CHAPTER VIII

THE ESCAPED PARROT

As I say, old Caleb Obed and the Cap’n are pretty thick. What one knows the other knows. They’re that way. They jangle like a couple of silly kids in playing checkers. But in other ways they’re the closest of friends.

Now old Caleb got the idea in his head that we were neglecting his friend’s bird business. And he started jawing at us.

“I might ’a’ knowed,” says he, scowling at us, “that you b’ys wouldn’t tend to business. Here you be traipsin’ ’round the country with four wheelbarrows an’ the store locked up. When the Cap’n gits home I’m a-goin’ to tell him ’bout this.”

Scoop got mad.

“Go ahead,” says he. “We should worry what you tell him. If he doesn’t like the way we run the store he can stay home and run it himself.”

“I’m a-goin’ back to town,” says Old Caleb, pulling in his fishing line. “I hain’t a-goin’ to see my ol’ friend’s business go to pot. No, sir. I’ll jest run it myself till he gits home.”

“Help yourself,” says Scoop. “We don’t get anything out of it, anyway.... Come on, gang.”

“What are we going to do with the wheelbarrows?” says I.

The leader grinned.

“We might have a parade,” says he, “and wheel ’em into town.”

“Yah,” says I, “and have the Strickers hoot at us. Nothin’ doin’,” and I dumped my wheelbarrow into the weeds.

The other fellows followed my example. Then we set out for town.

Red and Peg, I noticed, had their heads together in more whispered secrets.

“What’s eating you guys?” says Scoop, watching the others.

“Ask Red,” says Peg.

“Ask Peg,” says Red.

The leader got huffy at the gigglers.

“Come on, Jerry,” says he, pulling me aside. “We don’t have to hang around with them if they don’t want us to.”

“What’s the idea of getting sore at them?” says I, when we were alone.

He gave me a hidden grin.

“I’m not sore,” says he. “I’m just letting on. Don’t you catch on, Jerry? They’re going to have a parrot fight.”

“Hot dog!” says I.

“It’ll be ‘dead dog’ for them,” says he, laughing, “if the Cap’n comes home and finds black parrot feathers scattered all over his house. For you know the old man’s temper.”

“There they go,” says I, pointing to the gigglers, who had hurried away from us. “They’re heading for the store.”

“We’ll get into the Cap’n’s attic,” says Scoop, “and watch them through the trapdoor in the sitting-room ceiling. That’ll be fun, for they won’t know we’re there. And when the show is over we’ll give them the horselaugh.”

The other two stopped in a candy store, so we managed to get ahead of them. At the bird store we went up a fire escape to the flat roof.

“The Cap’n doesn’t know it,” says Scoop, raising a scuttle, “but last week when he was away to the county fair I lost the front-door key and had to get into the store this way.”

The attic that we dropped into was stuffy and dusty. I got cobwebs in my teeth. I hate spiders. And I shivered in the thought of swallowing one of the nasty things.

Scoop raised the trapdoor in the sitting-room ceiling.

“Here we are,” says he.

The parrot heard us.

“Why does it keep calling for Ham?” says Scoop.

“That was the name of its master,” says I, thinking of the dead sailor.

“I know that,” says Scoop. “But now that the man is dead I should think the bird would forget about him.”

“I k-k-killed him!” came from the parrot in a shrill, screechy voice. “I k-k-killed him! B-b-blood! B-b-blood! Gu-gu-give me some b-b-blood!”

Scoop shook his head.

“If _we_ only knew what that parrot knows,” says he.

“What do you mean?”

“It has a secret, Jerry. This ‘blood’ talk isn’t mere chatter. There’s a meaning back of it.”

The parrot was still talking when Peg and Red appeared at the alley door.

“Nobody at home,” says Peg, coming into the room below us, “except Solomon Grundy and the parlor lamp.”

Red had his aunt’s parrot in a shoe box.

“My bird’s ready,” says he, strutting around, “whenever yours is.”

Peg heaved across the room to the hidden wall hole.

“Howdy, King Solomon,” says he, taking down the picture that hid the hole.

The parrot bristled in its cage.

“Gu-gu-git out, you dirty b-b-bums.”

The big one laughed.

“Hey!” says he. “Don’t you talk that way to me, you hunk of petrified ink, or I’ll bite your cupola off.”

“H-h-ham!” says the parrot, screechy-like. “R-r-rattle their skulls, H-h-ham. R-r-rattle their skulls.”

This brought the other parrot to life.

“Breakfast,” came a thin voice from the shoe box. “Polly wants breakfast.”

Peg laughed.

“Polly will want a casket pretty quick,” says he.

“Don’t kid yourself,” says Red, sleuthing the table edge for a wad of chewing gum that he had parked there earlier in the day.

“Your parrot sounds like a hunk of cake,” says Peg.

“Cake with rat poison in it,” says Red.

“Poor Polly!” says Peg. “You better take a last fond look at your bird, Red. For it’s heading into sudden death.”

“You can’t scare me. Bring on your old feather duster, you big bluffer. I’ll show _you_.”

“How are we going to work it?” says Peg, squinting at the bristling black parrot with a calculating eye.

“Search me,” says Red. “This is my first parrot fight.”

“We might put ’em in the Cap’n’s churn and crank it up.”

“Let’s put ’em in a big cage,” says Red. “Then we won’t get clawed.”

Peg skidded into the store and came back with a cage.

“I’ll put my bird in first,” says Red.

Old Solomon Grundy was boiling mad now. _He_ knew there was crooked work going on!

“Golly Ned!” says Peg, jumping back to save his fingers. “Did you see him slap his tin shears at me?”

Red purred.

“Talk to him,” says he. “Be gentle.”

The big one tried it again.

“Hold ’er, Newt,” says Red. “She’s a-rearin’.”

“I pretty nearly lost an elbow that time,” says Peg.

“Can’t we hold the cage doors together?” says Red. “Then we can make old Solomon get into the big cage. See?”

Peg shimmied around.

“I’ve got it,” says he. “Now, git a broom and poke around in the small cage.”

Red gave a swat with the broom, shoving Peg in the face.

“For the love of mud!” says the big one, spitting up broom straws. “What do you think you’re doing?--shooting pool?”

“The broom slipped,” says Red, trying to keep his face straight.

“My right arm’ll slip,” says Peg, “if you don’t back up. _Good_ night! You sure are dumb. Look where you’re shoving after this.”

“I did look,” says Red, “but you moved.”

They fooled around for several minutes, Peg with the cage and the other one with the broom. But let me tell you they didn’t put anything over on Solomon Grundy!

“Now!” says Peg, shoving the cages together.

Red jabbed with the broom. He jabbed so hard he knocked the cage out of Peg’s hands. Solomon Grundy was loose in the room now. And was there _action_! Boy, if I live to be a hundred and fifty years old I never expect to see anybody move any faster than those parrot fighters did. Around and around the room they went, ducking and dodging the furious fighting bird. Sliding for base, sort of, Red managed to get under the sofa. In the same time Peg got into the bedroom.

Here the alley door opened.

“Um ... I kin see Donald Meyers under the sofy,” says the newcomer in a cackling voice. “What you doin’ under thar, Donald? Be you hidin’ on the Cap’n?”

Before Red could answer there was a strangling scream.

“Murder!” says Scoop, dropping down through the trapdoor. “Come on, Jerry.”

Peg came running from the bedroom just as I landed kerflop! in the middle of the sitting-room floor.

“Who screamed?” says he.

“Old Caleb Obed,” says I.

Red crawled out of his hiding place. His eyes were as big as saucers.

“I saw him,” says he. “Solomon Grundy flew at him and he let out a screech and beat it.”

Scoop was in the alley now. We could see him crawling along on his hands and knees. He was trying to capture something with his cap.

“H-h-ham!” says a familiar rasping voice.

I gave a cry.

“It’s Solomon Grundy!”

Too quick for the leader, the stuttering parrot flopped its funeral-like wings and disappeared over the roof of Red’s aunt’s millinery store on the opposite side of the street.