“Making it the size of Christopher Columbus’s smaller ships,” added Storm.
“Exactly!” said Uncle Richie. “You see, Señor Juan de Iturbe was on a pearl-harvesting expedition up the Gulf of California.”
“That’s between the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico,” said Storm. (She and Uncle Richie made quite a team.)
“Precisely!” said Uncle Richie. “A king tide—which, of course, is very high—coupled with a storm surge carried his ship across a strait and propelled that vessel more than one hundred miles northward, far up into what is now California, near present-day San Diego. The pearl-hunting ship was soon deposited in a distant saltwater basin—a lake in the process of drying up. Eventually, that dead lake would create part of what we now know as the Salton Sea basin at the northern edge of the Sonora Desert.”
Tommy nodded. “That’ll happen in the desert. Lakes will dry up on you.”
“After exploring the lake for several days,” Uncle Richie continued, “Señor de Iturbe came to the unfortunate but undeniable conclusion that he would not be able to sail out again. His ship’s keel was stuck in a sandbar. So, with no good options, he abandoned his craft. Standing upright, it looked as if it were still sailing across the windswept ocean of sand. He and his entire crew hiked back across the desert to the nearest Spanish settlement, leaving behind a fortune in precious black pearls!”
“And nobody’s ever discovered the ship?” I asked.
“Nobody,” said Uncle Richie.
“So, you want to go to the desert to find Señor de Iturbe’s ship?”
“Indeed, Bick, I do. For, I suspect its hull will be heavy with treasure chests, all of them laden with priceless black pearls!”
“But,” said Beck, “all you have to work with is a legend!”
“True. However, sometimes, a legend is all we need!”
CHAPTER 15
Uncle Richie suggested we stroll over to Dupont Circle to catch a cab back to our apartment.
“I’d like to stop by Second Story Books,” he said. “It’s only a two-minute walk from here. They have a marvelous collection of rare and out-of-print books. I might be able to locate a gently used copy of Joaquin Miller’s epic poem. Research for the expedition, eh?”
So, once again, we tried to keep up with Uncle Richie, who was unusually athletic and spry for a guy in his seventies. Second Story Books had a series of rolling bookcases set up on the sidewalk in front of their shop. Browsers were searching the shelves—readers lost in their own treasure hunts.
“I’ll only be a moment,” said Uncle Richie.
“Can I search with you?” asked Storm.
“Why, I’d be delighted for the company!”
They headed into the bookshop.
“I want to see if they have any rare sailing books,” said Tommy.
He went in to browse, too.
Leaving Beck and me on the sidewalk with the bargain hunters pawing through the books lined up on the rolling carts.
I recognized one of the shoppers because the sun was reflecting off his bald dome. Yep. It was that Professor Hingleburt, the stuffy guy who gave Mom and Dad grief when we were running around like wild things on our quest to find the Hope Diamond.
“Did you hear?” Dr. Hingleburt said to the man and woman browsing with him. “The Kidds are in town.”
“Who are the Kidds?” asked the man.
“You know. Drs. Thomas and Susan Kidd. The treasure hunters who gallivant about the globe with their children, looking for long-lost treasures while simultaneously fighting to protect the environment.”
“Oh, yes,” said the lady, looking down her nose. “I’ve heard about them. Aren’t they doing something at the Smithsonian?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Hingleburt. “An exhibit about their discoveries in Peru. The Lost City of Paititi.”
“That’s a hoax,” said the lady.
“They claim they found it,” said Dr. Hingleburt, with a dismissive shrug. “I suppose the Smithsonian will let anybody say whatever they want—as long as it sells tickets.”
I looked at Beck. She looked at me. Both of us were clenching our fists and grinding our teeth. It’s another twin thing. Somebody talks trash about our family, we get mad.
“Of course, you know whom Mrs. Kidd is related to,” sniffed Hingleburt.
“Whom?” said the lady.
“The infamous Richie ‘Poppie’ Luccio! He’s her uncle.”
“That old fool?” said the lady.
“The same.”
“Remember, a dozen years ago, when that museum in Sydney gave him back all the treasure he originally claimed came from a 1622 shipwreck off the coast of Australia?” said the man. “Richie Luccio recanted the entire tale! Admitted it was totally made up.”
“How could I forget?” said Dr. Hingleburt, chortling merrily.
Beck and I were about to march over there and give these snooty Washingtonians a piece of our mind.
But that’s when Tommy, Storm, and Uncle Richie came out of the bookstore with their purchases.
“Well, speak of the devil!” said Professor Hingleburt, who’d just seen and recognized Uncle Richie. “Off on another grand treasure hunt, Poppie?”
“Perhaps, Henry,” said Uncle Richie. “Perhaps.”
“Will you give it all back again?” asked the lady. Then she and her pals started tittering and giggling.
“Come on, Uncle Richie,” I said, running over and grabbing his hand while Beck grabbed the other one. “Let’s go home and eat some of that ice cream you bought.”
“Yeah,” said Beck.
We pulled him away from the snickering snobs as quickly as we could.
But I glanced up and caught a glimpse of his face. That was the first time I’d seen Uncle Richie look sad.
I also hoped it would be the last.
CHAPTER 16
Mom and Dad were home when we returned to the apartment.
“We’re going to eat ice cream!” I announced. “Chunky Monkey! Rocky Road!” I said the flavors as boisterously as Uncle Richie had announced them when he first walked through our door.
But he still wasn’t smiling.
“Ah, Thomas. Susan. Good to see you.” Uncle Richie sounded like the weary old man he could’ve been. “Your children are a joy and a delight. It was grand spending time with them.”
“Thank you so much, Uncle Richie,” said Mom.
“Are you free tomorrow?” asked Dad.
“Unfortunately, no. You see, Thomas, I am setting off on a new expedition.” He thumped the hard cover of the antique book he’d just bought. “I’ll be searching for the Lost Ship of the Desert! I have a few promising leads. Very promising, indeed.”
“They’re solid?” asked Dad, sounding impressed.
“As solid as any I’ve ever followed.”
Mom nodded politely when he said that. “Good, Uncle Richie. Good.”
“Flying off to California tomorrow. I’ll be touching down at a secluded airstrip I know of near the Salton Sea, not far from San Diego, as the crow flies. I’ve made preliminary arrangements with a local excavating company to borrow a backhoe and bulldozer. Might need to dig my way through several hundred years of sand.”
“Do you have the money to finance your expedition?” asked Dad.
“I am in the process of securing funding,” said Uncle Richie.
That sounded like he was off to another card game.
“Can we go find the buried treasure with you?” asked Tommy. “I mean, Mom and Dad are going to be busy. We’re going to be bored.”
“It would be an honor to excavate sand alongside you, sir,” said Storm. “I mean, Uncle Richie.”
“Love to have you along, Thomas. You, too, Storm.”
“I want to go, too,” I said.
“Bully for you, Bick. Bully.”
“We could finance the trip,” said Mom.
“We’d be happy to do it,” added Dad. “I’ve been curious about the legendary Los
t Ship of the Desert for quite some time.”
Beck was the only one in the room not saying anything.
“Well,” said Uncle Richie, who had to notice Beck’s silence (it was hard not to). “Talk it over amongst yourselves. I’d love to have you children along for the ride. It would prove to be a marvelous expedition, I’m sure. I hope to be wheels-up at nine hundred hours. Please let me know ASAP if you will be joining me on this quest. Life is a grand adventure, children. Accept it in such a spirit, and it doesn’t matter what the naysayers buying bargain books along the boulevard might blather about you!”
Uncle Richie had bucked himself back up. He tipped his hat and strode triumphantly out the door.
The instant he was gone, I turned to Beck.
“Can we have the room?” I said to everybody else.
“Of course,” said Mom. She, Dad, Storm, and Tommy went off to the kitchen to start scooping ice cream. They knew what was brewing.
“Do you have a problem, Rebecca?” I shouted.
“Of course, I do. You’re my brother.”
“I meant about Uncle Richie!”
“He’s full of hot air!”
“So are balloons, and they can take you places you’ve never been before.”
“They can also burst in midair and leave you stranded in the desert!”
“Oh, so you’re afraid?” I said.
“You heard Professor Hingleburt! He said Uncle Richie is a phony and a fraud.”
“Ha!” I scoffed. “Talk about hot air. Hingleburt has so much, he scorched off his own hair. That’s why he’s bald.”
“I know,” said Beck. “How dare he talk about our family like that! We’re the Kidds. So is Uncle Richie.”
“Actually, he’s a Luccio, like Mom used to be. But he’s still family!”
“Right. Good catch, Bick.”
“Thanks, Beck. All for one and one for all!”
“You’re right. So, what are we doing yelling at each other?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Especially since we need to start packing!”
Beck nodded. “Nine hundred hours is early.”
“I know! It’s like nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Because it is nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Good point.”
“Thank you.”
I turned to the kitchen.
“You guys?” I hollered. “We need to load up our gear. Hurry up and finish your dessert. We’re going to the desert with Uncle Richie!”
CHAPTER 17
The next morning, we were airborne at promptly 9 a.m.
“Punctuality is the politeness of kings,” said Uncle Richie over the roar of the engines after we lifted off from the private aviation center at DC’s Dulles airport.
“King Louis the eighteenth of France said that,” said Storm.
“Indeed, he did. Bully for you, Storm. Bully!”
“Whoa, there were, like, seventeen Louies before him?” said Tommy. “What’s wrong with France? Don’t they have any other good first names for kings?”
Once again, we ignored him.
Maybe because Storm, Beck, and I were scared. The twin-propeller plane was lurching forward, with one wing and then the other taking the lead.
“Uncle Richie?” I said over the rattle and hum of the groaning engines. “How old is this aircraft?”
“It’s not old, Bick. It’s gently used. Ladies and gentlemen, you are now flying in a 1971 Piper Aztec. It’s the very same twin-engine plane that the record-shattering British aviatrix Sheila Scott once flew around the world the longitudinal way—by flying over both poles!”
“Wow!” said Tommy, who’d been studying for his pilot license. “This used to be her plane?” He did have another reason for that nickname of his.
“Perhaps,” said Uncle Richie. “I did find an interesting pair of ladies’ boots in the cargo bay when I took possession of it in New Jersey several months ago.”
“Did you win it in a card game?” asked Storm, bracing her hands on the back of Tommy’s copilot seat as we bumped along.
“Indeed. That’s why I call her The Royal Flush!”
“But will it make it all the way to California?” asked Beck.
“I certainly hope so,” said Uncle Richie as the left engine shook and banged like it wanted to spit out its rivets. “But the suspense of not knowing makes the ride much more interesting, eh?”
Not really, I wanted to say. Instead, I just closed my eyes.
We chugged along without incident for two hours.
“Anyone care for a loop-de-loop?” asked Uncle Richie when we were somewhere over Tennessee. I think he was bored.
“Go for it!” shouted Tommy before the rest of us could scream, “No!”
“Cheerio!” cried Uncle Richie. “Hang on to your hats, your backpacks, and your breakfasts!”
When we finally pulled out of the loop, Beck and I turned to Storm.
“Are we there yet?” we gasped.
Storm shook her head. “One thousand nine hundred and nine more miles to go.”
“How about a barrel roll, boys and girls?” asked Uncle Richie.
“No!” the three of us shouted before Tommy could shout, “Yes!”
“Very well,” said Uncle Richie, “we’ll do a hammerhead stall turn coupled with a tail slide instead. You’ll see, children. These prop planes are quite nimble. Much more aerobatic than their jet-engine-equipped cousins!”
Yes. It was as scary as you could imagine. Like being on a roller coaster without a track or guardrails.
Tommy loved it. The rest of us remembered our prayers. We knew we were in the hands of a madman. We were never going to find the Lost Ship of the Desert. Instead, we were going to become the Lost Airplane of Wherever We Crashed.
“How about lunch?” Beck shouted after Uncle Richie concluded his stomach-churning display of aerial tumbling and twisting. Lunch, of course, was the last thing on our minds since our stomachs had been tossed around and ended up somewhere behind our noses. But Beck hoped food would distract Uncle Richie from his daredevil actions for at least thirty minutes.
“Bully!” said Uncle Richie. “Unwrap those sandwiches your father packed. Flying upside down can really work up an appetite.”
“There’s potato salad, too,” I said. “And chips. And pickles.”
“And fruit,” added Beck. “Lots and lots of fruit.”
We both wanted this to be a very long lunch. One that might carry us the rest of the way to California without any more flying circus stunts.
Our plan worked.
We cruised across the country without incident. Uncle Richie found a new distraction: teaching Tommy how to fly his 1971 clunker of an airplane. We were all grateful for that.
Until we crossed over the desert and began our initial descent into the Salton Sea area.
That’s when Uncle Richie turned to Tommy and said the most terrifying words of them all.
“The controls are yours, Thomas. Bring us in for a landing!”
CHAPTER 18
“So, I just like push this thing forward, right?”
And, just like that, Tailspin Tommy put us into a nosedive.
“Ease back on the yoke, Tommy,” said Uncle Richie.
“No problemo. Uh, where exactly is ‘the yoke’?”
“In your hands.”
“This thing that looks like a steering wheel?”
“Exactly! Well done, lad!”
While Tommy took what I hoped wasn’t a “crash course” in landing an airplane, those of us seated in the back were white-knuckling our armrests and tightening our seat belts.
“Don’t forget to lower your landing gear,” coached Uncle Richie.
“Chya. Definitely,” said Tommy. “Can’t land without landing gear. Uh, any tips on how to do that?”
“Press the button for wheels-down.”
“Oh. Right. Duh.”
“Increase flaps ten degrees,” said Uncle Richie. “We’re
coming in too fast.”
You know that screaming, whining noises the spaceships in Star Wars movies always make when they’re about to crash into the surface of a distant planet? Uncle Richie’s plane was making those.
“Um, maybe you should take the wheel,” said Tommy.
“Believe you can do it and you’re halfway there!” said Uncle Richie. “You’ve got this, Tommy!”
I looked to Storm. She was shaking her head and mouthing the words, “No, he doesn’t.”
“Easy, easy,” said Uncle Richie. “Keep a nice steady rate of descent. Line up your approach vector. Easy…”
I just closed my eyes.
A few seconds later, I sprang up in my seat. Tommy had found the runway and bounced off it like a rubber ball. But then he chopped the power and we landed again. In fact, we kept bounding up and down the runway like a hopping kangaroo. It was enough to make you want to toss your cookies. Fortunately, there hadn’t been any cookies in our lunch sack. Just all that fruit. So, we barfed our bananas when Tommy finally slammed on the brakes and pitched the prop plane into a skittering, skidding, sideways stop.
“Well done, Thomas!” said Uncle Richie. “Bully.” Then he turned around to compliment Beck and me on our projectile vomit. “Well aimed, you two. Well aimed, indeed!”
We’d both emptied our stomachs into a quickly improvised air sickness bag: the big brown grocery bag Dad had packed our lunch in.
“Storm?” said Uncle Richie. “Kindly tell everybody where we are.”
“The Salton Sea Airport,” she replied, as her face slowly lost its pea-green color. “We’re a mile southwest of Salton City in Imperial County, California and approximately one hundred and twenty miles northeast of San Diego. The runway is made out of gravel.”
“Probably why it was such a bumpy landing,” said Tommy.
Riiiight, I thought. That’s why it was so bumpy.
“Kindly taxi over to that Quonset hut,” said Uncle Richie, pointing to a rusty, semicircular, steel building sitting in the middle of a patch of dirt. “Your parents’ generous financial support of our expedition allowed me to, late last night, make a few phone calls to an old friend and rent all the gear we might possibly need for our treasure quest in the deserts west and south of here.”
All-American Adventure Page 4
