Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 04 - Any Port in a Storm (7 page)

I groaned.
“Dr. Welby…”

Scoobie spoke into the portable mic.
“Folks in about ten minutes we’ll be launching Ocean Alley’s first annual Talk Like a Pirate Day. Gather round so you can see Harvest For All’s very own Jolie Gentil be the first to walk the plank.”

I stood next to Aunt Madge.
“You know, I could short-sheet all the guest beds and you’d never know.”

She smiled.
“I’ll probably have to up the security.”

Harry walked up and I realized she had made them coordinating outfits.
Her skirt had alternating burgundy and gold panels, and his captain’s costume had a burgundy vest, with gold cuffs just below the knee of his black pants.

I grinned at him.
“Nice duds.”

He looked delighted and he and Aunt Madge gave each other such soppy looks I turned my head.
I heard a couple car doors slam nearby and turned to see a family with several kids walking toward us. A boy of about five had on one of the cheap pirate hats that come with Halloween costumes and held a cardboard sword wrapped in aluminum foil. As I looked around I realized there were more than fifty people wandering the park.

“Ladies and gents,” Dr. Welby’s voice boomed.

Who would give him a microphone?

Scoobie tugged on the puffy sleeve of Dr. Welby’s pirate costume, and after Scoobie said something Dr. Welby nodded and said, “I beg your pardon. Pirates and ladies,” he began.

“Excuse me!” Aunt Madge called.
When he looked she smoothed her hands down her costume and gave him one of the raised eyebrow looks I thought she reserved for me.

It was the first time I’ve seen Dr. Welby look flustered.

He recovered quickly.
“As my grandchildren would say, my bad.” This brought a short spate of laughter before he continued. “Lady pirates and gentleman pirates. Let me tell you how to get the most from Talk Like a Pirate Day in Ocean Alley.”

I listened absently as he explained that there would be a ‘suggested donation’ to do such things as toss a beanbag or talk like a pirate in a variety of ways.
As he pointed out that the people with the short aprons would accept money I glanced at the skeleton the teens were almost through setting up. A young man I recognized as the clerk who had swept up the broken pots at Mr. Markle’s grocery story had walked over and was laughing with Alicia as they each tried to pin a dart on the skeleton’s tail.

Hayden walked up to them and took Alicia by the elbow and propelled her a few feet from the boy.
For a second Alicia looked surprised, but then Hayden put his arm around her shoulder and said something into her ear and she beamed. The store clerk was clearly miffed.

So if she’s with him she’s not to talk to anyone else?

“…and now for the moment we’ve been waiting for,” Dr. Welby intoned.

“At least some of us,” Scoobie yelled.
He caught my eye and swooped off his pirate hat and did a small bow.

“Come on up here, Jolie,” Dr. Welby said.

I plastered a smile on my face and as Dr. Welby stepped down I walked the few yards to the steps leading up to the plank.
I’ll get Scoobie and George. And maybe Ramona.

“Thank you for coming,” I said, as I got to the top of the small platform that led to the makeshift plank.
The microphone made a high-pitched squawk and I almost dropped it. Lance whistled.

“We’re all going to have a lot of fun today, and you should feel good because your money will help the people who come to Harvest for All Food Pantry.”
I nodded toward the bake sale tables that were heaped with goodies. “We live in a great town, but not everyone has enough food to eat. Every time you pay a volunteer for something, you’re helping a neighbor.”

As I said this, Scoobie and George ran into the small crowd jiggling the change in their aprons and then ran a circle around the plank platform.

“Over here, mates,” Lester said, and he blew heartily into his whistle.

“Ok,” I said, “everyone knows where Lester is. Just don’t sign anything he gives you, you could be listing your house.” No one was paying attention to me any more, which was good. “Thanks for coming!” I concluded.

I heard a quiet step behind me and quickly stepped to the side of the small platform just as George had been about to push me onto the huge blow-up mattress below the plank.
Surprised, George kept moving forward when he didn’t run into my back. He walked off the edge of the platform, missing the plank completely and landing flat-out on the mattress.

“Shiver me timbers,” came Joe Regan’s voice from his nearby sales stand.
“You gotta do it ‘til you do it right!”

I walked quickly down the steps and stood next to Aunt Madge.

“Chicken,” she said, and I heard Ramona laugh. George got off the mattress, looked at me and painted an imaginary number one in the air.

I’ll pay for that later.

A line was forming at the bottom of the small steps that led to the plank. As Scoobie began collecting money, he said, “No jumping on the plank, it’s not as strong as a diving board.”

I decided I was safer away from the plank, to say nothing of George, and walked with Aunt Madge as she made her way back to the bake sale table.
Monica, who had a bandana around her head and another tied at her neck at a jaunty angle, looked flustered as she accepted money, and she dropped the coins on the ground in front of her.

“I’ll get it,” I said, and squatted behind the table as I picked up about ten coins.

Flash!

I had no idea George could actually giggle.
I stood slowly and stifled the first words that came to my mind. “I brought my own ammunition,” I said, with a quick smile. “I might have to start a blog just to post bad pictures of you.”

His eyes lit up, and George grinned.

Bad thing to say, Jolie.

“I can’t believe you said that,” Ramona said, as she walked up, sketch pad in hand.
“Come on. Reverend Jamison wants you to sit at the Harvest for All table for awhile.”

Within ten minutes there were at least two hundred people in the small park.
A couple grade school age boys had cap guns and about every five minutes they would stage energetic battles with swords and guns. When it became apparent that they planned to use the plank as a staging ground for a major battle, Father Teehan walked to the plank and stood talking quietly to the Methodist minister and occasionally accepting compliments on his pirate’s outfit, which included a very old cassock of some sort on which someone had stitched a pirate’s chest. Instead of pirate bounty spilling out he had cans of food.

After half an hour Sylvia came to relieve me at the Harvest for All information table and I began a slow tour of the various games and food stations.

Lester’s barking laugh reached me.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s so’s you can whistle while you work.” He gave a blast on his whistle, and in one fluid motion Jennifer grabbed a bean bag from a pile by her plywood ship, raised an arm, and threw it at him, knocking off Lester’s hat.
Maybe Harry did tell Jennifer that Lester called her a dame.

The pin-the-tail-on-the-skeleton game was a big hit with teens and pre-teens.
It seemed others were not enamored with the idea of being blindfolded and then twirled around until you were dizzy.

A fresh gust of wind made me almost stumble into Joe Regan’s pick-up truck before I caught myself.

He glanced at the sky before saying, “Going to get a lot rougher in an hour or so.”

I glanced at my watch. “So I heard. I don’t know why it couldn’t wait a couple of hours.”

Joe laughed.
“Even you don’t have that strong a will, Jolie.”

I gave him my four-fingered wave and walked over to toss a few beanbags through Jennifer’s portholes.

“Jolie, Jolie.”
Max’s excited voice greeted me as he peered through one of the holes, from behind the ship. Clearly he was doing as Scoobie asked and collecting bean bags that managed to make it through a hole. “Can you see me, Jolie?”

“I can, Max.
Thank you so much for helping.”

“I help.
I help a lot.” His head disappeared.

Jennifer tossed me a beanbag, a somewhat pained expression on her face.

“Thanks for letting him help here,” I said to her, in a low tone.

“I honestly don’t mind.” He just,” she glanced toward the hole where Max’s head had been a moment before.

“—never stops talking,” we said together, quietly.

I looked around. “Where’s Josh? He’s almost always with Max.”

“He was here earlier,” she said, and stood back to let me try the toss.
“Three beanbags for fifty cents.”

“Was she trying to sneak in a game on you, Jennifer?” George asked.
He slipped coins into the apron Jennifer had over her elaborate dress and picked up three bean bags from a pile on a small table. “Three out of three, Jolie,” he said.

While George was aiming I slipped my hand into my apron pocket and pushed the button to turn on my camera.
Two of George’s sailed through the porthole, but the third hit the plywood hard and slid to the ground.

“You missed one,” came Max’s voice from behind the ship.

George’s grin turned to a grimace just as I raised my camera and clicked. Far from being annoyed, his expression lit up as he said, “The game’s afoot!”

“Jolie’s next,” Max called.

Each of mine sailed through a hole and Max almost cackled.

“I’ll take him over to the bake sale for a few minutes,
” I said, quietly, to Jennifer. “Maybe George can pick up bean bags.”

He scowled at me as he said, “Sure thing, Jennifer.”

It took Max several minutes to decide what he wanted, and in the end Aunt Madge put one of nearly every kind of cookie in a plastic bag and I gave her five dollars when Max was busy inspecting his bag. I took a chocolate chip cookie and studied Max as we walked toward one of the park benches. I’ve never known if he has some sort of illness he was born with or if the apparent hyperactivity and nonstop talking are the result of a brain injury or drug use. I guess it doesn’t matter.

We talked for a few minutes—rather, Max did—and I found out he was from Ohio originally and had met Josh at an amusement park on Lake Erie, where Josh was playing his bongo drums outside a fortune teller’s booth.
“And when the summer was over I just went with Josh. They were tired of me there anyway.” Max seemed to decide he had said too much, as he stared at his cookie bag for several seconds.

“Shall we head back to the pirate ship?” I asked.

He turned quickly and set a fast pace as we walked toward the bean bag ship, as he called it. I’m not sure why I walked to the side of the ship as he walked behind the plywood ship, but something had caught my eye.

George had apparently tired of his bean bag duties, and Alicia and Hayden had taken over.
“Alicia’s kissing her boyfriend,” Max said, in an excited voice.

“Hey!” I said.

They pulled apart, Alicia with a look of defiance and Hayden with his lazy “I dare you to scold me” expression.

“Alicia, he’s at least twenty,” I said.

“Twenty-one,” she said, proudly.

“And it’s not your business,” Hayden said.

Scoobie had walked up behind me.
“Come on, Alicia, your turn to put on the blindfolds.”

Alicia gave Scoobie and me a sullen look, but walked away with Scoobie, whose quick look in my direction was probably a warning not to butt in.
Max had vanished.

A couple people had heard me talking to Alicia, but they turned away as I stared at them.
I walked a couple feet behind the plywood ship. “Exactly what is it you want?” I asked.

Hayden gave a humorless laugh.
“Pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“She is a freshman in high school,” I said.

He shrugged.

I lowered my voice.
“Do you know what statutory rape is?”

“What are you going to do, arrest me?” he asked, lazily.

“I wish I could give the police a reason,” I said, in a harsh tone.

“If I did anything you’re the last person I’d tell,” he said, smirking, as he started to walk past me.
“I could help you learn to mind your own business,” he added, more quietly.

Max’s head peered behind the plywood and George walked around him.
“Trouble?” he asked, looking from me to Hayden.

“Not from me,” Hayden said, and walked away.

Max scrambled to pick up the eight or ten bean bags that had sailed through the portholes while Hayden and I talked.

George’s eyes followed Hayden for a moment and then turned to me.
“He bothering you?”

“He was kissing Alicia,” I said.

George looked amused for a second, and then he asked, “How old is he?”

“Twenty-one, according to Alicia,” I said.
“Have you seen Megan lately?”