Post #416348 by Cammo on Thu, Oct 30, 2008 11:22 AM

**Race Day

Part 4**

It was built on Point Peter - the southernmost tip of the whole island; a treacherous strip of rock that jutted out into the water, the death of many ships and men and now a tourist park with ice cream stands in the summer and maybe the best seafood restaurant in the County.

We turned off the highway, bouncing onto a tree lined road that led right to the Point, potholes everywhere, and I slowed down to twenty for the first time. Then we broke out onto the gravel parking lot. It was peaceful. You could smell the water, and the feeling of casual activity that hung over all docks flooded into the car through our open windows. Maybe this was the last stop. Maybe the party was here.

We looked around, but nobody was in sight.
“Go to the lighthouse, Cam.” DREW said, but he looked as mystified as us.
I drove by the restaurant, “Admiral Dent’s”, we looked inside, vacant except for the lady at the cash register. There was a t-shirt store next to it. Closed. I picked up speed and drove to the lighthouse – the road tilted downwards, and got narrow. We stopped at it’s tiny parking lot and got out.

Nobody.

“I don’t GET IT, mon.” Andy said.
“Yeah, what? Did we do this wrong?” The directions were pretty clear, though. Then we all heard a noise, and looked down at the lighthouse, below us, built over the rocks. Somebody was scrambling over them, right at us. He slipped, then we all saw it at the same time –

He was carrying an envelope.

“It’s TOMMY!” yelled Andy.

“Hey, they’re at the lighthouse! Right at it!”
"I’ll go, mon.” and off Andy went. He ran down the little path, hit the rockls, and sort of loped across them, much more athletic than Tommy coming back the other way. They met just below us, a few hundred feet, and Andy stopped for a second to say something to Tommy. Tommy stopped too, caught his breath, said something, then turned away. Andy shrugged his shoulders, and loped on.

Then Tommy was right beside us, and I had been wondering something and yelled at him,
“Where’s your guys’ car?”
He didn’t answer, so I yelled again as he ran panting up the road away from us, “You gonna RUN the whole way back?”

There was an uncomfortable pause, then DREW and I looked at each other. The thing with DRTEW was, I was finding out, the guy was no dummy. He didn’t fall off the turnip truck last week. He had been wondering the same thing.

“Where’s their car?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re hiding it.”
“Why would they do that?”
“So we wouldn’t see where they were going. Maybe Richard dropped Tommy off, then went back up the road and is hiding the car.”
“But we saw him anyway.”
“Yeah, we were lucky.”

Andy has vanished behind the lighthouse, but appeared again now, coming back at us.

“I was thinking…” DREW said slowly.
“Yeah?”
“Um, nothing. Let me think some more.”

I let him think, which I supposed meant don’t talk to him, and Andy finally came up the path. He was pooped.

“I… got …. it …. mon,” waving the envelope.

“C’mon.” We got in the car and I had to back up the road, watching for Rally cars behind, and at the top spun the car around and gunned it. This car is gonna need a good wash at the end of today, I was thinking as I drove for the exit road.

“What’s it SAY?” DREW asked.
Andy was fumbling with the paper, and read

“The road to the Town of the King
Needs a….

“HEY! WHAT the HELL IS THAT!” I yelled, and slammed the brake pedal. The car slid sideways to a stop.

I shut off the engine, and got out.

Somebody had piled all the picnic tables in the park on top of each other, right in front of the exit road.

Well, I won’t tell you what all of us said at that time, you’ll have to imagine this part all for yourself, some words are better forgotten. We realized where Richard had been while Tommy was getting the clue; arranging picnic tables with their mysterious third Rally team member, their car safely on the OTHER side of the barricade, ready to go. We couldn’t go out the way we had come in – it was a one-way, one lane road and more Rally cars were due in. Andy and I got busy tearing the tables down, we didn’t trust DREW with any heavy work and he didn’t seem too inclined to help anyway, he kept looking at the road we had come in on, we had got the first table down when DREW said

“Our names aren’t on the envelopes.”

Andy and I stopped, wiped the sweat off our faces and said

“Yeah?”

“So we’ve got two extra envelopes now. And to win the race, we have to bring in the clue slips, y’know. Not the envelopes.”

“So?” I didn’t get it.
Then Andy said, more to the point, “What do we do with the envelopes?”

“We give them to the lady at Admiral Dent’s.”

Something brilliant was happening here, Andy seemed to be catching on but …

“With slips of paper that we’ve written, see? Fake directions.” DREW looked at us like we were barely intelligent chimps in a zoo.

“Holy CRAP! Hey, she could wave them at the next cars coming in!”
“Yeah, we could tell her they’re messages to our friends and they’re expecting them!”

“Go! Fast! Drew, DO IT!” and off he pranced to Admiral Dent’s.

Andy and I went back to work on the tables, two more to go.

“Hey, what did you say to Tommy?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“When you passed Tommy, what did you say to him? On the rocks?”

“Oh.” Andy smiled. “I asked him if he had any TUNES! Any ZEP!”
“Oh.” Funny. “Did he have any?”
“Nope.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Nope.”
One more pic-a-nic table to go. We were bushed.
Andy thought for a second. “But you know what? He looked sort of worried.”
“Good.”

Then the final table was out, DREW was running back, we all jumped in and gassed it and drove as quick as the potholes would allow, back onto the backktop, thirty forty, and

“DREW, you are amazing. That was brilliant, mon.” Andy nodded his big head back at him.
“Yeah, you’re promoted to, ah, Vice President of Dirty Tricks.”
“How about just ‘Prince of Evil’?” DREW said, stretching lazily.
“That too.”
“HEY! Where are we going?”
“OH YEAH!” Andy said, pulling out the paper, reading

“The road to the Town of the King
Needs a Fairy, a River, and a Spring.”

“Oh, no.” said DREW.
“A Fairy?” Andy asked, glancing at me and looking up. “And the Town of the King?”
“Kingston. Right DREW?” I said.
“Yup.”
“Oh, no, the ferry to Kingston?”
“Yup. Kingston Springs Fisheries is right beside the Ferry. And you cross the river on the ferry.”

“It’s at the other end of the County!” DREW whined. “Oh, NO!”
“Look, DREW, we’re not such bad company, y’know, and if we had some tunes this might actually be sort of enjoyable, so…”

“HEY!” DREW shouted, I got some TUNES!”

Andy literally shook in his seat of a second, then whipped around and said
“How did you get TUNES?”
“At the restaurant, the lady looked like she knew something was fishy.”
“Well, yeah, it IS a seafood restaurant.”
“So I just bought something, you know, as a bribe.”
“The Prince of Evil.” Andy said, smiling.
“Yeah, so she had a little collection of tapes they sell. Here’s the best one.”

And DREW pulled a tape out of his shirt pocket, then handed it to Andy, who read

“Bob Denver, Back Home Again.”