The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (10 page)

L
IVE IN A BARN AND YOU
get used to having all kinds of creatures around. Horses and cows and pigs, and wild things like owls and mice and snakes. One time Harold and I watched a fat black snake swallow a little gray mouse. It was the most amazing thing because the mouse never moved or tried to get away. It was like the mouse knew it was snake food and didn’t want to make trouble.

That’s pretty much how Mr. Willow acts with the beautiful Kate Nibbly. His eyes even blink like mouse eyes and he shivers like a mouse whenever she says things like “Oh really, Webster? How simply fascinating!” or “What’s your opinion, Webster, should I wear the pearl necklace or do you prefer the amber?”

Haven’t known her five minutes and already she’s Kate and he’s Webster, and you’d think they’ve been sweethearts for years. We’re sitting in a little restaurant at the steamship terminal, eating butter muffins dipped in chocolate and glasses of ice-cold milk. Miss Nibbly is busy making Mr. Willow feel like he’s the most important man who ever lived, and her brother Frank is being ever so nice to me.

“You say your brother was sold into the army? Extraordinary. What a terrible injustice. The whole purpose of the war is to end slavery, is it not?”

“I don’t know what the purpose of the war is,” I tell him, talking around a mouthful of muffins. “I just don’t want Harold getting killed is all.”

“Of course you don’t,” Frank says, sipping delicately at his glass of milk. “The loyal brother. How touching. And you say this enterprise, this urgent journey to free your brother, is being financed by Jebediah Brewster, of the famous Brewster Mines?”

I didn’t say no such thing, but Mr. Willow did, blurting out all our private business the first time Miss Nibbly asked. How Mr. Brewster is testing his character by sending him as my guardian, and how he has letters of introduction to very important people, and how he’s been instructed to purchase Harold’s release, if it comes to that.

He does everything but show her the money entrusted to him by Mr. Brewster, and that’s only because I jump on his shoe.

“Homer, what has gotten into you?” he asks, rubbing his skinny foot.

“Time we got on the ship, Mr. Willow.”

“There’s no hurry,” says Frank Nibbly, showing me his teeth. “No hurry at all.”

But the other passengers are saying their good-byes and starting to board the steamship
Orion
, and the stewards are loading up the trunks and baggage, and clouds of smoke are coming out of the smokestack. Mr. Willow finally notices what’s happening and jumps up like somebody stuck him with a darning needle.

“The boy is right!” he blurts. “We must go! Can’t miss the ship!”

When Mr. Willow makes it clear we really do have to board, I figure that will be the end of it, because something tells me the Nibblys don’t really have tickets for the steamship, but want to trick us into missing the boat so they can figure out how to fool Mr. Willow into giving them the money.

They’re after the money. I know it and Frank knows it and Kate knows it. The only one who doesn’t know what’s really going on is poor Mr. Willow. I grab him by the cuff and drag him to the gangway, into the crowd of passengers who are boarding. He keeps looking back at Miss Nibbly and she keeps batting her eyelashes, but finally we’re at the top of the gangway and a man is asking for our tickets.

“Tickets? Tickets?” says Mr. Willow, looking confused. He pats his pockets and my heart sinks, but then he finds the envelope and hands over the tickets and the man is shooing us aboard, telling us to make way for the other passengers.

My idea is to hurry along to the cabins, but Mr. Willow turns back to the rail, looking for Miss Nibbly in the crowd below.

Frank and Kate are nowhere to be seen.

“Where can she have gone?” Mr. Willow wants to know.

It’s on my tongue to say they’re off looking for another sucker, but the poor man looks so hurt I decide to keep my mouth shut.

I
F THE CABINS ON THE STEAMSHIP
Orion
were any smaller they’d be cages, and me and Mr. Willow would be clucking like chickens. There’s barely room to open the door, and the bunks are so short and narrow that Mr. Willow has to practically fold himself in half before he can lie down. It’s not so bad for me — I mostly fit — and from the top bunk I can see out the little window. I lie there and watch the light fade from the sky until the stars come out.

We could walk the promenade deck, like most of the other passengers are doing, or visit the dining room, or maybe even explore the steam engines, or tour the wheelhouse, but Mr. Willow doesn’t want to leave the cabin. I never seen a man go lovesick before, but there’s no doubt about what’s wrong with Webster Willow. He’s pining for Kate Nibbly. A few hours ago he never knew she existed, and now he can’t live without her.

“You need to see a doctor,” I advise. “Maybe get some pills, or some leeches to draw away the sick blood.”

“Shut up, Homer.”

“See? If you were feeling well, you’d never tell anyone to shut up. You’re much too polite.”

“Go away and leave me alone.”

“Can’t,” I say from my perch on the top bunk. “You’re my guardian. If I was to fall off the ship or jump into the boiler, Mr. Brewster would hold you responsible and you’d never get your own congregation.”

“Jump off the ship for all I care,” he says, his voice muffled by the pillow he’s hugging to his face. “You never liked her,” he wails. “It’s all your fault!”

There’s a bunch of things I could tell him, if only he’d listen. How it’s as plain as the long, skinny nose on his face that Miss Nibbly doesn’t really care about him, but only about the money. How one liar can always recognize another, and I right away recognized two of ’em in Frank and Kate Nibbly, from the moment she pretended to fall into Mr. Willow’s arms. How some folks are just naturally decent and truthful like Harold and Mr. Willow, and others are always scheming and taking advantage.

I could tell him all these things, but Mr. Willow jams the pillow over his head and so I’m left talking to myself, and listening to the steady throb of the great steam engine, and feeling the steady
whoosh!
of water running by the hull,
whoosh! whoosh! whoosh!
like the ocean is telling me a story but I can’t hear it until I’m sound asleep.

When the knock comes on the cabin door I wake up so fast I bump my head on the ceiling.

“Homer Figg! Message for Homer Figg!”

Mr. Willow is snoring like a sawmill, so it’s up to me to jump down from the bunk and open the cabin door.

A ship’s steward stands in the passageway. He’s wearing a funny little hat that buckles under his chin, and a smart uniform with gold stripes running down his trousers, and tight little shoes polished like black mirrors, and clean white gloves on his elegant little hands. His little eyes are as cold as chips of black ice.

“Homer Figg?”

“Yes, sir, that’s me.”

“The captain has requested your presence,” he announces, sounding very full of himself. “Follow me, please.”

If the captain wants to see me I must have done something wrong, but I can’t for the life of me think what that could be, since so far I’ve been in the cabin the whole trip, looking out for poor Mr. Willow. Still, when the captain of a steamship gives an order, you’d best comply, so I tuck in my shirt and follow the steward as he marches smartly through the dim passageway and out to the open deck, where the smell of salt and sea wakes me all the way up.

The steward gives me a stern look, then takes a thick brass key from his pocket and locks the passageway door behind us.

“Where’s the captain?” I ask.

“In his cabin fast asleep,” the steward says, pocketing the key. He touches his hand to his little hat and then slips away into the darkness so fast I don’t have time to follow.

It comes to me the captain never wanted to see me — probably he’s never even heard of Homer Figg — and that someone has paid the steward to get me out of the cabin and lock the door behind me.

I run along the deck, looking for another door, but they all seem to be locked from the outside. I start banging on the walls and shouting for Mr. Willow and finally one of the doors flies open and an old man in a nightshirt wants to know why in the name of thunder I’m making such a ruckus.

“Thanks! Much obliged!” I say, and scoot past him into the passageway, on a dead run for our cabin before it’s too late.

But when I get there Mr. Frank Nibbly is already leaning against the wall and studying his fingernails. He gives me a sly little smile and says, “Good evening, Homer. Taking the night air?”

“Where’s Mr. Willow?” I demand. “What have you done to him?”

“Mr. Willow is fine,” he says. “Mr. Willow is dandy.”

Before I can get around him, the cabin door swings open and out steps the Reverend Webster B. Willow in his best frock coat, with Kate Nibbly draped on his arm.

“Mr. Willow, are you okay? Have you still got the money?”

The clergyman has this goofy look on his face, like he’s not sure whether he’s in this world or the next, but wherever he is, he’s happy to be there. Like he’s been hit on the head with a wooden mallet and likes it.

“The most amazing thing has happened,” he announces, patting her clever hands. “I am to be married. Miss Nibbly and I are engaged to be married.”

W
HAT HAPPENED IS
, M
ISS
Nibbly kissed Mr. Willow and he kissed her back, and now he thinks he’s obliged to marry her, as a matter of honor.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand such a thing,” he says loftily, his eyes shining like little brown pebbles. “What would an orphan boy know of honor?”

Orphan boy. That’s what Frank Nibbly called me, and now he’s got Mr. Willow saying it, too. Come to think of it, the clergyman hasn’t used his own words since he come under the spell of Kate the Beautiful. It’s like in the storybooks, where the princess kisses a frog and it turns into a prince, except Mr. Willow has turned into something even dumber than a frog. More like a skinny worm about to be breakfast for a really smart robin.

There’s no use talking, because he only hears what he wants to hear, but that don’t stop me speaking my mind on the subject. “You think Mr. Brewster would approve?” I ask him, pacing around the cabin. “He sends you to help me and you get married instead? Have you seen the way her brother looks at your wallet? Like a fox deciding which chicken to eat, that’s how he looks!”

“Darling Kate always wanted to be a minister’s wife,” he says dreamily. “It was love at first sight.”

“It was love at first sight, all right! They saw you comin’ a mile away. Said to each other, that looks as dumb as a sack of rocks, let’s see what he’s got in his pockets.”

Mr. Willow don’t put his fingers in his ears, but he might as well, for all the good it’s doing. “We’ll settle in New York City, close to her family,” he says. “And I shall be pastor of Park Avenue.”

“Park Avenue is where the rich folk live, Mr. Willow. Even I heard of that.”

“Indeed, indeed. For your information the Nibblys are very wealthy. Dear Frank handles all the finances.”

“Dear Frank wants to handle
our
finances, Mr. Willow. You can’t let him take the money! We need it to get Harold back.”

He ignores me and keeps right on talking his dreamy talk about getting married, the sooner the better.

“I will cable Mr. Brewster from New York and inform him of the happy news,” he says, looking off into the distance, as if spotting a lovely rainbow. “He will give me his blessing, I’m sure. Jebediah has been helpful and generous, but the Nibblys are, well, they’re the Nibblys.”

I never heard of the Nibbly family, but it turns out Mr. Willow knows they’re high up in New York society, and it comes to me that it isn’t only her beautiful self he loves, but the name attached. It makes me think maybe I’m wrong somehow, because what would a family like that want with a skinny farm boy in a frayed jacket, except if it really is true love?

“We are soul mates,” he mutters to himself. “Fate brought us together. Dear Kate has been waiting for me all her life. She knew it the moment she looked into my eyes.”