On the Blue Comet Read online

  A chuckle went through the room and a shifting of legs in the comfortable upholstery.

  “Eleven?” asked Mr. Rockefeller. “Is there anything you can tell us to convince us of that, Oscar?”

  “I can prob­ably do a long division problem for you if you want,” I said. “I can do fractions, if they’re not too hard.” The young Kennedy boy yawned again and mouthed the word show-off at me silently.

  “That won’t be necessary, Oscar,” said Claire’s father. I took my seat at Claire’s side. “Your questions, gentlemen?” he asked with a certain smugness, as if he, himself, had invented me.

  “Who’s the president of the United States in 1931, son?” asked Mr. Biddle.

  “Herbert Hoover, sir,” I answered.

  “Good man, Hoover!” said several of the men, nodding.

  “Oh, no, sir,” I injected. “Mr. Hoover let the country go into a terrible mess after 1929, and he didn’t know how to get out of it. Hoover fiddled while Rome burned. That’s what my dad said, anyway. Do you want to know who the movie stars will be?”

  “Your dad is prob­ably a Democrat,” huffed Mr. Merrill.

  “Oh, yes, sir.” I looked at their frightened faces. “I could tell you about the cars! The cars in 1941 are amazing. They will look like rockets compared to today.” I wanted to tell them about Dutch’s Thunderbolt and the color movies. “Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees will hit fifty home runs and steal seventy-six bases in 1941,” I said, thinking about what had interested my dad, but they did not want to know about Joe DiMaggio.

  “You say there is going to be a war in 1941?” asked Mr. Bister.

  “Yes, sir. With the Japanese. They will attack us. The Germans will be back in it, too, and the Rus­sians. There will be a new president, but I can’t remember his name.”

  “Try, Oscar,” encouraged Mr. Lynch.

  I toed the pattern of the Turkish carpet. His name had disappeared. I couldn’t make it come back. I shook my head and said, “My dad voted for him twice.”

  “Can you tell us what happened in the year 1929? Everything you remember from the newspapers and the radio.”

  “It was in the fall,” I answered. “October ’29.” I tried beefing up my piping five-year-old voice without success. “There was a crash somewhere right here in New York City on Wall Street. That caused what they called a depression. Businessmen lost all their money and jumped out of windows and other ones had to sell their diamond stud pins and hawk apples on street corners.”

  The men looked at one another.

  “What stocks were affected? Can you remember?” asked Mr. Bister.

  “Stocks?” I asked.

  “Well, how did Standard Oil do? Did it lose money?” asked Mr. Rockefeller.

  “How about municipal bonds?” said Mr. Bister. “And General Electric? Did General Electric survive?”

  “What about General Motors?” asked Mr. Mellon.

  “Everything crashed,” I answered. “The banks began to close. Everyone except the really, really rich people in the country was poor. The factories closed, and there were no jobs. Farmers couldn’t farm because of dust storms.”

  It was then that I saw the tycoons’ true purpose. Sitting around the Bisters’ fireplace were the very profiteers that Mr. Applegate and Aunt Carmen had talked about. They might as well have asked me who would win next year’s Kentucky Derby. All they wanted to do was get hot tips and make more money than ever, farmers and factory workers be d—d.

  “And just what caused this crash, Oscar, d’ya know?” asked Mr. Biddle, crossing his legs and plucking his trousers, just so. “What led up to it?”

  I remembered what Aunt Carmen had said. “Margin calls!” I answered. I pulled in a deep breath and repeated Aunt Carmen’s words. “Whatever margin calls are, and greed. Greedy Wall Street profiteers, gambling more than they were worth and building a house of cards until it all crashed down around their ears. They were like fortune-tellers at the horse races. I guess that’s why they called it the crash.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence in the Bister living room, clear shifting around on the cushions of the chairs, and muttering.

  Mr. Kennedy had a distinct way of talking. “Boy,” he said, forgetting my name, “who’d you say was president after Mistah Hoovah? Who was it?”

  I closed my eyes. Who was that? Oh, yes! That was it. The same name as President Theodore Roosevelt. “Frank. Franklin. It’s Franklin Roosevelt.”

  “Franklin Roosevelt!” The name seemed to slingshot around the room.

  “Are you sure of that, Oscar?” asked Mr. Bister.

  “Yes,” I said. “He won twice. I saw a picture of him on a magazine cover. He was standing on an aircraft carrier saluting hundreds of sailors.”

  Mr. Merrill cleared his throat and clinked the ice cubes in his drink. “Boy?” he addressed me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know what polio is?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I didn’t think so. Polio is what Frank Roosevelt has. He’s flat on his back in a bed. There’s no cure for it, and if you get it you never walk again. Frank Roosevelt’s never going to stand on an aircraft carrier. He’ll never run for president or anything else again for the rest of his life! That bucktoothed wife of his’d never let ’im do it, anyway. President Franklin Roosevelt, my eye!”

  Claire’s father turned on me. His face was concerned. “I think you’re mistaken about that, son,” he said. “There is no way in the world that Frank Roosevelt will ever be president. Not with polio. I don’t believe you saw him standing up on an aircraft carrier either.”

  There were humphs and mutterings in the room.

  “And I am not so darned sure you’re eleven years old, either.”

  My stomach clenched at his tone.

  “Oscar!” Claire broke in. “Do ‘If’ for them. No six-year-old could recite ‘If.’ Just do it!”

  The judgment of the men in the room was still suspended. Cigars and cigarettes were lit.

  “Go ahead!” said Claire’s father. “Make me believe in you, Oscar.”

  I stood in the middle of the hearth rug and began. “If you can . . . if you can make a heap — no, wait . . . wait. If you can keep your head when . . . when all about you are blaming you — no, wait . . .” I felt my pulse race as the words to Kipling’s poem, always as familiar as my own fingernails, wilted in my mind and disappeared. Claire’s face fell. I was forgetting. The future was dropping away from my mind, perhaps to be lost forever.

  “Come on, Oscar!” said Claire. “You can do it in your sleep!” Claire began to mouth the words as I had once done for Cyril. But it was no good. I stumbled worse than Cyril had ever done. The poem had vanished from my mind like a star in the morning sky.

  “An out-and-out little fakah! A liah!” commented Mr. Kennedy. “President Frank Roosevelt! What a joke! Greedy profitee-ahs, indeed. I’m no greedy profitee-ah!”

  Claire rounded on him. “Oscar’s an all-American, Midwestern boy who goes to church on Sundays. He’s told you the truth, Mr. Kennedy, but I don’t think anyone in the room wants to hear the truth! Everybody here just wants to make more and more money!”

  “You are faking, Oscar, if that’s even your real name,” said Mr. Bister to me calmly. “And lying. I can tell a liar by his eyes.” He turned to Claire. “Deal’s off, young lady!” he said, and tossed my dime onto the hearth rug at my feet. “Probably got this from some street magician!” he snapped.

  Claire didn’t argue. She took my hand and glared at Mr. Kennedy, his son, and both Mr. Merrill and Mr. Lynch. “Come on, Oscar, we’ll go upstairs.”

  Mr. Bister was not going to give me a plug nickel. I knew that much. Claire and I plodded up the stairs in silence.

  We heard someone say, “What are you going to do with this scruffy little orphan?”

  “I’ll have to call my lawyer,” said Claire’s father.

  “Dammit, Bistah! You ahra lawyah!” Mr. Kennedy chimed in with his flat an
d nasal tones.

  Claire said not very much at all, but her eyes spoke and I knew what was in them. I had made her father look like a fool in front of his friends, and I’d blown the whole thing. We sat in her window seat and looked down at the traffic on Seventieth Street without speaking. Supper had been prepared and sat on a silver tray on her table, but neither of us had any appetite for it. Claire found me a pair of Max’s old Brooks Brothers pajamas and a toothbrush. Suddenly she touched my arm and said, “Let’s listen in!”

  Claire pulled down the laundry chute’s iron handle and put nearly half her head into the opening. A draft of chilly air wafted up through the chute and with it, the voices. We listened to Claire’s mother and father talking over supper.

  We heard their knives and forks clinking on their dinner plates. We heard the squeak of furniture as they moved in their chairs. They gabbed away about the parties they would attend and the ones they would not bother with and the friends who might or might not attend each. At last Mrs. Bister hiccupped. Then she said, “Robert, what are we going to do with the little runaway upstairs?”

  “I was going to send him back where he came from on a train,” answered Claire’s father, mouth full of something. “But he might come back.”

  “You can’t send him on a train alone like a piece of baggage,” Mrs. Bister argued. “The railway requires adult accompaniment, and we are not going all the way to Chicago with that little urchin.”

  The word urchin stung me like a wasp. But she went on and we listened intently. “I’ve tried to reach the father in . . . where is it he said he’s from? Cairo, Illinois. No listing whatever under Ogilvie,” countered Claire’s father.

  My breath stopped short. Of course there was no listing! It was 1926. Dad didn’t get us a telephone until 1928, two years later. I couldn’t have called him anyway.

  “Dearest, I don’t want that child in the house putting ideas in Claire’s head. God knows if she won’t wander away again!”

  Claire’s father grunted.

  Mrs. Bister went on, “Our daughter should not associate with such riffraff! He’s odd! Coins from 1931, indeed! There’s something very wrong about that child. Maxwell agrees. Darling, please call a cab and bring him over to the Boys’ Home over on West One Hundred and First Street, there’s a dear.”

  Coffee was served. The next minute we heard Robert Bister’s voice on the house intercom. “That’s right, Bruno,” he said. “Whistle me down a yellow cab in five minutes. We’re going to the west side. The driver can wait. Then it’s home again. Evelyn and I have a party at midnight. We must dress.”

  I heard the familiar firm footsteps on the stairs. Claire’s father was humming “Jingle Bells.” He stopped to light his pipe. I could hear the click of his lighter. Above him one floor up Claire and I tore down the hall and back to Claire’s room.

  “Boys’ home? What’s that?” I asked desperately. “An orphanage? A loony bin? A reform school?”

  “All three!” said Claire miserably.

  “But Claire, if I’m put in the Boys’ Home, I’ll never see my dad again.”

  Tears glittering in her eyes, Claire knelt in front of the train. “This is the only way, Oscar,” she said. “Get ready — he’s coming up the stairs to get you.”

  “Wait!” I said. “My wallet! It’s in the maid’s room, in the pocket of my pants. All my tickets are in it! They’ll throw me off the train if I don’t have a ticket!”

  Claire leaped up and ran to her bureau. On top was a china piggy bank. She smashed it and piled fat masses of money into my hands.

  “Good-bye, Oscar!” she said. Her words caught in her throat, but she knelt again and pushed the Twentieth Century’s forward switch.

  Her father rapped on the bedroom door. “Oscar, are you in there?” he asked politely, and knocked again.

  “Come with me, Claire!” I suddenly yelled. I shoved the money in my pockets and reached out for her hand. “Jump, Claire,” I shouted. “Jump!”

  The door to her bedroom swung open. But Robert Bister was a second too late. Arms forward like a swan diver, I jumped clear and high into the New York City heavens. Claire’s hand slipped out of mine at the last minute. Claire, her bedroom, and her father faded from me like stars in a sunrise.

  “Good morning, Mr. Moneybags!” said a familiar singsong voice.

  The smell in my mouth and nose was sickening, yet I had smelled it before: Lysol disinfectant combined with canned fish sticks. Pure hospital. I opened my eyes and looked to see how far down in the bed my feet went. Was I six, or some other age? My feet poked up under the coverlet, at about four feet and five inches from my chin. I was eleven years old again, my real self. I tried to sigh with relief, but my chest was locked in heavy tape. I was hooked up to a dripping bag attached to a tube attached to a needle that was taped to my hand. This was alarming.

  “Is that needle really stuck in your hand for good?” asked the voice at the head of my bed. It was Willa Sue.

  I couldn’t answer her. “Where am I?” I rasped. But if Willa Sue was here . . . and this was a hospital, then it could only be — sure enough, the sheets were all embroidered CAIRO METHODIST HOSPITAL. “Where’s my dad?” I asked.

  “He’s on his way back from Cal­i­fornia,” said Willa Sue. “Mama had quite a time reaching him. Did you know your dad was working on an orange ranch pick­ing oranges? He quit his job because you’re such a moneybags now. He’ll be here tonight.” Willa Sue looked no older than when I last saw her little Cutie Curls.

  “When they found you on the sidewalk outside the station, Mama sent him a whole Western Union telegram all the way to Indian Grove Ranch in Cal­i­fornia telling him to get on home. It cost her three dollars and forty cents for one telegram!”

  “When did this happen, Willa Sue?”

  “Oh,” said Willa Sue airily. “Mama has been up with you for two days, while you were in that awful, disgusting steam tent. I had to stay overnight at the neighbors’ house, and I didn’t like it one bit.”

  “What happened then, Willa Sue?” I asked.

  “Well,” she answered primly, “you almost died, but you didn’t.”

  I couldn’t tell whether Willa Sue was happy or sad about that. “Mama’s down in the cafeteria getting a cup of tea, so you just have me,” she said, and kicked her legs, which did not yet reach the floor from the visitor’s chair. On either side of Willa Sue were her favorite dolls. She patted them and adjusted them as if they were in our conversation.

  “How did I almost die?” I asked Willa Sue.

  “You’ve got four broken ribs. One! Two! Three! Four! Plus you have a punctured lung, just like a popped balloon,” said Willa Sue. “It gave you new-monia, and you had a fever of one hundred and four degrees for all this time since they found you lying on the sidewalk outside the Chicago Station in a pair of Brooks Brothers Boys’ Shop pajamas. Aunt Carmen said the pajamas must have cost a small fortune.”

  I was as weak as a bunny. That was true. “What’s the Mr. Moneybags all about?” I asked Willa Sue drowsily.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m not supposed to know, but I was hiding in that little coat closet and I heard everything! You were at death’s door. They said you were in a croma —”

  “Coma,” I corrected her.

  “The FBI detective was here,” said Willa Sue. “The one with the glass eye.”

  “Pearly Gates!” I said.

  “So that’s why he’s called Pearly,” said Willa Sue.

  “Never mind that, Willa Sue. What happened?”

  “Well, Detective Pearly took one look at you and he said, ‘What happened to the kid? Did he jump out of a ten-story window?’ and right on the word jump, you opened your eyes and started talking a mile a minute. Even though you had a fever of one hundred and four degrees, you told him all about the bank robbery.

  “‘We’re gonna nab those goons!’ That’s the way Detective Pearly said it, and Boom! They did nab ’em, right on the Mexican border with only mi
nutes to spare, and now, of course, Mr. Pettishanks is going to give you a big reward. Ten million dollars!”

  “Thousand,” I corrected.

  “Ten something,” said Willa Sue. “Monday morning, Mr. Pettishanks’ll give you the check. It’s a lot of money. You don’t have to live with us anymore. I hope you buy me a present, Oscar.”

  “I’ll get you a new doll, Willa Sue,” I promised.

  Willa Sue smiled her cutie-pie smile. “Oscar,” she asked, “what’s so special about the word jump?”

  I did not answer Willa Sue. I had slid back toward the warm hands of sleep. But on cue my memory of the last two days kicked in and began trickling back to me. I could remember the fever, the pneumonia, and the steam tent.

  I could see Detective Gates writing furiously in his notepad. “Stackpole!” I wailed to him through my illness. “Stackpole and McGee! Stackpole was bent over like a monkey; mustache and bad complexion. McGee was a little runt with red hair. They were going to head to El Paso and then to Mexico. I tried to help Mr. Applegate!” Here my recollection was gauzy. Detective Gates wanted to know who Mr. Applegate was.

  “He was the night watchman,” I’d insisted.

  “There weren’t no night watchmen,” said Detective Pearly Gates.

  This puzzled me, but I didn’t want to ask Willa Sue or Aunt Carmen anything about it. Willa Sue left my hospital room holding Aunt Carmen’s hand. They promised to be back with my dad as soon as he came in on the train.

  The nurse brought lunch. Crumbed fish loaf. I left the meal untouched under its metal lid, congealing on a tray beside my bed, until midafternoon when I woke.

  On my tray I saw there was today’s paper, neatly folded. I opened the paper to the front page. It was January 3, 1932. I had been gone only ten days. Dad was still at Indian Grove. The Tip-Top Ranch was years in the future, and there was no war being fought. Everything was normal, and best of all, my dad was on his way. The front headline read:

  DOUBLE CRIME SPREE GOONS NABBED ROBBERY! KIDNAPPING SOLVED!

  Double? I said to myself. Double? I read on with curiosity.