Another Whole Nother Story Read online

  “You’re right, Gerard,” said Mr. Cheeseman.

  “I know,” said Gerard, matter-of-factly and without the slightest trace of arrogance.

  “I’ll go first,” said Mr. Cheeseman, “to make sure it’s safe out there. When I give the word, the rest of you may follow.”

  “Aye, aye,” said Captain Jibby, with a quick salute of his right hand. (Or perhaps I should say the Swiss Army knife that stood in place of his hand ever since it was bitten off years ago by one of his circus tigers.)

  Mr. Cheeseman climbed onto the chair that Maggie had been sitting on, his head disappearing into the wafting smoke. “Be careful, Dad,” said Jough.

  “Don’t worry, Jough. I will.” With a quick hoist, the children watched as Mr. Cheeseman ascended into the mist. When he swung his legs onto the roof of the LVR and stood up, it became apparent to him why the door would not open. The LVR had come to rest next to a very large sycamore, the tree’s sturdy trunk rising up precisely where the LVR’s door was meant to open. A design flaw, was Mr. Cheeseman’s first thought. The door should have been made to open inward.

  His second thought was, Where the heck are we? For in every direction, all he could see were trees. Well, that’s not entirely true. He could also see plants, shrubs, grass, weeds, dirt, flowers, and a young chipmunk named Phillip. In other words, a forest. And on that forest floor, a good ten feet away, was the LVR’s smoldering ceiling panel, just lying there like the lid of a sardine can that had been eagerly and violently torn away by someone who very much loved sardines.

  A quick glance at the LVR’s exterior gave rise to more concern. The source of the smoke was the LVR itself. Its outer shell had partially melted on one side, the crystals having dissolved and re-hardened into one smoldering mass. It should go without saying that this was not good. Ethan’s plan had been a simple one. He and his children would travel back to 1668, stopping just long enough to drop off Jibby and his crew so that they might return the White Gold Chalice to its rightful owner, thus putting an end to the curse that had plagued the family bloodline for centuries. Ethan would then fire up the LVR and reverse course, heading back to the time just before Mrs. Cheeseman was murdered by the corporate villain known as Mr. 5, and save the day.

  As a man of science, Mr. Cheeseman took many laws into account when formulating his plan. He did not, however, take into account Murphy’s Law, which states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And, true to form, everything had gone wrong.

  He drew in a deep breath, as if he might need additional oxygen for the lie he was about to tell. “Okay,” he shouted down to the others. “Everything looks good here.”

  “All right then,” said Jibby, assuming the role of second in command, which Jough did not necessarily appreciate. Though he was a teenager, grown-ups still insisted on treating him like a child most of the time. “Let’s go now. Women and children first.”

  Pinky let out a yip and leaped into Gerard’s arms. “What about dogs?” Gerard asked.

  “And dogs,” Jibby agreed.

  Though Pinky had no hair and was, as a result, quite pink in color, I should point out that this is not how she came by her name. You see, long before Mr. Cheeseman and his children were forced to go on the run to protect the LVR from corporate villains, government agents, and international superspies, they lived a perfectly normal existence, complete with friends and neighbors. One day, one of those neighbors had puppies. Actually, it was their dog that had the puppies. For the neighbors themselves to have puppies would really be a newsworthy event.

  There were five puppies in the litter, and the children chose the one they deemed to be the cutest and, coincidentally, the smallest of the bunch. If the puppies were fingers, that puppy would certainly have been the pinky and that’s how Pinky got her name. If the children had not found her so adorable, I might very well be telling you the story of a short, plump dog named Thumb.

  Jibby took Pinky from Gerard and passed her up to Mr. Cheeseman, who set her on the ground. Jibby then turned to Gerard and said, “Ready?”

  Gerard nodded and Jibby took him beneath the arms and hefted him up through the opening, where his father took him and lowered him to the ground next to Pinky. Maggie struggled out next, refusing any help from Captain Jibby or anyone else, despite the tightness in her neck. Then, one by one, the rest of the passengers emerged until they had all gathered around the egg-shaped disco ball known as the Large Venezuelan Rat. Sorry. Luminal Velocity Regulator.

  Jibby and his crew, exhausted from the ordeal, took a seat on a fallen log covered with moss and spongy wild mushrooms. His crew consisted of: Three-Eyed Jake, Jibby’s best friend and right-hand man; Sammy, a strong man with both the might of two and a half men and a back injury; Aristotle, a psychic with short-term memory loss; Dizzy, a tightrope walker who suffers from an inner-ear imbalance; and Juanita, Jibby’s lovely wife, with a soft smile and coffee-colored eyes.

  “Wow,” said Gerard, though he had seen plenty of forests before. “Where are we?”

  “Well, just before we lost power, the chronometer read October 2, 1668,” said Mr. Cheeseman.

  “Actually,” said Gerard, “my question was where are we. Not when are we.”

  “The last information I have is that we’re somewhere near the eastern seaboard of North America,” said Mr. Cheeseman.

  The rest of the group just stood there, staring at the damaged time machine, afraid to say what they were thinking, hesitant to think the very worst. Finally, Gerard—who could always be relied upon to say what everyone else wanted to say but would never think of doing out of sheer politeness—spoke up. “So does this mean we’re stuck in this time forever?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jough. “Of course we’re not stuck here forever. Are we, Dad?”

  “Relax, everyone,” said Mr. Cheeseman in the most reassuring voice he could muster. “We’re not stuck here forever. But I’m afraid we’re definitely stuck here until I can make the necessary repairs to the LVR, which may take a while since I left all of my tools back at the house.”

  Captain Jibby cleared his throat and proudly displayed his Swiss Army hand. “At your service, sir.”

  “I appreciate that, Jibby,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “But this is going to take more than a can opener and a hole punch. I don’t suppose you have a blowtorch on that thing?”

  Jibby looked at his knife-hand (or hand-knife, if you prefer). “ ’Fraid not,” he said.

  “Where you gonna get a blowtorch in 1668, Dad?” asked Jough.

  “I guess I’m going to make one,” said Mr. Cheeseman without hesitation. “By borrowing parts from the LVR and fuel from its hydrogen thrusters. I’ll still need some metals for welding. If we can find a blacksmith, we should be able to get some suitable materials for solder. Of course, in order to find a blacksmith we first need to find our way out of this forest.”

  “No problem there,” said Jibby. He turned to Three-Eyed Jake and slapped him affectionately on the shoulder. The slap came with such force that it disrupted Jake’s eye patch and sent his glasses askew. “As a seafaring man and a first-class navigator, Three-Eyed Jake here can tell direction by the position of the stars in the night sky.”

  Long before they were circus performers, Jibby and his crew were pirates, reckless plunderers of the high seas. That all ended one day in 1668 when they found themselves in the thick of a powerful electrical storm that zapped them into the twenty-first century, which is where they happened upon the Cheesemans.

  “Though I’m sure Jake is very good at navigating by starlight,” said Jough, “that doesn’t really do us a lot of good right now.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Jibby agreed.

  “That’s okay,” said Gerard, staring skyward. “I can tell direction by the position of the sun.”

  “Is that so?” Maggie challenged. “Then which way is west?”

  Gerard studied the sun, then looked back into the trees. He licked his finger and raised it into
the air. “Actually,” he said, “I remember now that I can only tell which direction is up.”

  “Well, that’s helpful. Why don’t we all just go up then?” said Maggie.

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” said Mr. Cheeseman, which pleased Gerard to no end. “If someone could climb to the top of one of these trees, perhaps they might be able to spot some sign of civilization.”

  “I’ll do it,” Gerard quickly volunteered. “I’m an excellent tree climber.”

  “I know you are,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “But these trees are a little out of your league.” Ethan was right. Most of the trees were at least a hundred feet tall and some as much as a hundred and fifty. “I’m sorry, Gerard, but I think you’re too small for this mission.”

  Gerard was convinced that being small was never a good idea.

  After much discussion, it was decided that Dizzy would be the one to climb the tree. Once grounded by a severe case of vertigo, Dizzy was a climbing machine again, thanks to earmuffs invented by Mr. Cheeseman as a means of restoring inner-ear balance.

  Dizzy rubbed his hands together and surveyed the area, looking for the tallest climbable tree. When he had settled on one, an enormous cottonwood, he took a running start across the lumpy ground and leaped into the air. Like an Olympic gymnast (or a spider monkey, your choice) Dizzy grabbed a branch with both hands and swung his feet up onto another, landing with precision and perfect balance.

  A small round of applause rang out from all but Gerard as Dizzy acknowledged the praise with the exaggerated bow of a born showman. He then began the long climb to the top as the others watched.

  “I hope he can get us out of here,” said Jough.

  Mr. Cheeseman agreed with a nod. “Still, even if he is able to see something in the distance, it would be almost impossible to find our way out of these woods without a compass,” he said, thinking of the one on the LVR’s control panel. “Jibby? I’ll take you up on that offer for tools now if you don’t mind.”

  Jibby twisted the Swiss Army knife in a counter-clockwise direction until it was free of its mount, then tossed it to Ethan. “The corkscrew is a little bent,” he said. “One too many bottles of rum, I suspect.”

  “Screwdriver should do the trick,” Ethan said before climbing up the side of the LVR by wedging himself between it and the sycamore tree.

  “Hey, todos. Mire esto,” said Juanita, standing at the front of the LVR. Though no one else but Jibby spoke a word of Spanish, it was obvious by her hand gestures that she was saying “Hey, everyone. Look at this.” When the others joined her, they were treated to a rather odd sight. Draped across the nose of the LVR was a thin rope, and attached to that rope, by way of clothespins, were two tie-dyed T-shirts; a pair of bell-bottom jeans; a red, white, and blue bandanna; and a pair of long white tube socks.

  “Those are some awfully strange-looking clothes,” said Aristotle, his woolly eyebrows scrunched together.

  “Aye,” agreed Sammy. “But what are they doing there?”

  “Based on pictures and movies I’ve seen, I’d say we picked them up on our way through the 1960s,” said Jough.

  Gerard reached up and pulled one of the socks from the clothesline. “What are you doing?” said Maggie. “You have no idea where that’s been.”

  “I know it’s been through the wash,” said Gerard, sliding the sock over his left hand. “Look, it’s my new sock puppet.” Gerard was a child of boundless imagination who could carry on a conversation with just about any inanimate object. He had once named the family toaster Ethyl and would routinely discuss with her exactly how he preferred his toast. (Lightish brown, for anyone interested.)

  “That’s not a sock puppet,” said Maggie. “It’s a sock. To be a puppet it at least has to have some sort of face.”

  Gerard reached into his mouth and stretched out the bubble gum until a small piece of it snapped off between his fingers, the remainder retreating back into his mouth. He quickly rolled the small bit into a marble-sized ball and ground it into the cotton sock until it stuck. He repeated the procedure twice more to create a second eye and a large pink nose. He then held up the sock as if to show off his handiwork. “There,” he said. “Now he has a face.”

  Maggie sized up the sock with its two misshapen bright pink eyes and blobbish pink nose. “He looks like a lab rat.”

  “He’s not a lab rat,” snapped Gerard. “He’s a sock puppet. And his name is … Roy. Rat-Face Roy.”

  Everyone greeted the newest member of the group with warm regards, making Rat-Face Roy feel right at home; everyone, that is, but Maggie, who folded her arms across her chest and angled her eyes upward.

  “Hey, speaking of names,” said Jough, “we should probably pick new ones for ourselves.”

  “Yes,” said Gerard excitedly. “I’ll go first.”

  The only upside to being on the run from dangerous criminals, government agents, and international superspies, all falling over themselves to get their hands on the LVR, was that each time over the past two years that Mr. Cheeseman and his family had moved to a new location, he insisted that the children completely change their identities. This was done for their own protection.

  “Are you sure?” said Maggie. “I mean, do you really think it’s necessary in this situation? After all, it’s not like we moved across the country. I doubt anyone will be after us in 1668.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jough. “You can never be too careful. I vote that we change our names to be on the safe side.”

  “I second it,” said Gerard.

  “I third it,” said Rat-Face Roy.

  Advice By Any Other name

  The great William Shakespeare said, “What’s in a name?” He also said, “Call me Billy one more time and I will stab you with this ink quill.”

  Unlike Jough, Maggie, and Gerard, most people will go through life without ever changing their names. It is far more common to have other people change your name for you. Back in my college days at good old Southwestern North Dakota State University, most everyone was given a nickname: “Lefty” Dufrain because he was left-handed; “Stretch” Tolliver because he was six-foot-four; and “Rusty” Malone because he had a metal plate in his head, and not a very good one I might add.

  My school chums called me Bertie, which displeased my parents to no end, as they had given much thought and consideration to naming me Cuthbert, which means “clever and famous” or, in the language of the Lakota tribe, “cannot dance with wolves because I am watching my friend’s purse.”

  When it comes to naming children, people look to many places for inspiration, including actual places. These days, names like Dakota, Montana, India, and Chad are all the rage. Of course, some places make better names than others, which is why you will meet very few people named West Virginia, Kennebunkport, or Swaziland.

  So when naming someone else, I advise you to take great care to bestow upon that person a moniker befitting his or her character, as I did with my two pet snails, Gooey and Squishy. And when it comes to naming yourself, I strongly advise that you be careful not to choose one that might alert evil villains to your true identity.

  Chapter 3

  Before Gerard could announce his new name to the world, Mr. Cheeseman emerged from the LVR with the freshly extracted dashboard compass in hand. “Got it,” he said, the autumn leaves crunching beneath his feet as he dropped to the ground. He handed Jibby his Swiss Army knife and Jibby expertly screwed it back on. “How’s Dizzy making out?”

  Like a slow, smooth elevator, all eyes moved up the giant cottonwood looking for Dizzy, who could be heard scrambling from branch to branch about three-quarters of the way up the tree. “Well, he hasn’t fallen yet,” said Jibby, leaning back against the LVR. “That’s a good sign.”

  “It sure is,” said Rat-Face Roy.

  Mr. Cheeseman gasped and recoiled at the first sight of Gerard’s new friend. “Ahh! Get that thing away from me,” he said, jumping behind his twelve-year-old daughter. This resulted in mu
ch chuckling from the group, especially from Juanita, who, for an otherwise quiet woman, had a very hearty laugh, accompanied by wheezing, snorting, and some very enthusiastic knee slapping.

  “Relax, Dad,” said Jough. “It’s just Gerard’s new sock puppet.”

  “Oh,” said Ethan, panting heavily and feeling rather foolish. “For a second there I thought it was a rat.” Though you would think, as a scientist, he would be used to working with rats, Mr. Cheeseman was deathly afraid of them and thus was happy to learn that the creature before him was merely an old sock with pink bubble-gum eyes.

  “So what’s your friend’s name, Gerard?” asked Mr. Cheeseman, trying to regain both his composure and his dignity.

  “His name’s Rat-Face Roy. But my name’s not Gerard anymore.”

  “It’s not?” said Mr. Cheeseman. “Did I miss something?”

  “We’ve decided it’s time to change our names,” said Jough.

  “Oh?” Mr. Cheeseman seemed somewhat surprised, even though the whole name-changing thing had been his idea to begin with. “So you really think it’s necessary this time, considering the circumstances?”

  “That’s what I said,” Maggie agreed. “But I was outvoted.”

  “Democracy in action,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “That’s what made this country great.”

  “Well,” said Jough, “if it really is 1668, America doesn’t exist as a country yet.”

  “True enough, Jough.”

  “Actually, my new name is Chip. Chip Krypton,” said Chip, who had previously gone by such names as Don Von St. John, Rory McJagger, Gary Indiana, and, of course, Jough Psmythe.

  “Chip Krypton,” Mr. Cheeseman repeated. “Has a nice ring to it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How about you, Maggie?” asked Mr. Cheeseman. “What should I call you from this moment forward?”

  “Well, I’ve narrowed it down to two but I think I’m going with Penelope Nickelton. You can call me Penny for short,” said Penny, who in the past had answered to various aliases including Shari Chablis, Brooke Babblestone, Calliope Plume, and most recently Magenta-Jean Jurgenson, or Maggie for short.