Any Which Wall (12 page)

E
MMA AND
S
USAN
, watching from the beach, yelled and then ran barefoot in the direction of the thatched hut. Roy heard their cries and turned to see what all the fuss was about. All three of them dashed over to the wall and wished breathlessly to be home, but nothing happened!

“We’re stranded,” cried Susan. “We’re stuck!”

“We are?” asked Emma. “What will we do?” Her chin quivered.

“Not much
to
do,” said Roy, patting her shoulder. “We just have to wait, but I’m sure it’ll turn out fine.” He looked at Susan for confirmation of this fact. “Henry will come right back for us. Won’t he?”

“Of course he will,” said Susan. Under her breath she added, “If he can.”

But Emma didn’t hear that part, so she breathed a
sigh of relief. “Can we go swimming?” she asked.

Susan was about to say no because she thought they should wait by the wall for Henry, but when she looked out at the greenish blue water, she changed her mind. It did look tantalizing. “Okay,” she said, “I guess our clothes will dry fast in this sun, but we have to be extra careful and stay close to shore. Who knows how many miles we are from the nearest lifeguard.”

Roy took off his sneakers and they all walked into the water, which felt as good as it looked. They paddled and watched tiny fish dart around their feet, and it was nothing like the murky brown reservoir they swam in at home. None of them had ever gone swimming in their clothes before, and they laughed when their shirts filled with big air bubbles. But when a dark shark fin broke the surface of the sea only about twenty feet away, they all climbed quickly back onto the sand, licking the salt from their lips.

Meanwhile, Henry and Sam arrived in the cornfield side by side. They eyed each other up and down, with their hands still firmly plastered to the wall.

Henry wasn’t someone who believed in thinking too hard about things, so he moved quickly. As soon as he saw that they were back home, he grabbed Sam,
toppled them both to the ground, and held the man down for about twelve seconds. Unfortunately, Sam was more than twice his size and rolled Henry off in no time, pushed himself back to standing, and dusted off his britches.

Henry frowned. He only knew one way to overpower a grown-up, and that was by tickling, a technique he often practiced on his dad. He’d never imagined the skill would come in handy in an actual fight, but he was ready to try anything. He jumped to his feet and gave a battle cry. With his hands outstretched and his fingers flexed, he charged and tickled the would-be pirate mercilessly so that Sam fell back onto the ground.

“No, no, hee heee heee, ho, help!” cried Sam. “It’s just what all the sea dogs used to do. Oh, help, help, he-eh-eh-elp. Please, please stop!” he called out breathlessly, laughing hysterically in that not-really-happy way that accompanies a serious tickling session.

“Promise you won’t jump up?” shouted Henry as he tickled. “Promise you’ll stay put? Promise—on the pirate’s code!”

“I promise, I promise, I promise!” panted Sam.

Henry stopped tickling, but as soon as he stopped, Sam lunged at the wall again. Henry dove after him and barely had time to touch the wall before Sam called out
in a rush, “I wish I was in a bank full of gold!”

Suddenly they were in a small room, surrounded by stacks and stacks of money. Neither Henry nor Sam was willing to take his hand from the wall, but Sam reached down and groped in a bag at his feet. When he drew out his hand, his fingers were wrapped tightly around a bundle of old-fashioned-looking money. He cackled, “Now, this is fun! I could loot all day! At last I understand why my mean old papa ran back to the sea and the ships and the suckers!”

Henry eyed Sam angrily without taking his hand from the wall. “You promised,” he said, “on the pirate’s code.”

Sam shrugged, sniffing his handful of bills. “You can’t hold me to that. There
is
no such thing as the pirate’s code.”

“Oh,” said Henry. “I thought there was.”

“Nope, and if there were a pirate’s code, it would probably be ‘Do what you want, and never mind about the mess.’ Plus, you were tickling me, and that’s downright unfair. You can’t expect someone to keep a promise they make when they’re being tickled.”

“That might be,” said Henry, “but you deserved it for stealing the wall from us. Why did you do that?”

“I was being a pirate,” Sam said matter-of-factly. “What do you think pirates do? They steal stuff from people, and you’re people.”

“But that’s crummy,” said Henry, who had never considered what it might feel like to be pirated from. “That’s not adventurous or exciting or glorious. That’s just being a bully.”

“Well, sure!” said Sam with a laugh. “And just imagine what a bully I could be! With that wall, I could be the ultimate pirate without ever getting seasick. I could steal from everyone, work from home, and never even get sunburned. A whole new breed of pirate! My papa would be so proud.”

Henry thought this was actually kind of clever, but it didn’t really change anything. “You could have stranded us there forever,” he said. “With no food or water. You
have
stranded Roy and Susan and Emma! Do you want to be a pirate badly enough to leave a bunch of kids to starve? On a desert island? In the past?”

“It wasn’t a desert island,” said Sam, neatly counting his stack of bills, “and I’d have come back for you. I just wanted a little booty and some respect.”

“Respect from who?” asked Henry.

“Why, my father’s old sea dog friends. They stop in periodically to dig holes in the yard to see if they can find Blackbeard’s treasure. They eat my food and laugh
at my books and get their big swashbuckling boots all over my good rugs. Ha! I’d show them!”

Henry could understand this desire and felt for Sam, but all the same, this behavior was out of line. “Too bad it isn’t your wall,” he said. He turned to the vault wall and added, “Home, please.”

In a blink, they were back in the field in the shadow of the wall.

Sam eyed Henry up and down. “You’re no fun, and anyway, who says it’s
your
wall?” Then he turned to the wall and said, “The bank!”

They were back in the bank in a flash, and Sam’s greedy fingers were scrabbling around in another bag.

“It’s our wall because we found it first!” said Henry, and then to the wall he said again, “Home!”

Instantly, they were back in the field, only now, Sam had two bundles of bills.

“In that case,” said Sam, “I found it too—right after you did. You aren’t the first people in the world to find it, you know!” He stuffed the money in his shirt and turned back to the wall. “The bank!” he said.

They were back in the bank, and Sam was rooting in a bag of coins on the shelf beside him.

Henry sighed. In a tired voice he said, “Home, please!”

They were back in the field just as before, only this time, Sam had been holding onto the burlap sack the money was in, so he had the entire bag with him! With the weight of all the money, the bag was incredibly heavy and it fell sharply to the ground, spilling gold and silver coins all over the grass. Sam laughed in delight. “Look at all that!”

Henry was feeling funny from all of the switcheroo-ing. “Please stop?” he begged. “Please? We aren’t getting anywhere, and this could go on all day.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Sam. “I’m getting somewhere. I’m getting rich.” He kicked at the pile of coins but did not take his hand from the wall. “Okay,” he said to the wall with a greedy grin, “now I want to be in the biggest bank in the history of the world!”

Instantly, they were in the biggest bank in the history of the world. Only it wasn’t quite what Sam had bargained for. He meant to arrive in the biggest bank in the history of the world as he knew it, but the history of the world is long and extends in both directions. Suddenly Sam found himself in a very strange place: a highly secure, high-tech, ultramodern bank vault!

Under their hands, a metal wall looked to Henry like it was made of some kind of futuristic metal. It felt solid but looked like mercury, like a silvery flowing
river. Laser beams crisscrossed the walls in roving strands of multicolored light. The walls were not simple shelves full of bags of coins, bars of gold, and stacks of bills. Instead, they were tightly sealed, airtight compartments full of strange vials and boxes and lights. Henry thought they looked like spaceship refrigerators.

Sam blinked. This did not look like any bank he’d ever known. He had no idea what to steal, but he eyed the lasers with wonder.

Henry had seen enough adventure movies to know not to move a muscle, but Sam had not. Intrigued by his strange new surroundings, he reached out to touch a thin darting beam of light. He succeeded but recoiled with a shriek!

Flashing lights burst into action like ten thousand fire trucks, and there was a sudden noise like a million screaming cats: meee-OW, meee-OW, meee-OW, meee-OW, meee-OW! The sirens and lights split the air, and with a whimper and a wail, Sam let go of the wall and crumpled to the ground.

This was just what Henry had been waiting for.

“Home!” shouted Henry, and in a blink, he was in the field alone, standing beside a spilled bag of old coins. For a minute, he just stood, still hearing the sirens and seeing spots. Then he took a second to
inspect the coins at his feet. He couldn’t help it. He was curious. He picked up one of the coins and saw that it looked something like a quarter—all silvery but rough. It had a kind of lion swimming in wavy lines, and the year on the big silver coin was 1730. There were some words too. Henry felt the coin’s dull surface and wondered where Zeelandia was.

Then his mind flashed to Sam, stranded in the future with the awful sirens, and he pulled himself away from the pile of money. He put his hand on the wall, took a deep breath, and shut his eyes. “Okay, wall, we need to go back to that big bank with the sirens.”

Again the air was filled with the terrible screaming and the lights, but Henry didn’t even need to open his eyes to find Sam. The sorry excuse for a pirate threw his arms around Henry’s knees right away. He gasped and pleaded. “Please! Please! I want to go home! My head! My nerves! Smelling salts! I’m going to faint!”

When Henry did open his eyes, he saw Sam kneeling on the ground, gasping like a fish, with his eyes wide and his hands shaking. Clearly, the poor guy wasn’t cut out for a life of piracy and adventure. “Sure,” said Henry. “Sure. I’ll take you back.”

“Thank you. Bless you. I’m so sorry I ever came!”

With Sam’s arms wrapped desperately around his
legs, Henry said, “Home, wall,” just as the sealed round door to the vault began to open from the outside. Just in time.

Back in the field, Sam let go of Henry’s legs and lay panting and crying. Henry gave him a minute while he considered how hard it would actually be to have a famous pirate villain for your father. He thought about his own parents working every day at Pearson’s Pharmacy and about how they’d never even once suggested he become a pharmacist. In fact, they were very supportive of his plan to become a cowboy astronaut or a professional skateboarder.

Henry was filled with an overwhelming surge of gratefulness, and he resolved to pick up his room as soon as he got home, just to say thank you.

Once Sam was breathing normally again, he and Henry looked at each other.

“I feel bad,” said Sam, hanging his head, “and what’s more, I now know I’m not meant to be a pirate of any kind. This day has been interesting but so very, very stressful. I like being alone and reading my books, and that’s what I’m going to do from now on. Can you please take me home?”

“We need to go get the others first,” Henry reminded him.

“Oh, certainly we do,” said Sam. “I feel just terrible about stranding them. I hope they aren’t too angry with me!”

“And we need to take a second and return this,” said Henry, nudging the bag of coins.

“Yes,” said Sam glumly. “I suppose it’s the right thing to do.”

They put the coins back in the bag and wished themselves back to the old-timey bank, where they set the bag back on the shelf. Sam quickly returned the two bunches of bills, and it was only a matter of minutes before they were collecting Susan, Roy, and Emma, who had begun to turn a little pink in the tropical sun.