Scurvy Goonda Read online

  “How can you tell he’s worried?”

  “His fur.”

  Ted turned to Scurvy. “Could you take a look for me?”

  “But I’m comfy in tha bed.”

  “C’mon, Scurv. This is important.”

  Adeline watched Scurvy heave himself off the mattress—she’d always been able to see Scurvy, for some reason. She talked a lot about all the ab-coms she could see, and there were times Ted wondered if she maybe could see everybody’s abstract companions.

  Ted sat up on the bed and watched Scurvy conducting his examination.

  “Is he okay?” Adeline asked.

  “Hold on, hold on,” said Scurvy.

  Being a planda, Eric always had black rings around his eyes, but today he looked downright exhausted. Even his bonsai was drooping.

  “Strange, this,” said Scurvy, poking a bare pink spot on the planda’s belly. Eric recoiled. “It seems his baldish areas are a wee sensitive.”

  Eric tucked his head. He didn’t like being the center of attention.

  “What do you think we should do about it, Scurvy?” asked Addie.

  “Not tah worry, m’lady! Yer planda is just a touch stressed! Probably worried about how he’ll look in his bathing suit this summer!”

  Adeline laughed.

  “Ya know I won’t let anything happen tah him,” said Scurvy. “If this is more than just a case of nerves, I will sail every ocean on Earth tah find him a cure fer his malady!”

  “Thanks, Scurvy,” said Adeline. Eric nodded gratefully.

  As Adeline walked out of the room, holding Eric’s hand, Scurvy saw more bald spots on his back and behind his legs. Dead bonsai leaves fell to the ground behind him.

  “This isn’t good at all, Teddy-boy. Somethin’s brewin’,” said Scurvy. But then he saw that Ted was already fast asleep.

  Scurvy knew that Eric’s fur was falling out because he was nervous, which made Scurvy nervous too. He reached under the mattress and pulled out a small envelope adorned with a silver seal blaring a portentous inscription:

  From the office of

  THE PRESIDENT OF MIDDLEMOST

  The envelope had been delivered more than a week ago, brought in the middle of the night by an unseen courier and left inside Scurvy’s boot.

  Scurvy pulled a letter out of the envelope. The corners of the paper were bent and the sheet was dark with his fingerprints. Here’s what it said:

  ATTENTION

  ALL ABSTRACT COMPANIONS!

  THIS IS YOUR CALL TO ARMS!

  ALL AB-COMS are to report back to

  Middle most within SIXTY DAYS or be

  considered DESERTERS by the presidential

  army! The humans are planning to

  EXTERMINATE us! Return to Middlemost

  before a grisly fate befalls you!

  All check-ins will take place at Ab-Com City.

  Do not tell anybody that you are leaving! We

  have spies everywhere and we will know if

  you are betraying your own kind!

  The time is now! The future is ours!

  Defend yourself and defend your real friends!

  Onward!

  Your Gorgeous Leader,

  PRESIDENT PERSEPHONE SKELETON

  “Not me leader, ya ain’t,” mumbled Scurvy, folding the letter and placing it back in the envelope. “Not me family. Not me friend. I won’t ever leave me Ted.”

  Scurvy hadn’t been to Middlemost in a very, very long time, and he wasn’t going to be “called to arms” just because Persephone—Persephone, of all ab-coms—demanded it. His home was right here on lovely Cape Cod. With Ted.

  V

  Down a path from Ted’s house, through the woods, and then up a hill was the crest of a sand dune—a big mound of fine, clean dirt. From the top of the dune, Ted could look down over two huge cranberry bogs and the big pond next to them. Bogs always had ponds next to them. To collect the cranberries, the farmers flooded the bogs using pond water, which caused the berries to float to the surface, making them easier to scoop. During the winter, the bogs were flooded to protect the plants from the cold, and when the water froze, Ted would skate on the surface, trying to slice the stray berries stuck in the ice. But now it was summer, and Ted was on top of the dune staring down at Carolina Waltz, who was sitting at its base.

  When Ted and Carolina Waltz were in the same third-grade class, she had been the only girl to place a homemade card in his Valentine’s Day mailbox. Ever since then, Ted had longed to be Carolina Waltz’s boyfriend.

  Here’s a valentine, Ted, Carolina had written on that tremendous third-grade day. I don’t care that you talk to pirates. I like you.

  I like you too, Carolina, Ted had written back, which to this day was the best moment he’d ever had with a girl.

  That is, it was the best moment he’d ever had in real life with a girl. But for years, in his mind, he and Carolina had been together. He saw them together in places around the world: There she was in a white dress, laughing as he steered their gondola through the canals of Venice en route to an art auction at which they hoped to pick up a new painting for their enormous Italian villa.

  Che cosa comprare? Ted asked Carolina, because in this fantasy he spoke a little Italian, and he liked the way it made Carolina giggle.

  Oh, Ted, you are my Da Vinci, said Carolina, twirling her parasol in her gloved hands. We should buy whatever you want.

  Penso che un Cézanne sia sembrato piacevole, said Ted, because he knew that Cézanne was Carolina’s favorite. She batted her eyelashes at him.

  You’re perfect, said Carolina.

  Siete perfetti, said Ted, because he thought that Carolina was perfect too.

  In his imagination.

  In reality, since third grade Carolina had become mean. Today she was with two of her girlfriends, talking about guys from school, one of whom was walking toward them.

  “Hello, ladies,” said Duke.

  “Duke!” shouted Carolina’s friend Shelly LeShoot, who was awful.

  Duke’s usual method of beating up Ted started with Duke standing up in the middle of the high school lunchroom and demanding, “HEY, TED, SAY SOMETHING CRAZY!” which would cause hundreds of kids to turn toward wherever Ted was sitting, alone. Most kids believed Ted was nuts, and it frustrated them that he never actually behaved in a crazy manner.

  And so Duke would continue: “YOU SHOULD SHOW EVERYBODY YOUR WEIRD BIRTHMARK.”

  Ted did have a strange birthmark that covered his right forearm. It stretched from his wrist to his elbow and was solid brown aside from three pale circles arranged in a triangle in its center. His mother used to tell him his father had one just like it. Ted had always been self-conscious about it. He never wore short-sleeved shirts, and when he had to change into his gym clothes, he always did so in one of the bathroom stalls.

  “MAYBE HE’S SO CRAZY HE FORGOT HOW TO TALK!”

  To which Ted would just silently reply, Yes, Duke. I’m out of my mind. I now communicate via a system of grunts and whistles that you can only understand if you decipher the code I’ve written with my own earwax.

  Invariably, Duke would see Ted rolling his eyes, come storming over to the table, and tell Ted to meet him outside after lunch. So Ted would go outside after lunch, and Duke would beat him up in front of the student body. Duke was a master of the headlock.

  “I love your new sneakers, Duke,” said Carolina.

  “Stole them from that Foot Locker at the mall,” said Duke.

  “That’s so awesome,” said Shelly.

  Ted looked over at a rock lying nearby. It was almost perfectly round, about the size of a grapefruit, and it was covered in little shiny specks. It looked heavy, but not heavy enough that Ted couldn’t hurl it from the top of the sand dune, if he were ever compelled to do such a thing.

  He imagined himself hurling the rock at the group below,and then, just as it was about to crash down upon them: rrrrrkkk! It would come to a screeching halt above Duke and his
groupies, crack open, and dump hair-removal liquid all over them, so that when they came into school the next day, they would be grotesquely bald. Ted bet that under his luxurious blond hair, Duke had a lumpy caveman skull.

  “Aye, Ted. From here, ya could knock Duke’s head completely off,” said Scurvy, nodding at the rock.

  “I’d miss,” said Ted. “And then he’d come up here and destroy me.”

  “Nah. We have tha high ground, matey. At tha very least, ya’d be able to roll some of these larger boulders down and take off running. Might kill some of the girls, but no great loss there. Not very bright, those pocky dollies.”

  “Oh, Duke, you’re so funny!” yelled one of Carolina’s friends.

  “Mercy killin’ is all it would be,” said Scurvy. “Do it for the entire human race.”

  “Scurvy, you know it’s not like it used to be in your time. You can’t just go around murdering everyone you don’t like.”

  “Watch yer mouth,” said Scurvy. “This is my time as much as anyone else’s.”

  “Let’s go,” said Ted, getting up from the sand.

  “Help a pirate up, mate,” said Scurvy.

  Ted grabbed Scurvy’s hand and pulled him to his feet. It was the first time he’d ever had to do that. Scurvy had always been terrifically strong.

  “Are you okay to walk?” said Ted. “You look tired.”

  “I am that, a wee bit,” said Scurvy. “Just haven’t been sleepin’.”

  Ted took a final look at Carolina—geez, she was so beautiful. He couldn’t believe that somebody who looked like that could be so mean. Ahh … Carolina.

  For a second, Ted thought that she might be looking up the sand dune at him. But she was probably just tossing her hair, or making sure that her face was getting tanned. Girls like her always got all the sunshine.

  VI

  Ted’s father, Declan, had left Cape Cod when Ted was seven, saying he was going camping with friends. When he didn’t turn up a week later, Ted pictured his dad diving for sunken treasure, or releasing zoo wolves into the wild, or doing some other logical thing that would explain why he hadn’t come home. But when inquiries to his dad’s friends revealed that there was no camping trip, and credit card records showed that his father was in New York City, the truth hit young Ted: his father wasn’t coming home. Shortly after that, even the credit card records stopped arriving.

  Ted kept a photograph of his father in his bedroom. He had been a handsome man with a muscular physique, a receding hairline, and big hands. Ted remembered those hands gripping his ankles as he rode on his father’s shoulders, way up high. The photo, from a fishing trip, showed his father helping him bait a hook. He remembered his father telling him stories about pirates and sea captains every night before he went to bed. He remembered that his father had loved him, though he was no longer quite sure if this was true. Maybe he just hoped he did?

  Soon after Ted’s dad left, Scurvy Goonda showed up.

  These days, Ted found himself thinking of his dad a lot. Any time he saw one of his classmates getting picked up at school by a father, or he passed a sports field where fathers were cheering on their kids in soccer games or field hockey matches, he wondered what his life would have been like if his dad was still around to help him with everything.

  It was hard being the only male in his family. His mother and Grandma Rose expected him to know how to change fuses and cut plants with the Weedwacker and get rid of mice. Even Adeline thought he should be a natural when it came to trapping spiders—indeed, all spider-disposal tasks fell on Ted’s skinny shoulders.

  Ted stared out the window. A windsurfer was skimming along the surface of the water. Ted remembered that his father used to love windsurfing. Even now, sitting at the kitchen table, Ted could almost picture his father holding up a big blue sail, buzzing along on top of the waves—

  “WHY DO MEATBALLS HAVE TO BE ROUND ANYWAY?” said Grandma Rose. “I WANT MY MEAT IN A TRIANGLE!”

  Debbie piled spaghetti onto Grandma Rose’s plate, sprinkling the pasta with a few of her tears. Spaghetti had been Declan’s favorite meal. Debbie still made the dish every Friday night, and it always made her cry.

  “Why do you make spaghetti if it makes you sad?” asked Adeline.

  “It was your father’s favorite,” Debbie explained, sniffling. “I want to have it ready when he comes home.”

  “How do you know he’ll come home on a Friday?”

  “PIPE DOWN, ADELINE,” said Grandma Rose. “YOU SOUND LIKE A ZEPPELIN EXPLOSION.”

  “We scheduled an appointment for you to see a marvelous psychiatrist, Ted,” said Debbie. Grandma Rose nodded and spaghetti spilled from her mouth. She wasn’t good at chewing anymore.

  “No way,” he declared.

  “Sweetheart, you need friends who aren’t imaginary pirates,” said his mother.

  “He’s real to me.”

  “THEN WHY CAN’T ANYBODY BUT YOU SEE HIM?” asked Grandma Rose. “YOU WEARING GOGGLES MADE OF STUPID?”

  “Maybe they can’t see him because he’s… shy?” he offered.

  “PIRATES AREN’T SHY!” said Grandma Rose.

  This was true. Scurvy was crazed and loud and consumed by bacon lust, and generally pretty much anything but shy.

  “Maybe he hides from you ’cuz … ’cuz he just doesn’t like you!” said Adeline, nodding to Scurvy, who was standing at the corner of the table observing the action. Scurvy tipped his tricorne and winked.

  “Rightie-o, young Adeline,” said Scurvy.

  “Don’t talk to invisible pirates, dear,” said Debbie. “And finish your milk.”

  “Can I go now?” said Ted.

  “Next Monday. Two o’clock. Dr. Winterhalter,” said his mom.

  “I have to go to work now, Mother.”

  Ted walked outside, got on his bike, and started pedaling madly. There’s nothing WRONG, he thought. Except for the fact that I’ll spend the next eight hours at a lousy job where the bacon is going to be strewn around the meat aisle because our customers are MANIACS who ENJOY digging through piles of bacon, searching for the one PRIME PIECE that has only a SPECK OF FAT on it, messing up the PERFECT piles that I MADE last night.

  “Arrgh!” Ted roared at the road. But the road didn’t say anything back.

  Scurvy was riding on the bike’s handlebars, and Ted had to keep pushing his head down to see where he was going. But each time he took his hand off Scurvy’s head, the pirate would pop up and put his hands in the air, feeling free, and Ted had to lean far to the side to make sure that he didn’t veer off the road or go careening into traffic.

  “Stay down, Scurvy,” said Ted.

  “Bicycles are brilliant,” said Scurvy, his long, dirty hair flapping behind him, whopping Ted in the face.

  “But I can’t see the road.”

  “I’ll be yer eyes, Ted-o-mine!”

  “Scurvy, please. I need my own eyes.”

  “Nonsense! Ya haven’t spent a lifetime staring at tha horizon. Ya don’t know what true vision is. Wait… a pothole coming up, starboard!”

  Ted pulled on the handgrips, but he forgot which side was starboard, and then suddenly he was flying through the air, the gray asphalt beneath him and his brain firing off warning messages: Pain coming! Try to fly! The last thing Ted saw before he hit was Scurvy plummeting to the ground next to him.

  “YER RIGHT,” shouted Scurvy. “FROM NOW ON YA SHOULD BE YER OWN EYES!”

  Before Ted could respond, he smacked into the hard earth.

  VII

  Each time Ted touched one of the freezing-cold packages of hot dogs or stacks of sliced bologna, his hands started to sting. Every part of his body was in pain—his elbows and knees were scraped, there were skid marks on his palms, he had a bump on his head, and he thought there might be a small pebble lodged way up his nostril.

  “I asked politely, I tried to push you out of the way, I told you I couldn’t see,” said Ted.

  “I tend tah lose my head when I feel tha win
d through me hair,” said Scurvy, uncharacteristically disappointed with himself. He was dirty from the crash, curled in a corner of the meat aisle, sitting on some smoked-turkey cold cuts. There were long smears of dirt across the Lunchables boxes he had assaulted.

  “Yer upset with me,” said Scurvy.

  “Yes, I’m upset. If somebody sees me bleeding all over the meat aisle, I’m going to get in trouble.”

  “Then go to tha bathroom and get some Band-Aids. Or rub some mud into tha wounds.”

  “Mud won’t help.”

  The truth was Ted didn’t want to leave the meat aisle to get the first-aid kit because he was afraid of running into Jed. But he needed to tend to his oozier scrapes, so he grabbed a couple of empty cardboard cartons to make it look like he was doingsomething productive, and walked through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  The back of the store was packed with huge boxes filled with all the other products that would eventually make their way out to the unforgiving lights of the supermarket floor.

  In the midst of all these boxes was the Crusher.

  The Crusher was a giant vise that smashed whatever went into it into tiny cubes. Ted couldn’t fathom how something so massive had ever been transported into the supermarket in the first place. He imagined instead that the Crusher had stood in the same place for thousands of years, built by druids or ancient pagans who had worshiped the machine as a god. The Stop to Shop had to have been built around the Crusher.

  Ted tossed his empty cardboard boxes into the Crusher, put on a pair of protective goggles, and, with an enormous heave, pulled a long metal lever to turn on the machine. The Crusher roared to life and Ted jumped away like he always did, because the machine scared the heck out of him. Gears spun and levers creaked and Ted could almost hear the cardboard boxes screaming as they were smashed and compressed and obliterated out of their peaceful boxy existence.

  Such was the power of the Crusher.

  Ted popped a couple of aspirin and used the first-aid kit in the bathroom to smear his wounds with some sticky iodine. Meanwhile, Scurvy Goonda stared at himself in the mirror, using his dagger to pick bits of bacon out of his teeth.