Mayor of the Universe: A Novel

  “I’ve got to get my hat!”

  “Not in this weather,” said the counselor. “Now sit down.” He pressed on Shark’s shoulder so that the boy was forced to sit on one end of the semicircle. “Rocky,” he said pointing, “you sit over there.”

  “Yes, yes, both of you boys get close to the fire,” said Miss DuBarry. “I don’t want anyone catching pneumonia on top of everything else.” She pushed up her glasses. “Honestly, you boys know better than to stay out in a storm like this. Didn’t you hear the weather bell?”

  “We didn’t hear anything,” said Shark, who huddled under the blanket was still trying to stop shivering. “We were out on the lake.”

  Miss DuBarry’s pale face lost even more color.

  “Out on the lake—why would you be out on the lake?”

  “Because that’s what the task told us to do!” said Rocky.

  Confusion flickered in the camp director’s eyes.

  “Task? The first task was at the lake. You boys should have finished that one long ago.”

  “They did the tasks backwards,” offered Tern. “They started at the weight room and ended at the boathouse.”

  “Why would you do that?” asked Miss DuBarry.

  “Because it was good strategy!” said Rocky. “Nobody else got to all the places and did all the stuff, did they?”

  “We almost did,” said Steel. “We were on the way to the weight room when we heard the gong.”

  Lightning flashed in the windows like a strobe light, and several boys jumped at the crack of thunder.

  “All right, then,” said Rocky, pulling his blanket more tightly around himself. “We did everything. We won the game.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Miss DuBarry, clearly flustered. “You played the game backwards—”

  “You didn’t say we had to go in any order!” said Rocky. “You can’t penalize us for that!”

  “Well, that’s true . . . but you were out on the lake in violation of camp policy.” She wagged a finger. “No one is to be on the water during a storm.”

  “So what exactly are you saying?” asked Rocky, anger propelling him to his feet.

  “I don’t like your tone, young man,” said Miss DuBarry. “Sit down.

  “Now, I think it’s safe to say that because of Mother Nature, who does manage to assert herself without regard to the plans of man”—her smile was not returned by anyone—“it may be that no clear winner can be announced. However, I—”

  “No clear winner!” said Rocky. “We won! We did all the tasks!”

  “No, we didn’t,” said Shark, who had been sitting hugging his knees, holding tight the volcanic rage and anger that roiled through him.

  “Yes, we did,” said Rocky, the sneer on his face audible in his voice.

  “We only went around the dock twice.”

  “That’s because you were such a chicken! That’s because you jumped out of the boat! That’s because—”

  “And we didn’t answer the last question,” said Shark. Knowing how important winning was to Rocky was like a weapon for him, and he felt as still and composed as a tiger ready to spring onto an antelope. “We didn’t tell each other who the person we most admired in the world is.”

  “Well, it sure isn’t you!” said Rocky. The blanket dropped from his shoulders as he leapt up and charged toward his partner.

  But Shark was ready, and unlike the nosebleed he’d accidentally given Rocky during the volleyball game, this one was bestowed with full intent. The thunder that cracked just at the moment his fist met Rocky’s nose was a perfect sound effect.

  The day after the big Feelings competition fiasco, Shark had paced the lakeshore, and Copper, who had planned to spend his free time swimming, decided to instead help him look for his hat.

  “It stinks that you lost it,” said Copper. “It was the coolest hat ever.”

  Because of the rainstorm and the subsequent brawl, the boys hadn’t been able to share the stories they’d learned about their partners with the rest of their group. Copper had no idea of what had been lost until Shark told him the story of his grandfather.

  “Oh, boy,” said Copper. “That really stinks.”

  From then on, he spent every Morning Free Time partnered with Shark, a two-man search party.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Shark had said on the second day.

  “We should look over there,” said Copper, pointing to a clump of cattails.

  On the third day, Copper suggested that Miss DuBarry should force Rocky to help them look for the cap since it was his fault it was missing.

  Shark shook his head. “The less I see of Rocky the better.”

  Copper considered this for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I’d feel the same way. Hey, why don’t we go look in the woods? Maybe the wind blew it there. Or a bird could have carried it up and dropped it.”

  Shark valued his easy friendships with Cheetah and Zebra and other members of the Birch cabin, but as the days passed, it was Copper to whom he confessed his rage and sadness.

  “I know that I’ll always have my Grandpa, you know, here.” He tapped his chest and fought the tears that often seemed only a blink away. “But that cap was just . . . I don’t know, it was like . . ."

  “Like him still being with you?”

  Shark nodded. “Yeah. There was no way I could wear that hat without remembering how much he loved me.”

  “I’ve got a picture of my grandfather,” said Copper. Armed with sticks, they poked through the weeds that grew alongside the path. “Everyone says I look a lot like him . . . although he wasn’t fat.”

  “You never met him?”

  Copper shook his head. “No, he died before I was born . . . in the war.”

  Shark remembered hearing about Copper’s family having emigrated from Austria before the war, and suddenly the plot of the story was spiked with intrigue.

  “Was he . . . was he a Nazi?’

  Copper beat back a clump of weeds before tossing the stick aside. “No, it was the Nazis who killed him.”

  “And so that’s how I went from this,” said Jack Parrish, pointing to the photo of a young, curly-haired obese boy projected on the screen, “to this.”

  Miss DuBarry, operating the slide projector, clicked the next picture forward. It was a publicity photo of Jack Parrish wearing a tuxedo and holding a revolver, and the air was softened by all the little sighs issued by campers wondering if ever they might look as dashing and dangerous.

  “Now it wasn’t easy—as you well know—but guys, you’ve taken the first step, a big step in deciding you’re the captain of your own ship. And you don’t want to steer a big, bulky ship, do you, boys?” Jack Parrish walked through the beam of light projected on the screen as he paced across the floor. “You want to steer a streamlined ship that’ll take you anywhere you want to go, in no time flat!”

  He pumped his fist in the air and the boys burst into applause.

  Miss DuBarry turned off the slide projector and raced up to the stage, clapping her hands like a seal begging for a treat.

  On stage, she hugged her childhood friend, feeling woozy in his embrace.

  “Wasn’t he wonderful, children?” she asked, after he (she could have held on forever) ended the hug.

  Most of the children needed no prodding; nearly everyone was on their feet, stomping and clapping and whistling.

  Rocky, however, chose to stay in his seat in the back row, arms crossed over his chest, frown lines crossing his forehead.

  The applause lasted a long time, until it was finally cut off by Jack Parrish’s hand gestures.

  “As much as I’d like to stay,” he said, “I’ve got to be back in California tomorrow.” He cupped his hand to the side of his mouth and stage-whispered, “I’ll be screen-testing several actresses who’ll be working with me on my next motion picture.”

  The boys, thrilled to be in on this bit of Hollywood gossip, clapped and whistled some more.

  “Maybe I shoul
d tell the director to take a look at Miss DuBarry, hmm?” he said, holding his hand out to the camp director, who was struck dumb that the kindness and sensitivity Mervin Phillips had displayed as a boy was still intact in the movie star.

  “Well, I’m sure Camp WoogiWikki needs her even more,” he said and promptly kissed Miss DuBarry’s hand. Then, glancing at the Swiss watch his agent had given him (and whose engraving read, BBO! for Boffo Box Office!), he said, “But now the time’s come for me to meet with a certain winner of a certain contest. Will the winner please step up onstage so that I may escort him to my limousine for a ride around the lake?”

  There was not the sort of wild applause the boys gave Jack Parrish, but it was enthusiastic and sincere enough, and Copper flushed with pleasure as he mounted the stage.

  Shark clapped as hard—probably harder—than anyone, truly feeling that for a change the best man had won, the boy who had become his trusted friend.

  “What’s this?” asked Jack Parrish, accepting the folded note Copper handed him. After reading it, he held a brief whispered conference with Copper and then stood for a moment, scratching one eyebrow with a thumbnail, an affectation at least a dozen boys in the Great Hall would thereafter pick up.

  “Well, now,” he said to the boys, “Copper has asked me to read this to you.”

  An excitable murmur rose from the boys, and Miss DuBarry craned her long neck, trying to read the words on the paper.

  “All right, settle down,” said the movie star. “Here’s what Copper writes.” He clamped one hand on the boy’s shoulder and began reading the note. “‘Losing weight is a good thing, but what my friend Shark lost wasn’t so good, and that’s why I’d like him to win the prize of a private meeting with Jack Parrish.’”

  There was a moment of silence before the room erupted in gasps, and then applause. Rocky shot out of the room like a runner hearing the firing pistol, but as fast as he departed it was a turtle’s pace compared to the velocity in which Shark exited.

  Part V

  18

  It was such a light drizzle that it appeared the rain didn’t fall to the ground as much as it shimmied in space. Miss Plum had the lights on; she thought there was almost nothing cozier than a classroom lit up against darkening, rainy skies. The weatherman had promised a snowy holiday but for now it was still above freezing.

  Humming “Turkey in the Straw,” one of the songs the children had sung in that morning’s all-school Thanksgiving pageant, she chuckled to herself, thinking of little Raymond Erk, who played the very important part of the vegetable that had brought the pilgrims and Indians together. Encased in a green tube on which candy corn had been glued, the kindergartner forgot his line and stood mute under the spotlight, nervously twirling the crepe paper tassels of his gold cap while the children playing Indians hissed, “Maze! Say, ‘I’m Maze!’”

  Miss Plum’s class was taught good manners, but when the bell rang their teacher allowed them the excitement that precedes a holiday, an excitement that manifested itself in the children jostling at the doorway, some breaking away from the knot to throw their arms around her in a hug, others shouting “Happy Thanksgiving!” as they pushed out into the hallway.

  She had declined the offer of Mrs. Bryers, the other second grade teacher, to join her and her family again for Thanksgiving; at last year’s dinner, Mrs. Bryers’s husband and her brother had gotten into such a heated argument about taxes that Miss Plum had heartburn even before she had digested the lumpy potatoes and oversalted green bean casserole. That the pumpkin pie—Miss Plum’s favorite!—slumped in an undercooked crust and was served without whipped cream was another disappointment, but it was the confession of Mrs. Bryers’s brother that he’d voted against the school referendum that convinced the teacher that this would be her one and only Thanksgiving with the Bryers.

  “That referendum,” she had said sweetly, dabbing her pretty mouth with a paper napkin imprinted with cartoon pilgrims, “allowed the entire school district to upgrade their math and science text books. Do you really consider that a waste of money?”

  Mrs. Bryers’s brother had offered a smile oilier than the gravy and said, “Heck, yeah—unless the periodic table has suddenly changed! Unless two and two equals something different from four now!”

  Yes, this year Miss Plum would be perfectly grateful spending Thanksgiving all by herself, and furthermore she was going to buck tradition and make lasagna, the leftovers of which she would enjoy all week.

  Humming “Bless This House,” she was almost finished with cleaning her classroom, taking down the construction paper turkeys and cornucopias that decorated the windowpanes.

  Admiring the care with which Katie Charbonneau had fringed the edges of her paper turkey’s tail feathers, Miss Plum held the fowl by its head and pulled up, carefully unpeeling the rectangle of tape off the window. She had now a clear view to the empty playground, only it wasn’t empty, and her gasp was as loud as if the paper turkey in her hand had gobbled.

  Seeing a figure curled up next to the slide, she grabbed her raincoat and raced down the hallway and out the side door, remembering to put the wooden block between it and the doorjamb, as she knew the janitor along with everyone else had already left for their long holiday weekend. Her assumption had been that the figure was a child who’d hurt himself and so was surprised as she drew nearer to see that this was not a child but a man curled up in the fetal position. When she knelt beside him, she immediately saw who it was and she gasped again, loud enough to rouse Fletcher.

  He groaned, and accepting the arms that pulled him up, he leaned on her as she led him into the school and to the nurse’s office. Several times she staggered under his weight, but determination gave muscle to adrenaline, and she was successful in reaching her destination.

  Miss Plum leaned him against the door’s height chart and as he stood there, slightly weaving, his eyes closed, she told him to stand still so she could take off his wet clothes. Although her hands shook as she gently pulled off the wet Camp WoogiWikki T-shirt and the khaki shorts, her voice nonetheless betrayed no nerves as she calmly spelled out for him what was happening: “Now I’m setting you on the cot, Fletcher. Now you’re lying back on it. Now I’m getting some blankets out of the cupboard.

  “There, there,” she said, sitting next to the cot on Nurse Pam’s wheeled stool. “There, there. You just rest now.”

  They were probably superfluous words; from the moment Fletcher lay down on the cot he had fallen into a deep sleep. She hoped it was sleep and not a coma, and she was nervous that she didn’t know how to tell the difference between the two.

  Darkness crept into the office and Miss Plum leaned backward to turn on the lamp on the nurse’s desk. It cast a warm soft light, and as the clocked ticked she stroked the slope of Fletcher’s shoulder back and forth, back and forth, until she felt nearly hypnotized.

  She was just thinking she might doze off herself when the patient opened his eyes and looking into hers asked, “Am I in Oz?”

  Miss Plum smiled, and seeing the deep dimples in her cheeks Fletcher knew at least who he was with, if not where.

  “You’re not Auntie Em,” he said, “you’re Miss Plum!”

  “Yes, but please, call me Wanda.”

  “Okay . . . Wanda,” said Fletcher, liking the shape his mouth had to make to say her name. “But Wanda . . . where am I?”

  “In the school nurse’s office. I found you outside on the playground.”

  “Oh, no! I hope . . . I hope I didn’t cause you any embarrassment with your—”

  “Everyone’s gone. For the Thanksgiving weekend.”

  “Is that why you’re wearing pumpkins?” asked Fletcher, looking at her blouse.

  “Actually, they’re gourds. I do have a pumpkin blouse—well, jack-o’-lanterns, really—that I wear on Halloween.”

  “And Tandy?” said Fletcher, suddenly sitting up. “Is she here yet?”

  “I just found you.”

  Clutching the blan
ket to his chest, Fletcher looked around, knowing that if the alien were with him, her presence would be quite obvious in the small narrow room. He saw a growth chart and a small cabinet, a step-on scale, and hanging by two hooks his damp Camp WoogiWikki T-shirt and shorts.

  “You found me in those?”

  Miss Plum—Wanda—nodded. “I take it you were at a camp?”

  “A camp for fat boys. Which is why I could probably still fit into those as a grown man.” Fletcher pulled at the skin under his nose before confessing, “I’m a little nervous. I don’t really know what to do until Tandy gets here.”

  Decision making was one of the many areas in which Wanda Plum shone.

  “We’ll wait for her . . . at my house.”

  “But she doesn’t know where you live!”

  The petite blonde enjoyed the release of laughter.

  “Your aliens seem pretty resourceful. And I am in the phone book.”

  Still wrapped in the school blankets, Fletcher rode to Wanda’s house in her Volkswagen Beetle.

  “Where are we, anyway?” he asked as they drove through the dark rainy streets.

  “Aberdeen.”

  “Aberdeen!” said Fletcher. “Aberdeen, South Dakota?”

  “Well, lad, it’s not Aberdeen, Scotland,” said Wanda, in a fairly good brogue.

  “You’re kidding me! Out of all the places Tandy could have brought me to for our debriefings, she brings me to Aberdeen?”

  “It’s not Paris, but it has its charms. Why, the Brown County Fair is top-notch, and our community theater has been compared to—”

  “I’m thrilled that it’s Aberdeen,” said Fletcher, touched by her boosterism. “I mean, you’re just 125 miles from Pierre!”

  “You’re from Pierre?” asked Wanda, and when Fletcher nodded they both laughed.

  “Small world,” she said.

  “Well, not so small,” said Fletcher, gesturing skyward. “But certainly strange.”

  The house was neat and pretty like its owner, the walls of the living and dining room painted a soft peach and decorated with paintings and chintz-upholstered furniture and a fireplace with an unusual hearth and mantle.