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

/> 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