Boomtown Page 10

  The announcement was greeted with cheers from a worried crowd. I think they were mostly happy because now the rest of the Santas could be launched without further interruption. My church members were happy since they wouldn’t have to start searching for a new pastor. I was happy just to be alive.

  Janice helped me to my feet and led me over to the car, where we sat and watched the remainder of the launches from relative safety. We could see Ruth with her high school friends leading Christmas carols for the children. Sarah was in the front row with a bent halo, dressed as an angel and trying her best to act like one. Jonny was helping his bud-dies light off the last of the Exploding Elves and the Rocket Reindeer. It was strange and fun and disturbing and wonderful all at the same time.

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Button,” Janice said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.

  “And a Merry Christmas to you, Mrs. Button,” I answered, kissing her back.

  Then she smiled mischievously. “I suppose I better wish you a Happy New Year now. You know, just in case you don’t live long enough to see it.”

  “Oh! Very funny!” I groaned, handing her the car keys.

  “And since you are so funny . . . you can drive us home.”

  CHAPTER 8

  A Gift from the Hopontops

  Christmas morning at the Button house meant getting up early, eating toast, sipping coffee and cocoa, and checking our Christmas stockings to see what Santa brought us that year. We found the usual things: a hairbrush and hairclips for Ruth, a yoyo and some new gears and wheels for Jonny’s Erector Set, and a whistle and some doll clothes for Sarah. Then Janice and I got the biggest surprise of all.

  While we sat in the living room opening our presents, Janice heard the sound of crying coming from the front porch. Sarah was the first one out the door.

  “It’s a baby!” she shrieked.

  “No, it’s not,” Jonny argued.

  “You don’t think I know what a baby looks like?” Sarah replied, holding up the bundle so all could see. We saw a tiny brown and blue face peek out from inside an Indian blanket and heard the sound of whimpering.

  “Sarah,” Janice implored, “please hand the baby to me.”

  “I found it!”

  “I know that, dear, but it’s a baby, not a toy. It’s probably freezing—and hungry too.”

  Jonny grabbed the handmade basket where the baby had been lying, and we all came inside to take a closer look. Peeling aside the striped blanket, we saw dark hair over a small narrow face, ruddy cheeks, brown skin, and bright blue eyes. The baby was probably no more than a few weeks old, dressed in cotton pajamas and a pair of cotton socks. Janice rewrapped the baby tightly in the blanket and we shuffled into the living room to stand by the heater. In a few moments, the crying subsided and Janice took command.

  “Ruth, run down to the LaPierres’. They have their new baby and all. Ask them if we can borrow a bottle, some infant formula, and diapers. Jonny, fetch me a few more blankets. Sarah—stop dancing around—in the bathroom are some cot-ton cloths that will work for diapers for now; bring those to me, will you please? Arthur, get that note pinned to the corner of the blanket. Can you read it?”

  I reached over and undid the safety pin that was holding a note written in crooked scrawl and spattered with tears. I flipped it over and looked at both sides. Not much there.

  “It says, ‘Please take her as your own.’ That’s it. Nothing more. No signature.”

  “A girl,” Janice hummed, rocking the baby gently.

  “That’s what the note says.”

  “A baby on a doorstep; a mysterious note; no explanation. I’ve read about this sort of thing happening,” I murmured. “I just didn’t think it was going to happen to us.”

  Sarah came barreling into the room waving the cloths. “I heard you! A girl baby! And I was the one who found her! Can I keep her, Mom? Dad? Can I?”

  I grabbed her by the shoulders to keep her from lifting off into outer space. “Really, Sarah, please. Of course you can’t keep her. She’s not a pet; she’s a baby. A baby with a mother and a father. We have to find out who they are.”

  “You never let me have nothin’!” Sarah pouted.

  “I never let you have anything,” I corrected. “Which isn’t true. I let you have all sorts of things, but this is different.”

  “C’mon, Dad, please? I’ll give back all my presents. I’ll keep my room clean. I’ll never get in trouble ever again. Can we keep her? Please, please, pleeeeease! ”

  “Janice. Help me out here?”

  But Janice wasn’t any help at all. She was too preoccupied with cooing and cradling the infant—and once Ruth came back from the LaPierres’, feeding the hungry child a bottle of warmed-up formula. Ruth sat on the left and Sarah on the right, and the three of them ignored the two males in the room.

  “Another girl,” sniffed Jonny. “Why couldn’t it be a boy? It just isn’t fair.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I agreed, grumbling to myself. “None of this is. But, I suppose, someone has to be the bad guy. It looks like I’m the one who has to do something about this.”

  It was Christmas morning, so I didn’t really want to bother anyone at home. It had to wait until the next day. Until then, I had a lot to think about. Where had the baby come from? How would we find out? How would we get her back to her family? What if we couldn’t?

  Janice snuggled with the baby all that day and all through the night sleeping by her side on the couch. No baby had ever been loved and cherished as much as that little thing. The next morning, while the kids were still asleep, she and I talked about it.

  “Janice, we can’t keep the baby. You know that.”

  “I was thinking I should call the sheriff. He might know where to start.”

  “And Doctor Goldberg. We can have him come over and make sure the baby is healthy.” She clutched the infant more tightly in her arms.

  “Thank you, Janice,” I said, standing up. “I know this is hard for you, but we’ve got to do the right thing—for the baby’s sake.”

  I called Sheriff Ernie and Doctor Goldberg. They arrived in less than an hour. By then, the kids were up and having breakfast in the kitchen. Sarah had some pretty strong opinions about “giving away her sister,” and Ruth insisted on standing nearby while the doctor checked the baby. His opinion was frank and to the point.

  “I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already figured out. The baby has thick black hair and bright blue eyes. She has ruddy skin and a broad nose, but otherwise very fine and delicate features. One of the parents is probably white. The other parent is certainly Indian.

  “But she’s healthy,” he pronounced, “and a pretty little thing, too, in spite of the circumstances. You know what we’re dealing with here, don’t you, Reverend?”

  “I’m pretty sure I do,” I answered warily. “The only question is what tribe. Who’s the father? Who’s the mother?”

  “Probably the Hopontops,” Sheriff Burton Ernie suggested.

  “The who?”

  “The Hopontops. Our Indian neighbors just over the river. We can go talk to them, but I’m not sure they’ll talk to us. They pretty much keep their business to themselves.”

  “Still, we’ve got to try. You’ll go on over with me, won’t you, Burton?”

  “’Course I will. But the Hopontops . . . as I said, this isn’t going to be easy.”

  “No. It won’t be easy for anyone,” I agreed, glancing at Janice.

  Just then the phone rang, and I went to answer it. “Janice, come over here.” I spent a furtive five minutes on the phone, after which Janice and I huddled for a few more minutes in anxious discussion. The kids wanted to know what it was all about—they could tell it had something to do with the baby—but I didn’t want to talk about it, not right at the moment.

  After I hung up the phone, I said, “Burton, can we go see the Hopontops now? I don’t want to wait, especially after what I just found out.”

  “Sure ’nough, Arthur.
Let’s go.”

  Janice and I thanked and said good-bye to Dr. Goldberg, and then Burton and I prepared to leave. Jonny insisted on coming with us, but I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Not this time, Jon. This is pretty serious. You stay here.”

  He frowned. “I’m thirteen, Dad. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  “I didn’t say you were. It’s just, I don’t have the time . . . I mean, I’ve got to take care of this right away, without . . .”

  “What? Without me getting in the way? My teachers don’t think that—other grownups don’t say that! There’s this one man I know . . . he doesn’t think I’m in the way . . . he trusts me . . . he—”

  I interrupted him. “What do you mean, ‘this one man I know’? Exactly who are we talking about? What man?”

  Jonny clammed up and stared at me bitterly. “Doesn’t matter who he is. I guess I’ll just stay home and baby-sit.” He stomped off into the other room.

  Janice came over to me, cradling the baby in one arm and holding out my new coat (I never found the missing one). She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Arthur, take your son.”

  “But Janice . . .”

  “Now. Call him over. Please. This is too important to leave him out.”

  “Okay, okay,” I agreed reluctantly. Who was running this house, anyway? “Jon! Put on your boots and a heavy coat. Get your gloves too. It’s freezing outside.”

  Once Jonny was dressed, the two of us headed out the door and followed Burton down the snowy sidewalk. His police cruiser was parked out front. I climbed into the passenger seat, and Jonny bundled into the back. Burton pulled away from the curb and headed east out of town and across the Hoponover Bridge.

  “We’ll go talk to Chief Knife Thrower,” Burton said. “If anyone knows who the father of the baby is, it’ll probably be him.” As we drove out to the reservation, Burton filled us in on the Hopontop Indians.

  “About a hundred fifty years ago, there weren’t many white men; this was strictly Indian territory. You had the Salish, Chinookan, Klikitat, Cayuse, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and the Hopontops. Their villages and camps covered the hills and the plains like they had for hundreds of years.

  They raised crops; they hunted buffalo; they fished the rivers; they raised their families. This was their home.

  “It wasn’t all peace and harmony, though. The tribes fought sometimes. They wanted control over the best hunting grounds, the most abundant rivers, and the most fertile fields. Mostly they kept to themselves, but every now and then a skirmish would break out. They’d hold a war council, beat the drums, and shoot some arrows. Sooner or later they’d work out a compromise.”

  “What kind of compromise?” Jonny asked, fascinated by Burton’s story.

  “Well, you see, the tribes ’round here could be pretty fierce if they had to be—except for the Hopontops. They didn’t want no part of it. Year’d go by all peaceful and quiet, and then all of a sudden something would flare up and the Hopontops would find themselves smack-dab in the middle of it. They just wanted to trade with the other tribes and otherwise keep to themselves. So they came up with an idea.

  “Turns out a lot of ’em had an amazing talent for acrobatics. They were also pretty good with horse tricks, things like that. The other tribes around here heard about it, and pretty soon, groups would show up just to watch them do flips and handstands. Word spread, and pretty soon they started scheduling performances every full moon. Worked like a charm. It kept the other tribes settled down, and it kept the Hopontops out of the fighting, since nobody wanted to hurt the performers.”

  I looked at Burton. “You’re making this up, right? You’re telling me that the Hopontops are circus Indians? Circus Indians? Are you serious?”

  “No fooling, Reverend Button. Everybody knows about the Hopontops! I’m surprised you never heard of ’em.”

  “Apparently I haven’t heard about a lot of things,” I muttered.

  “Well, listen to this. The Hopontops have a two-hour show including bronco riding, tricks on horseback, toma-hawk throwing, blindfolded archery, tumblers, rope tricks, and that whole death-defying trapeze lake-of-fire thing they do. It’s really something.”

  Jonny piped up when he heard that. “Lake of fire? What’s that?”

  “They call it the Flaming Dive of Death. One of the braves climbs up on a rope, flies into the air, does a triple somersault, and lands in a flaming pit of water. Most amazing thing you’ve ever seen.”

  “Wow! You ever see it?”

  “Yep. I’ve been watching ’em since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Everybody loves ’em! In fact, back in 1911, the president of the United States himself made a detour just to come by and see their show.”

  “The president?”

  “Sure ’nough! Stopped right here in Boomtown! President William H. Taft rode the Great Northern Railway over from Seattle. It was in May, right before the Hopontops went on tour. They put on a command performance just for him and his cabinet. That was just about the time they were perfecting the Flaming Dive of Death trick. President Taft’s photographer took pictures with Chief Back Flip. They’re on display at the Boomtown Museum. Hey, speaking of that, Arthur, you been over there yet?”

  “Where?”

  “The Boomtown Museum! You gotta take a tour. It’s open every Saturday and every afternoon and evening during the week.”

  “Sure thing, Burton,” I answered. “It’s right on the top of my list, first thing after I take care of this baby business. No problem.”

  We turned left off the main highway and went down a dirt road heading west. We drove for another couple of minutes while Sheriff Ernie talked nonstop about the Hopontops, some of the shows he’d seen, their newest tricks, the mountain lion taming act, and so on. He was hoping we could see them practice while we were there.

  As we bounced along the unpaved road, I tried to reconcile what Burton was telling me about the Hopontops with my preconceived ideas about Indians. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d seen in books and pictures and movies. You know what I mean—shirtless braves on horse-back shooting arrows at buffalo, doing rain dances around bonfires, wearing feathers and war paint, raising their right hand and saying “How” all the time. Like most kids, I grew up playing Cowboys and Indians. Like most adults, I’d never met a real one.

  So I didn’t know what to expect when we crested a hill, passed a stand of cottonwoods, and looked down upon a snow-laced valley. What I saw was a huge circus tent surrounded by smaller tents and a staging area with brightly painted trucks and wagons. Beyond that was a neat encampment of teepees, each with a curl of smoke climbing into the clear, frosty sky. In the center was a longhouse built out of logs and roofed with bark shingles. I could see corrals with horses and sheep and cattle and sturdy barns filled with hay and oats. Behind that were rectangles of farmland sleeping under a carpet of snow. Down to my left were Hopontop children building a snow fort and having a snowball fight in one of the fields.

  “Pretty as a picture, isn’t it?” Burton said as I nodded in agreement. We drove down the hill and into the center of the village, past the main tent on our left, and parked in front of the longhouse.

  Burton hopped out and whispered, “Hey, Jonny, before we hunt down the chief, why don’t we take a peek inside the Big Top?”

  Before I could object, Burton was jogging across the road and poking his head through a flap in the tent. Jonny was at his shoulder. They waved me over.

  “Looky here. We can slip in and watch for a few minutes. Some of the Hopontops are practicing right now.”

  “Burton, that’s not why we’re here,” I reminded him.

  “Come on, Arthur; have some fun!” Burton said, his eager expression looking very much like my own thirteen-year- old son’s. Jonny and Burton disappeared inside. What now? I pulled open the flap, climbed the wooden bleachers, and took a seat next to them.

  The main tent must have been more than a hundred feet tall, with three sections supported b
y massive poles. Each pole was carved with intricate Indian pictures. Up above were ropes and rigging and nets for the high-wire acts and small platforms at the tops of each pole. These had rope ladders hanging down for climbing. The canvas walls were painted with elaborate scenes in traditional native colors depicting Hopontops performing some of their more famous acts. There was a painting of Dark Cloud the Magician and another showing the Flaming Dive of Death.

  Around the edges were wooden bleachers, ten rows high, lining both sides of the long tent that was open at both ends so circus acts could enter and exit and where equipment could be moved in and out. The dirt floor and the three rings were covered in fresh sawdust. Its pungent pine scent made my nose itch.

  “Look at that, Dad! In the center ring!”

  Jonny was pointing at the trick-rider/sharpshooter going through his routine. His horse was tethered to a longe (a guide rope) that was held firmly by an assistant who guided the beautifully colored and costumed palomino round and round in a circle. The sharpshooter stood straight up on the horse while he shot stationary targets set up inside the center of each outer ring. Bang! Bang! Bang! He broke dinner plates and apples and clay birds and balloons without missing a single shot.

  “That’s amazing!” I exclaimed to Burton.

  “That’s Eye of the Eagle, their most famous sharp-shooter,” he answered. “But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  Eye of the Eagle did a backflip off his horse while shooting his final target. Then four assistants ran into the ring and started throwing Hen Grenades high into the air. Bang!BOOM! Bang! BOOM! One right after another, without missing one; the air was filled with the resounding echo of exploding Hen Grenades while fluffy, white scrambled eggs rained down on the floor.

  The three of us applauded. “That was super!” Jonny yelled. “We saw the Ringling Circus once, but they didn’t have anybody as good as him! What’s next?”