Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware (27 page)

Lily raised her hands over her head, and felt, between her fingers, the night air, alive.

Do you seek a summer moon?

Do you seek a warm lagoon?

Would you like a sun that sets

Over domes and minarets

In a land of monks and maidens fair?

Seek Delaware—

Delaware, Delaware.

Do you like a grand bazaar

And snacks made of bears and tar?

D'you seek wise men with strange powers?

And goats in hotel showers?

Forget Rhode Island. Who'd go there?

Try Delaware—

Delaware, Delaware.

From the burning brooks of New Castle

To the blowzy fields of Kent

To the pickle yards of Sussex
,

That's where my youth was spent.

From the deserts of far Smyrna

To the griffon cotes of Zoar

To the maples of old Waples
,

Oh, those happy days of yore!

Though I've seen New York and Rome

My heart longs for my old home.

I miss taxis pulled by yaks

And flying squirrel attacks

And barbarian lords with feathered hair
,

In Delaware!

Delaware! Delaware!

[Fading:]

It's an East Coast state with a foreign flair.

Fair Delaware!

Where things are arched instead of square

In Delaware.

Young Jasper Dash learned how to stare

In Delaware.

Visit downtown Dover, if you dare
,

State capitol of Delaware.

If you're eating candy, always share

In Delaware.

etc.

[Repeat until you have exhausted all possible rhymes and driven your parents crazy. Then fade, veiling your face and backing mysteriously—but quickly—out of the room.]

Fair Delaware

Words and Music

M.T. Anderson

*
The Joliet Insulation Museum. The Syracuse Burn-Pit. The Unsteady Walking Hall of Fame.

*
Faithful readers will know that Jasper defeated Bobby Spandrel's evil, pernicious plans in such novels as
Jasper Dash and the Cowpoke Caper
,
Jasper Dash in the Bladder-Jungles of Venus
,
Jasper Dash's Far-Out Hippie Adventure
,
Jasper Dash and the Hydrogen Snails of Pluto
, and
Jasper Dash and His Resounding Electric Handshake.
Whether he met Bobby Spandrel in Cairo, Egypt, or Cairo, Kentucky, Jasper always managed to smash his way into Spandrel's secret headquarters and short-circuit the villain's laser-guns before Spandrel and his evil crew blew up Fort Knox or knocked down the Eiffel Tower or kidnapped a spaceship of Martian orphans or carved Bobby Spandrel's spherical likeness into the side of Mount Rushmore beside the presidents' faces.

*
The bunkers on Jasper's property were experimental bunkers. Some of them were his, and some of them were leftover alien experimental bunkers from olden times. There were lots of ancient tunnels that ran under the ground there, too, and old control rooms, and I think some things lived down there, maybe. There were probably routes to places like the Diamond Realm and the Court of the Fungus Lords. But that's not what this book's about. It's about Stare-Eyes. Okay? All right? If you're so bloody interested in the bunkers, why don't you go write a story about them yourself?

Your guess is as good as mine.

*
The Gyroscopic Sky Suite was Jasper's invention: a flying set of rooms that clamped on to the side of luxury hotels. It first appeared in
The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen.
If you haven't read that book yet, this might be a good time to kick off the covers, jump in your go-cart, and roll downhill to the nearest bookstore to purchase seven.

*
Wait—wait! Now I am remembering that I did indeed pass through Delaware for about twenty minutes on the way from New Jersey to Maryland. All I remember was the tolls on the interstate were really high, given I was there for less than a half an hour. I think they were about $4.50.

*
All monks speak in riddles. Whenever one of King Arthur's knights, for example, meets a monk in the Forest Perilous, all the monks say are things like “Pride, my son, is like four white pigs in a clearing.” Then they tell a story that isn't an explanation of anything except pigs. They never say useful things like “You know, you can get the bloodstains out of that coat with some salt and seltzer,” or “Dude. Giant behind you.”

*
You may notice that the Delawarians in this book talk in kind of an irritating way.

We have to give them credit. English is not their first language. They speak a language peculiar to Delaware, unknown anywhere else, a rich tongue with its own poets and novelists and songwriters.

Before you make fun of them for the way they talk, answer me this: How much of
Delaware's
language do
you
speak, wise guy?

*
The Delawarian love goddess. As tweed-clad British world explorer Lesley Arbuckle-Smythe notes in his volume on Delaware,
Five Years in the Land of the Blue Hen:
“Just as the Delawarians save their ornament and their precious metals to adorn their temples, so do they show the wealth and opulence of their gods by lavishing upon them all the vowels—
A
,
E
,
I
,
O
,
U
, and sometimes
Y
—that are so desperately absent from the rest of the language. Hence we hear of Auimeu, father of the gods; Oouquoo, god of balanced justice; Yyuhoo, goddess of love; and at the most extreme, Aiiieee, the fearsome god of war.”

*
Yes, it happened to me. Thank you, Burgess Lipton Jr., for a lovely evening. Next time you go to the Dakotas with your digital camera, please stay there.

*
Translation: “Another potato salad??!? I thought Yrrgta signed up to bring the potato salad! What are we going to do with three bowls of stinkin' potato salad? And did any of you brain trusts think about soda pop?”

*
You can also follow along and detect while Lily does. That's what I'm doing, because I'm completely lost.

Take a crayon, a quill, or a jagged inky stick. Make a grid like Lily's. Write
X
's in the spaces when you absolutely know that a particular description
doesn't
fit one of the mountain names. And write an
O
in the space when you know that a particular description
does
fit a particular mountain name. Follow along, and see if you can guess it first!

*
Dear Ask Stacey:

Why are tentacled things always trying to throttle me?

Yours,

Pestered in Pelt

P.S. Sometimes twice a day.

Dear Pestered:

Like cats, many tentacled things can detect who dislikes them or is allergic. That's the person they head right toward, drooling. It might be that you, coming from the Horror Hollow area, have developed a particular aversion to monstrosities that especially attracts them. An old home remedy for movie monsters: Try twelve Sherman tanks, a fighter plane, and a plan that is crazy but that
just might work
. For planes, my mother recommends the F-35 Lightning II! Good luck!

*
She should feel a lot better. I just checked out what's happening on Mount Minndfl—remember, the mountain with the pillar, where things sounded really interesting a few hours ago? Well, it's pitch-dark up there, and the pillar's standing all alone with a storm howling around it, and there's no sign of any life at all, except the whooping of the mountain-squids farther down the slope. I wouldn't go there right now if you gave me three shiny nickels and the laces from your boots.