Seven Dead Pirates (11 page)

The worst part was … they were ready to leave. And
he
could have helped them. In fact, he had
promised
to help them. The famous “plan” they were waiting for.

A foghorn blew in the distance. Lewis rubbed his chilly arms. What had he been thinking? Had he really believed that, at the end of six months, he could just move out of Shornoway and leave the pirates behind? Without a word?

Now there was no choice. He’d have to tell them about the real estate agents who were going to sell Shornoway.

The moment
that
thought sunk in, he realized something else.

He would have to do what they asked. He racked his brain for a long time, searching for another answer, but in the end, there was none.

He would have to take them to their ship.

“I
’ll do it,” said Lewis, with only a slight quiver in his voice. “Here’s the plan. I’m going to take you to the museum myself. I’ll make sure you don’t run into cars. And we’ll go soon.”

There was a moment of silence as the pirates absorbed this—then wild pandemonium as they leaped around, crashing into furniture and punching one another’s arms.

Watching them, Lewis was glad he’d decided to tell them the good news first.

“I
have
to take you because … because my parents are going to sell Shornoway.”

It was like pricking a balloon. The pirates faded
and sagged.

“Sell the old manse?” repeated Crawley. “To who?”

“Strangers?” demanded Jack the Rat.

Lewis gulped. “I don’t know. Yes, I guess, strangers. But you see, it won’t matter because you’ll be gone! You’ll be on the
Maria Louisa
. Right?”

Without warning, his eyes pricked with tears. Suddenly, he could
see
the tower room—with strangers in it. No! He couldn’t think about that.

He focused on the pirates, who were staring at one another uneasily.

“If there’s going to be
strangers
living here in Libertalia,” muttered Moyle, “it’s right that we go soon. We doesn’t take to strangers, lad.”

“That’s true,” said Skittles in a quivery voice. “We ain’t met a stranger in a good many years.”

“But …” said Adam and stopped.

Lewis nodded encouragingly.

“Ain’t there strangers out there in the world, too?” blurted the cabin boy. “On that road, like? And in that moo-see-um?”

Skittles winced, and his body brightened with alarm. The same thing happened to Bellows. Clearly they hadn’t thought the whole thing through.

“We been here a long time,” mumbled Jonas. “Safe, like.”

Lewis swallowed hard. What now? After all this, was he now going to have to persuade them to leave?

Trying to hide his own anxiety, he said, “Don’t worry. I’ll be with you all the way.”

“Well said!” Crawley whacked Lewis across the back. “Rest easy, mates. We has the lad! He knows
everything
about the world out there and all them strangers, too.”

“Aye, we has the lad!” agreed Moyle, trying to smile.

“Name the hour, young Lewis,” ordered Crawley. “We’re ready.”

“Well,” said Lewis, “soon.”

The sooner, the better, he thought. Before the real estate agents came. And his class.

“But …” He struggled to say it. “There’s still a tiny problem.”

“Problem?” Crawley fixed him with a belligerent eye.

“It’s … it’s the same as before,” stammered Lewis. Suddenly, it all spilled out. “Captain Crawley, you just don’t look like the people around here. You look like what you are. Pirates! Ghosts! You
have
to stay invisible when we go. All of you! If people see you, it’ll be a disaster.”

Worst of all, he thought, a disaster for
him
. He allowed himself to picture, just for an instant, what would happen if people in Tandy Bay spotted the
ghoulish pirate crew … and Lewis Dearborn walking among them. No! Lewis Dearborn
leading
them. His reputation as a weirdo would be sealed forever. He’d spend the rest of his life trying to explain.

“You have to stay invisible,” he repeated.

Crawley slung an arm around Lewis’s shoulders, pulling him aside. “Laddie,” he whispered, “ain’t you listening? Now, for myself, I ain’t afeared of nothing. Not strangers. Not them things that go fast—”

“Cars,” said Lewis.

“Cars,” agreed Crawley. “But the boys? Well, you can see how it is for them. Just talking about it, they’re going on and off like them things you puts in your lamps.”

“Lightbulbs,” said Lewis.

“Aye! They’re glowing and dimming like lightbulbs. And we ain’t even left the house.” Crawley clutched Lewis tighter. “So you see, lad … we has to find a way to get there
visible
.”

Lewis swayed, feeling faint. It was impossible. Even if they snuck out at night, even if they only ran into one Tandy Bay resident, it would be a nightmare. Lewis pictured a late-night shift worker fleeing in terror, yelling into his cell phone at the 911 operator: “Yes, that’s right! LEWIS DEARBORN! He’s the leader!”

Suddenly, Crawley let out a whoop. “Son of a sea biscuit!” he yelled. “I knows! By all the saints and sinners, I
knows
how to do it.”

“Wh-what?” said Lewis, as the other pirates gathered around. “How?” He was drowned out by shouts.

“Garments!” hollered Crawley above the din. “Ah, mateys, it’s a lucky thing we have the lad—and him knowing all about what folks wears nowadays. Give a cheer now! For the lad!”

“Huzzah!” yelled the pirates. “Huzzah for the lad!”

Alarm bells clanged wildly in Lewis’s head. “Me? What do you—”

“Here’s the plan again, a mite improved,” interrupted Crawley. “We needs to look like
travelers
, lad! We needs to appear as ordinary traveling folks passing through the village.”

Lewis blinked. “You want to pass as … tourists?”

“Tourists! Aye, that’d be it. You needs to dress us up, laddie, in clothing such as
tourists
would wear. Mayhap we’ll be lucky and no one will see us. But if we is seen, lad, we needs to look like a crew of ordinary tourists.”

He grinned, the gaps in his smile winking darkly. His good eye blinked, while the other stayed fixed in a frozen stare.

Tearing his gaze away, Lewis looked around the
rest of the group. At Jonas’s missing fingers. At the scar that carved Moyle’s forehead in two. At Jack’s hunched posture and lip-licking scowls.

The only one who was even close to normal-looking was Adam.

How could he make them look like modern tourists? It was insane!

And yet Crawley was right. They’d have to do something.

“I’m not really an expert on clothes,” he said hesitantly. “I mean, of course I
have
clothes, and my dad does, too. But I don’t know if they’ll fit.” He glanced at the colossal Bellows and the diminutive Skittles.

The pirates didn’t reply.

“I don’t have much money, either,” he added, thinking out loud. “It would cost a lot to buy you … er, tourist outfits.”

Moyle laughed. “No need for money. Easier just to
steal
’em!”

“Aye!” growled Bellows. “Steal ’em. We’ll show you how.”

Lewis shrank back. “I can’t do that!”

“Why not?” demanded Crawley. “Don’t folks do laundry round here? Don’t they hang it outdoors to dry? Why, it would be easy as drifting with the tide to steal some nice clean britches for me and the boys.”

“People don’t hang their laundry outside anymore,” explained Lewis, “at least not this time of year. They have dryers mostly and …”

He stopped, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.

Seeing the look on Lewis’s face, Adam crept closer. “It don’t have to be nothing fancy,” he whispered.

Lewis shook his head, but the words “nothing fancy” triggered a memory. The conversation he had overheard at school. Abbie’s scarf. He realized suddenly that he
did
know where to get clothes that weren’t fancy—or expensive, either.

“The thrift store,” he said under his breath.

“Beg pardon?” said Crawley.

“It’s a place where they sell secondhand clothes. They’re cheap. I could afford to buy you clothes there.” Actually, he wasn’t sure. He’d never been in Rag Time. He could only hope that his $37 in savings would be enough.

The pirates clapped and pounded the furniture, delighted by this new development.

“I ain’t had new britches in hunnerts of years,” said Bellows, looking down at his ragged pants, the color of mud. “I’d like some blue ones, I would. Might I go with you, lad, to that thrifty shop, to fetch ’em?”

“I’ll go, too,” grunted Jack. “I still doesn’t trusssst the little bludger.”

Skittles smiled timidly. “Well, if it ain’t too far, I could—”

“No!” said Lewis. “I—”

“Back, you lubbers!” Crawley swatted Skittles across the back of the head. “The lad don’t need
you
blocking his path out there. No!
I’ll
go with him.”

“What?” said Lewis.

Grabbing the boy’s arm, Crawley pulled him aside again, out of hearing of the others. “Lookee here, lad. I been cooped up a long time, and I’m restless as a bat in a jar. I needs a peek at the world, I do.”

“But—”

“You knows I can stay invisible, right? Won’t be no problem for me.”

“Well—”

“I could give you advice in your ear. About fittings and such.”

Lewis thought quickly. He
was
a little nervous about picking out clothes. And the captain
was
an adult—of a sort. If Crawley could stay out of sight, he might actually be helpful.

“Okay,” he said, before he could change his mind.

“When?” said Crawley.

“Tomorrow. After school.”

“Tomorrow!” repeated Crawley, clapping his hands in excitement.

“Remember,” said Lewis. “You promised.”

“Promised what?”

“To stay invisible!”

“Aye, lad, of course. Do you think I wants to give meself grief? You won’t see a hair of me. Not a hair.”

“Okay,” said Lewis. Exhausted, he dropped onto his bed and closed his eyes.

He might have fallen asleep, just like that, in all his clothes, except for the book that was placed gently on his right arm. He opened his eyes.

Treasure Island
. He looked around. They were sitting on the floor, waiting.

He sighed. Sitting up, he opened the book.

The boy in this story was Jim Hawkins. And, like Lewis, he had found himself accidentally in the middle of a pirate crew. Lewis felt a real kinship to Jim, whose pirates were causing him huge amounts of risk and aggravation.

But that was where the similarities ended. Jim Hawkins was the kind of boy Great-Granddad had described—a “bold one,” fearless and decisive. Jim would make things work. He was the kind of boy who solved problems.

But him? Lewis Dearborn?

One thing at a time, he told himself.

First, the clothes …

T
he next day, Lewis raced home from school. With barely a hello to his father, he charged straight up to Libertalia.

Twenty minutes later, he opened the front door of Shornoway and stepped outside. He was alone. But a sharp-eyed observer might have noticed that he was talking to an empty space just to his left.

“Excuse me, Captain Crawley,” he was saying. “If we’re going to walk all the way to the thrift store together, you’re going to have to loosen up on my arm. You’re making a bruise.”

The vice-like grip on his left arm relaxed, then tightened again as they reached the street.

“Here comes one now! Watch out! CARRRR!” said the voice in his ear.

“Ow!” Lewis pulled away. “Captain Crawley, please. Just
look
at that car. See how it stays in its own lane? As long as we walk on the side, we’re safe.”

“By thunder, them things goes fast!” gasped Crawley. “Hold on now, laddie, while I catches me breath.”

Lewis waited obediently, wondering whether it had been a mistake to bring Crawley. Peering in the captain’s direction, he could make out a faint ghostly outline. Would Crawley be able to keep his promise?

“Maybe we should go back,” he said.

“Never!” declared Crawley. “I weren’t afeared of the evil Captain Dire, and I ain’t afeared of them car things neither.” To Lewis’s relief, he faded.