Brass Monkeys

by Terry Caszatt

  “See, Mingley was so dense in the belfry,” Teddy burst out, “that she and her dumb Stormie friends wrecked the lenses before they knew what they were doing. Then she was forced to construct all those big lights at the top. Then she had to cut down the trees in order to run the generators that make power for the lights. Dumb move after dumb move!”

  We drove over the top of a small rise and the ruins were clearly visible now. We couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred yards away.

  “They say it was a beautiful building before the war,” said Lilah. Her voice had dropped to a hushed tone. “It was mostly glass, stone, and wood. And it wasn’t big either. Adjana wanted a school that was small enough to make you feel at home.”

  We passed by the flattened ruins of the school building and came alongside the band shell. We were only a few yards from the steps leading up into the shell when I spotted the piano sitting on the stage. One leg was broken, but there it was, a black grand piano with the lid up.

  “Boy,” whispered Teddy in awe, “I don’t think anyone has played that in a long time, but I’ll bet you’d like to.” He eyed Lilah after he signed this.

  “Would I ever,” said Lilah. Her even-toned voice trembled ever so slightly.

  I stared at Lilah. She was so pretty, sitting there with the light glancing off her dark hair. But I still wondered what music could possibly mean to her, if she couldn’t hear?

  “So you play the piano?” I began hesitantly.

  Lilah nodded. “I learned to play long before I lost most of my hearing,” she said. “I still have some hearing in my right ear, but now I mostly hear music in my mind, my memory of it. But it works really well for me.”

  “Lilah was the best music teacher our school ever had,” said Teddy proudly, speaking and signing. “She was fantastic. She could tell simply by a student’s body language whether they were playing sharp or flat or too fast or too slow.”

  Lilah smiled. “I made mistakes, but I’d developed a kind of sixth sense.”

  “Mingley tried to get her fired,” Teddy went. “But the townspeople wouldn’t allow it. Mingley actually brought Fundabore in for a while, but the kids made such a fuss the school board had to let him go. So we never got too much of the “March of the Midnight Scholars,” just the incense and the rotten classes.”

  “But that was enough,” added Lilah. She was staring hard at the piano as we passed by. Abruptly she turned and faced us. “I just remembered something Webster told us. He said McGinty liked to play the piano.”

  “Jeezo-peezo,” said Teddy, “you’re right!” His eyes grew large. “I knew he was out here. I knew it. And Jack is going to be so sorry he didn’t stick with us.”

  Teddy pulled to a stop near the edge of the stage and cut the engine. We sat there for a few seconds just peering around.

  Teddy snuffed nervously, then spoke and signed, “I think it’s a little too—”

  “Sshhh!” hissed Lilah.

  “Quiet,” Teddy whispered.

  “I’m getting out,” I said.

  I opened the van door and picked up the trumpet I had stored under the front seat, then jumped out. Lilah and Teddy joined me, and we headed cautiously for the steps of the stage.

  “There’s something weird in the air,” said Teddy. He signed slowly and whispered in an exaggerated way.

  “Maybe your voice?” snapped Lilah.

  The hair on my neck prickled. This was the moment for which I had come so far and risked so much. I reached inside my tunic and touched Brass Monkeys. I tried to imagine how excited McGinty would be when I handed the book to him. I just wished Jack were with us.

  “Maybe we should call out McGinty’s name?” I said, tensely. “That way if he’s close …?”

  Teddy signed this, but Lilah had read my lips and was already speaking right over it. “Good idea,” she said in a low voice. “Go ahead.”

  They stopped and looked at me expectantly.

  “Right now?” I asked.

  The tension must have been too great for Teddy, because he suddenly blatted out in a hoarse and fearful voice, “McGinty!”

  Lilah saw his mouth yaw open and hissed at him, “Teddy, not you!” She turned to me. “Billy, you. You have the book.”

  I cleared my throat. “McGinty!” My voice sounded tinny in the desert air.

  “You guys call too,” I said. “I sound stupid.”

  They started for the far side of the band shell, Teddy calling out “McGinty!” every few feet. Now Lilah raised her even-toned voice and joined in.

  I climbed the steps of the stage. “McGinty!” I yelled, my voice suddenly magnified by the shell. For a moment I just stood on the front part of the stage and looked out at the ruined school building. I wondered what it must have been like all those years ago, when Adjana and her teachers had taught there. What kind of music had they played?

  On a sudden impulse, I raised my trumpet and blew a soft chromatic scale—low C up to middle C and back down again. It sounded great, just round and golden, and I knew it was caused by the shell. Teddy heard me, and he and Lilah popped into view below the lip of the stage. They grinned and waved at me.

  “McGinty!” I called out. “I’m here!”

  Suddenly something crazy rushed over me. Foolishly I raised the trumpet again, and this time I blew out a few bars of “Malagueña.” Man, I was rocking. I could have played a solo with the Boston Pops right at that moment. The next thing I knew, Lilah and Teddy were jumping up and down and pointing like crazy.

  When I turned and looked, my heart started pounding like a hammer. A figure was just leaping off the far side of the stage. The person moved so quickly that I didn’t get a good look at him, but he appeared to be fairly short and was wearing some kind of colorful shirt and shorts, along with a strange, four-cornered hat.

  I ran frantically along the stage. Near the edge I skidded to a stop and held the book over my head. “McGinty!” I screeched. “I have your book! I’m here!”

  The man paused and looked back. Then, very deliberately, he turned and ran into the desert.

  24

  the wild bunch in fateful battle

  I groaned, the sound coming out of the deepest part of me. I lowered the book and watched him disappear into the sandy hills.

  A feeling of hopelessness flooded over me. I felt like sitting down and bawling. What had gone wrong? Why had he run away like that?

  Panting and out of breath, Teddy and Lilah joined me.

  “Was it him?” cried Lilah. “We couldn’t see him clearly.”

  I nodded. “Had to be. He must have been here all along, but then he ran.”

  “We kept yelling his name,” said Teddy, “but he wouldn’t stop.”

  I felt sick. “Maybe I scared him when I started playing the trumpet.”

  Lilah read my lips and was already shaking her head. “No, absolutely not,” she said firmly. “He acted like he didn’t want to see anyone, period.”

  “Where the heck was he hiding anyway?” I wanted to know.

  “I think behind the piano,” said Lilah.

  I glanced over at the grand piano and saw a piece of paper on the music rack. I walked over and picked it up. It was a piece from a spiral notebook, and on the corner of it someone had sketched a picture of a unicorn. Riding on its back was a boy and a girl.

  “What is it?” Lilah asked as she and Teddy joined me.

  “It’s a drawing. I wonder if McGinty drew it.” I held out the paper.

  “Hey, a unicorn,” said Teddy, brightening. “I used to collect them.”

  “Maybe McGinty is trying to tell us something,” I ventured.

  “Oh, yipes,” said Teddy softly.

  I glanced up, expecting to find out what the drawing meant, but instead Teddy was staring out over the desert.

  “Somebody’s coming,” he said.

  I turned and saw the clouds of dust in the distance. Lilah knew immediately what they were.

  “Stormie trucks,�
� she burst out. “Coming this way.”

  We fell into a terrible panic. Teddy bolted behind the piano, evidently thinking he could hide there. Lilah grabbed him and we scurried down the stage steps.

  Lilah and I made it down, but Teddy got his feet tangled and fell heavily.

  Lilah and I stopped to help him up, but he lunged to his feet and went galloping off toward the van. When we got into the van, he was already at the wheel, pumping the gas pedal. He turned the key, but the engine wouldn’t start.

  “You flooded it!” yelled Lilah.

  Teddy looked amazed. “I think I flooded it,” he said.

  Lilah cried out something that made no sense to me, but I knew what she meant: it was too late to run. Two trucks filled with Stormies were bouncing straight toward us. They were so close I could see the grill on the lead truck.

  Lilah pulled out the test gun and thrust it at me.

  “Take it! You still have a chance!”

  “No way,” I said. “We’re in this together.” I started to repeat it with lip motions, but she cut right over me.

  “Not anymore,” she said. Her dark eyes were fierce. “You have the book?”

  “Inside my tunic.” I patted it to be sure.

  Teddy, who had been searching for a weapon under the seat, came out with a map pointer, a little wooden thing with a metal tip.

  The big trucks rumbled to a stop and the drivers killed the engines. My eyes were bugging out as I watched the hulking Stormies jump down.

  “You guys run for it,” Teddy cried. “I’m going to charge ‘em!”

  “Teddy, no!” Lilah tried to grab his arm, but he shook it off.

  “Sometimes in life, even though you’re scared,” he said, “you have to take a stand.” He drew a shaky breath. “For me, this is one of those times.”

  Both Lilah and I cried out, trying to hold him back, but it didn’t help. Without another word he jumped out of the van, then broke into a stiff-legged run toward the oncoming Stormies. They stopped, obviously surprised at the sight of a lone man charging them. Then, calmly they leveled their eraser guns, and I heard the terrifying thwwut thwuut as the first round came flying toward Teddy.

  He ran for several yards before he was hit. He cried out and fell hard, then rolled over and began clutching his leg.

  “No, no, Teddy,” I heard Lilah moan. I watched in horror as the Stormies prodded him with their weapons, then turned and looked at the van.

  Lilah gave me a desperate look. “Stay out of sight,” she hissed. “I’ll lead them off, then you run for it.” She gripped my arm fiercely. “Get the book to McGinty!”

  “Lilah, don’t do this,” I cried. “They’ll shoot you!”

  She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Find him,” she said. Without another word, she jumped down from the truck and began running across the sand. For a few fleeting seconds the plan seemed to work.

  The Stormies let out a yell and raced after her. Lilah ran hard and she was fast, too. I jumped out of the van, but instead of running I stood there watching, frozen with fear. Two of the faster Stormies overtook Lilah and threw her to the ground. She got up and struggled wildly. One of the Stormies lashed out with his fist and Lilah sank to her knees. She glanced my way, then signed a last, quick message that I didn’t understand. The Stormies turned and saw me.

  I gasped and fell into some kind of weird panic. I dropped the test gun, picked it up, then remembered my trumpet and grabbed that, too. I turned and started running for the stage, the book flopping inside my tunic. But for some stupid reason, I wasn’t running fast at all. I felt like I was in a dream. I had just passed the corner of the stage when I heard a Stormie scream out, “Get him! It’s Wise!”

  Something about hearing my real name electrified me, and all at once everything came into focus. With a yell you could have heard all the way back home, I began running like a wild man. I blundered around the corner of the stage, descended a slight slope, then found myself out in the desert. Without a thought in my head, I ran swiftly, heading for the same small hills into which McGinty had disappeared.

  For the briefest time nothing happened behind me. Then the horde must have broken around the corner of the stage, because it sounded like the entire Stormie army was after me. With their guttural screams and the sound of their bells echoing in my ears, I gritted my teeth and ran toward the first sand hill.

  Just before I reached it, I saw the erasers whiz past me. I stumbled around the base of the hill and again my pursuers were temporarily lost to view. What I did next probably saved my life.

  Instead of running straight ahead, I dodged to my right around another dune. That was enough to throw them off my trail for a few precious seconds.

  I turned, angling into the hills. I strained to make my legs go faster, but the sand seemed to be pulling me down. I looked desperately for a place to hide and saw nothing but a few cactus-like plants.

  I began to slow down. Sweat poured off my face and my breath came in ragged gasps. Somewhere along here I must have dropped the test gun. My head drooped lower and my eyes were blurring. That’s when I noticed something really weird … I had four legs.

  25

  a wild desert kid

  The two new legs pumped right alongside my own, and slowly I realized they were not mine. I came to a stop and stood swaying in the heat.

  An African-American kid about my own age stood there, eyeing me with a grin.

  “Not bad,” he said. “You trying out for the track team or the school band?”

  I stared at him. I knew I was hallucinating. It was as if all my old comic books had suddenly come alive. Then the kid moved and paper rustled and I realized he was actually wearing clothes made of old comics. His shirt was mainly Spider Man, while his shorts were all about the Incredible Hulk. His hat was this comical, four-cornered thing that featured the Fantastic Four. On top of all that, he had some inky tattoos on his face and arms.

  “Are you Mc … Mc …?” I tried to say ‘McGinty,’ but my lips were too dry.

  He laughed softly. “I’m nobody, man. Just a wild old desert kid.” He began moving rapidly around me, spreading out on the ground what appeared to be a piece of green and tan cloth.

  “Desert kid?” I repeated dumbly. I could hear the sound of bells now and I opened my mouth in warning, but he knew what I was going to say.

  “Oh, yeah, the Storm dudes are coming, but don’t worry man, ‘cause at any moment I’ll turn into the Hulk and tear ‘em limb for limb.” He flexed his biceps. “I’m turning green!” Then he chuckled and said, “Kidding!”

  I turned and thought about running, but he held out a hand.

  “Hey, relax. In two seconds you’re going to be invisible. Keep your trumpet down alongside your leg so it won’t stick out.”

  He lifted the bottom edge of the cloth, which had weights attached to it, and began spinning the whole thing so that it opened like a parachute.

  “I got just one question,” he said as he whirled it over my head, “and it’s killing me. Have you got any ballpoint pens on you?”

  I nodded. I knew I still had one in my inside shirt pocket.

  His face lit up with a huge grin. “Flame on, man!”

  He dropped the whirling cloth over me and immediately the weights wrapped the whole thing tightly around my body.

  “Just stand real still,” whispered the boy. “You ain’t got no problems now. You’re a cactus!”

  I heard the sound of more weights being twirled around and then the sound of the cloth wrapping itself tightly. I figured my new friend had just covered himself and none too soon, because the first of the Stormies came raging around the hill.

  The cloth was so thin I could see the Stormies’ faces as they raced past. After a few seconds of silence, a second group went by, followed by several Stormies on those weird motorcycles with the frames made from football-tackling dummies.

  When the racket died down, my companion said in a low voice, “Whoee,
Storm boys on their wacko bikes. Old Ming-daddy must want you real bad.”

  “She does,” I said. “She hates me.”

  “Usually she doesn’t get that excited about a runaway drone.”

  “I’m not a drone,” I replied.

  There was a startled pause. “Waitaminnit! Holy Aunt Petunia … I know who you are! You’re the kid who was on the big Zorca screen this morning. Am I right?” I heard my companion rustling around as he took off his camouflage. Then suddenly mine was twirled off and I took a deep gulp of air.

  He was grinning at me. “You’re him, ain’t you? I never got close enough to the screen to get the details, but I had my binoculars and I sure saw your face.”

  “Yeah, I’m him,” I said.

  “Put ‘er there, pardner,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Otis Ray Lavar, but most people call me Ray or Raymondo, if they know me pretty good.”

  “Eugene,” I said, shaking hands. “But down here I’m sort of known as Billy Bumpus.”

  “Billy Bumpus! That’s a good name for you. You looked like old Bumpus coming through the sand with your trumpet and half the Stormie army after you.”

  “Was that you,” I said, “at the band shell?”

  “You got it, man. It was me.”

  I gave him a puzzled stare. “What were you doing there?”

  “Just hanging around, checking out stuff. I’m always on the look-out for things I can use—you know, clothes, food, whatever.”

  He was quickly gathering up both pieces of camouflage cloth and stuffing them into a large knapsack.

  “How come you ran like you did?” I asked.

  “How come? Whoee, don’t be dumb! I saw the Stormies’ dust way before you guys did. Plus, I didn’t know who you were. You acted really strange to me, yelling out McGinty’s name and tootin’ your horn. If there’s one thing I’ve learned down here, it’s that you don’t trust people until you know what’s the what. ‘Course, after I saw you were being chased by the Stormies, and you were a kid like me, I figured I should help you out.” He gave me a sly look. “So, you mind telling me why you’re looking for McGinty?”