Hook's Tale

by John Leonard Pielmeier

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I was off ship with Daisy.”

  “Yes. Quite. I found this lying on your bed.” He held up my diary. “As I said, your writing can be very entertaining. Not as accurate in this little volume as it is in the ship’s log, but then again, what does Truth have to do with a good yarn?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your description of last night was filled with lies and innuendos.”

  “I’m sorry, Father, but that’s how I saw it.”

  “Indeed most of the contents of your diary are pure fiction. What you say about me. What you say about my behavior toward your mother.”

  “That was not meant for anyone’s eyes but my own.”

  “Then why write it down if you didn’t intend to show it to someone? Quite possibly to publish it.”

  “And where, in these blessed isles, will I find a publisher?” I was getting angry now too.

  He threw the book at me with all his might. Its corner struck me in the forehead, leaving a nasty gash. I felt the blood from it creeping down my temple. I was very still.

  “ ‘On the day after the Entertainment,’ ” he began, then paused and looked at me. “I’m dictating. Write. ‘On the day after the Entertainment—’ ”

  I turned back to the log and began writing. The explosion was apparently over.

  “Yes. Go on,” I prompted.

  “ ‘—I paid a visit to my secretary’s cabin—’ ”

  I wrote the words just as he said them.

  “ ‘—and there I found, much to my surprise—’ ”

  I wrote, though my hand was trembling.

  “ ‘—a scurrilous document in his handwriting.’ ”

  “Father, I don’t think—”

  “Write the words exactly as I say them!”

  I took a breath. I followed his instruction.

  “ ‘It was with great sadness—’ ”

  I wrote. I could not meet his eyes.

  “ ‘—that later in the day—’ ”

  I wrote. I could hear him behind me, opening up his sea chest. As I finished writing his words, I heard its lid slam shut with finality. “Yes. Go on,” I prompted again, dipping the nib into the inkwell and waiting for him to continue.

  “ ‘—I meted out my punishment.’ ”

  I snapped my head around to look at him, but I was too late. The scythe swished through the air, severing my right hand, pen poised in my fingers, from my wrist.

  * * *

  I screamed. I clutched my forearm to my chest as the blood shot forth. He seized me by my collar, hoisted me to my feet, and dragged me from his cabin. Everyone on deck had heard my scream and now watched in horror as he hauled me to the ship’s rail. I feared he was about to toss me into the waters below; one-handed, I would surely drown. What I failed to notice was that, in grasping me, he had also grasped my newly severed hand. It was this—its fingers still clutching the quill tightly in a kind of rigor mortis while my mother’s gold wedding band twinkled in the setting sun—it was this and not myself that he flung over the side.

  Below lay Daisy, waiting where I had left her, and as the hand plummeted toward her, she opened wide her jaws, caught it in her mouth, and swallowed.

  Chapter Nine

  Why, dear reader, do you always insist on believing that sad little Scotsman, who only heard the story third-hand, instead of believing one who lived it? His purpose, you must remember, was to paint the boy in a heroic light. As a novelist, he should be praised: Peter cuts off the hand of his would-be assassin; Peter saves Tiger Lily from her incipient murderer; Peter rescues a passel of innocent children from the villain’s dastardly scheme. Brilliant! For fiction, that is. I, on the other hand—which other hand, by the way, I am forced to use now to write, since my right one was underhandedly removed, leaving me but my sinister side to express my feelings—I on the other hand am writing a memoir, and cannot use the conveniences of fiction to paint a nicer, cleaner, simpler picture of how things happened. I am stuck with the Truth, and the Truth is neither nice, clean, nor simple.

  * * *

  Allow me to pass through the unpleasantness subsequent to the amputation as quickly as possible. After seeing Daisy lunch on my extremity, I fainted like a Victorian ingenue and was carried below (or so I was told) to the sick bay, where Smee immediately applied a tourniquet, stopped the bleeding, and then sent me on to Black Murphy in the smithy. Murphy heated the blade of a dagger and proceeded to cauterize the stump. Drifting back to some kind of awareness as the knife seared my wound, I screamed bloody murder and lost my tenuous grip on reality a second time, after which I was returned to the sick bay, where Smee applied his miracle salve and bandaged me clean and tight. I remained under Smee’s tender care for several days, drifting in and out of delirium, and it was then, dear reader, that I devised the first part of my, well, of my dastardly scheme.

  Once Father was sober, he visited me in the sick bay and offered his sincere apologies. He swore never to touch “that foul liquor” again, and in addition publicly expressed his regret to all of the Roger’s crew, and to Mullins and Mason in particular, for their having to suffer the consequences of his dreadful habit. “Some men can resist Demon Alcohol’s nefarious seduction,” he told them, “but I obviously am not one of them.” He intended to ban liquor entirely and to dump the ship’s rum supply overboard, but when I heard of this I cautioned him against it if he wanted to avoid another mutiny. I urged him instead to dispose of his own personal collection of inebriating refreshment, which he did. Then, as soon as I was sufficiently recovered and could bear the pain reasonably well, I asked to meet with him privately in his cabin.

  * * *

  On entering the room I inhaled deeply; indeed the portholes were open and all aroma of rum, gin, or any other form of spirits had been wafted away by the ocean breeze. Father rose from his desk, warmly took my hand (the remaining one), and kissed my cheek.

  “My boy,” he said, “how can you ever forgive me?”

  “No, no, Father, I deserved this. I truly did,” I told him.

  He was not expecting such a reply. “What do you mean? Don’t be absurd, boy.”

  “What I mean is—I have not been completely forthcoming with you about my time in these isles.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I have something to confess and I”—I nodded to the dining table—“I think we’d best be seated first.”

  Once we were comfortably ensconced across from each other, I continued, haltingly. “I know, sir, you are anxious to find the treasure that was indicated on the map.”

  He sat up a little straighter. “You know where it is?”

  I nodded.

  I could see him restrain his anger at my withholding this information for so long, but he knew harsh words would not help in this case, and he now placed his hand gently on top of mine.

  “Where?” was all he said.

  “Not so much ‘where,’ Father, but ‘what.’ ”

  He tilted his head at a slight angle, as if he were trying to figure me out.

  “Not gold?”

  “Nor diamonds, doubloons, pearls, silver, none of that.”

  “What then?”

  In answer I reached into my pocket and produced a tiny quantity of Sand.

  “I don’t understand,” he commented.

  I peppered the sand onto the crown of my head. In a matter of seconds I was hovering in the air before him.

  “This, Father, is worth more than all the pirate treasure in the world.”

  “The Flying stuff?”

  “Think what Her Majesty could do if she ruled the air. Travel would be transformed—just imagine it—locomotives in the ether! International commerce would be controlled by England—‘Hail, Britannia! Britannia rules the sky!’ Our flying cannons could rain down punishment on anyone who opposed us! We would no longer be the Empire; we would be the World !”

  I floated back down to m
y seat.

  He began to understand my meaning. His eyes gleamed at the thought of World Domination, and he now clutched my remaining hand tightly and squeezed with excitement.

  “Of course. How foolish of me. All for England! We’ll make a fortune! Where is it, where’s the source?” he asked. “Where can it be mined?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Father. Not yet.”

  “What do you mean? Why not?” Anger stuck its head out of the mouse hole.

  “Because I can no longer trust you, Father.”

  I could sense the blood running colder in his veins.

  “Of course you can,” he answered flippantly, then adjusted his remark. “What I mean is, I’ll prove to you that you can. Tell me how; how do I regain your trust? Name it; if it’s in my power to do it, I shall.”

  “Come fly with me.”

  “What?”

  “Back to England. I’ll be the guide but you must be the salesman. I have no head for business matters; you do.” I had no idea whether this was true or not, but he embraced the compliment. I explained: “I know someone you can talk to, someone who has connections with the Prime Minister. He’ll arrange a meeting where you will demonstrate what we have—to Parliament, to Victoria herself. Once a deal is struck—so long as I’m part of that deal—I will reveal to you all that I know.”

  He was quivering now; were I to insist on leaving at that very moment, he would have leapt to his feet and begun packing.

  “Tonight,” I announced. “Once the sun is set, we’re off.”

  * * *

  The night sky, as it always is in the Never-Archipelago, was clear, and the second star in Peter’s Liana winked at us like a beacon. I had retained Daisy’s croc collar, and I now put it to use again with Father, tethering him to myself lest he get lost. He had never flown before, and that was the tricky part, but since we were anchored off Long Tom’s shore—where there were no trees or rocks or cliffs for him to bang into—I figured that the worst that could happen would be that he would fly back to England topsy-turvy. But he learned the art of flight quicker than I had, and after only a little bit of practice with balance and weight distribution, we headed to London.

  I had retained enough of the Flying Sand from my first voyage to allow me to make another round-trip. My only worry was that it would not be enough to carry two of us back and forth. Still, once we took flight, the single problem we encountered was that, for a man whose stomach was accustomed to the sea, Father could not handle the air: he lost his dinner somewhere between the Never-Archipelago and Jupiter. The sun was beginning to rise as we settled down onto the Embankment, with only a charwoman and a pair of inebriates witness to our descent. The inebriates thought nothing of it; the charwoman uttered an unprintable exclamation and promptly fainted; we walked to the Savoy for breakfast.

  I still had some of Slinque’s money stuffed in my pockets; expenditures, therefore, were not a problem. As soon as we entered the hotel restaurant, I made a generous gift to the maître d’, who ignored my one-handedness and Father’s outmoded dress and showed us to a table by the window. “Would you kindly tell me,” I asked him as he held my chair, “what is the current year?”

  If he were astonished by the question, he did not show it. “Year of our Lord 1891, good sir,” he said, unwavering. It had been thirty-one years since Father last set foot in England.

  His appetite had not fully returned, and he nibbled on toast while I enjoyed a full English breakfast. We both ordered coffee, and I mentioned that—in this one instance—a tiny drop of rum in the hot beverage might be warranted, if only to give him back his stomach. He agreed. After breakfast we walked in the direction of Fleet Street, and since the hour was still quite early, we popped into a tavern that was open for business and shared another toddy—or two. Come nine o’clock I provided him with a small packet of Sand for demonstration purposes and told him the name of the man he was to meet.

  “George Darling,” I said to him. “Your other son.”

  He was shocked at this, naturally, but I soothed his nerves as best I could by handing him a tiny flask filled with fortification that I had purchased in the tavern, and assuring him that George was expecting his imminent arrival, though getting past his secretary could prove a bit of a challenge.

  “You’re not coming with me?” he asked nervously.

  “No, no, it wouldn’t do. You are, after all, a captain in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. I’m still, officially, a cabin boy. Besides, I need to make a luncheon appointment with an investor, to secure sufficient funds for the initial mining operation. You’ll do fine on your own.”

  I gave him some of Slinque’s cash, told him I would meet him at one o’clock that afternoon on this very spot and left him to lunch with the investor. I wished him luck.

  * * *

  Once I dropped Father off at George’s office, I spent the morning walking from Fleet Street through St. James’s Park and then on to Notting Hill. I called at the Darling household on the off chance that I would find someone at home, and I was fortunate to discover not only Mary Darling but six-year-old Wendy, who remembered me quite clearly and expressed her delight at my return. Nana barked and jumped and covered me in dog hair, and I barked back at her, which sent Wendy into a paroxysm of giggles. On noticing my empty cuff, the little girl asked what had happened to my hand, and I told her that I had given it to a flying crocodile, which she found immensely funny. She then introduced me to her three-year-old brother, Jack, who was napping when I first arrived, after which all five of us—Mary, Wendy, Jack, Nana, and myself—went for a lovely stroll in the Kensington Gardens, where I made up a story about a baby named Peter who lived with the birds on an island in the middle of the Serpentine.

  At the Round Pond, Wendy and Jack wandered off after some ducks, and Mary had the opportunity to ask me further about my hand. She was terribly concerned, but I explained that it was lost in an industrial accident which was far too tedious to go on about. She said nothing more about it, sensing that this was a sensitive topic, but I could tell she mourned for it almost as deeply as did I.

  Mary insisted that I stay for an early dinner, and I agreed. By the time George arrived home, I had put Wendy and Jack to bed—telling them of the Further Adventures of Peter in the Gardens—decanted a lovely bottle of Bordeaux that I had purchased on our earlier stroll, and set the table for three. George was astonished at the sight of me. “Good Lord,” he exclaimed, “what happened to your hand?” Mary shook her head, and he quickly changed the subject. “Your name came up today in conversation.”

  “Oh really?” I feigned surprise. “With whom?”

  “With the maddest man I have ever had the bad fortune to meet.”

  “What happened, George?” Mary asked with concern.

  I poured the wine as I listened.

  “He was waiting in my outer office when I arrived,” George said, “screaming at my secretary that he had an appointment. Poor Marjorie was beside herself. She couldn’t get rid of him, so I agreed to meet with him in my inner sanctum. Well, as soon as the man passed me on the threshold I could tell he was higher than a kite. The smell of rum nearly knocked me off my feet! And no sooner were we sequestered than he insisted that he was my father!”

  “Oh, good heavens,” I gasped. “Incredible!”

  “To say the least! There was a tiny resemblance, I admit, but he couldn’t have been more than ten years older than I was. And then he said that you had sent him to me because I could get him a meeting with the Prime Minister!”

  Mary laughed out loud. “I don’t believe it!” she shouted with glee.

  George started laughing too. “Yes, it’s true, and when I asked why he wanted to meet the man, he said he had—he had”—George was laughing so hard he could hardly contain himself—“he had acquired the rights to mine a seam of very valuable Flying Sand!” I was roaring now too, and all three of us were soon wiping tears of laughter from our eyes. “I told him that he needed to leave at once or that
I would summon the police and he said”—once again George could hardly speak for laughing—“he said that he had brought some of the sand for a demonstration. He then reached into his pocket—did I mention that his clothes were at least thirty years out of date? Anyway, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a handful of sand—I’m not joking, Mary!—and he threw it on the both of us! He then began jumping up and down and encouraged me to do the same! ‘Think lovely thoughts!’ he shouted.” (I had added this fiction to our initial takeoff, hoping he would repeat it at the first inopportune moment.) “Well,” George concluded, “by this time Marjorie had called the police and they arrived and hauled him off, screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘I can fly! I flew here! I can fly!’ ”

  The next five minutes were spent in uncontrollable laughter and tears, after which we ate a delicious meal accompanied by a second bottle of Bordeaux.

  * * *

  It was past nine at night when I posted Father’s bail at the Fleet Street constabulary. The policeman retired to the holding cells and returned with a man I scarcely recognized. He was now matured to his full age of sixty-five and looked considerably older. (I, by the way, had aged too, advancing to the deliciously ripe age of thirty-one, which suited me rather well.) Whatever bacteria had found a foothold in his body in 1860 (and I hate to speculate on the nature of the diseases they carried), they had so ravaged his muscles and mind in the last twelve hours that what was presented to me was a very thin man with little hair, half a mouthful of teeth, a wandering brain, and more than a bit of palsy. I thanked the policeman, took Father by the hand, and returned with him to the Embankment. There I tethered him to my wrist, peppered us both with the Proper Sand (the sand I had given him for “demonstration” was from the beach at Long Tom and had no special properties whatsoever), and sailed with him into the night sky. Of course I could have left him in London, but even I could not be so cruel.

  I said not a word to him, nor he to me. He was lost in a world of madness and senility, and we never spoke again.

  We arrived back at the Roger just after dawn. I presented the crew with their duly elected captain and returned to my cabin.