Episode 15 - The Off-Limits Plane

Scottsdale BABY!!!!!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:04

The Bay Village Chronicles Book 13: Baron Thunder Pants and the Off Limits Plane. The house on Stratford Street had a smell all of its own. Pancakes from the morning, cut grass from the backyard, and somewhere underneath it all, the warm rubber and oil smell that drifted in from the garage where Uncle Mike kept his airplane. That's right, an airplane. Uncle Mike liked to build things, usually just woodworking, but he's been working on this special secret airplane for a really, really long time. Pierce and Henry had flown all the way from Wichita the day before, just two boys in one suitcase between them, and Duane had been waiting at the door before the car even stopped. Bear had been waiting too, sitting on the top porch step in his socks. Because Bear was the youngest and bravest, and he refused to wear shoes until somebody made him. You came, Duane said, like he hadn't been sure that they would. We came, said Pierce. I see you're playing Minecraft again. Yeah, I love Minecraft. It's my favorite game. And that was the whole hello. Because cousins, well, they don't need long ones. They just know they belong together. The plan was simple. Tomorrow the entire family would go to the Scottsdale house, the one in Arizona with a cactus out front that Bear had once tried to hug. Uncle Mike and Aunt Kelsey would take everyone, and there would be a pool, there'd be no school, and it was going to be the best week of the whole summer. Well, that was the plan. Plans, as you will see, can be slippery things. Chapter 2. The next morning the four boys were out back hunting for a lost frisbee when they heard the car start. By the time they ran around to the front yard, two sets of taillights were already turning the corner of the end of Stratford Street. One car full of suitcases, and one car full of the girl cousins waving out the back window, and both of them headed for the highway. And for Arizona, and very much not full of boys. For a long moment nobody said anything. They forgot us, Henry said. They did not forget us, said Pierce, who was the oldest, and felt that being the oldest meant staying calm, even when calm was the last thing he felt. Pierce, Henry said gently, they forgot us. There's no way. How in the world could two adults, responsible adults, forget the most important people on vacation? Bear sat down right in the grass. Now who's gonna make pancakes? he said, and his voice wobbled a little because Bear was brave about almost everything except being left. Duane, though, was not looking at the empty street. Duane was looking at the garage. And on Duane's face was the particular expression that in the long and adventurous history of the Bay Village Chronicles had never once led to anything boring. I have an idea, he said. Chapter three. The airplane sat in the garage under a gray cloth, the way a sleeping thing sits. Uncle Mike had built it himself bolt by bolt over three whole winters. It had a red stripe down the side and seats for exactly four people, which was a funny thing, because right now there were exactly four boys. But there was also a sign. Uncle Mike had taped it to the propeller in big letters. Off limits to kids. This means you, Duane. It says this means you, Pierce wrote aloud. It means some you, said Duane. But not necessarily you. That's not how sign works, said Pierce. But here's the thing about being left behind. It makes a boy feel small. And sometimes small boys do large things just to feel big again. Pierce looked at the empty driveway, he looked at Bear, still sitting in the grass, he looked at the airplane, red stripes gleaming over the dusty cloth, and he felt the pull. The pull pulling them to do the one thing that they know they shouldn't do. If we fly, Pierce said slowly, we could catch them before they even get there. We could land in the desert like heroes, said Henry. We could have pancakes for dinner, said Bear. Pierce said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we do this, let's call them to make sure they can't just turn around. That's a good idea, said Duane. Pierce ran inside and he went straight to the tin can phone and he called his parents' number. It was busy. They tried again. They weren't answering. Duane had already pulled the cloth off the plane while Pierce was making the call. Don't worry, guys, I've watched my dad fly it eleven times, he said, and I know which buttons mean go. Pierce knew, and he absolutely knew that the right thing was to call the grown-up and wait on the porch. He knew it was the right thing. But then Duane started the engine, and it roared, and the garage door rumbled up into a bright Kansas morning, and somewhere in all that noise the right thing got very hard to hear. So they climbed in, Pierce, Henry, Duane at the controls, and Bar in the very back with a book about Rory McElroy. Everybody buckled, Duane shouted. Everybody buckled, two voices shouted back, and the off limits plane rolled down the off limits driveway, bumped into the long off limits sky behind the house, wobbled and proud into the wide blue sky. Chapter four. It's hard to stay scared when you're flying. Wichita shrank below them into a quilt of green and gold. The river was a silver thread, the cars were ants. Bear pressed his nose to the window and laughed so hard he got the hiccups, and even Pierce, even careful Pierce, felt the worry in his stomach loosen just a little. They were doing it. They were really, truly doing it. Which is, of course, exactly when the cloud came. It was not an ordinary cloud. Ordinary clouds do not have a door. This one did, a round brass door set right in its puffy gray middle, as the boy watched, the door swung open and out floated the strangest flying machine any of them have ever seen. It was part hot air balloon, part bathtub, and part umbrella, all stitched and patched and held together with what looked like a great deal of tape. And standing in the bathtub part with his hands on his hips and his chin in the air was a man wearing the largest, puffiest, most enormous pair of trousers in the entire history of trousers. They billowed, they flapped, they thundered in the wind like sails. Halt, the man boomed. You are flying through the private sky of Baron Thunderpants. Bear hiccuped. There is no such thing as a private sky, said Pierce. Well there is now, said the Baron. I claimed it. And there was nobody using it. He narrowed his eyes at them. And there is a toll. Nobody crosses the sky without paying a toll. I don't have any money, Henry said. I don't want money, said the Baron. And he smiled a slow, but terrible smile. I want snacks. End of chapter four Chapter five. Now the boys did have snacks. Aunt Kelsey, who thought of everything, had packed a bag of pretzels, four juice boxes, a sleeve of good cookies for the trip they were supposed to take in the car, and Baron Thunderpants, it turned out, could smell good cookies from the plate from a great, great distance. Which was the whole reason he set up a toll booth in the clouds in the first place. Hand them over, he boomed. Floating closer, or I shall huff, I shall puff, I shall blow your little plane back to Kansas. He can't really do that, Henry whispered. But Baron took an enormous breath, and his thunder pants filled with air until they were the size of a small house, and he let it out with a whoosh and the plane spun so fast down that Bear's hiccup stopped, and everybody held on for dear life. Okay, Pierce said, fast and low, I guess he really can do that. This was the moment. You have to read enough of these books to know that every Bay Village Chronicles has a moment, the kind where being scared and being clever have to happen at the very same time. And it was Bear, small, fearless bear in the back with no shoes on, who figured it out first. Pierce, said Bear, his pants are full of air. That's how he stays up. Pierce looked at Baron. He looked at those great billowing trousers swelling and flopping, and he holding the ridiculous bathtub aloft. Duane, he said, fly straight at him, as fast as this thing goes. At him? said Duane. Trust me, said Pierce. So Duane pushed the lever all the way forward. The little red striped plane shot toward Baron Thunderpants like an arrow, and the Baron, who had expected snacks and not bravery, took the biggest breath of his entire life to blow them away for good. His pants swelled and swelled and swelled. At the very last second, Duane yanked the plane up and over, and the and the wind off their wings caught the enormous overstuffed trousers, and just so Baron Thunderpants went spinning off in the sky in the balloon like a balloon let go at a birthday party. He cried, I'll be back as he faded away into a faraway dot and then into nothing at all. The cloud with the black brass door drifted apart into ordinary fluff. In the back of the plane, Bear opened a bag of pretzels. We earned these, he said, and nobody argued with him. Chapter six Arizona came up to meet them, red and gold and shimmering with heat. And the four boys sat there for a second in the sudden quiet, hearts pounding, completely and entirely alive. Then they saw Uncle Mike. He was running. Aunt Kelsey was running. The girl cousins were spilling out of the car and there was a great deal of shouting, and not at all of it was happy kind, because somewhere on the long drive, the grown up to counted heads and come up for short and turned the whole world upside down looking for them. Uncle Mike reached the plane and pulled all four boys into a hug so tight it hurt. And then he held them at arm's length, looked at the airplane, the off limits one, sitting in the Arizona dust with not a scratch on it. His face did about six things at once. You flew it, he said. We flew it, Pierce admitted. There was no point pretending. We broke the rule. It was my idea to actually go. The last part was not really true. It had been Duane's idea. But Pierce was the oldest, and being the oldest sometimes means standing in front. We knew it was off limits, we did it anyway. I'm sorry, Uncle Mike. For a long moment, Uncle Mike didn't say anything. You scared us out of your our minds, he said finally. That rule was to keep you safe, and you knew it, and there are gonna be consequences. And no, before you ask, none of you are flying that plane again for a very, very long time. Yes, sir, said the four voices. Then Uncle Mike crashed onto Bear's level, and the corner of his mouth twitched, just barely, the way it does when grown-ups is trying to, with all of his might, not be impressed. Did you really make it the whole way? he asked. There was a baron, Bear said solemnly. His pants were full of air, would beat him with pretzels. Uncle Mike looked at Pierce, he nodded very seriously. That tracks, Uncle Mike said. And that night, after talking to and after hugging and after Aunt Kelsey checked each of them over to be sure they were okay, they all sat out by the pool under the sky of a crowded desert stars, and Uncle Mike made pancakes for dinner because Bear asked and because some days call for it. Pierce looked up at the dark. Somewhere out there very far away, a billowing dot whistle spinning slowly home, muttering about snacks and private skies in revenge. He had a feeling they had not seen the last of Baron Thunderpants. Mike turned to them, and he said, Guys, we hope you know. We're not always this irresponsible. We didn't mean to leave you. We were just uh in a hurry. Pierce said, We know. You had a lot on your mind. And just so you know, we wouldn't have flown that plane unless we really believe that Duane can do it. Duane smiled. He felt proud. Thanks, Pierce. I love you. I love you too, bro. And that is the end. Join us next time for one of the most epic, crazy invasion stories of the Scottsdale House. Get ready for Vladimir Pupin.