Inflating a Dog (The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy) by Eric Kraft (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

time to bail as many boats as I do. With each boat that I bail, I regain a little time, and if I’m very quick about it I even have a small surplus, so that some nights, when I’ve been very efficient, I actually have time to kill before the dawn comes.”

    “And how do you do that?”

    “I just sit on the bulkhead and watch the Bolotomy flow by.”

    “So, after you’ve inflated all those boats —”

    “Not all of them, Egbert. I don’t inflate every boat in Babbington. Some of them I let go.”

    “Those are the ones that sink?”

    “That’s right.”

    “And do you choose which ones to bail — I mean inflate — and which ones to let go?”

    “I do. Yes.”

    “How do you make that decision?”

    “Well, some of the boats that I do not inflate belong to people who are not worthy of owning boats that float.”

    “And how do you determine that?”

    “I gather information in my role as Night Walker of Babbington.”

    “I see. So your two roles are complementary.”

    “Yes, to a degree, but only to a degree, and only in one direction. That is to say, the Night Bailer of Babbington makes use of information gathered by the Night Walker of Babbington, but I haven’t yet noticed that the Night Walker makes use of any of the efforts of the Night Bailer.”

    “So the Night Walker doesn’t own a boat?”

    “Heh-heh-heh.”

    With another laconic chuckle, the legendary and mysterious Night Bailer (or was it the Night Walker?) turned and sauntered with cool nonchalance into the shadows, where he (they?) melded with the night and disappeared from sight.

In that manner I made the time pass and I got the job done, but I can’t say that I enjoyed it, and I doubted that I could keep it up. The captain was leaving more and more water in the bilge each night, and I wasn’t succeeding in reversing time. I was spending longer and longer as the Night Bailer, which was making me seem lazy and sluggish at my day job, where I was assistant to my mother and Patti in making Arcinella look good on the surface.

I could see that when the captain eventually decided to abandon the work — to abandon Arcinella, my mother, Patti, and me — when the night came, as I was sure it would, when I found that he had not bailed Arcinella at all, I wouldn’t be able to keep her afloat on my own.

Arcinella would sink. That would be bad. Worse, her sinking would seem to be my fault. I had to keep her floating to keep my mother’s hopes and dreams afloat, and I had to keep her floating so that I wouldn’t look like a fool. How? The Night Bailer needed help.

Chapter 32

In Which I Swallow My Pride

I KNEW from observing Captain Mac that he had a device that pumped water from the bilge in a steady stream. I never allowed myself to get close enough to see just what this device was, but I assumed that it must be a hand pump. I assumed this because I knew that hand pumps existed that were specifically designed for evacuating water from bilges. My grandfather had a hand pump, and I had seen him use it to empty the bilge of the Rambunctious. I hasten to say that the Rambunctious did not take on much water, and that the pumping of the bilge was a brief chore before a pleasant day on the bay, less brief if there had been rain. I had even used my grandfather’s bilge pump myself. Since this was all I knew about bilge pumps, I jumped to the conclusion that it was all there was to know about bilge pumps, that the hand pump was all there was in the way of bilge-evacuation devices of any sort beyond bailing.

Where could I get a bilge pump? I didn’t want to go to my grandfather and ask to use his, because I would have had to admit to my having been foolish not to consult him before buying Arcinella, and I would have had to endure his compassionate understanding and forgiveness. The whole thing would have made me miserable.

I had another place to turn for help. My best friend, Rodney “Raskolnikov” Lodkochnikov, came from a family with a long history of clamming, boat ownership, and intimate acquaintance with boats not long for the world on the surface. The Lodkochnikovs lived a short way from where Arcinella was berthed, in a house that stood on pilings over the edge of the estuarial stretch of the river.

When Raskol opened the door and found me standing in front of him, he folded his arms in a manner at once challenging and dismissive, and leaned back against the doorframe frowning. I told him my story. He smirked and snorted. A smirk is not the sort of response one hopes that a problem will elicit from a friend. Neither is a snort.

“Dad!” he called out after letting an awkward moment pass. “Peter’s here.”

“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Lodkochnikov from the depths of the dank, dark Lodkochnikov house. I heard the creaking of his easy chair, and in a moment he came to the door and stood beside his son. He folded his arms, displaying the original model of challenging and dismissive Lodkochnikov arm-folding, of which Raskol’s earlier example had represented the latest version. “So you’ve come to talk to us,” he said, smirking as Raskol had.

“Yeah,” I said. I frowned. I looked chagrined. I shrugged. I hung my head. In general, I tried to look like a whipped dog.

“Mother!” called Mr. Lodkochnikov. “Peter’s come to talk to us!”

Mrs. Lodkochnikov appeared.

“Big Ernie! Little Ernie! Ariane!” she called into the gloom. “Peter’s here to talk to us!”

The two Ernies and their delectable sister appeared and stood behind their stocky parents. It would have made a good family portrait, with all of them folding their