by Eric Bower
He missed the Air Oh! Plane by at least six feet, and we ended up with a giant earthworm in our front yard instead. The worm was quite frightened at suddenly being so large, and it immediately burrowed back into the ground, causing an earthquake, and making a hole in our yard roughly the size of a small lake. It tunneled so quickly that we were unable to hit it with P’s Shrinking Invention before it disappeared.
So if you happen to see an earthworm the size of a steam engine, now you know why. Sometimes we’re a bit careless with our inventions. Sorry. I hope you’re not scared of worms.
M took the Bigging Machine and pointed it at the Air Oh! Plane. Thankfully, her aim was much better than P’s.
A few moments later, we were all climbing into the full sized Air Oh! Plane. I have to say, it felt good to be back in that wonderful invention. We had a lot of fun the last time we flew around the world. In fact, I would go so far as to call it the best time of my life.
I sat in my regular seat at the back of the plane, and found the “CAPTAIN” cap that my father had made for me. I put it on and smiled. P quickly took it from me and put a “FIRST MATE” cap on my head instead. P takes his caps very seriously, and he was clearly going to be the captain for this adventure.
M found an open bag of peanuts on her seat that she had brought on our last trip and was happy to learn that they were still fresh.
Suddenly, Rose screamed.
She hopped out of her seat and jumped onto one of the wings of the Air Oh! Plane. She was shaking like a hiccupping bowl full of jelly. We all looked over to her seat, and were confused at what we saw.
A little hairy head poked out, followed by a large pair of brown eyes.
“Is that what I think it is?” my father asked.
“I think so,” M said in an astonished tone. “It’s a monkey.”
P turned to M.
“Oh, it’s a monkey?” he said. “I thought it was a hairy baby.”
I Choked
“It’s a saimiri sciureus,” M said, as she cracked one of her peanuts and gently offered it to the monkey.
“Really?” I said. “Because it looks more like a monkey to me.”
“It is a monkey, but that’s the scientific name of the species,” Rose told me.
“Oh.”
“I read all about these monkeys when we were traveling through South America,” M said with a giggle as the monkey took the peanut from her hand and sniffed it. “They’re referred to as ‘common squirrel monkeys.’”
A squirrel monkey. Of course.
I sort of have a weird thing with squirrels. I don’t really want to talk about it. So I’m not going to.
“We must have accidentally shrunk it in South America when we were shrinking things to take home as souvenirs,” P said as he gently petted the common squirrel monkey on the head. “Poor thing. It’s probably been living off these peanuts for the past few weeks.”
M ran back to the Baron Estate to fetch some fresh fruit for the monkey to eat.
The monkey ate a few peanuts and then stared at my father. My father stared back. The monkey patted P’s spiky hair. P patted the top of the monkey’s head. P fed the monkey a peanut. The monkey fed P a peanut. The monkey crawled onto P’s shoulder and began to pick at his hair. P began to pick at the monkey’s hair. Then they looked at each other and slowly nodded their heads.
“I feel like this monkey understands me,” P said.
It was true. Most people don’t get along that well with my father.
M came back out with a basket filled with fresh fruit for the monkey. After it had eaten, it immediately fell asleep in P’s arms.
“We’ll have to return it to its home in South America,” said M. “The poor thing probably misses its family.”
P frowned. The monkey stirred, frowning in its sleep.
“Maybe we can return it to its home after we find the treasure,” P suggested. “I mean, we should start searching for that treasure right away. We made a promise to the President.”
“To the Vice President,” Rose corrected.
“It’s still an important promise to an important person,” P insisted, taking off his coat and wrapping it around the monkey like it actually was a hairy little baby. “Is everyone ready for takeoff? Our next stop is the Southern California coast. Once we’re there, we’ll shrink the Air Oh! Plane, and use the Bigging Machine on the underwater ship.”
“I read that an underwater ship is called a ‘submarine,’” I told him, feeling proud that I could teach my clever father something for once.
“Shhh,” P shushed me. “The monkey is sleeping. Hmmmm . . . we can’t very well go around calling it the monkey, can we? We should give it . . .” P peered at the sleeping monkey before continuing, “ah—him—a proper name.”
“How about Squirrely?” Rose offered. “Since he’s a squirrel monkey?”
P looked insulted by her suggestion.
“You’re a girl,” he said to Rose. “Would you like for us to call you Girly?”
“. . . No.”
“Then try to think of a better name for him.”
“How about Benjamin?” M suggested, as she prepped the flying machine for takeoff. “We could name him after the President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” P said. “But I was thinking of naming him after my grandfather, Waldo. I’ve always wanted a son named Waldo.”
“Um, you already have one. I’m your son. And I’m named Waldo.”
“You don’t count,” P told me as he gently rocked the sleeping monkey back and forth. “You prefer to go by W.B.”
“Ready for takeoff,” M said as she started the Air Oh! Plane.
She flipped a switch and the propellers began to spin. As they spun, they made a wonderfully loud thwapping noise, and the tall grass surrounding us began to whip around in a wild frenzy. We all put on our goggles and leather flying caps, and as the Air Oh! Plane started to roll forward, out of the corner of my eye I saw an eggplant omelet running towards us.
It took me a moment to realize that it was Aunt Dorcas.
Which I suppose made more sense.
“Wait!” Aunt Dorcas screamed as she ran after the Air Oh! Plane. “Wait! Where are you going? You’re not leaving me alone here again, are you?”
I turned to Rose.
“Did anyone tell Aunt Dorcas where we’re going?” I yelled over the whirling of the propellers.
“We aren’t supposed to tell anyone where we’re going!” Rose yelled back. “Remember? We promised Vice President Morton that we would keep this a secret!”
“But won’t she be worried about us?”
“Would you rather have her come along?”
“Good point.”
“Wait!” Aunt Dorcas continued to yell, her purple face turning even purpler as she ran after the winged flying machine. “Where are you going? Answer me! Will you be back later today? Should I wait for you for supper? Where did you leave my foot medicine? Is that a monkeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyy . . .”
My eggy aunt’s voice faded away as the Air Oh! Plane caught the winds and began its graceful climb into the sky. Rose and I waved goodbye to Aunt Dorcas, who continued to cry and scream even though we could no longer hear her.
“Was that Aunt Dorcas?” M asked as she wiped her goggles and looked down at the slowly shrinking ground. “What did she want?”
“She just wanted to wish us a pleasant flight,” I told M, and Rose nodded her head.
“Awww, that’s nice,” M said as she steered the flying Air Oh! Plane westward, pulling up until we were sailing over the fluffy summer clouds.
“Lullaby, and goodnight,” my father sang to Waldo. “My sweet little mon-key. Close your eyes. Dream of flies. That you’ll pick from your hair.”
An hour later, we landed on th
e beautiful California coast. We sat there and watched as the breeze blew softly over the Pacific Ocean. The white foamed waves crept further and further up the sandy beach where we had parked, and the air was thick with the invigorating smell of salt water. After we climbed out of the Air Oh! Plane, my father shrunk it and placed it into a bag. He then pulled out his little submarine and tossed it into the sea. Before he could use his Bigging Machine on it, my mother gently took the invention from his hand.
“Why don’t you let me do it, dear?” M said to him. “We don’t want to accidentally create a giant sea monster.”
“If that’s what you wish, my little muffin,” P responded stiffly, clearly upset by M’s lack of faith in his aim. “I need to check on little Waldo anyway.”
He peeled a peanut and fed it to little Waldo—and by “little Waldo,” I mean the monkey, not me. I still had to peel my own peanuts.
Once M used the Bigging Machine on the submarine, we were able to see what a truly fantastic and detailed invention the underwater ship really was.
It was made almost completely out of metal, and it was covered with dozens of circular windows shaped like eyeballs. The body of the submarine looked sort of like a fat fish, with rubber and metal flippers sticking out of each side, which allowed the submarine to slowly paddle through the water like a giant sea turtle. There was a little hatch on top where you entered the submarine, and right in front of the hatch was a long metal tube with a rectangular piece of glass at the end.
“What’s that?” Rose asked, pointing to the tube and the glass.
“It’s a periscope,” P answered. “We have plenty of windows in the submarine which will allow us to see what’s happening around us in the water, but the periscope can be raised to allow us to see what’s happening above the water.”
There was a little ladder welded to the side, which we used to climb on top of the submarine. P opened the hatch and crawled inside with little Waldo perched on his shoulders. M followed, and then Rose and I did as well.
I don’t know what I was expecting the inside of the submarine to look like. I suppose I assumed that it would look as plain and practical as the outside. But my father had surprised us all by designing the inside to look like the living room of a nice and ordinary home. It was really quite cozy. There was brightly colored wallpaper, cushioned sofas and chairs, a dining table, a kitchen corner with an ice box and a little stove, and another room with two comfortable looking sets of bunk beds stacked against the walls.
“Sharon and I will take the bunks on the left,” P said. “And Rose and little Waldo can take the bunks on the right.”
“You meant me, and not the monkey. Right, P?” I asked.
P glanced at me and bit his lip, looking very much like he’d forgotten that I was there.
“Of course I meant you,” he said quickly. “I definitely meant you and not the monkey.”
At the front of the submarine was a large rectangular window, and underneath the window there was a little control panel with several metal cranks and levers and buttons. There was a metal steering wheel which P had taken from a rather awkward bathtub-helicopter invention he had built a few years earlier, an invention which M had refused to let him use (she said it was indecent to fly around the country while soaking in the tub).
P immediately went to the chair set up behind the steering wheel, and my mother went to the chair behind the control panel. M pressed a button and pulled a lever, and the submarine began to sink underwater. I watched as all of the little covered lanterns that P had built along the sides of the submarine lit up at once, giving us a clear view of what was happening under the sea.
Not a whole lot was happening. There was a ton of seaweed floating around. There were a few crabs scuttling along the ocean bottom, and a couple of bored looking fish. The fish spotted us and began to act as though they were doing something important, probably so we wouldn’t think that fish spend all of their time floating around doing nothing.
I glared at the fish to let them know that I was on to them. Fish are lazy. Don’t believe anyone who tells you differently.
“Would anyone like to have lunch before we leave?” Rose asked. “I know that I would. I haven’t eaten since this morning.”
“I’m hungry too,” I said, though I was always hungry, and everyone knew that I was always hungry, so there really wasn’t any need for me to say it.
“There’s no time for lunch,” P said, as he and M flipped a few switches on the control panel. “I want us pointed in the right direction and moving before we lose any more time.”
Waldo the squirrel monkey shrieked loudly and pointed to his mouth. I don’t speak monkey, but his large brown eyes seemed to say, “I need food! Now!”
P smiled.
“Oh, alright,” he said, scooping up Waldo and carrying him to the kitchen corner. “I can’t say no to you, my good little boy. Let’s have lunch. I’ll make the tastiest meal you’ve ever had, my lovely little Waldo, just for you.”
I can’t remember P ever making a tasty meal just for me.
Once lovely little Waldo and the rest of us had eaten, my father and mother fired up the submarine, activated the flippers, and started heading south.
Like the Flying Baron Estate (and by that I mean our house, which my parents had transformed into a flying machine for a race around the country last January), the submarine was steam powered, with a coal burning stove located near the back. All of the ship’s coal was conveniently stored in a large, hidden compartment under the floor.
My parents had managed to invent something that pumped oxygen into the submarine through vents in the ceiling. M started explaining to me how they had done that, and I really tried to listen to her explanation, but then I spotted a funny looking fish out the window and I stopped paying attention.
In my defense, it was one of those skinny little fish that blows up into a big bubble when it’s scared. The moment it saw the splendid Baron submarine, it blew up into a comically giant ball, and I was able to count all the little spiny bits on its body. It was pretty great.
While my father steered the submarine and my mother navigated, Rose and I sat beside one another on the sofa and stared out the windows at the secret underwater world, which seemed to grow more and more impressive the further we traveled.
The fish we saw were beautiful and unique, swimming around in their little schools as they searched for food. We passed by the remains of old shipwrecks, where sharks and eels swam and slithered through the splintered wood. Stingrays rose from the ground in a slow moving cloud of sand. Spiny lobsters crawled over rocks. I even saw a small family of seahorses dart by—cute little creatures that were no larger than my finger.
I wondered if I could use my father’s Shrinking Invention to shrink myself small enough to ride one of those little seahorses like an underwater cowboy. It would probably be much safer than riding a real horse on land, because if I fell off the seahorse, I’d just float around in the water instead of landing on the hard ground. But then again, when riding a horse on land, there was very little chance that a large creature would appear out of nowhere and swallow me and my horse in a single bite. In the ocean, that was a very real possibility.
See? That’s why I preferred not to get ideas. I should have been born a slug.
“It’s incredible,” Rose breathed. “It’s like something out of a wild dream.”
I usually dreamed about talking squirrels or giant sandwiches that tried to eat me, but I still nodded my head in agreement. It was absolutely incredible, the most incredible thing I had ever seen.
And then I felt something land on top of my head. A sharp pair of nails dug into my scalp. Something stuck the end of its tail into my ear and began to poke around.
“Waldo?” I said.
Waldo responded by taking two of his tiny monkey fingers and poking me in both of my eyes.
; “Ow!”
Then he hopped down beside me and gave me a little shove. I forced myself to smile at him and then looked back out the window. The monkey shoved me again. And then again. Waldo shrieked into my ear and then shoved me one more time.
“What does he want?” I asked Rose through gritted teeth.
“I think you’re in his spot,” she answered with a giggle.
“But I was here first.”
Waldo shoved me yet again. I stood up, and the little monkey immediately sat in my spot. He then nudged me away so I wouldn’t block his view out the window. I shot him an angry look, but then he shot me an even angrier one.
I sat on the floor beside the sofa.
“Lousy, stupid monkey . . .”
The submarine didn’t travel nearly as fast as the Air Oh! Plane, but it still moved fast enough for us to see some amazing things. At one point, we joined a pod of whales which were traveling south. The whales were really quite friendly. They sang us their loud whale songs, which made the entire metal submarine vibrate. One of the mother whales sort of adopted us, which was slightly awkward when she tried to cuddle up to us during a nap. When she started trying to feed us, we knew that it was time to go our separate ways.
My father regularly used the periscope to see what was happening on the surface of the sea, and sometimes he would let us look through it as well. Usually we saw nothing but big choppy waves. Once I looked through it and saw a huge eyeball. It made me scream. My scream woke up Waldo, who got angry and bit me on the head. I told my father about it, complaining that his monkey wasn’t very nice to me.
“Well he says that you’re not very nice to him either,” P responded. “Don’t make me choose sides between my children, W.B., that’s not fair.”
“But he’s not your child. He’s just a monkey!”
I looked over at Waldo who glared at me from beneath the bill of his “FIRST MATE” cap. Actually, it was my “FIRST MATE” cap, but P had given it to Waldo after claims that the monkey’s head was getting cold.