The Sinister Case of the Field Trip Pirates


The boys groaned when they read the assignment sheet and saw that they were riding

with ancient Mr. Jocelyn for the annual field trip to the metropolitan museum of history.

“He’s still alive!” Huey shouted unhappily.

Mr. J had retired from teaching years ago, but he was still famous in kid legend. And he

still kept showing up at school to help his wife who was still teaching language arts to several

grades.

“He was a teacher here since the Civil War.” Louis chimed in, repeating a favorite kid

legend.

“Yeah, he was George Washington’s Social Studies teacher.” Dewey added, showing his

knowledge of history, placing George Washington at the Civil war.

The three musketeers.

Mr. Coffman the school’s guidance counselor called Huey, Dewey, and Louis that last

year and the name stuck. Of course, the only thing they knew about 3 musketeers was that it was

a candy bar that made your jaw sore chewing through it.

Speaking of candy, the boys were already out of their Halloween stash. Even the

homemade stuff they got from Mrs. J.

They still shuddered when they talked about their close call with death at the J’s.

* * *
Field Trip Pirates --2

The boys were the first kids in history to go to the J’s house for Trick or Treat.

They hoped the worse that would happen would be that Mr. J was one of those pain in the

neck wise guy old man types who always chose “trick” and you end up standing there looking

stupid because you don’t know any tricks you just want your candy in a hurry so you can get on

to the next house to pick up some more loot.

But they didn’t even see the old coot.

It had taken a lot for the boys to get up the nerve to go to the J’s house. The

house was set way off the road in the woods and it was dark back there and the J’s killer son

lived in the attic waiting to pounce on his next victim. Least ways that’s how kid legend told it

down through the centuries.

The Js had to keep on working even though they were way old, just so they could afford

to feed their son the monster in the attic. He ate a steady diet of raw meat. Fresh raw meat and

plenty of it every day.

No one had ever trick or treated at the J’s and lived to talk about it. So this year the 8th

graders dared the three musketeers to do it. The boys never backed down from a dare especially

if taking it would make them big shots with the super cool 8th graders.

The sucky part of the deal was that Huey had to take along Jason, his nerdy kid brother.

Mrs. J had answered the door when Huey finally got brave enough to knock. The old man

was nowhere to be seen. Probably out haunting a house, pestering some ghosts with one of his

legendary pop quizzes.

“Maybe the beast got him.” Dewey whispered pushing Huey in ahead of him.

Jason didn’t even get near the door. The boys told him to hide behind the bushes and wait

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because the sissy would cry so loud that it would wake up all the murdered people

buried in the J’s basement.

They looked around nervously, They expected to find a huge punch bowl filled with

smoking poison and knockout drops and a tray loaded with candy apples each containing a rusty

razor blade. They knew there wouldn’t be any bowls of candy. There never are at haunted

houses.

They could tell Mrs J recognized them from school but wasn’t guessing who they were

too fast. She wanted to give Mr J time to sharpen the axe he’d use to butcher them up for their

kid’s midnight snack..

The boys hadn’t put much effort into their costumes, three pig face masks, their bodies

covered with a quilt Huey had snuck out of his mom’s closet (three pigs in a blanket, get it).

After about three seconds, Mrs. J got bored with the trick or treat bit and guessed who they were

Right down to the official school names each hated so much.

After that there wasn’t anything more to say. They all stood there, expecting her to start

yelling at them just like at school, since all she did in class was yell at them.

The boys weren’t exactly top students of hers.

That’s when the eerie music started.

Organ music like in those old fashioned black and white horror movies that are so boring

since no one gets chopped up and there’s no blood or flying body parts splattering the screen.

Then came the ghost sounds. Moaning from the basement, from all the beast’s past

victims.

The last straw was the screams from upstairs. The boys figured the beast had caught their

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scent, broken its chains, and was coming after them.

So they quickly scooped up fistfuls of whatever it was Mrs J was holding out on a tray for

them and bashed down the door, making their escape.

Once they were safely outside, the musketeers galloped down the dirt path through the

woods, killer owls hooting all around and blood sucking bats flapping in their faces, and worse

creatures bubbling and gurgling from the bottom of the yucky creek that runs slowly thru the J’s

property.

Louis looked up and saw a light flickering in the attic window and curtains fluttering

back and forth.

The three musketeers broke the Olympic hundred meter dash record getting out of there.

“Did ya see the shadow moving behind the curtain?”

“It was a giant mutant half man, half monster holding an axe.”

“Did ya see the blood stains on the rug in the living room.”

“That’s where the J’s maniac son killed the men who came to take him away to the prison

for the criminally insane.”

They were busy reciting the rest of the kid legend when they spotted the headless giant

coming down the path after them. Tall as a tree, dressed from head to toe in black, the giant was

carrying a lit jack o lantern in his left hand and something sharp and shiny, like an old fashioned

weed whacker in his right.

Faster and faster, closer and closer he came. His legs didn’t move. It was like he was

magically floating off the ground.

Then, it was every man for him self for the three musketeers. They skeedaddled, leaving

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poor Jason in their dust.

Funny thing is, the monster passed right by Jason, who was just standing there gawking

through his mask. Instead, it kept after the boys until they were off the J’s place. Then it

turned and slowly passed Jason again, walking this time, real slow and kind of funny like it was

hurt and limping.

Then, it went back in the house. Through the front door, like a human being.

Jason swore he heard muffled laughter coming from deep inside the monster’s belly.

The boys didn’t stop running until they reached home where they caught an earful from

Huey’s mom about leaving Jason out by himself. She jumped in the car and drove them all over

the neighborhood before Huey finally admitted that Jason might be at the J’s house being fed to

their monster in the attic.

She looked at him and several times started to say something then decided it wasn’t

worth it.

She found Jason sitting in the J’s living room drinking hot apple cider and discussing

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” with MrJ.

The old relic was still alive! The boys looked around nervously, hoping he’d wrestled the

Monster back into his chains up in the attic.

And he had even given Jason one of his musty books, personally autographed

by the J’s personal pal, some guy named Washington Irving. The book’s so old it’ll probably fall

apart the minute Jason opens it, Huey whispered to the other musketeers.

The good news for the boys is that the 8th graders were hanging out like usual, doing

”nothing” yet still getting in trouble. They witnessed the whole thing. It was official. Huey,

Field Trip Pirates --6

Dewey and Louis had trick or treated the J’s and were pretty cool as far as the 8th grade coolest

of cool kids were concerned.

That wouldn’t help matters much for anyone who had to deal with the three musketeers

and their swelled heads from that moment on.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --7

Mr J was a lot older than his wife. Kid legend had it that he was at least 300 years old. He

had been retired from teaching for a lot of years but his wife still taught in the upper grades, so

he occasionally filled in at school, helping out on special events like field trips.

He especially enjoyed going on the field trips Some of the other teachers were surprised

to see his name on the list for this one since his odd behavior on the last trip to that particular

museum, to see the ancient Viking exhibition.

Several of the students on that trip snitched that Mr. J had put on a horned helmet, sang

real loud in some good awful language sounding like a cat that swallowed a bagful of nails, then

described in vivid detail the burning burial tradition practiced by the Vikings. One or two of the

smaller children mentioned having nightmares involving being trapped on burning Viking ships

after that trip.

Funny thing though, there was a dramatic increase in interest in history for the rest of that

marking period and the middle school kids from _____ scored higher on the state Social Studies

exam that year than any other school in the state.

Huey was disappointed that he was in old Mr. J’s group because Mr. J expected the kids

in his group to stick together with him. Then he moved too slow through the exhibits and stopped

to read and examine each item, which meant that the kids were expected to do the same.

The good news was that his best buds, Louis and Dewey, were in his group. That meant

plenty of fun and games. The three musketeers would surely be able to get over on the old

geezer.

There was another problem though. Huey’s annoying little brother Jason, the best reader

in the book club, was also assigned to his group. The adults always made the same stupid

Field Trip Pirates --8

mistake of assuming that Huey would be only too happy to take his younger brother under wing

and make sure he had fun.

“Make sure he gets lost in traffic and has to spend the rest of his pukey life wandering the

streets of the city, cold and hungry and alone until he shrivels up and dies is what I’d like to do.”

Huey sniggered to his buds.

“What is this field trip about anyway?” Huey asked

“Pirate exhibition.” Louis answered

“Yohoho and a bottle of rum” Dewey added, showing off his entire knowledge of pirates.

The club had read Treasure Island and to reinforce the story, Ms. K, the club moderator,

had set up the trip to the grand opening of the touring pirate exhibit. Ms K was neat on field trips.

She let the kids do whatever they wanted and go wherever they wanted.

Huey and his buds figured on ditching the learning part of the trip. Instead they’d go to

the gift shop and act pathetic so grown-ups would feel sorry for them and give them money to

buy stuff. Then they’d try to clean out as much junk food as they could eat from the vending

machines. And they’d finish the day hanging in the lobby gawking at all the strange-os passing

through who thought this museum stuff was cool.

“D’you read the book.?”

“Whattya think?”

“Me neither.”

“Hope there’s no test.”

That was another problem. Mr J was so old and addled that he sometimes forgot he

wasn’t a teacher anymore and on the bus ride he’d give some of his cute little pop quizzes.

Field Trip Pirates --9

Some of the kids, nerdy Jason for one, thought the quizzes were cool and always knew all the

answers. Huey and the musketeers would make sound effects like seeing who could belch

loudest as their way of letting Mr j know what they thought of his fun facts.

But they were all in his group this time which meant that he’d try bonding with

them. Bonding was adult for trying to get the kids to think he was cool and had a clue. All it

really meant was that the old fart would learn their names and call on them.

“We’ll ditch Mr j in the lobby and show up when its time to leave and act all scared

because brain dead Mr j lost us.”

“We’ll be sure to ditch my dorky brother Jason too. Him and the j deserve one another.”

“One for all!” the musketeers shouted, “and all for one.”

And none of them had any idea what it meant…

** ** **


Field Trip Pirates --10

Mr. J finally put down the book and shook his head laughing.

“Robert Louis Stevenson.” He whispered admiringly. That was all he needed to say,

having reached that stage of life when he could talk to himself with shortcuts and still convey the

complete meaning of whatever he was thinking.

Mr J was excited that the students at his old school were finally making the acquaintance

of young Jack Hawkins. And of course the unforgettable Long John. He hoped that’s how the

kids thought of the rascally old pirate, ‘unforgettable”. The way he had so many years before…

As he put on his coat to walk the dog, he wondered just who or what the students at

_____ considered to be “unforgettable” Being happily unenlightened in that department, he

shrugged and figured it was a television star or maybe a professional athlete.

“Maybe there’s still room in their busy lives for the likes of Long John.” he thought as he

headed along the path through the woods.

He spent his days alone now, while his wife went off to work each morning. Just him and

Kelly, the black Lab, his faithful sidekick on so many expeditions into the woods and

wherever their path took them.

Until it was back to the house by four to prepare dinner and have the fire burning cozily

away in the living room fireplace for when the wife returned filled to near bursting with the

stories of her day.

Tomorrow would be different though. Tomorrow he was going with her. Back to the

school that had been his world for 37 years. He still felt like part of that world. He wanted to be

ready.

“Treasure island”. Long John Silver. Buried treasure. Sixteen men on a dead man’s

Field Trip Pirates --11

chest.” He repeated these phrases as he walked deeper into the woods, thinking about

the treasure, about Long john and the pirates. Seeing them clearer now. And he thought about

how he could help the kids see it all too.

He picked up the walking pace, his signal to Kelly that they would be going farther

than usual and he went deeper into the woods, where the ideas hid waiting for him to find them.

The trees began blowing in the late autumn wind. Leaves cascaded all around him. He’d

always enjoyed the idea of falling leaves in Autumn as a prefect metaphor for time passing.

There I go again, he thought. “Metaphor” Once a teacher, always a teacher.

Students, who can explain metaphor for the rest of us?

He fed the geese and ducks loitering about the pond where they waited each day for him

to come with goodies. Then he sat on the swing he’d put there so long ago and, well, he swung.

Then he shivered and huddled inside his coat collar.

He laughed as he counted all the old man things he had just done. He sat and waited for

the last glorious red leaf of the forest’s lone sugar maple tree to loosen and tumble to the ground

Mr. J loved the woods in Autumn but he couldn’t take his mind off Treasure island and

the field trip.

He reached into the large pouch he always carried wherever he went. He rubbed

His fingers across something inside. He closed his eyes and was soon lost deep in thought, his

hand buried in the pouch. Several cards fell to the ground as he sifted through a thick pile. Then

he stared intently at one card, rubbing it slowly and mumbling to himself. The wind picked up as

he shoved the cards back inside the pouch.

That pouch had been the subject of kid legend for generations. Some kids thought he

Field Trip Pirates --12

carried raw meat that he fed to his maniac son. Others believed Mr. J carried around copies of

every test he’d ever tortured a student with in his career as a teacher.

The latest legend said that the J had a secret formula of eternal life that he kept with him

at all times and that was how he’d been able to stay alive for hundreds of years.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --13

As he fumbled with the cards inside, Mr. J remembered how he’d first found the wallet.

He slowly swung as he recalled the fight with his father. One of many.

His father had been a stern disciplinarian. Even when J. was a young boy, his father

forced him to work to “earn his keep”.

“Force” was the perfect word. J wasn’t exactly lazy but he was better at daydreaming

than doing chores and preferred holding a book in his hands than any of the tools his father had

tried teaching him how to use.

Their arguments had become contests of wills over the years. Father trying to make son

into a mirror of himself. Son struggling to make himself into something he wanted to be. J could

even remember the exact words they spoke.

“Father, I want to learn. Some day, I’ll go to college and become a teacher.”

“Teacher! Pah! Them that can’t do, teach. School fills a fool’s head with grammar and

Latin, and all sorts of other nonsense that’s dead or should be dead…Learn a trade, I say. Learn

how to use these.”

Then he held out his hands. It seemed almost like he was begging his son to give up his

crazy dreams. But J was stubborn. Maybe determined is a better word.

One day, his father tried showing him how to repair a broken motor. But the boy wasn’t

interested and couldn’t concentrate on the work.

His father went through the mechanical sequence several times before he lost patience.

He shoved the boy away, knocking him down. He was angry and ordered him out of the work

shop.

“You’re no good. You’ll never be any good. A fool is what you are.”

Field Trip Pirates --14

When the boy didn’t leave quickly enough to suit him, the man threw a wrench at him.

It grazed his shoulder but it was heavy and both the blow and the anger directing it hurt. The boy

cried.

“Go on to your mother. Maybe she’ll read you a bed time story and you can cry yourself

to sleep.”

Instead, he ran into the woods. Not caring where he was going, he just ran . He didn’t

stop running until he was exhausted.

When he finally caught his second wind, he didn’t know where he was. He was standing

beneath a huge chestnut tree. Its branches were thicker around and extended longer than the

largest trees he’d ever seen.

He saw something dangling from the lowest branch.

A leather pouch.

He pulled it down and reached inside.

Books.

He never wondered how they came to be in the pouch or how the pouch came to be on

the tree. He understood why they were there and that was enough. He would stay on the path he

had chosen and never be bullied by anyone.

From that day, the pouch became part of him. He kept it filled with proof of all he’d

learned as he journeyed through life teaching and always learning.

When he wrote his first book report, he copied it down on a card and put it in the pouch.

That’s how Mr. J started his collection of cards.

Years later, the collection was still growing…
* * *
Field Trip Pirates --15

Mr J was lost in thought, lovingly thumbing through his pouch as bright gold and silvery

leaves, maple and hickory, cherry and walnut, rained down on him, nearly covering him where

he stood.

Finally he opened his eyes and smiled. The dog ran around him playfully as he slowly

looked around to regain his bearings.

He especially marveled at the leaves. He began picking them up by the fistful, shoving as

many as he could into every pocket. Then he ran, old man fashion, giddy as he kicked

up leaves, stirring up the secret things hidden in the woods.

The woods began to open up, spreading out before him like a sea, waves rushing all

around him. The swaying branches began to assume form, straightening, crossing. The blizzard

of leaves changed too, solidifying, becoming great white sheets billowing in the wind.

Masts and sails parted the trees. The earth rocked beneath his feet. Rolling waves

thundering far off, running up and down a distant shore. Closer now, waves splashing across a

ship’s deck. The distinct smell of salt as the wind changed course.

Kelly stayed close beside him, silently watching, having seen such changes before…

A ship appeared where trees once stood. And he and the dog stood upon a deck, looking

up as shaking branches turned into groaning masts…

A man stood above them at the ship’s wheel steering. His skin was brown, the color of

the leaves fallen off the oak trees. His big hands were covered with scars, the fingernails, broken

and dirty. He bore a nasty scar on his neck. Looked like rope burns. As he looked out over the

steering wheel, he blew his nose. It had been broken several times, in close fighting and when he

blew, he let out a blast like a horn at a football game.

Field Trip Pirates --16

He wore a long blue coat, with large shiny brass buttons. Once quite elegant, now frayed

along the edges and tattered and patched in numerous places. He wore a large lace trimmed hat

that he obviously took pride in it being the only neat and well-kept part of himself.

He looked down at Mr J and the dog.

“Ahoy and shiver me timbers, if it ain’t Barnacle Bill. Give a hand and heave to. We’re

headin’ into a strong wind. If I ain’t mistaken, adventure lies ahead…”

“Adventure? And what adventure would that be for a retired school teacher?”

“Teacher? Bill, ain’t you learned yet that teachers is swabs?” He roared.

Mr J frowned at the scoundrel. This was not the lovable rascal Long John. This was a true

rogue, worse than Flint on his bloodthirstiest, money grubbingest day. A breaker of young

hearts. A spoiler of youth. A thief of dreams.

He raised his umbrella and waved it menacingly at the ship. Then he positioned himself

preparing to duel, his umbrella now a sword. The other laughed grimly and stood back.

“Not yet, laddie, not yet. Mark me shipmate, I’ll be there to greet ye when the time

comes, Bill.”

Suddenly, one of the masts snapped. A large spar fell, knocking Mr. J to the deck. He

lay there, not moving, Kelly wagged her tail thinking he was playing. But when the man didn’t

get up, the dog’s wags became more insistent. Then the dog yipped. Then he barked.

Finally, the ship disappeared. The woods were back. Kelly wagged her tail. That was her

signal that it was drawing close to 4. Time to be getting home to prepare dinner and have the fire

burning cozily in the living room fireplace…

“I’m getting too old for this.” Mr J thought to himself, as he blacked out.
* * *
Field Trip Pirates --17

Mom’s become totally obsessed with protecting me from, well, from everything. The

whole world. She has my name sewed everywhere on all my clothes. Even my gym socks have a

great big “J” for Jason stitched in red on the heel. “J” for jerk is how it makes me feel.. It’s

humiliating.

I swear if I let her she’d tattoo my name, address, and her cell phone number across my

forehead along with a message like ‘if Jason the jerk does or even thinks about doing anything

consider it a serious medical emergency and call 911’.

She’s so jumpy these days. She hates any sign of conflict. That’s why she dreamed up

stuff like this loving brother bit. Whenever me and Huey fight she separates us like she’s a UN

peacekeeper. Makes us do our homework in separate rooms and if we’re really trying to destroy

each other, eat in separate rooms at separate times which is fine with Huey because he gets to

watch teevee while he eats in the living room and I get to sit and keep mom company at the

kitchen table.

I feel so sad for her. She works two jobs just to take care of us.

One of her jobs is as a hash slinger. I know that’s slang for working as a waitress but I

can’t help but laugh when I imagine my mom running around juggling trays on both arms,

another tray balanced on her forehead, tossing plates of spaghetti and scrambled eggs at starving

people sitting in booths.

Maybe splat somebody in the face with a nice fat cream pie like they do in the Three

Stooges.

That’s the job that really tires her out. She goes to the diner after we’re in bed..or at least

after we’re supposed to be in bed…Huey usually sneaks out after she’s gone to call his dumb

Field Trip Pirates --18

friends or look up bad stuff on Internet and always to terrorize me. I never say anything to her

though, ‘cause that’d only make the punishment worse when he gets me at school.

Her other job’s in a nursing home. She takes care of really old people whose bodies are

falling apart. Really. Sometimes she’ll come home from work and her uniform will be stained

with something, blood maybe or something worse and she’ll say “poor Mr. Gibbs, his kidney fell

out of his backside or he threw up his stomach and parts of his lung came along with it.

My favorite was the story she told about a lady who was about 137. She sneezed so hard

her wig popped three feet up in the air and then all this white stuff poured out of both nostrils. It

was her brains coming out…

I just wish she didn’t have to do either of those jobs. Then she could play the piano and

maybe teach kids music lessons at home the way she used to. At least she’d be there for us and

not always be so tired.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --19

I reach school early the morning of the field trip. I always reach school early

to avoid having to deal with Huey. He hates being my brother and takes it out on

me as soon as we’re out of sight of home.

I keep asking mom to let Huey go to school by himself. Huey whines

and carries on for hours every morning begging her to let him go by himself but every

morning she makes him take me with him. There we’d go down the street, Huey half a mile

ahead, me looking around, dragging my backpack, looking at everything…Huey every two

seconds yelling come on Jason, come on Jason, come on Jason…

…until we’re far enough away from the house that Huey could turn and yell

“Hope a truck runs over you”

And there like magic at his side are Dewey and Louis, and the three of them run

off laughing.

“I’m a big boy mom. I can walk to school by myself.” I always tell her. “Besides, Huey

would rather be with his friends.”

“Well, he’s your big brother and he should love and watch out for you. You should be his

best friend.”

Right mom, I always think, never say. I love her but the way she lives in lala land

especially about the way her kids are supposed to be. Whew!

Truth is Huey hates me and everyone in the world except mom knows it. I’m the last kid

Huey would “watch out for” and as for love, please gag me.

Here’s another truth. I hate Huey too.

I have fun imagining all sorts of neat ways for Huey to die. A meteor falling out of the

Field Trip Pirates --20

sky lands right on his head. A 300 foot tsunami crosses the Atlantic Ocean and carries him off

making him swallow a zillion gallons of salt water. Terrorists kidnap him, tie him up on

one of their terrorist airplanes and blow him up over the white house with only Huey on board.

Or how about a virus brought here on a ship from some foreign country that infects him and

makes his eyes fall out and pus and blood pour out of every pore.

Oh yeah, I really get into inventing ways for Huey to die.

I think I hate Huey even more since dad died.

That part about dad dying is a lie I tell myself. I tell people that my real dad died in a ship

wreck during the war. I’m not sure which war but this is my very own personal kid legend. My

real dad was a war hero, I tell people.

The guy we were stuck with later was like an evil step dad, something like one of those

changelings you read about in fairy tales, you know, human kid switched at birth with a fairy

kid only this changeling is in reverse, grown up switched with an nasty ogre.

I guess I should admit that my dad didn’t die. Maybe just a part of him died. What really

happened is he just gave up trying and one day left.

So the truth is, I really hate Huey every since dad ran away.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --21

Mom had been crying again. I could tell first thing when I saw her this morning. She tried

covering it up with make up and then when that didn’t work she tried faking us out with too

many smiles and then too many frowns. They are the masks she puts on so as not to show us

boys how much she’s hurting inside.

Show us boys? Show me at least. I feel her hurt.

Huey doesn’t feel anything. At breakfast he had his face so buried in the box of whatever

sugar loaded crap he was pigging out on that if you’d called his name and he lifted his head up to

answer, the box would come up too.

‘Box head’.

I’d called him that once when that actually happened and I paid for it on the

way to school…right into Mrs Barrett’s thorn bushes he tossed me. I was still picking out the

stickers three days later and had to lie to mom about all the scratches on my face.

Today, Huey had added something to his morning menu. Coffee.

She’s letting him drink coffee.

“He’s getting so big. He’s becoming a man.” She said

Yeah right. Huey, a man. Gimme a break.

A full grown ape maybe. But a man?

Whatever mom.

The crying meant only one thing.

He called last night.

And that only means one thing.

He was drunk last night.

Field Trip Pirates --22

The call probably went like this. At first, he wants to come home. Blubbering into the

phone with that lame-o voice he uses when he wants to sell somebody something or he can turn

it on when he wants you to feel sorry for him.

“Please take me back. Gimme another chance. I miss you. I miss my sons. I can’t live

without you. It won’t happen again. I’ve changed. It’ll be different this time. I have a plan. A

sure thing that’ll set things up so none of us ever have to worry again.”

There’s always a plan. A scheme. Some kind of shortcut that will make everything right.

I notice now how everything he says is about “I”, himself.

Mom hangs tough though. So he changes his strategy. Whining doesn’t work so he starts

with the threats.

“I’ll take them back. I can do it you know. You can’t take care of them. They need a

father. Heartless bitch. I’m coming over there and taking what’s mine. You’ll see. It’s all mine.

The car, the kids, the house. And you’ll find yourself out on the street so fast it’ll make your

pretty little head spin.”

More stuff like that with some more nasty words thrown in to add flavor.

You have to hand it to the old man. He knows what buttons to push to get her upset and

get the tears going. Everybody has at least one talent in life. I guess that’s his.

And you gotta give him credit for that come and take it all bit.

Like the house being his. Gimme a break. We’re only living here because grandmom let

us after he screwed up so bad that the bank took our house. That’s why mom has to work the

two jobs. The loan guy came by to see her about setting up a payment plan to maybe get our

house back.

Field Trip Pirates --23

I didn’t like the way the loan guy looked at her like he had something else in mind but

she has to be nice to him because she’s a grown up and grown ups have to pay the mortgage else

they’ll come for us in the middle of the night and throw all our stuff out in the middle of the

street where all the kids can see it on their way to school and we’ll have to go live in a cardboard

box under a highway.

Listen to me. I’m not even eleven years old and an expert on foreclosure. How many

kids my age can even say the word let alone understand what it means. I know more about

foreclosure and bankruptcy than most other kids my age know about baseball and football, even

video games.

That’s because I always listen to all grown-ups. Even grown-ups like my dad. I listened

to everything my dad said. Every worthless word of it. And then I listened to everything

everybody else said to him and that made me realize that he’s a liar.

“They stole everything of mine’ he said. Yeah right.

“But I’ll get it back.” Sure dad sure.

When he first started acting up, mom would call grandmom in Florida and grandmom

would tell her to “hang in there”.

“He’s having a rough time right now.” She’d say from the deck of her condo. “At least

he’s not beating you or the boys.”

I guess that was the line. Good old pop never crossed it. Until that last night when he left

for good.

He was drunker than usual and even though I’m just a kid I was getting pretty good at

telling just how drunk dad was. Slur the words but still try to do stuff drunk. Sweet talk and

Field Trip Pirates -24

smother everybody with his pathetic dad routine drunk. Nasty talking with threats and

beating us down with words drunk.

That last night he was way beyond any of that.

He came home that night and started tossing stuff around. Looking for money that

he swore mom was hiding in the house like she was burying treasure under the

living room rug or in between the rafters up in the attic. I swear to God, he actually moved

furniture to look under the rug. He climbed up in the attic, snaking around up there with a

flashlight looking for the loot.

Then he hit her.

He wasn’t real good at it so it was half punch, half slap. He was trying to hold back at

that point.

Then he saw me. I was watching from the hallway, afraid to say anything and frozen

where I stood. I didn’t even see him come at me. I was still watching that swat at mom, repeating

over and over.

“And YOU!” he shouted. “Sick frightened baby boy gonna cry? Little extra unwanted

mouth to feed gonna get sick cause daddy gave mommy a little love tap? That’s nothing next to

what I’m gonna do to you…you coming along ruined my life.”

He’d remembered how to make a fist when he hit me the first time. The stomach punch

hurt but didn’t break anything. I don’t know what the right to the head did. I was unconscious

after that one connected.

Then off he went. Ran away. Got good and drunk. Stole other people’s money and

gambled it away. He even stole all the money my mom had been saving, took it right out of the

Field Trip Pirates --25

bank.

My dad.

What a pirate.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --26

Mr. J woke up covered with leaves and Kelly licking his face. And Mrs J standing over

him, frowning. He staggered to his feet and bowed deeply.

He looked around on the ground shuffling through piles of leaves before he found what

he was looking for, then shoved them into his pouch.

“You’ve been at it again.” She said, using her teacher’s voice.

“What would you like for dinner, m’lady?” he asked, kissing her hand

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked now using a voice that was special for just

the two of them.

“Name me a quest that I might go forth and win your heart.” He spouted.

“How about getting that fire started, and warm us up some cocoa, it’s getting chilly out

here.” She answered, taking his hand and holding it close to make sure he was alright.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --27

Like I said, my dad knows how to push peoples’ buttons.

Like how I blame myself for his leaving. I wasn’t just being a hypersensitive kid

thinking that. My dad had told me I was to blame. Frequently. In those last wonderful fun

filled years when the old man went skidding down hill picking up speed faster and faster until he

crashed at the bottom and vanished.

After pride and joy Huey came into the world and polluted it with his stinkiness, I

came along. The unwanted surprise.

I guess it was okay at first but that didn’t last. Everything was fine as long as dad’s job as

a stock broker went fine and he could play hotshot. Fancy cars and expensive clothes.

Dinners out and vacations.

He always wore real expensive suits. I remember how shiny his shoes were. He never

wore sneakers or boots to work like other kids dads.

And the gold cufflinks and tie pins…he was always real proud of them.

We were proud of him. He used to fly in airplanes a lot too. We’d be outside and a

plane would be flying over head and mom would tell us to look up and wave.

“There goes dad.” She’d say. “Off to work.”

Heigh-ho…like he was one of the seven dwarves or something.”

Then one day he came home acting sort of loopy and said he’d made a “big deal” He was

swaying a little when he showed us all this diamond he had in his ear. He’d gone and gotten his

ear pierced. He looked like a dashing buccaneer, mom said.

“Yeah.” He laughed real wild. “A regular Wall Street marauder.”

Then all of a sudden, he stopped dressing all fancy and talking like Mr. Big Time

Field Trip Pirates --28

Dad’s company had gotten in trouble with the government over some of the investments

it made. People were getting fired. Some went to jail.

I remember how he’d pace for hours, yelling hysterically to whoever would listen,

hoping he wouldn’t lose his job, blaming other people for his problems. Then he started looking

for other ways to “take care of business”, as he always called it. Mom started praying that

he’d stay out of jail. So what’s he do?

He started stealing from some of his clients.

He didn’t call it stealing but even a dumb kid knew what it was. He was taking

what wasn’t his, taking from other people without their permission.

Then he started drinking and gambling with other peoples’ money at the casino. Who

knows what else?

He even stole from grandma, who was one of his smaller clients. He stole his own

mother’s retirement. Way to go dad.

How does an adult explain doing something like that so it comes all right?

He blames someone else. In this case he blames his kid. Not wonderful Huey. Not first

born, chip off the old dad block, apple of the eye, Huey.

Blame the other one, the one who came unannounced and snuck into the family and

ruined everything. Sickly Jason. Not big strong wonderful Huey.

Just picture “Baby Huey” the stupid, humungus duck in those old cartoons that Walt

Disney must have drawn when he was a kid or something and that’s my brother, dad drunk and

slobbering kindness all over him.

“How do I know he’s even mine.” He finally said about me at one point.

Field Trip Pirates --29

That was even lower than stealing from his own mother.

That’s pretty much how dear old dad put it, that last night. All boozed up and smelling as

ratty as he sounded.

Mom had put up with a lot but she threw him out as soon as he laid in on me .

That was the day my father died. And a new kid legend was born.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --30

Huey didn’t miss a beat. After dad left, he played it for what it was worth, working the

guilt game with mom while lording it over me as the new man of the house.

What the old man did was fine one way or the other with Huey. You never heard him cry

or show that he was hurt in any way, unless it was to his advantage to cry and then he could put

on a performance that should have gotten him an Academy Award and a nobel prize for acting.

At least twelve times a day, he’d carry on about going to find “his father” until mom gave

him his own way. Never failed.

That’s when mom started working two jobs. There was no interruption of junk food

parties or trips to the mall or new video games. The brainless imbecile even thought it was cool

not to have a dad.

None of his friends have fathers. Dewey’s father is in jail. Louis doesn’t even know

where his father had gotten off to.

Any way, that’s why I played along with mom and didn’t materialize a mortar

launcher that I could blast at Huey’s big fat butt as he schlumped down the street.

I have another secret that not even mom knows about. Even after all the crummy stuff he

did to us I couldn’t stop wishing he’d come back. The way he was before he went off the

deep end. I’d even dream about it. But y’know what, in every one of those dreams there he’d be,

with mom and Huey living happily ever after.

But no me.

I’d wake up wondering if maybe it would have been better if I was never born like he

said that last night.

* * *

Field Trip Pirates--31

Each day as we walk to school I imagine a new way for the bro to die.

Today, since pirates are the theme, I imagine that pirates impress Huey. I

had found that word, impress, in the dictionary and I read about how the British navy used to

just grab anybody they wanted off the street if they needed extra sailors to do the nastiest chores

on their war ships.

I hope Huey would get impressed by a nasty captain who would chain him below deck

and make him row the ship all over the world and he would never see the sunlight and his teeth

would fall out and his skin would turn all yellow.

Impressed…maybe that’s what should happen to all the bad fathers who run away.

I have to stop imagining Huey getting keelhauled on the Spanish Main because Ms K is

letting me into the library. I’m the first one there. as usual.

Ms Kay greets me with that warm smile she always reserved for her most favorite book

readers. Like it or not, I was surely tops in the club since I read hundreds more books than Sherry

Danforth the next best kid in the club.

“The buses aren’t even here yet Jason.” Ms K frets, running around like a chicken with-

out a head trying to do ten things at once and getting nothing done which is usual for her on

days of field trips.

“You can help me by checking off the names of the kids as they come in.”

Great. Just what Huey needs to see. His goodygood brother brownnosing the teacher even

on field trips.

I consider erasing my brother’s name so he won’t be allowed to go on the trip.

Then I wonder if I erase his name and wish hard enough, could I make Huey himself disappear.

Field Trip Pirates --32

But Ms K knows Huey was on the list because she had made a special point of assigning Huey to

old Mr J’s group. And then she assigned me to the same group so I could be with my brother.

What’s with adults? They just don’t get anything.

Kids arrive by twos and threes. I’m the only loner. The loudest threesome of

course, is Huey Dewey and Louis. The three of them descend like a pack of wolves on the

breakfast snack table that good hearted Ms K had set up for the group.

Soon, there isn’t anything left for anyone else. Where do three small boys put four

dozen donuts and several gallons of juice? And so fast. Even I have to admit, I’m impressed

and I’ve never even been on a boat…haha.

Adults start coming in. Parents. A few teachers that I recognize like Mrs. Jocelyn, my

language arts teacher. She spots me from way across the room with those eagle eyes of hers and

waves. I have to wave back, so I give her one of those half waves, making sure none of the kids

see.

Mrs. J is nice and all and she really likes me but she’s a teacher and so old.

Speaking of old, here comes the dinosaur. My mom says she had Mr. J back in the old

days when they called it “history” instead of Social Studies”. She became unusually happy when

she heard he’d be my monitor on the field trip. My grandmother and her grandmother and her

grandmother had been taught by the J, all the way back to the beginning of time and the Garden

of Eden when Mr. J lectured Eve about how foolish she was behaving, taking that bite out of the

apple.

That was the kid legend anyway.

Mr. J, is carrying books as usual, more donations for the school library.

Field Trip Pirates --33

Strange thing about the old man though, whenever I find a neat book in the library it

turns out to be one donated by Mr J.

** ** **


Field Trip Pirates --34

Most of the 8th graders had been flagged from going on the school trip because of

behavior problems, meaning that they were so annoying that none of the adults would go if

they were going. Adults and kids have totally opposite ideas of what’s cool.

The kids show up at the bus anyway, hoping the adults had a brain freeze and

forget they’d flagged them.

When Ms K tells them to get to their classes, they hang around some more, looking bored

and chillin’ out and trying to get some of the kids who are going in trouble.

They snigger when Mr J comes out of the school and stands in the parking lot with his

umbrella. Two boys are hanging over a tall girl. She’s wearing tight jeans and a sombrero.

Dumb girl probably thought it was a pirate’s hat. Anyway, the girl isn’t sure which boy she

likes but it’s obvious she likes the attention she’s getting from both.

“Look at his mustache man. He looks like a gerbil.” One of the boys said about Mr. J.

He was showing off for the girl She thought it was hilarious.

“A really old gerbil.”

They’re all cracking up like they’re so clever and cool, leaning against the bus the way

cool kids slouch, with their sneakers pushed against the side to leave scuff marks on the yellow

paint.

“What was that young man?” MrJ asks, stepping right into the middle of the group and

forcing them to separate, which makes them nervous. “Please remove your feet from the bus.”

One of the kids starts to mouth off the way the 8th graders always do to teachers but Mr.

J ignores the kid. He’s zeroed in on a big kid named. Robbie, one of the football players.

Mr J uses the hooked end of his umbrella and pries Robbie’s foot and then whole body, off the

Field Trip Pirates --35

bus like it’s a feather. The kid nearly falls to the ground.

“Yo old man…” he tries to get into Mr. J’s face.

Mr J doesn’t back off. He just stands there eyeball to eyeball. Even though he’s about a

foot taller than Mr. J, Robbie must have seen something scary in the old man’s eyes because

pretty soon him and his gang have lost interest in the field trip and are gone off to annoy

someone else.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --36

I have no one to sit with on the bus. Why should the bus be any different from the

cafeteria or the gym or assembly?

I sit in the very front directly behind the driver. Usually I can talk to the driver but this

bus has a plexiglass barrier behind the driver’s seat.

So I die a slow death waiting for the bus ride to start so it can be finished and we can get

this fun-filled museum thing over with

Two parents sit across from me, looking nervous. They’ll be busy supporting one

another against this army of strange kids set loose from prison for the day. Then I eyeball the

empty seat beside me

Uhoh.

I pray they need the seat for the first aid kit or as a place to put coats. Anything. But

no.

Last person on the bus sits right next to me. I can hear Huey and his gang guffawing

from six rows back.

Mr J.

“Mind if I slip my umbrella in here?” Mr J asks.

What’s with these old people always jinxing the sunniest days by bringing along

umbrellas wherever they went and making it rain?

At least I’ll have my gameboy to keep me occupied on the ride so I won’t have

to talk to the old geezer.

No I won’t. Huey switched his busted gameboy with my working one just

before we left the house. Every kid on the bus has games, music or some other electronic

Field Trip Pirates--37

distraction except me.

“I wonder what we used to do on these expeditions before they had electronic games?”

Mr. J asks conversationally.

“Shoot mastodons out the windows?” I want to answer.

Huey would have said it. But I’m far too polite. I shrug instead. And ask Mr J if he

knows how to fix my game.

Of course, he doesn’t.

** ** **


Field Trip Pirates--38

The bus ride starts out uneventful. Huey tells a stupid joke.

“What’s black and white and red all over. A penguin with a sun burn”

Dewey does a few of his planet weird drawings, starring who else, yours truly, as the

head weirdo doing all sorts of stupid stuff with the teachers who were the other inhabitants of

planet weird.

The action starts to pick up when Louis loses his cell phone. One of the mothers who’d

volunteered to come along find he’d typed “bitch” on the screen then texted it to the girls

sitting in the seats across from him. It’s one of the few words he’d learned how to spell right

since starting school. If the adults didn’t do something, he’d probably start sharing the rest of his

vocabulary knowledge with the girl any second.

I feel sort of sorry for the lady. She’s so flustered she can’t even talk. I guess she

never imagined that kids in her precious son’s grade knew such words. And just maybe her son

knows ‘em too.

She shows the evidence to Mr. J who doesn’t miss a beat. He puts the thing in his pocket,

stands next to Louis and without saying a word spins him around in his chair and with his

umbrella points to the front of the bus, the direction he expects Louis to be looking.

“I don’t have to listen to you.” Louis starts but something in the way Mr. J looks at

him makes Louis shut up.

“You can retrieve this from the principal’s office when we return to school. That will

give you ample time to come up with an excuse for having such a word on the screen.”

“It wasn’t me.” Louis says pathetically lame. Dewey and Huey eyeball him, figuring

he’d try to get them in trouble but Louis shuts up again.

Field Trip Pirates--39

“Meanwhile, think of all the better words you might have written to show off your

brilliance for the young ladies. And this time, keep them to yourself. Up here.” He points to his

head. “You can think can’t you? A mild uproar to be sure”

“Hey, isn’t that an oxymoron?” Louis asks, suddenly shocking himself that he actually

remembered something from one of his classes.

“Who you callin’ a moron?” Dewey shoots back, trying to take advantage of Louis being

in trouble, by egging him on to get in even more trouble.

The three musketeers I knew from reading stuck together through thick and thin.

“No,” Louis actually persists, “Ox…”

“Don’t even say it.” Dewey snaps and the pair wrestle in their seat until Huey rises in

his seat directly behind them and conks their two heads together.

“While Master Louis observation is clearly misunderstood by his peers, it’s gratifying for

a doddering old school teacher such as yours truly to learn that the youth of today is still

acquainted with the oxymoron.” Mr. J says.

“Now, I’d be terribly pleased beyond total unreasonable expectations if you boys stop

acting naturally, which can be pretty ugly and fill me with something more than sweet sorrow,

causing me to tear apart my weary soul with silent screams.”

“How many oxymorons did I just present? Can anyone provide an exact estimate?”

“Is this a quiz?” Dewey asks unhappily.

And then Mr. J turns back toward his seat, giving Dewey no chance for a comeback,

snappy or otherwise. It’s about this point that I begin to notice strange things about Mr j.

Like how his mustache had grown since the bus ride started. Mostly white, it had started

Field Trip Pirates--40

to thicken and darken and curl about the edges. His hair too, but that mustache was a real twirler,

you know, the kind you can grab at the ends and braid and make do all kinds of neat stuff.

“Pretty cool mustache, Mr j.” I finally have to say.

“Ah you’re an observant lad.” The old man answers. “Any idea what pieces of eight

are?”

Oops, I shouldn’t have encouraged him. Now he’s going to start talking to

me which for adults means asking a lot of foolish questions that no kid should possibly be able to

answer. That being what the adult wants since it gives the adult a chance to show how much

smarter he is than the kid.

“Actually I do.” I can’t help answering. “Spanish dollars. Silver. Worth 8 reales.

Actually used as currency in this country until 1857.”

“Smart lad.”

“Wikipedia.” I lie.

I’d done all the reading and then some. But I hate when teachers think I’m smart so

I try to get them to think I’m dumb by telling them I use the same short cuts as the rest of

the kids.

Mr. J knows better, like he sees right through that whole thing and isn’t letting me off

the hook for knowing my stuff. So I change the subject and ask him if the kid legend is true

about his son the monster in the attic.

“I do have a son. And he did sleep in the attic, by choice.” Mr. J says not vtoo happy

about the subject I chose. “But that was long, long ago.”

He doesn’t say anything else and even to a naturally nosey kid like, it’s obvious he isn’t

Field Trip Pirates--41

about to say any more.

“Anything else about pieces of eight?” he asks instead.

“Pirates love pieces of eight?”

“Exactly” the old guy smiles.

That’s when I notice his teeth. White for the most part and straight, the way you’d

expect a teacher’s teeth to look. Except that here and there, Mr J has a gold tooth and in the

center of each tooth, a diamond. It gives him a sparkling smile.

Mr. J doesn’t seem so bad for someone so old. I really don’t know too many old people.

Relatives like grand mom who show up at Christmas time, smelling funny, sort of musty

like they’d been locked in a basement all year waiting for a special event so they’d be let out for

the day. And they always make you sit and talk serious with them about stuff you’d never dream

about talking about… with them anyways.

‘What are you learning in school. Have you been a good boy. Do you have a girl friend.”

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--42

Mr J is happy just to talk about books.

“Thanks for the book.” I say, just to let him know I didn’t have short term memory

freeze and can still remember back to Halloween.

I hope that satisfies him and he’ll talk to the other grown ups the way they usually

stick together in a cluster on these things. All scared and worried that the kids might stage a

mutiny, take over the bus, and maroon them in the middle of the expressway.

“What did you think of Ichabod Crane?”

I forget he was a teacher.

I should have acted the way Huey would, get all uppity and blow him off, “dude it’s a

book. Just a bunch of words. I mean, who cares.” is what he would say. but then why would I

ever want to act like Huey?

So maybe I’d have some friends and I’d get to sit with lots of my friends instead of

having to talk to old old teachers….

“Remind you of any of your teachers?” Mr J interrupts my thinking.

I need something clever to say quick or he might just give me a test on the spot. Kid

legend has it that the J carries around a folder full of tests inside that big bag of tricks of his just

ready to be given for every occasion.

“I can’t imagine inviting a teacher home for dinner. Not with Huey’s table manners.”

He likes that. It not only shows that I read the book but I’m thinking about the way

teachers used to mooch off the families of their students back in ancient times.

He throws back his head and laughs. It isn’t one of those adult politely laughing at

something precocious the kid said phony laughs. It’s a really belly buster. It kind of

Field Trip Pirates-43

encourages me so I talk some more.

“Huey eats like such a pig that even the Headless Horseman would be afraid to come for

a snack.”

“What about that horseman? Think he was a ghost?” he suddenly whispers.

“There’s no such things as ghosts MrJ.”

He sits back, looking a little disappointed.

“Not nowadays anyway. Same as this field trip. Pirates and treasure…maybe when you

were a kid.”

“No ghosts? No pirates? I can’t imagine a world without them.”

There’s something about the way he says it that makes me like him even though he has

two strikes against him being ancient and a teacher. Then he gets back to grilling me about

pirate stuff from Treasure Island.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--44

Traffic stops moving just as I’m answering Mr. J’s question that Davy Jones locker

was the place at the bottom of the sea where drowned sailors went to stay. Davy Jones was the

sailors’ version of the devil.

“Something happening at the bridge,” The driver explains. “Might be here for awhile.”

The museum is located on a small island in the river that passes through the big city. The

bridge is the only way on and off the island. If the bridge is closed, no museum trip.

Mr. J tells me that the museum used to be a prison before it was a museum and way

before that, it was a fort that guarded the river from invaders and even pirates that sometimes

raided up river and threatened the city.

Then he tells me there’s even a legend that treasure was once brought into the fort from a

captured pirate ship and was buried there.

“A lot of people dug but no one ever found it.” He says.

I’m looking at Mr. J, figuring his senility is getting to him. Pirates and buried treasure

near here? Sounds more like kid legend than something you’d read in a history book.

The natives are getting restless behind us and start chanting to the driver to turn the bus

around and he looks like he’d be only too happy to do that

Then Mr J does something strange. Saying he had to “stretch his legs”, he gets off the

bus.

Huey and his buds go ballistic. No one is supposed to get off the bus until we get to

where we’re supposed to be. That is field trip rule number one. Naturally Huey wants to

get off the bus to go with Mr j. As if he cares what the old man is up to.

“It isn’t fair. We have to sit here and he gets to get off.”

Field Trip Pirates --45

The parents sitting beside me don’t know what to say or do. Finally, Ms K comes from

the back of the bus and bribes the kids to be quiet with some candy.

The bus slowly lurches forward until it reaches the bridge. About a thousand police cars

are lining the bridge, lights flashing all over. The kids crowd the windows to get a look.

There’s Mr J in the thick of things talking to one of the police officers, showing the cop

something he had in his wallet.

The cops are crowded around talking to him. I’m the only one who sees this because I’m

the only one on the bus looking everywhere, the way I always try to in strange situations.

So I see what the problem is.

A woman had climbed out onto one of the platforms on the pedestrian path across the

bridge. She was threatening to jump. No one went too close for fear of scaring her into doing

something stupid.

And suddenly, there’s Mr J talking to her. I don’t say anything to anybody else on the

bus. I watch Mr. J. Everyone else on the bus is too busy looking at the cop cars, wondering of

somebody was shot, or checking out the boat traffic on the river or making faces at the cars

around the bus.

Suddenly, Mr J’s swinging across the bridge on a cable from the other side

of the bridge. He lands on the platform beside the woman and before she can react, he sweeps

her up in his arms and goes swinging back to the side of the bridge where all the cops are

waiting.

The two of them are suspended in the air a long time waiting for the paramedics and Mr.

J is really talking to her, like he’s giving her a really hard quiz. She starts crying and talking to

Field Trip Pirates --46

him and he’s giving her that disapproving look that mom gives me when I do something she’d

expect Huey to do.

Then he talks to her some more and she’s nodding her head and agreeing with everything

Mr, J is telling her.

Finally, she seems okay with whatever the old guy’s telling her so Mr. J swings down

to the ground and the paramedics carry her off, her holding his hand tight until the ambulance

doors close and it takes off.

“Did you see that?” I finally have to shout.

Of course no one saw it. Huey was busy poking Maryann Seavers in the arm. He had a

huge crush on Maryann and Maryann knew it so she was always getting Huey to do stupid stuff

that would get him into trouble. Which was easy since Huey did enough stupid on his own that

having a girl around to egg him on was just ‘fuel on the fire’. That’s what the teacher called it in

the lunchroom last week before she sent Huey to the principal’s office.

Mr. J quietly rejoins the group as Ms. K is separating Huey and Maryann and getting

the seating arrangement on the bus all confused with three kids in one seat in one row and one

kid in three seats in the next and everyone is pushing and shoving which leads to giggling

followed by more pushing and shoving until Mr. J bellows in a loud voice that makes me jump

in my seat.

“Avast shipmates. All hands on deck and belay that behavior or it’s the plank for you

master Hubert”

“Master Hubert.”

Louis and Dewey go hysterical. Huey fumes and his buds are rolling in the aisle

Field Trip Pirates --47

laughing.

“As for you two swabs,” his voice resumes its Mr. J tone “tell me what keelhaulin’ is or

you might suffer the experience.”

Louis and Dewey don’t know a keel haul from a u-haul. For that matter, Huey doesn’t

understand what the J had meant about “the plank”. I see that right off because I know the

three of them hadn’t read “Treasure Island” and didn’t know the first thing about pirates.

But Mr. J’s loud growly voice had shut them up.

“What did you show the policemen? What did you say to that woman?” I can’t help

asking Mr J after the bus resumes moving.

“I told them I was a crisis intervention counselor.” Mr. J reaches for his pouch. “I showed

them my card.”

When he opens the bag, I am not sure I shouldn’t expect vampire bats or pterodactyls to

fly out but all that happens is a few cards fell to the floor.


“PIRATE RESCUES, INC” specializing in damsels in distress in high places.
Lost boys restored. Villains foiled. Treasures found. We are bonded.

That may or may not have been what was written on the card but that’s what I read.

The pouch is thick with cards. I spy another before Mr. J scoops them back:

HEADLESS HORSEMAN EXTERMINATING: naughty children scared back to good, Neighborhood hooligans routed, patented fear technique guaranteed.
Hallowe’en tricksters a specialty.

“Pick a card. Then rub it. Absorb its meaning and become whatever it allows you

imagine.” Mr. J whispers as he shuts the pouch before anything inside can escape. “But be

careful what you wish for…you might just get it.”

Field Trip Pirates --48

Mrs. J comes up to us then. She’d already come up several times during the ride. Funny, I

think she’s more worried about what he’s doing than the kids.

“And what are you two conspiring?” she asks with a smile, but with a real

concerned look on her face as she watches how the old man reacts.

He just smiles and doesn’t answer. That’s fine with her, she doesn’t seem to want to

know what we’re doing just as long as we stay out of trouble. I say “we” because I swear

she’s more worried about him than me.

“Itinerary.” She says to him in the same tone of voice she uses on us kids in class when

she’s about to pile on the homework.

“Bus arrives museum. Bus unloads. Group enters museum together. Group eats lunch

together. Group breaks down into smaller groups and tours exhibit. Groups reunite in museum

lobby. Bus reloads. Bus returns to school. We go home.”

“And they all lived happily ever after…” he adds.

He smiles at her with a mischievous gleam in his eye. I choke, trying not to laugh. Mr. J

looks like one us kids, caught in the middle of doing some mischief.

“No detours. No adventures.” She nods briskly, hoping the idea sinks in

She pats me on the shoulder and returns to her group in the back of the bus. Later, she

calls me back to her seat. She has a real serious look on her face like the time she caught Barry

Wooster cheating on an exam and he lied to her face about it. I can’t figure out what I did wrong.

“Ever since he had the stroke…the third one I believe, and he fell and had that nasty

bump on his head, I worry. I watch and I worry. He’s always had a lively imagination. When he

was teaching, he liked to re-enact whatever book or scene from history he was teaching. Students
Field Trip Pirates--49

loved it and it’s one of the many things I love about him but…”

She pauses, embarrassed, suddenly realizing that she is talking to a kid. But Mrs. J had

always liked me and I like her…for a teacher. We were pretty comfortable talking to one another

as long as the three stooges aren’t watching.

“Sometimes he gets too much into the spirit of the occasion and then…watch out!”

Great, I’m sitting next to a crazy old guy who could flip out and go on a murderous

rampage any minute. Or maybe he’ll start falling apart like the old people mom takes care of…

bits and pieces of himself sliding up and down the aisle every time the driver hits his brakes.

So instead of MrJ watching over me and the other kids, I get to watch over him.

The bus arrives at the metropolitan museum with Huey still wondering if

Mr. J is going to spank him with that plank he’d been talking about. I even overheard him asking

His buds if they saw any splintery looking planks sticking out of the J’s pouch

* * *


Field Trip Pirates—50

The quiet man had appeared a few days before, as the museum was getting ready for the

new exhibit. He hung around the museum every day, sometimes just sitting in the lobby looking

at nothing in particular. He didn’t bother anybody and he always bought a ticket so nobody said

anything to him.

When he wasn’t exploring inside the museum, he wandered the streets around the

museum, becoming acquainted with the secluded alleyways and dark cubby holes, all the

shadowy places that might offer concealment or escape in a pinch. Every now and then, he’d

stop and talk to one of the street vendors who’d set up in front of the museum to take advantage

of the expected high turn out for the new exhibit.

But mostly, he wandered about the “old town” which is what the locals called the island

on which the museum was located.

“The old town.” He thought. “Plenty a dark narrow place. Just right for settlin’ an old

score.”

Back inside in the midst of the excitement of the opening of the pirate exhibit , he

carefully examined each exhibit for sign of anything that might be useful to his

purpose. Slowly, methodically he moved from room to room, then floor to floor never venturing

too close to the area where workers busily set up the new exhibit. No need to arouse their

curiosity and with it suspicion, he thought. No need to get too close. One might be tempted to act

rashly.

The only ones to get hurt will be them who need to get hurt, if plans are laid deep and

true and carried out to the letter.

He’d been rash before to be sure. Hot blooded and quick tempered and where had it got

Field Trip Pirates --51

him? Still waiting for his chance.

“Too long.” He muttered. “This time, wait for the right moment and then strike with all

the hot iron I’ve got.”

Finally satisfied that he knew every inch of the building, he set his marks in place to be

there when he was ready to return “to get what was rightly” his.

He scanned the list of groups scheduled to view the opening day, It had been easy to

peach the list. People would be fearful knowing just how easy it was for a man of his peculiar

talents to lay hands on such a document.

All it took was cunning and brazenness, two qualities he possessed in great abundance

along with an ability to blend in unnoticed.

He didn’t look quite sinister in light of day. More like a helpless old man shuffling about,

a lost boy who’d stayed lost for a long, long time.

With no hope of ever being found.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --52

I don’t how a dumb muscle bound clod like Huey does it but it takes about five

seconds from the time the bus unloads and Ms K herds us into a group at the museum entrance

for him to escape from his group. And his two even dumber clod pals escape with him.

I wish the museum had an alarm system designed to go off the minute creeps like my

brother are let loose inside its walls. A loudspeaker in every display, video cameras and

flashing lights in every room and hallway all programmed to detect Hueys. A pack of vicious

dobermanns caged in a back room for no other purpose than to be set loose upon Hueys

whenever they threatened to ruin a school field trip just by being on it.

But the adults running museums don’t think that way. They want everyone to have a

chance to see all the neat stuff they have. And they think everyone will be on their best behavior

once they get a gander at that neat stuff.

Even Hueys.

Teachers are just as bad. Ms K isn’t happy the three stooges took off but she isn’t for

sending an armed posse of dead eye trigger happy security guards after them either

“They’ll turn up.” She says. “They’re just being boys.”

Is that how boys are? I had to wonder. Maybe I am better off being an oddball.

Mr J just curls his lower lip and grins, showing those diamond studded teeth again.

Showing that crazed look in his eye too. Then he disappears.

** ** **


Field Trip Pirates--53

The last one to see the boys in a manner of speaking is the vendor outside the museum.

The man has long gray greasy hair pulled back in a pony tail. He’s wearing a soiled bandana

around his neck. It’s bright red but almost matched for color by his weather beaten face.

The man is selling all sorts of pirate gear like hats, toy swords, souvenir maps of the

museum designed as pirate treasure maps, jolly roger flags.

Although he wears a black patch over his right eye, it’s plain that he does so for

effect. Actually, he’s totally blind. An ancient dog sleeps at his feet, ignoring the noisy

crowds all around him. Seeing me, the dog suddenly raises its head and gives three loud barks.

It’s clearly a signal to his master.

The blind man turns fast and lunges at me, grabbing me by both shoulders.

With surprising strength and agility, he lifts me off the ground and drags me away from the

crowd to a quiet place near the end of the street.

“Be ye looking for three young swabs with ants in their breeches?” he whisperes in

my ear.

Ms K is still running up and down shouting for Huey and the boys. She keeps reminding

me of chicken little and his falling sky.

I try pulling away but that blind man has a grip of steel.

“Now why would ye want to run away from poor Mr. Pugh, the friendly sooveenear

seller.” The blind man whines then as he bends lower he hisses in a voice filled with gravel.

“Belay that, lad, and lend an ear to what I say or you and your three hasty mates will find

yourselves in a dark place with your gizzards slit. As for that ear you’ve lent, why I’d sooner cut

it off and feed it to my dog. It dotes on pig ears it do, but little ragamuffin ears should go down

Field Trip Pirates -54

just the same…”

The villain tells me how Huey and his friends, in a frenzy as soon as they left the bus

and eager to be away from the rest of the group in order to seek adventures of their own, had

taken one of Pugh’s special treasure maps.

“Absolutely free with no obligation, har har.” The blind man cackles

The scoundrel grins all evil like and pulls me even closer, rubbing his bristly cheek

roughly against mine. I could smell the sour booze smell on his breath and smoke from his

clothes and it gags me so much I cough. He gives me such a shake that my brain bounces around

like a ping pong ball inside my head..

“And not just any maps, mind ye. These maps bore the black spot.”

I can’t help it. My face gives me away. The vendor cackles evilly knowing that I read

The book and understand the meaning of the symbol.

“Those three lubbers hadn’t a clue. They went dashing right off to the place the spot

directed them to be.”

I have cold chills running up my spine like always happens at the part of the

story when a sinister plot is happening and the hero first becomes aware of it. But I’m sure

no hero. Anyway, the villain must have felt it too because his twisted mouth opens in a toothless

grin.

“If’n we was in other circumstance, I’d carve you up right now and feed your parts to my

pet tiger. You might make a portion of a decent meal. But as is, you’re needed on deck. Inside as

it were.”

I get it, I feel like saying. You’re a real bad guy and you’d like to torture me. And you

Field Trip Pirates --55

have a lot of creepy pets and they’re hungry. The guy is way overacting. I even wonder if he’s

really blind so I kind of give him the finger, the way Huey does when a teacher isn’t looking

after she yells at him. No response. At least the blind part’s not an act.

I want to get away from Pugh. He looks like the kind of creepy grown up who really

does have a hungry tiger at home waiting to be fed a dumb kid or two for lunch, so I look

around, trying to think and act sneaky. My group is still trying to get organized. The museum

ticket agent is counting heads and has to keep restarting as heads shift, refusing to stay still long

enough to allow her to get an accurate total.

Then I think about Huey.

Why rescue him? The world will be better off without the clod, making life miserable at

home and school. Even on reward field trips.

But then I think about mom and how it would hurt her to lose Huey, though I

couldn’t see any reason why that might be. So I give one of those sighs, You know. Like, I

know what I have to do even though I don’t really want to. Then I kick the blind guy somewhere

where it really hurts and he goes down on his knees squealing and the dog starts barking and I

pull free of the blind man’s grip and race for the steps, ignoring the calls from the others in

my group to wait.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--56

I don’t know how to begin my search. Maybe there really are clues. Like in the book,

Flint left dead men to mark the way to his treasure.

Too bad Flint didn’t hide his treasure in a museum. He could’ve used mammoth tusks.

Sure enough, straight ahead, someone had twisted the tusks of the giant stuffed mammoth

guarding the entrance. Each tip pointed in the same direction. Toward the human heart

exhibit near the stairway.

The human heart is a walk through exhibit. Inside, you see all the arteries and stuff that

makes a heart work.

Huey and the boys are probably in there running around like nuts, playing tag. Giving

heart attacks to any grown-up stupid enough to try squeezing inside the thing.

I find the second marker is in there but no musketeers. It’s poem written on the wall of

the heart in red. Blood?

Chalk.

“faint of heart, look no more”
but get ye to the second floor.”

So I push past Bobby Mazer, one of the few 8th graders allowed on the trip. He’s trying

to kiss Amanda Berry. At the same time, he’s shoving her inside an artery. I think it’s the aorta.

She’s trying to stop him, but not too hard.

So much for true love.

The second floor has all these old time experiments with electricity. Anything in there

could be a clue, it’s all such mysterious old stuff. Maybe my hair standing on end after I pass the

static electricity display is a clue. My hair makes this weird turn, every hair pointing left, down a


Field Trip Pirates --57

long corridor leading to the chamber of ancient inventions. That’s what I call it anyway. What

else would you call a room full of out of date junk.

A telephone that dials. It’s black and weighs a ton. I’m surprised the numbers aren’t in

Roman numerals it’s so old. Next to it is the telegraph, invented by some guy named Morse. H

even made up his own secret code for using the thing. This telegraph’s even older than the c

clunky dial phone and you can’t even talk into it. You have to know this Morse guy’s strange

code language to even use it. Then there are piles of some of Edison’s stuff.

I’ve heard of Edison. I know he invented the light bulb and had a high school in our town

named after him but I never knew he invented all this other stuff. Like movies. Edison

didn’t know about DVD’s or CD’s or even VCR’s. And his movies didn’t have sound.

With all these old gadgets telling how mankind learned to harness electricity, I half

expected to see the raggedy tail of ol’ Ben Franklin’s kite in there.

The Morse code thing starts clacking away the minute I step up to it like it’s waiting for

me. A message. It had been rigged up to type out the next clue as soon as I touched the clacker

‘Three halls down, to the left’

Huey and his gang probably didn’t go this way unless it was by accident. No way, they

figured out Morse’s little code. They’d have broken the clacker thing before they

managed to tap out the ‘three’. So I figure the boys are in trouble already. Maybe that map

led them right to….to what? The blind man’s hungry tiger?

I take a deep breath and plunge ahead, too curious to be smart because if I was smart I’d

sure be a lot more afraid…

Now I can tell I’m getting close. I smell the ocean. Or maybe the museum people

Field Trip Pirates --58

are being real genuine with the exhibit and came up some special ocean smells. Just use some

of Huey’s old socks. That would make a good low tide smell.

The exhibit’s locked up of course. Everybody is downstairs pushing and shoving in

line trying to be first to go through when they open the doors.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --59

Ms K led her group into the pirate exhibit. All the kids oohed and aahed when they

found out about John King, the nine year old runaway who became a crew member aboard a

famous pirate ship.

The cannons looked pretty cool but they just lay there doing nothing. The kids wanted to

watch pirates firing them, blasting holes in the walls and wrecking stuff, making lots of noise and

smoke. So everybody sort of nodded at the cannons and walked on hoping the next exhibit had

more kick to it.

That was the display of pirate treasure. Expecting to see mountains of gold

and precious gems, The students groaned again in disappointment when they saw the feeble pile

of coins in a glass case.

A sign posted next to the case noted the small amount of actual money found at the

site of the ship. There were several guesses as to what happened. Maybe it was washed away by

currents. Maybe another treasure hunter had beaten the museum experts to the site at an earlier

time, before such things were such a big deal for history’s sake. Or maybe, the pirates, who

trusted no one, especially one another, hid it somewhere else.

“Maybe their ghosts came and took it away.” One impressionable fifth grader whispered.

The next room showed what was supposed to be a typical pirate tavern with buccaneers

hoisting mugs of rum and singing their yohoho songs. What the kids assumed was a tape

recorded voice came from one of the manikins.

“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, yohoho and a bottle of rum” it sang out.

“It’s Johnny Depp.” A kid yelled.

“Gimme me some of that rum.” Another chimed in, thinking he was being cool.


Field Trip Pirates --60

There were more glass cases filled with sailing instruments, as well as the frayed remains

of some of the clothes pirates wore. Even the adults were yawning by the time Ms K came to that

display, having insisted on reading every word on every card as she went along since Mr. J was

nowhere to be seen and wasn’t doing his usual job of slowing up the field trip.

“After all, this is a book club. Reading is what we do.”

After everyone had passed through the tavern scene, the eyes on one of the manikins

moved. Then slowly a hand. Then another manikin stretched a stiff leg, groaning in discomfort

as it did so. Slowly, the two dummies stealthily rose to their feet. They crept out of the light

and into the shadowy corners of the exhibit. One of them opened a hidden door in the wall

behind the display. The pair slipped inside.There to wait for the signal that they were needed.

A third manikin, waited until the pair disappeared. Then he too rose and made his way to

the trap door. He listened a while. Then, satisfied that the others had moved on, he slipped

inside the doorway and quietly followed.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--61

Huey Dewey and Louis were still no where to be seen but they made their presence felt.

Further along the exhibit, a couple of the younger kids ran crying to Ms K that they were

scared. Ms K explained that the pirates were just manikins but the kids cried. They weren’t

afraid of the manikins.

They were afraid of Huey Dewey and Louis.

The boys had paused on the race to follow their special treasure map when they reached a

door way with a curtain hanging down to conceal what was on the other side. The map pointed

them toward what was on the other side of that curtain. They guessed the curtain was there to

hide something cool on the other side. All the goody goods that come to museums would stop at

the curtain. Then they’d read the sign that advised them to keep out and that would be the end of

their adventure.

But with Huey, that sign might as well have read, “please enter and do whatever you

want as long as it’s mischief”.

The boys were annoyed when they did just that and found themselves in an empty

corridor leading toward another exhibit room in a part of the museum that had been closed for a

long time. It was dark for one thing

Cobwebs hanging down all along the corridor was another clue that no one had been back

here for a while.

The huge rats were the best clue. The rats were pretty much in charge of the area. They

must have recognized some distant relatives come for a visit because they left the boys alone.

The musketeers were afraid to go forward but none of them wanted to admit it so Huey

managed to save the day.

Field Trip Pirates--62

“We can hang out here, behind this curtain, and scare all the little kids as they pass.”

And that’s just what they did.

Their first victims, a group of younger students, were soon racing back through the

exhibit like a herd of those animals you see on the safari videos after a lion shows up on the plain

and starts chasing them.

That started Ms. K running around too, flustered and trying to round up the herd.

Meanwhile, the boys had grown bored with that educational experience. They were also

feeling braver thinking that if the rats could go back there so could they. They pushed

through the cobwebs, ignored the eerie squeaking floor, and ran down the corridor that had been

posted off limits.

What they found was better than pirate treasure.

The room was lit by torches. The boys thought the flames coming out of the walls were

neat. They cast a gloomy glow over the room. It was hard to make out at first but at the far end of

the room was a pirate ship.

They immediately ignored the “Keep Off” sign and climbed aboard. The ship creaked

and moaned like the way Dewey’s old grandpa sounded trying to move after laying on the couch

watching television all afternoon,

No one was watching which for the boys meant that anything goes. So they went wild

and set out exploring the ship, wild kid style. They made the boat rock as they shook it from side

to side.

Had to give it to those idiots, they worked together great as a team.

Then they made bloodcurdling yells and threatened to keelhaul anybody who came

Field Trip Pirates --63

aboard. Of course, they still didn’t know what ‘keelhauling” was. But being natural born bullies

and numbskulls, they were sure to come up with something annoying and pass it off as

keelhauling..

After running a million times in a matter of minutes from top to bottom and from end to

end they got bored being pirates. They’d forgotten all about the map and all the treasure and

adventure that awaited the three musketeers at the end of that map.

They decided to play a trick on the rest of the field trip. They’d sneak back and take

down the “Keep out” sign by the curtain. This would be their chance to scare all the little kids.

Settle some scores with a few super nerds like Jason. If they were really lucky, maybe give a

teacher or two a heart attack.

“We’ll keel haul the whole bunch of them as they come through.” Huey announced.

His buds loved the plan.

“But first, we have to get rid of that sign. And that curtain.”

And somebody had to figure out what keelhauling was, fast.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --64

The line moving through the exhibit had stopped moving. It couldn’t

move forward because a number of heavy cannon and seamen’s chests blocked the path marked

along the exhibition route.

The only way through appeared to be along a dark corridor that hadn’t been dusted in a

long time. The adults figured the cobwebs were there for effect. Ghost pirates and all that. They

Rolled their eyes and pretended to be scared to go along with the kids. Then they saw the rats.

No one was in any hurry to go forward since there were lots of rats running around. Since

the line couldn’t move forward, it started backing up. Smaller children retreating to the rear

collided with older kids who became annoyed with having stampeding children screaming all

around them and then that whole confused mob began shoving back even farther finally reaching

the slower moving adults who were just as confused as ever.

The teachers tried herding their charges, while the curators ran about looking for the

curtain, hand writing a new “keep out” sign and shushing everyone as if the group was disturbing

the pirates or something.

And no sign of Mr. J anywhere.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--65

Huey and company hadn’t counted on a museum curator catching them before they

could keelhaul even one fourth grader.

But there they were, the pride and joy of _____book club looking down at their feet and

shuffling in their clodhopper sneakers while being lectured at by a little old lady who didn’t

come up to the shoulders of any of them.

Suddenly, her speech was interrupted by a noise from below deck on board the ship. The

curator, figured it was another juvenile delinquent. She got ready to pinch another boy by the ear

but instead, didn’t she get a surprise.

“Avast me hearties. Belay that wench’s squall.” A voice growled at them from the

shadows. The boys turned to face a grinning skeleton leering back at them. Lights flashed and

flares fired up behind the skeleton so the boys could just make out the outline of a face that

looked like the jolly roger on the pirate flag.

They drew back. Each boy wanted to scream but held back, not wishing to show the

others he was afraid.

As the flares faded, the skeleton took on a fleshy appearance and changed into a full

blooded pirate.

“Cool, man.” Dewey shouted, thinking this was part of the exhibit and the pirate was an

employee in costume.

Figuring they were being included in some planned routine, the boys turned around to see

what tricks the curator would perform as her part of the stunt but just like that, she had been tied

by ropes around the arms and legs.

“We’ve got her now laddies. Is it the plank for her or shall we just indulge in a little

Field Trip Pirates--66

keelhaulin’”

What’s with this planks and keelhaulin’ stuff? Huey wondered.

The boys still didn’t know what keelhauling was but coming from this guy it sure

sounded like something nasty. And as long as it was going to happen to somebody else, it might

be fun. They suddenly felt like they were real pirates.

This field trip is okay, each thought as they grinned at one another. This pirate

guy’s all right for a grown-up.

The boys watched as the pirate paraded across the deck toward them, showing off

his brass coat buttons and belt buckle, the belt itself bulging with pistols that looked more like

antique water squirters than real guns but that sword, a “cutlass” he called it, was sure real

enough and sharp too.

“Three smart lads, smart as paint. I could see it right off from the affidavy your school

sent ahead announcing you was comin’” the pirate said sweetly.

He told the boys he’d hand picked them for his crew because they had showed

Themselves to be true “gentlemen of fortune”

His evidence? He read from some papers he pulled out of that frilly shirt of his.

Huey had never obeyed an authority figure unless threatened with punishment. All three

boys had records that reeked of laziness, selfishness, greediness, and complete ignorance. And

they were cowardly bullies who were brave only in the safety of numbers.

The three musketeers beamed proudly as the pirate read off their particular qualities.

“And as soon as we get this here scow turned about and headed out to that ocean.” The

pirate said, pointing at a three dimensional hologram of the sea that served as back ground along

Field Trip Pirates --67

the far wall of the exhibit.

“We’ll head to the island and find the treasure.”

It seemed like the whole exhibit filled with flashes of lightning and in the distance deep

within the hologram, crashing thunder. Waves breaking on a distant beach!

The pirate hollered about jibs and mainsails and halyards and booms but the boys didn’t

understand a word of it. Louis was nearly knocked overboard when the ship “turned about” and a

sail spun flying toward his head, just missing.

“Shipmates! The island’s just the place for lads like yerselves.” The pirate roared. “You

can swim all day, climb trees like the monkeys and eat coconuts, hunt like lions and cook slabs

of fresh killed meat on a roaring fire each and every day and night for the rest of your

natural lives.”

The man had a way about him that thrilled the three musketeers. Each boy saw something

familiar in the face and swagger of the pirate.

Dewey saw his favorite rock star. The one with the long straggly black hair and the dark

eye make-up, his cheeks bright red as though smeared with the blood of his victims. Dewey

bobbed his head to some imaginary rhythm as the pirate pranced across a stage inside Dewey’s

little brain, bouncing to the pulse of a heavy bass guitar and tribal drum beat.

Singing about keelhauling everything. School, home, family, the kid down the block who

beat Dewey up last summer. Anything and anybody that bothered Dewey, this guy could do in

with a song.

Louis wasn’t sure who he saw. Maybe one of the big tough kids who hung out in the

parking lot of the 7-11. Kids he admired but secretly feared. To get over his fear, he tried to

Field Trip Pirates--68

act like them.

Smoking cigarettes. Shoplifting at the drug store. Keying the entire side of the car he

thinks belonged to the old grouch up the street who snitched to his mom about how he broke

someone’s window one day he was caught throwing rocks .

Louis was just having fun and besides, it was an accident. Maybe it wasn’t him.

Maybe it was Huey. Yeah, it was Huey…He’d been throwing rocks too.

Instead of the way grown-ups always blamed him no matter what he did, it would

be a life of not being blamed for everything that goes wrong,

That’s what Louis heard

Huey couldn’t figure out why he was so impressed with the pirate. All he saw was his

dad.

But it was a new improved dad. Flashier. More stylish and sinister in whatever he was

doing.Huey had always been especially impressed with the way his dad could weasel his way out

of any problem. Do whatever it took. Lie, cheat, steal. Run away.

It didn’t matter who was hurt just so long as he got what he wanted out of it.

That’s why Huey didn’t sweat his father not being around. He knew the old man was

taking care of business.

Besides, mom so busy working, Huey was able to get away with more stuff.

Huey had a simple outlook on life. All adults were the same. All adults are assholes.

Huey’s solution: he was never going to grow up. No job, no family. No responsibilities.

If he couldn’t be a carefree fun loving musketeer, he figured he’d get himself lost.

That’s what Huey heard: Huey, the grown up getting away with stuff.
* * *
Field Trip Pirates--69

The ship starting acting peculiar. It didn’t just rock and roll from side to side the way it

did when the boys first climbed aboard. Now, it broke away from the restraints holding it in

place. The ship began rising and falling as if riding in a squall. Waves broke over the side.

There was thunder overhead and gulls flying around squealing.

Huey went to pull up the hood on his sweatshirt when he realized he wasn’t wearing his

smelly old Dallas Cowboys jersey. Instead, he was wearing a sissy red satin coat with shiny

buttons and big floppy sleeves like the ones those guys wearing the white wigs wore in the

pictures in that fat Social Studies book he looked at one time when the cable was out and there

was nothing else to do.

His sneakers were gone, too, replaced by these heavy clodhopper boots.

And his backwards baseball cap was gone. His head was covered by a red bandana that

smelled like fish or something worse.

He looked over at Louis and Dewey and saw they were dressed the same way, like

midget captain Hooks.

“Dude you look ridiculous.” One said to the other.

“Dude, I banged my head against the cement wall a few times when we were running

through here. I know I cracked the cement but did I crack something in my head too?”

“No me bucks. Your heads are fine and your eyes are seeing what they are meant to see.

For three such as ye were so meant for the life of the sea that you’ve been impressed for me

crew. Make sail.”

When the boys stood dumbfounded, they felt the crack of a whip. It stung each of them.

“Make sail. I said.”

Field Trip Pirates--70

“What are you talking about mister. I’m not impressed. I’m just a kid.” Louis whined,

then showing there was no honor among bad boys he squealed on his mates. “Besides, this was

all Huey’s idea. He’s the one who wanted to do the keelhaulin’.”

“I said, make sail.” The pirate growled and the boys heard a pistol fire.

Louis started bawling. Dewey ran from one end of the ship to the other then back.

“What are we gonna do. What are we gonna do.” He kept crying again and again.

Huey, being slightly smarter than his pals, tried to think. It was too difficult. His brain

was way too much out of practice. He looked into the shadows away from the smoke coming

from the pistol.

Suddenly, lightning flashed and he saw someone fighting with a gang of raging

buccaneers…

“Mr. J!”

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--71

Mr. J reached around in the dark for his pouch. The living manikins had confirmed his

suspicions. He had quietly followed the pair of manikins from the tavern exhibit.

He squeezed behind the wall and slid along until he reached a trap door. He

forced open the door and entered a small room. The room contained several computers and

stereo equipment, concealed wires ran in all directions with some cleverly hidden thick cables

leading under a second trap door that opened onto a long dark corridor.

“Stage lighting. A Virtual reality simulator.” He’d heard of such a thing from his son, the

computer expert but had never really paid much attention thinking that nothing could beat

applying good old fashioned human imagination to tinker with “real” reality. These sophisticated

gadgets seemed out of place in a pirate exhibit.

But then, there are pirates and there are pirates.

The manikins had gone somewhere beyond that dark corridor. He could tell by the

agitated way the rats scurried about, like they were deserting a sinking ship…

He heard noises coming from the end of the corridor. Must be another room, he

thought, as he fumbled about in his pouch, hoping he’d picked the right card. He paused with

several in hand but it was so dark, he couldn’t make out the inscription.

“Here goes.” He finally said, picking one and returning the others to the pouch.

Which card had he grabbed? He felt himself growing stronger and ready for battle.

Maybe it was the ‘Ace’ card?

That one read:

‘Achilles, part man, part Greek mythological god.
Crazed brawling a specialty. Superhuman acts of bravery on request.
Available for television wrestling, parent teacher conferences
and income tax audits.”
Field Trip Pirates--72

Or had he pulled the one he’d wanted. That one read:

Baker Street Irregular
“No mystery too complicated. No clue too insignificant.
Dashing debonair sword fights a specialty.
Nick of time rescues and happy endings in every mystery”
Available for finding missing homework, wayward parents, hounds lost on moors.

Somehow, the two cards had gotten stuck together. Once he finished with this field trip,

he’d have to sit down and sort through the pouch and put them all back in alphabetical order.

Maybe categorize them by character type or story line. But that would require so much cross

referencing for all those years of work.

Maybe he’d break down and ask his son, the computer whiz, to devise something along

the electronic gizmo line to deal with it. Give him another shot at talking to the boy. It had been

so long since they really talked.

“Why do we all make the same mistakes with our sons? He asked no one in particular.

Maybe best to let that be. He had his virtual reality. His son was discovering his own…

No time now to ponder which is better, imaginary creations of the mind or mechanical

effects of the machine, he decided, falling into character. The game afoot, and his superhuman

nose smelled a rat. And this rat was of the two leg variety.

He hoped that the cards had been stuck together long enough that some of Achilles brute

energy rubbed off on the sleuth and some of the detective’s mental skills made it over to the ill-

mannered warrior.

And if he was real lucky, maybe that bit about Achilles heel would rub away too. He

plunged ahead, not knowing which character would appear to confront the pirates.

Fortunately, these types aren’t usually well read. Maybe they won’t know about that heel.
* * *
Field Trip Pirates--73

No, it couldn’t have been old lame-o Mr J.

What Huey saw was a giant with long flowing blond hair topped by one of those dorky

Sherlock Holmes caps. He wore shining armor and in his mouth he had a huge pipe which

smoked like a chimney..

He held a sword in one hand and a giant magnifying glass in the other. And over his

shoulder he was carrying Mr. J’s weirdo saddlebag.

But boy, he was really giving it two ornery looking pirates.

Huey recognized the manikins from the tavern display. They must have hidden there,

disguised under the waxy make-up that still coated their faces, until they were needed by their

captain.

“Boys, stand back. And to take your mind off your fears, recite the capitals of the fifty

states.”

It was Mr. J…and still giving pop quizzes.

“Ah, the rest of the crew.” The pirate shouted. “And me old shipmate Barnacle Bill.

In disguise today to fool an old comrade, eh? You’re looking a bit odd, Bill. Get the cards mixed

up, have ye?”

“Lads, greet me old ship mate Barnacle Bill. Sailed with me once, ages ago when he were

a wee nipper. He’s what you call a “true seaman”. Loyal to the ideas of family and country.

Believes in kindness, honesty, and good manners. No stomach for keelhaulin’. Says his prayers

afore goin’ ta sleep each night. And educated too. He can read and write.” The pirate sneered,

spitting and making a sour face like he just slurped down an entire spinach and beet ice cream

sundae.

Field Trip Pirates--74

“Have ye seen the light and decided to join yer old mates, share and share alike Bill?”

Mr. J stabbed one of his assailants through the shoulder. That worthy fell back, while

the other tried to take advantage and snuck up from behind to attack. But the J man was too

quick for him and stopped him by whacking him over the head with the thick magnifying glass.

Then, he slashed him across the chest with his cutlass. The boys cheered as Mr. J forced the

swabs back into the shadows and out of sight.

Meanwhile, the pirate was climbing around the riggings near the top of the ship. He was

waving his sword at Huey ordering him to keel haul the curator once and for all so they could get

underway and do some treasure hunting.

“I’ll deal with that lubber Bill meself.” He cackled.

He pulled a pistol from his belt and took careful aim at Mr. J, then fired. It looked like he

missed but suddenly, Mr. J was hopping up and down, holding on to his heel.

“You see Bill.” The pirate said slowly, taking aim again. “I have done a bit of reading.”

Mr. J fell to the floor, groaning. But before the pirate could reload and aim his pistol,

he’d reached into his pouch and pulled out another card.

It read:

Incredible Houdini: Disappearing tricks a trademark.
Feats of magic performed routinely.
Transforms F report cards into straight A’s.
Chores finished with a snap of the finger. Vegetables changed to candy
No trick unplayable

Mr. J vanished. The pirate cursed. Then he looked down at the boys and cursed some

more. It was terrible cursing and under normal circumstances, the boys would have admired it.

Louis was a blubbering blob and Dewey was a babbling boob. Huey

Field Trip Pirates--75

stood alone, one musketeer facing this blood thirsty villain. His hands shook. His knees buckled.

His teeth chattered. He felt like the time the science class took a nature hike on the beach and to

show off, he ran into the ocean, forgetting it was February and the water was so cold he thought

he’d turn into an iceberg on the spot and float away to Antarctica.

Worse yet, the curator was still tied up and dangling over the side of the ship and the

boys were supposed to be keelhauling her. Huey still had no idea what keel hauling was

so he couldn’t obey the pirate’s orders even if he wanted to.

And this guy didn’t look like the type who explained what he wanted before he started

cutting off heads.

“I wish Jason was here. He’d know what keelhaulin’ is.”

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--76

In a flash of lightning reeking of gunpowder, the ropes were gone from the curator and

were instead tied tight around Huey.

The pirate lifted and tossed him over the side of the ship. Huey went under water. His

mouth was still open wide in surprise at the authenticity of the display so he swallowed a

barrelful of seawater and nearly drowned. Then he was dragged under the boat and pulled up on

the other side.

“That is keelhauling, you impudent imp. Maybe next time you’ll read a book before

you go along and ruin a perfectly good field trip.” The captain roared. “You sail with me and

you’ll learn that I never give an order twict.”

Huey couldn’t help himself. He wanted to be tough, want to be ruthless, wanted to be a

pirate, but getting keelhauled made him want his mommy.

So he cried. His sobbing made the pirate sarcastic. There’s nothing scarier than

a sarcastic grown up except maybe a sarcastic grown up pirate.

“Are ye goin ta peach on me to yer teacher or are ye goin ta take it like a seafarin’ man?”

the pirate roared. “A lad likes you needs the discipline now n agin. It’s like mother’s milk to

‘im.”

Huey’s ears shot up at that word, ‘discipline”. He was always on his guard sharp as a

tack, whenever an adult threw around words like ‘disciplne’.

But the pirate’s attention had already turned elsewhere. He spun the steering wheel and

the ship began turning faster and faster. Then it came unmoored and started drifting deeper into

the hologram of the open sea that covered the wall at the far end of the room.

* * *

Field Trip Pirates--77

The boys heard waves crashing. They felt the salt spray. The ship rocked as it appeared

to enter the wall.

“What an adventure this will be.” The pirate crowed, staring at the boys with his one

good eye, the other being covered by a black patch. The patch having switched from one eye to

the other since the boys first saw him.

“Come along swabs. Think of what yer leaving behind.”

The boys stared stupidly into the eye and fell again under the pirate’s spell. This time,

each boy saw his worst nightmare.

Louis could see himself doing piles of homework and actually having to feel happy about

it and after the homework, he was just as cheerfully doing chores like washing the dishes instead

of playing video games.

And he was sickeningly honest, always admitting when he did something bad and there

was never anyone around one to blame but himself whenever he screwed up

Dewey’s worst nightmare involved Brussels sprouts. Plates full of sprouts. He never ate

anything green and existed on a diet of Whoppers, fries and cokes with double cheese pizza on

the side. And here he was gorging himself on plates full of sprouts and always asking for more.

Then he’d do one of his Planet Weird drawings and no matter how he drew it, he was

always the head weirdo, doing all the stupid goody good stuff the creatures on Planet Weird

always did.

Huey saw his living hell was actually both of those things but only worse. In Huey’s

nightmare, not only did he do homework and act helpful while stuffing his face with green pukey

healthy stuff. He saw himself actually playing with his dorky dweeb doofus brother. And gag,

Field Trip Pirates--78

enjoying it.

The boys looked to each other, hoping to find some of that all for one toughness that they

were always talking about. Since they’d never read about the real Three Musketeers,

they had to rely on what made them the most feared kids in their grade at ____ school. But being

bullies didn’t help in this instance, they realized.

Bullies are actually cowards and in a pinch like this, bullies showed their true colors.

Instead of being dashing scourges of the Spanish Main, they felt like three very

frightened little boys who really didn’t have it that bad in the lives they led. They wanted no

parts of any “adventure” and couldn’t keep themselves from crying.

The pirate laughed at them.

“Arrrgh. I thought you was the worst of the worst, meanest of the mean. Surely, ye’ll be

fine once ye get yer sea legs. Maybe run a swab or two thru with your swords.”

The boys just wanted to go home.

“Swabs, I mean to have that treasure and by the powers if’n you shirking lubbers hinder

me I’ll have your livers for me supper.”

The sound of his cruel voice brought the boys hearts pounding up their throats

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--79

Mr J doesn’t look too good. I mean, he doesn’t look like his old self in the first place. But

this guy in the funny costume, lying on the floor looking up at me looks all pale and wobbly, like

he had 103 fever and just threw up two days worth of lunch. He’s breathing heavily and his eyes

keep rolling up into his head.

“Don’t let Mrs. J see me like this.” He keeps saying, trying to sound brave and heroic and

all that. But I’m wondering if he’s more afraid she might yell at him for doing something stupid.

I’m not fooled by the disguise or whatever he wants to call the outfit he’s wearing. He’s

still an old man, no matter what tricks he pulls out of his hat…or pouch to be more exact.

I’m scared too. Mr. J’s a pretty smart guy, for a teacher. I figure if he’s in trouble, what

are the rest of us gonna do?

“I won’t lie to you boy.” He’s saying to me now. “There’s a great deal that happens that I

don’t understand. Life’s full of mysteries and while things always happen for a reason,

sometimes that reason is obscure.”

Something like that. I have to admit I’m not listening too closely because now I see the

blood. His bad leg’s been shot down near the heel. There’s blood all over the floor where

it runs down from his wound. He’s making like it’s no biggie but I can see from his face that he’s

hurting.

“…just keep your head and do the very best you can. That’s all anyone can reasonable

expect…”

Yeah, yeah. Sure Mr. J. Still talking like a teacher. I’m surprised he doesn’t give a pop

quiz on all the stuff he’s telling me.

But then I get it. He’s preparing me to take over. He’s trying to give me the old wisdom

Field Trip Pirates--80

routine to keep me from getting scared. But it isn’t working. I see blood and I don’t want it to be

mine.

He’s going on about “saving the day” and all I’m worried about is saving me.

Why did I let myself get mixed up in this mess. Of course, Mr. J could have asked

himself the same thing but he doesn’t. He really is brave and all that. And he believes I am too.

So I feel bad. I figure he’ll go back in there and get himself hacked to bits or blown to

Smithereens. But I nod my head like I’m listening so the old guy doesn’t think he’s wasting his

time. All the time this is going through my head, he’s still gabbing away. How like a teacher to

talk and talk even long after the class stops paying attention.

He tells me that he routed the other “scurvy lot” but there’s one villain left.

“The worst of the worst, I won’t lie to you. Got me from behind like the treacherous

scoundrel he is.” He looks at me and sees the fear and that makes his mind up.

He lifts himself off the floor with a tremendous effort and leans on the sword. He tells me

he can’t ask me to do this and I should go back with Ms K and the rest of the group. He grits his

teeth. I can feel his pain and I also feel all that strength of his and my own jaw tightens.

He’s standing there, ready to go, the blood pouring down his leg, his face getting whiter

and whiter and all he does is worry about my safety.

He staggers a few feet, takes a deep breath and then falls right back down on his face.

“Lie still, Mr. J. Wait for the museum people or the police. Somebody else can take care

of this.”

But then he does something I didn’t expect. He hands me his sword and his pouch.

The sword’s heavy but it feels pretty cool when I swing it around and slash the air a few times.

Field Trip Pirates--81

The pouch is light as a feather. He tells me to be careful with it.

“I want it back.” He says.

“Yes sir.” Something in the way he talks to me makes me call him “sir”. And it’s not the

old guy and respect your elders thing.

“No matter how dark it seems, I’ll be there with you.” Blah blah. “I won’t desert you. I

have the utmost confidence in you.”

I wish I felt the same way about myself.

Mr. J has been brave and honest and true. What more could a kid ask for from an adult.

I wish I felt the same way about myself.


Field Trip Pirates--82

The boys miserable spirits rose when they saw someone swinging overhead on the ropes

from the riggings overhead. At first they thought Mr. J, had pulled another card out of his

magical pouch and come back for them but if it was he’d shrunk.

This guy still waved his cutlass around like a real hero who knew what he was doing.

Best of all, he wasn’t giving the boys any more pop quizzes. Then Huey recognized their

would-be rescuer.

“Jason!” the boys shouted together.


* * *


Field Trip Pirates--83

Yeah it’s me. Flying to the rescue. Not really sure why I’m rescuing Huey and his

dumb friends but I have to admit the way they cheer when they see me, even Huey’s happy to

see me.

And here I am sword fighting with a pirate, using old Mr J’s umbrella which had

turned into a really neat sword. Just right size for a pint sized hero like yours truly. He even gave

me a card from his wallet that helped me learn how to fly in a hurry.

It read:
PETER PAN Your danger is our adventure.
Nick of time rescues of lost boys, Indian princesses, and fairies.
In distress? You cry, we fly.

The card was coated with some kind of dust. Mr. J swore that the dust would help me to

fly. If I chose to believe.

Hokey maybe but why not? Anything’s possible…they landed a man on the Moon after

all, like my grand mom always says. Although I’m still not sure why she thinks that’s such a big

deal.

“And who are you today, lad?” The pirate asks.

“Same as I was yesterday and will be tomorrow. I’m Jason, and your worst

nightmare.”

To make him feel a little better about fighting a child, I throw in something about being

the scourge of the seven Seas but tell the truth I’m scared. This is no Captain Hook or Long

John Silver I’m fighting, a couple of storybook characters missing vital parts. This is a full

grown, fire breathing, blood curdling pirate. He’s all there right in my face and 100% bad!

“’Scourge of the seven seas’. I like it. A fitting epitaph. You do know what an epitaph is

don’t you lad?
Field Trip Pirates--84

“Yes sir. A short text honoring a person written on his grave.”

“We both know the date of death. What date of birth shall we have chiseled on your

marker?”

The pirate swings widely with his sword and misses. I fight hard as I can. I’m doing

okay. In fact, I start slowly forcing him to climb back down to the deck.

“Just like Jim Hawkins.” I yell to the boys as I back the pirate toward the opposite

end of the ship.

I can’t help showing off. I didn’t know I was so handy with a sword. Even though it is

Mr. J’s umbrella.

“Swim for it you guys.”

The boys don’t hesitate. They’ve had enough of the pirate life.

They jump overboard and immediately a great swell of a wave carries them out of the

hologram. The boys look like they’re drowning. Sharks circle underneath and far below, on

the bottom of the sea, I can see a skeleton beckoning to them with a bony finger. He’s

standing beside a row of gym lockers.

“Davy Jones’ locker.”

Huey manages to gurgle before he goes under for the umpteenth time.

The pirate throws himself at me and I leap sideways to avoid the blow. Then I start

running around the deck, slipping on the slick deck, trying to stay away from him, dodging

swipes of that buccaneer’s cutlass. But he‘s smart. He keeps slowly cutting down my area of

running room.

My eyes are glued to that sword, the whole time, visions of ten inches of cold steel

Field Trip Pirates--85

shoved in my belly is more than enough to keep me on my toes.

Suddenly, the ship hits a reef and turns on its side at a 45 degree angle. Water splashes

Aboard and knocks us both down.

We tumble about the deck. The pirate loses his sword as he slides. I’m moving as

fast as I get an idea, so I start climbing the ropes hand over hand. I don’t look down ‘cause I

know I’ll get dizzy. I don’t stop climbing I reach the very top, the cross trees.

But the pirate recovers his footing and he’s right behind me, a dagger clamped in his

teeth. I reach for my own knife and begin cutting thru the rope he’s climbing. I want to cut it

before he can get to me.

“Come closer and I’ll cut it and you’ll drop to the ground below and knock your brains

out” I tell him, trying to sound tough but really hoping to fake him out.

He has this look in his eyes. I’ve seen it before. Over the edge mad. And nothing you

could do or say is gonna bring him out of it until the thing plays out.

“Laddie buck. You have me at an advantage. Let’s talk it over. There’s so much treasure,

surely enough for us two to set up like kings or better yet, congressmen. I’ll be like a father to

you.

“Funny, you’re acting like my father to me right now.” I couldn’t help saying it

I keep cutting through the thick rope as the pirate edges toward me.

“Jason, son. You was always my favorite. It’ll be just you ‘n me.”

“Just like old times?”

I stop cutting. Close as I am to cutting through the rope, I can’t bring myself to do

it. I don’t understand why but I have to look at the rum soaked buccaneer as he reaches

Field Trip Pirates--86

eye level. I just have to look him in the eye this one time.

The pirate, thinking he’s gotten to me, talks faster in this soothing voice.

“Enuf gold that ye’ll never have to go back to school or even worry over a day job ever in

your life…”

I look away for an instant, pretending to think about it. Seeing his words take effect, the

pirate pushes his best line…

.”.and you’ll be able to buy the house back for your poor sainted mother as well.”

That’s too much. I look him straight in the eye, real cold. He knows I see the him for

what he is.

“A liar’s sales pitch. You even sound just like my dad.”

“Arrrgggh I’m gonna cut out that unwanted little heart of yours and feed it to the sharks.”

he shrieks, slashing out at me with an awkward blow that ’s part punch, part slap. It leaves a red

welt on my cheek. But I don’t feel a thing.

I cut the last strand sending the pirate plummeting down to the deck below. But not

before he strikes with his concealed knife, wounding me in the left shoulder.

“Makes no never mind, I’ll always be there boy. Right behind you. You’ll hear me steps

comin closer and closer until you feel my breath on your scrawny little neck scorching away the

hairs like the hottest fires of Satan’s kitchen”

Before he can finish his idle threat, the pirate lands with a thud, cracking his skull

Open. But he’s still not through. He pulls himself to his feet in order to stage a long exaggerated

death scene complete with swoons, and moans, and calls for one last yohoho and one final bottle

of rum.

Field Trip Pirates--87

What a pirate!

After the villain falls overboard and slowly sinks to the bottom of the sea, I feel the

wound to my shoulder. It’s bleeding and really begins to hurt. Then, everything starts to go

black. I never knew what that meant before now. Now I see. The room starts darkening in parts

as the room changes back to a museum exhibit

The sharks swim away and are lost inside the hologram. Huey, Dewey, and Louis are out

of the water and running back along the corridor toward the nearest exit. A bunch of rats are

chasing them. Davy Jones gives one last wave and vanished with his lockers, one more pirate

stuffed inside. Then, the ocean vanishes and the whole thing becomes just a fancy three

dimensional painting on a museum wall.

In the dark, all I hear is a loud obnoxious sound like a car horn stuck. Then, I pass out.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--88

All the lights in the exhibit had been turned off. Only the red emergency lights glowed in

the pitch black. Smoke filled the pirate exhibit and it was only Mr. J’s clearheadedness, leading

everyone to the fire exits, that saved a lot of people from getting hurt.

Jason lay unconscious on the carpet just as a man wearing a cape swung down from the

ceiling and taking him in his arms, swung away again just as a swarm of police officers and

firefighters, wielding flashlights and their night sticks, burst into the exhibit chamber.

Mr. J had been first to reach him.

“You’re all right.” Jason said to him, still feeling faint.

“If it wasn’t for him thinking quick, you might not be alive right now to be a hero, young

man.” An officer said, as Jason fainted again.

When Jason finally came to, he was in the museum manager’s office. Mr. J was still

wearing his cap and puffed on his pipe as he paced nervously back and forth, talking non stop.

Everyone in the room followed his steps and tried to concentrate on what he was telling them

about the pirates.

“They even were able to wire the room so the ship would move.” He explained. They had

somehow gained access to the back areas and had set up a computer to create a virtual reality

seascape that, with the right lighting, sound effects, and the power of suggestion, might convince

some gullible boys that they were aboard a real pirate ghost ship.”

Why did the pirate need Huey, Dewey, and Louis?

“Slave labor, plain and simple. He figured he’d use them and since no one would miss

them, dispose of them afterwards. Cold blooded villain.”

Ms. K asked how he knew so much. He’d been tipped off at the bridge.

Field Trip Pirates--89

The jumper!

Turns out, she had been part of the gang. The pirate set up the jump as a

diversion to distract the police and delay the grand opening of the exhibit until he and his stooges

could get everything in place. Even down to the blind vendor setting up his cart in front of the

museum to watch for the bus from ______ and send the boys on their way

“What they didn’t count on was my being able to dissuade her from her criminal path.”

Mr. J explained. “A former student, long ago. She told me the whole set up, even down to using

the boys. They also didn’t count on a certain very brave young man who, no doubt, will be

remembered as the hero of this “sinister case of the school field trip pirates ”

Mr. J then related the story of why the pirates set up the elaborate scheme at the museum.

A long time ago, there were pirates right here. They sailed up and down the coast, attacking ships

coming and going to Europe.

One pirate was especially successful. He was a dandy, had been a

school master in merry old England but took to piracy to make enough money to marry the

beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who wouldn’t let his daughter marry a poor school

teacher.

The pirate captured plenty of ships and lots of treasure. Legend had it that he buried it on

one of the islands up river and away from the main shipping lanes.

Over the years, that island was settled. For a short while a fortress, then a prison were

built, right over the spot where the pirate buried his treasure.

He and his men tried to get it. They attacked the fort but were beaten off. They waited

years and despaired of ever having a chance at the loot. When the fort became a prison, the

Field Trip Pirates -90

pirate was finally captured and locked up at the prison right near the spot where he supposedly

buried the treasure. He bribed his guards who joined him to dig an elaborate system of tunnels

some leading toward the treasure, some away, and some were booby trapped.

But before he ever had the chance to actually dig the treasure up, he was hanged

for being a pirate and his secret went with him to his grave. He was such a headstrong fellow that

it took the hangman several tries to do the job.

Hence, legend has it, the pirate was hanged three times for his crime.

There was also a legend about his treasure map and over the years, fortune hunters sought

the map which would show them the place on the island where he buried it.

The prison closed and was turned into a museum. The same museum in which we were

listening to his story. And the legend has it that the treasure is buried right beneath this very

room. But, Mr. J laughed.

“It’s all just a “kid” legend,” he whispered for the boys to hear. “You know how kid

legends are.”

“But who was the pirate?” Huey asked. “Was he a ghost?”

“That’s what he wanted you to believe, Master Hubert.” Mr. J got that funny look of his

and smiled. “Maybe he was a ghost. Maybe he just a very bitter and greedy man who knew a lot

of history and tried to trade a quest for knowledge into a hunt for gold that wasn’t his. Ask

Jason. Last time I asked, he didn’t believe in ghosts.”

“What do you think now?

Jason didn’t know what to think. But he did wonder how it was that the pirate knew Mr. J

very well indeed.

Field Trip Pirates--91

“A youthful indiscretion.” Mr. J answered, looking hard at the boy.

Don’t look at me that way lad. I was young… once upon a time. Anyway, it happened a

long time ago when I first went out into the world on my own. Before I understood the true

power of what I had.”

He pointed to the pouch and then his head.

“Too late to keep the likes of him from getting loose in the world.”

“Is he really gone now?”

“I don’t know that for sure Jason. Just because you sent him to what appeared to be his

watery grave….may not be the last of him. His type always seems to be around. They survive.

Like a cat that way. With lives to spare and no care to what they do to others. I guess the best

Way to understand is by reading another of Stevenson’s books, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

He kept giving that funny look. But finally, he assured Jason, they were out of danger for

now.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--92

Huey Dewey and Louis find themselves sitting on a bench outside the pirate exhibit in

the museum’s main hall. They’re embarrassed because of all the geeks and dweebs obediently

tagging along with parents and teachers, are gawking at them.

Ms. K is standing over them talking, wringing her hands. The head curator stands

behind her, her untied arms folded. She’s scowling. She looks deadlier than any pirate who

ever sailed the Spanish Main

“Not only could you boys have been hurt which would have served you right but you

might have damaged a priceless historical artifact.” She says in a voice that had the musketeers

wishing she’d holler instead.

None of the boys know what an artifact was but they’re glad to be away from that old

pirate ship. They’re dry, too.

Ms K orders the boys to stay glued to the bench while she rounds up the rest of the

kids.

Of course, Huey Dewey and Louis quickly forget their ordeal aboard the pirate ship.

Being antsy types, there’s no bench in the world large enough to contain them or glue

powerful enough to hold them down in one place for more than a minute.

Soon, they forget all about why they were sitting and are looking for more mischief to

get into.

High overhead, a wire runs across the ceiling. Mr. J had explained that the bad guys had

run the line a few nights before the exhibit opened. The wire was connected to a generator and

some computer equipment they had set up in a van across the street from the museum. Somehow,

no one noticed it or they thought it was needed to run the new exhibit.

Field Trip Pirates--93

Blind Pugh sat in the van operating the computer to make all the special effects work.

The computer stuff was even labeled in Braille so he’d be able to run the show without

any hitches. How about that. Blind Pugh, a techno geek! What’ll the crooks think of next?

Anyway, now that all the commotion with the pirates died down, some genius college

kid, an intern history student from the college is slacklining up on the wire, entertaining the

crowd before the cops chase him down and throw him out of the museum. But he inspires the

three musketeers with a brilliant idea to keep the field trip interesting.

Dewey dares a girl, Angela Kravitz to walk the tightrope. I’m something of

an expert on fifth grade girls since I have to put up with them all day at school. What I know is

that all Fifth grade girls are dumb. All they care about is boys. They’ll do anything if they think

it’ll get an older boy at all to like them. Any older boy at all.

Even a Dewey.

Angela is just like all the others. I would sometimes stare at her in math class. She’s taller

than most of the other kids and kind of mature looking, if you know what I mean. I guess I kind

of like her. I like the way she always fluffs her hair before she raises her hand to ask a

question. Like a movie star getting ready for her big scene.

But she’s stuck up and doesn’t talk to “little boys” like me. She even tries hanging out

with the eighth graders but they just laugh at her. That makes her feel bad and I feel sorry for her.

She looks pretty scared right now but Angela actually manages to tiptoe halfway across

the wire before anyone notices what she’s doing. And they only notice then because she

starts crying when she realizes what a stupid thing she is, being fifty feet in the air and only a

wire to keep her from crashing. She freezes, too scared to go any further.

Field Trip Pirates--94

She calls out to Dewey to help her but he isn’t going out there. That wire is high off

the ground. And so thin.

“Besides, Ms K told us me I had to stay on this bench. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

The angel replies.

Another crowd of angry, flustered adults gather around the group from ____.

Ms K and a new bunch of official looking grown ups are frantically try to calm the girl

down until the fire department can get there with a safety net and she can drop down

safely.

“We’ve got to save her Mr. J.” I say, not sure if maybe the world might be a better place

with one less Angela Kravitz to distract guys like me.

I look at the old man, not doubting for an instant that he could do it. He looks at me with

that strange look he gets, the one that lets you know he’s seeing right through you and knows

more about you than you know about yourself. Another one of those looks kids always hate to

get from adults.

“He can’t do nothin’. He’s just a dumb old man.” The three numbos, Huey, Dewey and

Louis snicker.

“Why ask me?” Mr. J says. That’s all. He’s still giving me that look.

I’m standing beside Mr. J, at the edge of the crowd. I whisper in the old man’s ear. Mr.

J smiles down at me, then nods and hands me his umbrella.

I take the card he hands me out of his pouch.

It reads:

Matinee Idol. Death defying feats of heroism.
Fearless acts that defy nature. Good always beats bad.
Field Trip Pirates--95

Damsels in distress rescued and romanced by dashing handsome dude.
Little children saved, thrilled, and otherwise amazed speechless.
Money back guaranteed if not completely charmed and amazed.

I open the umbrella and step onto the wire before the adults can stop me. Next thing you

know, there I am, tightrope walking using the umbrella for balance. And me so afraid of heights I

don’t even want to help mom put the angel on the top of the Christmas tree.

“Way cool.” Dewey says and even Huey has to agree.

I slowly cross the wire until I reach the girl. As I stretch to take her hand, the wire

wobbles, then snaps.

Thinking quickly I wrap my sweater around the wire and hold on tight. With

Angela clinging and digging her girl claws into my shoulders I swing back to the platform

and land gracefully with a “tada!” right in front of the crowd of adults who are watching in

amazement.

Even the teachers had stopped yelling at Huey, Dewey, and Louis to gawk.

Then I bow.

The crowd goes ballistic with applause.

I’m still holding the card Mr. J had given me as everybody slaps me on the back to

congratulate me and Angela is giving me this funny look that she’d never given me before. Then

she throws her arms around me and tries to kiss me.

Arrrgh. Maybe I should have left her out there, I think. And now I’m embarrassed

because maybe I wouldn’t have minded her kissing me after all. And all at once, I’m

the one who’s confused.

“Well done Jason. I see you have one of his cards.”

Field Trip Pirates--96

It’s Mrs. J. She’d made her way through the crowd and quietly steers me away from

Angela and the rest. She takes the card out of my hand. I’d squeezed it so much when I was

saving Angela that it looks pretty crumpled.

“This one’s special.” She whispers. “He was holding it the day he met me. He looked just

like Errol Flynn”

My eyes bulge wide open and she laughs and puts a finger to her lips.

I wonder who Errol Flynn is.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--97

“We didn’t even get a chance to shop at the store.” The boys complain after they’re the

last ones herded aboard the bus for the trip back.

“You’re lucky the museum doesn’t have you three arrested and _____ banned from any

future field trips.” Ms. K scolds

“Oh well, now we’ll never get our pirate’s treasure.” Louis sighs.

Mr. J reaches into his coat pockets and finds the leaves he’d plucked from the ground

yesterday. He hands them out to the kids on the bus.

“Aw they’re just a bunch of dried up old leaves.” Huey Dewey and Louis whine.

But for me, the leaves turn into a pile of silver coins.

“Pieces of eight.” Mr. J winks

Huey smirks at me with that clueless “whatever” expression that’s as much a part of his

face as his nose. So for him, it really is a bunch of dead leaves. They crumble in his fist.

Huey and his buds didn’t get anything out of the field trip. They had found no treasure of

any kind on their day’s adventure so they whine and are just as annoying on the ride home as

they had been on the ride to the museum. The rest of the kids all cheer for Mr. J and count their

treasure and chatter away about what they saw and learned on the field trip.

The kids unanimously agree that they want to be in Mr. J’s group for the next trip.

“Even you Jason?” he asks. “Take another bus ride with an ancient old man?”

“Especially Jason.” I exclaim.

“Then it’ll be our group. How ‘bout it kids, who wants to be in the group led by the Two

J’s?”

The kids all cheer. Angela Kravitz, still making googoo eyes at me from four rows back,

Field Trip Pirates--98

cheers loudest. Look at me, Mister Popularity all of a sudden. I sink down in the seat but the

truth is, I feel pretty good. Even about the Angela bit. Maybe, especially about the Angela bit.

“By the way lad, that trip would be where?”

“The Outer Space exhibition at the science museum.”

“I’ve been there.” He winks at me.

“Or at least, so kid legend has it.”

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--99

The rest of the bus ride home goes real fast until Huey and the boys’ pirate sword

swallowing contest. That ends with a side trip to the emergency room at the hospital after

Louis really does swallow his sword and nearly chokes himself trying to say that Huey and

Dewey did it.. He ends up spitting up some blood but no body parts come out.

I guess that proves that kids are held together better than old people and don’t start to fall

apart and lose bits and pieces of themselves until they get real old.

So we take a detour to the hospital. We leave Louis there with one of the teachers to wait

for the principal and for his mom to come deal with him. I hope his insides didn’t explode and

come pouring out of his ears.

I wonder what would happen if something happened and he never comes back to our

school.

The three musketeers would have to become a dynamic duo. They may not be up on the

classics as Mrs. J calls them but I’m pretty sure Huey and Dewey read comic books…at least

they saw the Batman movies. Maybe they’ll know how to act in that case. They were lousy as

musketeers.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --100

The museum people never did figure out where that extra pirate treasure that turned up

came from. Mr. J had found the hidden trap door under the hidden room that had to be reached

by the first trap door.

The museum people were amazed to learn that all these hidden rooms and

trap doors and secret passageways were right under their noses. I mean, they’re great for going to

the far reaches of the world, to Africa and the North Pole and places like that. But they didn’t

even know what they had right there in their own museum.

So Mr. J was strutting around, proud as a peacock the day he got to teach them a thing or

two about treasure hunting when he led them through all the secret stuff and they found….

TREASURE!

Money from all over the world, from countries that don’t even exist any more. Gold and

silver and diamonds and rubies and all that kind of jewelry stuff.

After all the experts, the coin guys and historians and the scientists and the archeolgists

and all the other “ists” go over and over and over it, they decide it’s ours.

But what are we gonna do with old coins and such?

So after talking it over with mom and asking Mr J who I’m convinced knows something

about everything, we decide to take the big reward the museum people offered us in exchange

for donating what we found.

Enough to set up college scholarships for me and a permanent future bail fund for

Huey…I’m kidding. He has a scholarship fund too. Now if there was only a college dumb

enough to take him.

Best of all, there’s enough left over for mom to pay off the mortgage and quit the hash

Field Trip Pirates--101

slinging job. No more flying plates full of mashed potatoes clobbering unsuspecting customers.

She’s keeping the other job but she’s going back to school to study nursing so instead of

having to clean up messes after old people fall apart all over her, she’ll be the one who knows

what to do to keep them in one piece.

My father keeps trying to get back in my life. I know it’s because of the money but I talk

to him. He even took me to a Phillies game.

He’s working but it’s nothing steady. He keeps bouncing from job to job and place to

place.

My kid’s idea of a dad, that ideal dad who plays ball with you and knows

everything…that dad’s dead…like the war hero dad of my kid legend.

I’m polite to this guy. Because he’s my father, I have to deal with him. A judge says so.

So I listen to him and learn. Boy, do I learn.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates--102
There’s more treasure out there. I know it. Mr. J and I talk about the treasure and lots of

other things whenever I go over to visit.

We even talk about my dad.

“Just like parents can’t demand that their kids be what they’re not, kids learn that they’re

parents aren’t always going to be what they want.”

A good parent is what a kid needs, he always says. It sounds so obvious how come so

many people don’t get it. Even good people. Sometimes a parent can mean well but hurt their kid

as much as the one who’s a natural born louse. I guess the worst thing a parent can do is know

his kid’s weakness and use that to hurt him.

He keeps giving me old books to read and I do. Fat books by a guy named Dickens who

must have lived to be 300 years old to write all the stuff he wrote and some by Mark Twain that I

like because they’re about kids like me even though they’re not like me.

And by the way, there’s no monster in J’s attic either although Mr. J swears me to

secrecy on that one since the kid legend about the monster keeps guys like my brother Huey

from pestering the J’s at Halloween and pretty much any other time of the year.

In fact, after he tells me his son’s not a monster living in his attic, Mr. J tells me his son

actually lives all the way on the other side of the world, working for a computer soft ware

company. I’m surprised when he tells me he hasn’t had any contact with his son for a few years

after they had a big fight and decided they couldn’t communicate with one another.

That’s just a grown up way of saying two people are just too stubborn to try to work out

their differences.

So I get to do something nice for him. I teach him how to use e-mail. Then I sit there

Field Trip Pirates --103

beside him in front of the computer and pester him until he sends an email to his son.

What do ya know. The kid wrote back. That leads to a few more and e-mails back and

forth and then a phone call or two and guess what?

Mr. J’s son is coming home to visit next October.

“He’ll be here for Halloween. He says he can’t wait to sleep in his old bedroom up in the

attic.” Mr. J says with a sinister laugh. “Let’s invite your brother and all the rest of the kids from

school to come for trick or treat.”

Mr. J looks younger these days. By about a hundred years. He’s still ancient but now we

laugh about how old he is. We laugh about Angela Kravitz too. She’s always hanging around,

pestering me to sit with her at lunch or come to her house to do homework. Sometimes, I get

mad and tell her to buzz off. Most of the time I don’t. I kinda like having her around.

Especially because it annoys Huey. He teases me about my girlfriend and always makes

noises and faces when she calls or comes over to the house. But it doesn’t bother Angela which

is pretty cool. And it doesn’t bother me because I know Huey’s secret.

He’s jealous.

He’d like to have a girlfriend too. But he won’t have time. Since he’s grounded at home

for the rest of his life and at school he has detention until he’s about forty. By then he’ll be so old

no girl will want him and he’ll need mom’s help to keep his decrepit body from falling apart.

I stop imagining creative ways for Huey to die. I feel sorry for him sort of He’ll destroy

himself with his meanness

Mr. J still gives me his famous pop quizzes.

On one, he keeps asking me where I think the treasure is and I try to tell him places but

Field Trip Pirates--104

he just shakes his noggin no, then points to his head and tells me to think some more.

Then one day I think I get it. I stop digging holes in the back yard and looking under

rocks and behind trees and in every dark corner of wherever I go.

I can tell you the longitudes and latitudes on that map Huey got from the blind vendor but

that doesn’t begin to tell you where that treasure is hidden. The map itself is worthless for that

And you can’t figure out how to look for it from the secret directions the villains set up

along the way throughout the museum that led to our battle on the pirate ship.

To learn the location of the treasure, first you have to go inside Mr. J’s mind and learn all

that he knows, all the stories, all the kid legends. Then, you have to go through his pouch.

Pick a card, any card.

Then, you have to open up your own mind.

And let your imagination do the rest.

I guarantee you’ll find the treasure.


Field Trip Pirates --105

“Epilogue:
A youthful understanding of TREASURE ISLAND”


A boy’s father goes away. That’s how it starts. He goes away and leaves his son to face

the world and a shipload of bloodthirsty pirates all by himself.

His mom can’t help. She’s too busy running a hotel to drop everything and look for pirate

treasure. Besides she can’t read a treasure map and doesn’t believe in such things anyway.

But she’s a swell mom and she understands why a boy has to drop everything and run off on a

treasure hunt.

So young Jim Hawkins finds some grown ups and shows them the map. And just like all

grown ups, they take over the treasure hunt and push him aside. Oh sure they promise him a “fair

share” but in the meantime they make him work as their cabin boy on their great sea adventure.

Also just like grown ups they screw up the plans by trying to do the job cheap and save

money. Instead of hiring a crew of trustworthy sailors they hire a gang of pirates headed by a

one legged man who’s the meanest and most dangerous pirate of all.

That’s Long John Silver.

He’s most dangerous because he’d kill you while he smiled at you. He’ll do anything, say

anything, be anything just to get the money.

Typical grown up

But he’s worse. He’s smart. He knows how to talk to a kid, what to say and how to act to

get a kid to trust him

Silver and Jim Hawkins start out as pals. Naturally the rest of Jim’s grown up friends are

clueless, always drinking rum and wine and figuring out how they’ll spend the treasure when

Field Trip Pirates--106

they find it.

So it’s up to Jim to discover the pirates secret plan to take over the ship.

The rest of the story is about the fight between the pirates and the good guys. The good

guys keep winning because the pirates are rough and tough but pretty stupid. They can’t read or

write and they don’t trust one another so there’s no team work like with the good guys.

And they don’t have a secret weapon. A kid who’s smart as paint.

Every time it looks bad for the good guys, Jim saves the day. He rescues the ship. He

finds a guy who was marooned. Marooned means he left on Treasure Island to die. This guy

knows where the treasure is, so the good guys get it and hide it in a cave.

The pirates never do find it. So, they turn against one another. Even Long John, who

keeps switching sides to whichever seems to be winning, even he ends up against the pirates, his

own pals.

That’s how he saves his skin.

But at the end, after the pirates are beaten, Silver still can’t be trusted. He steals some of

the money and sails away to live happily ever after on the Spanish main.

The rest go back to Merry Old England rich with doubloons and pieces of eight and Jim

goes to college and becomes a doctor like his mom wants.

* * *


Field Trip Pirates --107

Treasure Island is one of the books Mr. J found in the pouch when he discovered it

hanging from the giant chestnut tree, years and years ago.

This is the very first book report he ever wrote. The whole report pops up, on like a small

computer screen when you rub the special Barnacle Bill card he carries in that pouch of his.

His son set up that neat little gizmo for him when he came out to visit.

When Mr. J showed it to me, I did something no kid had done since the days of

Ichabod Crane.

I invited a teacher home for dinner. Actually, I invited two teachers. Mrs. J came too.

Huey snuck out and went to McDonald’s with Dewey. He got in trouble for it later.

By the time he gets off being grounded, he’ll be older than Mr. J.


--THE END –

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.03.2010

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