The Amazon rain forest is burning. It filters our atmosphere, removing carbon, and producing about 20 percent of our breathable air. The Latin Trump, newly elected leader of Brazil, wants it to burn to make arable land for growing soybeans to sell to China and profit over the Pumpkinhead President’s stupid trade war.
I already worry about having a heart attack at any moment. I can’t afford insulin for my diabetes, or another trip to the emergency room. The next concerning chest pain may well be the onset of the end of everything for me. If it is just another mystery pain caused by the inflamed joints in my rib cage, or the arthritic bones pressing on my spinal chord, I will not be able to pay for the inevitable surgery I discussed with doctors before. Better for my heart to go boom and the suffering to end.
But I believe in the Dylan Thomas solution. “Do not go gentle into that good night, rather, Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light!”
So, how do I do that? How do I rage against the end of days? Whether for the entire planet facing heat death and a destroyed environment, or just for myself?
I will write the next home-town novel about the boy who cannot die. I am calling it A Boy Forever… at least for now. That’s a working title.
The Paffooney for today pictures Firefang, a girl who comes to the little town of Norwall, Iowa, against her will with her adoptive oriental father. She is not the protagonist. Young Icarus Jones is that. Rather, she is the antagonist, the fire-breathing troubled teen dissatisfied with life and longing for chaos and escape.
This will not be a teen romantic comedy. Well, not only that, anyway. It will be a book about an imprisoned dragon, the undying, and the undead. It will be about murder and the quest for immortality. I am working on the plot of it as an epistolary novel, made up of letters, interviews, and first-person accounts. And it will be both funny and sad, both an allegory and a farce, a parody and a prose poem.
Okay, I know it’s a tall order. But when faced with imminent death, you gotta do something, right? I intend to write another novel.
The picture is modeled after a girl from Brazil that I met over the internet, on Twitter. The character is not based on her. I barely know her. But I used her internet selfie to draw the picture portrait of Firefang.
When you look out
the portal of a space craft, especially a large portal like the main view-port
of the Leaping Shadowcat, you get a glimpse of the great orchestra of light and
silence that has been playing its music in space since the dawn of time.
The diamond-bright stars glow with an electric melody in a great sea of black,
littered with the silent notes of the Galactic Symphony written on the face of
the universe, and being conducted by God himself.
Ged Aero stared
at this silent music as he contemplated his brother’s plan. Ham Aero had
proposed the impossible. How could it be the only solution?
“You can’t deny
it any more, Ged. The Galtorr Imperium is no place for a man like you.”
“…but the
unknown, Hamfast? How can you expect to get by beyond the edges of known
space?”
“Others have done
it in the past. You know that civilization still has not absorbed even
half the worlds that Martin Faulkner visited five hundred years ago.”
“Yes,” said Ged,
pulling at the front brim of his dirty brown fedora as if to hide his eyes and
the doubt that was in them, “but he was an explorer. He knew how to live
in space without any human contact for years on end.”
“What he can do,
we can do.” Ham pushed a fall of thick yellow hair out of his eyes.
It had been far too long since he had had a haircut, but only their mother had
been allowed to do it, and she was now gone. “We have to. Prejudice
against you has reached the point that it will be fatal.”
“Okay, I know that. But I’m learning to control it. I don’t have to change all the time. I can stop it when I need to, and maybe even start it myself. I don’t know why it happens, but I think I can make it work for me instead of against me.”
“Yes, well, mutations
like yours are almost always fatal in the end. You’ll slip at the wrong
moment, and the Imperials will have your head on a platter. What did they
call your disease?”
“Lycanthropy.
Werewolf disease.”
“That’s my point
exactly. We both know it’s really something else, but the torches will
come out to burn you the next time they see you change even a little bit.”
“Unknown space,
Ham? Does it have to be unknown space?”
“Yes, Ged.
Unknown space. It’s my spaceship. The decision is ultimately mine.”
It was a
beautiful space ship. It was a safari cruiser of the Xenomorph Class, a
smooth airfoil shape with silver skin and a photon drive that could leap across
parsecs of space in practically no time. It could land on planets with
atmosphere as easily as it could glide through the electric sparkle of
space. It had a good, sturdy ground ATV and accommodations for as many as
twenty-five people.
“So how do you
plan to navigate the unknown?” Ged knew Ham was a capable starship
captain, but they had no reliable navigator. And the third member of
their minimum crew of three, the engineer, was not even aboard.
“Goofy can do
it. He’s more gifted than you believe.”
“Don’t tell me
your friend Trav Dalgoda is the engineer we’re waiting for!”
“Okay. I
won’t tell you.”
“Are you
insane? You’re going to jump out into unknown space with that Lunar Tick
as our only means to fix the ship and set our course?”
“Yeah,” said Ham,
grinning. “It doesn’t sound too smart when you put it that way. But
he is an original thinker and a good problem-solver.”
“He’s also wanted
on four planets and owes ten million Galtorrian credits to the biggest Vice
Lord in the Thousand Planets.”
“Yeah. It
was easy to talk him into jumping out with us.”
“Oh, I’m so glad
it was easy.”
The two brothers
had started calling their boyhood friend, Travis R. Dalgoda, “Goofy” when, as
an academy graduate, he started wearing an eye patch over his left eye even
though he could see through it perfectly. It didn’t hurt that he always
wore that silly Donald Duck sailor’s hat that he got on his one and only leave
on the Disney planet. He also had a thing for ties with weird pictures or
sayings on them. Trav was one of a kind.
“I guess I
understand your plan finally,” Ged said morosely to Ham. “You’re going to
bring an end to my suffering by committing suicide in deep unknown space.”
“Yeah,” said Ham
staring out the view port at the silent music of the stars, “Something like
that…”
At that moment, a
blazing piece of space junk trailing sparking debris came fluttering toward
them like a wounded sparrow.
“Oh, gawd!
Get to the co-pilot console, Ged!”
Whatever it was,
it was maneuvering, using powered flight. It was apparently seeking them
out.
“Any bets that
this burning space-ball is Goofy?” Ham asked as he strapped himself into the
pilot chair.
As if in answer,
Trav’s voice came over the ship-to-ship commo. “Ham-boy! You gotta
help me. I picked up a band of followers on my way out of system!”
“Yep. That’s
Goofy,” moaned Ged.
“I’m pickin’ up
bad guys!” shouted Ham. He flipped on the commo. “Goof? You
got six of them on your tail?”
“Oh, is that
all? My sensors are out. I figured it was more like fifty.
Pinwheel Corsairs, ain’t they?”
“Yes. I
make them to be Tron Blastarr and Maggie the Knife. What’s your beef with
them?”
“Oh, they’re
friends of mine. I helped them loot a cargo out of Mingo Downport.
They just didn’t like the ninety-ten split I left them with.”
“Typical,”
muttered Ged. “They got the ten, right?”
“Could I split it
any less fair than that?” Trav answered.
Ham launched the
Leaping Shadowcat into an arching intercept course. Ham had never done a
high-speed docking maneuver before, that Ged knew of, but the young pilot was
about to learn fast.
Kyle Clarke came storming into the Zeffer house before
either the sheriff’s deputy or Mrs. Philips could arrive. He was angry to the point of curse words over
what apparently had happened to Valerie.
He made Mrs. Zeffer and Ray repeat the story of how Ray found her three
times before he even started calming down.
He made it clear he wanted the story from Ray, not Valerie. Once he had learned she had been unconscious,
he didn’t even want to hear her version of events. He told her she would not be able to make
sense of things until she was well rested and recovered. He wanted Mrs. Philips, a registered nurse,
to examine her before any other investigation took place. Valerie could only imagine in horror what he
suspected.
“Mrs. Philips! We
need you to examine little Valerie Clarke,” said Mrs. Zeffer as Mary’s mother
arrived at the Zeffer home. “She’s been
attacked by someone.”
Mrs. Philips was very pale, and also seemed shaken.
“What is the matter, Mrs. Philips?” Kyle asked. “You seem unwell.”
“My daughter Mary and her boyfriend Pidney Breslow are
missing. I’m afraid it has something to
do with what happened to Valerie.”
“Oh, no! We’ve phoned
the sheriff already and he’s sending Deputy Harper from Belle City to
investigate,” Kyle said in a concerned tone.
“Do you know what happened?” asked Mrs. Zeffer.
Ray was sitting on the bed in Bobby’s room next to Valerie
who was already wearing the clothes Kyle had brought her. Both of them looked at the adults standing
just outside the bedroom doorway.
Valerie’s fear for what might’ve happened to Mary and Pid was
overwhelming. She leaned against Ray’s
shoulder and began to cry softly.
“It was the strangest thing.
The three of them were all in our basement, reading some old book. Then, suddenly there was a purple fog in the
house. It smelled so sweet it made me
sick to my stomach. It apparently
knocked me out. When I came to, I found
my daughter Amy and her brother Jason were both sleeping on the floor. They had been knocked out too.”
“And the kids were taken from your house?” Kyle looked alarmed and upset.
“Yes, all we found were their clothes in the basement. I have never seen anything so strange. Whoever took them must have stripped them
naked first.”
“Oh, you poor dear,” said Mrs. Zeffer, taking hold of Lady
Philips’ shaking hands and guiding her to a chair in Bobby’s room. “Sit here.
Let me get you some tea.”
“Was there any indication who might have done this terrible
thing?” asked Kyle.
“I… I don’t know,” Mrs. Philips said as Mrs. Zeffer bustled
out of the room to make tea. “We found
the empty clothes… and then you called asking me to come here and examine
Valerie.”
“You should’ve said something then,” Kyle said.
“I… I just felt numb.
I told Jason to look after Amy and came right here to see what I could
find out.”
“All right… um, Mrs. Philips… I called you over here to
examine my daughter Valerie. I was
worried someone might have… well, she was found naked in the alley,
unconscious.”
Lady Philips made a small strangling sound in her
throat. Valerie knew immediately what
she must have thought had happened to Mary.
“I’m okay, Daddy. I
know for a fact that nobody did anything like that to me.”
“Valerie, princess, you were unconscious. Somebody drugged you and stripped you
naked. We need to be certain what
happened.” Daddy Kyle was trying to be
comforting and soothing, but there was a cold, desperate edge to his voice that
actually scared Valerie. She looked at
Ray. Ray’s eyes were frightened too.
“Your dad is right, Val.
You need to be checked. Mrs.
Philips is an RN, a professional nurse.
She’ll be able to tell.”
“Okay, Ray,” said Valerie’s dad coolly, “You should go help
your mother in the kitchen. Deputy
Harper will be here soon.”
Ray reluctantly let go of Valerie and stood up. “You know, sir, that I would never hurt your
daughter.”
Kyle’s angry glare softened a bit. “I… I do know that, son. And believe me, I am grateful for the way you
rescued her and brought her somewhere safe.
I’m on edge right now. I don’t
know what was done or who did it. You
know what I mean?”
“Of course. If I were
in your shoes, I’d be afraid for my daughter too.”
Ray nodded resolutely.
Then he went out of the room.
“I will examine her in private, Mr. Clarke. I will be able to tell. I have treated rape victims before. I don’t have a kit with me, but I will know
if one needs to be used… Only…”
“What?” Kyle asked.
“After we know, I am going to need you and Deputy Harper to find Mary.” Valerie’s dad was grim-faced, but he nodded his agreement.
Valerie-squirrel, despite the almost endless supply of
squirrel energy provided by a fast-pumping squirrel heart, was panting and out
of breath as she stopped at the corner of Cecily Dettbarn’s porch roof. She needed to catch her breath, but she could
see Mazie Haire’s Gingerbread House on the other side of the Norwall water
tower, just across the street. Even
better, she hadn’t seen Skaggs the cat for at least two blocks.
The evil cat had nearly caught her as she ran along the
fence back at the Kellogg place. When he
had lunged at her, he missed, and he toppled into the concrete birdbath that
sat between the fence and Mrs. Kellogg’s big bay window on the west side of the
house. She hadn’t seen the cat since she
had left him behind there, sputtering cat-curses and spitting out old sparrow
feathers.
Valerie-squirrel had gone back up into the trees to travel
the rest of the way north on Whitten Avenue, and then from maple to maple along
the north side of main street.
Now, looking carefully all around for signs of danger and
lurking cats, she climbed down the trellis on the side of the Dettbarn
house. She then sniffed the air and
scampered quickly across the street to tall grass under the water tower.
“Boof! Boof! Boof!” barked Barky Bill from the end of his
chain behind Martin’s Bar and Grill.
“What does boof mean, stupid dog?” Valerie-squirrel thought
in the direction of the stupid dog.
“Well, it means boof,
or possibly bark in dog
language. How is it you don’t know that
already? You are a dog, aren’t you?”
Valerie-squirrel was stunned. “I thought the cat told me dogs can’t
speak. You’re Barky Bill, aren’t you?”
“I answer to that, yeah.
But also, Stupid Dog, and Ijit Dog, and Damned Dog… and some other
strange words that end in dog.”
“Skaggs the cat told me you couldn’t speak.”
“Yeah. The cat’s
right. Dumb dogs can’t speak.”
“But you’re talking to me now. What do you mean dogs can’t speak?”
“You are a dog, ain’t ya?
Dogs can talk to other dogs. We
do it by waggin’ tails and sniffin’ butts and stuff. You know about that, right?”
“I’m not a dog. I am
a girl, actually. Valerie Clarke. But I’ve been turned into a squirrel by black
magic.”
“Oh, yeah. You are a
squirrel! I can smell you from here. But not the eating kind of squirrel. I can smell that you are not a real
squirrel.”
“Do you smell the cat?
Skaggs? He was chasing me, trying
to kill me.”
“No. I hate the dumb
cat. I will kill him some day. I don’t smell him now… no.”
“Good. Promise you
won’t eat me if I go over to the Gingerbread House?”
“The witch’s house?
You don’t want to go there.”
“Yes, I do. And I
don’t want you to attack me when I try to get there.”
“Oh, I would never eat you.
You smell like the prettiest little
squirrel-girl that ever lived in this town.
I will protect you. I will boof
at the cat if he comes near. And one day
I will kill him. But I could never eat
you. Barky Bill is a good boy, yes, he
is.”
Valerie-squirrel was a little worried that Barky Bill might
not be completely sane as dogs go. She
didn’t know if she dared run past too close to the chained and perpetually
angry dog. So, giving him the widest possible
berth she could manage, she slipped under the water tower and down the alley
behind main street into the back yard of the Gingerbread House.
“Boof!
Boof! Boof-boof-boof-boof!” was how
Barky Bill ended their brief conversation.
The next day Valerie had a chance to hang out with Pidney
and Mary again, so she took it. She road
into town on the school bus after school with Danny Murphy. They didn’t actually talk about anything the
whole way. Anticipation is often better
than the real thing. And it wasn’t often
that Mary and Pid were both off directly after school. Pidney had no football practice that
afternoon, and Mary canceled whatever school meetings she had planned that day
in order to come back to Norwall with him after school. The four Pirates were supposed to meet in the
Library for Pirate business.
“There’s Mary and Pid,” said Danny pointing as he and Val
stepped off Milo’s school bus.
“Yeah, but who is that?” Valerie asked, pointing at a
mysterious cloaked figure standing behind the tree by the Library door. She was instantly reminded of the cloaked man
she had seen the day they got the Tiki idol.
“Hey, Pidney!” Danny shouted, “who is that near you behind
that tree?”
Pidney was holding the door of his step-dad’s old 70’s
Lincoln Mercury to help Mary get out.
Mary carried a tall stack of books.
They had driven home from the high school in Belle City together.
“What man? Where?” The figure moved out of sight behind the
large fluffy pine tree.
“Look behind the tree!” shouted Valerie.
Pid walked around to where he could see behind the
tree. He looked back a Valerie and Danny
and shrugged. “Nobody here that I can
see,” he said.
“You guys need to see what we found in the high school
library,” said Mary waving them to come towards the Library building.
Valerie looked at Danny.
He shrugged. They both walked
toward the Library.
“I found some old high school yearbooks in the library,”
said Mary. “We can use them to get an
idea what Captain Dettbarn used to look like.
He’s kinda hard to describe any other way.”
“And there’s a book about the ship, Mary Celeste. It tells about the old ghost ship, not the
Captain’s ship, but I still think it is important,” said Pidney.
Valerie and Danny walked across the street from the bus stop
to join the two high school kids.
“Here’s the 1962 Belle City Bronco yearbook,” said Mary,
handing the black-bound thin book of pictures to Valerie. “The Captain is in the Junior Class in that
one. He had a beard then, just like the
one he had on his face the last time I saw him.”
Valerie opened to the page of Junior portraits and ran her
finger over the C’s and D’s until she got to Dettbarn. He was kind of a dumpy fat boy even then,
with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a derfy smile that showed his crooked
teeth. He had a rather ratty looking
beard, which was perfect for a rodent-like face, that, while it didn’t look
like a rat, it did look an awful lot like the face of a woodchuck, or some kind
of short-toothed beaver.
“He’s kinda funny looking,” Val said to herself, but loud
enough for all to hear.
“Now, see here! I
take exception to that remark!” said a cloaked and hatted figure stepping out
of the shadow of the evergreen tree by the door.
“Who…?” croaked Mary, leaping away from the figure and
towards Pidney.
“Help me…!” squawked Danny as he awkwardly leaped into
Pidney’s arms, the football muscles catching hold of the smaller boy easily.
“Don’t you get mad at me!” said Valerie hotly. “It is not like I was talking to you… whoever
you are!” She lunged toward the
stranger, grabbing his yachting cap and yanking it off his head.
But where the head was supposed to be… nothing at all there
except a pair of thick bifocal glasses hanging in the air like they were
weightless in outer space.
Valerie looked at the glasses, and then down at the yearbook
picture still in her other hand. Yes, it
was an updated version of the same style of thick glasses.
“Erm… Captain Dettbarn. It’s you!”
“Uncle Noah?” Mary said.
“What happened to your head?”
“Oh, um… it’s still there, Mary dear. Head-hunters didn’t eat it or anything. I am just the victim of a curse. A curse that makes my body completely
invisible.” He removed the cloak to
reveal a free-standing pair of pants, a short-sleeved red-and-white-striped
shirt, and empty neckerchief, and floating white gloves that didn’t seem to be
properly attached to the invisible dumpy body wearing the sailor’s clothes.
“Er, uh… sir?” asked Pidney, “What is all this purple smoke
coming out from behind the pine tree? It
has a funky smell, like burning sugar or something.”
“Well, I hate to say it, but that is an indicator that the
witchdoctor himself is watching us at the moment from somewhere not too far
away. That purple smoke always seems to
come around right before some evil magic happens.”
“Oh, that’s not good.
Maybe we better go inside the library before anything bad can
happen.” Mary was looking around the
street for signs of the evil witchdoctor.
Pidney put Danny on the ground and both boys headed up the
Public Library steps.
“Um, uh… Pretty girl, can I have my hat back. I want to go in the library in disguise. No sense in scaring the librarian.”
Valerie frowned at the invisible man as she handed him back
the hat and the disembodied gloves placed it back on top of his invisible
rodent-like head.
“Let’s go inside the Library,” said Mary. “We have things to talk about and questions
to ask… Lots and lots of questions to ask.”
The four young Pirates took the invisible Captain into the
Norwall Public Library, into the reading room where all the encyclopedias were
kept, along with the piano used for community sing-a-longs after town council meetings. They all took seats around one of the round
tables used for meetings and, on rare occasions, students doing homework.
Valerie kept staring at the empty space behind the floating
glasses where the Captain’s face actually had to be. If she squinted and stared real hard, she
could almost picture a face there, though an older face than the yearbook photo
Mary had shown her.
“Uncle Noah,” Mary said, “You have to answer some questions
for us now.”
“Well, um, heh-heh… what exactly do you children want to
know?”
“How did you become invisible?” Danny demanded. “And can you teach me how to do it too?”
“Why do you want to be invisible?” Valerie asked Danny,
while poking him in the ribs with a finger.
“Yeah… well… you see, I could go into the girls’ locker room
at school, and…”
“Okay, not that question!” insisted Mary. Pidney beside her was a bright crimson color
in the face. “Tell us, Uncle Noah, why
you became invisible.”
“Well, that was not a matter of choice. Did you read the log book I sent you?”
“Not all of it, no…”
Mary looked at the empty air behind the glasses with a very skeptical
expression.
“Well, you see, there was this witchdoctor… also called a
juju man… His name was Mangkukulan… He put a curse on me, and made me invisible.”
“Why did he put a curse on you?” Pidney asked.
“Well, uh… you really should read about it in the log book
first. It tells the story better than I
can here and now… um, before you read it.”
“Just summarize for us,” suggested Mary.
“Well, um… the truth of the matter is… um, I am in need of
a… well, a pure sort of… a girl who…”
“What, Uncle Noah?”
“I need a virgin.”
“Cool,” said Danny.
“What do you need one of those for?”
“Um, well, I… Mangkukulan needs a virgin to give to the
mayap mapali Matuling Lupa.”
“The what?” asked Valerie.
“That wouldn’t be a volcano or something would it?” asked
Danny.
“Well, sorta, kinda… the god of volcanoes.”
“And why does Man-coo-coo-man think he needs to get a virgin
from you, Captain?” asked Pidney, frowning.
“Because I… well… I sorta… um… spoiled the one he had.”
“You what? And what
virgin were you planning to give him in return?” asked Mary, almost loudly and
angrily enough to be heard by the librarian in the next room.
“I hate to ask this, Mary dear… but… well… are you still a
virgin?”
“What? How can you
ask a question like that?” Mary roared.
The librarian, Val’s Aunt Alice, looked into the room just
as the Captain hastily pulled the hood of the cloak over his head.
“Is everything all right, Mary dear?” the librarian asked.
“Oh, ah… we are fine.
We are just having a friendly little argument.”
“I see…” Aunt Alice frowned at the cloaked and hooded figure
slumped down in the chair across the table from Mary. “Call me if you need anything, girls. I have a handy phone on the desk, and there’s
a new deputy sheriff in town. We have a
deputy who actually lives in Norwall now.”
“That’s good to know, Ms. Stewart. Thank you so much.” Mary smiled grimly at the cloaked Captain.
Captain Dettbarn seemed meek and chastened after that.
“You can’t really believe you can take a girl from your home
town and give her to a witch doctor to throw into a volcano?” Mary said quietly through gritted teeth.
“No, I suppose not.
But I still might need to know… um, for magical reasons. I do have to solve the problem somehow.”
“You don’t have the right to ask that question,” said
Pidney, simmering with anger. “You are
talking about a young lady’s honor. She
loses something no matter what the answer is.”
“How can she be losing something?” asked Danny, looking thoroughly
confused.
“She loses her right to privacy. And besides, if she answers that she is one,
the creepy old Captain here may kidnap her and throw her into a volcano.”
“Oh,” Danny said.
“I really need to know, Mary, honey… because the witch
doctor’s magic follows me everywhere.
And I am afraid he will try to take you if you are. After all, you are the daughter of my good
friend Dagwood Philips, and the witch doctor will know that you are important
to me.”
“And what will you do if it turns out that I am one?”
“Well, I can’t do anything about that… but your boyfriend
here could.”
“Captain!” Mary was
angry again, and Pidney was a glowing red with embarrassment again.
“Is Valerie in any danger?” asked Danny, suddenly panicky.
“This pretty little one?” the Captain asked.
“Of course,” said Mary.
“Is she in danger too?”
“Well, I don’t know.
She’s obviously not as important to me as you are, Mary… but she’s even
more obviously a virgin.”
“Well, that’s disturbing,” said Valerie. “Because I have my doubts that Pidney can
solve the problem for both of us.” The
notion tickled her insides. The idea was
not without its good side. But, still,
it made her angry that they all made that particular assumption about her.
“I, um… I better be going now,” said the Captain. “I have put you girls in enough danger
already. But… I promise, I will find a
solution to this problem. You, however,
need to read the log book. If I have any
chance of finding the right magical spell to save us all, I’m going to need
your help.”
With that, there was a sudden burst of light from flash
powder, and the Captain was gone. His
cloak remained. As did his clothing and
his yachting cap.
“Oh, my gawd!” swore Pidney.
“What will we do now?”
“I think we have to do some serious reading,” said
Mary. “And we may have to think about
some other things that kids like us probably shouldn’t be doing either.”
Mom loved to cook.
She could do wondrous things with a casserole. In fact, her Tater Tot casserole was such a
hit that it had spread to households all over the county and people from as far
away as Illinois were writing her letters to get the secret recipe. It wasn’t such a secret. Browned and loose ground beef, Campbell’s
Cream of Mushroom soup, Tater Tots from Ore-Ida, and real cheddar cheese went
into her magical casserole. But friends
of friends and family were practically rabid about wanting to get their hands
on the special secret recipe. They
didn’t realize until she told them that the recipe came from the label of a Campbell’s
soup can to begin with.
So the house smelled wonderful because Uncle Dash and
Valerie’s cousin Stacey were coming to dinner.
Stacy was college age now, and Valerie looked up to
her. She was smart and independent, and
she knew how to dress up like a fashion model whenever there was an excuse to
do it. As Val and Stacy set the table,
the two had a brief moment or two to catch up on cousin stuff.
“I hear the Pirates are re-forming,” Stacy said. “And they tell me you are going to be one of
them?”
“Well, yeah… so?”
“Don’t bring it up tonight.
Daddy will get mad. I mean, more
mad than he already is.”
“Uncle Dash is mad?” Valerie was slightly taken by surprise. Uncle Dash was the kind of guy who was always laughing, always joking. Valerie had relied on his sense of humor and mature wisdom her whole life long. She believed he was even wiser than Daddy Kyle. He was a farmer. He had the wisdom of the Earth.
“Your Uncle Dash is mad at me,” said Stacey.
“Why would he be mad at you?”
“I told him a secret today.
One I have to tell everybody sooner or later.”
“Really? Tell me.”
Stacey was obviously biting her own lower lip for some
reason. Why would she do that? It didn’t really make sense to Val. There were tears in her cousin’s eyes.
“I mean it, Stacey. I love you. You cantell me.”
“Well, I…” Before
Stacey could spill it, the adults came into the room.
“Really,” Uncle Dash said with a frown on his face, “We
could sell that sixty acres southwest of town and the big pasture along the
Iowa River. That would give us enough
money to at least bargain for more time… maybe another growing season.”
“But, Dash, that’s all your land. This is my debt. I can’t let you sacrifice from your share. It should be some of my land.” Kyle sat down at the head of the table with a defeated-seeming kerplunk. Valerie knew her dad’s basic onomatopoeias, the sound-words of his soul, and kerplunk was definitely not a good one.
“But it is some of the less-valuable land I am offering to
sell. All of your land is better, and we
should be trying to keep all of it.”
“Yeah, well… I still don’t want you to make sacrifices to
pay my debts.”
Uncle Dash took the seat next to Daddy Kyle where Valerie
would’ve sat if they didn’t have company.
Mom came in carrying a big casserole dish full of
steaming-hot tater-tot casserole. She
proudly set her work of art down in the middle of the dining room table. “Stacey, will you help me get the peas and
the mashed potatoes?” Mom said. Then she
dashed back out to the kitchen.
“You’re my brother, Kyle.
You have to let me help you. And
it is all family land. We have to work
together, even though we divided the farms when Dad died. It is all one large farm, really.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
That conversation died too as Mom and Stacey brought the
rest of the supper to the table, and Mom insisted that everybody sit down and
eat. Valerie said Grace and food was
passed all around. Everybody at the
table had a farmer’s healthy appetite, and soon mouths were too full to
talk. Conversation was suspended for the
more important thing… at least until all were stuffed and satisfied.
“It’s a shame that Patricia couldn’t come with you this
evening, Dash,” Mom said.
“She was sorry to miss it, but she really wasn’t feeling
well. She needed to take some medicine
and go to bed. Which reminds me… Stacey has some new she needs to share with
everyone in the family.”
Stacey looked at her father with a distinctly angry expression.
“Well, you may as well tell them.”
Stacey’s glare at Uncle Dash made Valerie suddenly worried for
her cousin. What could be wrong?
“I’m… not going to college anymore.”
“Oh, Stacey!” Mom said.
“Why not?”
“Well, I’m…”
The pause was unbearable.
“I’m pregnant.”
Stunned silence followed.
Uncle Dash’s face was so sad it almost made Valerie burst into tears. Stacey did cry, and that was almost worse.
“How, I mean… who?”
Daddy didn’t know what to say. He
was kinda tongue-tied, right up until the answer hit him square in the
memory. “Not the Toad! Oh, Stacey!”
“His name is Brom, not Toad.
I don’t know why everyone needs to call him that.” Stacey’s tears were replaced almost instantly
with fury.
“It’s the way he drives.
He reminds everyone of Toad in the Disney movie Wind in the Willows. You
know how recklessly he roars about in that yellow Ford Mustang of his.” Uncle Dash was very direct and
soft-spoken. It was an argument Valerie
had overheard before.
“He also has a big mouth like a frog,” said Valerie timidly.
“Oh, Val…” Stacey
shot her a wounded look. Whose side was
she supposed to be on, anyway?
“Well, I have to say, it isn’t such a big surprise. You have been in love with that boy for a
while now, haven’t you, Stacey?” Daddy Kyle said.
“Yes, I love him with all of my heart.”
“Is he going to do the right thing by you?” Mom asked.
“He’s willing to marry me… if Daddy doesn’t forbid it.”
“Dash, you can’t forbid it,” said Daddy Kyle. “That’s no way to start off a life… for
Stacey or Brom either one.”
“You would take their side, wouldn’t you,” Uncle Dash said
harshly. “You know, as my little brother,
it wouldn’t kill you to take my side once in a while.”
Daddy stared straight at his plate. His mouth was a tense and very straight
line. “Stacey would be good for
Brom. As Mrs. Brown, she’s bound to
settle him down at least a little bit.
Like the way Julie settled me down.
You remember what a wild kid I was, right?”
“We haven’t decided how it’s going to be, yet,” Dash said
calmly. “There is a lot to be decided
yet.”
“You really can’t decide for her, you know,” Daddy Kyle
said.
Uncle Dash got angry at that. “How would you feel if it were Valerie in
this situation? Maybe with somebody like
that Murphy kid… or Richard Martin’s little rag boy?”
“It’s not the same.
Valerie is still too young to be a mother.”
“And Stacey isn’t?”
“Kyle, Dash, please!” said Mom, “don’t discuss this in front
of the girls. They can hear everything,
and I don’t think it helps anybody to hear you two argue about this.”
It was quiet for a few moments, but a very tense quiet.
“Julie is right, Dash,” Daddy said. “Why don’t you and I go for a drive in your
pickup, and the girls can spend some time together here.”
“We have a lot to talk about, Kyle. But it won’t do a lick of good if you don’t
listen more than you talk.”
The two brothers glared at each other. But they were family, and too much alike not
to smash heads together like a couple of rams in springtime. So they both went out and got in Uncle Dash’s
Chevy pickup and drove on into town.
“Headed for Martin’s Bar and Grill,” said Stacey, blowing a
stray hair out of her eyes to show disgust.
Valerie wordlessly snaked her thin young arms around her
beloved cousin and gave her a distressed and tearful squeeze.
“It will all get worked out for the best,” said Mom in her
most comforting voice.
“I hope so,” Stacey said.
Then after a long pause she repeated, “I hope so.”
The meeting at the library hadn’t happened on the day
originally planned because Alice Stewart sometimes had to close the library
when things came up. Her daughter,
Alicia, was a single mother raising a child alone, and some days the library
simply had to be closed when the baby developed a mysterious cough and had to
go see a doctor in Belle City. All of
this was explained to Mary, Pidney, and Valerie, and apologized for, by Val’s
Aunt Alice as they arrived at the finally open Norwall library on Main
Street. The library was a thing of some
pride to several Norwall families, the Clarkes and the Stewarts and the Duffys
prominent among them because they had raised the money and remodeled the old
butcher shop and bought all the books.
The place was a literary miracle for the small town, as most towns of
that size did not have anything equivalent to it.
“I swear to you, Valerie,” said Aunt Alice, “I will make it
up to you for having to put you off for a couple of days. I will certainly help you three find whatever
important research you are looking for.”
“I think we are looking for Tiki idols, Auntie,” said
Valerie.
“Show her, Pid,” said Mary.
Pidney sat the backpack on the librarian’s desk and opened
it. He pulled out Valerie’s ugly little
wooden man and sat it down on the desk.
“I know a book that might help,” said Aunt Alice. She went directly to a shelf that contained
the 200’s from the Dewey Decimal system and pulled down a large old book called
Treasury of Maori Folklore by A.W. Reed. It had “Tiki” listed on a number of pages in
the index. So Aunt Alice handed the book
to Pidney who soon found a picture that somewhat resembled the ugly little wooden
man.
“It says on this page that Tiki was the very first man,”
read Pidney. “Apparently he found the
first woman in a pond… somebody called Marikoriko… they became the first
parents of all men.”
“Well, he’s found in most Polynesian cultures as a large
piece of wood carved in the shape of a man.
And, um…” Pidney’s voice trailed
away.
“What, Pid?” asked Mary.
“Well, um…”
“Let me see,” said Valerie.
She grabbed the book out of Pidney’s hands. The picture of a Tiki idol in the book seemed
to wink at her as she tracked down the page to find where Pid was reading. “Oh, here it is…” Val began to giggle almost uncontrollably.
“What?” said Mary.
“Read it aloud.”
“In New Zealand, some Maoris contend that Tiki represents
the penis of Tane, the god of forests and birds. He is strongly associated with the
procreative act.” She read that and then
broke down into a laughing fit. One of
those painfully embarrassing laughing fits that happen when something is entirely
too personal to talk about with the boy you have a crush on and you can’t help
but nervously laugh.
Pidney, red as the ripe tomatoes in Mrs. Clarke’s vegetable
garden, wandered over towards the encyclopedias and began looking at the volumes
of Collier’s.
“What else does it say?” asked Mary.
“It says that in the Cook Islands, at Rarotonga, Tiki is
credited with being the guardian of Avaiki the Underworld. Magical idols of Tiki can be given
offerings to smooth the way for those who fear they are dying. The idol maker is said to have magical powers
and can in some cases bring the idol to life as a servant by chanting and
touching the painted tattoos on the idol’s body in the correct order.”
“You’re kidding,” Mary said.
“No, really! It says it
right here.” Valerie pointed to the
disputed passage and Mary read it for herself.
“Well, it does say that.
But it doesn’t have any mention of the proper chant to use or anything.”
“This ugly thing does appear to have painted tattoos,” said
Aunt Alice, looking at the idol’s protruding buttocks and arched back. “Swirly patterns with little spots in the
center like bull’s-eyes.”
“What was Captain Dettbarn’s ship called?” Pidney asked.
Mary looked over at the Polack who was thumbing through the
“M” volume of Colliers’ Encyclopedia.
“The Reefer Mary Celeste. Why,
Pid?”
“This encyclopedia says it was a ghost ship.”
“A ghost ship?” gasped Valerie.
“Good heavens!” swore Aunt Alice.
“What does it say?” asked Mary in a skeptical voice.
“It says the Mary Celeste was an American merchant
brigantine that was found sailing near the Azores on December 4th,
1872. No crew was aboard. A lifeboat was missing. And they never found any trace of the
crew. Not the Captain, either. Captain Briggs, his wife, and their infant
daughter, Sofia simply vanished at sea and were never heard from again.”
“Pidney, that was a sailing ship more than a hundred years
ago. That was the Brigantine Mary
Celeste. Not the Reefer Mary Celeste. Captain
Dettbarn’s ship was a modern cargo ship with refrigerated cargo capacity. They are not the same ship.”
“Oh,” Pidney said softly.
He closed the book.
The ladies all got a chuckle at Pidney’s expense. But Valerie noticed that Pidney was still
uneasy about the spooky connection. She
thought it was something that might later prove to be significant after all. At least to Pid.
Canto Fourteen – Log
Book of the Reefer Mary Celeste
Valerie opened the book to the page Mary had indicated with
the red paper book mark.
“That’s the spot where the story seems to begin,” said
Mary. “The part before that ‘s all cargo
manifests and navigational data.”
“Okay,” said Valerie, “Then here goes;” She began to read
aloud.
We were sailing southwest from the
Republic of Palau in Micronesia where we had taken on supplies at the big
island of Koror. It was September of
1979. The seas were calm, although the
first mate was tracking a big storm that could potentially turn in our
way. We were supposed to deliver the
refrigerated meat and vegetables in our hold to Pinoy Proud Food Markets of Manila by the beginning of
October. There were supposed to be
bananas too, but we had made the mistake of putting the bananas in the freezer
and frozen bananas become just the right shade of poo-poo color to make them
unmarketable. So the crew had been eating
a lot of frozen banana pops. Doc
Johnson, whom we call Doc because he knows a lot of useful stuff was worried
that we might inadvertently cause hyperkalemic death among the crew, which
worried me a bit, but since no one else seemed to know what the heck
hyperkalemic meant, we were okay with eating that many frozen bananas, but I
was later led to wonder if, in fact, the whole hyperkalemic death thing might
be the source of hallucinations.
It was a valid worry as it turned
out. Because that September, in the
early morning on Monday, September 10th, Kooky Smith first saw the
mermaid.
“Wow!” said Danny Murphy, “a real mermaid?”
“Well, that’s the debate, isn’t it?” said Mary. “The story starts to get stranger and
stranger. And he even says it might be
because they ate too many frozen bananas.”
“Does it say what the mermaid looked like?” asked Pidney.
Valerie looked carefully at the block of text ahead written
in Captain Dettbarn’s goofy wrong-way-leaning handwritten letters.
“Um, yes, let me read that part.”
Chinooki was a naked woman from the
waist upwards, with comely breasts and long pinkish-white hair. Her skin was a kind of fish-belly-looking
silver and her dark red eyes looked brown most of the time, but glowed like
fire at night.
“Gonga!” said Danny, a word he often used to express both
surprise and admiration at the same moment.
Pidney, however, was blushing a cherry red that covered most
of his crew-cut head and neck.
“Chinooki?” asked Mary, “What kind of name is that?”
“It sounds kinda fishy,” said Valerie. “Like Chinook salmon.”
“Or maybe Chinese,” suggested Danny.
They all turned and looked at Danny.
“What? They call
Chinese people Chinks, right?”
“Polite people don’t,” suggested Mary.
“Read more about what happened,” Pidney asked Valerie.
Kooky said that he saw her the
first time off the starboard rail, swimming with her head and shoulders raised
out of the water. He thought she was
some kind of shipwreck survivor, but when he hailed her to offer help, she
waved at him and smiled, then dove and showed him her fish tail.
Of course, no one believed
him. Sea stories like that get told all
the time, and Kooky liked to drink… sometimes even on duty. We all knew he was quite capable of seeing
things that weren’t real.
But the second time she was spotted,
Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones were also on deck, and when Kooky shouted they
immediately came to the rail and saw her too.
Now, Bob was like Kooky in a lot of ways, so we woulda thought he was
making it up too, or just backing Kooky’s kooky story for yucks and
kippers. But Chuck was well known for
both sobriety and honesty. He was the
man I trusted to keep the ship’s books because I knew he’d never cheat any of
us out of a single penny we were due.
And he’d sooner cut off his own hand than tell a lie.
“We have ta catch her and bring her
aboard,” Kooky said.
“You gonna eat her?” Bob asked.
“Are you daft, man? I don’t want to hurt her,” Kooky said. “She’s beautiful. I want to catch her and keep her.”
“Be wary,” Chuck said. “If she’s not a natural creature, then she’s
some kind of unnatural menace sort of thing.
Bringing her on board this ship might be the last thing we ever do in
this life.”
“Well, I for one, would very much
like to see this real mermaid,” I said.
I would later come to regret those words more than any I had ever said
before in my whole life.
The four young Pirates all looked at each other, and all
four of them shivered at once. Valerie
could certainly read out loud in a way that would scare you out of your under
pants.
Mom had a point about Conrad Doble. Every single time Valerie was in the same
room with him, he looked at her with a look that meant… Well, it seemed that way. She made very sure that she was never alone
in the same room with him. She almost
wished some times that Mary Philips wasn’t so accepting and was willing to just
kick the old slime-bucket out of the Norwall Pirates. But he was a link to the old Pirates. Valerie’s cousin Brent had led a group of
Pirates that included Milt Morgan, Andrew Doble, Eddie Campbell, Todd Niland,
and King Leer when he was the littlest pimple-head in the gang. Doble even claimed there were times when the
Cobble Sisters, Sherry and Shelly, were considered Pirates too, but it was
difficult to believe Conrad Doble because he always added random x-rated
details to the stories whenever girls were talked about. But this particular time, when Valerie had
been invited to the Philips’ house to discuss the Pirates, Doble was not even
invited.
In the basement of Mary’s house, Dagwood Philips, her
father, had built a comfortable family room.
It was heated by a Franklin stove that Dag had put in with his own
carpentry skills and ingenuity.
“This is a really nice room,” Valerie said.
“Thanks,” said Mary.
“Pidney’s mother Julianna calls it our make-out room. She says it’s where Pidney and I kiss so much
we give each other kissing disease.”
Valerie was shocked.
“You kiss a lot here?”
“No,” said Pidney.
“My mother is always joking about it.
She says that if I know a girl as pretty and smart as Mary, then why am
I not already proposing? Why am I
always saying that she is just my best friend?
She is my best friend.”
That was a relief to Valerie whose inner little
jealousy-fairy had suddenly been shouting in the back of her mind somewhere
until Pidney had said that one perfect thing.
“Your Mom has a thing about mononucleosis, too,” said Mary.
“That’s true. She had
it when she was a teenager in Poland.
She claimed she got it from kissing a boy too much.”
“Does that kind of joking bother your Dad?” Valerie asked.
“Of course not,” said Pidney. “When Mom tells the story, it was Dad that
gave her the disease. They both had it
at the same time.”
Valerie laughed, even though it was not funny.
Danny Murphy plumped down the big leather-bound album that he
had brought to the meeting. It stirred
up clouds of dust from the second-hand coffee table where he plumped it. It was fat with added pages, being one of
those loose-leaf albums held together by a decorative cord, one you could add
extra pages to.
“What’s that?” asked Valerie.
“That is the Sacred
Big Book of Pirate Secrets,” said Mary.
“I asked Danny to keep it for us until we needed it to look at.”
“What kind of secrets?” asked Pidney.
“The secret kind,” said Danny Murphy. “All of the Pirates wrote down things they
thought were important, wise, or… maybe wicked.”
“Did you read some of it?” Mary asked.
“I did,” said Danny.
“In several places in there, different Pirates wrote that seeing Sherry
Cobble naked was a very good thing.”
Pidney was suddenly blushing furiously. “Sherry Cobble? Isn’t that Brent’s…?”
“His ex-wife,” said Valerie.
“She was a nudist even back then.
I guess they all saw her when…”
“Yeah,” said Mary.
“About that. I got that book from
my brother Branch. Not everything in
there is necessarily put there by the original Pirates. My brother likes to tell funny stories.”
“He wrote down all the Pirate stories, didn’t he?” asked
Danny.
“Yes, he has a very big imagination.”
“Still,” said Danny, “it is written in different
handwritings. And I think Brent Clarke
signed his name to one of the naked-Sherry comments. And there’s a lot of other dumb stuff and
cool stuff in there as well.”
“Anything in there about Tiki idols and talking cats?” asked
Valerie with a laugh.
“Not yet,” answered Danny.
“I think that’s gonna be for us to write.”
“Is Ray coming today?” asked Pidney.
“He said he couldn’t.
It’s just the four of us,” said Mary.
“But we have more than just this silly thing to look at. Here’s the log book we talked about.”
She plumped the leather-bound volume down on the table next
to the Pirate book. It had an anchor
symbol embossed in gold on the front cover.
And the title, Log of the Reefer
Mary Celeste.
“Wowsers!” said Danny.
“Can we read it now?”
“I thought Valerie and I might read parts of it out loud,” said Mary. “There are parts of this that just beg to be read out loud. And Valerie’s Aunt is a librarian after all.”
Catch a Falling Star 