The Pirate's Booty (Inventor-in-Training)

by D. M. Darroch

  “Okay,” agreed Angus.

  “You can grind it faster with a mortar and pestle,” said Ivy.

  The two humans looked perplexed. Ivy let out an exasperated sigh that came out of her crow voice box as a guttural croak. She fluttered from Angus’ shoulder to a small boulder with a divot in the center. “This is a mortar.” She tapped her beak on a small, elongated rock. “This is a pestle. You put the comfrey in the mortar and grind it up with the pestle.”

  Captain Hank took the leaves from Angus and rubbed them between the two rocks. They broke down into a green paste. When Ivy was satisfied with the consistency, she said, “Now you want to spread it on your knee and cover it up. Pack some to bring along. You’ll want to reapply it every few hours.”

  “Turn around,” Angus told her. Ivy discreetly turned her back and covered her eyes with a black wing. Angus unfastened his jeans and pulled them down. With the captain’s help, Angus applied the sticky powder to his already purpling knee and wrapped a rag around it. Angus pulled his jeans back on and said, “Okay.”

  Ivy turned around and glanced at Angus. “Fly,” she said.

  “What?” he asked, and followed her eyes. “Oh,” he reddened and quickly zipped up his pants.

  The loot Ivy had found on her previous night’s exploration was beyond anything Angus could have imagined. It was unbelievable what kind of treasure, his mother would have said garbage, was given up to the ocean. He and the captain had spent the better part of the afternoon searching through the debris and hauling out useful pieces.

  Captain Hank had retrieved two pallets of canned peaches, five boxes of variously-sized rusted screws, a beach ball, two salt-bleached buoys, and sundry bits of netting and rope. Angus had whooped with joy when he’d discovered two black plastic animal troughs and a pallet of sneakers. Luckily, the sneakers were only two sizes too large for him. He stuffed them with rags, and considered them an improvement over his Styrofoam shoes. Unluckily, the sneakers only came in two colors: pink and purple. He figured a few well-aimed jumps into a mud puddle would fix that. The rhinestones that covered the shoes would be harder to disguise though.

  He laced up his new pink shoes and took a few turns along the beach. He tripped a few times until he learned to lift his knees up a little higher than normal to accommodate the added length of the sneakers. He heard Ivy begin to caw and hiccup as she watched his absurd gait. He hoped she wasn’t perched too high off the ground.

  Captain Hank rested on a boulder, surrounded by boxes of wind-up toys. His busy hands fiddled with a green plastic frog. “Watch this!” he announced, holding it aloft so Ivy and Angus could see the long frog legs kick in the air. He giggled like a happy child and reached for a long gray shark. “This one’s tail moves back and forth! Look!”

  “Cool,” said the disinterested Angus examining a purple sneaker. Perhaps that color would be easier to camouflage.

  The captain grabbed a frog, duck, and shark and ran to the water’s edge. He knelt in the surf and wound up the frog and the duck. He lined them up next to each other and watched them paddle to the shore. He wound up the duck and the shark and reran the race. Angus noticed what he was doing and tossed the purple shoe back into its box. He hobbled over to the captain; his knee had stiffened somewhat while he’d been sitting. He picked up the frog and wound it. The captain wound up the duck and the shark again. Without exchanging words Angus and Captain Hank placed all three toys in a line and watched them race to the beach.

  “You need to do it again,” suggested Ivy. “And I’ll keep track of which one wins the most frequently.”

  “Great idea.” Angus wound up the frog again. He and the captain ran the race twenty more times. Ivy made tally marks in the sand with her beak.

  “Hmmm. Hardly conclusive,” said Angus.

  “Do you think we’d have better results in still water?” asked Ivy.

  “We might, but we’ll be dealing with moving water in our real-life scenario,” responded Angus.

  “True,” agreed Ivy.

  The two regarded the sand thoughtfully.

  “Excuse me, if you don’t mind terribly,” interjected the captain. “What are you two talking about?”

  “The experiment, of course,” answered Angus.

  The captain stared at the tally marks blankly.

  “The time trial,” added Ivy.

  “We wanted to know which of the toys would perform best in a certain set of conditions. Which is the fastest? Which has the most powerful propulsion?” said Angus.

  “Which one stays wound up longest,” said Ivy.

  “Oh yes! We forgot to test that,” said Angus reaching for the frog and duck. “Captain, if you please.” He handed them to the captain and began winding the shark.

  Captain Hank took the proffered toys and glanced with uncomprehending eyes from Angus to Ivy. “I still don’t understand.”

  “We need to know which tub toy is the fastest, strongest, and most durable,” explained Ivy.

  “We’re going to use them for the boat’s motor,” announced Angus.

  Chapter Ten: BP Goes to School

  BP clambered on to the bus and lumbered to the back. Two girls shared one of the seats and a boy sat alone in the other. The boy regarded BP with a bored expression.

  Book bag slung over one shoulder and shoes clasped in his hand, BP growled, “Move.”

  The boy yawned. “Make me,” he said.

  BP sighed and rolled his eyes and then clobbered the boy over the head with his shoes. “Move,” he repeated more forcefully.

  The boy frowned and grabbed the top of his head. “I can’t believe you just did that,” he gaped. He stood and moved indignantly to another part of the bus. BP grunted and settled himself into the vacated seat.

  The two girls stared at him. “That was pretty mean, Angus,” said one of them, a slender girl with long, wavy black hair and intelligent brown eyes.

  BP wrinkled his nose and snarled at them. “Arrrrr!” One of the girls shrank back into her seat and feigned interest in her fingernails. The black-haired girl wrinkled her forehead and shot him a disapproving look.

  “Angus Clark! You are acting like a beast,” she declared, crossing her arms and jutting her chin forward. “And you should put on your shoes.”

  BP narrowed his eyes and gave her his fiercest glare. She returned his look with equal animosity.

  The bus pulled to a stop and several riders climbed aboard. “Angus! Dude!” called a cheerful voice. “We sitting in the back today? Cool!”

  BP glanced up and saw an energetic boy with short-cropped curly blond hair wobbling along the aisle.

  “Avast, matey! Yer eye!” BP pointed in astonishment at the boy’s face. It was One-Eyed Billy. In place of an eye patch, Billy now had a healthy eye.

  Billy nudged BP to the side, and sat down beside him. “Dude, what happened to your face?” Billy looked equally surprised at BP.

  BP raised his hand to his cheek and felt a welt where the cat had scratched him. He’d forgotten about that.

  “A midnight fiend tried to kill me. But not to worry. I dealt it a grievous blow. But yer eye, Billy? What black magic did ye conjure to grow it back?” asked BP.

  “Oh cool, are we doing pirates?” asked Billy eagerly.

  “Aye, we’re pirates, and no mistake. Ye surely ran a rig on me, did ye Billy, ye scallywag!” laughed BP.

  “Oh, that explains it,” snorted the black-haired girl. “You’re pretending to be pirates.” She laughed and shook her head dismissively.

  “Oh, be quiet, Ivy Calloway. Always thinks she knows better,” said Billy. “Right, Angus?”

  “I’ve heard enough ‘Angus’ to last me fer years,” said BP.

  “Oh, right,” said Billy, becoming serious. “Of course, Angus is too normal. What’s your pirate name?”

  BP stared at him. “The Booty Poker, of course! Are ye squiffy, mate?”

  “Squiffy? No, I don’t like that name for me. Yours is really cool though. Fu
nny, too. Booty Poker! I want a good one like that!” said Billy.

  BP regarded Billy narrowly. “Why, ye’re One-Eyed Billy, of course!”

  Billy grabbed his eye. “Cool! I need an eye patch, right?” He opened his lunch box and rifled through its contents. He pulled out a napkin, folded it diagonally, and tied it behind his head. He turned to BP and blinked happily.

  “Buffoons,” muttered Ivy from the adjacent bus seat.

  The bus pulled to a stop.

  “Okay, kids. No pushing. Don’t forget your bags,” called Mr. Nelson.

  The children grabbed their bags and books and noisily clambered out of the bus. BP gripped his shoes in one hand and his bag in the other. He looked around in wonderment. This was not the dock! This was nowhere near the water! He’d been tricked! The Fearsome Flea would set sail without him. He turned to Billy.

  “We’ve got to get back to the Fearsome Flea!” he urged.

  “The Fearsome Flea?” asked his benapkined friend. “What’s that?”

  “The scourge of the seven seas. The brutal vessel that casts fear into the very bravest of hearts. Our ship, Billy! Maniacal Marge’ll leave without us!” said BP.

  “Oh, yeah, right. Our ship. We’ve got that math test today though. I’ll be grounded for a year if I flunk. Maybe we can go after school,” Billy turned and hurried into the building.

  As BP watched his mate, it suddenly came to him. He remembered this place. Countless hours of fear and torture. More frightening than one thousand midnight fiends. It was a school. He turned on his heel and headed in the opposite direction.

  “Angus Clark! Where do you think you’re going?” called a stern female voice.

  BP spun around and came face to face with a smiling woman sporting a fashionable short hairstyle.

  “Did you forget something, Angus? We can call home to your mom. Oh dear, you haven’t even put your shoes on this morning. Some mornings are like that, aren’t they? Come on inside, and let’s get you situated.” She hustled him up the steps and into the building. The door closed behind him, and he was trapped inside.

  Feet wedged into brown leather shoes, BP shuffled down the hallway from Principal Quigley’s office. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet and his toes felt pinched. An earsplitting “clang!” startled him and he grabbed his ears.

  “Hurry, Angus! That’s the bell for first period!” cautioned an adult voice.

  BP was quickly remembering how this worked, and he scurried into the first open door he saw and grabbed a seat. He dropped his book bag to the floor. Surprised faces gawked at him.

  “Angus, you’re not in this class,” whispered a heavy-set, freckle-faced boy.

  “Angus Clark, I’m thrilled that you enjoy art so much,” smiled a fresh-faced woman in a paint-splattered apron. “But I think you have Ms. Evergood this period, don’t you?”

  BP grunted and stumbled to his feet, swung his bag over his shoulder, and looked around blankly.

  “Second floor. Room 24,” whispered the freckled boy.

  BP winked his eye and gave a quick nod to the boy. “Ye’ve got me marker, bucko.” The boy raised his eyebrows quizzically as BP swaggered from the art room.

  He climbed a flight of stairs and scanned the doors for the number 24. There was 20, 22, next one, 24. He pushed open the door and entered the room. In front of him stood a clean, well-groomed, scar-free version of Maniacal Marge.

  “So glad you could join us, Angus,” said Marge. “Please take your seat and pull out two pencils. I’m about to hand out the test.”

  BP looked around the room, locked eyes with Billy, and walked confidently toward him.

  “Your seat, Angus,” called Marge. BP stopped and turned. “Beside Ivy, please,” said Marge.

  The dark-haired girl from the bus wiggled her fingers and smiled sweetly at him. He lifted his lip in a sneer and threw himself into the seat beside her.

  “Pencil, Angus,” whispered Ivy. “Oh, I mean ‘Booty Poker’.” She giggled. He crossed his arms and fixed her with a hard stare. She raised her hand. “Ms. Evergood? I think Angus may need a pencil.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” sighed Ms. Evergood.

  Chapter Eleven: Making Glue

  Captain Hank and Angus piled the booty into the two black plastic animal troughs to transport it back to the camp on the eastern beach. Angus broke apart several pallets and fastened them to the bottom of the troughs to create some land skis. They tethered the troughs one behind the other with a pull rope on the front one. They each grabbed a piece of rope.

  “Oof,” grunted Captain Hank as he tugged, moving the trough train a few inches. Angus pulled with all his might. His knee throbbed, and his head hurt from holding his breath, but the train didn’t budge.

  “Why don’t you try working together?” Ivy piped up. “On the count of three. One, two, three!”

  With a large grunt, the two humans pulled, moving the train another inch.

  “It’s not working,” said the captain.

  “What if we use the technology of the Iditarod?” suggested Angus.

  “Could try. Probably won’t have much effect but it’s worth a shot,” replied Ivy, perching on the front trough.

  “What?” asked the captain. “The idea rod?”

  “No, no, the Iditarod,” explained Ivy as Angus got to work tying a series of harnesses into the rope. “It’s a famous dog sled race in Alaska. Between six and eight dogs are tied to a towline attached to a sled. The weight of the sled is distributed across the dogs, so they’re able to pull together what they couldn’t pull alone.”

  “Okay, let’s give it a try.” Angus stepped between the two ropes he had attached to the trough sleds. He fastened the harness around his torso. The captain watched him closely and then put on his harness in the same way.

  “On the count of three,” croaked Ivy. “One, two, three!”

  Instead of using just their arms, Angus and Captain Hank leaned their entire bodies into the harness. The trough train slid painfully forward, a little farther than before, until Angus gasped, “I need to stop.”

  He put his hands on his knees and bent his head low, gulping air. Captain Hank huffed from a standing position and said, “This isn’t going to work.”

  The crow cocked her head thoughtfully. “How about if you untie one of the troughs?”

  Captain Hank unfastened his harness. He walked to the rope that secured the back and front troughs to each other, selected a tool on his Swiss army knife, and used it to loosen the knot. The rope fell away. He walked to Angus, laid his hand on the boy’s back, and asked, “Feeling okay?”

  “Better. Thanks.”

  The pirate refastened his harness and said, “Anytime you’re ready, Angus.”

  Angus took a deep breath, and stood upright. He exhaled loudly. “Count us off, Ivy.”

  “One, two, three!” The lightened sled began to scrape over the rocks. The rush of excitement Angus felt at its comparatively rapid movement translated into a surge of energy. Angus trudged along behind the gangly captain, towing the packed trough across the rocky beach. The pallet skis attached to the bottom caught on jutting sticks several times. The weight and momentum of the sled loosened the sticks and carried them along.

  When they arrived at the forest’s edge, Captain Hank stopped. They faced a three-foot incline into the wooded terrain.

  “Let’s rest a moment,” panted the captain.

  “Sounds good to me!” Angus leaned against the trough and watched the captain stretch his arms behind his back and shake out his legs. The captain wandered down the beach toward the incoming tide and gazed back toward the forest. He looked up to the sky, thought for a moment, and strolled back to where Angus and Ivy waited.

  “This isn’t going to work,” he declared.

  “What do you mean? Look how far we’ve come!” said Angus.

  “Look at the sun.” Captain Hank pointed to the sky. It was beginning to glow orange as the sun slipped closer t
o the horizon. “We’ll be lucky if we can haul this thing back to camp by the morning. And I, for one, do not intend to march through the forest in the dark tied to this thing.”

  Angus began to protest but Ivy interrupted him. “Captain Hank is right. How are you going to drag this thing through the forest, around trees, up and down hills? And then you’ll have to come back tomorrow and drag the other one, too.” She quirked her head in the direction of the second trough they had untied.

  Angus considered what his friends had said. He peered into the trough. It would be lighter if they unloaded it, but they needed all the supplies they had packed inside it. And even if the trough weighed less and was easier to move, it would still be difficult to squeeze it between some of those trees they’d hiked past this morning. As much as he hated to admit it, his friends were right. It wasn’t going to work.

  “So does either of you have a better idea?” he asked.

  “You could build the boat here on this beach,” said Ivy.

  Angus stood dumbstruck for a moment, and then slapped himself on the forehead. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” It was so elementary, he was embarrassed it hadn’t occurred to him.

  Captain Hank agreed. “I suggest we pack up some food supplies and hike back to East Beach before it gets any darker,” he said, reaching into the trough and retrieving his pack. He unzipped it and began stuffing cans into it.

  “Let’s leave everything else here,” suggested Angus. “Tomorrow morning, we can hike back with some tools to build the boat.”

  After Captain Hank and Angus had packed everything they could carry, they strode briskly into the forest. On the way, Angus trod through every mud puddle he could find. That evening, his wet, brown sneakers dried by the fire. Ivy couldn’t resist trying to pluck off the glittering rhinestones.

  The next day, they returned to West Beach. Besides lunch they had packed the captain’s metal soup pot and matches. Angus’ trusty screwdriver hung in its usual position around his neck. His safety goggles rested on his forehead. The captain built a small fire on the beach and warmed a pot of coffee.