The Shells Of Chanticleer (6 page)

We walked through dark public rooms, past glass cabinets housing a collection of wasp’s nests, beetles pressed between glass, stuffed white mice trapped in glass domes and a collection of replica skulls – at least I hoped they weren’t real

We went up a wide mahogany staircase to a spacious second floor landing. Off to the left was a door and she opened it to reveal an enormous vault of a room with floor to ceiling shelves brimming with leather bound books. A matching mahogany library ladder was attached to tubular brass rails that encircled the entire room. There were no windows.

“Wait here,” she instructed, flipping on the lights and closing the door behind her.

I stood silently and observed my surroundings. A stained glass dome topped off the ceiling, the morning sun illuminating a celestial scene of winged angels hovering in a cloudless pink sky. In the scene an innocent herd of baby lambs were about to topple over a cliff and plunge to their deaths in a foaming ocean below. I supposed the angels would step in at the last moment and pull them back from the edge but for the moment they were only watching. I never quite knew if I was reading artwork correctly. Was the scene symbolic? Was I one of those lambs?

Well-worn leather armchairs faced each other in a conversational circle in the middle of the room. A large fireplace broke up the shelves on one wall but its marble mantle was old and cracked and a pair of antique bellows gave the fireplace a creepy, haunted-house appearance.

After a minute, the door opened. A white-haired man stepped in. His hair stood up in unruly tufts, but he was tanned and sharply dressed in a white business shirt and an expensive tailored suit with gold C cufflinks. He looked like a banker taking time out from counting his money. The Prime Minister, I presumed. He paused for a moment after his grand entrance, and when he spoke it was with authority.

“There are a thousand books here, all out of order. You need to alphabetize them,” he commanded. I wasn’t surprised to hear him speak in a British accent. He turned to leave.

“You mean from A to Z?”

“If you know of another method, by all means go ahead and use it. Be my guest. Otherwise the traditional alphabet passed down through the ages will have to suffice.” Then, rolling his eyes, he looked me up and down, snorted, and huffed off.

What a snob!
I thought. Yes, maybe my question was stupid but his manners were definitely lacking. So, alphabetizing was to be my big assignment? They were probably trying to see how intelligent I was. Well, I wasn’t illiterate; kindergarten had been a long time ago. I could do it. I stared at the brimming shelves. There were so many volumes, beautifully bound in crimson, blue, and green leather. I walked over to the shelf and took one down.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll. Its title was embossed in gold on the spine and the cover; I ran my hand over the indentations and inhaled the comforting smell of the leather. The edges of the pages were dipped in gold leaf making each volume look like a piece of found treasure.

That would clearly be filed under C for Carroll, I figured … unless it went under A for Alice. Was it to be alphabetized by author or by title? Should the A’s start at the high top shelf or the low one on the floor? Was there a system? What did he want?

He had obviously just left me in the dark.
Should I ask him?
He seemed very prickly. I didn’t really want to approach him, wherever he was. Maybe he was the type of person who got mad when you didn’t ask for clarification when you were confused—some people were like that. But maybe he was the type who wanted to be left alone and not be bothered, who wanted me to use my own initiative. Wasn’t ‘shows initiative’ always on our report cards?

I went to the library door and cracked it open. All was quiet in the hall. I shut the door. I stood there hesitant and a little apprehensive, a little scared. The words of Miss Clarice taunted me: too much pinging, too much looking over my shoulder waiting for the next hammer to fall, too much doubting of my own instincts. I hadn’t forgotten those zingers.

What was I afraid of? I wasn’t afraid of the books. Was I afraid of being alone in the room or in that house? Strangely, no. Was I afraid of the Prime Minister? I didn’t think so, but I was afraid of how he would act toward me when he discovered I had done the job wrong. But what if he returned and I had done nothing? Taking a look at the clock I realized that a good twenty minutes had passed by with nothing to show for it. Yikes.

Anxious to do something I started pulling all the volumes from the shelf. I needed empty space on the shelves so I could begin. The only way I could get that clear space was to take everything off. My genius plan was to sort them into piles alphabetically and then put them back on the shelves. I worked steadily for quite some time, carrying books down from the shelves, separating the piles and stacking them carefully.

Unfortunately I did not think to take into account the fact that there really wasn’t enough room on the floor for one thousand books in twenty-six separate piles. I balanced a few stacks on the lumpy leather chairs, but those toppled over quickly. I tried to stack the D’s on the mantel, but I misjudged the narrow space and Dante’s Inferno and Don Quixote landed in the fireplace grate, smack in the middle of a dusty pile of dirty ashes.

Quickly, I rescued them and swiped the ash away with my hand, but the sooty residue smudged all over my palm and fingertips. On reflex I went to wipe my hand on my white sweater but luckily I stopped myself. That would not be good.

Glancing around, I realized I had no option other than to wipe my hand on the dark rug. The soot wouldn’t show there, I reasoned. I didn’t want to dirty up the rest of the books. I sank to my knees, wiping my sooty palms across the deep pile of the rug while all around me tottering towers of books swayed and collapsed. Suddenly I heard a huge racket outside in the hall and the door slammed open. It was the Prime Minister. His face turned red and his eyes bulged when he took in the scene.

“Child, what have you done?” he cried.

“Why I’m alphabetizing!” I replied, looking backwards at him from over my shoulder. I knew it looked messy, but I wasn’t finished yet. Well, that was the wrong thing to say because he immediately began to scream.

“OUT!” he yelled, the vessels in his face swelling and turning red, his stubby but well-manicured finger pointing at me. He looked like an overcooked sausage seconds from bursting. “OUT! OUT! OUT!”

I jumped up and dodged him as he tried to grab my arm. The books scattered on the floor between us worked to my advantage as his foot slipped on a volume, sending him tumbling forward onto the leather chair. I quickly skirted by him and got myself out of the room and down the staircase as his impassioned shouting filled the row house. As I got to the bottom of the stairs the old woman was coming towards me, sheer terror on her face. She grabbed my blazer by the sleeve and shooed me through the first floor and pushed me into the vestibule. Before slamming the door behind me she said, “I’ll call Bing to come get you. Wait here.”

Hearing her lock the inner door from her side was the last straw. I started laughing. Exactly what was the point of that? To keep me from storming back in and demanding a second chance? No thanks. No way.

I was left waiting inside the cramped, cold vestibule. It was deadly quiet. I could hear the living room clock ticking on the other side of the door. Outside, I could hear birds chirping and the occasional passerby. I stood there for a few minutes.
How would I know when Bing arrived? Does he know to come to the door for me? Maybe I should wait outside.
I grabbed the big door handle and turned it slightly. It clicked open easily. I pulled the door toward me and peeked outside. The street was empty. I snuck out the door and slowly pulled it shut behind me. I glanced over to the window. I hoped the old lady couldn’t see me. I would rather wait outside in the sunshine than in that mothball-smelling closet of a space.

I sat on the steps and waited. The sun was out but the concrete was cold. What a weird morning. What was going to happen next there? After a minute, I saw Bing hurrying down the sidewalk. He didn’t smile when he saw me stand up and wave at him. Instead he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me with him as if we needed to make a quick escape.

“Come on, Macy, I’ll get you out of here,” he said. We took off down the block, gates and shrubs whizzing by.

“Why are we running?” I panted, trying to keep up with his long legs. I knew I had done something wrong. I looked back over my shoulder to see if we were being chased. No. Not yet.

“Keep going,” he hissed.

Bing kept his eyes focused straight ahead as we hurried. Gone was his smile and
joie de vivre
from earlier that morning. Not until we cleared the block and had made our way safely back into the town square did Bing slow down and loosen his grip on me.

“Whew,” he exclaimed, relaxing his features. “What a morning.”

He let a little chuckle escape, a small one, and I felt relief that he thought the situation was funny and not bad. He laughed some more, a little deeper and heartier. He glanced at me and put his hand on my shoulder as if he needed support. Then great peals of laughter shook his body until he doubled over, sank to the ground and rolled on his back.

Naturally, that drew attention, and soon there was a little group of onlookers, other students about my age, dressed like me, who wandered over amused and curious, wanting in on the fun.

“What’s so funny?” they asked.

“I’m not sure,” I explained. “We came from the Prime Minister’s house and Bing seems to think that was hilarious.”

“The Prime Minister’s house?” asked Poppy, the girl who’d been carrying the book on her head. Three or four other kids pointed their fingers at me and joined in the screaming.

“OUT! OUT! OUT!”

They too dropped to the ground and rolled around laughing. I started to wonder what kind of a cuckoo world I had stumbled into. That Violet and Zooey from the day before had seemed nice, but where were they? I was stuck with lunatics. I flirted with the idea of wandering away from Bing and the group. It wasn’t that funny and apparently I was not in on the joke. Or I was the joke. It was hard to tell.

I shouted to make myself heard over the laughing. “Hey! It isn’t funny to be an inch away from a big angry man who looks like he’s going to kill you.”

It didn’t make any difference. No one paid attention; they were all busy laughing.

“Hey!” I shouted again, lightly kicking Bing with my flat to get his attention, but it was no use. He just kept rolling around in his own little world. I stood there, getting madder and feeling more and more embarrassed.

“Okay, stop kicking me,” Bing finally said. He stood up and composed himself, drawing his hand across his mouth as if physically trying to wipe away his mirth.

“That’s enough guys. Enough I said. Sorry sweetheart. It’s just so darn funny. Every time,” and his shoulders started shaking with laughter again.

Oh no. I thought. No more.
I kicked him hard, in the shins.

“STOP LAUGHING AT ME,” I yelled.

That did it. Everyone shut up.

“Ouch,” Bing said, grabbing his shin and hopping around on one leg dramatically. He quieted down. “Well, I guess I deserved that.”

I stood in the middle of the circle, the new girl, everyone’s eyes upon me. It was suddenly so quiet that I could hear the fountains gurgling.

Finally, Rafe, the poem reciter, spoke up, “It’s okay, you don’t need to get violent! What’s your name?”

“I’m Macy. I’m new.”

“Hi Macy. You need to know that every one of us has been screamed at by that old gasbag, been scared to death and run out of there like a bat out of hell. He’s famous for it. It’s kind of like passing your initial test here at Chanticleer. We all live through it and laugh about it later. You will too.”

“Come on, we’re sorry,” said Poppy, and she put her arm through mine and gave it a squeeze. “Let’s all go to lunch and we’ll tell you about it.”

I looked at Bing and Poppy and the others. Every one of them was smiling at me and nodding as if to assure me that I was no different.
Okay,
I thought to myself.
I’m all right. I just lived through something a little strange but I’m not hurt.

I put my arm through Poppy’s arm and Bing took my other arm and gave me a playful fist to the head. Suddenly I was cracking up at the memory of running down the stairs, and at the sound of the vestibule door being locked behind me to keep me out.

“See, you are laughing at yourself already!” Bing teased. “I told you to laugh at yourself. Laugh at who you are now. Life is funny.”

I felt I had to apologize. “I’m sorry for kicking you, Bing. Do you have a bruise?”

“Nah,” he said, without even glancing at his leg. “Only on my ego. Sorry Macy if you thought we were laughing at you. We just like to laugh in this place, that’s all. Come on, you must be starving. Let’s eat.”

I followed along as the group headed into an enormous timbered building with floor to ceiling arched windows. Each window was inset with diamond-shaped panes reflecting the sun in a dozen brilliant colors. Once through the door my ears were overcome with the din of voices and the clanking of plates and silverware. This was no institutional cafeteria stocked with veneered tables and plastic chairs: glass chandeliers descended from the high plastered ceilings; the walls were paneled polished wood the color of cocoa; and placed between thick deep-green marble columns were round tables covered in creamy linen cloths. Through the enormous arched windows I could see a leafy courtyard dotted with oversized urns of wildflowers and trailing ivy. There were statues of wolves and trumpeters and a brick archway that went nowhere.

Everyone grabbed plates off of a serving buffet and lined up in front of a long display of heated dishes. Bing handed me a warm plate.

“Take whatever and however much you want to eat. What do you like?” He narrated the buffet as I followed along that first lunch. Did I want butter buns? Did I like cheesy pies?