by Linda Bailey
“Sure. Tonight. I promise.”
It was only when she was walking away that he began to think it through. Was he crazy? The pirates could whip out their swords, they could flash their knives, they could …
He took a slow, deep breath. It will be okay, he told himself. He could do this. So could Abbie. So could the pirates. He stared up at the tower and took another breath. It would be okay.
“You invited the girrrrl?” shouted Crawley, his face mottled with anger. “Does you think we’re a show, lad? Does you think we’re a play for your friends to come see?”
“No,” said Lewis. “I just—”
“Keep the girl away!” snarled Jack the Rat. “We doesn’t trusssst her.”
“Aye!” hollered Bellows, waving an enormous finger under Lewis’s nose. “We wants no girrrrrls in Libertalia.”
“No strangers, neither,” added Moyle.
Lewis threw up his hands. “What are you talking about? I just brought a whole class full of strangers into the tower. Girls, too! You were here when they came. Don’t tell me you weren’t!”
“That were different,” said Crawley with a sniff. “We was invisible. We was practicing!”
Lewis let out a sigh.
“Look,” he said, “Abbie isn’t a stranger. She’s my friend. She’s already reading Treasure Island and—”
“No, by thunder!” roared Crawley. “We don’t allow no girls aboard ship, and we won’t allow one in Libertalia now!”
“No!” echoed the others. “No!”
Lewis had to shout to be heard. “Excuse me! EXCUSE ME!”
They stopped.
“I think you’re forgetting something,” said Lewis. “I’ll be doing you a big favor on Halloween, right?”
The pirates blinked.
“I did you another favor when I bought you those clothes.”
Silence. Skittles nodded.
“In fact, I do you a favor every night, don’t I? When I read?”
Most of them were staring at the floor now. Even Crawley looked abashed.
“So I think,” concluded Lewis, “that it’s only fair for you to do me a little favor.”
“Fair,” grumbled Jack. “I hates fair.”
There was a mumble of agreement, but it petered out.
Crawley scratched the stubble on his pockmarked chin. “One time!” he said finally. “She can come here one time only. And she takes us as we are, mind. Rough as old rope. You tell her that!”
“I will,” said Lewis. “I promise.”
The bell rang for dinner. As he walked to the door, he heard a final mutter from Jack. “We’ll feed her to the sssharks.”
“You will not!” said Lewis over his shoulder.
Jack mumbled something else, too low for Lewis to hear.
There weren’t any sharks anyway, thought Lewis.
Were there?
He shook his head. The pirates really were making him crazy.
The part of Treasure Island that Abbie wanted to read with the pirates was the end.
“It’s hard to wait,” she said as she and Lewis left school the next day. It was becoming a habit, this walking partway home together. “But there’s something special about finding out how a story ends. Unless … do you think I could visit more than once?”
“No,” said Lewis quickly. “Sorry.” He didn’t say how hard it had been to arrange even once.
“Is there anything I should … you know, do? Say? When I meet them?”
Lewis heard the tremor in her voice.
“Not really. I’m sure they’ll like you.” He wasn’t sure at all. “Just watch out for Jack the Rat. Try not to get too close.”
“Why not?”
He wants to feed you to the sharks, thought Lewis.
“Jack’s … different.”
“Oh,” said Abbie. “Okay.”
“And you have to take them as they are,” he added.
“What does that mean?”
“They’re not very … polite.”
“Oh. Well, what does that mean?”
He shook his head. “You’ll see for yourself.”
In the days that followed, Lewis read steadily with the pirates, while Abbie read the same chapters alone. Seeing that the final two chapters of Treasure Island were short, they decided to leave both for her visit.
Lewis, meanwhile, wondered how to explain Abbie’s visit to his parents. She solved that problem in a second.
“Just tell them we’re working on a project together. We are, aren’t we?”
When Lewis told his father and Mrs. Binchy about the project, they sounded pleased.
“Invite her for dinner, why don’t you?” said Mrs. Binchy. “You’ll think better with a good meal in you.”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Dearborn. “We’ll plan something delicious.”
On the day of Abbie’s visit, she walked to Shornoway with Lewis after school. He had decided to leave the tower for after dinner, but he wasn’t sure what to do till then. Abbie made that choice herself by lingering in the kitchen, where Mr. Dearborn and Mrs. Binchy were cooking Spanish paella. Lewis had eaten this before—a pan of yellow rice, dotted with chicken, sausage and clams. He watched Abbie, wondering if she’d find it weird.
“Can I help?” she asked.
“Of course you can, lovey,” said Mrs. Binchy. “Here! Top these beans.”
Lewis, feeling useless, found himself volunteering as well. When Mrs. Dearborn poked her head in fifteen minutes later, there were four people chopping and frying.
“What’s all this?” she asked. “Looks like the kitchen at the Ritz.”
Mrs. Binchy sniffed. “As if there’s anything at the Ritz to match my paella.”
To Lewis’s surprise, his mother sat down and accepted a glass of wine. She didn’t join the cooking party, but she did listen—even smiling now and then—to the conversation, most of which came from Mrs. Binchy. Lewis noticed that, while Mrs. Binchy did most of the talking, it was his father who did the work.
Dinner was perfect. Abbie said it twice. Mr. Dearborn said Abbie was the perfect guest. Lewis was glad to hear the food was good because he was so nervous, he could barely taste it. All he could think about was the pirates, upstairs waiting for “the girrrrl.”
“Run along now,” said Mrs. Binchy when Abbie offered to help clear up. “Homework’s more important.”
“What’s the project, Lewis?” asked Mrs. Dearborn.
Before Lewis could think, the word slipped out. “Pirates.”
Abbie’s eyes widened.
“Pirates?” Mr. Dearborn reached for the newspaper. “Is it a history project, then? About the pirates along this coast?”
Lewis paused, eyes locked with Abbie’s. “Uh-huh.”
“Great idea!” Mr. Dearborn snapped open the paper’s front section. “You should look at that book again—by that fellow, McAlistair.”
“Be sure to write a clear outline,” added Mrs. Dearborn. “It makes all the difference.”
Lewis and Abbie laughed all the way up the back stairs.
Then they stopped. Suddenly … there it was. Lewis reached out to touch the carved letters on the door. Libertalia.
“Ready?” he said.
“I think so.”
He knocked twice. Then he opened the door.
The pirates were lined up, waiting. They looked … different.
It was their hair! They’d slicked it down. The tangled thatches of the day before had been flattened into greasy-looking manes. Several pirates wore colorful bandanas, tied at the backs of their heads like caps.
And their feet! They were all wearing shoes. Lewis recognized the odd footwear as the contents of an old trunk down the hall. Some of it didn’t fit—slippers that barely covered Bellows’s toes, enormous rubber boots on Skittles’s small feet. But the pirates had all made an effort to cover their gnarled toes and ragged toenails.
They had taken care with their clothing, too. The effect was still ridic
ulous. But knowing them as he did, Lewis understood that they had put careful thought into those capri pants and satin vests and—in Jack’s case—plaid boxer shorts.
“Hi,” said Lewis awkwardly, as the silence grew. “This is … Abbie.”
Heads bobbed stiffly along the row. Captain Crawley, resplendent in a burgundy velvet jacket and green jogging pants, bowed deeply from the waist. “We be most honored, miss.”
If Abbie was shocked by the pirates, she didn’t show it. She responded with a deep, low curtsy as elegant as if she’d been curtsying all her life.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said.
No reply came, except anxious, aching glances. The pirates seemed hypnotized by Abbie. Lewis remembered that although they had seen girls over the years, including his mother, and more recently his classmates, they hadn’t actually talked to any for a very long time. Maybe since they’d died! Even Jack the Rat was wringing his hands with the strain.
What must it be like not to talk to a girl for two centuries? Watching the pirates, Lewis realized that he was looking at a shyness as deep as any he had ever felt. It made him want to help.
“Why don’t we sit down?” he said.
There was a flurry as the pirates all reacted at once, stumbling into one another and fighting for the same places on the floor. Captain Crawley smacked several of them aside in his haste to reach the wicker chair, which he dusted off and set in the middle of the rug.
“For you, miss,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Abbie, settling herself in the chair.
Lewis was astounded. There she sat, surrounded by dead pirates, her smile so comfortable it was as if they were all old friends.
“Well, Lewis?” she said. “Aren’t you going to read?”
Taking a seat on the brass bed, he began. He read haltingly at first, aware of Abbie listening, but gradually he relaxed. Soon he was doing the different voices and speaking softer or louder as the words demanded. In this chapter, the treasure was finally discovered, and even though many of the book-pirates perished searching for it, Lewis’s pirates were thrilled. They beat on the floor with their fists, hollering “Yo ho!” and before Lewis could stop them, they were punching each other, too. He had to shout for order. Remembering Abbie’s presence, the pirates quieted down.
He finished the second-last chapter to a dead hush. The audience waited expectantly.
Lewis offered the book to Abbie. “Would you like a turn?”
The pirates let out a collective gasp.
“Me?” said Abbie.
“Sure!” Lewis focused his gaze on the ghosts, daring them to interfere.
“Well,” she said nervously. “If nobody minds.”
She started softly. But soon, like Lewis, she was deep into the story, reading with eagerness and expression. When she got to the part where Long John Silver’s final fate was described—his mysterious disappearance to an unknown place—the pirates began chanting. “Sil-ver! Sil-ver! Sil-ver!”
Abbie waited, smiling, till they were done, then read the final paragraphs of Treasure Island. Slowly, carefully, deliberately, she closed the book.
“Ah, missy,” said Crawley after a pause, “the life of a pirate is a raw and perilous thing, and no mistake. The lubber what wrote that book, he knowed it like he was there.”
The reading had put the pirates in a pensive mood, but it didn’t last. Soon they were engaged in their usual activities—singing, dancing, gambling. Abbie watched, fascinated. She moved her chair over by the window, and the pirates kept their distance—all except Adam, who crept close and settled shyly at her feet. Seeing the eagerness on the cabin boy’s face and the quickness with which he began a conversation, Lewis hung back and played a game of cards with Jonas.
It was much too soon when Abbie asked, “What time is it, Lewis?”
The pirates weren’t used to saying good-bye any more than they were used to saying hello. As Abbie thanked them, they mumbled and stared at their feet. Lewis had the feeling that, dazzled as they’d been by her presence, they were also glad to see her leave.
“I’ll walk you partway,” he said when they got downstairs.
Streetlights glowed on the rain-slicked road.
“Thank you,” said Abbie. “I’ll never forget it. Or them.”
“I know. Sorry they were so shy. They’re not usually like that. But at least you got a chance to talk to Adam.”
“Uh-huh.” She turned to face him. “Lewis, if I tell you a secret, will you promise not to pass it on? To anyone? Especially not the pirates?”
He shrugged. “Okay. Yes, I promise.”
“Adam’s a girl.”
Lewis opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Finally, he managed to croak, “What?”
“It’s true,” said Abbie. “He told me. Well, she told me. She said she had a terrible, cruel father. Lewis, it’s an awful story. He beat her! She was desperate and ran away to sea. But the only way a girl could be hired on a ship in those days was to pretend to be a boy.”
“B-but that was ages ago,” spluttered Lewis. “All these years … why hasn’t she told them?”
Abbie shook her head. “Did you see the way they treated me? As if I were some kind of … statue or princess or something? They have funny ideas about girls, Lewis. They’re very old-fashioned.”
It was not the word Lewis would have chosen. But remembering their first reaction to “the girrrl,” he could see she was right.
“She was desperate for another girl to talk to. That’s why she told me.”
Lewis swallowed hard. “What’s his … her real name?”
“Mary. Mary Baker. She had nine brothers and sisters, can you believe it?”
“I’m still trying to believe she’s a girl,” said Lewis.
He shook his head. Here was another enormous idea to wrestle into his brain. He’d been doing so much of that lately. Nothing was what it seemed. Nothing stayed the same.
Then he remembered how he and Abbie had laughed earlier. That was another change—the laughing.
He liked that part. The laughing part was good.
The week before Halloween was calm. Maybe too calm. Maybe “calm” was the problem.
At school, Abbie talked to Lewis regularly now, as if it were normal. She looked for him in the schoolyard and wandered over, bringing her friends along. She invited him to play kickball three days in a row. On the third day, he said yes. He didn’t play well. But he wasn’t embarrassingly awful, either.
Seth kept his distance. He continued to scowl and mutter insults. But Lewis, who had received much worse from Jack, was almost able to ignore Seth.
Up in the tower, the pirates were bickering. They fought about their costumes till some of the garments got ripped apart, leading to a confiscation of all thrift store clothing by Crawley. Lewis could see that the end of Treasure Island had left them restless. He found a new book of pirate stories in the library, but it wasn’t the same. The loss of Long John Silver was felt powerfully. The crew talked about him as if he were a real person.
“Where does you think Long John is now?” asked Jonas one evening. “Where does you suppose that mysterious place is, where he went at the end of the book?”
“China Seas,” said Moyle.
“Spanish Main,” said Skittles.
“No,” said Adam in a strong, certain voice. “He’s headed Madagascar way. Long John’s in Libertalia.”
“Libertalia!” agreed the others. It built into a shout. “LIBERTALIA! LIBERTALIA!”
“Aye,” said Crawley, patting Adam’s shoulder. “That’s where he’ll be. Libertalia. And Hook’ll be there, too.”
“They’ll set anchor in the same port,” said Bellows.
“Aye!” cried the others.
Lewis stared. They really believed it.
Crawley, unfortunately, was doing very little to soothe his crew’s nerves. Every day, he got more excited about seeing his ship again.
“Going home, mateys!” he shouted
, rubbing his palms together. “We’s been landlubbers long enough. Going home!”
As for Lewis, the closer he got to Halloween, the more he began to focus. Seven dead pirates and one jittery boy trying to cross Tandy Bay … how many things could go wrong? For the first time, he began to understand Crawley’s need for “a plan.” For the first time, he began to actually think things through.
It was already settled, of course, that the pirates would be visible. There was no guarantee they could stay invisible even if they tried, so Lewis had to count on Halloween. If there was any day in the year when they could walk around looking like themselves, it was October 31.
The question was—what time of day? He had always thought nighttime would be best. But he had discovered, in recent days, that the pirates’ biggest fear was car headlights at night.
“Owl’s eyes!” said Skittles in a wobbly voice. “Like the owl of hell, flying right at yer. It ain’t natural.”
We’ll go in daylight, decided Lewis. Again, he’d have to count on Halloween. People enjoyed dressing up in Tandy Bay. There should be plenty of odd-looking people roaming around during the day.
The other problem was the size of the group. It would be impossible to travel in a clump-of-eight along the narrow edge of Muckanutt Road. The pirates would have to walk single file.
Did they know how to walk single file?
He organized a practice. Back and forth along the upstairs hallway he walked, with Crawley’s crew following in a sloppy, trailing line. They seemed to get the idea. Some even got into the spirit of it, marching like soldiers. But that didn’t mean they’d get it right on the road.
The plan was full of risk. Lewis knew that. But at least it was a plan.
He spelled out the details to Crawley: visible, daytime, thrift store clothing, single file.
“Awwr, now,” cried Crawley, “that’s a grand plan, laddie! And a bold ’un, too. I always knew you had it in you. Didn’t I say so, Bellows?”
After that, they waited. October crept to its end.
On October 30th, with one day left till the journey, Lewis took a detour to the drugstore on his way home from school. Searching the Halloween section, he chose a ready-made costume for himself—Frankenstein. There would be dozens of Frankensteins on the streets. But more than that, he hoped the tattered clothing, along with the ghoulish makeup and neck bolts ($3 extra), would help him blend in with his companions.
