On the Blue Comet (24 page)

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 and 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.”