a pirates field trip by ray rebmann (bill gates book recommendations txt) 📕

/> 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.

* * *


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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.

* * *

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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.

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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