The Sea Pony

by Ellen Potter

  I took the piece of bubble gum out of my pocket and put it in the fairy hole too.

  “That’s just a little extra bonus for you guys,” I said. “Now I’m going in the house to make some cinnamon snakes for Erik. I’ll be back out here soon, so you should probably get busy.”

  I ran to the house to make Erik’s cinnamon snakes. I took out a slice of bread and a stick of butter from the fridge. With a butter knife, I cut off a hunk of butter and started to spread it on the bread. But that butter was very frustrating. It just wouldn’t smooth down on the bread. I punched it a couple of times, which helped a little. Then I dunked a spoon in the sugar bowl and poured sugar all over the bread. After that, I sprinkled on the cinnamon. I punched it all down some more. Now it was time to cut it into squiggly snakes. I was pretty excited about this part. Except all that punching had made holes in the bread, so the snakes came out too short. They looked more like cinnamon worms. Plus, they were flattish, which made them look like worms that someone had stepped on.

  I put them on a plate. I tried to arrange them in a nice way so that they didn’t look as disgusting. Then I carried the plate to Erik’s room. But guess what? That kid was still snoozing! The side of his face was mashed against the pillow, and his mouth was wide open.

  How was he going to get better by tomorrow if he didn’t eat the cinnamon worms?

  I cleared my throat a few times. Then I made some monster noises. But he just kept on snoozing.

  I knelt down next to his bed, and I carefully put one of the cinnamon worms in his open mouth.

  “Chomp, chomp,” I whispered in an encouraging voice. But Erik’s tongue pushed that cinnamon worm right out of his mouth and onto the pillow.

  I put the cinnamon worm back in his mouth. His tongue pushed it out onto his pillow again, but this time he rolled over on it. I could see a smoosh of butter and cinnamon in his hair.

  “Hmm,” I said, looking at the mess in his hair. “I guess I’d better just let you get some sleep.”

  Then I tiptoed out of there.

  After that, I went outside to check on my horse situation. I walked all around the Fairy Tree. I peeked behind our dogwood bushes. I looked in the shed.

  But darn it, because I didn’t see a horse anywhere.

  Maybe the fairies left him somewhere else, I thought. And maybe there’s a note in the tree to tell me where he is.

  I ran back to the Fairy Tree and climbed up to check inside the hole. I patted all around in there. No note. But the fairies took the bubble gum, because that was gone. The only thing in the fairy hole was that dumb whistle. I put it around my neck again, because it was better than nothing.

  “Hi, Piper.”

  I looked down, and there was Dad, dressed in his shiny orange oilskin pants and big black rubber boots. “Is your brother up yet? Uncle Mack wasn’t feeling well this morning, and I could use Erik’s help on the boat.”

  “Erik’s not feeling well either,” I told him.

  “Hmm.” Dad put his hands on his hips and squinted up at me. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. Except for not getting a horse,” I said.

  He looked at me funny for a second. Then he just ignored what I said about the horse and asked, “How’d you like to be my sternman today?”

  The sternman is the guy who stuffs dead fish into little net bags to use for lobster bait.

  I LOVE being sternman!

  Except for the dead-fish part.

  Suddenly I had a new idea about how I could get my horse.

  “I bet I can stuff the bait bags faster, now that I’m seven,” I said to Dad. “So maybe you can pay me to be sternman.”

  Dad thought about that for a second. “Fair enough,” he said. “How about ten cents a bag?”

  I thought about that. If I stuffed the bags extra fast, faster than I ever had in my entire life, I might be able to make enough money to buy a horse. It would have to be a little horse, though, because a big horse would cost more.

  “Deal!” I told him.

  We walked down to the wharf, and Dad helped me into the skiff, which is a little boat that you take to get to your lobster boat. Except something strange was going on.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” I said. “This isn’t our skiff.”

  This skiff was a plain aluminum rowboat. Our skiff is bright blue and it’s shaped like a banana. We’ve had it for as long as I can remember. It’s practically a member of our own family.

  “Remember that storm we had last night?” Dad asked.

  I nodded. “It was a wicked bad gullywhumper.”

  That’s what my mom calls a big storm.

  “It was,” Dad agreed. “In fact, it was such a gullywhumper that our skiff broke free of its moorings and was swept away. I’m borrowing this one until I buy a new one.”

  Oh no! Poor old blue skiff! I thought about it getting tossed around in the storm in the middle of the night. Now it was all alone, lost in the big wide ocean. My heart felt achy.

  “We have to look for it, Dad,” I said.

  “I looked for it all morning,” he replied.

  “But did you look everywhere?”

  “Everywhere I could think of. I’m afraid it’s a goner.”

  You know what I really can’t stand?

  I really can’t stand gullywhumpers.

  Dad rowed us out to our red-and-white lobster boat, the Tiger Shark, which was moored in the harbor. He tied up the rowboat to the mooring, and then he lifted me inside the Tiger Shark. Our lobster boat is not very big, and she’s not fancy, like the lobster boat Allie O’Malley’s dad owns. But Dad says the Tiger Shark reminds him of me…very loud and fast as a rocket.

  Sometimes the ocean is full of bumpy waves. Today, though, it was flat as a plate as Dad steered the Tiger Shark out of the harbor. I took a big gulp of air. It tasted like salty pennies.

  “Ready to get to work, Piper?” Dad called back to me.

  “I was born ready, boss!” I said in a deep voice.

  That’s the way I talk when I’m sternman.

  I picked up a little red net bag out of a barrel. Then I reached into another barrel and pulled out a dead fish. Quick as anything, I put that slimy fellow into the bag. Then I picked up another dead fish and stuffed it in the bag too. I kept on stuffing at lightning speed till the bag was full. I yanked down the plastic ring that closed up the bag and dropped it in another barrel. Then I started stuffing a new bait bag.

  My poor finger snails were probably passing out from the stink.

  “Hey, Dad?” I called, over the roar of the boat’s motor.

  “Yup?”

  “Someone on Peek-a-Boo just got a horse,” I told him.

  “No kidding?” he said.

  “I’m not kidding. And so guess what I decided to save up my money for?” I said.

  “A gerbil?”

  “No. A horse. I already have ten dollars in my piggy bank. And I just made ten cents more.”

  “I hate to break it to you, pal, but horses cost at least a thousand bucks.”

  “A thousand bucks!”

  “Often more than that,” he called back.

  “Hmmph,” I said grumpily.

  Because a thousand bucks is a lot of ka-ching. By the time I stuffed enough bags to make that much money, I’d probably be an old lady with clip-on teeth, like Grandma Green.

  Floating on the water all around us were lots of colorful lobster buoys. The lobster traps sit on the bottom of the ocean and are attached to the buoys by long ropes. Some buoys are red and green, some are blue and white, some are pink and yellow…every color combination you could imagine. Lobstermen paint their buoys their own special colors so they can find them on the water.

  Our buoys are painted yellow and black. They look like giant bumblebees.

  Dad stopped the boat. He picked up a long pole with a hook on the end and grabbed the rope attached to one of our bumblebee buoys. Then he put the rope on a machine called a pot hauler, and the pot hauler pulled our lob
ster traps right out of the ocean.

  I almost cheered up about the horse situation, because looking in the lobster traps is my favorite part of being sternman. You never know what’s going to be in the traps. There might be lobsters. But there also might be pinchy crabs or starfish or prickly sea urchins or funny-looking sea cucumbers. It’s like a mystery treasure chest from the bottom of the ocean.

  Dad pulled up two traps. There was one greenish brown lobster in the first trap. A lot of people think that lobsters are red, but they’re not. They only turn red when you cook them.

  Dad measured the lobster to make sure it wasn’t too big or too small. Then he turned the lobster over to check if there were any eggs on its belly. Nope. He also checked to see if its tail had a little notch in it. The notch means it’s a lady lobster, who can have babies. If the lobsters are too big or too small, or if they have eggs or a notch, you have to throw them back in the ocean.

  “This one’s a keeper,” Dad announced. With special pliers, he put thick rubber bands around the lobster’s claws and then placed it in a barrel of water.

  We looked at the second trap. Jackpot! There were five lobsters. There was also a purple starfish, an eel, and a gigantic rock crab. Dad picked up the crab and quickly tossed it in the water before it could pinch his fingers. I picked up the eel. I wanted to get a better look at it, but it was so slithery that it slipped right out of my hands and back into the ocean. Then I picked up the purple starfish. Its little legs curled around my hand as if it was hugging me. I love the soft, nubbly feeling of starfish. I petted it carefully with one finger. Then I leaned over the rail to put it back in the water very gently.

  That’s when I noticed two big brown eyes looking up at me.

  I gasped inside my head. My mouth stayed very quiet, though.

  Because those big eyes belonged to a seal’s face! The seal was gray with lots of spots all over and long whiskers.

  “Well, hello there! Are you looking at my finger snails?” I wiggled them for him. “They’re not real snails, see, so don’t even think about taking a bite out of them.” The seal’s nose twitched. “Oh! I think I know what you want. Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right back.”

  While Dad was busy putting bands on the lobsters, I went to the bait barrel. I pulled out the fattest fish I could find. I did it sneaky-style, though, because I didn’t think Dad would want me to waste any bait. I tossed it to the seal. He caught it right in his mouth and chomped it up.

  “Did you like that, cutie pie? Was that yummers?” I said in baby talk.

  Then I remembered I was a sternman, so I cut that out.

  Dad started up the motor again, and the Tiger Shark hurried off to the next traps. The seal bobbed in the water, watching us leave. He looked as if he was sorry to see me go.

  “So long!” I called out to him.

  But the motor was roaring, and the bubbly wake was shooshing behind us loudly. I didn’t think he could hear me. Then I remembered Mrs. Spratt saying that a bosun’s whistle is so loud it can even be heard in bad weather. I reached into my shirt and pulled out my whistle.

  “So long!” I whistled to him.

  PHWEE-PHWEEE!

  You’ll never guess what happened. Right after I blew the whistle, the seal dove underwater. A few seconds later, his head popped up by the boat, and he swam right alongside, staring up at me.

  I quick snuck a couple of fish out of the bait barrel and tossed them to him. He gobbled them up and then swam away.

  I whistled again.

  PHWEEEEE­EEEEE­EEEE!

  Splish! Up came his head right by our boat.

  “You’re a smart cookie,” I told him.

  I fed him a few more fish.

  “Hey, I have a great idea!” I said. “You could be my pet seal! And I’ll call you…hmm…how about Scoot? Do you like that name? Scoot? And whenever I blow my whistle, you can come see me, okay?”

  I ran to the bait barrel and grabbed up a bunch more fish for him.

  Just then, Dad cut the motor, and we stopped next to some of our bumblebee-colored buoys.

  “I just thought of something else,” I told Scoot. “I could ride on your back! It would be just like having my own pony, and you don’t even cost a lot of ka-ching.”

  I imagined riding on Scoot’s back while he swam around the harbor. I’d hug him tight around his neck, and we’d swoop up and down on the waves. Maybe I could even ride him to school. I pictured Allie O’Malley’s surprised face when she saw me on Scoot’s back, riding alongside the school boat, waving to her. That made me smile.

  “I guess those fairies knew what they were doing after all,” I said to Scoot. “They didn’t leave a pony, but they gave me a special whistle that brought a pony to me!”

  “Who are you talking to?” Dad asked.

  “Scoot,” I said, and pointed at Scoot. He had swum away from the boat and was bobbing in the water, watching us from a distance.

  Dad looked at Scoot. He made his eyes narrow and suspicious. Then he went to look in the bait barrel.

  Uh-oh.

  “Piper,” Dad said to me in his angry voice, “have you been feeding our bait to that seal?”

  “He’s a sea pony,” I muttered.

  “You are seven years old, Piper,” Dad said. “Seven’s not a baby anymore. Think! What would happen if I fed my bait to all the seals? Hmm?”

  “You wouldn’t catch any lobsters,” I mumbled.

  “That’s right. And no lobsters means no money. You’ve wasted half my bait today, Piper, and we can’t afford to do that, especially now that I have to buy a new skiff.”

  “But I wasn’t feeding all the seals, Dad,” I said. My eyes were getting teary and my mouth felt wobbly. “I was just feeding one special seal.”

  Dad looked at me and sighed. I think some of his mad left his body with the sigh.

  “All right, Blue Eyes,” he said to me. “Let’s hear it. What’s so special about this seal?”

  “For one thing, I love him. And also, when I blow on my whistle, he comes.” I picked up my whistle and gave it a good PHWEEEEEEP!

  Scoot dove under the water, and the next minute he was right by the boat.

  Even Dad looked surprised.

  “See?” I said. “Isn’t he a smart cookie?”

  I leaned way down, over the rail, to pet his slickery head.

  And that’s when the terrible thing happened.

  The chain on my whistle slipped right off my neck and into the water.

  “Oh! OH NO!” I cried.

  But before I could grab it back, Scoot poked his nose through the chain. The next thing I knew, that sea pony was wearing my whistle around his neck.

  I leaned farther over the rail and stretched out my hand, but I couldn’t reach him.

  “Scoot! Come here, boy!” I said in an encouraging voice.

  Scoot stayed right where he was, staring at me with his big round eyes.

  “Scoot, you bring me my whistle!” I ordered.

  But I guess Scoot wasn’t great at following orders, because that’s when he decided it would be fun to swim in the other direction.

  “Follow him, boss!” I shrieked at Dad.

  “Piper, it’s just a whistle—”

  “It’s a special whistle! It’s a…a…a sea pony whistle! If I lose it, Scoot will never come to me again!”

  Dad looked at me as if I had lost my marbles, but I made such a fuss that finally he said, “All right, all right, keep your hair on.”

  He went to the wheelhouse and put the boat in gear, and we started moving again. But we weren’t going fast enough.

  “Is that all you got? Step on it, boss!” I yelled.

  Dad looked back at me with a cranky face.

  I tried to keep my hair on after that.

  The Tiger Shark began picking up speed. Scoot swam and swam while we raced after him. We chased him all around Tom Thumb Island, then past Blueberry Cove. The boat’s engine was roaring, and the wind was whooshing in my ears.
I was glad that the Tiger Shark was small and speedy!

  Every so often, Scoot would dive under the water and disappear. But right when it seemed as if we had lost him, his shiny dark head would pop up again.

  In front of us, I could see Little Gull Island, where we once went with Grandma and Aunt Terry for a picnic. Suddenly Scoot stopped swimming. His head disappeared under the water, and when he came up again, my whistle was not around his neck anymore.

  “Oh no!! It’s gone! My whistle drowned!” I wailed.

  “No it didn’t!” Dad yelled over the sound of the motor. “It’s right over there!” He pointed, and I saw it, floating on top of the water.

  “Oh yes, I see it!” I shouted back.

  Dad slowed the Tiger Shark down. When we were close to the whistle, Dad stopped the boat. Then he went to the stern and, leaning over the rail, scooped up my whistle and handed it to me.

  “Thank you, Daddy! Thank you, thank you!”

  I tried to toot an extra-loud “thank you,” but the whistle sounded as if it needed to clear its throat. I held it over the rail and gave it a good shake to get the water out.

  That was when I spotted something. It was stuck on a sandbar near Little Gull Island. It was bright blue and shaped like a banana.

  “Dad!” I shouted, and pointed. “There it is!” I was so excited I could hardly get the words out of my mouth. “It’s our skiff!”

  Dad looked. Then he put the edge of his hand above his eyes, as if he thought the sunlight was playing tricks on him.

  “Well, how about that!” he said, smiling. “I would never have thought to search for it here. And the skiff doesn’t even look worse for wear. We can tow it back right now.” Dad nodded at me. “Nice work, Sternman.”

  “If it wasn’t for Scoot, we wouldn’t have found it,” I reminded Dad.

  “I guess that’s true,” Dad said. He went to the bait barrel, took out three fish, and then tossed them to Scoot. “You earned this fair and square, buddy!”