No. 25. Jasper Dash Down the Volga with Nary a Paddle
AVAILABLE AT FINE STORES NEAR YOU!*
And hurled himself bodily into them.
Ray came flying into the room, knocking down several goons. Jasper, reacting as quick as lightning, knocked a goon over the head with the butt of his harpoon gun while, with the other hand, he gripped another goon under his arm in a headlock.
Now if you’ll pause for a moment and consider, you’ll remember that Jasper was still in his bubble. This meant that the man in the headlock had bubble-bag over his head and couldn’t breathe. So, he started kicking his legs and arms.
Larry advanced menacingly toward them.
Then there was a big fight. Most of the goons were knocked out or in some kind of disarray.
That sounds sloppy. But please. Take my word for it; they were out of the picture, okay? I could describe the whole tedious fight. I could work it out numerically and mathematically, but goons—and hand-to-hand combat with goons; anything to do with goons—it all really bores me to the point of weeping. Their equipment, their martial arts training, their love of dried flowers, their fondness for sports bars... I am not goon friendly. Bing, bang, biff. Clocked on the jaw; hip check; knee to the nose; leap out of the way so two of them run into each other; swing; pow; knuckle sandwich. Let’s just assume that they’re all knocked out.
Larry advanced menacingly toward Ray and Jasper.
Ray hurled himself again, this time right at Larry.
Larry raised one rubbery blue fist and knocked him backward. Ray teetered and slumped, still tied up like a beach umbrella in February.
It was up to Jasper.
Jasper raised his harpoon gun. Larry spun and kicked. His heel whopped the edge of the bubble, knocked the harpoon gun askew just as the harpoon was fired. The harpoon shot through the bubble and clanged uselessly against the ceiling.
Larry laughed—for about a nanosecond. And then he saw what was happening:
Jasper’s pierced bubble was deflating with Jasper in it—shooting around the room like a punctured balloon—making a disastrous sputtering noise as Jasper ricocheted off the walls— banged into light fixtures—slammed into computer panels.
Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, was interfering with the whale mind-control, using only his elbows, face, and midriff.
Now that’s a hero for you.
And in Smogascoggin Bay, the radio tower stopped sending out its wicked signals.
And in Decentville, the whales paused and listened to the whale song Lily played on the phonographs.
They heard their brethren from the sea. Their minds suddenly felt clearer.
From the phonographs came the lonely cries of whales on ancient voyages, barnacled with age. They heard songs that told of warmer climes, where the sun dapples your back when you sound with your calf in the afternoons; tales of the mysterious North, where ice floes like castles drop their battlements into the chilly sea. They heard of their race’s heroes, and of their travels to frigid deeps. They heard of the slumberous beauty of tides, the seductive murmur of kelp.
And the whales wanted to go home.
Sheepishly they looked at one another.
Without mind-control they couldn’t remember what they were doing on land at all.
So they started to walk back to the shore, trying to pretend that nothing had happened.
In the town they left behind, there was cheering.
* No longer available on the shelves at fine stores near you. Available now exclusively and by special arrangement on the shelves of old vacation rental cottages, where you can often find Jasper Dash books in the living room, as well as old National Geographics, Chinese checkers, half colored-in Herbie the Love Bug activity books from 1978, used up Mad Libs, and dog-eared, boring novels for adults by Leon Uris, Colleen McCullough, and James Michener, I mean big, thick books with names like Space and Novel, you know what I mean, right on the shelf under the dead mounted alligator that Sheryl, your uncle Georgie’s new girlfriend, has to keep turning toward the wall because it gives her the creeps. And all the books are dry and yellow from the sun, and all of them have wrinkly pages from the salt water, and when you flip through them, sand falls out as if it was index cards marking the place of former summers; and your little brother Dooky finds some half-melted army men on the shelf and goes out to the sandpit to play with them, which is good, because he was completely getting on your nerves in the car, what with his dumb elephant joke that he told about twenty thousand times; but after him spending like an hour out there, you’ll be ready to talk to him again, especially if the two of you can convince your mom to let you go out to dinner at this place that serves spicy fries. And the really good thing about Uncle Georgie always having new girlfriends is that the new girlfriends are always really, really nice to you because they’re trying to impress Uncle Georgie, before they realize that he’s nice but kind of a wiener and has a big gambling problem; and you think Sheryl is probably the best girlfriend that he’s had in a long time, because at least she can do card tricks, so on the beach, you sit next to her on your blanket, and you’re reading the adventures of Jasper Dash and you’re wondering who originally read them, years ago, who were the faceless kids, now grandmas or now dead, who lay like you on the beach and read them back when your parents weren’t even born yet, and their names are written in pencil on the first page—“This book belongs to Caroline Botts”; “Hank Botts read it, too”— but the people who own the cottage you’re renting are called Martelli. Your older sister Gina refused to put on suntan lotion for some reason, so now her skin is all purple and green, and a lot of the local boys have come over to admire it, and they’re going, “Whoa! Cool!” and she smiles at them, with a kind of crackling sound as the skin on her face moves. And your mom and Uncle Georgie are playing Frisbee on the beach, calling to each other, and Sheryl is lying there next to you, studying for some graduate school exam, wearing big sunglasses; and Gina has just gotten sand in her sandwich and is complaining about it to everyone, because she says it clings to the swiss cheese, like clings, you know? and everyone is going, “Just brush it off,” and she says she can’t, because her hands are sandy, and Dooky says, “What are you complaining about? Sand... Sand-wich. Sand... Sand-wich,” which actually is pretty funny, because it makes Gina even angrier, and she goes, “Mom! Tell him to stop being a jerk!” And the top of your head gets warm as you read on about Jasper’s adventures in the cloud caves, and you don’t even notice the green flies buzzing around you anymore, and you’ve spent nights having clambakes down by the ocean, and you had a lobster for the first time, and Gina was allergic, and she got hives and piles, so she looked like she was leopard skin, a leopard-skin Gina, and Sheryl was really good with her and helped her apply ointment, and Dooky kept going, “Oinkment, more like it”; and you brush flies away from your hair, and your uncle, who is sitting next to you, trying to hitch a flying kite to his leg, sees you, and somehow overcome, your uncle Georgie smiles— and he says to you, “I hope you will always feel this kind of joy”; and motorboats go by out in the salt marsh, and they startle egrets so they fly up toward the empty, cloudless sky.
Larry watched the screens in despair. “My army... my army!”
Jasper picked himself up from the floor, struggling a bit with the deflated Oxysphere around him. “I’m afraid they’re gone, sir. Gone back to the sea, where they belong.”
One after another, the whales tumbled into the water, their stilts lying desolate, like hydraulic pickup sticks, on the shore.
“It’s all ruined!” Larry growled.
By this point Ray had freed himself from the ropes and picked up one of the guns from the floor. Larry strode right past him, knocking his hand aside. Larry turned at the door. He growled, “I’m going to swim away, through my yacht’s screen door. But mark my word, Boy Technonaut—I’ll be back. You’ll see me again! Someday I’ll be back, and more fearsome than ever!”
Jasper looked at him, tight lipped.
“No, sir, I’m afraid not.” He shook his head solemnly.
“No?”
“No,” Jasper said, very gently and consolingly. “In three years I’ll run into you, and you’ll be working full-time at an industrial carpet-cleaning service.”
Larry’s head drooped. He said sadly, “The one on Ethan Boulevard?”
“No,” said Jasper, “a little farther south, on the corner of Twelfth and Harrison. You’ll be writing your memoirs at night.”
Larry nodded. “They’ll be too long and boring for publication, won’t they?”
Jasper felt he shouldn’t answer this. He put his hand, still webbed with bubble, on Larry’s shoulder. “You gave it your best go, sir. That’s all any of us can do.”
“Thank you,” said Larry. “I’ll see you some other time.”
“Remember, evil never pays.”
“Okay,” said Larry. “Thanks for... you know, the tip and all.” He shuffled off to an unforgiving future.
Meanwhile, Jasper Dash gasped for breath, trying to find the way out of his Marvelous Non-Osmotic Hypo-Allergenic Oxysphere.
A week later a very triumphant little party was gathered in the Aero-Bistro, floating over the sea. Of course, Lily, Jasper, and Katie were there. They were joined by their parents and the governor of the state, who was congratulating Lily on her brilliant scheme to foil Larry’s invasion.
“Lily, it’s quite a feat. You really have shown the people of this state what one girl can do,” the governor said. “Just one girl, some androids, a flying restaurant, twenty vintage Victrola phonograph players, a small submarine, and a boy in a plastic bubble.”
Katie said, “She’s the one who first noticed that there was something fishy about the Abandoned Warehouse.”
Jasper said, “And she’s the one who figured out what Larry’s plan was.”
Katie said, “And she’s the one who figured out how we could remind the whales of what they were missing underwater. She figured it out by listening to her grandmother.”
The governor nodded. “I hate to think what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in, Lily. If those whales had made it to the state capital ... I see an awful picture in my head: whales in the state legislature, wearing white wigs ... making lots of laws .. . where schoolkids had to eat plankton ... It makes me proud to be a non-whale elected official of this great state.” He smiled for the cameras.
Several of Katie’s writers from Simon & Schuster were at the next table. “Lily,” said one, “when you first saw Barry the fish-man, did your eyes ‘stick out’ in horror?”
The second writer lit a cigarette. “When you thought of your plan, I assume you said, ‘It’s so crazy... it just might work.’ I’m writing that down:... so crazy ...it.. .just... might...”
“Lily, do you have any superpowers you haven’t told us about?”
“Here. Bend my keys with your mind.”
Lily took a step backward.
“Do you ever wear a cape and a bodysuit?”
“A crash helmet?”
“You really need a pet rat named Nimrod. He’s a scoundrel, but he’ll worm his way into your heart.”
“Be quiet!” yelled Katie.
The three men stopped their scribbling and typing.
“All this attention is frazzling her,” said Katie.
Lily looked at her own knees.
For a second, the three writers looked ashamed.
Then one of them said, “Mr. Dash, when you fought off the killer bees, did you—”
Katie grabbed her friends’ arms and pointed.
She, Lily, and Jasper pulled away from all the people who wanted to hear their story, and they stepped over to the railing to watch the sun set over the sea. Around them the potted ferns waved and the seagulls cried. The clouds turned a rich, rumbling kind of red as the sun disappeared. The sky stretched peach above their heads. The wind blew at them.
Katie said, “Well, Lily—are you proud?”
Lily didn’t say anything. She just smiled and nodded.
Jasper looked at her. He said shyly, “Why-Lily—with your hair blown back like that— you’re beautiful.”
Lily quickly covered her eyes with her bangs.
Katie shook her head. “Walking whales,” she said. “Is there a single weird thing that doesn’t happen to us?”
“Could have been worse, fellows,” said Jasper. “It could have been evil, flying kelp. Or giant man-eating sea anemones.”
Katie shrugged. “With fiends like these, who needs anemones?”
She grinned and spread her hands.
“Katie,” said Jasper, “we could laugh, but that would be like lying to a friend.”
He turned to look at the clouds. Katie punched him lightly on the arm. Jasper just whistled a tune and kept looking at the clouds. Katie leaned her elbows on the railing next to him. Jasper kicked Katie in the shin, in a polite, gentlemanly kind of way. Katie, admiring the way the water reflected the light, put her pinkie in Jasper’s ear. Jasper took his elbow and— “Break it up,” said Lily, “or I’m throwing my Jell-O at both of you.”
Along the shore, the forest and the gorge turned red with sunset. For a long time, they stood by the railing and talked about things that mattered to them. There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don’t care where you’re going, and you don’t care where you’ve come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands. That’s how it felt to Katie, Jasper, and Lily: Though the night was falling, it was as if they could still feel the sun on their faces, and they stood together talking until the sky turned to black, the party balloons sagged, and the androids came to take them home.
Questions for Further Study
We hope that you have enjoyed Whales on Stilts! Many readers may be coming across this book for the first time in a classroom setting or in a structured reading group; for them we have endeavored to provide questions to aid in a thoughtful and insightful conversation about the themes, characters, and real-world story that the author, M. T. Anderson, has woven into the rich tapestry that is this book. The editors at Simon & Schuster have employed child-learning specialist Ann Mowbray Dixon-Clarke to come up with a series of talking-points that will enrich, enliven, and enlighten.
When everyone in your group is seated comfortably, the designated moderator should begin by asking the following questions:
1. Who chose this book?
2. Can I hit him/her in the stomach?
3. Which character is your favorite character?
4. Out of all the page numbers in the book, which one is your favorite? Discuss.
5. What’s that out the window?
6. If you could legally drive any whale at all, would you drive a baleen whale (Suborder Mysticeti) or a toothed whale (Suborder Odontoceti)? (Please show your work.)
7. In the scene with the giant starfish, who should have picked up the powdered sugar?
a. Katie
b. Jasper
c. Whoever spilled it, thank you very much
d. Nimrod, the debonair pet rat. What antics!
8. Which whale book with a character named Lily and another one named Jasper is your favorite?
9. Oh, really?
10. Lily notices many strange things around the streets of Pelt. What strange things do you notice around your town?
11. Should you report something like that to the police?
12. Jasper Dash owns a pair of electric pants. If you could electrify any article of your best friend’s clothing, which would it be, and how many volts?
13. What do you think the theme of this work is? Please hum it in its entirety.
14. When you are reading this book and you begin to weep, is it because of:
a. the plight of Pelt
b. the terror of whales
c. too many fictional helmets
d. you are reading this book
e. Ann Mowbray
Dixon-Clarke
15. Anchovies: Why?
16. In one scene, Jasper Dash wears a futuristic photocopier-repair outfit. If you were walking down the street and one of your friends came up in a futuristic outfit, for example some futuristic shorts or maybe a futuristic swim cap—on a bright, sunny day, let’s say, and the swim cap was green and sparkly, and this friend comes up, and you haven’t seen her for three days because you’ve had a lot of work to do around the yard, and you’ve been burying your head in The Chronicles of Chowder #7: The Saw That Cut Time, and haven’t come to the phone ever when your friend called, and now you see that your friend is wearing this outfit, and across the street there are three guys who you know a little bit from 4-H, would ... um ... I forget the question. Could I borrow some gum?
17. Has anyone else noticed that Larry is kind of adorable?
by Ann Mow bray Dixon-Clarke
1. How are Katie, Jasper, and Lily different? Why do you think they are friends? Do you have any friends who are very different from you? What are they like? Why don’t you think that Ann Mowbray Dixon-Clarke has any friends? She bought a big grill for her backyard, hoping that people would come to cook their ribs. She has that great dress with the twisty things on the arms. Do you think she’s different? Is she distinctively different, i.e., with a certain flair?
2. Why do the whales decide to go home? What do they miss about their home? If you are in a classroom or a reading group, do you wish you were at home right now? Do you wish you were at Ann Mowbray Dixon-Clarke’s home, where there are ribs a-plenty? Maybe you could bring your class and some coleslaw.
3. Larry is a bad person in most of this book. Do you think he could become a good person? What would make the difference in Larry’s life? Maybe he needs the love and attention of a very special lady, who can help him choose his suits and grain sacks, someone who can spray his flukes, someone who could help him channel those destructive energies into the building of birdhouses and the cooking of ribs in her darling backyard. Who might that person be? Have you read about anyone recently who might be the perfect person for a handsome, rubbery, concealed overachiever like Larry?