The Lizard of Oz: Chapter Twenty-Three
The Mouth of the Nile
The next morning, Miss Osborne woke everyone up at dawn. Skipping breakfast, she packed the kids into the VW. Sue sat on the roof again.
Daniel Boone gave Mr. New Man a coonskin cap.
“Is that real coonskin?” asked Mark.
“No, of course not,” said Mr. Boone, “There’s no point in killing a critter just for a hat.”
With his new hat and his face paint and beads, Mr. New Man looked like an Indian scout. He ran ahead with Crazy Horse.
About noon, Donny spotted the Redcoat Sergeant. He was on the porch of a cabin, smoking a pipe and rocking on a swing beside his wife. He looked happy. “‘Ome is where the ‘eart is,” he said.
While Miss Osborne wanted to know what this place had to do with the place where she was going, she was in too much of a hurry to stop and ask. She had to get to Ome, and nothing was going to slow her down.
They drove for hours, crossing more and more moors.
Miss Shelby whispered to Miss Osborne, “You don’t think we’re lost, do you? I’d hate to be lost in a wilderness.”
“There’s nothing to worry about, Miss Shelby,” Miss Osborne reassured her. “Crazy Horse knows the way.”
Miss Shelby was amazed at how confident Miss Osborne was now. She crossed her fingers and shut her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to have such faith, but she was so hungry that all she could imagine was food.
Just then, Mr. New Man shouted, “Man alive!”
Donny said, “Gosh! It’s raining bread.”
Miss Shelby reached out the window, caught some, and ate it. “Like manna from heaven,” she said.
“Yes,” Miss Osborne said matter-of-factly, focusing on her driving. “It probably is.”
Everybody was gobbling manna.
Between bites, Mark asked, “What’s manna?”
“Well,” said Miss Shelby, “it’s usually just a figure of speech. But since we’re approaching the Nile, this just may be the real thing. I don’t know what else it could be. It’s probably a local phenomenon, caused by the geography and the climate. Legend has it that long ago, a man named Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt.”
Mark asked, “How many kids did Israel have?”
“Lots of kids,” answered Miss Shelby.
“As many kids as our class?”
“Oh, many more than that.”
“Gosh,” said Donny.
“And Moses led the children of Israel across the Red Sea.”
Mark asked, “Were they in Redland, like us, Miss Shelby?”
“No,” explained Miss Shelby, “they were in exile in Egypt.”
Donny asked, “Did they send notes to one another on an exile-ophone?”
“No, I don’t think so. But they did leave their place of exile, and they headed for their promised homeland.”
“Gosh,” said Donny, “everybody’s trying to go Home or Ome.”
They all started looking for the children of Israel.
Miss Shelby explained, “That was a long time ago. You won’t see them now.”
Mark asked, “You mean they’re all grown up now?”
“That was a long time ago. None of them would be alive now. But after they crossed the Red Sea, they wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years.”
Eugene said, “I guess it was like Winthrop — without any street signs, a place where it’s easy to get lost.”
“Yes, I suppose it was,” Miss Shelby agreed. “But they finally found their promised land.”
“Did they live happily ever after?” asked Gaynell.
“For a while, yes. But what I started to tell you was that while they were in the wilderness, a bread-like substance called manna rained on them, and it was manna that kept them alive through their long journey.”
Cindy said, “That’s a good story, Miss Shelby.”
“I thought you’d enjoy it. History is full of good stories. Some people say that history repeats itself, and that’s why we should read it. That’s a silly idea, what with the way things change and people learn and progress. But history has so many good stories that there’s no need to think up reasons for reading it. When we get back to school, we can read some together.”
“Gosh,” said Donny, “what a big mouth.”
Miss Shelby was taken aback that Donny would say a such a thing about her. She didn’t know what to say, until she saw the mouth herself — a huge wide-open mouth, swallowing manna. “That must be the Mouth of the Nile,” she said.
Donny said, “It’s a whale’s mouth, and there’s somebody inside.”
“Oh,” said Miss Shelby, “that must be Jonah.”
“No,” said the person in the whale. “My name is Joan, and this is the Ark. Haven’t you ever heard of Joan of Noah’s Ark?”
Miss Shelby explained, “Long ago, there was a great flood that covered the earth. Some people say that it happened because people were evil.”
“What’s evil, Miss Shelby?” asked Mark.
“That’s when people are naughty all the time,” explained Miss Shelby.
Eugene asked, “What was wrong with them. Were they disenchanted?”
“That’s one way of putting it. Yes, some people were bored and disenchanted, and they became naughty. But a man named Noah stayed enchanted. He built a big boat that he called the Ark, and he took aboard two of every animal he could find. Then when the flood came, he and his family and the animals sailed away and had a long boat ride.”
“That sounds like fun,” said Cindy.
“When the flood went down, they landed and started the world all over again,” Miss Shelby added.
Cindy asked, “What happened to the other people?”
“They drowned.”
“Euh! That’s awful.”
“If you’ll just step aside,” said Joan, “I’ll let down the gangplank and let the gang out. It’s suppertime, and they’re all very hungry.”
Thousands upon thousands of animals came rushing out — two of every kind.
“The whale comes here every time he and his friends get hungry,” explained Joan. “And they get hungry often — so often that some people call him The Mouth of the Nile.”
Gaynell recited, “Egghead south to the Mouth of the Nile and find the tooth the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth for smiles and smiles till suffer-time.” She was very proud that she remembered all of the witch’s poem.
Soon all the kids were playing with the animals.
Linda C. was talking to a pig. Donny let an owl try on his brand-new glasses. Timmy slid down the trunk of an elephant. Kevin and Joey were climbing all over the whale.
Kevin said, “Maybe this is the big white whale that Sinbad the Sailor was looking for.”
“I don’t know that story,” said Miss Shelby, “but I do know one about a man named Ahab.”
“What happened to Ahab?” asked Kevin.
“He drowned.”
“That’s not a very good story,” said Kevin. “Sinbad just kept having more and more adventures. I bet he’s still having adventures.”
Donny walked up to Miss Shelby, bringing his owl. Wearing Donny’s glasses, the owl looked very human.
“Miss Shelby,” said Donny, “maybe this is like Circus Island, and these are all people who were turned into animals.”
“That sounds like reincarnation,” said Miss Shelby.
“Is that some kind of milk?” asked Donny.
“No, it means being born again. Some people believe that all animals were once people and all people were once animals. They say that every living thing has a soul and feelings — just like the Little Blue Wallflower — and people should be careful not to hurt them.”
Gaynell rode a unicorn, and Kathy found a white charger and looked all over for its rider.
The scene seemed strangely familiar to Miss Osborne, as if she had been here before or dreamed about it. Everything was turning out well. The whale would take the class to Ome, and everybody would live happily ever after.
Crazy Horse and Sue said their good-byes, “We give ’em music. Music mighty strong medicine.” And they started singing, “Joshua at the Battle of Jericho . . . and the walls came tumbling down.”
The class knew the words this time, so they all joined in.
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Links to other chapters and the story of how this story was written.
