Free Fair Weather by Richard Peck Page B

the way, regally, around the fountain.
    And something terrible overcame me. Oh, I expect it had been coming on right along. I suppose it had been creeping up on me from the moment Mama had put me in long skirts to go to the fair. I reckon it had been stealing up on me from the time I realized how lonely Aunty was.
    Still, I seemed to be some other girl entirely as I scraped back my chair on the screeching tile. This other girl I’d become was on her feet now. Lottie’s hand came out for me and missed. Now I was in Mrs. Palmer’s path, blocking her way.
    I’d taken leave of my senses, though my blank mind noticed small things. The pearl dewdrops on the silk roses of Mrs. Palmer’s hat, things like that. Her eyes were surprised as her gaze fell upon me.
    “Pardon me for butting in, Mrs. Palmer,” I heard myself say. By ill chance the orchestra was resting. My countrified voice rang through the room and bounced off the tile.
    I drew back my smudged skirt and dropped her thefirst curtsy of my life, and the last. “I only wanted to say what a grand city you have here.”
    You could hear a pin drop. The room held its breath. There at my elbow rigor mortis had set in on Aunty. Lottie was poised for another grab at me.
    The two ladies flanking Mrs. Palmer viewed me with alarm. But she nodded in her cultivated way. To me and the listening room she replied, “How pleased I am to hear you say so. Some of the Spanish nobility we have received have not been so favorably impressed.”
    My mind whirled, but I was encouraged by her reply. Too encouraged. “Me and Lottie,” I blundered on, “are up here visiting with our aunt, Mrs. Fleischacker, over behind you on Schiller Street.”
    I pointed Aunty out. She stared at nothing, framed in veils, despair written all over her. “I’d like to make you acquainted with her.”
    “Ah,” Mrs. Palmer said carefully. Then disaster outright befell us.
    As if from a puff of infernal smoke Granddad appeared. He was just suddenly there, elbowing Mrs. Palmer out of the way, swatting his old curly-brimmed Panama on his knee.
    “There you’ens are!” he roared in the room. “Helaca-toot, Terpie, I’ve lost Buster!”
    *  *  *
    When I can bear to think of us next, we were well away from the Turkish pavilion. The exposition spread aroundus, a vast anthill of people, a haystack where a needle named Buster would be hard to locate. Aunt Euterpe moved like a woman in a terrible trance. Though I’d meant well, I’d robbed her of her last hope. I thought that once we found Buster, I’d offer to have myself arrested and put away someplace where I could do no more harm.
    “Think, Granddad.” Lottie gave his arm a good shake. “Where did you last see him?” We were hurrying now, though where, we didn’t know.
    “After we left the Electrical Hall, I took him over to the California pavilion to see the horse and rider made out of prunes,” Granddad recalled. “Then we skated past the United States Government Building to view the weapons of destruction. After that I stood him a good meal at the German place we was at last night.”
    It wouldn’t have taken Granddad long to get back to the Midway. We headed there now. “Then what?” Lottie said. “Think, Granddad.”
    “Well, I dropped in to see Little Egypt do her dance, and the boy went for a camel ride,” Granddad admitted, stumping along. “I told him to meet me out front, but the little squirt didn’t.” Granddad was worried. Lottie and I were too, though we understood that Buster was quicksilver, there and gone before you knew.
    The Midway was as crowded as before. Long lines waited to pay their fifty-cent pieces and ride the great wheel. The captive balloon had worked free of itsmoorings and vanished, but people were examining the cable. We stopped to inquire if Buster might have been riding the balloon when it drifted off to oblivion. But we were assured he hadn’t been.
    Small boys darted everywhere, none of them Buster.