The kid was keeping up with me, step for step. “Don’t you need to get back to your job?” I asked, although it felt a bit odd saying that to a kid who should be in about the third grade.
“Nope—I’m all finished there for the day. I don’ have to be to my other job ’til later.” He skipped a few steps ahead and then turned to look at me, walking backward. “Those maps are no good, y’know. Half of ’em was written before the fair was even finished so they could get ’em printed in time and some of the exhibits moved aroun’. What you need is a guide. A respectable young lady shouldn’ be wanderin’ the fair without an escort, anyway.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ve seen plenty of women touring the fair without a male escort.”
“Well, t’gether, yes,” he admitted. “But not walkin’ aroun’ by their lonesome much, right? I c’n be your guide—I done it nine times already, once for a group of ladies all the way from London. I know ever’thin’ about the fair, ’cause me dad worked here the whole time they was buildin’ it.”
He paused and drew in a deep breath. “For two dollars I can show you ever’thin’ worth seein’ here and ways to avoid the crowd and”—he blushed a bit—“where the ladies’ necessary is, an’ all that kind of stuff…”
I was about to ask what a necessary was, but then I considered his blush and put two and two together.
“So what d’you say, miss?” he continued, quickly. “You don’ wanna be goin’ around by y’rself. There’s spots what ain’ safe for a young lady to be in—there’s some bad folk here might take advan’age of a girl on her own, y’know.”
We had reached the middle of the avenue between the Mining Building and the Electricity Building. The gold dome of the Administration Building was just ahead, but Katherine’s lavender feather was nowhere in sight.
Sighing, I glanced around and could see that he was correct—there were plenty of women in groups or even pairs, but I didn’t see even one unaccompanied female. I had to admit that I would probably look less conspicuous if I wasn’t alone.
There was also the fact that he had seen the letter. I still wasn’t sure how much he had read, and I decided that it might make sense to keep the kid in sight and under my control until I was out of there. And it was pretty clear that the promise of additional cash would keep him close.
He could tell that I was mulling it over, so he stood quietly, stick-straight, with his hands behind his back—a small, grubby soldier awaiting inspection. It was apparently difficult for him to keep perfectly still, however, especially with such a major business deal on the line, and the excess energy had him bobbing up and down on his toes, like a pogo stick.
“I thought you had another job to be at.”
“Not ’til a lot later,” he said, shaking his head. “And that’s just helpin’ me mom at the booth t’night, and she’d much rather I was workin’ somewhere else if I c’n bring in some extra. It’s been tough since me dad…” Died? Left? He didn’t finish the sentence and his face closed while thinking about it, so I decided not to press.
He was thin and his clothes were worn, and I suspected that his assessment that his mother would be happy to have a few extra dollars for the week was dead-on. He also seemed pretty sharp—which was a mixed bag, given that he knew more than I wanted him to about my arrival. The dark eyes were a bit mischievous, but his face looked honest and open.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Well, they used t’call me dad Mick and me Little Mickey, on accoun’ of us bein’ Irish an’ all. Only he’s gone now and I’m not that little anymore, so you c’n just call me Mick.”
“Okay, Mick—how old are you?”
“Twelve years, miss,” he answered without a pause.
I raised a very skeptical eyebrow. “How old are you really? I’m not going to refuse to hire you because of your age—I just want to know.”
“Nearly nine,” he said.
“Try again.”
“No really—I’ll be nine in August,” he said.
Given that it was October, he seemed to be stretching “nearly nine” to the breaking point, but at least that age seemed plausible. I tried to think up a story that an eight-year-old would buy, one that might keep him close and quiet until I was ready for the jump home. My mind flashed back to a book I’d read in middle school about Nellie Bly, the famous girl reporter of the 1880s who had traveled around the world on her own in seventy-two days. I was pretty sure she had been about my age when she started reporting.
“Okay,” I said, bending down closer to his eye level. “Here’s the deal I can offer, Mick, and it’s not open for negotiation. I’m Kate—I’m a journalist, a writer… for a newspaper back East. I usually work with a partner, my photographer, but he’s been delayed. I could use an assistant, but you’ll have to do exactly as I say—no questions and no talking to anyone about this, because I’m working on an exclusive, okay?”
His brow creased a bit at the last part. I suspected that he wasn’t quite sure what an exclusive was but didn’t want to admit it. “A reporter? Followin’ them other two, right? The man an’ woman who came up before you? What’s he then, a criminal or somethin’? He looked shady, he did—”
I gave him a sharp look and cut him off. “No questions, remember? Five dollars for the time I’m here,” I continued. “I might be leaving today, but I could be here tomorrow as well, depending on how long it takes to get my story. I’ll pay your expenses, too—meals and the like. And the first stop we make is to the gentlemen’s necessary, and you scrub up—I want an assistant that’s clean and presentable. Then you help me get to the Midway before ten o’clock.”
He nodded again and grabbed my elbow, pulling me to the left, toward a cluster of large white fountains. “This way, Miss—”
“It’s Kate,” I repeated.
“This way, Miss Kate. I know the very bes’ route.”
As we walked along, Mick flipped into tour-guide mode and it was soon obvious that he hadn’t been padding his credentials. He really did know a lot about the Exposition and had memorized details about the various buildings and displays.
“This,” he said, as we approached a waterway, one end of which was lined with enormous white fountains, “is what they call the Gran’ Basin.” Mick pointed toward the centerpiece of the fountains as we passed, a large classical sculpture of a ship. “Tha’ one there is the Columbian Fountain—MacMonnies, the guy who designed it, tol’ me it’s s’posed to be a symbol for the country and how much progress we made since Columbus came. Those people rowin’ are s’posed to represent the arts—y’know, like music an’ paintin’ an’ stuff? The big guy there is s’posed t’be Father Time, steerin’ the boat to the future with his big…” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Me mom always called it a speal—what d’you call it in English, the thing they cut hay with?”
“A scythe?” I asked.
“Yeah, tha’s it,” he said, pulling me slightly to the side to dodge a small pack of middle-aged women who, like me, were looking up at the statue and not paying much attention to where they were walking. “A scythe. I don’ remember what the woman at the front is s’posed to be. Or those cupids. Maybe just decorations.”
“Now that buildin’ over there,” he said, “is the bigges’ buildin’ in the world—the Manufactures Building. And that one we passed on the way over here? The ’Lectricity Buildin’? There’s stuff in there you wouldn’ believe even if you saw it. Got a frien’ who works over there sweepin’ an’ he says there is this machine called a telautograph where someone can sen’ a picture say from back East and that machine’ll draw it for you here, just like you was gettin’ a telegraph. He also says they have this new thing by Mr. Edison that makes pictures move so it looks like you’re watchin’ this guy sneeze, ’cept you’re just lookin’ into this tiny little box. An’ just wait ’til you see it at night, that place is all lit up—you never seen anythin’ so pretty. Like a million lanterns, but I looked at ’em in the daytime an’ turns out they ain’ nothin’ but these little glass balls with a tiny wire inside.”
It was odd to think that almost all of the magnificent structures Mick was pointing to were temporary buildings, made of a material slightly sturdier than papier-mâché. The exhibits would be removed and the buildings would be torn down or burned in a matter of months. Only a few buildings would remain, along with the gardens—which were amazing in their own right, since the area had been a swamp less than a year ago.
We walked around the edge of the lagoon, where several colorful gondolas were docked, boarding their first passengers of the day. Looking across the water, I could see the Japanese Tea House through the trees of the Wooded Island.
Most of the way, we kept to the sidewalks, passing the U.S. Government Building and the Fisheries Building, where Mick was delighted to give me a full and imaginative description of the huge shark that was on display. He then cut through the grassy area in front of the national exhibits for Guatemala and Ecuador, and I had to walk on my tiptoes a bit to keep the edges of the boots from sinking into the damp sod.
My right shoe was already beginning to rub a blister on my heel and I was increasingly suspicious that Mick’s “bes’ route” was not the most direct path to the Midway. I could see the Ferris wheel in the distance, and we seemed to be walking past where we should have turned.
“Yes’m,” he said, when I pointed to the big wheel on the horizon. “But you don’ wanna be usin’ the necessaries over there. They ain’ fit for a lady. The ladies from London were very impressed with the necessaries in the Fine Arts Palace. It’s right up here, the very nex’ buildin’. Said they were the nices’ they ever seen.”
“But the… ‘necessary’… was intended for you to clean up. I really don’t need to go right now.” I was dreading the thought of trying to negotiate a toilet in my current dress, and had decided that it might be a good idea to just limit my intake of fluids for the rest of the day.
“Oh… sorry,” he said. “I can use the ones on the Midway where you don’ hafta pay the nickel, but… I thought maybe you just needed to… Some ladies won’ say, y’know. One of the ladies from London never would say and she nearly—”
“Girl reporters aren’t prissy,” I said, giving him a little smile. “We say what we think. So if I need to go, I’ll tell you straight-out.” I glanced over at the steps leading up to the ornate portico of the building. “We’re already here, so we might as well step inside. I’ll just wait for you in the lobby.”