Sugar Creek Gang Set Books 7-12 Read online

  So I picked out the nearest one, who was standing right beside a very pretty candy stand, and said to him, “Say, mister, can you tell us where to find the capitol?”

  He looked down at me and grinned cheerfully and said, “El Capitolio?” He hesitated, looked at me very carefully, and must have wondered what made my hair so red and my freckles so many and the rest of me so ordinary-looking. Then he started to explain in Spanish, which sounded like a lot of American words all tangled up and spoken backward and upside-down and—well, that was that. We didn’t get any help there.

  Besides, he had to leave us since the corner where we were standing had a traffic jam right that minute because a long bus was trying to turn in it. The street was so narrow and the tall buildings so close together that the bus had to stop and back up and go forward and stop and back up and go forward again before it could keep on going.

  All of a sudden I had a bright idea. I said, “Why don’t we get on that bus and ride? I’ve got enough money for a bus fare.”

  “But it’s going east,” Poetry said.

  “It is not,” I said. “It’s going south,” which it was, but Poetry said it wasn’t, and maybe it wasn’t. Anyway, before we could decide which way it was going, it was gone.

  But it was an idea anyway, so pretty soon, when a streetcar came along, we got on and sat down. It was just like a small Chicago streetcar, with different kinds of people on it—there were Palm Tree Islanders with their dark faces and their very black and kinky hair and pretty dark eyes, especially the girls and women; there were blacks, who had thicker lips than the Palm Tree Islanders; and also there were some Chinese. All of them were dressed just like American people, and the ones that were talking were talking Spanish or something that sounded like it.

  “Look!” I said to Poetry. “We’re turning! We’re going—we’re going in another direction!” Which we were.

  “I wish I could speak Spanish,” I said. “I’m going to study it when I get into high school.”

  “Hey!” Poetry said all of a sudden. “Look! There goes that billy goat again!”

  And sure enough, there it was, and the old man with the long whiskers was driving along, sitting like a king on a moving throne while his goat trotted very obediently ahead.

  “Did you ever see anybody look so much like Old Man Paddler in your life?” Poetry asked.

  I said, “I never did.” I just knew it was Old Man Paddler’s brother.

  For maybe about a minute we saw the goat, and then it was gone, because a streetcar and a goat wouldn’t have room enough to go side by side on a narrow Palacia street. Then we saw the goat turning out into another street, which I noticed was wider—in fact, very wide for a change. It was a boulevard that ran beside Palacia Bay.

  “That’s El Torro Castle,” Poetry said. “Right over there on the other side of the harbor.”

  “I’ve read stories about El Torro Castle,” I said.

  They were terrible stories of young men who had rebelled against the government a long time ago. They had been taken to El Torro Castle and put in a dungeon or a torture chamber. And then, if they didn’t do or say what they were supposed to, they were taken to another place in the castle, cut in pieces, and thrown down through a hole into the water below to be eaten by sharks. Sharks are very large and always hungry fish with small sharp teeth, and they like to eat people.

  But we didn’t have time to tell any fish stories just then because Poetry nudged me quick and said, “Hey, look! The old man is stopping.”

  Well, I remembered Old Man Paddler, and in my mind’s eye I could see tears in his eyes as he said, “Boys, it’s the one wish of my life before I die—to see my brother again.”

  It just seemed Poetry and I had to do something. So we were out of our cane-backed seat in a jiffy and lurching our way to the end of the car to get out as soon as it stopped. The very minute it did stop we were off and going straight over to the old man.

  Well, we knew a few Spanish words, such as “Buenas dias” for “Good day,” “Buenas tardes” for “Good afternoon,” and “Buenas noches” for “Good night.” So we hurried over to the breakwater, which was a wall made of cement to break the force of the water of the bay and to keep it from getting up onto the boulevard. There the old man had stopped and was sitting and looking out across the water toward the lighthouse.

  Poetry, as you maybe already know, wasn’t a very bashful boy except in church, and that was only because his voice was changing and sometimes sounded like a duck with a bad cold. Anyway, both of us went right up beside the small wheelchair-sized buggy, and Poetry said, “Buenas tardes, Mr. Paddler.”

  His saying that reminded me that it was afternoon but not after dinner, because we hadn’t had any dinner, and I was terribly hungry. Even thinking about sharks eating had made me hungry.

  The old man turned from looking out across the bay and looked down at us, and I saw that he had the same kind eyes Old Man Paddler had. And he surely looked like him except for his whiskers, which were more gray than white. And he had a scar on his forehead that started at just above his right eyebrow and ran right up into the place where his hat covered his hair. He was wearing a clean hat that looked like Dad’s Sunday straw hat back at Sugar Creek. Then the old man smiled at us and said, “Buenas tardes.” He said something else in Spanish, which of course we couldn’t understand.

  Well, I knew that if he was an American he could speak English, so I said to him, “Good afternoon, Mr. Paddler.”

  And he said, surprised-like, “Good afternoon. It is a beautiful day.” Then he looked puzzled. “You speak English?”

  “Sure,” I said. “We’re Americans. We flew down here.” It felt good to say that—as if I was more important than I am.

  “Many Americans come to Palacia in the wintertime,” he replied. “They think Billy and I are quite a curiosity. You have goats in America?” he asked. Then he looked away out across the bay toward El Torro Castle and said, “See that old castle with the black cannon rusting up on the top there? That’s where I was born— up there in a cell.”

  What! I thought. That’s a crazy place to be born.

  Then the old man turned around and looked at me, and I was so startled I gasped out loud. He looked so much like Old Man Paddler.

  I felt even more woozy when he said, “Yes, boys, I was a full-grown man when I was born–thirty years old. Never knew what it was to be a boy like you. Never knew what it was to romp and play and swim and dive and do things like other boys. I was born right up there.” He stopped talking and gestured toward the lighthouse.

  And while his face was turned away and while a bus was whizzing past and making a lot of noise, Poetry whispered in my ear, “He’s crazy.”

  “He’s mentally ill,” I whispered back, remembering something I’d read in a magazine. People who are like that should be called “mentally ill” rather than “crazy.”

  “See that little gondola out there,” the old man said. “I used to be an oarsman for one of them—rowed people back and forth every day to visit El Torro Castle. I didn’t even have to learn to row. I knew how to handle oars as well as any of those old tars out there.”

  The old man’s voice was raspy, as though it had talked so much all his life that it was worn out at the edges. A lot of his breath came through with his words, making it sound as if he was sighing as well as talking, which maybe he was.

  My eyes followed his out across the pretty blue water of Palacia Bay, where there were a half-dozen boats. They had canvas tops on them and looked like pictures I’d seen of the covered wagons that used to cross the prairies of the United States. Only now the sides of the canvas tops were rolled up, and you could see the people who were being rowed around.

  I wished I could have a ride in one of those taxi boats. Then I remembered that I was lost —or supposed to be—and also that I was trying to find out if the mentally ill old man sitting there like a king in his little vehicle was Old Man Paddler’s twin brother. And
if he was, what could we do about it? One thing was for sure—he sounded like a very sensible crazy man.

  “Say, mister, is your name Paddler? Kenneth Paddler?”

  He looked around quick as if he wanted to see who I was talking to, and when he didn’t see anybody else he said, “Were you addressing me, sir?”

  I was and said so.

  And he said, “My name is John Machete. That’s another thing. When I was born, a full-grown man, I didn’t have anybody to name me, so I named myself. See? I named myself after this—” He reached down and pulled out of the seat beside him a long machete, which is a big knife that Palm Tree Island farmers use for cutting sugar cane and other things, and slipped it out of its leather sheath.

  “Whew!” Poetry whistled. “Look at that, would you?”

  I was already looking at the beautiful, shining knife with its gold-inlaid handle.

  “It’s pretty,” I said and wished I had one for myself to take back home to my dad and for everybody in Sugar Creek to see.

  “Yes sir, boys, when I was born a full-grown man, I found this lying right under me. Maybe I never was born, though. Maybe I just came right down out of the sky, and this machete belonged to some god or goddess. Maybe I’m a god myself. I don’t know.”

  I started to feel very weird inside. The man was really—well, he was crazy, I thought. I grabbed Poetry by the arm and said, “Let’s get going. We’ve got to get back to the hotel. I’m getting hungrier and hungrier.”

  “You’re hungry?” the man said. And then, because the goat seemed to be hungry also and was trying to nibble on the stone breakwater near which he was standing, the old man scolded him, jerked on one of the lines, and roughly said something in Spanish. Then he said, “Where do you boys want to go?”

  “We’re looking for Gran America Hotel,” Poetry said.

  “Gran America?” the old man asked.

  I said, “Yes, it’s near the capitol building.”

  “El Capitolio is at the other end of the Prado. Here, you go—”

  Well, all of a sudden the goat wanted to go, and the old man seemed to have the same idea, so he told us just how many blocks to walk till we got to the Prado, Palacia’s very wide and beautiful boulevard, and that if we would walk far enough up the Prado we would find the capitol.

  Then the old man clucked to his goat and in a second would have been gone if Poetry hadn’t stopped him. “Where do you live, Mr.— Mr. Machete?”

  The old man’s voice changed at that, and he said grumpily, “No one cares where I live. Buenas tardes.”

  He clucked to the goat again, and this time he really would have been gone. But I was so sure he was Kenneth Paddler, Old Man Paddler’s twin brother, that I stopped him again, saying, “Wait! We have to know where you live. It—it’s very important!”

  But he wouldn’t stay stopped. Instead, he picked up his machete and waved it in the air, shaking it as though he was angry at somebody. Then he shoved it back into its leather scabbard. And his goat went trotting down the boulevard, leaving Poetry and me all flabbergasted and disappointed. But we made up our minds to find out who the crazy old fellow was—unless we were both crazy ourselves or I was having a dream and pretty soon would wake up and still be in the States.

  Poetry and I stood there, looking at the flying wheels of the vehicle and the flying heels of the trotting goat. Then we looked at each other. I said, “Do you suppose all this isn’t so? Are we on Palm Tree Island or in America, and are we just dreaming?”

  “We’re either dreaming or crazy,” Poetry said. “Whoever he is, he would make a good Santa Claus for some department store.” And that reminded him of a poem about Christmas, which he started to quote:

  “’Twas the night before Christmas,

  When all through the house,

  Not a creature was stirring,

  Not even a mouse.”

  There wasn’t anything we could do, because we were both broke and lost, and it seemed more important right that minute that we get back to the rest of the gang. So we walked along the breakwater till we came to a very wide, pretty boulevard, and it was the Prado. We turned onto it and started to walk in the only direction there was left to walk, which Poetry said was north and which I said was east. But we didn’t bother to find out what direction it was. We just kept on going, hoping that pretty soon we would come to the Capitolio. Then we’d get to the hotel, and maybe the gang would find us there before long. Boy, was I hungry!

  6

  I’d never seen such a pretty street. The sidewalk was right in the center of it, and Poetry and I walked along on its marble floor in the shade of very pretty green trees, which we’d already learned were laurel. I couldn’t help but wish they had been in full bloom. Then it would have been just like walking under an archway of pink blossoms.

  I was not only hungry, I was also hot, as was Poetry. He was puffing along beside me, and both of us were sweating more than if it had been summertime at Sugar Creek and we were hoeing potatoes.

  Pretty soon Poetry said, “Let’s rest. I’m tired.” We plopped ourselves down on one of the marble benches that were on each side of the center walk all along the Prado and watched the traffic going past. On one side of us it was going one way, and on the other side it was going the other way. There were different makes of cars, looking as if they had been made in America, and bicycles and buses. And every car was blowing its horn too many times and too loud. And all around us were people and still more people because, as I’ve already told you, Palacia seemed to be having a celebration of some kind.

  We hadn’t been seated there long when a little barefoot boy came along, holding up a string of macaroni beads for sale and talking Spanish. He grinned, and his snow-white teeth were as even as two rows of pearls.

  “I’m broke,” I said to the boy and shook my head, and Poetry said and did the same thing. But the little boy kept on pestering us until we got up and went on, saying “No” several times to maybe two dozen people who wanted to sell us something.

  It would have been fun, though, if we hadn’t still felt lost and also felt foolish for having chased a billy goat and an old man with whiskers.

  “We acted like two crazy fish,” Poetry said, “running after an old man with whiskers. Look! There’s another old man with whiskers just as long as the one we just chased.”

  I looked, and sure enough, sitting on a bench on the other side of the center sidewalk was an old man with whiskers as long as Old Man Paddler’s. He had a big white bandage tied all around his head and looked as though he wasn’t glad to be alive. All of a sudden I wished I was already grown up and was a doctor, and I even wished I would be a missionary doctor instead of one in the United States, where there were plenty for everybody who was sick.

  Well, the closer we got to the Capitolio, which we could see after a while, the more sheepish we felt for having chased an old man with long whiskers driving a billy goat. So we made up our minds not to tell the gang.

  “They’ll think we’re just plain cuckoo,” Poetry said, and maybe we were, I thought.

  Soon we had passed the Capitolio and were inside the lobby of the hotel. Almost right away, we saw the gang coming in.

  The minute they spied us, Dragonfly let out a half yell and said, “There they are!” He came swishing across the marble floor, past the winding stairway and past the desk where a big man sat with a cigar in his mouth. Then he swished past a big potted palm in the center of the lobby to where Poetry and I sat rocking in mahogany rocking chairs near a piano.

  Right away the gang was asking questions and telling us different things, and everybody was feeling fine with nobody paying much attention to what anybody else was saying because we were glad we were all there and all right.

  Dragonfly was breathing easily, just as if he wasn’t going to be allergic to Palm Tree Island after all, and that made me feel fine.

  “Were you lost?” Dragonfly wanted to know.

  “Lost!” Poetry and I both exclaimed at
the same time in a disgusted tone of voice. We decided to act mysterious, though, which we did.

  Well, Barry Boyland, right after finding us, stopped at the desk beside the man with the big black cigar, who smiled out of the corner of his mouth where there was room enough to. He phoned the Tourist Commission and police headquarters and told them not to look for the lost American boys any longer because they had been found. We really hadn’t been, but had found ourselves.

  We were just ready to go down to a special cafe, when all of a sudden I heard the most beautiful piano music right behind me. Turning around, I saw it was Little Jim sitting at that piano and letting his fingers gallop up and down the keyboard like two racehorses, each with five legs, playing some fancy thing that he had memorized.

  Then we all went out and hurried along behind Barry Boyland and the missionary, Mr. Fisher, who had met us at the airport and was acting as our interpreter. The missionary would take what we said in English and translate it for us to whomever we were talking. Then he would translate their Spanish back into English for us, so we could talk to anybody we wanted to and be understood.

  Pretty soon we were upstairs in an open-air cafe called El Aguila, which means “The Eagle,” and were all sitting around two tables covered with white tablecloths, being waited on by a very handsome, dark-skinned young man with a small black mustache. I sat scowling at my menu card, which was maybe fifteen inches long and was yellow and had a lot of Spanish words on it, such as Lunch Pescado Soute Meunier, Lunch de Pollo Asado—and a lot of other things.

  “I’ll take the fish dinner.” Big Jim, sitting beside me, pointed to the words Lunch Pescado.

  “How’d you know what that is?” I whispered to him.

  And he said, “That’s easy, if you study Latin. Piscator is a Latin word which means a fisherman, and—well, that is how I know. Over half of our English words come from Latin,” Big Jim said, being maybe the best scholar in the whole Sugar Creek Gang.