Bradley's Odyssey Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

The Sub

By now the Three-R’s had stomped off to lunch. This gave Bradley time to sit on a giant rubber eraser and think.
“I know where to find the Thinking Cap,” he told himself. “But how am I going to get off this island?”
The answer, he realized, was at the seat of his pants.
“The erasers!” he said. “When I dropped one into the fish tank at school, it floated. There are enough rubber erasers on this beach to build a boat.”
He went to work. First, he pushed five erasers side by side. Then he retrieved the yellow log he had sat upon earlier, now realizing it was a giant pencil.
“The perfect mast for my boat,” he said. “Next I need a sail.”
After a moment of thought, he remembered the striped, white area he had crossed before reaching the blackwall. “That wasn’t a football field,” he said. “That was a piece of Writing’s notebook paper.”
Ripping out a triangular sail from the paper was easy, but fastening it to the pencil mast proved a problem. Again Bradley searched the carpet and found what he needed. Wrapped around a desk leg was a strip of masking tape. Not only was the tape useful in attaching the sail, but also in holding the erasers together.
After much lifting and pushing, Bradley stood the pencil mast upright. He rammed the point into the middle eraser. Finally, he stuck a king-size paper clip into the stern to serve as a rudder, and the boat was complete.
Bradley stood back to admire his craft. “Erasers, a pencil, paper, and a paper clip,” he said. “I’ll call my new boat the USS Odyssey. USS stands for used school supplies.”
He pushed the boat into the water. It floated, high and steady. As he climbed aboard, a gust of wind filled the paper sail and whisked the boat out to sea.
“Farewell, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic,” Bradley called out. “So long, Show and Tell. The Thinking Cap Hunt can now continue.”
The afternoon was ideal for sailing, the sea calm, and the breeze stiff and warm. Several hours after leaving the Island of Three R’s, Bradley spotted another island. This one was peanut-shaped with a single mountain in the center. An assortment of colors ran down the mountain’s tiered slopes. It reminded Bradley of an ice cream sundae dripping with chocolate, strawberry, and pineapple toppings
“Apple Island!” he exclaimed. “And Chalk Mountain is still covered with paint from the volcano I created.”
As he sailed by the island where all teachers came from, Bradley spied an object sticking out of the water. An L-shaped pipe with a lens on the end shot past his bow. It turned right, left, then cut straight toward the boat, growing taller as it came.
The next thing Bradley knew a small, iron submarine surfaced nearby. A hatch on top opened, and up popped a man wearing a brown suit, white shirt, and red bow tie. He had short-cropped hair and a thin mustache.
Standing in the hatchway, the man snapped to attention. “Right-o,” he said. “Thought I spotted a vessel through my periscope. Good day, old chap. Are you ill?”
“Um, no,” Bradley answered.
“Perhaps you’re heading to a teachers’ workshop or you need a “mental” days off?” the man asked.
“Uh, no and no,” said Bradley.
“Then you have no need of a sub,” said the man crisply.
“You mean a submarine?” asked Bradley. “No, the U.S. Odyssey is all I need.”
“I mean a submarine, old chap,” said the man, giving a swift salute. “For that’s what I am, a sublime substitute at your service.”
“A sub in a sub?” said Bradley.
“Right-o, and I’m sailing home to Sub Isle after a grueling day in a classroom,” said the man. “My, how those fifth-graders tested me. Noisy, fidgety, and constantly out of their seats I’m afraid. But we substitutes have a motto: Rub a dub-dub, you can’t sink a sub, and by lunchtime I do believe I had control of the class.”
Bradley nodded, remembering some rough days his class had given substitutes. “So substitutes come from an island as teachers do?” he asked.
“That’s where I was this morning waiting for The Call,” said the sub. “When a substitute gets The Call, he must be ready for duty.”
Bradley leaned against the pencil mast of the U.S.S. Odyssey. “So what did you do when The Call came?” he asked.
“I subsided into my submarine and submerged,” said the substitute. “I sailed to the nearest substation, and rode the subway out to the suburbs prepared to teach all subjects from subtraction to subatomic particles.”
Bradley shook his head. “Well that could become a problem from now on,” he said. “If I don’t find the Thinking Cap, substitutes won’t have any classrooms to be called to. The crabby teachers have stolen it.”
The substitute’s mustache twitched. “What? The Thinking Cap is missing?” he exclaimed. “Bit of bad luck that, old chap. No wonder classes have been restless lately. No wonder it’s been impossible to teach children anything.”
Bradley looked toward Apple Island, still off the port side. “Do you know where the crabby teachers are now?” he asked. “Apple Island looks deserted.”
“After Chalk Mountain blew, they scattered in all directions,” the substitute explained. “I haven’t seen a crabby teacher in a classroom since then. But now, with the theft of the Thinking Cap, they’re bound to show up. I should get back to Sub Isle straight away, old chap. Tomorrow, if I get The Call, I want to be ready for the worst. Cheerio.”
With that, the man disappeared down the hatch. The door closed, and the sub slowly submerged. Soon Bradley was alone again on the grape-dark sea.