Chapter Twenty-Three
An Awkward Flight
Above the treetops, a bright, nearly full moon hovered in stark contrast against the black, starlit sky. The moon was a globe of striking white, fully visible in the evening. On this night, it seemed as though every crater could be seen on that orbiting entity.
And it was against this spherical canvas of cheese-like quality that a strange… sputtering figure appeared. Slack-jawed, Jack watched as this odd silhouette twirled in the sky above, with the moon serving as an impressive backdrop.
As he had previously pondered, Jack had seen an awful lot of weird stuff in his ten years of life. Even so, this… this was extraordinarily weird, all things considered.
There was a man up there. A man, hovering about in the sky, high above the safety of the earth. It appeared that there was a jetpack strapped to his back, from which bursts of spent fuel burned bright and orange.
The man seemed to be controlling the jetpack with his hands, each of which was wrapped around a handle by either side of his body. However, it looked as though he had not quite mastered the process of flight, for he dipped and bobbed, and hardly appeared to be in control of where he would ultimately end up.
With the backdrop of the moon, the silhouette of the flying man was clearly visible. He drew closer, approaching Lefty’s manor. He wobbled and sputtered in the air, something like a demented bumblebee. But he made progress, nonetheless. And as he came nearer, the sound of the music grew louder.
Though much of the flier’s features remained too far away for Jack to discern, he could now see that there appeared to be large speakers strapped to the man’s shoulders, from which the classical music projected. It seemed that the jetpack-wielding maniac had brought his own soundtrack, his own entrance music. It was a majestic musical score, which was apparently called Ride of the Valkyries.
Lefty peered up at the sky. “No,” he murmured. “It can’t be!”
Jasper chuckled in an odious manner. “Surprised, are you?”
Nibbler barked up at the hovering figure. The Labradoodle was as flabbergasted as anyone to see such a thing. The squirrels were also puzzled by the strange aviator, and they murmured among themselves in their squeaky language.
“Who is it, uncle?” asked Jack.
“It’s my nemesis,” Lefty answered. “A man who was once my ally, but became my greatest rival. I had thought he was… I thought he was gone.”
“Hah!” Jasper laughed. “No such luck, I’m afraid. You had thought that your former employer, the government, was the worst of your problems. But that isn’t so… the Black Hats have survived, and we’re back to take what’s ours!”
“The Black Hats?” Lefty asked. “Egads, is that still going on? I thought those doorknobs would have given up on that by now.”
“What? Have you truly gone mad, Lefty? The Black Hats are stronger than ever!” Jasper declared.
“Who are the Black Hats?” asked Jack.
“Oh, just a group of misguided buffoons,” Lefty explained, ignoring the grumbling objections of Jasper. He returned his attention to the hovering man. “You know, he always was one for dramatic entries, but this is a little over the top, don’t you think? Even for him? He used to just walk into a room with that music blasting from a boom-box hoisted upon his shoulder, and that seemed like quite enough.”
“Nonsense!” Jasper protested. He waved his mahogany broom at the flier, shaking it about with ever more vigor. “It’s mighty impressive! Why, just take a gander at the majesty of his flight, and the genius of the Black Hats in action! Behold! Behold, I say, behold!”
No sooner had Jasper made this declaration, than the flier began to wobble about in the air at an accelerated and alarming rate. The hot streams of spent fuel, visible as streaks of fire expelled from the jetpack, began to sputter. The speakers began to stutter on and off, and the music quickly faded down to a whimper. Within moments, the flier was preparing for an emergency landing.
“Oh, I’m beholding, alright,” Lefty chuckled. “Looks like he hasn’t quite mastered that thing yet, eh, Jasper?”
In response, the janitor could only offer a weak, “Oh, my…”
“Eeeek!” the flying man screamed, as his wayward jetpack sent him speeding toward the roof of the manor.
Trailing streams of smoke in his wake, he crashed not just into the roof, but through it. There was a tremendous commotion of noise at the impact, not to mention several grunts and groans, as the flying man plummeted into the manor. Asphalt shingles and pieces of lumber went flying every which way.
Jack and Lefty gaped in astonishment and alarm. Nibbler tilted his head at the strange sight. The squirrels above seemed to be giggling, thoroughly amused by the spectacle.
“Confound it!” Jasper exclaimed. He looked about sheepishly, before confessing, “It didn’t go exactly like that in the plan.”
“Gadzooks!” Lefty cried. “My roof!”
Turning on his heel, Jasper loosed a defiant squawk as he sprinted for the door to the passageway, which Lefty and Jack had left open behind them. The janitor turned out to be surprisingly nimble for such an ungainly character. Lefty was stunned and distracted by the crash-landing, and he couldn’t react before Jasper darted into the passageway.
“Well,” Lefty sighed, turning toward Jack and Nibbler. “I suppose we had better go find out what those knuckleheads are up to, eh?”
The Green Beans, Volume 2: The Strange Genius of Lefty O'Houlihan Page 23