The Last of the Gullivers (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE
ALL-NEW 1926 HISPANO-SUIZA

I
think I know a way.”

He took the old key and went to the barn, not really sure what he'd find. They got the rotting door open and saw a wood crate—eight feet high, sixteen feet long, marked for delivery to Lemuel Gulliver.

“It's from France, Bois-Colombes,” Jane read the marking.

They found hammers and prying bars and went at it. Each aged nail screamed as it was pulled from the wood. They peeled back the first panel and, under a blanket of dust and smoky web, they saw a giant motorcar. When they cut the steel straps that still held it, gravity rolled the monster into the farmyard.

A crowd of Little Ones stood watching a custom-built 1926 Hispano-Suiza move into sunlight, fourteen feet long, spoked-wood wheels, a canvas top folded open. The dashboard was ivory and rosewood, seats a dark leather, the carpet thick and wool. There were flower vases by the rear seats, still with the ghost-stems of roses.

“Looks like it's never been used,” said Jane.

“I don't think he even opened the crate,” Michael told her.

“Do you figure it'll still run?”

Philament Phlopp had already crawled into the engine. “I can make it work,” he said. “We'll need some petrol, oil, an hour or two.”

“But even if you got it running,” said Jane, “
who
would drive it?”

“I will,” Michael answered. He'd driven a digital Formula One racing car and how much harder could this be? If his feet could reach the pedals, he could drive it. He wiped greasy dust from the ornament. “It's a stork.” A silver stork in flight was the Hispano-Suiza's emblem. “They're good luck, y'know.”

Mr. Phlopp spent an hour and a half inside the engine, clearing lines, cleaning each of the eight cylinders. He had everything working perfectly, except the canvas top: the metal ribs had frozen in place and would have to stay down.

Michael and Jane and the Little Ones brought the heavy ship model around and tied it across a grille on the back. It overhung the car by a few feet.

Everything was near-ready now and Topgallant organized the Exodus. Standing on the toppled town fountain, he called for the others to, “Gather livestock, pets, children, older relatives. Hurry, and bring only the essentials!”

They moved quickly, wrapping hopes and dreams in tablecloths and leaving the rest behind. Soon, a hundred ninety-one Lilliputians were gathering by the barn, ready to board their rolling ark. Burton Topgallant had a list and saw that every name was accounted for . . . all but two.

Brave Mr. Wellup had been lost to the weasels and Hoggish Butz was nowhere to be found.

After a quick search of the wrecked city, Topgallant saw him outside the trampled bakery, calmly chewing a stale éclair, Golden Helmet glinting in the mid-morning sun. “It's time, Brother Butz,” said Burton. “We have to get moving.”

“We are
NOT
going,” Hoggish hmphed at him. “I am the Grand Panjandrum and
I
say we
STAY
. It is my decree, it is law.”

Burton Topgallant looked over the ruined city and sighed, “There's no one left to listen, Brother Butz.”

Hoggish only straightened the Gold Helmet and sniffed, “This is my kingdom. It is my
HOME
.”

“It was a home for us all, once.” Topgallant took a seat across from him. “But it isn't anymore. We're part of a greater race, you and me and the rest, and we need to join it.”

Hoggish was silent and still.

“Besides, if you stay here—what will you eat?”

“Oh, Great Ghost of Bolgolam . . . ,” sighed Mr. Butz.

The Lesser Lilliputians loaded into the car, all of them and with room to spare: it was even more massive than their Great Hall had been.

“Wait, hold on,” said Jane.

“What for?” asked Michael.

“We can't drive it like this.”

“Why not?” the boy wanted to know.

“Look at it,” she said. “It's a mess.”

And it was, covered with decades of dust that dulled its paint and chrome. “We should clean it,” she said. “We should make it look nice.”

But Michael shook his head. “There isn't time.”

“It won't take
LONG
.” Hoggish had quietly joined them.

They agreed it was something they owed Quinbus Flestrin and, with soap and water and little rags, they went at it. The Lesser Lilliputians were all over the car, scrubbing every hidden inch. Wool carpets were cleaned, leather oiled, ivory and rosewood polished, new flowers found for the vases. Within an hour, the Hispano-Suiza shined as it had on a day in 1926.

“All right,” said Jane. “Let's go.”

Michael started the huge engine and it hummed, healthy and full of life. He told everyone to hold on as he made a wide long turn in the field and drove up the rutted gravel road, out onto the single carriageway.

There were no cars, no lorries, no tractors on the main road. A sudden warm wind swept in from behind them and Jane's hair flew wild and free.

“Clap on full sail,” called Topgallant. “We're riding with the wind.”

The old car pulled from the farm, for the first and last time, and headed toward an unseen sea.

When Stanley Ford came by a few hours later, searching for Michael Pine and Jane Mallery, he would find the stone cottage quiet and empty and still. In the back, by the barn, he would find a pile of tiny wet rags.

If you've ever been twelve years old and at the wheel of an Hispano-Suiza, top down, throttle out, you know it's a powerful feeling—the road, hills, and patchwork farms sailing past, the miles melting beneath you.

Jane folded the road map in her lap and watched the fields of mop-headed cows and long-fleeced sheep go by. The Lesser Lilliputians peered out at a world they'd never Imagined, never Dreamed was here.

Michael eased the long car through a roundabout. As they drove through a small village, the road narrowed to pass between a church and an inn, and he misjudged the turn. The old car bounced hard on a stone curb, shaking, rattling to its frame. The big ship model nearly fell from the back grille.

“Is everything all right, you think?” Jane asked.

“Don't know,” Michael answered, but everything wasn't. A rear tire was punctured and going flat.

“I think the children may have been at the Gulliver cottage,” Officer Ford phoned to tell Horace Ackerby. “Somebody's been here, anyway. Within the last few hours, I'd say.”

This time, the Magistrate himself called for the APW.

There was a petrol station and restaurant at the far edge of this village and Michael pulled the car to a stop. The children got out and saw a very flat tire. “Is there another one?” Jane asked. “A spare?”

“If there is,” said Michael, “I wouldn't know how to put it on.”

Thudd Ickens slipped out of the car and crawled across the tire. “It's only a small puncture, on the inside, close to the rim. Nothing too bad.”

“You think these people can fix it here, at the station?” Jane asked. “I have a little money, not much.”

“Maybe,” said Michael and he headed to the service bay.

“What you want?” came a voice.

Michael hadn't seen the mechanic, half under a car. “We—my Dad—we have a flat tire. Can you fix it?” the boy asked.

“Not now I can't,” came the voice. “Give me a half hour.”

“All right,” said Michael, “thanks.” But he didn't have a half hour to give. When he saw a patch kit on the workbench, he grabbed it and hurried out.

Philament Phlopp was sure that he and Ickens could repair the tire. They took the patch and climbed back to find the puncture. Michael knelt and tried to help them, but a man in tweed was walking toward them from the station's restaurant. “Michael, somebody's coming,” Jane whispered. She quietly called for the Lesser Lilliputians to hide themselves.

“There's something you don't see every day,” the tweedy man was saying and he meant the car. “What is it, '28, '29?”

“ '26,” Michael answered.

“It's remarkable,” the man went on. “Think it might be for sale?”

“No,” Jane told him. “My Dad loves this car.”

“I can see why,” the man said, looking over the Hispano-Suiza. “Looks like it's never been used, like it was just made.” The children said nothing. “I'd like to talk to your Dad about it.”

“Okay,” said Michael and he moved to block the view of the rear seat.

“Where is he?” the man wanted to know.

“He's. Inside. In there,” Jane pointed to the restaurant. “In the lavatory, I think.”

The man in tweed nodded and said, “Yeah, maybe I'll ask him about it.”

A moment after he left, Phlopp called that the tire was patched. “You can fill it again,” Ickens said as Jane helped them into the car. Michael was adding air to the tire when the mechanic called to him from the service bay. “Tell your Dad I'm about ready. I'll patch that tire in a minute.”

“
We have to go,
” Jane whispered and grabbed the road map and went to stall the mechanic.

Michael kept filling the tire, checking that the patch was holding.

“We're a little lost,” Jane told the mechanic in the bay, stalling, spreading the old map on the workbench. “Can you show us how to get to Ambridge?”

A half-minute later, Michael had the tire filled and the car started. “Jane,” he called out. The man in tweed was coming from the restaurant. “Jane, let's go!”

“Hey, kids,” called the man. “I can't find your father in there.”

Jane ran from the bay and jumped in the car and they sped away, leaving the mechanic and tweedy man to wonder.

They headed out of the little town, past a bronze statue of St. George and his Dragon. They were a mile down the road when Jane remembered, “The map, Michael, the map to Ambridge, I left it in the station!”

“I know the way,” he said. “I was locked up there, remember?”

“But the river, can you find that? We have to find the river to reach the sea.”

Burton Topgallant happened to look up and happened to see two great birds, broad-winged, long-beaked, flying together far overhead. “Look there!” he cried. “Mr. Gulliver's storks are coming home.”

Michael saw the giant birds and knew they'd flown from Africa, from over the ocean. He watched their path, south to north, toward the next rolling mountain. “We need to go where they came from,” he told Jane. “Then we'll find the sea.”

The road lifted into a forest and small birds watched from telephone wires and the sun moved lower on the horizon.

“Brother Ninneter . . .” Topgallant popped his head over the front seat. “Bit of a problem.” Michael and Jane saw a police car following on the rising, falling road.

“Maybe they aren't looking for us,” said Michael, turning at a roundabout to keep going south.

But the police car turned, too, and followed.

“They are,” said Jane. “They are, Michael.”

There was a tractor ahead and he slowed to pass. “We have to get to Ambridge,” he said. “One way or other, we have to get them home.”

Jane held the door handle tight and said, “See how fast it can go, Michael.”

He pushed the pedal to the floor and Burton Topgallant went flying into the backseat. The old motor was awake now and remembering just how fast it could go—80, 85, 90 miles per hour. The faster it went, the more sure of the road it became. Farmland streamed by like rain from a cloud.

The police tried to keep up, but the Hispano-Suiza was too much car. As he left the cops behind, Michael began to think they might make it after all.

But it wasn't long until they saw more police ahead, coming toward them from the north, east and west, a dozen sets of flashing lights speeding at them. The road was blocked and Michael had to let the big car slow.

“Hold on,” he said, jerking through an open farm gate. He took the car across a field of fresh-plowed wheat. The Hispano-Suiza bounced over deep ruts and Lesser Lilliputians flew like kernels of popping corn.

The police cars tried following, but couldn't manage the rough field. The old car rode high and over the furrows, but all the dozen police were soon stuck fast in the dirt.

Michael drove over one field and through the next, until a stone wall stopped them. The town of Ambridge was just beyond. The car stopped with a sudden lurch and a shudder, its motor dead. Michael found an old wheelbarrow and they piled the giant ship model in. The Lesser Lilliputians walked as fast as their small legs let them and they set off, leaving the car behind in the field.

Night was falling as they reached the village, its streets full of music and dancers, a fair, a festival, like they used to have in Moss-on-Stone. Michael and Jane found a wrecked rusted shopping cart and loaded most of the Lesser Lilliputians into it, covering them with an old sheet. The rest rode in the wheelbarrow with the ship model.

There were police officers everywhere, but the children lost themselves in the celebration—a talent of Michael's—and the cops never saw them. The smell of warm food was almost too much for the Little Ones; still they listened to Jane and stayed out of view.

Down a block more, Jane saw the canal sparkling with moonlight. They found the place where the longboats were docked for the night and Michael went to the closed rental office. Once, these narrow boats had carried merchandise up and down the small canals that connected the country; now they carried only tourists. Michael read the trip rates: five pounds for an hour, fifteen for half a day, thirty for the full.

“I don't have that much,” Jane told him quietly.

But he wasn't worried. “You wait here,” he said to her. “I'll take care of it.” There was a small gift shop by the longboats, also closed for the night, and Jane huddled the Lesser Lilliputians under its wide sheltering eaves.