part 26:
Ultimate Team Up?
Trouble For the Jusenkyo Scouts!
by Matthew Atanian
©2005 by Matthew Atanian
Ultimate Team Up?
Trouble For the Jusenkyo Scouts!
by Matthew Atanian
©2005 by Matthew Atanian
“Ah, Moses,” Mike Quadrozzi commented as he walked down the path to the Crown Point campsite, dragging his foot locker behind himself towards the green canvas tent that would be his home for the next week.
“You be quiet,” Billy Gelinas said, bearing his own trunk as he followed Mike down the dim, shadowed path.
Mike paused, set his own trunk down, took a deep breath of the fresh forest air, and then turned to his companion. “What?” he asked.
“You say, ‘Ah, Moses,’ and the next thing you know we’re all under armed assault in one of the most unrealistic scenarios one could possibly conceive.”
Mike sighed, grabbed his trunk, and continued on. Billy was caught by surprise, and had to rush a moment to keep up. When he had caught up to Mike, aside from being breathless from running for a moment dragging his footlocker, Billy gave Mike a look that convinced the hat-clad scout that his friend was far from satisfied that the week that was ahead of them would be a benign one.
Again, Mike sighed. “Unrealistic, you say?” When Billy nodded, Mike continued. “More unrealistic then falling into cursed springs? Or how about Scoutmasters mysteriously disappearing, never to be heard from again? More unrealistic, perhaps, then shipping our SPL off to a Middle Eastern country just to get him out of our hair for a bit?”
Billy Gelinas’s response was a simple one. “Shut up, Squid.”
Mike shrugged his shoulders and took another deep breath. He then paused in the path once more, sniffing at the air for a moment with a look of concern upon his face.
“What is it?” Gelinas asked cautiously.
“Nothing, I just…” Mike turned to his colleague. “Do you smell smoke?”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Gelinas warned.
“‘No I don’t,’ what?” Mike innocently asked as he continued down the path once more.
Gelinas had not been taken by surprise this time, and began walking again when Mike had. “This is how it all starts, I know it,” he bemoaned. “You smell smoke, and then the next thing you know, this will lead to some bizarre and complex plot for our patrol to get itself sucked into. Probably we’ll have Matt Atanian involved as well, and perhaps also some guest appearances by members of Troop 180, or Dan and Colin.
“Kenny will do something smart, Perry will try and kill us, Swett will be sarcastic, and Shmuler will be annoying.”
“Will didn’t come to camp, remember?” Mike reminded Billy. “He and his dad are on that trip to Albuquerque he won.”
“Oh yeah,” Gelinas responded.
“Well, there goes your grand theory,” Mike told him.
“That’s sure annoying,” Billy sighed. A moment passed. “Ah ha! That’s annoying!” He grinned triumphantly. “Shmuler is annoying!”
Mike rolled his eyes.
Billy, meanwhile, continued with renewed vigor. “For some reason, the Porters will show up. Matt will swoon over Sarah, and he will also have to resist the advances of Taylor Kuntz. Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck dealing with whatever Justy is up to. Because mark my words, he will be up to something.
“There will be kiwi/mocha fruit juice. There will be that strange lost Japanese guy. There will be Jim Anderson asking something about someone with red hair. There will be laughs and hijinks galore and somehow everything will all work out in the end, and we’ll all live happily ever after.” Billy paused for a moment and then added, “At least, until our next zany adventure.”
“Oh, Billy,” Mike said, “you shouldn’t be such a pessimist.”
“You can’t tell me,” Gelinas said, exasperated, “that you honestly haven’t noticed a pattern since last summer?”
“Can’t say as I have, my friend.”
“Then you must be blind,” Gelinas said to Mike. “You just wait and see, though. It will all happen just as I have said.”
“No it won’t,” Mike said firmly.
“You sound so sure of yourself,” Billy said.
“And you don’t?” Mike pointed out.
“But I have reason to,” Billy insisted. Now he paused, and Mike stopped beside him on the path. “Care to make a bet|?” Billy asked. “Because I am positive that all of that stuff will happen.”
“All of it?”
Billy nodded. “All of it,” he confirmed.
Mike seemed to think about this for a moment. “Nah,” he then said, “I don’t want your money.”
“You just don’t want to loose,” Billy insisted.
“I wouldn’t loose,” Mike said. He looked Billy in the eyes. “Fine,” he said. “You’re that sure you’ll win? You’re on. I still don’t want you’re money, though. But I will bet my hat on it.”
“What?” Billy was stunned. “Your hat?”
Mike smirked.
“Hey, no fair! I don’t have any trademarked items of clothing to bet!”
To this, Mike simply shrugged. Then he said, “It doesn’t have to be clothing. I just don’t want your money. What else of value do you have?”
Bill Gelinas thought of this for a moment before announcing, “I will bet you all of my Magic cards.”
Mike nearly fell to the ground upon hearing this, but he quickly regained his footing. “You’re that sure you’ll win, are you?”
“And you’re sure enough to risk your hat?”
“Yes,” Mike told him. “Fine, you’re on.”
“Good.”
“Indeed.”
Gelinas smiled knowingly. “Any minute now,” he said, “all hell will break loose.”
“Sure, whatever.”
“Any minute...”
“The smoke smell is probably just someone’s campfire,” Mike rationalized, starting towards Crown Point once again.
“Any minute…” Billy continued in a sing-song voice.
Mike sighed. “Will you come on?” he asked. “We have to get out trunks dropped off and go back for more gear.”
Billy grabbed his footlocker and followed.
“By the way,” he asked Mike as he caught up once more, “any idea how we’re getting out of swim tests this year?”
Mike shrugged, “I’m sure something will come up.”
“Your confidence underwhelms me.”
“Shut up, Bill.”
Jim McGraw, acting Scoutmaster of Troop 192 for the week of summer camp, exited the Nunes Building. He was followed by his Senior Patrol Leader, Justy Yung. Together, the pair made their way over to the Manor House where the rest of troop 192 was waiting.
Mr. McGraw and Justy found them scattered about the Manor House lawn, some sitting and some standing, each member of the troop holding a copy of their medical form as the troop waited for their turn to check in with the nurse. Many of them also held towels and were wearing bathing suits rather then pants. After this, their next stop was traditionally the waterfront for swim tests.
The boys were clustered in small groups, most of them chatting with one another about their plans for the week ahead. A few of them were catching up with friends who were either in different troops or on camp staff.
Upon arriving, Mr. McGraw and Justy split up. The former joined most of the rest of the adults, standing off to one side with the adults of other troops and talking quietly amongst themselves. The later sought out one of the members of the Garden Snake patrol who went by the name of Perry.
“According to the board in the Nunes Building,” Justy told him, “Troop 86 is in Ticonderoga.”
Perry smiled.
Justy laughed.
Mark Abert happened to be walking by on his way to check something over at the Archery range. He stopped for a moment. “Hello, Justy.”
Justy stopped laughing. “Oh, hello… you.” He couldn’t remember Mr. Abert’s name.
Mark didn’t notice. “Cheerful as always, I see,” he said, smiling.
“Yes,” Justy said. “Things shall go as planned this time!”
“Glad to hear that,” Mark responded. “Will I be seeing you at archery?”
“Yes,” Justy announced. “A man of my importance must not forget to keep his basic skills sharpened.” He began to laugh some more.
“I like your spirit, Justy!” Mark said. He then spotted Matt Atanian. “Ah, if you’ll excuse me,” he said to Justy.
Matt Atanian was, as was almost always the case while in his uniform, wearing his red wool jacket. Between that and the trench coat he used for civilian wear, Mark often questioned his friend’s sanity in the summer time. He made no comment on this as he approached Matt, however, choosing instead a long running joke between the two of them: teasing Matt upon his choice of reading material, a hefty, leather bound book, another long running joke between the two.
“Hi, Matt. I see you’ve got your bible.”
Matt looked up from his copy of The More Then Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide, by Douglas Adams. “It’s not a bible,” Matt informed him.
“It’s your bible,” Mark replied. When Matt seemed unwilling to press the subject further, Mark changed the subject. “I’m looking forward to Friday night’s campfire,” he said.
“Campfire?” Matt asked. An unusual number of people had been making such comments to Matt since he had arrived at Moses, but he could not fathom why. Something was nagging him at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t put a finger on exactly what it was. Ah, well, it probably wasn’t important. Matt was sure it would come to him in time. “Yes, I’m looking forward to it, too,” he replied at last. “It should be a good one.”
“Indeed, it shall be the stuff of legends,” Mark replied, confusing Matt even more.
Matt was distracted at that point, however, when a helicopter flew low overhead. There was some sort of basket beneath it when caught Matt’s eye. It soon disappeared behind the trees in the direction of Russell Pond.
Matt turned back to Mark and was about to ask if he knew anything about it, but before he could Mark said to him, “Well, I must be on my way. I’ll see you later, though. At dinner?”
Matt nodded, and Mark continued on his way to the archery range in the parade field.
Shrugging to himself, Matt made his way over to a shady spot under a tree that was already occupied by Matt Swett and Luke Walker. Matt nodded to them, leaned against the tree, and returned to his book.
Swett and Luke meanwhile resumed the conversation they had been having.
“Come on, come with me tomorrow morning,” Swett was imploring.
“No way, you’re crazy,” Luke responded. “Get someone from your own patrol.”
“I tried,” Swett admitted. “They all said I was crazy.”
“Well you are,” Luke told him. “I mean, that’s way too early in the morning. I’ll still be sleeping.”
“But you love swimming,” Swett reminded him.
“Yes, which is why I am going for the Mile Swim this year. But you see, the water is nice and warm then. I won’t have to freeze my balls off. It’s too cold.”
“Ah, so that’s why they call it the Polar Bear Swim! I always wondered that,” Swett responded dryly. “Come on, I can’t do it without a buddy.”
“There is no way,” Luke responded. “Not even if hell froze over. Which it probably would if it ever went for a swim at six in the morning.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it anyway,” a voice interrupted. Dan Wellington was walking by, accompanied by Colin Pekruhn. It was the later who had spoken.
Billy Gelinas pulled out a small note pad at this point, which he had also done when Mark Abert appeared, and he jotted something down in it. He smiled, looked over at Mike Quadrozzi (who wasn’t paying him any attention, in any case) and put the note pad back in his pocket.
Dan and Colin, meanwhile, approached Matt, who greeted them warmly.
“Hey, Dan. Hey, Colin.”
“Hey, Matt,” Colin responded.
“Did you hear?” Dan asked with no preamble. He was grinning with a happy madness.
“Hear what?” Matt asked.
From this response, it was quite easy for Dan and Colin to deduce that Matt had not, in fact, heard. “About the fire!” Dan told him with a glint in his eyes.
Matt sighed. “What is it with everyone and Friday night’s campfire?”
“Not the campfire,” Colin said, “the forest fire.”
This had Matt’s full attention. He closed his book and looked suspiciously at Dan.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Dan said, “and you can stop. It wasn’t me. Not,” he added, “that I can’t enjoy it.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “You are an insane pyromaniac, but I suppose you’re too good at it to let it get out of control like that.”
Colin made a coughing sound that sounded vaguely like, “Cabin III.” The others ignored him.
“A forest fire, eh?” Matt continued. “How far away is it?”
“A few miles out from camp,” Dan told him. “And it is burning away from Moses, so there should be no danger to us if things keep up as they are. Still, Mrs. Balogna…”
“She’s the new camp director,” Colin interjected when Matt failed to recognize the name.
“Anyways, she’s driving the staff crazy with emergency evacuation drills, just in case.”
“Keeping you busy, then?” Matt asked.
“A little more then usual,” Colin responded. “Most of the burden’s on the waterfront staff. Makes sense, since they don’t have anything else to do.”
“Why is that?”
“Well you see,” Dan said, “I know this will come as horrible news to you and your friends, but they have this special army helicopter coming in and taking water from the lake to drop on the fire. With that going on, we’re not allowed to use the lake ourselves.”
“Oh my god, that’s great!” Matt exclaimed. When this drew an odd look from Colin, he added, “…ly disappointing. Yes, greatly disappointing. I had been looking forward to a nice dip.”
“Oh, you’ll still get yours,” Colin said with light-hearted menace as he and Dan started walking away.
“Yeah,” Dan said, “let us know if you need any help with Friday night.”
“Wait!” Matt called after them. “What are you talking about?” But it was too late, as Colin and Dan were out of ear shot.
Matt stood there with a blank look on his face as his friends disappeared into the distance. And then, as if a penguin had fallen from the sky and bounced off of his head, he was hit with a sudden remembrance that left him filled with a cold dread.
All this time since the spring camporee, and rather then get ready and find some way to make it happen, he had instead forgotten about it. And now he had less then a week to figure out what he was going to do.
For this Friday night at the campfire, in front of a large group of people (some of whom were coming up special just for this event), Matt Gets Wet.
Later that afternoon, once Troop 192 was finished checking in and settling into their campsite, and after news of the waterfront situation had been broken to a (mostly) disappointed troop, Aaron and Billy Gelinas were making their way to the Trading Post.
Billy needed some supplies for one of his merit badges. Aaron just wanted a snack.
“I hope what’s-his-name isn’t there again this year,” Aaron said.
“Who, Roy?”
Aaron nodded.
“Mike is wondering the same thing,” Billy said. “I asked him if he wanted to come with us, and he said maybe he’d come by later, and asked me to let him know who was running it. I think Mike wants to stay away if it is Roy again.”
“Well,” Aaron said, “he was an irritable bastard.”
As they approached, they passed two people leaving the Trading Post. One was Jim Anderson, son of the camp ranger and a member of the kitchen crew. The other was a member of Jim’s troop, a lad by the name of Jesse Lashway.
“Man, I loved that episode,” Jesse was saying. “Any excuse for tribbles is a good one. Which one was it that had a bomb in it?”
Jim shrugged. “The one with the red hair?” he guessed.
“I thought that was the one that Dax dropped on Kirk’s head,” Jesse countered.
The two continued on their way, and Aaron’s attention returned to Billy.
“What are you doing?” Aaron asked.
“Taking notes,” Billy responded.
“What sort of notes?” Aaron inquired.
“Proving a theory,” was all Billy would say, aside from adding, “Mike is going down.”
“Okay,” Aaron said in a tone of voice that indicated that he regretted having asked in the first place.
The two made their way up the ramp onto the porch of the Trading Post. They stopped for a moment and looked at the soda machine.
“What do you think?” Aaron asked.
“Nothing good has ever come from this soda machine, and I think no good ever will,” Billy answered most dramatically.
“Well… here goes nothing,” Aaron said, pulling from his wallet a single dollar bill. Billy braced himself as his friend inserted it into the slot on the machine.
A number of usual things proceeded to happen.
First, the machine accepted the bill on the initial attempt, without it even having been a crisp and new bill. Indeed, it was a rather winkled specimen of U.S. currency.
Second, when Aaron depressed the button marked, “Coke!” there immediately followed the sound of a can dropping down for him. This was almost as amazing as the sound that came right after that, the sound of a coin dropping into the change return slot. It was with a small sense of wonder that Aaron reached inside of it and retrieved a shiny new quarter.
Here now, however, came the ultimate moment of truth. Billy tensed as Aaron bent down to retrieve his beverage. As Aaron’s hand disappeared into the opening at the bottom of the ominous machine, Billy could bear the suspense no longer and he screwed his eyes shut.
Billy waited for the scream of horror, but it did not come. He tentatively opened one eye, and then the other. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
Aaron was holding a perfectly ordinary, nicely chilled, 12 ounce can of Coca-Cola. “I guess they finally fixed this thing,” he said.
“I guess so,” Billy responded in amazement.
The pair made their way inside the Trading Post.
There was no sign of Roy.
There were, however, penguins.
Not the living variety, nor the mental apparitions that plagued Matthew Atanian’s brain. Rather, these penguins were of the stuffed animal sort, and they were most numerous. They took up a good deal of whatever shelf space within the Trading Post was not otherwise occupied by merchandise. Also present was a stuffed wolf, a stuffed Tigger, and one toy that was not plush, but rather rubber: a chicken. But most of the toys present were stuffed Antarctic, flightless fowl.
A plethora of plush penguins.
One in particular caught the eye. It was resting atop the cash register, where Matt Atanian once upon a time had kept a small photograph of his dear friend Carolyn. This particular penguin was a plush hand puppet, and had the careworn look of a toy treasured since childhood. The white parts of it had long ago faded to a light gray, and although the toy had been propped up as well as it could be it still flopped into itself slightly in a way that gave it a charm that no mint condition toy could hope to achieve.
The next thing Aaron and Billy noticed made them wonder how the penguins could have been the first. Standing behind the counter was an attractive woman with a warm smile, bright eyes, and slightly wavy hair of a color somewhere between golden blond and light brown that fell to midway down her back.
“Hi,” she said in greeting to them.
“Hello,” Billy responded.
“Roy’s not working here this year?” Aaron asked.
The woman shook her head. “Nope, just me,” she told them. “I’m Amanda. What can I do for you two today?”
Billy purchased the supplies he needed, the two of them thanked the new Trading Post manager, and then they left to go and find the others and tell them the interesting news.
From behind a tree in the parade field, Roy watched them go. Then he continued to watch the Trading Post and the usurper within. Something would most definitely have to be done about this.
Ticonderoga was much like any other campsite at Moses. Indeed, first year campers were known on occasion to wander into the wrong site and not realize it until they noticed all of the unfamiliar people.
Justy and Perry knew exactly where they were going, however. Well, they had a general idea at least, in that the object of their search would most likely be in Ticonderoga. So that is where the two of them, followed by Proctor, travelled.
Perry paused on the outer edge of the campsite, intending to ask permission to enter as was proper etiquette. He did not get the chance, though, as Justy strode past him right into the site without as much as a by-your-leave.
“Present me to Taylor Kuntz,” Justy demanded of the first person he came across.
The young scout Justy had accosted was startled into compliance. He scampered off and returned a few minutes later followed by an older kid with hair that looked like a rejected style from a bad 50’s greaser movie. This look was reinforced by the black leather jacket, worn over his rumpled Boy Scout uniform, which matched the single leather glove on his left hand.
He looked Justy, Perry, and Proctor over, scowling as he did so. “What do you want?” he asked them gruffly.
“It is not a matter of what we want,” Justy said. “It is a matter of what you want.”
Kuntz raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“You want red-haired one,” Perry responded.
“My Goddess?” Kuntz asked, his voice brightening momentarily. Then it darkened again as he asked, “What do you have to do with her?”
Perry looked to Justy, hoping the SPL would play his part correctly. He would rather be doing this himself, but he still didn’t fully trust himself with his English language skills, and he didn’t wish to take any chances of not getting his point across correctly with someone of Kuntz’s limited brain power.
“We know she has rejected you on multiple occasions,” Justy said to Perry’s delight, “and we know why.”
They had Kuntz’s complete attention. “Tell me.”
“She does want to be with you,” Justy continued, surprising Perry with how well he was sticking to the script, “but she is held back by certain members of our troop. The Garden Snake patrol (of which my friend Perry here is the sole virtuous member) along with one of the Assistant Scoutmasters, a deviant by the name of Matthew Atanian, have tricked the woman you love into a foul arrangement. She is bound to their will, and they force her into unwholesome pairings with other females to satisfy their sick fantasies.”
“I knew it!” Kuntz exclaimed, eating up every word of the preposterous scenario Perry had tailored to suit Kuntz’s bizarre world image.
“However,” Justy said, “she has spoken to Perry here, who as I said is the one virtuous person amongst that dastardly group. She spoke of her desire to be free, and to be with you.”
“As it should be,” Kuntz said, nodding his head. “But what is your stake in all of this?”
“We each have our reasons to want to see the Garden Snakes destroyed,” Justy said. “Why not combine our efforts? Not that any of us would be incapable of defeating them on our own, especially you,” he added in a final stroke of Kuntz’s ego. “But then one or more of us would be deprived of the honor to be gained in this venture. We did not wish to do that to you, just as we are sure that a person as great as you would not wish to do that to us.”
As Kuntz considered all of this, Perry looked at Justy, impressed. Not only had he played his roll perfectly (impressive in a good way), but he had completely failed to notice that the points at the end in regards to honor were the very same ones that Perry had used towards him (impressive in a sad way.)
“Okay,” Kuntz said at last, “what do you have in mind?”
They spoke at length, after which Kuntz agreed to aid them. Much time had passed when Justy, Perry, and Proctor made their departure to return to Crown Point.
Perry smiled. “My plan…” he began.
“My plan!” Justy interrupted.
“The plan,” Perry continued with hardly a pause, “goes good. Perry think we can begin next step tomorrow.”
“Yes, we shall!” Justy said as a preamble to a vicious bought of laughter.
On the advice of Aaron and Billy, Mike and Hughes decided to go check out the Trading Post. There was, as had been reported, someone who was not at all Roy behind the counter. This not Roy person had her back to them when they had entered, so Mike called out, “Excuse me, Miss?”
The woman swiveled to face them. Most inexplicably she asked of them, “What do you mean, ‘Miss’?”
This caused Mike pause for a moment. Unless this person had something very unusual in common with Matt, he was quite sure she was a she. Then, with delight, a thought occurred to him that he decided to put to a test.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I have a cold.”
Hughes was looking back and forth between the two of them as if they were flipping insane.
“Never mind that!” Mike continued. “I wish to register a complaint about this parrot,” (Hughes was startled when Mike pointed at him,) “that I purchased from this very boutique not half an hour ago!”
To Mike’s delight, the Trading Post manager took one look at Hughes and said, “Oh yes, sir. The Norwegian Plaid? What’s wrong with it?”
Mike told her, and they argued back and fourth for a while before Mike was finally able to convince her that Hughes (who, incidentally, felt very much alive and not at all avian) was, in fact, dead.
Amanda offered to replace him, and she looked under the counter for a bit. “I’m sorry, squire,” she then announced, “we’re fresh out of parrots.”
“I see, I see,” Mike said in exasperation.
“I have got a Slim Jim,” she offered, holding one up.
“Pray, does it talk?”
She looked at it. She looked at Mike. “Yeah,” she said.
“Right! I’ll have that then.”
She handed it to him. He tried giving her a quarter in return, but she returned it and told him that the banter had been payment enough.
So Mike tipped his hat to her. “Be seeing you,” he said to her as he exited the Trading Post. He was followed by Hughes, who said to him, “You’re weird, d'you know that?”
Mike was about to respond when, from out of nowhere, a small, unfolded piece of paper flew through the air at him. Despite its complete lack of aerodynamics it somehow managed to hit him squarely on the forehead. Mike snatched it out of the air as it was falling from his head towards the ground and he looked at it.
“What is it?” Hughes asked.
“I don’t know.” Mike showed it to him. It was blank.
From behind his tree, Roy growled softly to himself.
Dinner on Sunday was an outdoor affair. There was a large fire pit in front of the dining hall, constructed from cinder blocks. Atop this sat metal grating that supported the sizzling hamburgers over the flames. The picky eater that he was, Matthew Atanian customarily brought two slices of American cheese with him to summer camp. He gave them to chef Kenny Healy, who was only too happy to place them on two of the cooking meat patties.
After getting his burgers and a cup of water, Matt joined most of the rest of the Garden Snake Patrol who were all sitting at one of the picnic tables.
“Well, Bill,” Mike was saying to Gelinas, “no zany plots yet.”
“It’s still Sunday,” Gelinas responded. “This is still all just set-up. You just wait and see, something will develop in the next couple of days.”
“What,” Matt interrupted, “are you two talking about?”
“We’ve been trying to figure out the same thing,” Hughes told him.
“Nothing important,” Mike and Gelinas said in unison.
“Why is Perry sitting over with Justy and Proctor?” Matt then asked.
“We’ve been trying to figure out that one, too,” Aaron told him.
Matt shrugged and turned to Kenny. “Looking forward to your first year of Summer Camp?” he asked the young scout.
Kenny looked up from his book. He nodded and said, “Yes, Mr. Atanian.”
Matt smiled at Kenny. The young boy had grown since he had first come to them in the fall, and not just physically. His eye then caught something past Kenny. His smile turned to a frown as he noticed Taylor Kuntz sitting at a far picnic table and staring intently in their direction.
The others noticed Matt’s gaze and followed it. They too saw Kuntz and frowned.
“WHAT?” Becker called out to him accusingly.
Kuntz got up and stormed away.
The Garden Snake patrol returned to conversation amongst themselves.
Soon, ice cream was served. The merit badge sign ups then took place and all of the youth scampered about to try and get into the ones the wanted, mostly with success.
The sky began to dim, and evening was upon them. With it came the Sunday night campfire as performed by the camp staff. It was, for the most part, unremarkable. The skits and songs seemed really tame this year. The only two pieces of entertainment came in the form of a funny sit by Mark Abert, Colin, and Dan, and – an unusual event for a Moses campfire – a brief jazz dance performance by the Trading Post manager.
Without much ado, the campfire came to an end. The assembled troops made their ways back to their campsites. Once 192 was back in Crown Point, Jack McGraw had a word with the kids before sending them to bed.
“All right, listen up!” he said gruffly. “Tomorrow morning at the Scoutmasters’ meeting, the camp director is going to want to know what you want to do for Friday night’s campfire. So what is it!?”
“Clappy song!” someone suggested.
“Lumberjack song!” came another voice.
“Wait!” Matt Swett spoke out. “Weren’t we going to…?” His voice trailed off as he turned to look at Matt Atanian.
“That’s right!”
“Oh, yeah!”
“Matt Gets Wet, part III!”
Matt, Mike, Aaron, and the Bills were joined by Swett, Becker, and Kenny for a brief patrol meeting before retiring for the evening. “Matt Gets Wet,” Mike asked of his patrol mates, “are we actually going through with it?”
“Why wouldn't we?” Swett asked.
“Not much choice,” Hughes said.
Everyone looked at Matt.
“So,” Mike then said, “what's the twist at the end going to be this time?”
“Indeed,” Aaron said. “There's no way Matt can actually get wet.”
“Why couldn't he?” Swett asked.
“Not sure we have much in the way of a choice there, either,” Hughes added.
“Yeah, after the Spring Camporee,” Gelinas said, “I think if we try another bait and switch routine, we'll get lynched.
Everyone nodded. Matt frowned.
“I am open to ideas,” Matt commented.
Kenny coughed lightly. All eyes turned to him. “I may have a solution,” he softly said.
Kenny led them to a door in the hallway. The door was covered by locks. Regular locks, deadbolts, padlocks, combination locks, even a key-card lock and another that required a thumbprint. Slowly, methodically, Kenny undid each of them.
He opened the door and the smell of stale air came from the other side. They peered inside the doorway and saw a stone staircase descending, spiraling down, and lit by naked light bulbs that seemed to stretch into infinity. Even with the light bulbs, the stairs eventually disappeared into distant darkness.
They turned to regard Kenny, the prickly feeling that they all felt on the back of their necks erupting into new heights of prickliness. Kenny assured them it was safe, and so Hughes, Gelinas, Mike, and Aaron all walked in.
As they made their way down the staircase, the corridor slowly seemed to get tighter, the walls closer and the ceiling lower. “Uh, Kenny, there's some mistake here,” Aaron suggested.
“I don't like this, Kenny,” Hughes added. “I don't like it at all!”
It was clear that some sort of forced perspective was at work in the corridor. As they went down, they approached a door that from the start seemed normal, but was actually only about large enough to stick a foot through. “What is this, Kenny? Some kind of fun house?” Mike asked.
“Why, Mr. Quadrozzi,” Kenny asked, “having fun?”
“I've had enough,” Gelinas protested. “I'm not going in there. Come on, guys, we're getting out of here.”
“Oh, you can't get out backwards,” Kenny said. “You've got'ta go forwards to go back. Better press on.”
“I doubt if any of us will get out of here alive,” Gelinas pessimistically commented.
Kenny looked at him, bemused. “Oh, Mr. Gelinas. You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.”
Aaron pointed at the pint sized portal before them. “You're not squeezing me through that tiny door.”
“You're off your bleeding nut, Kenny,” Gelinas said. “Except maybe Mike as a squirrel, no one can get through there.”
“My dear patrol mates,” Kenny said, not heeding their objections, “you are now about to enter the nerve center of the entire laboratory. Inside this room, all of my dreams become realities. And some of my realities become dreams.”
“Let us in, already!” Hughes exclaimed.
“Now, don't get overexcited! Don't lose your head, Mr. Hughes! We wouldn't want anyone to lose that! Yet. Now, the combination... This is a musical lock.”
Kenny bent down and opened a small panel above the door, revealing a small keyboard. His fingers danced across it, playing the opening to Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro."
Gelinas nodded his head knowingly. “Rachmaninoff,” he said.
Kenny ignored him. “Gentlemen,” he said, pushing the entire wall ahead of them so that it opened before them, “my laboratory...” When he spoke the word, he added extreme emphasis to the “bor” part, dragging out the vowel and rolling the “r” in a very profound manor.
He showed them spatial metaphasic vertion shells, ambient cosmic plasma bursts, duodynetic anaphasic streams, and osmotic energy cores. They were all in awe it was so overwhelming. There was so much technology they couldn’t even begin to grasp, and the room was so immense that it felt not like being normal sized people in a huge space, but rather like they themselves had been shrunk. The vast poster on one wall of the Periodic Table of Elements did nothing to help correct the misconception.
There was even a river flowing through the room. A dirty looking orange river with an orange waterfall streaming down into it from heights unseen.
“What a disgusting, dirty river,” Aaron said.
“It's industrial waste, that,” Mike added. “You've ruined your watershed, Kenny. It's polluted.”
“It's orange juice,” Kenny responded.
Hughes gasped. “That's orange juice?!?”
As they approached it, they indeed began to detect a citrus smell, as well as something else that they could not immediately identify.
Kenny nodded. “Ten thousand gallons an hour. All part of an experiment in fermentation. And look at my waterfall. That's the most important thing. It's mixing my orange juice. You know, no other laboratory in the world mixes its orange juice by waterfall.” He leaned in close to Gelinas and added as if in confidence, “But it's the only way if you want to get the pulp just right.”
Hughes took a deep breath, paying close attention to the mixture of citrus and something else. “Wait a minute… I know that smell…”
“Did you say fermentation?” Mike asked.
“Oh my god, it is!” Hughes exclaimed. “A five hundred proof orange juice river!”
“What possible purpose does that serve?” Gelinas asked Kenny.
“I'm a trifle deaf in this ear, Mr. Gelinas,” Kenny responded. “Speak a little louder next time.”
Hughes was running towards the bank of the river. “Where are you going?” Mike asked him.
“Just going in for a quick swim,” Hughes responded.
“Don't worry, he can't drink it all,” Aaron said.
“Are you sure?” Mike responded. He watched as Hughes began drinking from the river. “Hey, Hughes, save some room for later.”
Kenny was most concerned. “Oh, uh, Mr. Hughes, please, don't do that. My orange juice must never be touched by human hands.” He started to walk towards Hughes, who just continued to drink. “Plea–don't do that! Don't do that; you're contaminating my entire river. Please, I beg you, Mr. Hughes! You’ll ruin my experiment!”
Kenny tried to reach for Hughes to pull him away. Hughes, in trying to evade Kenny’s grasp, promptly fell into the river. He hiccupped.
“Man overboard!” Mike shouted
Kenny was aghast. “My orange juice! My most potent orange juice!”
Hughes hiccupped.
“Don't just stand there,” Aaron said, “do something!”
Kenny stood there ponderously for a moment. Then he deadpanned, “Help. Police. Murder.”
Hughes seemed to make a tentative swim for the shore, but then quickly disappeared beneath the orange surface.
“What–what's happening to him?” Mike asked.
“It looks like he's drowning,” Aaron responded.
“Dive in!” Gelinas insisted. “Save him!”
“Oh, it's too late,” Kenny lamented.
Gelinas looked at him. “Too late?”
Kenny nodded. “Oh, he's had it now; the suction's got him. Watch the pipe.” He pointed to a large clear cylinder rising out of one point of the river. Sure enough, within a few moments a large object went up the pipe and got stuck at its midpoint, blocking the orange liquid behind it. It was Hughes, grinning and hiccupping.
“He's stuck in the pipe there, isn't he, Kenny?” Mike asked.
“He's blocking all the orange juice,” Gelinas commented.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Aaron said. “Well, what happens now, Kenny?”
“Oh, the pressure'll get him out. Terrific pressure is building up behind the blockage.”
The others watched in suspense as the pipe began to shake. Then Hughes shot up through it as if he had been fired from a cannon.
As the others watched this, they became aware of a small group of people entering the room from either side. Or rather, a group of small people.
They were identically dressed in some sort of overalls, and had an unusual complexion that matched the color of the river. Their hair, even more oddly, was green in color and their eyebrows in contrast were a striking white.
They began to sing.
“Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-do, I have a perfect puzzle for you. Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-dee, if you are wise, you'll listen to me.
“What do you get when you guzzle down booze? Drinking as much as an elderly flooze. What had you thunk getting terribly drunk? Now you have a breath like a skunk!
“I don't like the smell of it!
“Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-da, If you're not greedy, you will go far. You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-do!”
Mike was surrounded by nuts. All sorts of nuts. And acorns. He searched through the pile he was sitting on until he found one particularly large and shiny looking specimen, which he then proceeded to nibble at.
Off to one side of the room was a pile of discarded shells.
Every once in a while, the hatch in the roof of the cylindrical room he was sitting in would be opened up, and more nuts would be poured in. The delivery person would be different each time, but it was always someone he recognized. There was Agent Pendrell, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and the delectable Agent Scully. Mike was most amused at the sight of a self-propelled wheelbarrow of nuts which was being followed around by a floating urn featuring a pasted on likeness of Graham Chapman’s face.
After a few hours, he began to become concerned as the level of nuts continued to rise, slowly burying him. Here came Dave Foley with another load, which buried him up to his waste.
“Hey!” he shouted up to Dave. “How about giving it a rest?”
“I’ll ask,” the Kid in the Hall responded. He then shouted to someone Mike couldn’t see, “Is that enough nuts? The guy in here wants us to stop.”
“I’m sorry, Dave, we can’t do that,” was the response.
Dave looked down at Mike and shrugged. “They said no,” he told Mike before walking away.
“Who?” Mike called after him. Dave didn’t respond, but his question was answered a moment later as a group of small, oddly colored people appeared around the hatch, each with a wheelbarrow that they poised over the held edge as they began to sing.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee doo,” they all sang. “I've got another puzzle for you. Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dah dee, if you are wise you will listen to me.
“Nut eating's fine when it's once in a while, it fills you with protein and brightens your smile. But it's repulsive, revolting, and wrong, eating and eating all day long!”
“The way that a squirrel does!” One of them soloed.
“But I am a squirrel!” Mike protested.
“Don’t touch that squirrel’s nuts!” one of the small beings responded.
As if that was some sort of cue, in unison they all dumped their wheelbarrows out, completely burying Mike under the nuts and acorns. As they did this, they finished their song.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee dah, given good manners you will go far. You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee do!”
Aaron searched his room frantically trying to find the present he had bought for Kirstin. Where the hell had he put it? He was supposed to have left ten minutes ago to meet up with her. At this rate, he was going to be seriously late.
And he had really been looking forward to giving her the very expensive box of gourmet chocolates he had purchased for her.
He heard his brother call out to him from the doorway. “What’re you doing?”
Aaron turned. “Derek, have you seen…” His voice trailed off as he noticed the brown stains around Derek’s mouth and on his fingers.
Derek burped.
Aaron lunged for his brother, his hands wrapping around the smaller Abdowmassy’s throat. This just wasn’t bloody fair! Derek was always doing things like this, always ruining things for Aaron. And he always got away with it, too! But not this time. Aaron would see to that. Oh, yes, he would. He squeezed his hands tighter.
“Aaron, what do you think you are doing?” His mother’s voice.
“Stop that this instant!” His father’s voice.
Aaron slowly released his grip. Derek pulled away from him, gasping for breath.
“But… but he ate the chocolates I had bought for Kirstin,” Aaron pleaded.
“No I didn’t,” Derek insisted. As he said that, he kicked away a rather fancy and quite empty box that had been at his feet, hiding it from his parents’ view.
“Derek said he didn’t,” his father said.
“But… but…” Aaron stammered.
“We believe him,” his mother said.
“What about that chocolate on his face?” Aaron asked.
“What chocolate?” his father responded.
Aaron pointed accusingly at his younger brother. “Look!”
“I don’t see anything,” his father said.
Derek was, in fact, as clean as a whistle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” his mother said, hastily putting away a now-dirty handkerchief.
“This is such bullshit!” Aaron said.
“What did you say?” his father asked.
“Honestly, such language,” his mother added.
Derek smirked.
“You, mister, are grounded for all of eternity,” his father said. He closed Aaron into his room and locked the door.
Aaron stood there, dumbfounded. Suddenly and without warning, a group of small people appeared from under his bed and sang a song.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee doo, I've got another puzzle for you. Oompa Loompa doom‑pa‑dah dee, if you are wise you will listen to me.
“Who do you blame when your brother’s a brat, pampered and spoiled like a Siamese cat? Blaming the kids is a lion of shame. You know exactly who's to blame:
“Your mother and your father!
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee dah, if you're not spoiled then you will go far. You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee do!”
Billy Gelinas sniffled a bit. His long, orange, cylindrical snout did always give him a bit of a trouble being a bit runny. He put that out of his mind as he
surveyed the task before him.
He stood atop a pyramid made from cubes. The cubes, however, were just not a good color. Well, he would have to do something about that.
He hopped down, and the cube he landed upon changed from red to blue. He hopped down again and the next cube did the same thing.
He smiled. This would be a piece of cake.
Or so he thought. Suddenly he spotted that Coily, his serpentine nemesis, was right behind him. If he could just lure Coily to the edge of the pyramid,
perhaps he could get the snake to go over the edge. But he would have to time things just right.
And so Billy jumped, from one cube to another, closer to the edge and the bottomless abyss beyond.
He got to the end of the road and risked a look behind himself. He was startled when he saw Coily was a lot closer then he had expected, practically right on top of him. With a yelp, Billy fell backwards and plummeted endlessly to his doom.
As he fell, he was joined in his decent by a group of small, oddly colored persons. They joined hands, forming a circle around him, and began to sing.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee doo, I've got another puzzle for you. Oompa Loompa doom‑pa‑dah dee, if you are wise you'll listen to me.
“What do you get playing video games? A very stiff thumb and an IQ that’s tame. Why don't you try simply reading a book? Or could you just not bear to look?”
“You'll get no…” one soloed.
“You'll get no…” soloed another.
“You'll get no…”
“You'll get no…”
“You'll get no long FMV’s!” they all sang together.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee dah, if you're not greedy you will go far. You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee do!”
The four Jusenkyo cursed members of the Garden Snake patrol sat up sharply from their cots, sweat upon their brows as they breathed heavily, trying to calm themselves.
Meanwhile, Matthew Atanian had an undisturbed night of sleep and awoke the next morning nice and refreshed.
And somewhere in the Bahamas, enjoying a nice vacation away from tormenting the Assistant Scoutmaster, a small group of penguins sat in comfortable beach chairs, drinking fish daiquiris.
“You be quiet,” Billy Gelinas said, bearing his own trunk as he followed Mike down the dim, shadowed path.
Mike paused, set his own trunk down, took a deep breath of the fresh forest air, and then turned to his companion. “What?” he asked.
“You say, ‘Ah, Moses,’ and the next thing you know we’re all under armed assault in one of the most unrealistic scenarios one could possibly conceive.”
Mike sighed, grabbed his trunk, and continued on. Billy was caught by surprise, and had to rush a moment to keep up. When he had caught up to Mike, aside from being breathless from running for a moment dragging his footlocker, Billy gave Mike a look that convinced the hat-clad scout that his friend was far from satisfied that the week that was ahead of them would be a benign one.
Again, Mike sighed. “Unrealistic, you say?” When Billy nodded, Mike continued. “More unrealistic then falling into cursed springs? Or how about Scoutmasters mysteriously disappearing, never to be heard from again? More unrealistic, perhaps, then shipping our SPL off to a Middle Eastern country just to get him out of our hair for a bit?”
Billy Gelinas’s response was a simple one. “Shut up, Squid.”
Mike shrugged his shoulders and took another deep breath. He then paused in the path once more, sniffing at the air for a moment with a look of concern upon his face.
“What is it?” Gelinas asked cautiously.
“Nothing, I just…” Mike turned to his colleague. “Do you smell smoke?”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Gelinas warned.
“‘No I don’t,’ what?” Mike innocently asked as he continued down the path once more.
Gelinas had not been taken by surprise this time, and began walking again when Mike had. “This is how it all starts, I know it,” he bemoaned. “You smell smoke, and then the next thing you know, this will lead to some bizarre and complex plot for our patrol to get itself sucked into. Probably we’ll have Matt Atanian involved as well, and perhaps also some guest appearances by members of Troop 180, or Dan and Colin.
“Kenny will do something smart, Perry will try and kill us, Swett will be sarcastic, and Shmuler will be annoying.”
“Will didn’t come to camp, remember?” Mike reminded Billy. “He and his dad are on that trip to Albuquerque he won.”
“Oh yeah,” Gelinas responded.
“Well, there goes your grand theory,” Mike told him.
“That’s sure annoying,” Billy sighed. A moment passed. “Ah ha! That’s annoying!” He grinned triumphantly. “Shmuler is annoying!”
Mike rolled his eyes.
Billy, meanwhile, continued with renewed vigor. “For some reason, the Porters will show up. Matt will swoon over Sarah, and he will also have to resist the advances of Taylor Kuntz. Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck dealing with whatever Justy is up to. Because mark my words, he will be up to something.
“There will be kiwi/mocha fruit juice. There will be that strange lost Japanese guy. There will be Jim Anderson asking something about someone with red hair. There will be laughs and hijinks galore and somehow everything will all work out in the end, and we’ll all live happily ever after.” Billy paused for a moment and then added, “At least, until our next zany adventure.”
“Oh, Billy,” Mike said, “you shouldn’t be such a pessimist.”
“You can’t tell me,” Gelinas said, exasperated, “that you honestly haven’t noticed a pattern since last summer?”
“Can’t say as I have, my friend.”
“Then you must be blind,” Gelinas said to Mike. “You just wait and see, though. It will all happen just as I have said.”
“No it won’t,” Mike said firmly.
“You sound so sure of yourself,” Billy said.
“And you don’t?” Mike pointed out.
“But I have reason to,” Billy insisted. Now he paused, and Mike stopped beside him on the path. “Care to make a bet|?” Billy asked. “Because I am positive that all of that stuff will happen.”
“All of it?”
Billy nodded. “All of it,” he confirmed.
Mike seemed to think about this for a moment. “Nah,” he then said, “I don’t want your money.”
“You just don’t want to loose,” Billy insisted.
“I wouldn’t loose,” Mike said. He looked Billy in the eyes. “Fine,” he said. “You’re that sure you’ll win? You’re on. I still don’t want you’re money, though. But I will bet my hat on it.”
“What?” Billy was stunned. “Your hat?”
Mike smirked.
“Hey, no fair! I don’t have any trademarked items of clothing to bet!”
To this, Mike simply shrugged. Then he said, “It doesn’t have to be clothing. I just don’t want your money. What else of value do you have?”
Bill Gelinas thought of this for a moment before announcing, “I will bet you all of my Magic cards.”
Mike nearly fell to the ground upon hearing this, but he quickly regained his footing. “You’re that sure you’ll win, are you?”
“And you’re sure enough to risk your hat?”
“Yes,” Mike told him. “Fine, you’re on.”
“Good.”
“Indeed.”
Gelinas smiled knowingly. “Any minute now,” he said, “all hell will break loose.”
“Sure, whatever.”
“Any minute...”
“The smoke smell is probably just someone’s campfire,” Mike rationalized, starting towards Crown Point once again.
“Any minute…” Billy continued in a sing-song voice.
Mike sighed. “Will you come on?” he asked. “We have to get out trunks dropped off and go back for more gear.”
Billy grabbed his footlocker and followed.
“By the way,” he asked Mike as he caught up once more, “any idea how we’re getting out of swim tests this year?”
Mike shrugged, “I’m sure something will come up.”
“Your confidence underwhelms me.”
“Shut up, Bill.”
Jim McGraw, acting Scoutmaster of Troop 192 for the week of summer camp, exited the Nunes Building. He was followed by his Senior Patrol Leader, Justy Yung. Together, the pair made their way over to the Manor House where the rest of troop 192 was waiting.
Mr. McGraw and Justy found them scattered about the Manor House lawn, some sitting and some standing, each member of the troop holding a copy of their medical form as the troop waited for their turn to check in with the nurse. Many of them also held towels and were wearing bathing suits rather then pants. After this, their next stop was traditionally the waterfront for swim tests.
The boys were clustered in small groups, most of them chatting with one another about their plans for the week ahead. A few of them were catching up with friends who were either in different troops or on camp staff.
Upon arriving, Mr. McGraw and Justy split up. The former joined most of the rest of the adults, standing off to one side with the adults of other troops and talking quietly amongst themselves. The later sought out one of the members of the Garden Snake patrol who went by the name of Perry.
“According to the board in the Nunes Building,” Justy told him, “Troop 86 is in Ticonderoga.”
Perry smiled.
Justy laughed.
Mark Abert happened to be walking by on his way to check something over at the Archery range. He stopped for a moment. “Hello, Justy.”
Justy stopped laughing. “Oh, hello… you.” He couldn’t remember Mr. Abert’s name.
Mark didn’t notice. “Cheerful as always, I see,” he said, smiling.
“Yes,” Justy said. “Things shall go as planned this time!”
“Glad to hear that,” Mark responded. “Will I be seeing you at archery?”
“Yes,” Justy announced. “A man of my importance must not forget to keep his basic skills sharpened.” He began to laugh some more.
“I like your spirit, Justy!” Mark said. He then spotted Matt Atanian. “Ah, if you’ll excuse me,” he said to Justy.
Matt Atanian was, as was almost always the case while in his uniform, wearing his red wool jacket. Between that and the trench coat he used for civilian wear, Mark often questioned his friend’s sanity in the summer time. He made no comment on this as he approached Matt, however, choosing instead a long running joke between the two of them: teasing Matt upon his choice of reading material, a hefty, leather bound book, another long running joke between the two.
“Hi, Matt. I see you’ve got your bible.”
Matt looked up from his copy of The More Then Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide, by Douglas Adams. “It’s not a bible,” Matt informed him.
“It’s your bible,” Mark replied. When Matt seemed unwilling to press the subject further, Mark changed the subject. “I’m looking forward to Friday night’s campfire,” he said.
“Campfire?” Matt asked. An unusual number of people had been making such comments to Matt since he had arrived at Moses, but he could not fathom why. Something was nagging him at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t put a finger on exactly what it was. Ah, well, it probably wasn’t important. Matt was sure it would come to him in time. “Yes, I’m looking forward to it, too,” he replied at last. “It should be a good one.”
“Indeed, it shall be the stuff of legends,” Mark replied, confusing Matt even more.
Matt was distracted at that point, however, when a helicopter flew low overhead. There was some sort of basket beneath it when caught Matt’s eye. It soon disappeared behind the trees in the direction of Russell Pond.
Matt turned back to Mark and was about to ask if he knew anything about it, but before he could Mark said to him, “Well, I must be on my way. I’ll see you later, though. At dinner?”
Matt nodded, and Mark continued on his way to the archery range in the parade field.
Shrugging to himself, Matt made his way over to a shady spot under a tree that was already occupied by Matt Swett and Luke Walker. Matt nodded to them, leaned against the tree, and returned to his book.
Swett and Luke meanwhile resumed the conversation they had been having.
“Come on, come with me tomorrow morning,” Swett was imploring.
“No way, you’re crazy,” Luke responded. “Get someone from your own patrol.”
“I tried,” Swett admitted. “They all said I was crazy.”
“Well you are,” Luke told him. “I mean, that’s way too early in the morning. I’ll still be sleeping.”
“But you love swimming,” Swett reminded him.
“Yes, which is why I am going for the Mile Swim this year. But you see, the water is nice and warm then. I won’t have to freeze my balls off. It’s too cold.”
“Ah, so that’s why they call it the Polar Bear Swim! I always wondered that,” Swett responded dryly. “Come on, I can’t do it without a buddy.”
“There is no way,” Luke responded. “Not even if hell froze over. Which it probably would if it ever went for a swim at six in the morning.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it anyway,” a voice interrupted. Dan Wellington was walking by, accompanied by Colin Pekruhn. It was the later who had spoken.
Billy Gelinas pulled out a small note pad at this point, which he had also done when Mark Abert appeared, and he jotted something down in it. He smiled, looked over at Mike Quadrozzi (who wasn’t paying him any attention, in any case) and put the note pad back in his pocket.
Dan and Colin, meanwhile, approached Matt, who greeted them warmly.
“Hey, Dan. Hey, Colin.”
“Hey, Matt,” Colin responded.
“Did you hear?” Dan asked with no preamble. He was grinning with a happy madness.
“Hear what?” Matt asked.
From this response, it was quite easy for Dan and Colin to deduce that Matt had not, in fact, heard. “About the fire!” Dan told him with a glint in his eyes.
Matt sighed. “What is it with everyone and Friday night’s campfire?”
“Not the campfire,” Colin said, “the forest fire.”
This had Matt’s full attention. He closed his book and looked suspiciously at Dan.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Dan said, “and you can stop. It wasn’t me. Not,” he added, “that I can’t enjoy it.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “You are an insane pyromaniac, but I suppose you’re too good at it to let it get out of control like that.”
Colin made a coughing sound that sounded vaguely like, “Cabin III.” The others ignored him.
“A forest fire, eh?” Matt continued. “How far away is it?”
“A few miles out from camp,” Dan told him. “And it is burning away from Moses, so there should be no danger to us if things keep up as they are. Still, Mrs. Balogna…”
“She’s the new camp director,” Colin interjected when Matt failed to recognize the name.
“Anyways, she’s driving the staff crazy with emergency evacuation drills, just in case.”
“Keeping you busy, then?” Matt asked.
“A little more then usual,” Colin responded. “Most of the burden’s on the waterfront staff. Makes sense, since they don’t have anything else to do.”
“Why is that?”
“Well you see,” Dan said, “I know this will come as horrible news to you and your friends, but they have this special army helicopter coming in and taking water from the lake to drop on the fire. With that going on, we’re not allowed to use the lake ourselves.”
“Oh my god, that’s great!” Matt exclaimed. When this drew an odd look from Colin, he added, “…ly disappointing. Yes, greatly disappointing. I had been looking forward to a nice dip.”
“Oh, you’ll still get yours,” Colin said with light-hearted menace as he and Dan started walking away.
“Yeah,” Dan said, “let us know if you need any help with Friday night.”
“Wait!” Matt called after them. “What are you talking about?” But it was too late, as Colin and Dan were out of ear shot.
Matt stood there with a blank look on his face as his friends disappeared into the distance. And then, as if a penguin had fallen from the sky and bounced off of his head, he was hit with a sudden remembrance that left him filled with a cold dread.
All this time since the spring camporee, and rather then get ready and find some way to make it happen, he had instead forgotten about it. And now he had less then a week to figure out what he was going to do.
For this Friday night at the campfire, in front of a large group of people (some of whom were coming up special just for this event), Matt Gets Wet.
Later that afternoon, once Troop 192 was finished checking in and settling into their campsite, and after news of the waterfront situation had been broken to a (mostly) disappointed troop, Aaron and Billy Gelinas were making their way to the Trading Post.
Billy needed some supplies for one of his merit badges. Aaron just wanted a snack.
“I hope what’s-his-name isn’t there again this year,” Aaron said.
“Who, Roy?”
Aaron nodded.
“Mike is wondering the same thing,” Billy said. “I asked him if he wanted to come with us, and he said maybe he’d come by later, and asked me to let him know who was running it. I think Mike wants to stay away if it is Roy again.”
“Well,” Aaron said, “he was an irritable bastard.”
As they approached, they passed two people leaving the Trading Post. One was Jim Anderson, son of the camp ranger and a member of the kitchen crew. The other was a member of Jim’s troop, a lad by the name of Jesse Lashway.
“Man, I loved that episode,” Jesse was saying. “Any excuse for tribbles is a good one. Which one was it that had a bomb in it?”
Jim shrugged. “The one with the red hair?” he guessed.
“I thought that was the one that Dax dropped on Kirk’s head,” Jesse countered.
The two continued on their way, and Aaron’s attention returned to Billy.
“What are you doing?” Aaron asked.
“Taking notes,” Billy responded.
“What sort of notes?” Aaron inquired.
“Proving a theory,” was all Billy would say, aside from adding, “Mike is going down.”
“Okay,” Aaron said in a tone of voice that indicated that he regretted having asked in the first place.
The two made their way up the ramp onto the porch of the Trading Post. They stopped for a moment and looked at the soda machine.
“What do you think?” Aaron asked.
“Nothing good has ever come from this soda machine, and I think no good ever will,” Billy answered most dramatically.
“Well… here goes nothing,” Aaron said, pulling from his wallet a single dollar bill. Billy braced himself as his friend inserted it into the slot on the machine.
A number of usual things proceeded to happen.
First, the machine accepted the bill on the initial attempt, without it even having been a crisp and new bill. Indeed, it was a rather winkled specimen of U.S. currency.
Second, when Aaron depressed the button marked, “Coke!” there immediately followed the sound of a can dropping down for him. This was almost as amazing as the sound that came right after that, the sound of a coin dropping into the change return slot. It was with a small sense of wonder that Aaron reached inside of it and retrieved a shiny new quarter.
Here now, however, came the ultimate moment of truth. Billy tensed as Aaron bent down to retrieve his beverage. As Aaron’s hand disappeared into the opening at the bottom of the ominous machine, Billy could bear the suspense no longer and he screwed his eyes shut.
Billy waited for the scream of horror, but it did not come. He tentatively opened one eye, and then the other. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
Aaron was holding a perfectly ordinary, nicely chilled, 12 ounce can of Coca-Cola. “I guess they finally fixed this thing,” he said.
“I guess so,” Billy responded in amazement.
The pair made their way inside the Trading Post.
There was no sign of Roy.
There were, however, penguins.
Not the living variety, nor the mental apparitions that plagued Matthew Atanian’s brain. Rather, these penguins were of the stuffed animal sort, and they were most numerous. They took up a good deal of whatever shelf space within the Trading Post was not otherwise occupied by merchandise. Also present was a stuffed wolf, a stuffed Tigger, and one toy that was not plush, but rather rubber: a chicken. But most of the toys present were stuffed Antarctic, flightless fowl.
A plethora of plush penguins.
One in particular caught the eye. It was resting atop the cash register, where Matt Atanian once upon a time had kept a small photograph of his dear friend Carolyn. This particular penguin was a plush hand puppet, and had the careworn look of a toy treasured since childhood. The white parts of it had long ago faded to a light gray, and although the toy had been propped up as well as it could be it still flopped into itself slightly in a way that gave it a charm that no mint condition toy could hope to achieve.
The next thing Aaron and Billy noticed made them wonder how the penguins could have been the first. Standing behind the counter was an attractive woman with a warm smile, bright eyes, and slightly wavy hair of a color somewhere between golden blond and light brown that fell to midway down her back.
“Hi,” she said in greeting to them.
“Hello,” Billy responded.
“Roy’s not working here this year?” Aaron asked.
The woman shook her head. “Nope, just me,” she told them. “I’m Amanda. What can I do for you two today?”
Billy purchased the supplies he needed, the two of them thanked the new Trading Post manager, and then they left to go and find the others and tell them the interesting news.
From behind a tree in the parade field, Roy watched them go. Then he continued to watch the Trading Post and the usurper within. Something would most definitely have to be done about this.
Ticonderoga was much like any other campsite at Moses. Indeed, first year campers were known on occasion to wander into the wrong site and not realize it until they noticed all of the unfamiliar people.
Justy and Perry knew exactly where they were going, however. Well, they had a general idea at least, in that the object of their search would most likely be in Ticonderoga. So that is where the two of them, followed by Proctor, travelled.
Perry paused on the outer edge of the campsite, intending to ask permission to enter as was proper etiquette. He did not get the chance, though, as Justy strode past him right into the site without as much as a by-your-leave.
“Present me to Taylor Kuntz,” Justy demanded of the first person he came across.
The young scout Justy had accosted was startled into compliance. He scampered off and returned a few minutes later followed by an older kid with hair that looked like a rejected style from a bad 50’s greaser movie. This look was reinforced by the black leather jacket, worn over his rumpled Boy Scout uniform, which matched the single leather glove on his left hand.
He looked Justy, Perry, and Proctor over, scowling as he did so. “What do you want?” he asked them gruffly.
“It is not a matter of what we want,” Justy said. “It is a matter of what you want.”
Kuntz raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“You want red-haired one,” Perry responded.
“My Goddess?” Kuntz asked, his voice brightening momentarily. Then it darkened again as he asked, “What do you have to do with her?”
Perry looked to Justy, hoping the SPL would play his part correctly. He would rather be doing this himself, but he still didn’t fully trust himself with his English language skills, and he didn’t wish to take any chances of not getting his point across correctly with someone of Kuntz’s limited brain power.
“We know she has rejected you on multiple occasions,” Justy said to Perry’s delight, “and we know why.”
They had Kuntz’s complete attention. “Tell me.”
“She does want to be with you,” Justy continued, surprising Perry with how well he was sticking to the script, “but she is held back by certain members of our troop. The Garden Snake patrol (of which my friend Perry here is the sole virtuous member) along with one of the Assistant Scoutmasters, a deviant by the name of Matthew Atanian, have tricked the woman you love into a foul arrangement. She is bound to their will, and they force her into unwholesome pairings with other females to satisfy their sick fantasies.”
“I knew it!” Kuntz exclaimed, eating up every word of the preposterous scenario Perry had tailored to suit Kuntz’s bizarre world image.
“However,” Justy said, “she has spoken to Perry here, who as I said is the one virtuous person amongst that dastardly group. She spoke of her desire to be free, and to be with you.”
“As it should be,” Kuntz said, nodding his head. “But what is your stake in all of this?”
“We each have our reasons to want to see the Garden Snakes destroyed,” Justy said. “Why not combine our efforts? Not that any of us would be incapable of defeating them on our own, especially you,” he added in a final stroke of Kuntz’s ego. “But then one or more of us would be deprived of the honor to be gained in this venture. We did not wish to do that to you, just as we are sure that a person as great as you would not wish to do that to us.”
As Kuntz considered all of this, Perry looked at Justy, impressed. Not only had he played his roll perfectly (impressive in a good way), but he had completely failed to notice that the points at the end in regards to honor were the very same ones that Perry had used towards him (impressive in a sad way.)
“Okay,” Kuntz said at last, “what do you have in mind?”
They spoke at length, after which Kuntz agreed to aid them. Much time had passed when Justy, Perry, and Proctor made their departure to return to Crown Point.
Perry smiled. “My plan…” he began.
“My plan!” Justy interrupted.
“The plan,” Perry continued with hardly a pause, “goes good. Perry think we can begin next step tomorrow.”
“Yes, we shall!” Justy said as a preamble to a vicious bought of laughter.
On the advice of Aaron and Billy, Mike and Hughes decided to go check out the Trading Post. There was, as had been reported, someone who was not at all Roy behind the counter. This not Roy person had her back to them when they had entered, so Mike called out, “Excuse me, Miss?”
The woman swiveled to face them. Most inexplicably she asked of them, “What do you mean, ‘Miss’?”
This caused Mike pause for a moment. Unless this person had something very unusual in common with Matt, he was quite sure she was a she. Then, with delight, a thought occurred to him that he decided to put to a test.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I have a cold.”
Hughes was looking back and forth between the two of them as if they were flipping insane.
“Never mind that!” Mike continued. “I wish to register a complaint about this parrot,” (Hughes was startled when Mike pointed at him,) “that I purchased from this very boutique not half an hour ago!”
To Mike’s delight, the Trading Post manager took one look at Hughes and said, “Oh yes, sir. The Norwegian Plaid? What’s wrong with it?”
Mike told her, and they argued back and fourth for a while before Mike was finally able to convince her that Hughes (who, incidentally, felt very much alive and not at all avian) was, in fact, dead.
Amanda offered to replace him, and she looked under the counter for a bit. “I’m sorry, squire,” she then announced, “we’re fresh out of parrots.”
“I see, I see,” Mike said in exasperation.
“I have got a Slim Jim,” she offered, holding one up.
“Pray, does it talk?”
She looked at it. She looked at Mike. “Yeah,” she said.
“Right! I’ll have that then.”
She handed it to him. He tried giving her a quarter in return, but she returned it and told him that the banter had been payment enough.
So Mike tipped his hat to her. “Be seeing you,” he said to her as he exited the Trading Post. He was followed by Hughes, who said to him, “You’re weird, d'you know that?”
Mike was about to respond when, from out of nowhere, a small, unfolded piece of paper flew through the air at him. Despite its complete lack of aerodynamics it somehow managed to hit him squarely on the forehead. Mike snatched it out of the air as it was falling from his head towards the ground and he looked at it.
“What is it?” Hughes asked.
“I don’t know.” Mike showed it to him. It was blank.
From behind his tree, Roy growled softly to himself.
Dinner on Sunday was an outdoor affair. There was a large fire pit in front of the dining hall, constructed from cinder blocks. Atop this sat metal grating that supported the sizzling hamburgers over the flames. The picky eater that he was, Matthew Atanian customarily brought two slices of American cheese with him to summer camp. He gave them to chef Kenny Healy, who was only too happy to place them on two of the cooking meat patties.
After getting his burgers and a cup of water, Matt joined most of the rest of the Garden Snake Patrol who were all sitting at one of the picnic tables.
“Well, Bill,” Mike was saying to Gelinas, “no zany plots yet.”
“It’s still Sunday,” Gelinas responded. “This is still all just set-up. You just wait and see, something will develop in the next couple of days.”
“What,” Matt interrupted, “are you two talking about?”
“We’ve been trying to figure out the same thing,” Hughes told him.
“Nothing important,” Mike and Gelinas said in unison.
“Why is Perry sitting over with Justy and Proctor?” Matt then asked.
“We’ve been trying to figure out that one, too,” Aaron told him.
Matt shrugged and turned to Kenny. “Looking forward to your first year of Summer Camp?” he asked the young scout.
Kenny looked up from his book. He nodded and said, “Yes, Mr. Atanian.”
Matt smiled at Kenny. The young boy had grown since he had first come to them in the fall, and not just physically. His eye then caught something past Kenny. His smile turned to a frown as he noticed Taylor Kuntz sitting at a far picnic table and staring intently in their direction.
The others noticed Matt’s gaze and followed it. They too saw Kuntz and frowned.
“WHAT?” Becker called out to him accusingly.
Kuntz got up and stormed away.
The Garden Snake patrol returned to conversation amongst themselves.
Soon, ice cream was served. The merit badge sign ups then took place and all of the youth scampered about to try and get into the ones the wanted, mostly with success.
The sky began to dim, and evening was upon them. With it came the Sunday night campfire as performed by the camp staff. It was, for the most part, unremarkable. The skits and songs seemed really tame this year. The only two pieces of entertainment came in the form of a funny sit by Mark Abert, Colin, and Dan, and – an unusual event for a Moses campfire – a brief jazz dance performance by the Trading Post manager.
Without much ado, the campfire came to an end. The assembled troops made their ways back to their campsites. Once 192 was back in Crown Point, Jack McGraw had a word with the kids before sending them to bed.
“All right, listen up!” he said gruffly. “Tomorrow morning at the Scoutmasters’ meeting, the camp director is going to want to know what you want to do for Friday night’s campfire. So what is it!?”
“Clappy song!” someone suggested.
“Lumberjack song!” came another voice.
“Wait!” Matt Swett spoke out. “Weren’t we going to…?” His voice trailed off as he turned to look at Matt Atanian.
“That’s right!”
“Oh, yeah!”
“Matt Gets Wet, part III!”
Matt, Mike, Aaron, and the Bills were joined by Swett, Becker, and Kenny for a brief patrol meeting before retiring for the evening. “Matt Gets Wet,” Mike asked of his patrol mates, “are we actually going through with it?”
“Why wouldn't we?” Swett asked.
“Not much choice,” Hughes said.
Everyone looked at Matt.
“So,” Mike then said, “what's the twist at the end going to be this time?”
“Indeed,” Aaron said. “There's no way Matt can actually get wet.”
“Why couldn't he?” Swett asked.
“Not sure we have much in the way of a choice there, either,” Hughes added.
“Yeah, after the Spring Camporee,” Gelinas said, “I think if we try another bait and switch routine, we'll get lynched.
Everyone nodded. Matt frowned.
“I am open to ideas,” Matt commented.
Kenny coughed lightly. All eyes turned to him. “I may have a solution,” he softly said.
Kenny led them to a door in the hallway. The door was covered by locks. Regular locks, deadbolts, padlocks, combination locks, even a key-card lock and another that required a thumbprint. Slowly, methodically, Kenny undid each of them.
He opened the door and the smell of stale air came from the other side. They peered inside the doorway and saw a stone staircase descending, spiraling down, and lit by naked light bulbs that seemed to stretch into infinity. Even with the light bulbs, the stairs eventually disappeared into distant darkness.
They turned to regard Kenny, the prickly feeling that they all felt on the back of their necks erupting into new heights of prickliness. Kenny assured them it was safe, and so Hughes, Gelinas, Mike, and Aaron all walked in.
As they made their way down the staircase, the corridor slowly seemed to get tighter, the walls closer and the ceiling lower. “Uh, Kenny, there's some mistake here,” Aaron suggested.
“I don't like this, Kenny,” Hughes added. “I don't like it at all!”
It was clear that some sort of forced perspective was at work in the corridor. As they went down, they approached a door that from the start seemed normal, but was actually only about large enough to stick a foot through. “What is this, Kenny? Some kind of fun house?” Mike asked.
“Why, Mr. Quadrozzi,” Kenny asked, “having fun?”
“I've had enough,” Gelinas protested. “I'm not going in there. Come on, guys, we're getting out of here.”
“Oh, you can't get out backwards,” Kenny said. “You've got'ta go forwards to go back. Better press on.”
“I doubt if any of us will get out of here alive,” Gelinas pessimistically commented.
Kenny looked at him, bemused. “Oh, Mr. Gelinas. You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.”
Aaron pointed at the pint sized portal before them. “You're not squeezing me through that tiny door.”
“You're off your bleeding nut, Kenny,” Gelinas said. “Except maybe Mike as a squirrel, no one can get through there.”
“My dear patrol mates,” Kenny said, not heeding their objections, “you are now about to enter the nerve center of the entire laboratory. Inside this room, all of my dreams become realities. And some of my realities become dreams.”
“Let us in, already!” Hughes exclaimed.
“Now, don't get overexcited! Don't lose your head, Mr. Hughes! We wouldn't want anyone to lose that! Yet. Now, the combination... This is a musical lock.”
Kenny bent down and opened a small panel above the door, revealing a small keyboard. His fingers danced across it, playing the opening to Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro."
Gelinas nodded his head knowingly. “Rachmaninoff,” he said.
Kenny ignored him. “Gentlemen,” he said, pushing the entire wall ahead of them so that it opened before them, “my laboratory...” When he spoke the word, he added extreme emphasis to the “bor” part, dragging out the vowel and rolling the “r” in a very profound manor.
He showed them spatial metaphasic vertion shells, ambient cosmic plasma bursts, duodynetic anaphasic streams, and osmotic energy cores. They were all in awe it was so overwhelming. There was so much technology they couldn’t even begin to grasp, and the room was so immense that it felt not like being normal sized people in a huge space, but rather like they themselves had been shrunk. The vast poster on one wall of the Periodic Table of Elements did nothing to help correct the misconception.
There was even a river flowing through the room. A dirty looking orange river with an orange waterfall streaming down into it from heights unseen.
“What a disgusting, dirty river,” Aaron said.
“It's industrial waste, that,” Mike added. “You've ruined your watershed, Kenny. It's polluted.”
“It's orange juice,” Kenny responded.
Hughes gasped. “That's orange juice?!?”
As they approached it, they indeed began to detect a citrus smell, as well as something else that they could not immediately identify.
Kenny nodded. “Ten thousand gallons an hour. All part of an experiment in fermentation. And look at my waterfall. That's the most important thing. It's mixing my orange juice. You know, no other laboratory in the world mixes its orange juice by waterfall.” He leaned in close to Gelinas and added as if in confidence, “But it's the only way if you want to get the pulp just right.”
Hughes took a deep breath, paying close attention to the mixture of citrus and something else. “Wait a minute… I know that smell…”
“Did you say fermentation?” Mike asked.
“Oh my god, it is!” Hughes exclaimed. “A five hundred proof orange juice river!”
“What possible purpose does that serve?” Gelinas asked Kenny.
“I'm a trifle deaf in this ear, Mr. Gelinas,” Kenny responded. “Speak a little louder next time.”
Hughes was running towards the bank of the river. “Where are you going?” Mike asked him.
“Just going in for a quick swim,” Hughes responded.
“Don't worry, he can't drink it all,” Aaron said.
“Are you sure?” Mike responded. He watched as Hughes began drinking from the river. “Hey, Hughes, save some room for later.”
Kenny was most concerned. “Oh, uh, Mr. Hughes, please, don't do that. My orange juice must never be touched by human hands.” He started to walk towards Hughes, who just continued to drink. “Plea–don't do that! Don't do that; you're contaminating my entire river. Please, I beg you, Mr. Hughes! You’ll ruin my experiment!”
Kenny tried to reach for Hughes to pull him away. Hughes, in trying to evade Kenny’s grasp, promptly fell into the river. He hiccupped.
“Man overboard!” Mike shouted
Kenny was aghast. “My orange juice! My most potent orange juice!”
Hughes hiccupped.
“Don't just stand there,” Aaron said, “do something!”
Kenny stood there ponderously for a moment. Then he deadpanned, “Help. Police. Murder.”
Hughes seemed to make a tentative swim for the shore, but then quickly disappeared beneath the orange surface.
“What–what's happening to him?” Mike asked.
“It looks like he's drowning,” Aaron responded.
“Dive in!” Gelinas insisted. “Save him!”
“Oh, it's too late,” Kenny lamented.
Gelinas looked at him. “Too late?”
Kenny nodded. “Oh, he's had it now; the suction's got him. Watch the pipe.” He pointed to a large clear cylinder rising out of one point of the river. Sure enough, within a few moments a large object went up the pipe and got stuck at its midpoint, blocking the orange liquid behind it. It was Hughes, grinning and hiccupping.
“He's stuck in the pipe there, isn't he, Kenny?” Mike asked.
“He's blocking all the orange juice,” Gelinas commented.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Aaron said. “Well, what happens now, Kenny?”
“Oh, the pressure'll get him out. Terrific pressure is building up behind the blockage.”
The others watched in suspense as the pipe began to shake. Then Hughes shot up through it as if he had been fired from a cannon.
As the others watched this, they became aware of a small group of people entering the room from either side. Or rather, a group of small people.
They were identically dressed in some sort of overalls, and had an unusual complexion that matched the color of the river. Their hair, even more oddly, was green in color and their eyebrows in contrast were a striking white.
They began to sing.
“Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-do, I have a perfect puzzle for you. Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-dee, if you are wise, you'll listen to me.
“What do you get when you guzzle down booze? Drinking as much as an elderly flooze. What had you thunk getting terribly drunk? Now you have a breath like a skunk!
“I don't like the smell of it!
“Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-da, If you're not greedy, you will go far. You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-do!”
Mike was surrounded by nuts. All sorts of nuts. And acorns. He searched through the pile he was sitting on until he found one particularly large and shiny looking specimen, which he then proceeded to nibble at.
Off to one side of the room was a pile of discarded shells.
Every once in a while, the hatch in the roof of the cylindrical room he was sitting in would be opened up, and more nuts would be poured in. The delivery person would be different each time, but it was always someone he recognized. There was Agent Pendrell, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, and the delectable Agent Scully. Mike was most amused at the sight of a self-propelled wheelbarrow of nuts which was being followed around by a floating urn featuring a pasted on likeness of Graham Chapman’s face.
After a few hours, he began to become concerned as the level of nuts continued to rise, slowly burying him. Here came Dave Foley with another load, which buried him up to his waste.
“Hey!” he shouted up to Dave. “How about giving it a rest?”
“I’ll ask,” the Kid in the Hall responded. He then shouted to someone Mike couldn’t see, “Is that enough nuts? The guy in here wants us to stop.”
“I’m sorry, Dave, we can’t do that,” was the response.
Dave looked down at Mike and shrugged. “They said no,” he told Mike before walking away.
“Who?” Mike called after him. Dave didn’t respond, but his question was answered a moment later as a group of small, oddly colored people appeared around the hatch, each with a wheelbarrow that they poised over the held edge as they began to sing.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee doo,” they all sang. “I've got another puzzle for you. Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dah dee, if you are wise you will listen to me.
“Nut eating's fine when it's once in a while, it fills you with protein and brightens your smile. But it's repulsive, revolting, and wrong, eating and eating all day long!”
“The way that a squirrel does!” One of them soloed.
“But I am a squirrel!” Mike protested.
“Don’t touch that squirrel’s nuts!” one of the small beings responded.
As if that was some sort of cue, in unison they all dumped their wheelbarrows out, completely burying Mike under the nuts and acorns. As they did this, they finished their song.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee dah, given good manners you will go far. You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee do!”
Aaron searched his room frantically trying to find the present he had bought for Kirstin. Where the hell had he put it? He was supposed to have left ten minutes ago to meet up with her. At this rate, he was going to be seriously late.
And he had really been looking forward to giving her the very expensive box of gourmet chocolates he had purchased for her.
He heard his brother call out to him from the doorway. “What’re you doing?”
Aaron turned. “Derek, have you seen…” His voice trailed off as he noticed the brown stains around Derek’s mouth and on his fingers.
Derek burped.
Aaron lunged for his brother, his hands wrapping around the smaller Abdowmassy’s throat. This just wasn’t bloody fair! Derek was always doing things like this, always ruining things for Aaron. And he always got away with it, too! But not this time. Aaron would see to that. Oh, yes, he would. He squeezed his hands tighter.
“Aaron, what do you think you are doing?” His mother’s voice.
“Stop that this instant!” His father’s voice.
Aaron slowly released his grip. Derek pulled away from him, gasping for breath.
“But… but he ate the chocolates I had bought for Kirstin,” Aaron pleaded.
“No I didn’t,” Derek insisted. As he said that, he kicked away a rather fancy and quite empty box that had been at his feet, hiding it from his parents’ view.
“Derek said he didn’t,” his father said.
“But… but…” Aaron stammered.
“We believe him,” his mother said.
“What about that chocolate on his face?” Aaron asked.
“What chocolate?” his father responded.
Aaron pointed accusingly at his younger brother. “Look!”
“I don’t see anything,” his father said.
Derek was, in fact, as clean as a whistle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” his mother said, hastily putting away a now-dirty handkerchief.
“This is such bullshit!” Aaron said.
“What did you say?” his father asked.
“Honestly, such language,” his mother added.
Derek smirked.
“You, mister, are grounded for all of eternity,” his father said. He closed Aaron into his room and locked the door.
Aaron stood there, dumbfounded. Suddenly and without warning, a group of small people appeared from under his bed and sang a song.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee doo, I've got another puzzle for you. Oompa Loompa doom‑pa‑dah dee, if you are wise you will listen to me.
“Who do you blame when your brother’s a brat, pampered and spoiled like a Siamese cat? Blaming the kids is a lion of shame. You know exactly who's to blame:
“Your mother and your father!
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee dah, if you're not spoiled then you will go far. You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee do!”
Billy Gelinas sniffled a bit. His long, orange, cylindrical snout did always give him a bit of a trouble being a bit runny. He put that out of his mind as he
surveyed the task before him.
He stood atop a pyramid made from cubes. The cubes, however, were just not a good color. Well, he would have to do something about that.
He hopped down, and the cube he landed upon changed from red to blue. He hopped down again and the next cube did the same thing.
He smiled. This would be a piece of cake.
Or so he thought. Suddenly he spotted that Coily, his serpentine nemesis, was right behind him. If he could just lure Coily to the edge of the pyramid,
perhaps he could get the snake to go over the edge. But he would have to time things just right.
And so Billy jumped, from one cube to another, closer to the edge and the bottomless abyss beyond.
He got to the end of the road and risked a look behind himself. He was startled when he saw Coily was a lot closer then he had expected, practically right on top of him. With a yelp, Billy fell backwards and plummeted endlessly to his doom.
As he fell, he was joined in his decent by a group of small, oddly colored persons. They joined hands, forming a circle around him, and began to sing.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee doo, I've got another puzzle for you. Oompa Loompa doom‑pa‑dah dee, if you are wise you'll listen to me.
“What do you get playing video games? A very stiff thumb and an IQ that’s tame. Why don't you try simply reading a book? Or could you just not bear to look?”
“You'll get no…” one soloed.
“You'll get no…” soloed another.
“You'll get no…”
“You'll get no…”
“You'll get no long FMV’s!” they all sang together.
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee dah, if you're not greedy you will go far. You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee do!”
The four Jusenkyo cursed members of the Garden Snake patrol sat up sharply from their cots, sweat upon their brows as they breathed heavily, trying to calm themselves.
Meanwhile, Matthew Atanian had an undisturbed night of sleep and awoke the next morning nice and refreshed.
And somewhere in the Bahamas, enjoying a nice vacation away from tormenting the Assistant Scoutmaster, a small group of penguins sat in comfortable beach chairs, drinking fish daiquiris.
Author's Notes & Disclaimers
Well, here we are again. Sorry for the bit of a delay. (Although, given some of the past delays, this one must seem like a blink of the eye!) I did have most of this one finished for quite a while, but fell off a bit when it came to finishing up the last few dream sequences.
Ah, yes… The dream sequences.
Well, BS½ is no stranger to dream sequences, and it had been a little while since I’d done some, so I thought it was due. And while on vacation this summer, I found the soundtrack to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the superior film version, in my opinion, which is not to say that I disliked the new one) and for some reason got the Oompa Loompa songs stuck in my head and wanted somehow to apply them to the boys.
Maybe it has nothing to do with the rest of the story, and maybe it is a needless tangent… But hey, I write these bloody things for my enjoyment. Hopefully others will like them too, but that is a secondary concern.
Another thing that might seem superfluous is the lengths to witch the new Trading Post Manager was detailed. Unless the reader is missing some brain cells, it is pretty apparent that this is a new character based on a real life person. In this case, it is Amanda Taylor, the best friend and distant cousin of my fiancée, Jessi.
Why include my love’s best friend (and a rather good friend of mine since meeting her) rather then my love herself? Is this some twisted indication that something is going on behind Jessi’s back? Of course not! Get your mind out of the gutter!
Rather, not including Jessi is protecting our relationship. Okay, logically, after four years it probably wouldn’t put our relationship in any danger, yet I
still have a superstition against including a romantic interest in a piece of fiction I am writing. Last two times I did it (once way back in a previous series of stories I had written, and once in the case of Nicole Colosimo who got a cameo in Kenny’s Laboratory) the woman in question soon after expressed a desire not to pursue or continue a relationship.
Meanwhile, a long time ago in a scout camp not very far away, the last time I went up to summer camp at Moses as a member of Troop 192 (which was 1998, incidentally) there was a female Trading Post manager who 192 got on quite well with. I had intended to include her as a character, and have a story line involving 192 having to protect her against Roy.
Only problem… It has been about seven years and I can’t for the life of me remember her name. Solution? Keep the idea but substitute in Amanda.
Another inclusion is Jesse Lashway, who won a contest about ten million years ago to have a cameo appearance in a BS½ story. I had planned to include such a cameo in the summer camp story line, and here it is. I figured I had better include it in part I wrote rather then leave it to Hughes in the next part. For reasons that are not the reader’s business, Lashway’s character would most likely suffer a horrid death should his fate have been left up to Hughes.
Now the usual stuff. Jusenkyo curses and such are taken from Takahashi Rumiko’s Ranma ½, used without permission. This story is not meant to reflect the values of, nor is it endorsed by, the Boy Scouts of America. Oompa Loompa songs: original lyrics by Anthony Newley, adapted for use in BS½ by yours truly.
Well, I think that’s everything. Hopefully we’ll be back soon with part 27, by Hughes. See you then!
Ah, yes… The dream sequences.
Well, BS½ is no stranger to dream sequences, and it had been a little while since I’d done some, so I thought it was due. And while on vacation this summer, I found the soundtrack to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the superior film version, in my opinion, which is not to say that I disliked the new one) and for some reason got the Oompa Loompa songs stuck in my head and wanted somehow to apply them to the boys.
Maybe it has nothing to do with the rest of the story, and maybe it is a needless tangent… But hey, I write these bloody things for my enjoyment. Hopefully others will like them too, but that is a secondary concern.
Another thing that might seem superfluous is the lengths to witch the new Trading Post Manager was detailed. Unless the reader is missing some brain cells, it is pretty apparent that this is a new character based on a real life person. In this case, it is Amanda Taylor, the best friend and distant cousin of my fiancée, Jessi.
Why include my love’s best friend (and a rather good friend of mine since meeting her) rather then my love herself? Is this some twisted indication that something is going on behind Jessi’s back? Of course not! Get your mind out of the gutter!
Rather, not including Jessi is protecting our relationship. Okay, logically, after four years it probably wouldn’t put our relationship in any danger, yet I
still have a superstition against including a romantic interest in a piece of fiction I am writing. Last two times I did it (once way back in a previous series of stories I had written, and once in the case of Nicole Colosimo who got a cameo in Kenny’s Laboratory) the woman in question soon after expressed a desire not to pursue or continue a relationship.
Meanwhile, a long time ago in a scout camp not very far away, the last time I went up to summer camp at Moses as a member of Troop 192 (which was 1998, incidentally) there was a female Trading Post manager who 192 got on quite well with. I had intended to include her as a character, and have a story line involving 192 having to protect her against Roy.
Only problem… It has been about seven years and I can’t for the life of me remember her name. Solution? Keep the idea but substitute in Amanda.
Another inclusion is Jesse Lashway, who won a contest about ten million years ago to have a cameo appearance in a BS½ story. I had planned to include such a cameo in the summer camp story line, and here it is. I figured I had better include it in part I wrote rather then leave it to Hughes in the next part. For reasons that are not the reader’s business, Lashway’s character would most likely suffer a horrid death should his fate have been left up to Hughes.
Now the usual stuff. Jusenkyo curses and such are taken from Takahashi Rumiko’s Ranma ½, used without permission. This story is not meant to reflect the values of, nor is it endorsed by, the Boy Scouts of America. Oompa Loompa songs: original lyrics by Anthony Newley, adapted for use in BS½ by yours truly.
Well, I think that’s everything. Hopefully we’ll be back soon with part 27, by Hughes. See you then!