Butler Did It! (9 page)

SCREWGE

WET DUCK, ARKANSAS

The driver, Maurice Lapin, one of the
old timers and the purser of the Pelican, and pulled the Rusty Duck
into the shade of an overhanging palm tree, killed the engine, and
tossed a boarding ladder over the side for the convenience of
anyone wanting to climb back aboard. After dragging a battered lawn
chair to the bow, he settled onto his lofty perch, becoming a
rather bizarre hood ornament on the nose of the Rusty
Duck.

The crew of the Pelican had spread out.
Several began sunning on the white sand, many romped in the surf, a
few were relaxed in the meager shade provided by the overhanging
palm trees, but all were drinking beer and having a good time. The
largest group set up a game of volleyball along the surf
line.

Tommy Cooper was working industriously
on the creation of his sand sculpture masterpiece. He was delighted
with this particular beach for its quality of sand. There was just
enough lime clay in the sand to make it a perfect sculpting medium.
The sand would support its own weight better than ordinary beach
sand. The tiny shell fragments scattered throughout lent structural
stability to the sand mix, which allowed him to experiment with
designs that ordinary beach sand could never hope to achieve. He
was also surreptitiously testing his new Special Sand Sculpture
Cement; a subtle combination of seaweed, salt, calcium, and sea
foam. He was hoping to produce an ionic binder, reducing
evaporation and allowing the sand grains to bind for a longer
time.

Close to a mangrove thicket, under the
shade of the palm trees, Yan Yu Chan sat in a lawn chair sipping a
beer and reading a cheap detective novel. He wore a garish orange
and red Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and a liberal coating of
zinc oxide on his blunt nose. Lying nearby was Elizabeth Barrett
O’Neil or EB, as she was known aboard ship. Today was her first
opportunity to get off the ship in over four months. She was bored
and feeling very neglected by her boyfriend, Tommy. She passed the
time casually watching a group of scantily clad males playing a
very dirty game of volleyball in the shallow surf.

There was no net for this variation of
the game. Instead, a rope strung between two poles delineated the
opposite sides of a makeshift volleyball court. Low rollers washing
onto the beach had a tendency to undermine the poles every five or
ten minutes, causing the imaginary net to fall over. Apparently,
depending upon which way the pseudo net fell, the rules of the game
dictated that kicking water and sand at the opposing side while
they were attempting to reseat the net was a perfectly legal move
in the game.

A small white, black and brown dog sat
soberly watching the game, seemingly keeping score and evaluating
the players. Anytime anyone approached him, he would take a few
running steps away and then turn around to see if he could con them
into a game of chase.

“You should call him Racer,” one of the
volley ball players razzed Butler, “he just wants to be
chased.”

“Who brought him to the party anyway; I
thought nobody could get their hands on him.”

“He hitched the ride all by himself,
seems he wanted to be here.”

“Maybe he’ll stay on the island,”
grumbled Matthew half-heartedly. As much as he said he didn’t want
to, he was beginning to enjoy the dog’s company.

EB moved from her reclined position to
sitting cross-legged on a beach towel, her red one-piece swimsuit
setting off her creamy white skin and luxurious dark hair. With
harsh little slaps to her pale skin, she began applying an SPF
40-sun block. She casually looked at her fingers as she spread the
blocker around on her thighs.

“The worst thing about my job is that
it just plays hell with my nails,” she announced to no one in
particular.

This revelation wasn't terribly
surprising, considering her job as chief engineer, the fact that
she had any nails at all was amazing.

Finally finished greasing up, she took
one last sip from a can of beer sitting next to her, and pitched
the empty into a bin.

“That’s the last of the beer,” she
said, “somebody’s going to have to get another six-pack from the
Duck.” She hinted quite loudly, hoping that a white knight would
arrive and rescue her.

The Asian man sitting next to her
glanced at her, and then at the man working feverishly on the sand
sculpture nearby, then gave a shrug and returned to reading. EB
shrugged back and then called over to Tommy, who was waist deep in
sand and shoveling furiously.

“Tommy, be a dear, and fetch another
six pack, would you?”

Tommy was head of research and
development on the Pelican, and the on again-off again boyfriend of
EB O’Neil. Currently he was in ‘on’ mode.

“Sure thing, Honey!” Tommy
automatically replied, as he continued to sling wet sand onto a
pile as big as a pool table. Nothing happened for several
minutes.

EB, becoming impatient, called out
again, “Tommy?”

“Just give me another minute, Honey,”
he answered, as he returned to the throes of creativity. Five
minutes passed very slowly.

EB sighed heavily, muttered a few
appropriate obscenities under her breath, and then got up. She
carefully adjusted her swimsuit to show off all her best
attributes. Taking advantage of the situation and hoping to make
Tommy jealous, she intentionally angled her walk past the
volleyball game, immediately causing an errant serve and a serious
argument over whether the resulting shot had been out-of-bounds or
not. While rummaging in the ice chest on the Rusty Duck, she
plotted her next move.

With exaggerated slowness, she pulled
out a cold six-pack from the ice chest, held it delicately out away
from her voluptuous body, and sauntered back past the makeshift
volleyball court. On her return, numerous wolf whistles followed
her.

As she strolled past her boss, Matthew
Butler gave a courteous bow.

“Why, Miss EB,” he drawled, “You’re so
pretty you could make a hound dog smile.”

She tossed her hair mockingly, and
strutted back to her spot in the shade, determined to stir up a
little trouble.

“A girl can’t even walk across the
beach without drawing attention to herself,” She expounded loudly,
“especially from that Matthew Butler!” She said the last line even
louder, hoping that Tommy would overhear her. “Did you see him
grinning at me as I innocently walked past?”

“Birds of rare plumage should never
squawk when their feathers are praised.” Chan answered
philosophically.

Leaning around Chan to peer at Tommy,
she said in an undertone, “The silly bastard’s ignoring
me.”

Tommy, still wrapped in the ecstasy of
creativity, hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

About then, a muscular fellow named
Mike, playing in the volleyball game, dove after a leaping power
spike by Matthew Butler. Attempting a desperation save, Mike
inadvertently hit the ball directly toward Chan. Watching the ball
fly toward Chan, the volleyball players held their breath in
dismay.

Without looking up from his novel, Chan
reached up and snatched the ball out of mid-air one-handed. Butler
immediately started clapping and whistling in appreciation of his
martial arts instructor’s astounding trick.

EB, muttered to Chan, “I’ll give you
$20 cash, if you can hit the boss from here.”

“Money has little worth.” Chan waxed
eloquently. “It is only skill that matters.” Out of the corner of
his mouth he growled, “However, if you put up your six-pack, I'll
make him taste the sand he’s standing on.”

“You're on!” EB quickly
agreed.

Chan stood, paused for a second, and
with almost no effort, booted the volleyball into the sky in a wide
sweeping arc that looked, at first, as if it would land out beyond
the surf line. At the last second, the ball hooked sharply and
seemingly accelerated back toward the huddled mass of volleyball
players who were watching the trajectory with slack-jawed looks on
their faces. Butler, seeing the change of direction as it barreled
toward him, suddenly dove for the beach just before the ball
whistled past his ear. He rose with wet sand sticking to his face.
He was still grinning, but the grin was a bit
glassy-looking.

“Well done.” EB conceded, as she
graciously passed the six-pack to Chan.

<<>>

Moving cautiously through the tropical
growth on the spine of the island, Katharine headed toward the
blaring music. She came to a rise in the terrain and peered timidly
over the greenery. Because of the terrain, she couldn’t see
anything on the upper part of the beach, but she could see the
partiers playing volleyball out by the surf. Making her decision,
Katharine began to run toward them. Blundering through the
undergrowth, she kept her eyes on her potential
rescuers.

She bulled through the entangled
mangrove roots and saw grass. Suddenly free from the thicket, an
exhausted Katherine staggered out, “Help! Help me, I--- Oh!” She
cried, blundering into a sculpted pile of sand directly in her
path. She staggered as she struck the pile and lost her
balance.

“No, stop!” Cried a fair-haired young
man, who was working on the far side of the sculpture.

She struggled to get off the pile,
obliterating it completely.

“My sculpture” cried the man in
anguish, “my masterpiece!” It was the heart-rending cry of a
wounded bird.

Tommy was still in shock over his
ruined sand sculpture when the crazed woman in the red diving suit
gripped his arms and yelled, “You’ve got to help me, help me
please!”

Chan and EB were the first to come
running when the woman had burst out of the undergrowth. They ran
up on to Tommy’s ruined mound of sand, destroying anything that
might have been left of his work of art. Butler and the rest of the
crew were not far behind.

The woman had a disheveled look and the
fear in her eyes was real. She was struggling to stand up on the
sliding mound of sand; Tommy was trying to defend himself from her
frantic thrashing. Butler stepped forward and held out a hand to
assist her off the cowering Tommy.

“Are you all right?” He asked her.
“What help do you need?”

Katharine gasped, she had been so
intent on making them understand that she needed help that she had
not thought about what she would say next.

“There’s a man in a hole,” she said,
pointing behind her, “I can’t get him out, he’s unconscious, and
the tide is rising. Come on, we’ve got to get him out.” She started
to run back into the underbrush.

Not knowing quite what to make of her
jumbled statements, Butler held her back for a second. “What kind
of hole is it?” He asked, “Will we need ropes?”

“Yes! Ropes! I had to crawl out. It’s a
blowhole out beyond the tide pools. He’s on a ledge and the tide is
coming, Hurry!” She said.

Turning to two crewmembers Butler
commanded, “Get the ropes out of the Duck, the first aid kit, some
towels, and the two-way radios.”

Turning then to EB he said, “Alert the
Pelican. Tell them it’s an unknown emergency and to be on
standby.”

Finally turning back to Katharine, he
said, “Lead on.”

<<>>

When the rescue party arrived at the
blowhole, they saw a shallow trough shaped pool, which disappeared
under a five-foot high overhang. Once they got under the sheltering
rock, they were able to see that the overhang had been smoothly
scooped out and at the back of it was a hole into the ground. It
was just about big enough to admit a large man. Katharine
disappeared down the hole and Butler squeezed in after her. He
climbed down the narrow chimney using his hands and feet. It was
about ten feet deep and grew darker as they descended. Butler
continued to feel his way down and soon he felt the seawater touch
his feet.

“You can slide this way from here,” he
heard Katharine say; “it’s only a couple of feet deep
here.”

He moved cautiously toward her voice.
When he felt level ground under his feet, he discovered he was only
knee deep in water. However, when he stood up, he cracked his head
brutally on the roof of the cavern.

“What was that?” Katharine asked from
somewhere to his right.

“Hit my head,” explained Butler, while
the stars swirled in front of his eyes.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I can stand up in
here.” She said.

“Let’s hold on a second ‘til we can
see.” Butler groaned, holding his head and waiting for the pain to
subside.

Soon their eyes adjusted to the dim
light and she led him into a cavern that was now about two thirds
full of water. He could see the waves flowing in and out and
guessed that, at high tide, the waves would shoot powerfully out of
the top of the hole they had climbed down.

Katharine waded into the water until
she was swimming and led him across the cavern; it was only about
two yards across at this spot. The man lying on the slanted ledge
was a small black man and was very hard to see in the gloom. He
appeared to be wearing only what Butler took to be swim
trunks.