Any Which Wall (11 page)

Emma kept her hand on the wall nervously, just in case they should need to make a speedy getaway, but after a minute, when nothing terrible had happened, she let it fall to her side.

After looking around, Henry called out, “Hello? Is there a pirate here?”

Whoever was rustling in the next room dropped something heavy and called out in a deep, quiet voice, “Who’s there?”

A man came and stood in the door between the two rooms. “Yes, hello?” said the man. “Can I help you?”

The man did not look like a pirate in the least. He was clean-shaven and neat as a pin, as well washed as Merlin had been filthy. He wore old-fashioned breeches
that buckled at the knee and a billowy white shirt—a clean one. There wasn’t a rat or a spot of bird poop in sight. His pants were old but nicely mended, and he had a book in one hand. He stared at them.

The stare was awkward. Finally Henry said, “We, um. We were hoping to see a pirate. We thought we were coming to a pirate house. Are there any around?”

The man cleared his throat and smiled. He set his book on a little table and said proudly, “As a matter of fact, you did come to a pirate house. Perhaps the most famous pirate house in the history of pirate houses. Many a ferocious fellow has trod these planks. They were ripped mercilessly from a number of unfortunate ships.”

“Really?” asked Henry, staring down at the planks.

“Indeed, though I’m afraid I’m not a very good example of a pirate, myself. Truly, I’m the worst pirate in the world.” It was clear from the way he said this that he didn’t mean what Henry had meant when he’d uttered the same phrase. The man sighed, “I suppose by the standards of some bloodthirsty seamen, I’m hardly a pirate at all.”

The kids all stared at him blankly.

“But,” said Roy, “you said this was the home of a famous pirate.”

“Oh, it was,” said the man, looking back up and nodding emphatically.

“And it’s also your house,” continued Roy. “So that would suggest—”

The man cut Roy off with a nod. “It’s mine now, but these walls have known better buccaneers than yours truly. It was my father’s before me.”

“Your father?” asked Susan.

“Yes, my papa, Blackbeard, the scourge of the seas. This was his house.”

“Blackbeard lived on land?” Henry sounded skeptical.

“Not for long, but for a few years. He ran his ship aground one day, not far from here, just down the Carolina coast. While he was on shore buying rum, he met my mom.”

“Your mom?” asked Susan. “I’ve never heard of Mrs. Blackbeard.”

“Thank goodness she didn’t hear you say that!” the man laughed. “How she hated it when people called Papa Blackbeard. Her married name was Mrs. Edward Teach, but her friends called her Charlotte.” The man spoke these words with a fond and slightly wistful look in his eye. “She was a lovely woman. She was shy but oh, could she dance. And sometimes she let me win at cards!”

“Why are you such a bad pirate?” asked Emma. “I think you seem nice.”

“That’s just it,” said the man with a despairing look. “I
am
nice. I haven’t been able to live up to my father’s legend, not at all. My name is Sam,” he said, sticking out a hand for shaking. “But it was supposed to be”—he choked on the next word—“Junior.”

Emma shook his hand. She felt very sorry for Sam.

Henry, who didn’t want the pirate part of the story derailed, prodded. “You were saying your dad lived here—”

“Yes, he tried to settle down and lead a different kind of life. He fixed up the place, painted the roof, and worked in the garden when he wasn’t drinking, but life on land didn’t agree with him at all. He kept getting drunk and shooting holes in the roof, and then it would rain and we’d all get wet. Eventually he went back to his ship and left us behind, here, in this house.” Sam looked like he might cry.

“I’m sorry,” said Susan.

“That’s so nice of you to say,” Sam said, brightening. “It wasn’t all bad. He did stop in to visit from time to time and bring me presents.” He gestured to the wall hung with the net. Tucked up in it were shrunken heads, monkey paws, strands of black pearls, and dried
seaweed. “He always remembered my birthday,” Sam added fondly.

“What happened after that?” asked Roy curiously.

“Eventually some farmers got fed up with his raiding and marauding and cut off his head. And thank goodness too. Though he was my father, and I loved him, he was a mean, mean man, birthday presents aside. He used to set lit matches into the brim of his hat and make scary faces when he was supposed to be reading me bedtime stories.”

Emma gave a shiver at the thought.

“It sounds exciting to me!” said Henry.

“Parents aren’t supposed to be exciting,” said Sam. “Parents are supposed to love you unconditionally, feed you, and occasionally bounce you on their knee, though that doesn’t work so well when your father has a peg leg. Parents are supposed to be trustworthy, dependable—”

“You mean boring?” asked Henry.

“I’d take boring over marauding, any day,” said Sam.

Emma nodded in sympathy. “Gosh, that does sound hard,” she said.

“It was,” said Sam. “I had nightmares all the time. After he was gone, my mother married a shopkeeper and we all settled down inland, which was fine, but
when my mother passed away, I came back here to live. I like the sound of the waves.”

Roy remembered something. “But wait—you did say you’re a pirate too. Didn’t you?”

“Sure, I’m a pirate, officially,” said Sam. “I have a certificate of authenticity.” He pointed to a framed piece of parchment on the wall, written in blood and with a great blob of red wax at the bottom. “I had a buccaneer’s baptism and everything, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter. There’s a lot of pressure, when you’re a second-generation pirate, to carry on the family name, but I—I couldn’t—” Sam began to clear his throat. He didn’t finish his sentence.

“Couldn’t what?” asked Emma, looking at the shrunken heads and imagining the terrible things Sam had not been able to do.

“I couldn’t grow a beard.” Sam put a hand over his eyes. “It was terrible. Every time my father came home from the seas, he’d take me out in the yard and examine my face in the sunlight, looking for the least little shimmering blond hairs, but it was no use. Finally he gave up and left me alone, a disgrace to his name.”

“That does sound awful,” said Susan.

“There are perks, though,” said Sam. “I own a pirate ship, my inheritance—”

“Cool!” said Henry.

Sam continued wistfully, “But it’s off in Ile Perdida, and I’ve never been able to get down there to see it. I’m too busy here.”

“You are?” said Roy. “With what?”

“I’m putting together an archive,” said Sam proudly, pointing to the shelves, “full of leaflets and pictures and books about pirates. I aim to have the best pirate archive in the world. It’s my little way of following in his footsteps, I suppose.” He added a weak, “Arr?”

Roy looked interested. “Do you want to be an archivist,” he asked, “or a pirate?”

“Well, I’d like to think I’m sort of both,” said Sam. “Keeping the dream alive on paper. I mean, I do love my books, and a pirate’s life is kind of hard and wet, and there’s always the risk of being forced to walk the plank,” he said thoughtfully. “But it sounds like a lot of fun too, what with all the boats and booty—and I wouldn’t have to be nearly so evil as my papa,” Sam sighed. “It doesn’t matter, though, since I can’t be a pirate without a beard. It just isn’t proper.”

“That,” said Henry, “is just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You don’t have to call yourself Blackbeard Junior. You can be your own kind of pirate. No-Beard the Pirate. Or Bald-Chin the Pirate. Or Sam
the Pirate, if you don’t feel especially creative! But you’ve got the ship, so why not?”

Sam looked put out. “It’s not that easy,” he said. “You make it all sound so simple. Papa’s ship—the
Queen Anne’s Revenge
—is far away on an island. How am I going to get there without a ship? You see my problem?”

“I think,” said Susan kindly, “that sounds a little like an excuse. Are you maybe just afraid?”

Sam protested, “Who, me, afraid? Bah! It’s complicated. I mean, really, I haven’t ever even seen the ship. It could be in terrible shape or stolen by now. What if I went all the way to Ile Perdida to get the thing, and it wasn’t there?”

“That’s not a very good excuse,” said Roy. “You’d be having an adventure, and you’d get to chase down the people who stole the ship. Obviously!”

The others nodded in agreement. “I think your father would be ashamed,” Henry said. “I mean, if he couldn’t grow a beard, don’t you think he’d just find a way to make that seem like a good thing? He’d have said that beards got in the way of real piracy. Or that he’d had his beard torn off in a brawl or something. Why, he’d probably have set a trend, and all the pirates would have started shaving, just to be like him!”

Sam considered this. “My father
was
pretty popular,” he said, “for a dastardly villain.”

“I think,” said Henry, “that you are just a big chicken.”

Sam’s face fell, but Henry proceeded to make buck-buck-buck sounds.

This was too much for Sam to take. After all, the blood of Blackbeard did run in his veins, however weakly.

“I’m not a chicken!” he sputtered at Henry. “Why, if I had a way to get to Ile Perdida, I’d go right now! This very minute!”

Henry stopped teasing and looked Sam up and down. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” said Sam.

“Then maybe we can help you,” said Henry. He put his hand flat against the wall.

When they saw this, the others stepped over to the wall and did the same.

“Are you sure about this, Henry?” asked Roy. “It seems a little wrong.”

“Sure about what?” asked Sam.

“He said he wanted to,” said Henry.

“Wanted to what?” asked Sam.

When he noticed their movements, he backed up a
few feet. “Wait! What kind of fiendish children are you? How did you get in here, anyway? Hold on a second!”

“Come on,” said Henry, patting the wall. “If you don’t like it, we promise to bring you back here. Or are you chicken?”

“Um, n-n-no—” Sam began to stammer. “But if we’re really going, I need to wash some socks for the trip, and I’ll have to pack a bag, and really I don’t know what the weather is like there. Pretty humid, I think, not good at all for my asthma—”

“Never mind all that!” Henry grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled him to the wall (which was only a matter of a few feet in the very small cottage).

Sam, stumbling forward, said, “At least let me feed the cat—”

But he wasn’t fast enough. Henry muttered something, and in the blink of an eye, they were all staring at the familiar green field.

Only it wasn’t at all familiar to Sam. “Where am I?” asked Sam. “How did you do that? What kind of twitchy magic do you children have?”

Henry ignored him and began to wish again.

But Susan said, “Wait a second, Henry. We need to talk. I don’t know how I feel about kidnapping this guy. We should explain the wall.”

“Yes,” said Sam, “you should explain!”

“Look, we can always take him home if he wants to go back,” said Henry, “but we can’t tell him about it. We swore.”

“We can take him with us through the wall, but we can’t tell him about it? That’s silly.” Susan shook her head.

“I’m with Susan,” said Roy. “I think we need to explain. That way he won’t be so scared. Right?” he asked Sam.

Sam nodded. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was agreeing to, but he was all for being less scared.

After they briefly explained about the wall, Sam’s eyes glittered with a tiny shine. “Okay,” he said, “I’m in. We’ll head for Ile Perdida and we’ll take a look at the
Queen Anne’s Revenge
, see what kind of shape she’s in, but I’m not promising anything yet. After all, she could be very dirty.” Sam made a fastidious face.

They all touched the wall, and Henry said, “Blackbeard’s house on Ile Perdida,” but nothing happened, so he tried again. “Whatever building is standing nearest the
Queen Anne’s Revenge
.”

Lickety-split, the wall under their hands turned to thatched palm fronds, and they were staring at birds. Birds everywhere. Around them, the air was extremely hot, like an open oven door.

“I’m surprised this even counts as a wall,” said Susan, inspecting the straw mat beneath her hand. It was really more like a bus stop made of palm fronds than it was like a building. There was a thatched roof overhead, but that was about it. Susan stepped out onto the sand to look around and Emma ran ahead of her to hunt for shells.

Sam wiped his forehead right away. “Goodness, I feel faint,” he said.

“But look!” cried Roy, pointing. Off a ways, in the distance, a ship was bobbing on the waves.

Sam did not look refreshed by the sight of his ship.

“Let’s go check it out!” called Henry, tugging on Sam’s sleeve. “It’s your inheritance, your father’s legacy. Let’s go!”

“No, no, no—this will never do,” said Sam fussily, looking around. “Where will I keep all my books?”

“You don’t have to live here,” said Henry. “You can go anywhere you want once you get the ship in shape.”

“I guess,” said Sam, sounding a little whiny, especially for a fully grown man who has just laid eyes on his pirate ship. He took a minute to breathe in the air and look around. “But it’s awful hot in the meantime.” He fanned himself.

Roy had stepped out from the shade of the hut and
was peering down the beach at the pirate ship (and at Susan and Emma, who were taking off their shoes) when Sam’s whiny tone shifted ever so slightly.

“No,” Sam said, “I don’t think I like it here. I don’t think I like it at all. The southern seas don’t suit me, but you know, there are many ways to buccaneer, and this”—he patted the straw wall beside him—“gives me an idea.”

Only Henry heard this, and only Henry noticed when Sam laid a hand on the palm fronds deliberately. Emma and Susan were already wading into the shallows and Roy was studying a sea turtle when Sam uttered the words, “I wish I was—”

“No!” shouted Henry, hurling himself toward Sam.

And though he had no time to stop the pirate, he did manage to touch the wall of the hut before Sam could say, “back at that wall.”