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

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