a pirates field trip, ray rebmann [i love reading .txt] 📗

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

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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.

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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…

** ** **


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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

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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

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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.

* * *


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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.”

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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…
* * *
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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