by Ron Bates
As Cuphead climbed back up the stairs, he thought about the carnival. He’d heard of carnivals, of course, but he’d never been to one—what were they like? Were they really as bad as Elder Kettle said? And if they were, why did people go to them? Not that it mattered, since he and Mugman had promised they’d stay away. Besides, if this carnival were any fun at all, the kids at school would be talking about it, and he hadn’t heard a word. So it wasn’t like he would really be missing out on anything—would he? No, he wouldn’t be—carnivals were bad places and that’s all there was to it. Anyway, tonight he had bigger plans. Much bigger plans.
This was going to be the best birthday of Elder Kettle’s life!
Cuphead walked into his bedroom. It looked different now, not at all like the wild wake-up scene from earlier. Everything was back in its place. Well, almost everything. He took the ball Hilda Berg had been nice enough to return (maybe she wasn’t so bad after all) and put it on the high shelf near the bookcase. And as long as he was in the neighborhood—
“SQUEEEEEEAAAAAAL!”
He grabbed Piggy.
“Hey, hey, watch it there!” the pink ceramic piggy bank squealed. “Take it easy, will you?”
“Sorry, Piggy,” Cuphead said, shaking him a little so he could hear the coins jingle.
“Well, I’m not a piñata, you know—so don’t get any ideas,” the pig said. “What are you doing, anyway?”
Cuphead looked around the room to make sure no one was listening. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“I’m getting everything ready for”—he looked around again—“Elder Kettle’s birthday party.”
“Birthday party!” Piggy yelled.
“Shhhhhh! Will you be quiet? He’s going to hear you.”
“So let him hear me. I love birthday parties! When’s the happy occasion?”
“Tonight, and you’re invited. But it’s a surprise,” Cuphead said.
He turned the pig upside down and shook him again.
“Hey, stop that! You’re making me dizzy!”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I need to get the money out for the present.”
“Money?” Piggy gasped.
He leaped out of Cuphead’s hands and landed on the bed. Suddenly, it all made sense. For the past few weeks, Cuphead had been stuffing him with money—fistfuls of it. It was a piggy bank’s dream! He was actually full for the first time in his life. And now Cuphead thought he could just come and take it back?
“Never!” Piggy cried.
Cuphead rolled his eyes. He’d been afraid this would happen. The gobs of money he and Mugman had been collecting came from Elder Kettle’s friends so they could all go in together on a really nice present, the kind that would make this birthday unforgettable. But Piggy wasn’t used to seeing so such money. And now that he’d developed a taste for it…
This wasn’t going to be easy.
“Calm down, Piggy. Let’s talk this over,” Cuphead said.
“There’s nothing to talk about. That money is the official property of the First National Bank of Piggy—which is me! So back off!”
This was ridiculous. Cuphead was going to be late for school. He leaped onto the bed and made an attempt at a tackle, but Piggy squirmed out of his grasp.
“Help! Police! Bank robbery!” the pig squealed.
Piggy jumped off the bed, and Cuphead went after him. As they raced around the room, others joined the chase. The dresser moved in from the right side, while the radio blocked the left side, and the alarm clock tried to ambush him from above. But the pig was too quick for all of them. Finally, they managed to corner him near the window.
“Stay away, stay away!” he warned them.
“Aw, jeepers, Piggy, be a sport,” Cuphead said. “I’m going to be late for school!”
But Piggy crossed his arms and shook his head defiantly.
“I’m never giving you this money—not one red cent. And there’s nothin’ you can do about it!”
Cuphead frowned. Piggy was greedy and amazingly stubborn. This could take all day. But maybe there was another way.
“Okay, I believe you, you’re never going to give me the money. But what if I trade you something for it?” he asked.
“Trade?” Piggy said. “Trade what?”
Cuphead pulled a yellow flower out of a pot on the windowsill. Piggy’s eyes widened.
“Is that a—a—a—?”
“Is it a what?” Cuphead asked innocently.
He held the flower out and wiggled it against Piggy’s nose.
“Get that thing away from me!”
“Why? Does it bother you?”
He wiggled it again.
“No fair!” Piggy groaned. “You know that I’m allergic to rhodo… rho-do… rho-do-do—”
He scrunched up his face and put a finger under his snout. “RHO-DO-DENDRONS! AH-CHOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The sneeze shook the room like a thousand Ala-ka-BLAM firecrackers bursting at once. When it was over, money floated down from above like freshly minted snowflakes. Cuphead quickly scooped it all up and stuffed it in his pocket.
“Thanks, Piggy,” he said. “See you at the party!”
Then he grabbed his books, slid down the staircase banister, and ran out the front door with Mugman.
“Remember what I told you,” Elder Kettle called after them. “Stay away from that carnival!”
On the way to school, Cuphead and Mugman saw the same familiar faces they always saw on their walk. They waved to Mr. Milky, who drove the milk wagon; said good morning to Mrs. Frosty, who drove the ice wagon; and gave a quick hello to Ollie Bulb, the grocer.
“Hello, Cuphead! Hello, Mugman!” cried Ollie.
And then he cried some more. He wept with joy at the sight of them, because, well, Ollie wept about everything. It’s probably because he’s an onion, and, as you know, they’re very sensitive vegetables. So the tears poured like summer rain, but no one minded, including Ollie, because there’s nothing he enjoyed more than a good cry.
“Are you coming to the you-know-what tonight?” Cuphead asked.
“You mean the party? Wouldn’t miss it!” cried Ollie.
“Shhhhh! Remember, it’s a surprise!”
“A surprise? Me and my big mouth!” Ollie replied, and the tears poured out again.
The hardest thing about having a surprise birthday party is making sure it stays a surprise. That was especially true on the Inkwell Isles. It was such a tiny community. Everyone knew one another, and there were gossips everywhere. Those people couldn’t wait to blab the latest news, and Elder Kettle’s birthday was very big news. It was going to be a huge celebration! There’d be music and dancing and, of course, a cake. Not just any cake, mind you—for an occasion like this, Chef Saltbaker was whipping up something extra special.
Chef Saltbaker was a tall, distinguished-looking saltshaker with a friendly smile and a shiny topper. His bakery was a very busy place. When Cuphead and Mugman stopped by, the chef was hard at work while spatulas, eggbeaters, spoons, and the other utensils rushed about in a culinary frenzy.
“Hello, Chef,” Cuphead said warmly. “Is the cake ready yet?”
Suddenly, everything in the busy kitchen stopped and the whole place fell silent.
“Ready?” Chef Saltbaker asked, sounding a little offended. “You want to know if the cake I’m making is ready?”
He turned to his kitchen utensils.
“Did you hear that? He wants to know if the cake is ready! Ha!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” the utensils all laughed.
“Oh look, zee cake, she is ready. We’ll put it in a paper bag for you! Ha-ha-ha!” a spatula joked. “What does he think you’re making? A cupcake?”
The utensils laughed again. Cuphead didn’t know why, but apparently, he’d asked the funniest question they’d ever heard.
“The cake will be ready exactly when the time is right and not a minute before,” the chef told him. “I will not serve a creation this delicious at anything
other than the absolute peak of freshness.”
Cuphead nodded, but he was shuffling his feet.
“Well, I just thought, since the party’s tonight, you might want to have it done early.”
Now the entire kitchen glared at him.
“Oh, make the cake early? What a wonderful idea! ‘Here you are, Elder Kettle. Enjoy your stale, tasteless, day-old cake.’ Pishposh!” Chef said, then added sheepishly, “Please excuse my salty language.”
Chef was an artist and a genius and a very nice guy. But he was passionate about baking. Cuphead should’ve known better than to question his work.
“Well, maybe the cake isn’t ready, but something sure smells good,” Mugman said.
Now Chef smiled.
“In my shop, everything smells good. Because everything is good! Here, lick these spoons!”
They did.
“Mmmmmmmmmmm,” Cuphead said. “What is it?”
“Perfection,” said Chef. “Now run along, I have a masterpiece to create.”
Cuphead and Mugman left the bakery which, as luck would have it, was currently right next door to Porkrind’s store. They still needed to find a gift for Elder Kettle.
They opened the door and went inside.
“What do you want?” said Porkrind.
Porkrind was a rough-looking swine with an eye patch and a gruff, gravelly voice. He wasn’t great with customers, but his store always had interesting things.
“We’re looking for a present for Elder Kettle,” Cuphead explained. “It’s his birthday.”
“Birthday, huh? How about socks?” Porkrind asked. “Everybody needs socks.”
“No,” said Cuphead. “Not socks.”
“Suspenders?”
“No.”
“Mustache wax? Shoelaces? Liniment oil?”
“It’s for his birthday; it needs to be… classy. You know, something fancy.”
Porkrind rolled his un-patched eye.
“Well, pardon me, Mr. Ooh-la-la,” he grunted, then turned and picked up a glass bottle from a shelf. “How about some smelly French co-log-nee? Or ain’t that good enough for His Majesty?”
Cuphead sighed. There were times when he wished Porkrind didn’t have the only gift shop in town.
“What about this?” said Mugman.
He was standing in the corner of the store, staring at a shelf filled with toy airplanes. They had birchwood gliders and windup planes and even a gas-powered flyer. For as long as he could remember, Mugman had been fascinated by planes.
“Jeepers, Mugman, Elder Kettle doesn’t want some dumb toy,” Cuphead told him. “It’s got to be something like—”
And then he saw it. Inside a case just beneath the cash register was the perfect thing. It was a pocket watch—a shiny, gold watch with a shimmering chain.
“That! That’s exactly what we… oh my gosh, look what time it is!”
The big hand on the pocket watch was pointing to the eleven. That meant they had just five minutes before the tardy bell rang.
“Come on, Mugman,” Cuphead said. “We’ll come back after school.”
They rushed out the door.
“We close at four o’clock on the dot,” Porkrind called after them. “Don’t be late!”
“We won’t be!” Cuphead called back.
As they raced down the street toward the schoolhouse, they spotted a big crowd of people gathered in the town square. Cuphead couldn’t see what they were looking at, only that they were excited. But he could see the top of a big, colorful tent being raised into the air. It was beautiful! He froze, staring at it.
“Come on, ya big dope,” Mugman said, and he grabbed Cuphead by the collar and dragged him down the street.
A huge, billowy cloud of dust rose behind the brothers as they ran down the old school road. It wasn’t the usual kind of running, you understand; it was the kind that spins mailboxes round like weather vanes and pulls the feathers off nearby chickens. Needless to say, this made a mess of the mail that day and greatly embarrassed a group of hens who were out for their morning stroll, but it couldn’t be helped. Cuphead and Mugman simply could not be late. Not on this day. That would be a disaster.
Unfortunately, the only thing moving faster than they were was the clock on the front of the large schoolhouse. It was the most annoying clock on the isles, never helpful when you needed it to be, never lending you a few seconds that you could pay back tomorrow or whenever you had some spare time. No, this was one of those clocks that moved too quickly in the morning, then took its dear sweet time getting through the rest of the day. The worst part was that the clock had it in for Cuphead. He was absolutely sure of it.
“Almost there!” called Cuphead, wheezing like a teakettle that’s nearly out of steam.
He was trying to be encouraging (Cuphead could find the bright side of a situation even when there wasn’t one), but as it happened, he was right. The school was just around the next corner. It was going to be close—down to the wire, really—but with the wind at their backs and a little luck, they might actually make it. Cuphead could picture it now: He and Mugman walking in with the other kids, getting their usual welcome from Mat, the welcome mat.
“Good morning, ow! Welcome to school, ow!” Mat would say as the crowd tramped on his face. “Nice to see you, have a terrific day, owwwww!”
Nothing perked up a morning like Mat’s cheerful scream beneath your feet, and Cuphead was determined to hear it. He urged Mugman on. The two of them pumped their arms and gritted their teeth, and that’s when they saw it.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH!
There was a fork in the road. It wasn’t just any fork—you don’t bring two pairs of virtually flying feet to a screeching halt over just any fork—it was Silverworth. Or as he was known to every school-age boy and girl on the Inkwell Isles, Principal Silverworth.
“Gee whillikers, it’s the principal! Hide! Hide!” Cuphead said.
The two of them ducked into the bushes. It was a reflex action, an overwhelming impulse that came over them the second they saw the highfalutin fork standing between them and the school. Everyone knew how Silverworth felt about being on time.
“Punctuality is the key to educationality,” he said as he pushed a group of students through the wide front door. “You may quote me.”
Whenever Silverworth had something profound to say, and that was more often than you’d think, he would hold a single finger in the air as if posing for a statue. The truth is, he would not have been at all surprised to one day find tributes to him carved in marble or bronze or Limburger cheese or some other material that might be suitable for a particular occasion. After all, he was, in his humble opinion, a monumental sort of figure. A small but distinguished-looking fork, he wore a monocle because it was stylish, and passed out detention slips like a newsie delivering the Inkwell Gazette.
No one was better at catching a Late Kate or Tardy Marty than Principal Silverworth. He could smell a straggler a mile away, and while he hadn’t yet spotted Cuphead and Mugman, he knew someone was out there. And he would find them. It was only a matter of time.
“Hmmmmm… If I were a lollygagger, where would I be?” he muttered to himself.
As luck would have it, that was the very moment that Canteen Hughes—who wore extremely thick goggles—happened to walk by. Silverworth plucked the lenses from Canteen’s face and held them up like binoculars. He scanned the schoolyard.
“Now, where are you hiding?” he said.
There was no answer, of course, only the sound of Canteen Hughes walking blindly into a nearby post. Silverworth paid no attention. He was focused entirely on the task in front of him, and that meant Cuphead and Mugman were in a predicament.
“Don’t worry,” Cuphead said hopefully. “We’re not licked yet.”
RINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
Then again, he may have spoken too soon. Nothing says you’re licked more loudly than the merciless clang of the tardy bell. Cuphead stared up at the face on the big clock at the
front of the building and saw her smile. It was as if she had been deliberately waiting for them to get this close, so their defeat would be that much more painful.
Now they were trapped outside—just them and Silverworth.
The principal raised a finger.
“Lateness is an impediment to greatness,” he called out. “This is valuable learning time you should be spending in the classroom, and you’ve already wasted—”
He turned to look at the clock behind him. When he did, Cuphead and Mugman picked up the bush and, like some kind of giant, leafy caterpillar, tiptoed closer to the front of the building. They set the shrubbery down again just as Silverworth turned back around.
“One minute,” he announced.
Mugman and Cuphead stared at each other. A full minute—gone. Class would be starting, and they were sure to be missed. They needed a plan, and they needed it fast. So Mugman pulled out his thinking cap (which looked like a brain but with lightning bolts on the side and a propeller on top) and put it on. But before he had time to do even the slightest bit of thinking, he heard a strange noise like steam escaping from a radiator.
“Psssssssssssssst.”
“Did you say something?” he whispered.
“No, I thought you said something,” said Cuphead. “I was hoping you had an idea.”
“Not a one,” Mugman told him.
He went back to his thinking.
“Psssssssssssssst.”
There was that sound again. Cuphead looked around.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know,” said Mugman, checking his cap. “Maybe my brain is leaking?”
But the noise was not coming from either of Mugman’s brains. It was, in fact, coming from a second-story window on the side of the school building. If the boys had only looked up, they would have seen a bright-eyed classmate waving her arms in a desperate attempt to get their attention. Her name was Ms. Chalice and she was a clever and fun-loving girl with a mischievous streak that frequently got them into trouble. She was also the best friend they’d ever had.
From the window, she’d been watching her pals’ clumsy attempt to make it into the school. It was sad, really. They needed her help. Ms. Chalice liked helping the boys—what she did not like was being ignored. So she reached out, grabbed the drainpipe that ran down the side of the building, and tilted it until it hovered just above their shrubby hiding place. Then she held it up to her mouth and very discreetly—or as discreetly as can be expected when you’re using an enormous metal megaphone—she said:
