Orphan Eleven Page 4

Bald Doris released his sleeve but continued to chase him.

  Nico did not move. Lucy stood next to him and Eugene.

  When Frank, Alice, Willy, and Bald Doris disappeared around the corner, Nico crumpled in a heap on the curb, his leg finally still.

  This couldn’t be happening. Frank and Alice would be back, wouldn’t they?

  Nico had been so sure.

  “We’re better off without them,” Eugene said with a trembling voice.

  “No, we’re not,” Nico whispered.

  Lucy could see how Frank and Alice might not want to take them all. But why would they leave Nico?

  Bald Doris came skipping back. “Look what I got.” She clutched a dollar bill between two grimy fingers. “Frank paid me to go away.” She grinned.

  Lucy knew she should be glad about this. A dollar was an awful lot of money. But her chest felt hollow and her hands colder than they’d ever been before.

  Lucy could feel the dark water of hopelessness rise inside her. She knew the sensation all too well. Miss Holland and Matron Mackinac had made her feel that way. Try as she might, she couldn’t get their voices out of her head.

  What is the matter with you, you useless girl?

  But she’d figured out what to do about them. She’d stopped talking, and then she’d run away. Now she would never have to see Miss Holland, Matron Mackinac, or Matron Grundy again.

  Eugene stood by the restaurant door as if Frank and Alice were still inside. Nico sat slumped on the curb, his head in his hands. Lucy pressed her page against the restaurant window and wrote:

  Why didn’t Frank and Alice want Nico?

  Eugene shrugged. “Replaced him,” he murmured.

  With Willy?

  Eugene nodded. “Nico got too old. He says Frank and Alice like kids who are firecracker smart but look young and innocent. No poker players suspect a little kid would peek at a man’s cards and report what he saw to Frank. That’s what Nico did for Frank and I guess it’s what Willy does now.”

  Lucy nodded. So Frank cheated. That was how he got rich.

  Eugene ran his finger along the glass. “He was never going to take all of us anyway.”

  Lucy didn’t think Eugene had believed this. Still, it felt good to hear him say it.

  Now for sure Lucy would find Dilly. But what if Dilly had a new family and a new sister? What if Lucy had been traded for someone else just like Nico had? She thought about the way Dilly laughed. And how she had sewn a doll out of polka-dotted and striped fabric scraps. She had glued the yarn hair in red ringlets just like Lucy’s and Mama’s and her own. She’d fashioned wire-rimmed glasses that she’d sewn to the sides of the doll’s head.

  The doll had three button eyes and one button nose, so Lucy had named her Mrs. Three Eyes. But Mrs. Three Eyes had been orphan-borrowed the first night at the Home for Friendless Children. Lucy reached in her pocket for the blue button that had been the doll’s nose. She had found it on the floor next to her bed and carried it with her ever since.

  Lucy sat down next to Nico. She’d tell him her plan to find Dilly. If Dilly was still living with the Sokoloffs, they might take Lucy in. But what about Nico, Eugene, and Bald Doris? The Sokoloffs’ apartment had been small.

  “I’m getting candy,” Doris announced, swinging the diner door back and forth.

  Lucy shook her head. They would need that dollar.

  Bald Doris pushed forward into the line at the cash register behind a big lady in a yellow dress.

  Nico still had not moved. Lucy tapped his arm, but he ignored her.

  In school when there was a problem Lucy couldn’t solve, she would write down all her possible choices. It was comforting to see things on paper, easier to decide what to do. She turned her page over to where there was a big clear spot. She did not want to spend time erasing now.

  But wait.

  Someone had written on her paper.

  Lucy looked closer.

  If Frank and Alice don’t work out, call Jabo KAR-0421, it said.

  Who could have written that?

  Eugene wouldn’t write on Lucy’s paper. It wasn’t Bald Doris’s handwriting. And it would never have occurred to Nico that Frank and Alice wouldn’t work out.

  Bernadette? She must have written on the paper after Lucy had fallen asleep.

  Lucy showed Eugene.

  He let out a tense breath. “Bernadette,” he whispered.

  Lucy nodded.

  “That’s a phone number?” Eugene asked.

  Lucy pointed to the diner, where a phone hung near the register.

  “Nico knows the guy behind the counter. He should be the one to ask,” Eugene said. He drew closer to Nico. “We need your help. We got someone better than Frank and Alice.”

  Nico wheezed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “No one better,” he said.

  Eugene snorted. “Nico, they left us here with nothing.”

  Nico didn’t respond.

  Eugene sighed. “Think the restaurant guy will let you use his phone?”

  “I dunno,” Nico mumbled.

  Lucy tapped Nico’s arm, then set the paper in his lap. She watched his eyes move across it.

  “What do I say when this Jabo guy answers?” Nico asked.

  Bernadette told you to call, Lucy wrote as fast as she could.

  “Right,” Eugene said.

  Nico blew his nose on his sleeve and ran his hands through his hair. He rolled his shoulders back, slipping on his old confidence. He strode into the busy diner and approached the man behind the counter.

  “What’s he doing?” Bald Doris asked, one hand in her candy bag.

  “He’s calling a friend of Bernadette’s.” Eugene spoke fast, his voice pitched high. “She wrote someone’s name on Lucy’s paper. Said we should call him if we needed help. You gonna share?”

  Doris pulled out a big piece of licorice and stuffed it in her mouth. “I earned it, not you.”

  Eugene glared at her.

  She rolled her eyes, then dug in her bag for a tiny piece.

  Eugene split it in three, which wasn’t easy, given how small it was.

  Nico’s skin was blotchy and his nose red, but he was smiling when he came out.

  They all clamored around him. “What did he say?” Doris and Eugene asked.

  “Bob said I could use the phone so long as we didn’t hang around here anymore. Jabo said he’d be here in an hour.”

  “Did he sound nice?” Eugene asked.

  Nico nodded.

  It had been a long time since Lucy had known a nice adult. Miss Ellie, the teacher, had been nice. All the girls cried when Miss Ellie left. Bernadette had been nice, but she was so young. The meanness of adulthood hadn’t taken over yet.

  Eugene hitched up his pants. “Where are we supposed to meet him?”

  “Down the road a bit,” Nico said.

  Lucy hoped Jabo lived close by. She didn’t want to get too far from Chicago.

  “That’s crazy.” Bald Doris crossed her arms. “I’m not going to wait for some guy we don’t even know.”

  “He’s a friend of Bernadette’s,” Nico said.

  “I didn’t like Bernadette. She didn’t let us stay with her,” Bald Doris said.

  “It was against the rules of her rooming house,” Nico said.

  Bald Doris rolled her eyes. “She could have figured it out. And she could have given us more food. Did you see how much she had?”

  Nico snorted. “You’re just mad because she bawled you out.”

  “Am not,” Bald Doris said. “But I’m not waiting for a stranger to pick us up and take us who knows where. Eugene and I are going back to the orphanage.”

  “Nope.” Eugene said the word hard, like a doorstop.

  “Well, I am.” Doris flou
nced away.

  Lucy wasn’t going back to the orphanage. Not ever.

  Once they got established at Jabo’s, she would find Dilly.

  The diner guy with the bald head came out. He threw a mean look their way, then made a big show of cleaning their fingerprints off the glass door.

  “Let’s go,” Nico said under his breath.

  They started walking to the spot where Jabo had said he’d pick them up. Bald Doris trailed behind, her lips black with licorice.

  When Lucy looked back, Doris made a face and said, “This is the way to the orphanage, too.”

  Maybe it would be good if Bald Doris went back. Bernadette had said they wouldn’t make it with her along.

  They walked by a shop that sold snuff and a barber school with haircuts for ten cents. Who had the money to pay for a haircut? Rich people or people who didn’t own scissors.

  When they passed an apartment building with a crisscross of clotheslines, Lucy felt a sharp stab of homesickness, remembering the time Dilly had reeled in their bachelor neighbor’s undershirt by mistake and had to knock on his door to return it.

  But except for the clotheslines, this place was not familiar.

  Lucy searched the faces they passed. Strangers.

  When Nico announced they were at the meeting place, they found a small patch of grass to settle on and wait.

  “I’m not doing this,” Bald Doris announced. She marched across the street and stuck out her thumb.

  The cars whizzed by. When one slowed to pick her up, Doris ran back to them. She plunked herself down and ate every last piece of candy.

  A few minutes later, she threw up a pool of black licorice barf. Then she cleaned herself up and sat down, facing away from the others.

  At the orphanage you were taught to forget about the bad things. Your life before was over. But that was a lie they told orphans. Lucy knew regular people celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. Regular people took photographs and kept diaries. Regular people had things they loved for their whole entire lives. Regular people remembered.

  Of course there were things Lucy wished she could forget, but most of them had happened at the orphanage. And that was all over now. She’d never be humiliated like that again.

  It was warm at first, but then gray clouds moved in and a cold wind came up. Each time a car rolled by, they jumped up.

  “I told you we shouldn’t wait for him. No one ever listens to me,” Bald Doris grumbled after more cars sped by.

  Lucy trusted Bernadette. Bernadette wouldn’t tell them to call someone who was mean.

  “It’s him!” Nico shouted when a brightly painted truck with fancy scrolls around the cab pulled off the road.

  Lucy jumped to get a glimpse of the driver, but she could see no one.

  The tires squealed as the truck came to a halt. They all ran to the driver’s side, which didn’t have a door.

  The driver was a tiny man perched on a throne of cushions.

  But there was something strange about him. The man had no head.

  The man’s hand clutched a cigar.

  Lucy took a step closer. If you don’t have a mouth, she wondered, how do you smoke?

  The cigar hand moved to the shirt and stuck the cigar in the gap between two buttons.

  His mouth was in his chest?

  A deep voice boomed out of his shirt. “Hey, what do you think of my cranium?” He reached over to the passenger seat for his head, which he dangled by the hair for her to see.

  Bald Doris shrieked.

  “Nice,” Nico said, his voice calm.

  The head looked as if it was made of ladies’ stockings stuffed with rags. The hair was sewn on, the nose was lumpy, but the eyes were startlingly real.

  Then Lucy noticed there were holes in the man’s shirt with eyes looking through. A short arm reached up to a headless collar. With three buttons unfastened, the man’s real head popped out.

  He was middle-aged, with a high forehead, a receding hairline, and folds of skin around his mouth.

  “ ’Bout wet myself,” Eugene admitted.

  The driver’s smile was warm. “I’m sorry to have frightened you”—he bowed to Eugene—“but I’ve run out of the gullible, the credulous, and the unsuspecting. I’m trying out for ringmaster. I will need quite the arsenal of tricks to get that coveted spot.”

  “Ringmaster? You’re in a circus?” Eugene asked.

  Jabo nodded.

  “Do you even need an act? As small as you are, isn’t that enough…” Nico’s voice trailed off.

  “Size is an accident of birth, my fine sir. The secret to showmanship is invention. A short person has to do twice the work to be considered half as good, so yes indeed, I must have many tricks up my sleeve.”

  He passed the head down for them to inspect.

  “The eyes are really good,” Nico told him.

  He nodded. “Made of glass. I sent to Philadelphia for them. Still working on the mouth. I’m considering facial hair.”

  Bald Doris butted in front of Eugene. “A beard,” she announced, though she did not touch the head when it was offered to her.

  The driver nodded, taking back his head and placing it tenderly on the seat. “I’m Jabo, and you must be Doris, Eugene, Lucy, and Nico.” He bowed to each of them. “The pleasure is all mine.”

  “How’d you know our names?” Nico asked.

  “Bernadette gave me a comprehensive report,” Jabo said.

  “My hair is growing back. Did Bernadette tell you that?” Bald Doris leaned her head down to show him.

  “Indeed.” Jabo nodded to Doris, who smiled, pleased with herself.

  Jabo jumped from the seat to the running board and pulled a crank. With a thrunk, a row of steps appeared from under the chassis and he walked down.

  He wore black-and-white-checkered trousers, a bright blue jacket, yellow socks, and red shoes. On the ground, he barely came up to Lucy’s chest, and she was the second-smallest eleven-year-old at the orphanage.

  Jabo took a deep bow. “What you see here is a sample of the driver. The full driver will come later.”

  Lucy popped her hand over her mouth to keep the laugh inside.

  “Let it out, my girl,” Jabo said. “Laughter is popcorn for the soul. Now, I have inquiries for you, and I expect you have been formulating questions for me.”

  Nico’s fingers raked his hair. “Mr. Jabo, sir, on the phone you said you would help us.”

  “Allow me to elaborate….You will be given excellent cuisine and a warm, safe place to sleep, until the show goes on the rails on Sunday. After that, it will be up to you.”

  “What will be up to us?” Doris asked, her eyes tracking him as he walked stiffly back and forth.

  “Your food and lodging. I’m hoping you will find someone to sponsor you, an apprenticeship arrangement…in which case, the situation will be permanent.” He stuck his finger in the air. “I wish I could offer you more time, but no one will remain in Winter Quarters after we jump to our first stand. We are a rail show, after all.”

  “What’s a rail show?” Nico asked.

  “A circus that moves by train from performance spot to performance spot, known in circus parlance as a stand.”

  “We’re going to the circus?” Doris asked.

  “Indeed. The circus is home. I hope Saachi’s will be family for you, too.”

  “Will it perform in Chicago?” Nico asked.

  “The first week in May, if I’m not mistaken. I should also mention that in your quest for an apprenticeship, you will be allowed three mistakes—errors in judgment, if you will.”

  “Mistakes?” Nico frowned.

  Jabo nodded. “Yes. Ah, so much to explain. Lucy, would you climb in the cab, there?” He pointed a wobbly finger to the truck. “On the floor well of the pas
senger seat is a black velvet box. Could you bring it down to me, please?”

  Jabo had picked her!

  Lucy hurried to the truck, which smelled of peppermint and cigar smoke. A basket of books was on the floor. Her breathing quickened….Jabo owned books!

  Under the basket, she spotted a black velvet box the size of a serving platter. She worked the box out from under the books and climbed down the stairs, carrying it as if it were as precious as a dictionary.

  Jabo searched their faces. “Anybody have a bugle? A trumpet or a kazoo would do.”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Well, then…a drumroll will suffice.” He leaned down and drummed his legs with his hands. Then he took the box from Lucy, lifted the black velvet lid, and peeked inside.

  The box was divided into many square velvet-lined compartments filled with small objects like shiny pebbles, feathers, and dice.

  Jabo walked around, peering up at them.

  “This is only a guess of where you might fit in at Saachi’s. It is based on my observations and Bernadette’s insights. Don’t be afraid to prove me off the beam, wide of the mark, otherwise known as incorrect. Only you can feel the tick of your own heart from the inside. Now…ladies first.”

  Jabo stuck his hand in the box and walked toward Lucy. When his fingers uncurled, there on the flat of his palm was a tiny silk blue-striped pouch. Lucy loosened the delicate ribbon drawstring and pulled out three black hairs, each about five inches in length.

  “Hair?” Nico asked.

  Jabo smiled. “Three pachyderm tail hairs, to be exact.”

  “What’s a pachyderm?” Doris asked.

  “An elephant,” Jabo answered.

  The hairs were strong, and black as burnt toast. Lucy let her fingers explore the length of them. She offered the bristly hairs for the others to touch, then wound them in a loose circle and slipped them back inside the pouch.

  Thank you. Lucy showed her page to Jabo. She loved the little silk drawstring bag but was not quite sure what to make of the elephant hairs.

  “I’m the one who needs hair, not her,” Doris groused.

  “Patience, Mademoiselle Doris. You are next.” Jabo began the drumroll again. Then he walked toward Doris and opened his fingers.