The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (13 page)

Seems like even though she made fun of him for mentioning spies, she’s keeping an eye out, too.

As for me, I’m straining to catch a glimpse of the men driving the last two wagons in our little caravan. From what I can see, as we jounce over the cobblestones, they both look pretty normal. Just regular men with beards and floppy hats that hide their eyes.

“Sit down and quit messing about,” Professor Fleabottom says. “You’ll scare the horses.”

“What’s in those wagons?” I want to know.

The way Fleabottom and Minerva are acting, there might be something hidden in the wagons. Something way more exciting than a boy who pretends to be a pig.

“Ah!” Fleabottom says, his eyes glinting with humor. “You guessed, did you?”

“I guessed there was something, but I don’t know what, exactly.”

“Patience, young man. You will know all of our secrets by this evening. But not until then.”

No matter how much I beg, he won’t tell me the secret in the wagons, and finally I decide to shut up and bide my chance.

The ferry terminal is near as crowded as the streets, with a mob waiting impatiently to get across the Hudson River. Some are on foot, others in carriages and wagons. The ferries leave on the quarter hour, regular as clockwork. They have flat decks so you can drive straight aboard, and big steam-driven paddles on either side.

At the sounding of a steam whistle the gate opens and a man shouts, “All aboard!”

Ten minutes later, wagons and horses and all, we’re bound for Jersey City.

The river is thick with ferryboats and steamships and sailboats of every size. Looks like the whole world is on the move, crossing that water. Behind us the island of Manhattan starts to fade away, until it looks like it’s made of fog and sticks. The puffs of gray smoke tooting out of the ferryboat smokestack reminds me of Uncle Squint’s clay pipe. Makes me wonder if he misses us. Most likely he misses all the work we did.

Strange as it may seem, I sort of miss the farm. The barn that was our home, and Bob the horse, and Bess and Floss the milk cows. Can’t say as I miss Squint himself in particular. No surprise there. The real surprise is waiting on the dock in New Jersey, standing tall in his new blue uniform.

My brother, Harold, big as life.

S
OON AS THE FERRY BUMPS
the pier I’m off and running, thinking this surely is my lucky day. My adventures have barely begun and already I’ve found my big brother! It wasn’t so bad, just an abduction or two, and being robbed and thrown in with the pigs, and joining the Caravan of Miracles, and being boiled by Indians.

Already I’m improving the story in my mind, with the purpose of making Harold laugh. He don’t laugh that much, being a serious-minded person, but when he does, it feels like someone gave you a silver dollar, because it’s bright and shiny and rings true. I come all this way just to hear it.

“Harold! Harold! It’s me, Homer!”

I fight my way through a sea of young men in new uniforms. Dark blue, four-button coats and sky blue trousers and forage caps, and each man with a black canvas haversack to carry his food. Most of the Union Army seems to be milling about, waiting for trains to take them south. It’s like a blue wool forest that smells of sweat and boot polish.

Figure if I can get to Harold before he gets on a war train we can fix it so he don’t have to go. We being me and Professor Fleabottom, since he knows men in the army and can maybe help us.

“Harold! Harold!”

At last he turns to my voice.

Up close, the face is wrong. My stomach flip-flops something awful and I nearly trip and fall, because it ain’t Harold. It’s another boy who could be him, on account of his size and the way he stands.

“You’re … not … Harold!” I say, stopping to catch my breath.

“Private Thomas Finch, Fifteenth Massachusetts,” he says, voice cracking.

“Sorry. Looking for my brother. Harold Figg. Of Pine Swamp, Maine.”

Private Finch shakes his head. “I believe the Maine regiments that mustered here have gone ahead. Your brother may be among them.”

“Okay,” I pant, blinking the sweat from my eyes. “Thanks.”

I’m about to go find Professor Fleabottom and the wagons, when I’m struck by inspiration. “Private Finch,” I say, turning back to tug at his stiff woolen sleeve. “If you happen to come across Harold Figg of Pine Swamp, Maine, would you please tell him to get on home? His little brother, Homer, is dying. Will you tell him that?”

“If I meet him, certainly,” says Private Finch. “But it is a big war. How will I know him?”

“Looks a lot like you, except Harold is slightly taller and stronger and better looking.”

“Is that a fact?” says Private Finch with a toothy grin. “I’ll see what I can do, Homer. You are Homer Figg, right?”

I shrug. “Maybe I am.”

“I must say, my young friend, that you look remarkably healthy for a boy who is dying.”

“Never mind that. Will you tell him?”

“Of course.”

After glancing around and grinning to himself, he snaps me a fine salute. “Thank you, Homer Figg. I am reminded to write a letter to my own dear little brother, who is slightly taller and stronger and better looking than you, and who would no doubt fake his own death to have me safe at home.”

He melts away into the blue wool forest.

A moment later the tattooed lady has me by the collar. She’s puffing like I am, from fighting her way through the crowd.

“Thought we’d lost you, boy!” She tips up my chin, looks me in the eye. “What’s this, have you been crying?”

I shake my head and she knows enough to say no more.

T
HAT EVENING THE
C
ARAVAN
of Miracles puts on the first show since I joined the company. We’re ten hard miles from the terminal in Jersey City, in low, weedy country not far from the sea, and come upon an army encampment. Must be a hundred white canvas tents set up in the tall grass, and the sound of rolling gunfire and shouting men just over the horizon.

“Is there a battle?” I want to know, standing up in my seat to see better. “Is this the war?”

“The war is still some great distance away,” Professor Fleabottom explains. “These are new recruits, training to fight.”

We set up our wagons in a little area surrounded by sandy bluffs, which he says is to keep us from the wind, but which also means we’re hard to see if you don’t know where to look.

“A medicine show is not always welcomed by the generals,” he tells me. “They think it distracts from the business of war. Whereas we believe that these young men deserve a bit of fun at the end of a long, hard day. Thus we strive to entertain, but with the utmost discretion.”

While we unload gear and get ready for the show, the two men who drive the other wagons approach the army camp on foot, and let the recruits know where we are, and what might be expected of us.

Me and Minerva are in charge of setting out the lamps and torches for when it gets dark and putting up the banners and flags.

A warm wind lifts the silky banners and makes it look like the words are dancing on air.

The really amazing thing is, I can’t wait to see the show, and I’m in it.

W
HEN THE LAST BLUE TWILIGHT
finally fades from the evening sky, soldiers begin to arrive in groups of two or three, whispering to one another and laughing quietly. They’re not supposed to be here, watching a medicine show, but are meant to be back in their tents fast asleep.

“One evening is all we spend at any encampment,” Mini explains, covering up her tattooed arms with long, puffy, clip-on sleeves. “Folks like us, traveling kinds of people, we must keep moving or the law will catch us.”

“What we’re doing, selling bottles of medicine, that’s against the law?”

“Not exactly,” she says uneasily, not meeting my eyes. “It’s more that strangers are never truly welcome, not for long.”

When the show begins, we’re inside the main wagon — Mini, because she’s putting on her long sleeves, and me, because I’m the Amazing Pig Boy and can’t show my face until the end.

Peeking out through the canvas, I watch as Professor Fleabottom claps his hands and leaps up on a little wooden platform that tips down from the side of the wagon.

His hat is tall, his knee-high boots are polished like black glass, and the buttons on his coat are five-dollar gold pieces that glow like little suns in the light of the oil lanterns.

“Good evening to all you brave gentlemen! Welcome to the Caravan of Miracles! May Almighty God bless the Union Army and deliver it from losing, time and again! With all you new recruits being trained to kill your fellow man, surely victory will soon follow! And to help you along the way, to ease the woes and pains of the battlefield, and the pinch of bedbugs in your soggy tents, and to improve the taste of the insects that infest your food, and, frankly, to give you courage when most needed, I, Professor Fenton J. Fleabottom, honored graduate of ancient universities in the Far East, have perfected a certain strong elixir. An elixir that will lift your spirits and put the gleam back in your eyes! An elixir containing a sure cure for what ails you! An elixir that will, from the very first sip, deliver you from evil, and place you in the soft, motherly bosom of mankind!”

A murmur comes from the crowd of young soldiers, and many raise up their hands, as if to grasp at invisible bottles.

“Patience, young heroes! Patience! Patience! The elixir goes on sale following the show, and not a moment before. Have no fear, there’s plenty for everyone! Now, if one of you good fellows will hand up that banjo, I will demonstrate how a single dose of Fleabottom’s Miracle Elixir cured my rheumatic joints, improved the dexterity of my digits, and clarified my ears. Listen and be amazed!”

The professor then commences to flail upon the banjo. It starts out as a sad and mournful tune, a slow version of “Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys,” but then he starts speeding things up and really making that old banjo ring. The soldiers begin to clap along, some of them singing, and just when you think the song is done, Mini slips behind him and somehow takes the banjo from him and keeps strumming without missing a beat.

How the men cheer! Mini gives them a wild grin and plays a lot of high plinky notes that sound like metal sparks exploding from fireworks, and then somehow she and the professor are
both
bashing at the banjo, Mini with her fingers on the frets and Fleabottom plucking the strings with hands that move so fast his fingers are blurred.