Journey to an 800 Number (7 page)

Iago and Jesus waved and said, “Sure thing, Woody. She says the same to you.”

I leaned against the wall of the camper, my arms folded across my chest, thinking Father could have asked me to settle Ahmed. So what if I didn’t
know how? He could have asked me instead of asking these strangers.

Iago asked me, “This your first time at the Fair?”

I nodded.

“We come every year,” he said. “Our mama has a tacos stand.” He pointed in a general direction. “They keep all the food stands together away from the animals. Mama’s stand is called
Rosita’s.
That’s our mama’s name. Our mama makes the best tacos at the Fair.”

The littler one, Jesus, kept nodding the whole time the other was talking.

“Since you guys are going to close up shop, I’m going inside. You just put everything away, and I’ll see you around. Okay?”

“You coming over to Rosita’s for supper? Woody always has first night supper at our place. You come, too.”

“I’ll see,” I said, and went into the camper.

Father was lying across my bunk, and I nudged him to ask him about supper. The minute I touched him, I felt that he was burning up. I pulled the blankets from the top bunk and covered him up and went back outside. Manuelo had just returned from leading Ahmed around the paddock. He commanded Ahmed to kneel, and Ahmed did so. He lifted Emmy from the saddle and said to Jesus, “You next.”

I said to Iago, “I’m afraid my father has a fever. I think he’s come down with the same bug I had about a week ago.”

Emmy walked over to us. She reached for my hand and said, “I like the new saddle. Can I ride tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Woody is sick. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Iago put his fingers in his mouth and made a whistle that a steam locomotive could have envied. When he did, Manuelo turned Ahmed around and cut across the center strip to make a beeline for us. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

“Woody’s sick.”

Manuelo maneuvered Ahmed back into his kneeling position, and Jesus got off. He said to me, “I’ll put Ahmed in his stall and feed him. I know where the stalls are. Iago, you take the others over to our place and stay with them and send Mama back here. Tell her that Woody’s sick.” Then he looked at me. “Don’t worry, Max. You take care of Woody, and we take care of the rides. I can drive Ahmed as good as Woody can. Woody taught me hisself.” He thought a minute and then added, “Unless you want to run the rides. I’ll try to take care of Woody, but I’d be better at running the rides.”

“If running Ahmed is your first choice, then you go right ahead and run Ahmed. I’ll take care of Father.”

“You get the sign and set it outside the camper.
I’ll carry it on over to the track tomorrow morning.”

“The sign?”

“Ahmed’s sign. The advertising one that tells how much to pay.”

“I don’t know where Father keeps his sign.”

“Under the table,” he said.

“Oh. All right. I’ll do that. I’ll set it outside the camper tomorrow morning.”

“That’s right. Outside the camper. Here comes Mama,” Manuelo said.

Down the field, across the worn-out pasture came Mama all right. She looked like the person for whom the word Mama was invented. She had Mama glands the size of cantaloupes and a stomach that started early and ended late. She was wearing blue jeans, and as she approached I saw that she had an advanced course of eye makeup on. Her hair was sprinkled with single gray hairs that announced themselves loud against all the other black ones. Her hair was parted in the middle and pulled straight back and held with a rubber band. When she turned around, you could see that her hair reached below her waist, even below the whole double mound of where she sat down.

“This is Max,” Manuelo said.

She said, “Hi, Max,” and asked me what was the matter, and I told her, and I also told her what I thought caused it. She sent Manuelo away, and the two of us went inside the camper. She reached across my bunk and felt Father’s forehead. “Let’s
get him undressed and sponge him down to bring the fever down,” she said.

Mama Rosita was not at all embarrassed about undressing a helpless man. She was able to lift Father and sponge off his parts like he was a department store manikin that didn’t have any. She put her hand back on his forehead. “That brought his fever down some,” she said. “Do you think you can get him to take some liquids? Coke is good. And make sure when he takes aspirin, he takes a big glass of water. I’ll send Manuelo over with some supper for you.”

I told her thank you very much, but I wished that there were some words that meant one degree more. I wished there was a special vocabulary that said thanks when thanks are deserved and not even asked for.

Father did look pitiful. I stayed inside the camper making sure that he didn’t get uncovered and take a chill. He was perspiring as if he’d been given a government franchise for it. When his breathing became regular, and I knew he was sleeping soundly, I began to look for the sign. I looked under the table but found nothing. I expected to find nothing because I had noticed nothing in all the time I had been staying with Father. I opened all the cabinets (two) and looked in them, and in the oven and even inside the half refrigerator, where I knew it wasn’t. I found nothing. Then I decided to crawl under the table and feel around the floor boards and
when I did, I looked up and saw that the actual underside of the kitchen table was painted, and the painting said:

BE A CAMEL RIDER
Ride AHMED
Children $1.00
Adults $1.50

The colors were sand, purple and red. I got out from under the table and saw that there were hinges connecting it to the camper wall and another hinge at the opposite end that dropped down to make the table leg. I loosened the pins and separated the hinges and had the sign ready for Manuelo.

He came with a bowl of chili that was a kind of spicy that was four beyond basic. I had to eat it slowly. Manuelo visited with me, and that’s when I found out that he was two years older than I. I also found out that he had been working the Oklahoma State Fair for seven years.

“It’s our vacation,” he said.

“Vacation?” I asked.

“Yes, it wasn’t too easy to get away this year.

It keeps getting more expensive.”

“Do you stay at a hotel?”

“What hotel? We stay in the camper. The front part is our taco and chili stand, and the back part is where we live.”

“The five of you live in half a camper?”

“Yes.”

“And the five of you work the taco stand?”

“Not Emmy. She’s only five. She’s too little to reach over from behind the counter.”

“But you work?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Okay.”

“Why is it a vacation?”

“Because we’re not picking melons and because it’s fun. You get to do a lot of different things. Man! We meet people like Woody and Ahmed.”

“Ahmed is not a people.”

“But he is the only camel I’ve ever known. Where else would I get a chance to meet a camel?”

“At a shopping center. At a school fair. You could meet them there. They are not what you might call exclusive.”

“It’s a real sacrifice for our father to let us go.”

“Which our father?” I asked, worried, considering the name of his second brother and considering that he’d said “sacrifice.”

“Our father, Manuelo senior,” he answered. “This is the height of the season.”

“What season?”

“Melons. Cantaloupe mostly. We pick melons down in the Valley.”

“What valley?”

“In Texas, the valley means the Rio Grande.”

“This is Oklahoma.”

“But we’re from Texas, man. We vacation in Oklahoma.”

Father spent what is called a restless night, and because he did, I did. A little bit of fever seemed to make him sleepy, but when his fever started to go up, he would waken, and I would give him Coke or ice water, or if enough time had passed, I would give him aspirin again. He looked feeble.

About six-thirty the next morning the sounds of the fairgrounds changed. Instead of an occasional animal noise and instead of the irregular creak of the seats of the ferris wheel and the eerie slap of the flag pole ropes against the pole as the wind blew them, I began to hear people. People calling to each other to say hello or to give an order. And the sounds of the animals changed from occasional to demanding. The sounds gathered together and got lost in noise the way a rainbow of clear colors gets lost to make white.

I slid down from the top bunk and did a quick job in what passed for a bathroom in Father’s camper. I started out the door when I heard Father moan. It was not a very loud moan, but it was loud enough. I returned to his bunk.

“I’ve got to get up,” he said. “I can’t seem to find my senses. Would you please help me, Bo?”

“It’s all right, Father,” I said. “Ahmed is taken care of. Everything is all right. I think you should go back to sleep.” It was not time for him to have
aspirin again. Rosita had said two every four hours, so I held his head while he drank some ice water. He sank back down into the pillow. “Thanks, Bo,” he said, and he fell asleep again.

I studied my father for the next few minutes, and besides deciding that I’d better not leave him regardless of how interesting the sounds outside became, I also decided that whatever it was that was making him sick sure wasn’t stopping his hair from growing. Besides needing a shave, the hairs inside his nose and ears had sprouted like bread mold for a science project.

Mama Rosita came by about nine o’clock and asked about how Father was and how he had spent the night. She brought me some kind of donut that opened up and you poured honey in, and a cup of coffee. I would have preferred milk, but I was too polite to say so.

“I’m rushing back to the stand now,” she said. “When the breakfast trade is all done, I’ll be back to help you bathe Woody and change the sheets.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I said, and she answered, “Good,” and left.

After she left I sat down to eat the donut and drink the coffee, and I realized how lucky I am to be polite. It was a good thing I didn’t tell her that I would have preferred milk because coffee went much better—just about perfect—with that kind of donut.

Mama Rosita returned about ten-thirty. Together
we bathed Father. I wished we could shave him, too, but Mama Rosita said that appearances don’t count, but that being clean does. Iago brought me lunch and later he brought me supper, and in between those times I cannot tell you what I did, but I was kept busy: taking the bottle to Father for him to empty his bladder or feeding him canned chicken soup or holding his head while he drank Coke or water. His fever seemed to go down after lunch, but it shot back up about four o’clock, and I kept sponging him off with cool wet washcloths.

When Iago brought me my supper about seven, I sat out on the camper step and asked him to join me, but he told me that he had to hurry back because he had to take Manuelo his supper, too, since they were short-handed in their booth. I ate alone there on the step, sniffing the air and deciding that although it was full of peculiar smells and particulates, it had a quality that sure
felt
healthy.

I heard a knock on the camper door about eleven. It was Manuelo. He laid a pile of bills on top of the counter, reached in his pocket for some change, and said, “Sixty-seven twenty-five. I kept ten bucks in bills and coins to make change.”

“How can you have twenty-five cents? I thought the rides were a dollar or a dollar fifty. The money should be in multiples of fifty cents.”

“You thinking I cheated you?”

“I was just …”

“The truth is that you were cheated.”

“I didn’t mean …”

“But I didn’t cheat you. Some gringo accused me of giving him wrong change, and I made it up to him even though I’m not at fault. In this business, man, you learn not to fight over two bits. You lose good will to fight in front of the customers.”

“Listen, Manuelo, I didn’t mean for you to think that …”

“You didn’t mean for me to think what, man?”

“I didn’t mean for you to think that I thought you were cheating.”

“Sure, man.”

“It’s just that I have this rather good ability in math.”

“Sure, man.”

“Listen, Manuelo …”

“No, you listen,” he said. “I’m not sure I like you, but I’ll tell you this. I love Woody. And so does Mama and Iago and Jesus and Emmy, too. We’ve loved him all the years we been coming to Tulsa. And we gonna continue to do for you because we’re really doing for Woody, and we’re not gonna let him down.” He picked up my supper dishes. “I’ll take these back to Mama. You tell Woody that Ahmed was a good boy today, and he’s all settled for the night.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said. “And would you please tell Mama Rosita thanks for the supper? Would you tell her that I said it was real good.” He turned to leave. “Would you also please tell her that?”

“I’ll tell her,” he said and left.

After he left I told myself that Manuelo was just pretty touchy and shouldn’t have jumped to any conclusions, and I told myself it was not my fault if I was rapid-fire in arithmetic, and after he left I hated him. Or me. I guess it was me I hated, but I hated him for making me.

Father’s fever broke that night, and by morning he awoke smiling and talked about getting up and getting going. I let him try, but, of course, he couldn’t. He sat halfway up and sank back down. “I’m as weak as May wine,” he said.

“Just lie there,” I said. “Would you like to have solid food today?”

“No, Bo,” he said. “I don’t feel strong enough to chew.”

“How about a mashed potato?”

“No, thanks,” he said. And he was asleep again in five seconds.

Mama Rosita appeared again, and I told her that Father’s health seemed to be improving, and she told me that it was time to change the sheets, and I told her that I couldn’t find any more clean ones, and I didn’t know what we would be changing them to, and she told me that she would send Iago over to baby-sit with Father and that I should take the sheets to the laundromat and wash them. I told her sure. I didn’t have any idea how to do laundry. I didn’t explain that laundry was one of the services we got for living on the Fortnum campus, and she
didn’t ask. I wished she would have asked, but she didn’t. She just asked me if I had quarters, and I told her that I did, that Manuelo had given them to me, and I looked at her out of the corner of my eye so that I could see if she would give any hint about whether Manuelo had said anything to her about the money. But there was no hint, so I didn’t know if he didn’t say anything or if she just made it look as if he hadn’t.