"Yes, sir."
"A pity. I"m certain it wasn"t your fault. Tell me this, Nathan, how do you feel you could best benefit these poor ladies? By continuing to sponge off them in their time of hardship, or by going off into the world? You would not only lessen the burden of the amount of food you eat and the amount of s.p.a.ce you take up, but you"d be able to send them money every single month. Imagine the look of delight on their faces as they opened up a package filled to the bursting point with coins! That seems to me like something that might make up for the wrongdoing one might have done in the past. Do you agree?"
"Yes," said Nathan. His mouth had gone completely dry. "I believe I do."
"Wonderful! You have about fifty minutes left in your sentence, but I"m sure that our b.u.mbling officer friend won"t object to letting you go a bit early. Since your possessions have all burned, there"s nothing to pack, and we"ll be on our way immediately."
"We"ll stop to say goodbye to Penny and Mary, right?"
Kleft"s expression turned grim. "I can understand why you"d want to, but I"m afraid that isn"t a wise idea. Women of that sort often object to a sinister man in black taking away their children. They"d beg you to stay, and you might stay, and then you"d be right back to being a burden upon them."
"But I have to at least thank them."
"What kind of thanks should you give them? Considerate, loving thanks of the sort I"m proposing, or selfish, mean-spirited thanks? You"ve driven them to the Poor House. Do you want to drive them to the grave?"
"No. I want to be good to them. But what about my friend Jamison? He"s dying, and would want to see me before I leave and he expires."
"A true friend would contact the sisters and tell them that I"m taking you away, and then where would we be?"
"I guess you"re right."
Kleft grinned. "Come with me, then."
"All right. I will."
"You will have a grand adventure, I promise." He took Nathan"s hand and led him out of the cell. "By the way, I hope you"re not afraid of spiders."
THIRTEEN.
As they left the police station, Professor Kleft handed Officer Danbury a small leather pouch that jingled. Nathan thought that it must be a wonderful thing to have so many coins to spare, and couldn"t wait to send lots of them to Penny and Mary. They"d be so happy!
A black coach waited outside. It had two horses to pull it, and in the driver"s seat sat a man with flesh so tight that he almost looked like a skeleton. The man gazed at Nathan, appearing as if he might snarl.
"May I pet the horses?" Nathan asked Kleft.
"You may not. This is your new life. You must learn to let go of such childish frivolities as affection. Get in."
Nathan felt an aura of dread emanating from inside the coach, as if he might pull back the cover and have eight corpses tumble out. He hesitated.
"Go on," said Kleft, tapping at the cover with the end of his cane. "There"s nothing to fear in there. A boy without courage is like a bat without rabies."
Nathan pulled back the cover and was very pleased by his good fortune when not a single corpse fell out. He climbed inside the coach, which had a soft, shiny cushion upon which to sit. Kleft climbed in after him and sat across from him.
"Are you excited?" asked Kleft as the driver cracked his whip and the coach began to move.
"Yes, sir. I"ve never been this close to a horse before."
"You know what our ancestors said about horses, don"t you?"
"No, sir."
"Well, it was nothing good." Kleft picked up an oversized book from the seat, rested it on his lap, then opened it to a spot about halfway through. "I write about all of my adventures in this book, which will join the thirteen similar books I have already filled. For what use are thrilling adventures if you don"t allow others to live vicariously through them? Therefore, I will ask that you remain silent as I write, for concentration is a difficult commodity to obtain in a life as busy as mine."
He took out a pencil and began to write in his book. Nathan had a million questions he wanted to ask, but he didn"t want to pester his savior, so he settled for sitting there silently and trying not to fidget too much.
It was not a short journey. They rode all day. When the horses grew too tired to continue, Kleft joked that they should shoot them and purchase new horses. At least Nathan thought he was joking. The driver explained that he didn"t know any place in the area to purchase new horses, and Kleft looked somewhat annoyed by this, and went into an angry rant about how horses should wait on humans and not vice-versa, but still, Nathan was relatively certain that he"d been joking about shooting them.
As darkness crept over the land, they pulled off to the side of the road and the driver built a small fire, which he used to warm up some stew. It was better than the meals Nathan had eaten in jail, but not as good as what he"d enjoyed with the sisters.
"Where are we headed?" Nathan asked.
"I"ve already told you. To travel the earth."
"But do we have stops in mind along the way?"
Kleft scooped up a particularly large spoonful of stew, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. He swallowed, dabbed at his mouth with a cloth napkin, cleared his throat, and then ate another large spoonful of stew. When he"d finished that and dabbed at his mouth again, he spoke. "It seems strange to me that a boy who was not, to the best of my knowledge, made responsible for driving the horses seems so concerned about the destination toward which those horses are supposed to be headed."
"But I"m going with them."
"Yes."
"So that"s my destination as well."
"Is it?"
Nathan had never used foul language in his life, and he"d certainly never expected to find himself using it in the presence of a grown-up, yet it spilled forth from his mouth before he realized what he was saying: "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"
Nathan cringed, expecting Kleft"s response to involve a slap delivered with such force that half of Nathan"s face popped off on impact, but instead Kleft ate another spoonful of stew. "Sharp teeth and sharp tongue, eh? Your time as a convict has taught you to curse like a sailor. I"ll ask that you keep such filth-ridden obscenity inside your own head from now on, for it burns the ears of my driver. See how he sweats?"
There comes a time in the life of most little boys when they leave the world of childhood behind and become a grown-up. For some boys, this happens quickly, as when four-year-old Edwin Malley saw his pet monkey hang itself. For some little boys, this takes a long time, as when fifty-three year-old Duane Whipton was struck on the back of the head with a shovel by his mother to accelerate the process of his going out to get a job.
As Nathan sat there, eating stew, he realized that Kleft most likely did not have his best interests in mind, and might very well be criminally insane. He couldn"t let Kleft think that he was some weak-willed child who would let himself be taken somewhere unknown, probably to be eaten.
He looked the professor straight in the eye and said the worst word he knew, one that began with D and rhymed with "ham."
"I hope," said Kleft, "that you are referring to a barrier used to obstruct the flow of water."
"I was not." Nathan suddenly felt very nervous. Had he gone too far?
"Had I known you were such a vulgar lad, I"d have brought along a bar of soap for you to choke upon. Listen to me carefully, young one. Your audience wishes to see flesh-crawling horror! Mind-scarring terror! Gasp-inducing shocks! But they do not want to hear a pre-p.u.b.escent boy utter expletives best suited to a dogcatcher!"
"Do dogcatchers curse a lot?"
"Even more than plumbers."
"I want to know where we"re going," said Nathan. "And I want to know what I"ll be doing there."
"Shall I harm him?" asked the driver.
Kleft shook his head. "Information is power. Clearly this boy has already learned that life lesson. Very well, Nathan. We are traveling two days south of here to meet up with the other members of Professor Kleft"s Parade of the Macabre. You will show off your beautiful fangs to spectators who will pay me a half-coin each to gape in horror at your ghastly visage."
"I don"t want to do that," said Nathan.
"Of course you don"t. Thus the control of information. But what are you going to do now? Walk home?"
"I might."
"If you try to leave, my driver will shoot you in the back. Then I will have to console him through his grief over murdering a child. You will ruin his life. Another selfish act on your part."
Nathan looked at the driver, who nodded.
"I demand that you take me back home."
"I decline your demand. Anything else?"
"I demand to know what"s in this stew."
"Don"t you like it?"
"It has an odd texture."
"It"s made from the standard animals. You"re just picky."
"What"s this piece?"
"Hold it up to the light of the fire."
Nathan held his spoon closer to the flames.
"It"s beef."
"No, it"s not."
"It"s not the part of the cow you would normally eat, but I promise you, it"s cow. And I recommend that you eat your fill, because your personality has fallen out of favor with me, and I may stop feeding you at any time without notice."
"You"re a terrible man," said Nathan.
"I never said I wasn"t. Go ahead, think back through our conversations and try to recall an instance where I said otherwise. I"ll wait."
Three separate plans of action occurred to Nathan. In the first, he hurled his bowl of stew directly into Kleft"s face, and then ran from the coach as quickly as possible. At the end of this scenario, the driver shot Nathan in the back, so he decided that it was a poor plan.
In the second plan of action, he flung the bowl of stew at the driver instead. This plan a.s.sumed that only the driver was carrying a weapon, meaning that it would be a spectacular failure if it turned out that Kleft was also in possession of a gun, or a knife suitable for throwing, or a dart, or a medium-sized rock, or even a bowl of stew that could be thrown in the same manner as the bowl Nathan had thrown at the driver. Since Kleft was obviously holding a bowl of stew, the second plan of action was also rejected as inadequate.
In the third plan of action, Nathan threw no bowls of stew at anybody, got back into the coach, and waited for a much better opportunity to escape. This struck Nathan as the wisest of the three.
"All right," he said. "I"ll go with you. But only because I don"t want to get shot. Otherwise I"d run right home. And I"m not going to eat any more of this stew. And...and...and..." Nathan searched for the best word. "...Hades!"
"It"s not a swear when you say it as Hades. Stupid boy."
"Then...b.u.t.tocks!"
"It"s not obscene when you use the proper scientific term for something. Stupid, stupid boy."
"Guts!"
"Guts? Are you drunk?"
"Feces!"
"Did you learn nothing from my previous comment about scientific terms? However, if the next words out of your mouth are anything but "Thank you for the stew," I will treat them as if you uttered the most lightning-attracting blasphemy imaginable, and you will find yourself shot."
Nathan did not want to find himself shot. But he also did not want Kleft to think his spirit was broken. "Thank you for the d.a.m.n stew."
"I almost admire that," said Kleft.
They finished their meal and resumed their journey. Kleft continued to write in his book, occasionally looking up and studying Nathan, as if acquiring details for his narrative. Nathan went back and forth between thinking that he should suddenly leap from the coach, and thinking that he should not suddenly leap from the coach.
Scarcely an hour after their stop, the coach stopped again. Kleft sighed with frustration and closed his book. "Those horses had better not be fatigued already," he said. "I could run longer than that, and I"m the sort of gentleman who would sit in a coach and let horses do all the work!"
"It"s not that," said the driver.
"Then what?"
"Robbers."
FOURTEEN.
"Come out of there with your hands in the air," said a voice that was squeakier than what Nathan would have expected from a robber.
"Not just in the air, but without weapons," said a second voice.
"Right," said the first voice. "Don"t hold weapons in the air."