Ignatius MacFarland (18 page)

We marched past the theater where Hamlet was playing and I realized I was now heading into a part of the city I had never seen before. It looked pretty much as fake and crummy as the rest of the city looked, with the addition of a huge statue of Mr. Arthur in the middle of a park that was filled with rickety swing sets that little mole kids were trying to swing on but kept falling off because they don’t really have butts.

I knew the statue was of Mr. Arthur because
everything
in this place was about Mr. Arthur. But I have to say, it was a pretty terrible statue. It sort of looked more like a mannequin in a department store and the face seemed like something I might draw if somebody made me draw a picture of Mr. Arthur using only my left hand. And since I’m right-handed, you can only imagine what that would look like. But as weird as that statue was, it wasn’t until we rounded the corner that I saw something that really threw me for a loop.

The White House.

There it was, sitting at the end of a really big lawn surrounded by a huge fence that looked like the fence around the real White House but that was way taller and scarier. It was the kind of fence you would never try to climb over because you knew you’d get impaled on the spikes at the top or caught by guards before you were even halfway up it.

There were tons of guards from all the different creature species dressed in poorly fitting suits positioned along the fence, and I had to figure Mr. Arthur was hoping the suits would make them look like secret service men. Unfortunately for him, they just looked more like when people have a pet parade and dress their dogs and cats up in human clothes and costumes. The creatures he had chosen were mean-looking, but their clothes sort of made you want to burst out laughing and say, “Awwww, isn’t that cute?”

We came up to a guardhouse at the front gate. The mole guy commander and the two gorilla guards walked me up to a giant purple baby who was dressed in an enormous dark suit with a tie that was way too short.

“Got the new Anti-Art,” said the mole guy in his deep rumble. “President Arthur wanted him brought in as soon as we caught him.”

“Good work,” said the purple baby in a weird voice that I can only describe as something the world’s biggest munchkin might have. He then did a big salute. RIIIPPPP! The armpit of his suit split open. “Oh, man,” was all he said as he looked at the hole he had just made and stared at his armpit like he was going to cry.

We marched up the driveway that led to the White House and I was surprised to see that it actually looked pretty real and well built. I figured that Mr. Arthur probably put a lot more time and care into building the place he lived in than he did into the stuff he just had to look at as he passed by. After all, if I was going to be a crazy dictator and force a whole frequency of creatures to do my bidding and recreate my entire world from back home, I’d probably build my house well, too. I mean, who wants to live in a piece of junk?

We walked up between the tall columns in the front and the mole commander knocked on the door. A feel (one of those fish/eel-type creatures that was standing in line behind the mole guys at Artbucks, in case you forgot) answered the door. He was dressed like a butler in a tuxedo, even though the tuxedo only had one arm that was coming out of the back of the jacket, since that’s where feels’ arms are. He gave the mole commander a look that showed he didn’t like him and said, “Yes?”

“Got the Anti-Art,” said the mole commander, who clearly didn’t like the feel, either.

“Just give him to me,” said the feel, who I now noticed had a really bad version of an English accent. It was weird enough to hear a fish/eel-type creature speaking at all, but when you add a bad British accent on top of it,
and
a tuxedo with one arm,
AND
factor in that we were standing in the doorway of a fake White House, well . . . you get my point that it was weird, right?

“We need to bring him in ourselves,” said the mole commander, as if the feel were an idiot for not knowing that.

“
Forget
it,” said the feel in the same tone you might use if somebody said they wanted to come into your living room and take a dump on the floor. “You guys aren’t stepping one foot into this place.”

“I was told to deliver the Anti-Art to President Arthur personally,” the mole guy said like he was about three seconds away from hitting the feel.

“And you have,
Commander
.” (The feel said the word
commander
in a super sarcastic way.) “Now, give him to me.”

The feel reached out his suction cup and was about to stick it on my chest when the mole commander grabbed the feel’s arm and yanked it down.

“OW!” the feel yelled.

“Keep your sucker off my prisoner, No Legs!”

“Who you calling No Legs, Dirt-Eater?!”

“Who you calling Dirt-Eater, No Legs?!”

“Who you calling No Legs, Dirt-Eater?!”

“Who you calling Dirt-Eater, No Legs?!”

And with that rather lame exchange they suddenly started shoving each other back and forth like they were about to have a fight on the playground. I thought that maybe I could use this chance to escape when . . .

“ENOUGH!” I heard a voice yell.

The feel and the mole commander stopped fighting and we all looked through the door into the White House. There, in silk pajamas and a red velvet smoking jacket, standing on the top of a big curved staircase in front of a gigantic painting of himself dressed the exact same way, was Mr. Arthur.

“Everybody please stop fighting,” he said, less like he was mad and more like he thought the fight was kind of amusing. “Is this the way we act when we have a new guest in our house?”

He came down the stairs and walked over to us. I could see that he was wearing one of those rich-guy scarves around his neck, the kind that you tie and then tuck into the front of your shirt so that it puffs out of your open collar. I think my dad used to call them “ascots.” Whatever it was, it sort of made Mr. Arthur look like a cross between Mr. Howell, the rich guy from
Gilligan’s Island
, and Hugh Hefner, this old guy who owned a magazine that nobody my age was allowed to see.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the feel as he bowed his head toward Mr. Arthur. “I didn’t want to let them in because I know how you don’t like any dirt inside the White House.”

Mr. Arthur patted the feel on its back to say “it’s okay,” and then stepped through the doorway. The mole commander and all the army guys bowed their heads as Mr. Arthur stopped and looked me up and down.

“The new Anti-Art, Your Excellency,” said the mole commander in a voice that sounded like he was trying to be really nice. “He was hiding in the flappers’ city with the girl, as you predicted.”

“I take it the girl got away?”

“Yes, sir,” said the mole as he bowed his head. “But we’ll find her.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Arthur with a smile. “I know you will.”

The mole commander and the entire army bowed over and over again as they backed away from the door. With all the bowing and walking backward I guess the creatures at the back weren’t moving fast enough and nobody could see where they were going and suddenly about forty of them, including the mole commander, all crashed into each other and fell backward like dominos. The creatures got mad in their own native languages and it sort of sounded like all the animals at a zoo swearing.

“ARTLISH ONLY, PLEASE!” yelled Mr. Arthur.

The creatures jumped up and backed away toward the fence twice as fast, this time saying, “Sorry, President Arthur!” and “It’ll never happen again, Your Excellency!” over each other. Then they all turned and ran out of the White House yard and disappeared down the street.

Mr. Arthur watched all this, then started laughing. “Oh, man, it’s funny when they do that.” Then he looked at me, got a big smile on his face, and held out his hand, palm up. “I’m Chester Arthur and I’m the president of this place. Give me five, soul man!”

It took me a few seconds to realize that he wanted me to slap him five the old-fashioned way that I used to see my dad do with his friends. But since Mr. Arthur was the president and all
and
since the last time I made direct contact with the hand of a leader from this world I had crushed it, I was a bit nervous to suddenly hit the hand of the guy I had just seen destroy an entire treetop city. However, he just stood there with his hand out and an expectant look on his face, which he then followed up by saying, “Don’t leave me hangin’.”

Unsure if the offense of leaving him “hangin’ ” would result in an even worse punishment than the one I was already expecting for befriending Karen, I very carefully raised my hand and slapped his excellency five.

“All
riiiight!
” he said, laughing as he pointed a finger at me and snapped his thumb down like his hand was a gun. “What’s your name?”

“Uh . . . Ignatius,” I said nervously. “Ignatius Mac-Farland.”

“Holy smokes, that’s quite a name, man!” he said, laughing again. “You must have gotten teased like crazy back in our frequency. You’re from my hometown, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Dig it, man. Right on! Hey, how’d you like a tour of the White House, Ignatius MacFarland?”

Wow, I thought. Mr. Arthur is really weird.

26

IN CHESTER WE TRUST

“This, my man, is the main lobby,” Mr. Arthur said loudly, like he was giving a tour to a large group of people even though it was only me standing next to him. “The whole idea for a White House came to me in one of my many creative dreams, the same dreams where most of my best ideas come from.”

As Mr. Arthur talked, he watched the feel butler move across the lobby floor on its slithering coil and go through a door into another room. As soon as it was gone, Mr. Arthur walked up to me and gave me a playful punch on the arm, like we were the best of friends.

“So what do you think of everything you’ve seen?” he said with a look that showed he was sure I was going to say something good.

“It’s a nice lobby,” I said, a bit confused.

“No, man,” he laughed. “My city. My world. You saw all that stuff out there, didn’t you?”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” I wasn’t really quite sure what to say and was sort of hoping he wouldn’t ask me any questions like that. My mom had always said, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.” Well, I was going to have to be awfully quiet now.

“So?”
he chuckled. “What did you think of it?”

I wasn’t really sure what to do. I didn’t want to lie but since this guy was also the president and since he was obviously a person who could do really bad things to someone he didn’t like, I felt like I should maybe just tell him I thought all the stuff he had passed off as his own and all the crappy buildings and clothing and stores and everything else he had forced on this frequency were really good. But I just couldn’t. I was caught in what you might call a dilemma.

“Well . . .” I said cautiously, “it looks a lot like the stuff back home.” It was a vague statement that I said in a sort of upbeat tone and so I hoped he would take it as a compliment.

“Yeah, I know, it looks like stuff back home, but what do you
think
of it?” he said in a voice that clearly showed he wanted me to be all “Wow, it’s great!” and “You are the most talented person I’ve ever met!”

“Well . . .” I said, even more cautiously now as my brain spun trying to figure out the most careful wording possible. “It’s pretty amazing. I really can’t believe you did it.”

Mr. Arthur got a huge smile and then held out his palm for me to slap again. “Thank you, my brother!”

Glad that I seemed to have dodged a bullet, I slapped him a sort of halfhearted five. He did the gun-hand thing at me again and gestured for me to follow him.

“So,” he said, in a really good mood, “how’d you get to this frequency?”

“I made a rocket and it blew up with me inside it,” I said, a bit embarrassed.

“Whoa, super cool! You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself, bro.”

“Yeah. I know.” It was sort of hard to have a normal conversation with the guy, knowing all that I did about him. After seeing what he had done to the flying people’s city, I kept waiting for him to throw me in a dungeon or take a punch at me or pull out a gun and shoot me like the bad guys do in those movies where you think they’re nice and then they just suddenly kill a guy because he double-crossed them or stole their money.

Mr. Arthur walked up to a door under the staircase and pushed it open. Then he turned to me and got a smile that said he was going to show me something top secret. “Come on in, rocket man, and see where it all happens.”

Oh, man, I thought. Dungeon time. Ice pick in the back of the head. The end of Iggy.

He gestured for me to go through the door. I took a deep breath, tried to tell myself that I could kick him in the nuts like Karen did if things got dangerous, and headed in.

Yikes.