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

I think I knew from the moment we left the dock on the first day that we were going to succeed this time. My mother was wearing shorts and a sailor’s middy blouse, and she looked quite attractive, but Patti was wearing a bright red bathing suit that dipped to the dimples above her buttocks in the back, and she looked sensational.

We started our day early, chugging around the bay from clam boat to clam boat, selling coffee, doughnuts, rolls, hard-boiled eggs, and beer to clamdiggers. At noon, when pleasure boats began to crowd the bay, we cruised among them, purveying hot dogs, hamburgers, potato chips, pickles, and beer. We were always busy, and when evening came on and we found that we had farther to travel between boats, we didn’t push our luck. We headed for home in the golden light, glowing, counting the profits.

ONCE WE HAD MASTERED the common touch, the enterprise rose like a bubble on a warm breeze. Every morning we catered to the clammies, and every afternoon we catered to the vacationers. Little by little we expanded the menu, and we eventually offered the three best-selling brands of beer. Now and then some witty vacationer would ask for caviar or champagne or “one of those funny little sandwiches.” We always laughed.

For quite a while, it seemed that we could do no wrong, and the rest of the summer bid fair to add one success after another, but the future never unfolds perfectly smoothly, and even a bubble rising on a summer zephyr has its ups and downs.

Chapter 49

When You Dance (Doo-Wop a Wadda Wadda)

AFTER A MONTH OR SO of doing very well by giving Babbington’s boaters what they seemed most likely to want, my mother, perhaps suffering from some form of addiction, tried tinting potato chips a pale yellowish green. She didn’t give us any warning. She just started setting out little brown bags of something on the roof over the engine room one morning when we chugged onto the bay. She tore one of the bags open and poured the contents onto a tray. I had never before seen potato chips tinted pale yellowish green, which may be an example of the famous limitations of suburban life. I picked up one of the little bags and read the name that my mother had hand-printed on it.

“‘Ella’s Chartreuse Chips,’” I read.

“‘Sheeps,’” said my mother. “‘Ella’s Chartreuse Sheeps.’ With a French accent.”

Patti and I exchanged a look. Neither of us had the heart to suggest that chartreuse sheeps were a bad idea.

She tried throughout the day to interest people in Chartreuse Chips, holding her tray out to them when their boats were alongside, offering free samples. Reactions were varied. Some people took one look and refused to try them, others grimaced while taking a tiny bite, and still others pretended to like them, but they all voted with their wallets. They did not buy.

At the end of the day, when we were on our way home, my mother held her tray full of unsold Chartreuse Chips over the side, shrugged, grinned, said to Patti and me, “I guess I just had to give it one more try,” and let the chips fall to the bay, where they attracted a flock of herring gulls and were gone before we were out of sight.

“Ha!” she said, pointing toward the gulls. “Success!”

WE MADE THE MISTAKE, once, of going out on a morning when the bay was choppy. The clammies were out, so we tried to make our rounds and sell them some coffee and doughnuts, but the transactions were difficult under those turbulent circumstances, and a lot of coffee, doughnuts, and change ended up in the bay.

“Bit rambunctious today,” said one clammy when we pulled up.

“Yeah,” I said. “Bit rambunctious. What can I get you?”

He and his partner perused the menu that Patti presented on a chalkboard. This always took a while.

“Guess I’ll have the clamdigger’s breakfast,” he said at last.

“Me too,” said his partner.

“Egg-on-a-roll, twice, and two beers,” I called out to my mother.

She tossed the first beer at me. Arcinella pitched, and I missed it. It went into the bay. She tossed the second beer. Arcinella rolled. I went into the bay.

“Bit rambunctious today,” the clammy said again when he hauled me out.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Bit rambunctious.”

We returned to shore that evening wobbly and wretched, and from then on the crew of Ella’s Lunch Launch were strictly fair-weather sailors.

ON ANOTHER DAY, we were chugging happily along when, little by little, we became aware that we were being enveloped by fog. In a remarkably short time, we couldn’t see anything in any direction but whiteness. It was a delightful sensation, and it turned us into children, laughing and giggling and calling into the fog for any customers who might be out there.

“Hello-o-o out there,” called my mother.

“Where arrrrre you?” called Patti.

“I can’t seeee you,” called I.

“It’s so strange — and wonderful,” said my mother.

“It’s like being inside cotton candy,” said Patti.

“You know,” I said, because the idea had just occurred to me, “I do think that we are in some danger of being run down by a larger boat.”

“We don’t have a fog horn!” said my mother.

“My fault,” I said, feeling guilty. “I should have — ”

“We don’t need a fog horn!” said Patti. She turned the music up — way up.

The three of us danced on the deck in the fog, and when it lifted we found that we were alone on the bay. Not a boat in sight. No clam boats. No pleasure boats. The businesslike thing to do would have been to call it a day and go home, but we went on dancing.

(We danced to “When You Dance,” a song written by Andrew Jones and sung by the Turbans, a group from Philadelphia composed of Al Banks, Matthew Platt, Charles Williams, and Andrew “Chet” Jones, issued as a single