A Fish Named Yum (2 page)

His plants were another story. How long, he wondered, could they survive in the dark under these swamplike conditions? Pump or no pump, the water might rush in and flood the whole basement. The risk was great.

The plants had to go. One by one, Mr. Pin ferried the heavy pots across the rising water and hauled them upstairs into the diner. By late afternoon, Smiling Sally's looked like Herb's Bionic Garden.

Mr. Pin was just taking his last plant up the basement stairs when he heard a voice booming through the back door.

“Where would you like the truck?”

“Not in here,” said Mr. Pin completely hidden behind the plant.

Hank, the trucker, jumped about three feet in the air. Then he parted the vines. He looked at the plant more closely.

“Mr. Pin!” he said seeing the rockhopper. “Uh, sorry, I thought it was a talking plant.”

“Afraid not,” said Mr. Pin. “I only talk
to
my plants.”

Getting over the shock, Hank said: “I heard you need a freezer truck.”

“Absolutely!” said Mr. Pin as he put the plant on the counter. “Chocolate ice cream is in danger.”

“Danger?”

“Right. You never know when you're going to need a few gallons of chocolate ice cream.”

“Of course,” said Hank.

With renewed energy, Hank and Mr. Pin hauled Sally's softening ice cream outside to the alley where a freezer truck was parked. Hank offered to bring another truck if it would help keep the diner business going.

The diner was quiet when Hank finally left. Surrounded by plants, Mr. Pin took a moment to rest his feet. He sat back in a booth and pretty soon his beak fell onto his chest. He wasn't asleep long before he heard an unusual announcement:

“Mr. Pin! Fish are swimming under City Hall.”

“Krill are swimming in the Arctic,” Mr. Pin answered in his sleep. Then he rubbed his eyes with his wings and looked at the towering figure of Phil O. Dendrum, his white hair rising just above Mr. Pin's indoor garden.

“Are you sure you're not a plant expert?” the sleepy penguin asked before recognizing the man who needed his help.

“Not this kind of plant,” said Phil. “But we have a real problem. The newspapers say that workers have thrown mattresses and concrete blocks on the hole in the riverbed. I wish I could do something. No one seems to be able to plug it for good. Not only that, it's beginning to rain.”

“There has to be something that will work,” said Mr. Pin.

“There have been many suggestions,” said Phil. “Some of them are a little unusual.”

“Such as?”

“Landfill garbage,” said Phil.

“Not a bad idea. There is a lot of it. But some of it would float, and it might get smelly.”

“How about peanut butter?”

“Excellent to eat but not to plug holes,” said Mr. Pin. “There's always chewing gum. It would be disastrous, of course, if I ever tried to chew any.”

“I understand,” said Phil. “How about newspapers?”

“Or government memos,” said Mr. Pin.

“Old shoes.”

“Jell-O.”

“Too soft.”

“Gerbil shavings. Maggie has plenty of them.”

“How about an old-fashioned beaver dam?” suggested Phil.

They were beginning to sound desperate.

“Good idea,” said Mr. Pin. But where would they find a crew of willing beavers at this late hour, not to mention all the trees they'd need.

Sitting in the back room of Smiling Sally's Diner, Mr. Pin and Phil worked late into the night. Sally brought them a thermos of hot chocolate and Maggie came in every now and then to offer a few more suggestions. They talked until almost midnight. Then Mr. Pin heard sounds he would not want to hear again:

Crack! Hisssssss! Whoooosh!

It sounded like the diner was blowing apart.

5

Fearing the worst, Mr. Pin and Phil hurried to the basement stairs. This time Mr. Pin started to put on the rubber waders, then thought better of the idea when he tried to get them over his webbed feet. He left them hanging on the basement door.

One step at a time, he went down the dark, creaking stairs while Phil stayed at the top. Mr. Pin was all alone with whatever it was, deep in the dark basement. Before reaching the bottom of the stairs, he felt the water already climbing up his feet. Easily hopping into the water, he swam through the basement to the site of the leak. It was gushing water now! The terrifying noise must have been caused by the water widening the crack in the concrete floor.

Mr. Pin thought fast. He thought about all of the things he and Phil suggested to stop the city's flood. He thought about Jell-O. Then he thought about something else. There it was, just out of reach, the answer to all of his problems.

Mr. Pin swam through the rising water. Maggie, who had come down from her apartment when she heard the explosion of water, stood next to Phil at the top of the stairs. She directed a flashlight at Mr. Pin.

“What's he doing?” asked Maggie.

“I don't know,” said Phil. “I can't see.”

Snargle. Glurgle. Sput!

Maggie looked at Phil. “Something strange is going on down there,” she said, handing the flashlight to Phil.

“All I can see is something that looks like a slowly moving glacier,” said Phil.

Splurgle. Glug. Rrrrrrosh!

“What's that?” asked Maggie.

Then they heard Mr. Pin ponderously make his way back up the basement stairs.

Exhausted, the penguin padded into the diner, his feathers matted together. He held his side with a wet wing and lowered himself into a booth.

“Too bad about the waders,” he said. “Might have come in handy.” He looked annoyed.

“What's wrong?” asked Phil who was concerned.

“The leak was fixed. But the price was … high.” Mr. Pin couldn't bring himself to say any more.

6

Phil wasn't sure what really happened in Sally's basement. He was hoping he'd find out. But he knew he'd have to wait. When he dropped by the diner the next morning, Mr. Pin had a plan.

“You're going to have a chance to help the city,” said Mr. Pin.

“We're going to plug the river?” asked Phil.

“Exactly. But first, you're going to need a disguise,” he told Phil.

“Of course,” said Phil. “I could always be a plant expert.”

“And I'm going to need a long rope, fishing buckets, and several trucks.”

“How many trucks?” asked Maggie.

“As many as you can get,” replied Mr. Pin.

“No problem,” said Maggie, thinking of Hank.

Phil looked surprised, but then again everything that happened in the diner was surprising. After a moment, he offered to bring the fishing buckets.

“Good. I'll take care of everything else,” said Mr. Pin. “We go to work at midnight.”

Maggie was thinking that midnight was a good time to solve mysteries. But what did Mr. Pin mean by “everything else”? Knowing Mr. Pin, it could be almost anything. Maggie knew she would find out soon enough. There was plenty of work to do. Answers would come later.

Mr. Pin said he was going to Pete's Chocolate Emporium. Maggie went upstairs to talk on her CB. That left Phil to find fishing buckets and get into a disguise.

Later that night, Phil found Mr. Pin asleep again, this time on the counter—wings on his chest and feet straight up in the air. He was surrounded by waterproof lights, rope, and an assortment of fishing supplies. Phil left him alone and curled up in a booth. There was time to rest before midnight and whatever Mr. Pin had planned. When Sally saw them both asleep some time later, she brought pillows and blankets, then blew out the candles they used for light.

They wouldn't be out long.

Around eleven o'clock, the quiet was suddenly broken by the sound of a portable radio broadcasting an old baseball game. It was a tape Mr. Pin used as an alarm clock.

Runners are in the corners. The game is tied 5 to 5, top of the seventh
.

Phil woke up slowly and put on his disguise: a fake beard, a helmet, and heavy work clothes. He decided to forget about the sunglasses. It wouldn't make any sense to be wearing them at midnight and might arouse suspicion. Then he looped a rope around his waist.

Mr. Pin wasn't looking much like himself either. He had put on goggles, a waterproof watch, and an underwater equipment belt. The ropes and fishing equipment were draped around his wide stomach.

Nice wing on that penguin
, the radio broadcaster said.

“I remember that game,” said Maggie, coming down the stairs. “You were great. The Case of the Spitter Pitchers. Are you sure you can walk around in that stuff?” Maggie had a way of talking all at once.

“This is the easy part,” said Mr. Pin. “The rest could be dangerous.”

Suddenly a truck roared down the alley. Hank burst through the back door. He said a “few” trucks were parked just outside.

“Very satisfactory,” said Mr. Pin.

“What do you want us to do with the trucks?” asked Hank. “Rescue more ice cream?”

“Not this time. We're going to fix a leak. By the way, our first stop will be Pete's Chocolate Emporium on the west side.”

Maggie wasn't sure what Pete's had to do with the flood. Pete, also known as the chicken man, had bought the factory to manufacture chocolate pigeons for his chicken shop. But that was another story. Sally and Mr. Pin usually bought most of their chocolate from Luigi the pasta man. Some things made no sense.

It was a strange group that rode west into the eerie, blacked-out midnight city. Under Mr. Pin's direction, a caravan of sixty-five trucks followed the detective to Pete's factory and then to the Kinzie Street Bridge, which overlooked the leaking river.

It was an even stranger sight when a disguised Phil convinced workers to allow a rockhopper penguin to inspect the damage.

The air was brisk. A crowd gathered and people held their breath as Mr. Pin dived into a dangerously swirling eddy to examine the leak. The water was too murky for a light to be of any help. But Mr. Pin could feel the water being sucked out of the river into the tunnel that flooded the city's underbelly. At any moment, the current could pull Mr. Pin into the tunnel. Phil was getting worried.

“It's too dangerous,” he said to a worker. “Get the divers.”

But before they could get their equipment on, Mr. Pin finally came up and gave the command:

“Bring the buckets!”

Maggie stood by, ready for anything. But she wasn't sure she'd ever be ready for this. One bucket at a time, Mr. Pin pulled buckets with flopping fish out of the narrow hole where they were trapped. Then they were loaded into a larger tank on one of the trucks.

Phil gave the signal:

“Unload the trucks!”

At first, Phil wasn't sure what would come out of those trucks. But suddenly it all made sense.

Never would the Chicago River look like this again. The truckers formed a line from their trucks and passed bucket after bucket of instant chocolate pudding mix fresh from Pete's Chocolate Emporium. It didn't taste very good. But it was great for fixing floods. Better than fast drying concrete. In less than an hour the eddying whirlpool had stopped. The hole was plugged. The danger was over.