CHAPTER IX

VOODOOISM

Red and Peg were in a pickle. There was no doubt about that. Their parrot fight having ended in the escape of the black parrot--the mystery parrot, as we now called it--they knew that the Cap’n would go for them when he found out what they had done.

Scoop and I hadn’t been asked in on the others’ fun. In fact the parrot fighters had acted kind of smart with us. So now we paid them back by telling them that the black parrot’s escape was their funeral and not ours.

Still, we wouldn’t go back on them, we said, having fun with them in their predicament. If they ended up in the town jail we would call on them, brotherly-like, and keep them in peanuts and chewing gum.

Wanting to save his hide, Red said he guessed he would hike into the country and visit his relatives for a spell.

“My Uncle Charley keeps cows,” says he, “and I can help him milk them. So he’ll be glad to have me around.”

Scoop hooted.

“_You_ milk a cow!” says he. “You’ll be telling us next that you know how to husk pumpkins.”

“If a cow stepped on you,” says I to the guilty one, “it would be worse than going to jail.”

“Stop talking about jail,” says he, shivering. “You give me the jimjams.”

Scoop waggled serious-like.

“I wonder if it’s true,” says he, “that Bill Hadley feeds his prisoners on bread and water.”

“Absolutely,” says I.

“I can’t swallow it, though,” says Scoop, “that Bill really mixes the bread and water in the cat’s dish.”

“I’ve seen the dish,” says I.

This kind of crazy talk didn’t scare Peg like it did poor Red. But just the same old hefty was worried in the thought of what he had done. He realized that he was in a serious predicament.

Then Scoop put his wits to work in the others’ behalf. The scheme that he suggested was a darb, all right. But Red held off.

“Gosh!” says he, more worried than ever. “What’ll my aunt say?”

“She won’t know anything about it,” says Scoop. “For she’s in Chicago, you say.”

“But why use _my_ parrot?” says Red. “Why don’t you use one of the store parrots?”

“They aren’t big enough,” says Scoop. “Yours is the only one in the store Solomon Grundy’s size.”

Red shrugged.

“All right,” says he, giving in. “I’ll take a chance. But, boy, I can see my finish if I get caught. You don’t know my aunt! She’s a rip-snorter, let me tell you.”

It was the leader’s scheme to blacken Red’s green parrot with soot and put it in the escaped parrot’s cage. That would give us a chance to capture the missing parrot without having an empty cage in the wall hole to give us away. Later on we would switch the real black parrot for the sooted parrot. The Cap’n never would be the wiser. He wouldn’t know that his black parrot had been out of the house. Thus his temper would be saved and our two chums would escape trouble.

I was given the job of putting the sitting room in order. And in returning the Cap’n’s dead brother’s picture to its wall hook I noticed something about the enlargement that had escaped me in the other times that I had handled the picture.

In the tattooing on the dead sailor’s bare chest was a black parrot. It was the only thing pricked into the skin in black ink. All around it were colored designs--anchors and flowers and moons and things like that.

While I stood there staring at the unusual picture, my thoughts bobbing around in my head, Scoop yipped to me to come into the kitchen and see the fun.

I found him rubbing soot from the stove into Red’s parrot’s green feathers.

“Solomon Grundy, Jr.,” says he, laughing.

The parrot eyed us reproachful-like in its smudgy disgrace.

“Breakfast,” it whimpered. “Polly wants breakfast.”

“What’ll you have for breakfast this morning?” says Peg, in fun. “Some fried fishhooks or some boiled shoe buttons?”

“Breakfast,” says the parrot again. “Polly wants breakfast.”

I drew the leader into the sitting room.

“I’ve made a discovery,” says I.

“So did Christopher Columbus,” says he, grinning.

“Lookit!” says I, taking him up to the dead sailor’s picture.

“A black parrot!” says he, following my finger.

“I bet you there’s a connection between this picture and the real parrot,” says I. “For this man owned the mystery parrot. He was a sailor. And you know how many secrets a sailor has.”

“Maybe he was a pirate,” says Scoop, letting his imagination jump along. “The pirate ship was called the _Black Parrot_. See? And all the pirates had this black-parrot symbol tattooed on them.”

“And the real black parrot,” says I, “was the ship mascot. Just like the cook’s parrot in _Treasure Island_.”

The leader laughed.

“Jerry,” says he, “we’re a crazy pair. We’ve got too much imagination.”

“Just the same,” says I, hanging on, “I bet you there _is_ a secret to the tattooed parrot. You wait and see.”

We had planned to turn the store over to old Caleb when he came around. That would give us a chance to go parrot hunting. But to our surprise the old man didn’t come back.

So we put Peg in charge of the store. Then the rest of us started out, each one taking a different course. I went to the left into Zulutown. But nowhere on the house roofs or in the trees did I catch sight of the escaped black bird.

Hoping that one of my chums had been more successful than me, I started back, still keeping a sharp lookout for the lost parrot. Pretty soon I met Red limping down the street. He looked like the last rose of summer.

“Nothin’ doin’,” says he wearily.

I was kind of grouchy.

“All we’ve done this week,” says I, “is search for lost parrots. First it was your aunt’s parrot and now it’s the Cap’n’s parrot. I suppose it’ll be somebody else’s parrot to-morrow.”

The other one laughed.

“Poppy Ott ought to be here. For he’s a better parrot hunter than us.”

“I haven’t seen Poppy since noon,” says I.

“I met him down town right after dinner,” says Red. “He was making the rounds of the stores for a job. But he hadn’t landed anything.”

“His pa’s got a job,” says I. “He’s going to do night watching in Dad’s brickyard.”

Red waggled.

“I like that kid,” says he, thinking of our new chum. “I hope he stays here.”

Coming to the store, we heard the Cap’n’s voice. But he wasn’t raving at Scoop and Peg. So we knew he hadn’t found out about the soot trick.

“Howdy, b’ys,” says he, when we joined him in the sitting room. “Awful hot afternoon, hain’t it? I purty nearly melted rowin’ home. Um.... I’ve learnt a lesson, I have. The next time I go fishin’ you won’t ketch me goin’ to sleep in my boat.”

Suddenly a wilted voice came out of the wall hole.

“Breakfast,” says Red’s parrot, whimpering-like. “Polly wants breakfast.”

The Cap’n gave us a quick searching look.

“Um.... You b’ys kin go home now if you want to,” says he, trying to get rid of us. “I won’t be a-needin’ you any more to-day.”

“Breakfast,” says the parrot again. “Polly wants breakfast.”

I remembered then that this “breakfast” talk was about the only thing that Red’s parrot could say.

Peg got my ear.

“Say, Jerry,” says he, “have you got your ventrilo handy?”

“Sure thing,” says I, feeling in my pockets.

“Then you better crank it up.”

“What do you want me to do,” says I, “make a sound like a gold fish?”

“That blamed parrot of Red’s can’t stutter. We never thought of that. So you’ve got to stutter for it. See?”

Maybe you know what a ventrilo is. It’s a little tin jigger that you put in your mouth to throw your voice. Like in ventriloquism. I paid ten cents for mine. The day I got it I took it to school to fool the teacher. I thought it would be fun to throw my voice into the wastepaper basket. But I didn’t know how to work it that day. I hadn’t practiced. And instead of having fun with the teacher she spotted me right off and sent me up to the principal.

But I learned how to work the ventrilo afterwards. So I was ready now to do some voice throwing at Peg’s orders.

“H-h-ham!” says I, trying as best I could to make my voice sound like the black parrot’s. “H-h-ham! Rattle their skulls, H-h-ham. Rattle their skulls.”

The Cap’n was on needles and pins.

“You b’ys better clear out,” says he.

Scoop laughed.

“What’s the matter, Cap’n? Are you afraid we’ll find out about your black parrot?”

The old man’s jaw fell.

“Heh?” says he, staring.

“We know you’ve got a black parrot over there behind your brother’s picture,” says Scoop. “So you needn’t try to cover up on us. We know it was your brother’s parrot, too; and we know that he paid you two thousand dollars for taking care of it.”

“I swan!” says the fidgeting old man, sort of gasping in his surprise. “What all _don’t_ you b’ys know?”

“H-h-ham!” says I again. “H-h-ham! Bring me some h-h-ham and eggs and a b-b-bucket of b-b-blood.”

“Why don’t you give your bird some fresh air?” says Scoop. “_Good_ night! It’ll suffocate in that hot hole. Have a heart, Cap’n.”

The old man was fearfully worked up.

“You b’ys keep ’way from that that pesky par’ot,” says he in a panting voice. “Don’t you go near it to let it git a crack at you. Cats an’ codfish--_no_! Why, if you knowed what I know ’bout that thar devilish par’ot you wouldn’t come in the house even. No, you wouldn’t! _Me_--I keep out of its reach, let me tell you. A feller, saiz I, is got only one life to live, an’ I hain’t a-goin’ to run no chance of havin’ my life cut short by no voodoo par’ot.”

Scoop was dancing in excitement now.

“Voodoo parrot!” says he. “What do you mean by that, Cap’n? Tell us.”

“B’ys,” says the old man, more composed now, “that thar par’ot is a’ awful worry on my mind. Yes, ’tis. Sometimes I wish that my fool brother haid kep’ his devilish par’ot an’ his money, too. Fur every minute that it’s in the house thar’s a risk to me an’ to anybody who might come in. That’s why I’m keepin’ the bird hid. I never told you b’ys ’bout it, fur I didn’t want you nor nobody else ’round here to know that it was here.”

“Is ‘voodoo’ a disease?” says Scoop.

At this question the old man then told us that voodooism was a sort of sorcery practiced by the natives of Haiti. On one of his trips to the island the tattooed sailor had learned about a strange “voodoo” parrot in a native temple. The natives called it the “death parrot” because it was black. They were afraid of its bite. It could kill people, they said. It was a “voodooer.” The tattooed sailor and another man named Bige Morgan got up the scheme of swiping the black parrot in fun. And one night they stained their bodies to look like natives and got into the temple. Pretty soon the natives all over the island knew that the voodoo parrot had been stolen. They were crazy. They found out about the two sailors. And to save their lives the sailors put to sea on a raft. The wind blew them into the ocean. Two or three days later they landed on a coral island. Here Bige Morgan died suddenly.

“When I first heerd the story,” says the Cap’n, “I told Ham that it warn’t no par’ot bite that killed Bige. Nope. He was p’isoned from somethin’ he eat. Or mebbe it was a snake bite. But Ham allus was a superstitious cuss. _He_ believed in spirits. Why, if I’ve heerd him tell it once I’ve heerd him tell it a hundred times how _he_ was a-goin’ to come back when he was daid an’ talk to me. So, with them idears in his head, I never could quite git him to believe that they was no foundation to the voodoo story. An’ to that p’int, b’ys, I calc’late that it warn’t no good thing fur me to be talkin’ ’bout it so much to him. Fur it’s a fact I kind of got a halfway superstitious fear of the blamed par’ot myself. Ham wouldn’t kill it. He was skeered to kill it--skeered, I mean, that it would bring him bad luck. When he was rescued from the island he took the par’ot with him. An’ he haid it fur years an’ years before he died. He kep’ it shet up whar it coldn’t git a whack at nobody with its bill. Since I brought the par’ot home I’ve kep’ it shet up, too. That was the safest plan. An’, as I say, when I feed it I don’t git clost up to it. Fur it’s a fact, b’ys, I don’t _know_ that it hain’t a voodooer. I kain’t hardly swallow the story. But on the other hand I kain’t prove that they is no truth in the story without me tryin’ the bird out on somebody; an’, of course, I won’t never do _that_. Great guns--_no_! So you kin see why I don’t want you fellers to git near it. Jest leave it alone. Prob’ly nothin’ would happen if it did take a nip at you. Still, as I say, I hain’t sure. It’s better, saiz I, to be safe than sorry. The wrong time to wonder if mushrooms is toadstools is after a feller is got ’em in his stomick.”

Well, we didn’t laugh at the silly old man in his own house. But we sure did whoop ’er up when we were outside. Such a crazy story!

“To-morrow,” says Scoop, “we’ll catch Solomon Grundy and switch birds on the old gilly. Then in a week or two we’ll tell him the truth about the parrot’s escape. It’ll put him easy, I bet, to learn that the voodoo story is bunk.”

“If we’re going to keep his mind easy,” says I, “we better keep him away from old Caleb.”

“Why so?”

“Old Caleb was bit by the parrot. Red says so. And if the Cap’n finds out about it he’ll worry himself sick.”

“We’ll call on old Caleb after supper,” says Scoop, “and sort of hush him up.”

Knowing that the stuttering parrot had come from Cedarburg, the same place where the mino bird had been stolen, we had thought for a while that there might be some secret connection between the two unusual birds. But now we put this thought completely aside. It was true that our old friend had been in Cedarburg the week of the mino bird’s theft. But that was just a happenstance, Scoop said.

The thing that puzzled us now was the newspaper advertisement. No mention had been made of this by the Cap’n in his talk with us. Yet we knew for a certainty that he had advertised the black parrot for sale.

Was he cheating? Having promised his brother to keep the bird, was he now trying to get rid of it on the sly?

“We’ll ask him about the advertisement,” says Scoop, “and see what he says.”

“Let’s quiz him about the spy, too,” says I.

“I had thought of doing that,” says the leader.

We figured now that the mystery was pretty much cleared up. All that was left was the spy. And the Cap’n probably could tell us who the prowler was.

What we didn’t suspect was that the spy was the biggest part of the mystery of all. Yes, sir, the _real_ mystery lay ahead of us. A lonely cemetery, an empty grave, a weird voice out of another world. _That_ was the kind of stuff we bumped into in working on the mystery.