot back. “There’s nobody around there. Come on!” He was talking fast now, his voice insistent. Jack hoped Alexander knew what he was talking about.

  They all followed Alexander over to the other side of the lower deck, and he showed them where a short ladder led into a little room filled with crates. He walked up to one and pulled a slat aside, and three oranges rolled right out onto the floor.

  “Wow!” Dutch said under his breath. He and Finn snatched them up while Chicks reached into the crate to grab more. Meanwhile Alexander opened up another crate for Eli and Owney. Jack slipped an orange into his pocket, then another. It still felt strange to Jack to “liberate” things, but it was hard to say no to a good orange, which you could keep for days and which could be eaten when you were both hungry and thirsty.

  “Try ’em,” Eli urged. He’d peeled one open and was popping the juicy sections into his mouth. “They’re good!”

  Harold was sitting on the deck with a pile of orange peels in his lap, his face sticky and flushed and happy.

  Frances beamed at him and turned to Jack and Alexander. “He ate the whole thing. And look at him—he looks better than he has in days. Oranges are just what he needs right now.”

  “Frannie, can I have another?” Harold called.

  “Of course!” Frances said. She retrieved one from the crate and handed it to her brother. Then she bounded over to Alexander and hugged him. “Thank you so much!” she told him.

  Jack could see Alexander grinning over Frances’s shoulder. He sure looks proud of himself.

  They all soon realized they could fit only a few oranges each in their pockets, so they decided to eat as many as they could there in the cargo hold.

  “We need a place to hide the peelings, though,” Eli noted.

  “We can use that trunk in the corner,” Chicks said, pointing to one that stood open and empty behind some of the crates.

  Jack went over to the trunk to toss out his peels and noticed that there were marks carved in the wood trim. There were little hash lines, crossed off in groups of five, as if someone had marked days or hours; a word all in caps—PAZ; and then some other marks that weren’t letters or numbers.

  They looked, in fact, like the markings on the medallion Zogby had given them! One he knew for sure—a little circle with two points on top. It resembled a loop of string with two loose ends. There was also one that looked like a letter M with a downward-pointing arrow.

  He wanted to show Alexander and Frances. But Alexander was busy playing catch with Owney, tossing one of the oranges back and forth. “Hey,” Jack said, trying to wave Alexander over between tosses.

  “What?” Alexander said. At that very same moment, Owney threw the orange back. It sailed past Alexander before he had a chance to catch it. It bounced once at the door to the cargo hold, then dropped down over the short ladder to the deck.

  “Get it quick!” Dutch said. “Nobody should know we’re in here!”

  Jack leapt down the ladder with the others close behind. He spotted the orange rolling along the deck and scrambled to retrieve it. By the time he reached it, though, something had stopped its rolling. Or rather, someone. Someone with fine black shoes—gentleman’s shoes—that were so clean they gleamed.

  Jack felt a chill. He had a feeling he knew whose shoes these were. He looked up and saw that he’d guessed correctly.

  Because he was looking right into the furious face of Mr. Edwin Adolphius.

  12

  BOUND FOR THE FACTORY!

  “Are we in jail now?” Harold whispered.

  “Of course not,” Frances whispered back. “There’s no jail on a boat. This is just a pen for animals. See all the straw?”

  Still, she had to admit that the tiny pen near the back of the steamboat seemed a lot like a jail cell, with iron bars that went all the way to the ceiling. It didn’t help that the sun had set for the evening, and the lamp in the corridor threw all kinds of strange shadows.

  Owney touched the bars grimly. “Bet they built it this way for the goats. So’s they won’t chew their way out.”

  Frances sighed. Not even goats wanted to be in this place, which was dark and smelly, with only bales of straw for sitting. She sank down glumly next to Harold on one scratchy bale. The older boys, Eli, and Alexander had found spots on the floor, but Jack stood by the entrance. He glared out at Edwin Adolphius and the three mean-looking deckhands who had shoved them one by one into the pen.

  “You have no right to keep us here!” Jack growled.

  “I have every right!” Mr. Adolphius spat. “You kids are stowaways and thieves. You’ve trespassed on my property and stolen from me!”

  “They’re just oranges,” Frances muttered.

  Mr. Adolphius narrowed his eyes. “Them oranges,” he said, “are meant to be canned. They’re headed to my factory. Just like you and your grubby little friends, girl.”

  The words hit Frances like a blow. “What?” she whispered. She turned to Alexander and saw his face had gone ashen again, just like it had when he’d come back from his excursion.

  “What are you talking about?” Jack asked Mr. Adolphius, his voice becoming frantic.

  Edwin Adolphius just smiled and cocked his head. “I think I hear your chaperone coming. I’ll let her explain.”

  Even though Frances recognized the hard, small footsteps that tapped their way along the boards of the deck, she still wasn’t quite prepared to see Miss DeHaven’s gloating face. Would she ever be?

  “My dear children,” Miss DeHaven said. “I do hope your new accommodations are satisfactory.”

  “What’s going on?” Jack demanded.

  “Why, you’re the luckiest children to ever stow away on a steamboat! Despite all your criminal actions, Mr. Adolphius has graciously agreed to admit you to his industrial school, where you’ll be joining these”—she motioned toward the four older boys—“most fortunate lads.” Dutch glowered at Miss DeHaven, but she just smirked and continued. “All of you are being given a wonderful opportunity! I’m so glad.”

  Frances knew that Miss DeHaven liked to say things that were the opposite of what they really meant. But she had a feeling that for once Miss DeHaven really was glad that they
were being sent to “industrial school.”

  “It’s not really a school, is it?” Frances said bitterly. “It’s just an awful canning factory, isn’t it?”

  Miss DeHaven’s face seemed to twitch a little at the question. Doesn’t she ever get tired of lying? Frances thought.

  But then the woman seemed to compose herself. She smiled sweetly and pointed to Alexander. “Of course it’s a school. Why, your friend here heard me and Mr. Adolphius talking all about it when he stole up to the first-class deck! He heard all about how much I wanted to find you poor children again and send you someplace where you could learn a lesson. He knows how much I want to help.”

  Alexander, who had been silent this whole time, suddenly sprang to his feet and leaned against the bars next to Jack. “This isn’t ‘help,’ and you know it!” he screamed.

  But Miss DeHaven was already walking away down the corridor, followed by Mr. Adolphius and the deckhands.

  Frances felt her face get hot. She couldn’t believe how Alexander had misled them. “You knew what Miss DeHaven was planning?” she asked him.

  “And you didn’t tell us?” Jack added.

  Alexander sighed. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “If we’d known, we would have laid low and stayed hidden all the way to St. Louis, instead of raiding a bunch of silly orange crates,” Jack said, pacing back and forth. “It’s just like you to decide things for us without giving us any say.”

  Jack and Alexander fought about this kind of thing all the time, Frances knew. But Jack was right. Alexander had been foolish, and selfish, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Alexander said weakly. But Jack sat down next to Eli and turned his back. Frances put her arm around Harold and wouldn’t look at Alexander.

  She heard him sit down next to the older boys. “I suppose you’re mad at me, too?” he asked them.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Dutch shrugging. “Nope.”