Puppet Wrangler (15 page)

But the way the gas station guy laughed when he said, “You can't miss it!” and the way the lady getting her tank filled laughed even louder got me worried. I can't say exactly why, but it did. They say you're supposed to follow your instincts, and my instincts right then were saying, “Stop. Go home. It's not too late to turn around.”

But the puppet in my knapsack was saying, “Would you hurry up?” and poking me really hard in the ribs, and that voice in my head was sobbing, “I get saddled with Dodo's kid,” so what could I do? I started walking to Arnold van Gurp's.

I turned down Bousfield's one and only side street and headed for the very end. Along the way, there were two old people sitting on one of those big wooden swings, but otherwise the road was deserted.
⁵⁷
I started whispering into the knapsack. I reminded Bitsie that he was supposed to play dumb and let me do the talking until I figured out what kind of guy this Arnold was. I made it sound like I was doing it for Bitsie—like I just wanted to make sure I was giving him to a good home—but who was I kidding? I was doing it for me. I didn't want Arnold to think I was nuts until I knew that he was nuts too. I wanted his puppets to talk first.

The houses seemed to end, and I was starting to think the gas station guy had laughed because he was playing a joke on me, when I saw something pink peeking through the trees. As I got closer, I caught glimpses of bright yellow and blue too, and bit by bit I began to realize there was a house back there.

A cartoon house.

A kind of shabby run-down cartoon house.

It looked like someone let a five-year-old design it. It was sort of skinny at the bottom and fat at the top. The roof was orange and curled up at the sides. The chimney leaned over one way and the front door leaned over the other way. The windows had those big black crosses in the middle just like they do in little kids' drawings. And in case I had any doubt if I had the right place, there was a giant red cartoon mailbox with the yellow words “van gurp.”

I guess the gas station guy was right. You couldn't miss it.

I rang the big purple doorbell, and this loud rinky-dink version of “The Lollipop Song” started to play. Bitsie groaned—he hates that kind of stuff—and I was just shushing him when the door opened and Arnold van Gurp said, “Yes??”

He looked odd. Not as odd as his house but pretty darn weird. He was about five foot nothing. His yellow hair was all slicked down perfectly and his teeth stuck out over his bottom lip even when his mouth was closed. He was dressed in a business suit, just like my dad would wear, only Arnold's was bright orange and his shirt was green and his tie was pink-and-yellow striped. I figured he must have really liked hot dogs too, because over the three weeks he must have been wearing those same clothes he'd collected quite a large number of ketchup stains.

It was a pretty weird outfit for anyone, let alone a guy as old as Mel.

Not that I could talk. I was still wearing that lame disguise—Bitsie's pink glasses and the kerchief with the fake braids—so I must have looked kind of strange myself.

Maybe that's why Arnold seemed to like me right away. I mean, it looked like we were related—or at least shopped at the same stores.

“Now, who might you be, and what's brought you here to Chateau van Gurp?” he said, all cheery like he was hosting a game show or something. Everything about the guy made me think he'd spent way too much time in kids' TV.

“Hi. I'm…”

I had to stop right there. Somehow it didn't seem like a good idea to give my real name.

“I'm...well, I'm a budding puppeteer!”

“You don't say! And so you've made the long and treacherous pilgrimage to far-off Bousfield to visit the Great van Gurp. Well, I'm flattered! Come in! Come in!”

He pulled the door open and bowed, and I stepped into a living room that was exactly what you'd expect after seeing the outside of the house. I was still sort of hoping to see a room full of puppets, all watching TV or playing video games or just doing stuff to bug each other. I was still hoping that this would turn out to be the home Bitsie always wanted.

And there were puppets everywhere, but they weren't what you'd call a very lively bunch. They were just draped over the big lopsided furniture like rag dolls. I tried not to jump to conclusions. I wasn't letting Arnold see the real Bitsie yet.

Why should he let me see the real side of his puppets?

I understood that—but I couldn't let him stall forever. I wanted to catch the 8 p.m bus back to Toronto so I could enjoy my last day of freedom before I was sent to jail for the rest of my life.

I decided to give Arnold a chance to feel comfortable with me before I popped the question. I said, “What a lovely home. So are your puppets alive or aren't they?” which didn't come out as smoothly as I hoped it would.

“Oh! So word has gotten out!” he said. He tried to look all modest and everything, but I could tell he was thrilled.

“Why, yes, every van Gurp creation comes with a free gift.

The gift of life!!!!!” He threw his arms up in the air like he was a gymnast who'd just won gold at the Oddball Olympics or something, and I guess I should have clapped, but I just stood there staring at him until he put his arms back down, all casual, like he'd just been having a little stretch or something and said, “Would you like to meet my puppet friends?

Stay for tea and cookies, perhaps?”

Cookies! I was so hungry. I said I'd love to.

He led me into the kitchen and introduced me to the three puppets sitting at the big green table. Mingo the Monkey: Caleb the Cowboy and Princess Peachy.

I'd like to say that they all jumped up to shake my hand, but they didn't. They just sat there with their big heads kind of hanging over the back of their chairs and their mouths open.

This didn't seem to bother Arnold at all. He said, “Oh, they're playing shy again! Sometimes they get that way with strangers.”

He told me to sit down, and then he crawled around on the floor until he was kneeling behind the puppets.

He put one arm around Mingo's shoulder and whispered to him, “It's okay. I know for a fact this young lady loves monkeys!” Arnold made a big show of kissing Mingo's cheek and patting his fuzzy head. I guess he was hoping I wouldn't notice his other hand trying to wiggle its way up the back of Caleb's shirt.

That's all I had to see to know the guy was a fake. Fake as the plastic cookies he had sitting on the table for tea.
⁵⁸

I put one of those “how cute!” smiles on my face and started looking for the right time to say “It's been lovely meeting you, but I really must dash.”

“Caleb” was just saying, “Why, heck, Mingo, you ole flea-bitten varmint! Don't you like your new lady friend?”

Mingo didn't have a chance to answer.

“Ah, forget about her!” Bitsy yelled as he wiggled out of my knapsack. “You're going to
love
me!”

⁵⁷
All out picking up their dry-cleaning at the video store, I guess.

⁵⁸
Boy was that a heart breaker. I kind of always suspected Arnold, but I at least figured I'd get real cookies.

44
YOU'D THINK HE'D HAVE NOTICED.

“Hey! Don't look so shocked!” Bitsie was saying to Mingo and Princess Peachy. I guess the blank expression on their faces could look like surprise if you really wanted it to. “You think you're the only living puppets around?…Ha! Think again, folks!” He loved knowing stuff other people didn't.

Bitsie did a little cha-cha-cha dance on top of the table. I should have just grabbed him and stuffed him back into my knapsack and hoped that Arnold was thinking about something else and hadn't noticed anything unusual. But I didn't. I was still trying to get my brain in gear.

Arnold, by this time, had, like, staggered back up onto his feet. His face was white and Caleb was still hanging upside down off one hand. Arnold gawked at Bitsie, closed his eyes, shook his head, then gawked at him again. It didn't help. The puppet was still dancing and talking all by itself.

Arnold looked at me all crazy-eyed and went, “How do you do that?”

Bitsie, I guess, thought Arnold was talking to him. “The cha-cha?” he said. “Oh, please! It's easy! It's just one-two-cha-cha-cha. One-two-cha-cha-cha! C'mon! Just follow old Bitsie! That's it! Right foot first, then left. Atta-boy! Put some hip movement into it, Arnie! Yeah!”

It was probably just because he was so shocked, but Arnold actually started following Bitsie's cha-cha steps. He wasn't bad either. He even seemed to catch on pretty fast to the turns and arm movements Bitsie'd thrown in. But I could tell by Arnold's wide-open mouth and shifty eyes that he was still thinking of something else.

Bitsie, of course, didn't notice anything. He was in puppet heaven!

“C'mon, you guys! Isn't anyone else here going to dance?”

Bitsie gave Princess Peachy a friendly little nudge with his foot and she fell out of her chair and landed flat on her face.

That was the first time I ever saw Bitsie scared. He went, “Sorry, Arnie…I mean, Mr. van Gurp!” in this really chicken voice. He jumped down off the table, threw Princess Peachy into a fireman's hold and got her back into her seat.

“How's that, Highness? All better or what?” She didn't answer. Bitsie looked back and forth between me, the Princess and Arnold. I thought he must have figured it out by now, and as crazy as this sounds, I was sort of hoping he'd know what to do. I sure didn't.

Arnold, meanwhile, had pulled himself together. His face had gotten a little pink again and he sort of smiled. He was watching Bitsie's every move, like he was looking for strings or something and not seeing any. He was getting ideas.

“Oh, don't worry about her, Bitsie,” he said in this really fake voice. “The Princess was up very late last night!”

Oh, c'mon. How lame was that?

Not lame enough. Bitsie fell for it.

He went, “
She
was? Ha! I was up
all
night! I kid you not!

We ran away from the studio yesterday and had to camp out at the bus station.”

“Oh, really?” Arnold was very interested.

“Really,” Bitsie said. “I wish you'd been there. It was so cool. Disguises—the whole bit! It was like
Spy International:

The Series
. Only better. No one could find out who we were or where we were going. Ab-so-lute-ly top-secret.”

Arnold was practically rubbing his hands together the way the bad guys do in old cartoons.

“Really?” he said. “So no one knows you're here…”

“Not a soul! As you can see, we made sure no one would ever be able to identify my lovely sidekick here as the plain, mousy Tel…”

“Bit-sieeee!” I screamed. I held the “-sie!” part for a while so my brain could figure out what to say next. “These cheap robots!” I kind of whispered to Arnold. “I had some trouble with his software program. Sometimes he says crazy things!”

Arnold would have gone for the computer story, I'm sure of it, if Bitsie had just kept his mouth shut.

“
I
say crazy things?!?” he went, all indignant. “Listen to her!”

Bitsie bent over and did that look-up-my-bum thing.

“Do you see a computer there?”

Arnold did a very thorough inspection. I guess he wanted to be extra sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

“No, I can't,” he said and looked at me in a creepy way.

“Nothing at all. Just the standard mecs.”

Bitsie snorted. “Ignore them! They're just for show.”

Arnold smiled. A big, happy smile that made me feel sick to my stomach.

“So, you like to dance, do you, Bitsie?” he said.

“Ooooh, yes!” Bitsie did a little hip-hop rapper move with his hands and neck.

“Then you
have
to meet these other pals of mine!” Suddenly, Arnold was Mr. Hospitality again. “They're just down the hall.”

Warning sirens went off in my head. I went to grab Bitsie and bolt with him, but Arnold was faster.

“Here, I'll give you a ride!” he said and tossed Bitsie up onto his shoulder like he was the nicest dad at the class party or something. What could I do? I snatched my knapsack and followed. I tried to catch Bitsie's eye, but when I did he just gave me a big thumbs-up sign.

Arnold took us down the hall. He unlocked a door at the end and showed us in. It was a tall room with one tiny window way up high, but it was full of puppets all stacked on top of each other like firewood. I figured Bitsie had to understand what was going on now. People don't usually stack their “friends” in locked rooms. At least where I come from.

But I guess it's like Grammie always says. We all believe what we want to believe.

Bitsie said, “Boy, these guys look like they were up late too!” and crawled down off Arnold's shoulder. “I am going to like it here! Par-ty Central! This is definitely my kind of place!”

He noticed something and stopped yakking mid-boogie.

“Hey! Isn't that Mavor the Mammoth?” He trotted over to a pile of fur in the far corner of the room. “From
Prehistoric
Preschool
?…It is! Whaddya know!”

I heard a click. I turned around. Arnold had left the room. I heard another noise and knew right away what it was.

Arnold had locked the door.

45
A LITTLE DEMONSTRATION.

“I had no idea you were alive!” Bitsie was saying to this dusty brown furball with one missing eye. “Had I known, I would have called you when your show got cancelled.”

I couldn't believe it. Was Bitsie blind? The only thing that would have made Mavor the Mammoth look any less alive was to have an axe in his head and some flies buzzing around the wound.

“Bitsie,” I said.