01 - The Battle of the Lemon Fair : Mario is taken hostage
Story index at the bottom
By David
Wednesday, June 7th 2006 - 09:08:24 PM
The Battle of the Lemon Fair
(This story is based on memories of fifty years ago. I have vivid images of many scenes and events from my boyhood games, but my recollections are sometimes fragmentary and discontinuous. so I have filled in the gaps. The dialogue is an approximation of the things we said. Words don't stick in my mind as well as images or actions.)
Part one: Mario is taken hostage
My name is David. André, Mario and I were 13 years old that summer back in the 50's when we fought the first battle of the Lemon Fair. We had grown up together in the north end of town, in the low section between the tracks and the river where the factory was and where a dam backed up the river for a couple of miles. The houses were simple worker's homes and the families were of several ethnical extractions: lots of French Canadian, Irish, and Italian, with some German and Polish too. We were best friends who had been in school together from kindergarten, and had served as altar boys together at St. Michael's church for many years.
That day we pretended we were voyageurs as we paddled our canoe up the slow moving waters of the Lemon Fair above the dam, but instead of the buckskins of the "coureurs de bois" we wore our bathing suits and t-shirts. The name Lemon Fair sounds nice but doesn't mean much. One day my grandfather, who was more comfortable speaking French than English, said that it was really "limon faire" which means to make silt. That seemed reasonable, because after a heavy rain the waters would run brown with mud. But today we paddled through clear water in the morning sun past banks lined with riverine forests of silver maple and fox grapes and thick stands of tall ostrich fern.
We had built the canoe ourselves. It was a simple craft with a cedar wood frame covered with canvas, sealed with linseed oil, and painted green with exterior enamel. My grandfather, who had a small carpenter's shop, helped us with sawing, and some of the tricky parts, but we boys did most of the work. We begged and scavenge what materials we could, and paid for the rest by collecting deposit bottles and doing odd jobs. I don't think Rockefeller on his yacht could have been any happier or prouder than we were in the 14-foot craft we had built ourselves.
André was bow paddle, and he knelt Indian fashion as he stroked easily on his left. He was the tallest of us, and the most athletic, with blond hair and blue eyes. He wore a yellow t-shirt that he had gotten in Quebec when he was up visiting relatives. It had a picture of a moose on it, and the words "Québec - La Belle Province". He wore his official Boy Scout swimsuit, a snug fitting olive drab racing suit that was fuller than a modern Speedo.
Mario sat on the duckboards in the middle of the canoe with his back against a thwart enjoying the ride. He wasn't paddling, as we were in no hurry to get anywhere. He had a lean body and the dark hair, eyes, and skin of his Italian forebears. His grandparents still lived in Italy, and he had gone there with his parents for a month's visit right after school got out in June. He had a white t-shirt with him, but he had taken it off and it lay beside him in the canoe while he soaked up the sun. His skin tanned early in the season, and once it grew bronze, he seemed immune to sunburn.
He wore a blue bathing suit that he had gotten in Italy. I wouldn't be caught dead in the thing on a public beach, and neither would Mario here in the States, but he said everyone wore them on the beach in Italy. The suit had triangular sections in front and back that covered all the essentials very well, but it rode much lower on his waist than André's racer, and it quickly narrowed to thin straps on his hips. He preferred it when we went canoeing on the creek. He claimed that once you got used to the Italian, a set of American trunks felt clammy and restricting.
I acted as stern paddle, kneeling like André, and doing j-strokes on my right to keep us on course. My hair and eyes were brown, and my build was pretty average. I was wearing a red and white striped polo shirt because too much sun would burn me, and red bathing trunks that tied at the waist and went down close to my knees. Unlike André and Mario, my relatives were all in the States, but my ancestry was mainly French Canadian like André's. I had a little French that I had picked up from my grandfather (my grandmother was Irish, so it didn't get passed on) and I learned a lot of useful things from André, especially "les sacres" (the swear words).
As we cruised along, I saw something big and green sail across our bow from out of the woods close to our left, and splash into the water on our right. "What was that?" I asked André.
"A fern plant, I think."
As we drifted past, I saw that it as indeed an ostrich fern. Six long fronds attached to their heavy rootstock floated in the water. An ostrich fern pulled out of the soggy ground with a clump of wet dirt still clinging to its roots makes an effective missile that flies true and hits hard.
"Avast there," I heard someone shout. "Heave to when we fire a shot across your bow." A canoe glided out of a blind cove just ahead of us. It was a commercial Old Town, eighteen feet long, the kind we used to call a war canoe. Four boys paddled it. With a slicker hull and trimmer lines than our canvas craft, and driven by twice as many paddles, the canoe easily maneuvered to cut us off. I knew the boys well. Larry and Jim were both a year older than us, and Mark and Greg were our own ages. I also recognized the canoe as the one that Jim's folks had bought some years ago. The good times we had all had in that canoe were the inspiration for us three to build our own.
Soon after, a 10-foot skiff cruised out of the cove with a single boy in it. Undoubtedly he was the one who had lain in ambush and thrown the warning fern. The skiff had a shallow hull with an internal keel, built for maneuverability on a river. Steve rowed it, and it belonged to his father who used it for fishing and duck hunting. It was only meant to hold two grownups safely, but we had often managed to get half a dozen boys in it for a while before it swamped.
The war canoe pulled alongside our own, and the boys grabbed our gunwales.
I sensed that this was not a friendly meeting, but I tried to brave it. "Hi guys. Great day to be on the river, huh?"
"Better for us than you," Larry said. "Consider yourselves a prize of war. Hand over your booty and we'll let you go. Cross swords with me and ye'll go to Davy Jones: Some by the yardarm, by thunder, and some by the board, and all to feed the fishes."
I shook my head and suppressed a laugh. He had the pirate jargon but didn't seem to be using it the right way. Two or three years before, Disney had made "Treasure Island" into a movie with Robert Newton playing Long John Silver. Larry had gotten interested in pirates and even did a school project on them. He still had a lot of that junk rattling in his head.
I saw André raise his paddle as though he wanted to push the canoe away, or take a swipe at one of its occupants. "Du calme, André," I said in a low voice. "Ils ont trop nombreux."
"Hey! Cut the frog talk," Larry said. "We got you outnumbered, so surrender your booty."
"What booty?" I asked.
"Gold, jewels, doubloons!" he shouted.
"You're freaking crazy."
"Take it easy," he said with a laugh. You've got to go and get some things for us. Once you've paid tribute, then you can use our river." He took a folded paper out of his pocket and handed it to me.
"Huh? What gives you the right to make us do that?"
"We're stronger than you."
"That's not fair!"
"Of course not. We're pirates. Now fill that list. I'm getting hungry."
I opened the paper, half expecting to see a black spot. It looked like a page torn out of a small notebook, and I read this penciled list: Two cokes, one Pepsi, one root beer, one orange crush, twelve hot dogs and rolls, Two large bags potato chips, one plain, one vinegar, one large bag marshmallows, five devil dogs.
"This is going to cost money." I said.
"Tribute is supposed to be expensive. Deliver the booty, and you can use my river all you want."
I had no intention of paying any tribute, but I wanted to get away from these guys so I said, "I'll see what I can do."
"Aye, you do that, and step lively, me hearty,"
I felt like telling him he did a real crappy Long John Silver, but decided not to antagonize him. Playing his game, I answered "aye, aye, sir."
"Begging your pardon, cap'n," Mark said, "but what's going to stop them from just leaving and not coming back?"
"Good point. We'll have to take a hostage. Steve, come alongside their ship. Have you got any rope?"
"Yeah. There's a nylon bowline and this anchor rope." He held up a coil of white nylon that looked to be 3/8 of an inch thick, and quite long.
"Good. You'll have to tie our hostage up with it. Otherwise he'll just dive overboard and escape once we release their canoe." Larry looked at the three of us, and then pointed to Mario. "You look like you're just extra baggage, sitting there like that. Go aboard Steve's vessel as hostage."
Mario laughed at Larry. "I don't think so."
Larry looked sternly at Mario and drew a long bowie knife from a sheath at his belt. "By thunder, we could board your ship, but there's an easier way." He made a slashing motion. "Ye've got a weak hull, and one slash in that canvas will send you to the bottom."
Now even a major slash in our canvas canoe could be repaired, but it would leave an ugly scar. Also, if Larry slashed it here, we would be swamped over a mile from our landing. Mario understood this and looked at me questioningly. I knew that Mario didn't mind much being tied up, at least when it was for fun. But this was turning into something not so fun. Since it was he that stood to lose his freedom and not I, I told him "Your call, Mario."
Mario looked at the canoe he had worked so hard on and was so proud of, and he stared at the knife in Larry's hand that threatened it. I knew it would break Mario's heart to see our canoe get slashed, so I was not surprised when he said. "Okay. I'll be your stupid hostage, and you can tie me up."
He got up and started to gather up his clothes when Larry said, "quit stalling, Mario, go just as you are." So Mario stepped into the skiff in his bathing suit as Steve maneuvered alongside. Then Steve pulled away. With only two boys in it, the skiff rode stable. Mario turned to look at us at us and said, "Get back soon, guys."
"We will," I assured him. Then I said to Steve "be gentle with him, or by god you'll pay. I swear it."
Steve laughed a little uneasily. "Don't worry. I won't hurt him."
We watched as Mario knelt in the boat and held his hands behind his back while Steve tied his crossed wrists. I could see what Steve was doing. He was a boy scout like the rest of us, and he tied Mario's wrists with the diagonal lashing that is used to tie two crossed poles firmly. It was right out of the scout manual, and I doubted that Mario could get free. Next Steve fixed Mario's wrists firmly against his back with several turns of rope around his waist. Then he had Mario sit in the stern seat while he lashed his legs together above the knees with an official scout sheer lashing. When he bent down to tie Mario's ankles, I could not see what he did because the skiff's gunwale hid them, but I had no doubt he tied them together solidly with another sheer lashing.
With Mario now firmly bound and helpless, Larry ordered his men to release our canoe. "Make sure you come back," he said. "We can't keep Mario forever, but if you don't return with the tribute, he'll stay tied up until we have to let him go home for supper. That's going to be six hours. Think of poor Mario all tied up with ropes to a tree for six hours."
"You said you weren't going to hurt him."
"Oh, the ropes will be loose enough so they won't hurt. But it's going to be awful boring just standing there for six hours waiting and waiting for you to come with the tribute and free him."
"That's pretty mean," I said.
"And, of course, with no tribute, we'll attack you again the next time we catch you on our river."
"Okay, Okay" I said. "We'll be back as soon as we can."
When we were out of earshot, I whispered to André, "we'll bring them something tougher than hot dogs to chew on."
(Parts 2 and 3 to follow.)
David
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David's stories
- 01 - The Battle of the Lemon Fair : Mario is taken hostage (m+/m)
- 02 - The Battle of the Lemon Fair : The best laid plans of mice and men (m+/mm)
- 03 - The Battle of the Lemon Fair : Into the enemy camp (m+/m+)
- 04 - The Last of the Mohawks : Captured (m+/m)
- 05 - The Last of the Mohawks : The wind changes (m+/mm, m/m)
- 06 - The Last of the Mohawks : Traitor (m+/mmm)
- 07 - Pestered by Mario (m/m)
Index of all stories in the "Archive for Everyone" section