by Nette Hilton
‘It’s raining,’ Auntie Mor reminded him. ‘It’s really late.’
But Stig simply gave her a quick kiss and touched Pyro’s shoulder as he left. ‘You two try to get a bit of shut-eye. We’ll have to be up early again in the morning, especially if I bring her back this time.’
Pyro knew he wouldn’t. He could feel it in his bones and the utter helplessness of not even being able to pretend anymore that everything was all right sent new tears to prickle at his eyes.
And a desperate new sadness filled the space where his heart used to be.
The crew were angry.
‘How could you ‘ave said them things, Cap’n?’ Derrick the Cook demanded.
‘Yeah, she’s just a little ‘un and she’s never meant anyone any ‘arm,’ another chimed in.
Heads nodded and nobody seemed to be able to make a move. They simply sat around the campfire and let sand drift through their fingers.
San Simeon understood how they felt. His own heart was fair breaking in his manly chest but he stood tall. ‘We’ll have to fetch her back,’ he declared. ‘It might be a tricky task and it’ll need the bravest we’ve got ‘cause we don’t know what we’re up against. Stand if you’re with me!’
Every man, every single one, leapt to his feet.
‘We’re on an island,’ sang Simeon. ‘Right?’
‘Right!’ sang the crew.
‘An island …’ San Simeon said in his loudest voice, ‘… is surrounded by water.’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘So what does that tell us, eh?’
Heads were scratched and bottoms itched but nobody was too sure of an answer. ‘You never said it was a test,’ Sneeze grizzled.
‘It tells us that Calamity is still here and we can find her if we set off in a straight line and keep walking.’
What a wonderful plan. The crew clapped and cheered and formed themselves into a line.
They cruised all over the island. And then back again.
Sweet Calam was not there.
San Simeon walked solemnly to the highest sandhill on the beach. ‘I’m thinkin’ the fair Calam’s been kidnapped,’ he said.
As one, the crew caught their breath. They gasped and hands were flung across mouths and eyes widened in horror and astonishment.
‘Somebody has come ashore and grabbed her afore she was ready to fight ‘em off,’ San Simeon said.
‘Who’d do such a thing?’ Derrick the Cook called out.
They didn’t need to be told. And Derrick, almost as soon as he’d voiced the question, had the answer ready.
‘Roaring Roy Bistro!’
Quickly they crammed into the dinghy and rowed out to the good ship Olga. They turned her to the wind and set sail for the horizon and the darkness of the storm that waited there.
‘Where to, Cap’n?’ asked Cracker the Wheel.
San Simeon simply gazed at the lightning flashing and the distant thunder that tried to tell him to turn back. ‘We’ll be calling into port and we’ll be then making for the Grottley Mug where Bistro’s crew like to hang out.’
‘They’ll tell yer nothing!’ Derrick said. ‘They’ll be too afeared of their cap’n.’
San Simeon smiled. He smiled his most charming smile and tightened the belt at his waist. ‘They’ll tell me,’ he said. ‘They’ll tell me because I will make them believe they are now my friends.’
‘Aha!’ cried the crew who’d heard the plan.
San Simeon smiled out at them. ‘Remember,’ he said as they launched into the eye of the storm, ‘the friend of your enemy is also your friend. Say it three times! And believe it!’
They said it three times. They chanted it out loud and they sang it as they unfurled sails and tied off ropes.
And they talked about it for a very long time because it was a tricky one and they didn’t want to fail if they got tested at the end of the voyage.
Pyro sat.
Around him the day was cloudy and grey and a blowfly somewhere was making a song and dance about it. The postcard in front of him was empty. What was there that he would want to write anyway? He’d been up for so long, for minutes that took hours to pass and still there was nothing in his head except that he had lost Becks. And every time, every single time, that thought slammed into his brain, his eyes filled up and he drooped a little lower. His spine seemed to have lost its strength and it was easier, he’d found, to just shut the world away on the other side of the little cave he’d made for himself with his head on his folded arms.
‘Here.’ Auntie Mor’s hand was on his shoulder. ‘Here’s something that might help you feel a bit better.’
Nothing was going to do that, but Auntie Mor had been so kind and she was going to set off with him to see the local principal just as soon as the kids were all in school. Mr Stig was going to the high school to do the same thing and Pyro could feel him standing at the end of the table. It was supposed to be his holiday, a special one, and Pyro was spoiling it.
‘Come on.’ Auntie Mor pressed a little harder. ‘It’s not over until the fat lady sings.’
Pyro looked up. She was holding a mobile phone – Mr Stig’s mobile phone because Auntie Mor wasn’t into anything that wasn’t attached to a wire of some sort. Brain-fryers, she called them.
‘Say hello,’ she said.
Pyro did.
Geezer said hello back. And then he said it was pretty dreadful that the little dog had disappeared and how come that had happened anyway. So Pyro told him. He told him about the storm and the parcel and the seat and the whole thing and telling it again didn’t make it sound any better. It was like a horrible story with a bad ending and he wanted it to be different but it always stayed the same.
Except …
‘So how’d she get off her lead?’ Geezer asked. It was a glimmer of a new ending. A different ending that might mean new ways of trying to find her.
‘Pardon?’
‘Well, if she was tied up she must have left her lead behind?’
‘She didn’t.’
‘What about her collar then? Did she slip her collar?’
Pyro was standing up. His brain was clunking around through a new set of gears. New images were beginning to form. And new problems. Like, how does a dog who’s tied up get herself loose?
‘Was it a good knot?’ Geezer asked. ‘Not like those ones you used to do?’
At another time Pyro might have giggled about the way all his knots used to come undone. Especially the knots that let all the hoops collapse onto the floor in the sports store. That’d been good. Mzzz Cllump didn’t think so but then she didn’t laugh at many things anyway.
‘I tested it.’ He remembered clearly tugging at it the way Geezer had shown him. His dad was in the army and knew things like that. It wouldn’t do to have things come undone if you were ripping along in a tank or galloping across a paddock or something. Geezer was good at knots and always checked things. ‘I pulled it three different ways.’
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
‘Then I reckon, my friend,’ and Geezer made his nyah-nyah-nyah evil-pirate sound that meant he was onto something, ‘that somebody must have undone that knot for you.’
But there’d been nobody around. Pyro checked back to the picture in his head that was the chair and the post office box. There wasn’t a single soul, except the grumpy man behind him and he didn’t look like the sort who’d untie a kid’s dog.
‘Why?’ He wasn’t thinking. At least, he was thinking but it was going so fast he couldn’t catch all the little kinks and catches in his new thoughts and ideas. Asking Geezer let it all slow down a bit.
‘Somebody’s playing a trick or something.’
Of course.
There it was flashing at him in neon lights. It was such a horrible, terrible thing to do that he couldn’t even imagine anyone wanting to be so cruel.
But bullies were like that. Big things that were so dumb they couldn’t work out the difference between cruel and funny, joke
s and meanie-stuff. If a bully had half a brain it would die of loneliness, Mzzz Cllump said one day when they weren’t supposed to hear her.
And she was right.
Pyro felt his fist curl up tight.
‘The Worries,’ he said out loud and Geezer said if they were the two that’d had a dinghy dumped on them down at the beach the other day, well he was pretty sure they’d be the sort who’d want to pay him back.
‘They’d take her for sure,’ he said.
Pyro couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it himself. He could hardly wait to get off the phone to try and work out how to go about finding her.
‘Geeze,’ he said. ‘You’re brilliant.’
‘I know,’ Geezer giggled. ‘I wish I was there to help you find her.’
Pyro wished he was too. Geezer was good at lists of things to do and putting things into the right order. He felt a little stab of guilt as he remembered how he’d left Geezer out of the hide-out plans.
‘Can’t wait to get home,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about our hide-out.’
‘Can’t wait either.’
He pressed the red button that said call ended and gave the phone to Mr Stig.
‘Well, you look a whole lot better. Good one, Mor.’
‘I had to call your mother first,’ Auntie Mor said. ‘She got in my ear about letting you go to the post office by yourself.’ She shrugged. ‘But she gave us the number and look at you now. It was worth it!’
It was definitely, absolutely worth it.
Becks wasn’t back. But now there was a way to begin a proper search for her.
All he had to do was make sure that it was the Worries who’d taken her. And then decide which direction was going to be the best to get her back.
Pyro already had a good idea about that. It filled him with such a rush of hope that he wrapped his arms around Auntie Mor and gave her a hug.
‘Sorry about Mum,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault Becks got lost.’ He grabbed his old jacket. ‘But I’ve got an idea.’
He didn’t want to waste time explaining about Plonker and Sausage Lips. He wanted to get his plan happening and to do that he had to go first to the post office.
‘See you later.’ And then he ran back and hugged Mr Stig as well. ‘I promise I’ll be okay now.’
As he ran down the hill the sky darkened as new clouds grumbled their way into the new day. The tide under the bridge was sulking itself out to sea, almost ready to turn and head back in again if the rubbish it dragged along behind it was anything to go by. The dinghy perched against the river bank was left high and dry and Pyro looked quickly away from it. If only they hadn’t messed about with it …
Pyro ran on. He put the boat out of his head and glanced at the waves instead. He could almost see them sighing as they prepared to turn and come back. He felt stronger now. And so sure that he was going to find Becks that he could almost hear the excited way she liked to bark.
His lost dog story had a new ending. He was sure of it.
San Simeon donned Bloater the Lookout’s hat. It was black and had two long tails that hung down behind with pompoms on the end. It wasn’t the best hat on the Olga but it was one that Simeon had always rather liked and was happy to try out now. It also gave him a place to hide his long, twisted curls that flowed down his captain’s back.
He also donned Sneeze’s jumper. It had stripes across the front and a nice pocket on the breast.
He dragged on an old pair of sailor pants with flared bottoms and buttons up two sides at the front and looked at himself in the mirror.
‘What d’you think, me lads?’
The crew looked at him. Derrick the Cook tugged at the jumper to straighten it a bit, and twisted the trousers so the buttons were lined up evenly on the sides. ‘Smart,’ he said. ‘I reckon you look good enough to eat.’
‘Do I look like me?’ Simeon asked.
Nobody was too sure of the answer.
‘Who d’you want to look like, Cap’n?’ The ship’s boy finally spoke up. ‘Cause if you’re trying to look like a gorilla or a giant gnat you didn’t get it right.’
Everyone laughed. They knew a joke when they heard it.
‘But if you want to look like someone who isn’t the captain of the good ship Olga …’ the clever boy went on, ‘well, I reckon that’d be it!’
‘Good!’ Simeon smiled his most charming, white toothy smile. ‘I’m off to the Grottley Mug to meet my newest friend.’
The crew lined up to wave him goodbye. ‘And who might that be, Cap’n?’ enquired the last man in line.
‘That’d be Innkeeper Yorrick the Plonk!’ San Simeon grinned as he stepped into the dinghy to be rowed across the harbour to the narrow dock and the dim lights of the harbourside warehouses.
The crew gasped. Yorrick the Plonk! Why, everyone knew that Yorrick the Plonk was the first best friend of the dreadful Bistro.
And then, out of nowhere, they remembered the little chant that they’d had to learn … how did it go?
The enemy of my friend … no … the friend of my friend … no … the friend of my enemy is …
They let it go and waved their good captain goodbye.
Later on, when he was safely back on board, they’d pluck up courage to ask him to remind them again.
Step One hadn’t been hard.
In his head Pyro had made his list as he puffed down the last incline towards the main street and the post office.
Step One had been to find out the name of the man who’d made him go into the post office yesterday. The electricity man. The one who had left the post office ahead of him.
‘You mean Stanley Davo,’ the man at the end counter had said. He was selling stamps and wasn’t too happy to have Pyro turn up again and bob around from one foot to the other. ‘Have you got something wrong with you that makes you do that?’ he said.
‘I do it when I want to get going,’ Pyro explained. His father said it was a habit that he’d have to break or people were going to think he had a bladder problem. His mother said not to be ridiculous and that all highly strung people had trouble standing in one spot for too long. ‘I want to ask Stan … er … Mr Davo about my dog.’
The post office man looked down and Pyro fought the urge to bounce to his other foot.
‘Stan’s usual morning jaunt is to the newsagent’s and then up to the beach to check out the waves and then back home to Old Red and …’ he glanced up at the clock, ‘that’s probably where he’s headed now.’
Pyro held his breath. ‘He’ll be at home then?’
‘He will.’
Pyro didn’t move.
‘It’s in Smith Street. Down the end near the mangroves. Yellow house with a blue fence.’
‘And a dog …’ Pyro finished for him, as he prepared to take off slowly. The post office didn’t look like a rushing-about place. ‘… called Old Red!’
The man at the counter laughed. ‘Old Red’s his missus and you’d better not forget it.’
Pyro found Smith Street on the town map and set off. It wasn’t far and he caught up with Mr Davo who was whistling as he walked. Pyro couldn’t whistle and he thought that Mr Davo was good at it because it was an actual tune that was played on the radio.
Pyro had to bounce around to land in front of him and then walk backwards a few steps saying ‘excuse me’ as he went.
Mr Davo recognised him. ‘What’s got into you, then?’ he said.
Pyro told him. He didn’t say that he thought someone had stolen his dog. He didn’t say that he thought that someone who was big and stupid and so dumb they couldn’t even get a joke right, was playing a trick on him.
He pretended, instead, that perhaps his friends had taken the dog to their houses to get it out of the storm and he was a bit worried because they’d need him to fetch it before the end of the school day.
Mr Davo listened. He scratched his head and then took a couple of steps towards his house. Pyro fell in beside him.
‘I
saw a couple of kids hanging around,’ he said. ‘You reckon they’d be your mates? One’s a big ’un and the other one’s …’
‘… got fat lips,’ Pyro finished for him.
‘I didn’t like to say.’ Mr Davo swung open the gate to his house. ‘Right pair of drongos if you ask me. I would’ve thought a nice kid like you’d know better than to hang out with the likes of them.’
A little voice in Pyro’s head was saying ‘Yes yes yes’ and he longed to high-five the old man in front of him. His fist itched to punch the air but all he could do was stand and try to look apologetic that he was friends with a couple of drongos, whatever they were.
‘You know what I reckon?’ Mr Davo said.
Pyro looked at him.
‘I reckon that they took your dog without asking. I reckon they sneaked up and pinched her to give you a bit of a fright.’ Mr Davo touched the bags under his own eyes. ‘Your eyes are lookin’ as baggy as mine. And your nose’s all bunged up. Been cryin’, haven’t you?’
‘She’s my friend’s dog.’
‘Thought I recognised her. Dot Mitchell’s dog, isn’t she?’
‘And Min’s.’
Mr Davo thought for a minute. ‘Well, I like your style,’ he said. ‘Trying to trick me into telling you if they took her or not by making out they were your friends. Clever move!’ He nodded. ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing …’ he pointed up the hill. ‘Them two scoundrels took off towards home. I know where they live and that’s the way they were going and I’ll tell you this as well, I reckon they were scared of the lightning and thunder. Big sooks!’
He stepped into his yard and closed the gate. ‘Bet you didn’t rush off home bawling like a baby because of a bit of a storm, eh?’
Pyro didn’t want to think about how bad he’d felt yesterday. He didn’t even remember the storm.
‘No, I thought not. So, you get yourself up that hill and try their houses. I reckon that little dog of yours is probably locked in one of their rooms. They’d be too stupid to work out what to do next.’