On the Blue Comet (11 page)

Dutch and I left the train
in Los Angeles. He had scribbled his real name and his girlfriend’s telephone number on a piece of Rock Island Line stationery. I folded it into my wallet. “Now, listen here, cowboy,” he said. “You better call that dad of yours, ’cause I don’t see anybody here to meet you.”

That moment I grabbed Dutch around his big swimmer’s chest. “I can’t call him, Dutch,” I sobbed. “I don’t have a telephone number for him!”

“I thought you said he’d meet you at the station. I thought it was all arranged!” said Dutch.

I continued to sob. I was ashamed, but I couldn’t stop. “I’ve never used a public telephone in my life, Dutch! And I’ll never see my dad again!”

Dutch slapped me gently on the back. “What’s the name of the ranch he works at, Oscar?”

“Indian Grove.”

“Well, sir, we’ll just up and call ’em on the phone. If they don’t answer, we’ll send a telegram!”

“A telegram!”

“Western Union reaches a customer in two hours! I know. I used to be a Western Union delivery boy when I was a youngster like you.”

Dutch did a lot of dialing and inquiring and waiting. At last he was put through to Indian Grove Ranch in Reseda. Suddenly Dutch dropped the phone as if it were a boiling-hot potato. “That thing gave me a shock like the electric chair!” said Dutch, holding his ear. Out of the phone’s receiver had come the most deafening noise, like sheets of metal rattling. Then I could hear, “Hello? Hello? Indian Grove. Hello?”

Dutch picked the receiver up carefully. He asked for my dad, twice spelling the name. I watched Dutch frown at the telephone. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to me, “He doesn’t work there anymore!”

“Can you find out where he went?” I asked, trembling.

“The fella doesn’t speak a word of English,” said Dutch. So Dutch talked very slowly and loud. “Where did Mr. Oscar Ogilvie go to? Where can I reach him?” Dutch repeated the question.

There was a long silence. Dutch at last nodded, hung up the phone, and tried Information again for another ranch in a place called Laguna Beach. He dropped more coins into the slot, and I could hear the sharp tone of a telephone ringing, heaven knows where.

Again Dutch asked for my dad, and again, after ten minutes of haggling and waiting, he was put off to another number.

My eyes stayed riveted to Dutch’s face. He seemed to know that my heart was thudding away at a hundred beats a minute. Patiently and with his best smile, he dialed again. “Third one’s the charm, cowboy!” he said.

The third number rang. I could actually hear an operator pick up the phone on the other end. “John Deere!” she said.

“Oscar Ogilvie, please, ma’am,” said Dutch, his voice like honey in a spoon.

“Just a minute,” said the disembodied lady. Dutch winked at me. Then the operator announced, “Mr. Ogilvie is out of town, sir. He’s checking on equipment in Tarzana. He’ll be back at his desk next week.”

“Where in Tarzana can we call him?” asked Dutch.

“I don’t know if I am authorized to tell you that, sir,” said the voice.

My heart sank. Tarzana sounded as if it were in Africa. Could I walk the streets until I found him?

Dutch was not defeated. He introduced himself, first name and last. “Forgive me,” he said, “but may I be so bold as to ask your name, please, ma’am?”

“Milly,” came the reluctant answer. “Everybody calls me Milly, anyway.”

“Well, Milly, it just so happens I have Mr. Ogilvie’s son here right with me. Oscar Ogilvie, Junior. He has just arrived from Chicago on the train. He’s only eleven years old and probably weighs forty-five pounds. It’s Christmastime, and this boy needs his father bad. Can you help us out? We would so appreciate it.”

I guessed Milly didn’t have a chance against Dutch’s friendly persuasion. I was right.

We stayed right by the telephone booth waiting for Milly to call us back. Several people wandered up and wanted to use the telephone. With his saddest grin, Dutch shook his head and said, “Medical emergency!” pointing to me. The people did not ask what kind of medical emergency and went away to find other pay phones. It took half an hour for Milly to call back.

Dutch picked up, and he just listened. Then he turned to me. “Milly’s got your father on the other telephone, Oscar. For some reason, your dad thinks this whole thing is a hoax.”

“It’s not a hoax!” I sobbed, and the tears spurted out of my eyes all over again.

“Wait a minute,” said Dutch, his hand on my shoulder comfortingly. “Okay! Your dad says if it’s really you, you’ll know right off where your mama died.”

“Lucifer Fireworks plant. It was a lightning bolt did it,” I said.

Dutch repeated this into the phone. Within thirty seconds, he had a new message. “It seems your dad is already in his truck flooring the pedal. Wait outside the station. He’s got to get here from some lemon orchard in Tarzana. Most of it’s dirt roads all the way down the coast till you hit downtown.”

We walked to the hot-dog stand. “Three jobs in a week. Your dad sure moves fast!” said Dutch. “Sounds like he’s got his feet on the ground, though.” Dutch bought me a foot-long dog and a Hershey bar to go with it. We also got a morning
Los Angeles Times
. Even here in L.A., my face was plastered over the front page.

“Wow!” said Dutch. “Look at that! You’ve got ten thousand simoleons coming, cowboy, if you can remember who did the deed!”

This time I hugged Dutch in joy, not tears. “If you run into trouble,” he told me, “just give me a buzz! My girl’s old man owns a twenty-room house in Pasadena. That’s where you’ll find me!”

Swinging his suitcase in one hand, he waved. With an athlete’s gait, he swept through a high archway. I waved back for as long as I could see him. He waded through the crowds of people heading for trains, flagging down porters, and looking for those they loved. I followed Dutch out to the entrance of the station and watched him step off the yellow-brick sidewalk into the world beyond. One minute his foot was on the sidewalk; the next he had disappeared and there was no trace of him to be seen. I felt unbearably alone.

I sat on the steps outside the station and concentrated, hawklike, looking for my dad, not knowing what color truck he had or the direction he might come from. I hoped no one would recognize me from the picture on the front page of the
Los Angeles Times
.

The station had yellow stucco walls and towers five stories high. They gleamed splendidly in the brilliant sunshine. Palm trees clicked their fronds in the breeze along the street outside. I ate my hot dog, saving my Hershey bar for later, and watched traffic passing by. The heat spiraled in waves off the sidewalks, although it was the day after Christmas. There were an unusual number of soldiers and sailors passing along the streets across from the station. I wondered why. You never saw soldiers in Cairo.

An hour passed. I read and reread the story in the paper about Mr. Pettishanks doubling the reward to $10,000, and the police being totally befuddled. I tried not to think about Mr. Applegate lying dead on the floor of the First National Bank of Cairo.
Try to remember, Oscar!
I told myself.
Try to remember the robbers’ faces, their names
.
You know you know them
.

But nothing of the crooks’ identity would come back to me.

Across the street, a newsboy was hawking the afternoon paper. I tried not looking every two minutes at the clock tower. I reminded myself that hot as it was in California, it was wintertime and dusk would come early.

The newsboy across the street was waving folded papers at passersby. “War fever! Read all about it! War fever!”

War fever? Some stupid war must have suddenly started that afternoon and knocked my story off the front pages. I wanted to know the latest scoop from Cairo. Had the thieves been caught? Had someone else collected the reward?

At that moment, a rust bucket of a truck drove up with
John Deere
written in script on the door.

“Dad!” I shouted. “Dad, over here! I’m here!”

My dad jumped out of the pickup. He hadn’t heard me. He began searching, looking up and down the street. He focused on the station steps. He looked right at me, but he didn’t seem to see me.

“Dad! I’m here! Right here!” I shouted. Again he didn’t hear.

He took his cap off for a minute to scratch his head, and it was then I noticed that he was entirely bald. Bald! My dad always had a thick head of hair. Where did it go? He was wearing eyeglasses too. Where did they come from?

I ran down the steps to cross the street, but I could not step off the yellow-brick sidewalk that surrounded the station. I tried jumping and punching and turning myself sideways, but an invisible wall separated the crisscross brick pavement from the black asphalt. I tried another section farther down the sidewalk. I ran up and down trying to hurl myself into the street, but between me and the asphalt street was a barrier, see-through as a window but tough as steel. I was trapped.

Dad’s eyes raked the area one more time, with his glasses and then without his glasses. I saw disappointment cloud his face. He raised both hands to his mouth and called, “Oscar? Oscar?” He saw no one he knew.

Disappointment overcame him, and he put his hand back on the door handle of the truck and began to open it. Panic quaked through me. My dad was going to leave. I would never see him again because I was pinned where he would never see or hear me.

“Dad!” I screamed. Could I turn my body into an arrow and burst through?

Dad lay the side of his head on the top of the steering wheel for just a moment. His shoulders hunched up, and he closed his eyes. Then he cleaned off his glasses and started the motor of the truck.

Then my eye caught a little red light flashing on the telephone pole above me.
TAXI
it said in white letters, exactly as in Mr. Pettishanks’s station layout. Waiting at the curb, on the yellow-brick pavement, its
ON DUTY
top light illuminated, was a taxicab. I jumped inside it.

“Where to?” asked the driver. “Just across the street, please!” I said, and threw my only dollar bill onto the front seat. The driver shrugged. He rolled his eyes, as if to say, “Crazy!” but turned the ignition key and grabbed the wheel to back the cab up.

I fell back against the seat just as a hurricane wind pinned me into the upholstery and darkness descended. Thick-as-Jell-O air clogged my lungs. If there was any oxygen to be had, it was rubbery and as impossible to breathe as gas. The driver shifted the gears into reverse and turned the cab around. As the cabbie jerked forward, the blackness around me dawned to a milky light. I gulped for air. For a moment the whole world roared and clattered like a thousand marbles hitting a tin roof. I thought my eardrums would burst. It was the same noise, a hundred times louder, as had come through the telephone when Dutch dropped it.

“We’re here, kid!” said the driver, and he stopped his meter at twenty-five cents. “Pay up — two bits!” he said lazily. Then suddenly he looked at me, and his eyes popped. “Get outta my cab, fella!” he said, and threw the cab into reverse.

I was already out in the sunlit street. I banged on the rear bed of the truck that my dad was just about to drive away. For some reason, my shoes had burst open, laces ripping. Aunt Carmen’s careful stitching on the waistband of my pants had split. Miraculously I now filled the trousers out. A minute before, Cyril Pettishanks’s shirt had hung on me like a pajama top. Now the buttons were tight. I grabbed the pant legs, tore through Aunt Carmen’s hem stitching, and kicked them down. “Dad!” I shouted, tears of happiness choking my voice.

Dad braked. “Who in God’s name are you, and what do you want banging on my truck like that?”

“Dad! It’s me, Oscar!”

He only sort of recognized me. Suddenly a grin ringed his face so hard I thought his cheeks would give way. “Oscar!” he yelled. “Is that you? Is it you?”

“It’s me!”

“Oscar! You’re safe!” Dad jumped out of the cab. “You’re not kidnapped anymore!” Then he just grabbed me. He gazed at me up and down, down and up, tears running down his face. He said not a word until he heaved a big sigh and mumbled, “God forgive me, son. I didn’t know you. It’s been ten years and, of course, you’re a grown man now. Ten years, Oscar! Ten long years!” He was looking straight out and up at me, not downward as he always had.

“Ten years?” I asked.

“Almost to the day!” said my dad. “You’ve grown two feet! Where have you been? What did they do to you? Get in the truck and tell me!”

Dizzily I pulled myself onto the front seat of the pickup truck. Dad gunned the engine. He stole sideways glances at me as if he thought I might just disappear in a puff of smoke. I felt my head loll on my shoulders and fall.

It was morning before I opened my eyes. The air wafting through the open window was as sweet as any summer day in Illinois. The world smelled of citrus fruit. Birds sang in the trees outside the window. Dad was sitting on the foot of my bed. When I opened my eyes, he was staring into them.