by Robert Elmer
Grandfather told Peter once that before the war he used to have a lot more messes, with twenty birds—all of them racing champions at one time or another. He had neatly pinned blue ribbons in a row on the wall inside his shed, proof of his stories. He had a lot of stories. But that was before—before Peter had a story of his own. Thinking back to that year, it all seemed like a long, long time ago.
The First Race
3
Peter slept in a little. When he finally woke up, it wasn’t to his alarm clock but to something else. Out at the entrance to the harbor, the foghorn blasted every nineteen seconds. He lay awake, counting the same way he had since he was a little boy. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, blast. One, two, three, four... crack!
He jumped out of bed, snapped up the shade, and threw open the window. Everything seemed drippy and clammy outside.
“Hey, are you trying to break the window or something?” he yelled down at Henrik.
Henrik was standing in the middle of the foggy street, with his hands on his hips and a grin on his face. He was taller than Peter, maybe as tall as Elise, and he looked like a professional soccer player as he juggled a pebble between his feet. He was always grinning like that, and when he came to wake Peter up, he usually pretended not to know anything about the pebbles he threw up at the window to get Peter’s attention. Peter scratched his head, looking down at the street. One of these days he’s going to break the windowpane, and then he’ll be sorry.
“You’re just sleeping the day away,” Henrik shouted back. “It’s late!”
Peter popped his head back inside, followed by a patch of cool fog. His alarm clock said seven. He pulled yesterday’s slightly wrinkled shirt on before he leaned out again.
“What do you mean late?” he shouted once more. “You call seven late?”
“I don’t call seven on a Saturday morning late at all,” said Mr. Andersen from the hallway. “You can stop shouting out the window before you wake all the neighbors.”
From the sound of it, he wasn’t kidding. Peter turned around and lowered his voice. “Sorry,” he said to the door.
“And now that we’re all awake,” added Peter’s mother, “you can come for breakfast.”
“But we’re going to take the birds out this morning on a race.” Peter opened up his door to the hallway. Both his parents were standing there, looking half asleep.
“How are you going to fly the birds, anyway, in this fog?” asked his father. He was still in his pajamas.
Peter went back over to the window again to check if there was any blue sky showing yet. There was, just a little. At least, it didn’t look totally foggy.
“It’ll burn off in an hour or so,” Peter told his dad. “That will give us just enough time to bike out to the Marienlyst.”
The Marienlyst—Mary’s Resort—was the grand old hotel north of the city, the one that looked out on the Sound and Sweden. To get there, Peter and Henrik would have to ride up the coast, past the famous Kronborg Castle. It was a ride they had made several times before with Elise.
“Hmm,” said Mr. Andersen, scratching his morning beard. He still wasn’t fully awake. “Well, you better get something to eat before you leave. And stay away from any soldiers out there.”
Peter nodded, barely paying attention. “We have to hurry, though,” he said. “Henrik is waiting outside with the birds.”
The boys had decided to take their two birds in the basket, let them go at the seaside resort, and see which of the birds made it back to the coop first. Elise, who was reading a big book for school over the weekend, had said she didn’t want to come this time, but she would judge the finish. It would cost Peter, though.
“Okay, but what will you give me if I do it?” she had asked him the day before, when they were trying to figure out how to do the race.
“I thought you would do it out of the goodness of your little sister’s heart,” he said, getting on his knees.
“Maybe...” She crossed her arms and grinned down at him. “But if I did it, it would be out of the goodness of my big sister’s heart.”
“Whatever,” said Peter, clutching her ankles and untying her shoelaces. She yanked her foot out of the way. “So how about it, sweet, lovable, tall, little sister?”
Peter ended up doing the dishes an extra day for Elise, which both of them thought was a pretty good trade.
“I still wish she would have volunteered, though,” Peter mumbled to himself as he shoveled down a piece of bread with cheese and downed a glass of milk. There was a tapping on the door downstairs at the street, and he ran to his bedroom window again to tell Henrik to wait. His window was almost straight above the outside door.
“Come on, hurry up!” Henrik hissed from the street below. He had the wicker fishing basket they used for hauling the pigeons strapped to the back of his bike. One of the birds was poking its little head out of the small square hole in the top. Henrik was jumping up and down now, bouncing on his bicycle seat.
“Okay, okay, I’ll be right down.”
Peter hurried down the hallway to the small washroom, splashed some water in his face, then sprinted back to his room. Elise still wasn’t awake. Or at least she hadn’t moved yet from her bed when he peeked into her room. Sleepyhead. Just in case she hadn’t awakened, Peter slammed his bedroom door for effect. That worked; she started to roll over and make a noise. Pulling on a pair of pants and a gray sweater that his mother had knitted, he listened for her.
“Hey, Elise, are you awake?” Peter hollered through the wall.
No answer.
“Elise, wake up. You’ve got to be ready for the race, and we’re leaving now.”
He thought she must have been pretending not to hear. She has to be awake by now.
“Come on, Elise. I’m not going to do your dishes for you if you don’t come through for the race.” He poked his head into her little closet of a room. At that, she sat up, looking very sleepy.
“When are you going to let them go?” she asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Elise was usually a morning person, but not today.
“It’s going to take us about an hour to get up to the Marienlyst Hotel,” he said, feeling more impatient every minute. Henrik was waiting. “Maybe less if we go by the water. Henrik is outside with the birds right now.”
“So what time again?” she asked.
“Okay, listen. It’s quarter to seven now, so we’ll let them go around eight or eight fifteen, or as soon as it’s all clear. Then it will only take Number One and Number Two a few minutes to fly back.”
“What if they take longer?” she asked.
“What if they do? I don’t know. Just be ready down at the boathouse to see which one makes it through the trap door first. Take a clock down with you, too, and write down what time the birds make it back.”
“Okay, Peter,” she grumbled, “but you’re making it too complicated for yourself.”
“But not for your genius brain. Don’t forget, I’m doing your dishes. Just be sure to get it right, okay? The second they poke their little heads into the trap door...”
“Okay, okay, Mr. General. I get the message.”
Peter started for the door.
“Peter, is your friend still outside?” asked his mother. Everybody was up by then, including Elise. “You go tell Henrik to come in for something to eat, if he hasn’t already had breakfast.”
“But, Mom, we’ve got to get riding,” he said, knowing he would not win the argument. Besides, she was heating up a little oatmeal on the stove, and it actually smelled pretty good. Maybe just a bite.
“Ride, nothing. You’re going to get something into your stomach besides a piece of bread. Now go get Henrik.”
A minute later they were all wolfing down bowls of steaming oatmeal topped with a shot of milk. There was no butter to melt over it, but oatmeal was one thing the Andersen family seemed to have plenty of. No one had ever known Henrik to turn down a meal, even though, as he said between mouthfuls, “We real
ly ought to be going.” Mrs. Andersen answered with another spoonful of oatmeal in their bowls. She didn’t need to ask.
By then Peter’s father had come shuffling out again, yawning and scratching his weekend stubble of beard. He was a tall man, and his sandy hair always stood straight up when he first got out of bed. He sat down at the table with the boys to his own bowl of oatmeal.
“Ouch,” he cried, fanning his mouth. “That bite went down a little too quickly.”
“You’re as bad as the boys,” scolded his wife. “Now all of you, slow down. It’s not a race.”
That’s exactly what it was, but Peter didn’t say that to his mother. Henrik was already scooting his chair out from the table, and he would be down the stairs, two at a time, in a second.
“Thanks so much for the breakfast, Mrs. Andersen.” At least he sounded polite, even if he did eat and run. Peter ran after him, down to where the family’s bikes were parked just inside the door at the foot of the stairs. There was a small, dark courtyard behind another door that opened to the street. The door slammed behind them, and the two boys were out on the narrow street, wheeling their way through the lifting fog. The race was finally going to happen.
The old city sat by the ocean as if it belonged there, and it had, for hundreds of years. Ancient, leaning brick buildings huddled over the tiny streets, streets that all seemed to run down to the harbor. They were paved with bumpy old cobblestones, the kind that made the boys’ teeth chatter when they rode over them. But it was only three turns and a couple of blocks before they made it to the main road leading out of town, Saint Anne’s Street. It was fairly easy pedaling from there, and there weren’t any cars on the road—only a few trucks, four gray German army cars, and a delivery van or two. Everyone else cycled, like Henrik and Peter, mainly because regular people hadn’t been allowed to use their cars since the war started.
Before they got far, though, Peter noticed the bird basket on the back of Henrik’s bike starting to wiggle. It was coming loose from where he had tied it onto the rack.
“Hey, Henrik,” Peter called up to him. His friend was about five bike lengths ahead and picking up speed. “The basket is coming loose, Henrik!”
But Henrik didn’t hear, so Peter pedaled faster, trying to catch up. His rubber hose of a tire only flapped harder, though, and he had a terrible time just keeping up. Dumb rubber hose. When are we going to get real tires again?
The hoses were awful substitutes for real bicycle tires, but Peter had gotten used to them. Ever since the war had started, and even a little before that, no one in the whole country could get new tires for anything. The German war machine seemed to gobble up everything made of rubber, so when things wore out—like the tires—Peter and his family had to make do with homemade tires. Mr. Andersen came up with the idea of sewing together the ends of a rubber hose with heavy twine and a sailmaker’s needle. And it worked, kind of. Peter’s Uncle Morten, a fisherman, came up with the idea to use soft, heavy rope, braided together around the tire rim. Both inventions looked pretty silly, but it was better than riding on the rims, even though no one could go as fast on the pretend tires.
Peter would have liked to go a little faster. If Henrik didn’t stop real soon, or at least turn around to check on the basket, the birds were going to take a tumble.
“Henrik, hey, Henrik!” Peter shouted. But by then Henrik was out of sight around a corner and pulling away. Sometimes I could just strangle him, if only I could catch up.
“Where are you going so fast?” came a voice right behind Peter. Startled, he almost swerved off the street, which only made Henrik laugh and laugh.
“Hey, real funny.” Peter slowed down. “Where did you come from, anyway? I was just trying to catch up to tell you that the basket was falling off.”
“Really?” Henrik sounded surprised, then stopped at the curb. While he had circled around through an alleyway, the basket had loosened even more. Somehow it was still hanging on. Both boys looked in through the birds’ square air hole, and the two pigeons were quietly holding on in the bottom of the basket. Peter tied the basket a little tighter, and they started down the road again.
“Only this time, Henrik, slow down, would you?”
“Sorry.”
Peter wasn’t sure, but Henrik sounded as if he meant it. The old city was soon behind them as they pedaled up the coast. Off to the right, in the distance, was the ocean. It’s never far from anywhere in Denmark. Peter could still see patches of fog here and there, but mostly there was blue sky now, and the sun seemed to brighten everything more each minute. Still, his hands were numb from the cold morning air rushing past the handlebars of his black bike. He gave them turns in his coat jacket, which helped a little. And even though Henrik had slowed down, Peter still had trouble keeping up. Henrik looked back over his shoulder once in a while, checking to see that Peter was still there.
“Can’t you go any faster, old man?” called Henrik.
“Hey, show off,” Peter replied. “I’ve been keeping it slow so you wouldn’t burn out your Olympic muscles.” He may not have been as fast as Henrik on a bicycle, but he could keep pace with his teasing any day.
“We’re almost there,” Henrik yelled back, ignoring Peter’s last remark. They were heading straight for the water now, and on the left was the large old Marienlyst Hotel, a local landmark. The place was known for its swimming beach, a gambling casino, and the great views of Sweden, just across the Sound. It was a big, beautiful building, full of history, and the boys liked to bike out here for the ride. It seemed so far away from their home in the city, even though it wasn’t really a long bike ride away.
Henrik was waiting on the steps of the grand old hotel as Peter pedaled up. He had taken his map out of his knapsack and was studying it. They both could find their way around this part of Denmark with their eyes closed, but Henrik always brought a map along anyway.
“Here’s how I figure it,” he said, holding the map close to his face. “If we let the birds go here, they’ll both go straight back to the boathouse, like this.” He traced his finger across the map, straight across the old city and over to the other side. “We’ll let them both go on the count of three.”
“Wait a minute,” Peter interrupted. “If we do that, they’ll both fly together, and they’ll just keep close to each other. We won’t find out which bird is faster that way.”
Henrik looked up, disgusted. “Why didn’t we think of that before?” he asked. “I’ll bet the Brain would have known if she had been here.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Peter. “But let’s think of a way to get them far enough away from each other so they fly by themselves. It still has to be fair.”
They looked around, trying to figure out a way.
“Look,” said Peter, pointing to a big rock down by the beach. “If you took your bird way down there, then we could still both let them go at the same time.”
“No, it’ll never work,” Henrik said after a minute. “They’ll catch up to each other and then just fly together.”
Peter knew he was right. The birds did have a way of finding each other, even when they were flying blocks away. Then a light went on in his head, and he remembered something.
“I’ve got it!” said Peter, pounding Henrik on the shoulder. “We’ll just give one of the birds a handicap. Yeah, that’s perfect!”
Henrik wrinkled his nose and squinted. That was his “I don’t get it” look.
“A handicap?” he asked. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. You mean, like tying a rock to its legs?”
“Not a physical handicap, silly.” Peter was enjoying having the good idea for once. Maybe it was because his sister wasn’t along. She was usually the one who figured out all the secret plans and things like that. “All we do is let one of the pigeons fly, just like we planned. But we hold on to the other one, and then—like five minutes later—we let the other one go. Then when we get back, we just use a little math and figure out which on
e came back the fastest. Not too complicated at all.”
Peter folded his arms, sure that he had a great idea. Actually, he remembered reading about it in a pigeon racing book called Pigeon Racing for a Hobby by Victor something.
“Your sister will know?”
“Sure she will. Besides, I told her to write down the time the birds come in. I think she’ll write it down for both of them.” He didn’t want to admit it to Henrik, but Elise was the one who had shown him the book a few months ago and explained the whole idea first.
“Oh, I get it,” said Henrik. “If Number One gets back first, and then Number Two gets back in less than five minutes...”
“Number Two wins.”
“And if it takes exactly five minutes for Number Two to get back...”
“It’s a tie,” said Peter. “But that won’t happen.”
“No, well, then if it takes more than five minutes for Number Two to show up, which it will...”
“Number One would win,” finished Peter, “but for sure that won’t happen.”
“Right.” Henrik scratched his chin, thinking. “Well, maybe there’s another way to do it.”
They both stood there for a minute, not saying anything, thinking some more. Peter was going over the five minute part again, making sure his math was right.
“You have any better ideas?” Peter finally asked.
“No. But the only problem is, neither of us has a watch to time the birds with.”
“No problem,” said Peter, pointing up at the hotel. “In there.”
There was a large grandfather clock behind the counter in the wood paneled lobby, perfect for what they needed. A lot of these kinds of inns had a big clock out front. The clerk behind the counter looked at the boys with his eyebrows raised, probably wondering why two eleven year olds would come into his hotel to stare down the hour.