The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

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fitting himself through the train door.
    â€œYou ’scaping the diphtheria too, Mr. Powers?” asked Kookie.
    â€œMe, I’m just escaping,” said Chad Powers, his face a picture of fright and confusion. That was when the children noticed that the townsfolk assembled on the platform were actually hissing behind their teeth, hissing Powers out of town. Someone even threw an egg.
    Inside the carriage, teacher, children, and inventor stared transfixed as the yellow yolk slid slowly down the glass—a small putrid sun setting on Chad Powers’s career. No one commented on the egg. Tibbie, who had a horror of scenes, took off her glasses, the better not to see it.
    â€œI shall be continuing on to Des Moines, myself, to visit my invalid mother,” said Miss March, pulling down the window blind with sudden violence. “Where are you headed, Mr. Powers?”
    â€œSomewhere I’m not known,” he said, and turned his face to the wall.
    â€œYou should come with us to Salvation!” said Kookie. “You could join the theater, maybe!
    Cissy stared at Kookie. So did Mr. Powers, unmanned by this sudden kindness. But talk of the Bright Lights had Miss March on her third tirade of the morning.
    â€œNow, this is strictly a temporary arrangement, children. I’ve told you already: I want to hear no talk of theatricals. If your—ahem— friends —were not resting from their disgraceful line of work, I could not possibly place you in their care. I do hope that is clearly understood. We go in search purely of shelter from the hurricanes of misfortune. If I find this . . . encampment of theirs is unsuitable, I shall have no choice but to take you with me to my invalid mother in Des Moines.”
    The train, in starting to move, jerked Tibbie Boden into the knowledge that she was leaving behind her father, her town, and everything familiar and friendly. She ran back down the train to the rear platform and stood coughing up tears and protests and regrets. Cissy and Kookie ran after her. The little settlement of Olive Town shrank away from them into the distance, as though they had offended it by leaving.
    â€œThere are rats in Salvation, Miss Loucien says,” Cissy whispered to Kookie.
    â€œDidn’t read out the bit about the rats,” said Kookie. “When I read the letter in class. Thought it might color Miss March against the Bright Lights.”
    So that had been why a single page had lain in the wastepaper basket. Not for the first time, Cissy was filled with admiration for the sharp thoughts inside Kookie’s spiky-haired head. She had never thought of censoring the letters as she read them out in class. “Do I hate Chad Powers?” she asked him, suddenly needing advice.
    Kookie shrugged and pulled his hands up the
sleeves of his shirt. “Couldn’t say. He draws spack-facious trains and boats and chariots and the like.”
    â€œAnd it wasn’t his fault really, was it? It was Fuller’s doin’, really. Wasn’t it? The store getting flattened?”
    â€œMad son of a—” Kookie began to say of Fuller, but he turned instead and went back inside the train.
    If it had not been for Curly’s prison sentence, Miss March would never have known where to start looking. She and the children might have traipsed upriver and down without ever finding the “shipwreck.” As it was, they headed straight for the Salvation town jail, standing on tiptoe in the alley alongside, to peep in at the high, barred window.
    So the first happy sight Cissy saw, a week after the demolition of her life, was the top of Curly’s bald head shining beyond the prison bars. It looked like the classroom globe, and she wanted so much to give it a spin, for luck.
    â€œHow’s things, Curly?” shouted Kookie, too excited to keep his voice low.
    Curly slopped his coffee and looked up at them through bent spectacles. “The worst is