Sam Samurai, Page 3

  And what a procession. It was not hard to figure out why they called them the Red Devils. Red-armored samurai, their two swords stuck in the left side of their belt, rode on horses done up with red harnesses, red saddles, even red stirrups. Solid red banners flapped from an L-shaped black pole stuck in a holder built into the back of the samurai’s armor. There had to be at least ten or twenty horsemen all together.

  “Wow,” said Fred.

  Next came the strangest thing. It looked like a big red and gold curtained box with two poles sticking out the front and back so guys could carry it. The curtains swayed, and you could see people inside.

  “The daimyo’s relatives and honored guests,” whispered Honda.

  Serious-faced samurai on foot carrying spears. More fancy curtained boxes being carried. Some with people, more with just bundles carried by some rough-looking tattooed guys. Tall red battle flags. Square red flags with gold writing. There were even a few soldiers with muskets. The whole crazy parade marched quietly past. After about ten minutes, the people at the end of the procession started looking more like regular folks. They wore robes, jacket and pants things like Honda wore, straw hats and sandals.

  Honda picked up his bundle. “When I say ‘go,’ walk behind me on the road and blend in.”

  “Oh that’s easy for you to say,” said Sam. “How are we supposed to blend in looking like this?”

  I looked at the three of us wearing our usual jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. We blended in fine in Brooklyn. In 1600 Japan we didn’t look anything like anybody.

  “If anyone asks, I will say you are entertainers hired by my master. I am making sure you reach him. Ready?” said Honda.

  SEVEN

  As usual, we didn’t get a chance to ask any questions. We just had to go.

  We jumped on the road and started walking with everyone carrying boxes, bundles, and bags. No one really did seem to take much notice of us. Fred, Sam, and I followed behind Honda and walked.

  We walked down a neat road of sand and stone lined with pine trees. We walked by the last of a few small houses and then we were out in the country. Rice paddies filled with water made a checkerboard along either side of the road. Women in big round straw hats stood in the ankle-deep water, planting small green rice plants in neat rows.

  “Look at that,” said Sam.

  A beautiful, perfectly snow-tipped mountain appeared out of the clouds behind us.

  “Mount Fuji,” said a small, smiling bald man in a plain brown robe.

  Clouds covered the mountain again.

  “How pleasant—

  just once not to see

  Fuji through mist.”

  “Very nice,” said Fred. “But you know what would be nicer? Something with wheels. Honda, how are you guys going to make motorcycles and cars if you’re not using wheels?”

  “What is ‘moto-syco’?” said Honda.

  “No wheels on the Tokaido Road,” said the little bald guy. “Because armies moving slowly is sometimes a good thing.”

  “Like when the army is not a friend‘s,” said Honda.

  The bald guy laughed again. “Exactly, samurai.” He looked us all over. “I don’t believe I have seen you before. May I ask, what is your name?”

  “Honda,” said our samurai, and nothing more.

  “I am known as Bakana Zou,” said the man.

  “Silly Elephant?” translated Honda.

  “But you may call me Zou,” said the smiling little man.

  Everyone in front of us suddenly stopped.

  “And that is also why we have so many gates and passport checks,” said Zou.

  “Gates?” said Fred.

  “Passport checks?” said Sam.

  “But of course,” said Zou. “When were you born? As it has always been on the Tokaido Road, just as this notice says.” Zou tapped a wooden sign at the side of the road and read it aloud:

  “Passports are required of all persons.

  Persons suffering from insanity,

  prisoners, decapitated heads (male or

  female), and corpses (male or female)

  must show passports.”

  Honda looked concerned. “You have no passports from your province of Bookalin?”

  “Uh ... no ... not exactly,” I said.

  “Oh now we are toast,” said Sam. “I told you we should have stayed.”

  “Can’t we just sneak around through the fields?” said Fred.

  “Oh no,” said Honda. “Guards.” He made a slicing sword motion.

  “Forget it,” said Sam. “We are turning around right now.”

  “But you know The Book is probably at this shogun’s castle,” I said. “That’s always the way The Book works. And it’s the only way we’ll really get home.”

  The line of people moved up. Now we could see the gate across the road. Everyone was showing a passport.

  “Does everyone have to show a passport?” I asked Zou. “Aren’t there any exceptions?”

  “Forget it,” said Sam. “If even bodyless heads need passports, we are cooked.”

  “Sumo,” said Zou. “Sumo never need passports. Not easy to hide sumo. Are you sumo today?” Zou cracked himself up again with his own bad joke. “Or performers. If you can show a good enough trick. Are you performers today?”

  Fred and Sam looked at me.

  The line moved forward.

  It all became painfully clear. Once again I had one chance to come up with a good trick.

  The line moved forward.

  And this time it looked like it was going to have to be something a little better than the Magic Finger Rings trick.

  I looked ahead and saw an awful lot of swords and spears up at the passport check gate.

  I remember thinking, “Something way better than the Magic Finger Rings trick.”

  EIGHT

  You know, now that I think of it, time warping really isn’t such an unusual thing. It happens to people all the time. When you can’t wait for something good to happen—like Friday afternoon and getting out of school for the weekend—that hour from 2:00 to 3:00 can take forever. When you want time to go slow—like when you have to go to the doctor’s and get a shot in a week—seven days can whip by in the blink of an eye.

  Time warped. I blinked. And the next thing I knew, Fred, Sam, and I were standing in front of a pinched-face man at the wooden guard gate across a bridge. He had already checked Honda’s and Zou’s passports. Now he had his hand out for ours.

  “Papers,” he ordered.

  “We are entertainers,” I said. “From the far-away province of Brooklyn.”

  The gatekeeper frowned. He looked like one of those unhappy guys who always think the worst about other people.

  “You look like runaway boys in very bad clothing,” said the gatekeeper, eyeballing us suspiciously.

  Honda came back with one hand on his sword handle. He looked down at the gatekeeper and spoke harshly to him. “They are entertainers,” said Honda. “I am escorting them.”

  You could almost see the gatekeeper shrink under Honda’s stare. “Of course, samurai. As you say, samurai.”

  Fred, Sam and I couldn’t believe it. Just like that we were free. I didn’t have to come up with a trick, which was a good thing because I hadn’t thought of anything. We walked through the gate and looked at the buildings of Edo in the distance.

  The gatekeeper gave a little bow, still looking us over. He looked at us like a snake watching a frog.

  “But according to law, they must show their entertainment,” said the gatekeeper.

  Honda turned to argue.

  The gatekeeper smiled a thin, mean little smile, now looking like the snake who swallowed the frog. A group of travelers, hearing the word “entertainment,” started to gather around us.

  Honda didn’t want to draw any more attention to us. He could only agree.

  Sam fiddled nervously with his glasses. “Okay Joe, let ‘em have it.”

  Fred pounded me on the back. “
Abracadabra.”

  I looked at Sam. I looked at Fred. I didn’t have the heart to tell them—my mind was a complete blank. It was like one of those horrible nightmares where you show up for math class in your underwear and find out there is a test you didn’t know about.

  Except this was a nightmare I couldn’t escape by waking up.

  “Well?” said the gatekeeper. I was scared stiff. I was scared speechless. I didn’t know what to do.

  And then the strangest thing happened. I still don’t know if it really happened, or if my stalled brain just made it up.

  I looked at the crowd waiting for the trick. The smiling face of Zou caught my eye. He nodded toward the doorway of the gatehouse. I looked just in time to see a bird spreading its wings and flying out of the doorway. I looked back at Zou. He nodded and flapped his arms once like wings.

  Now you may think I’m crazy. In fact, I think I’m crazy, because everything suddenly came together in my mind and hit me like a lightning bolt. All from Zou and a bird and a doorway. But how did Zou know I would know? Did I really see a bird? Did Zou really flap his arms?

  I didn’t have time to answer any questions. I had to get to work showing my Mental Powers in the Flapping Arms trick.

  “Of course,” I said, scanning the crowd for a friendly face. This trick works best on somebody who wants to believe you. “We don’t normally unleash our full Mental Powers because they can be so ... frightening,” I said. I found a kindly looking older lady smiling and nodding. “But I can show you a small glimpse of my Mental Powers by giving this lady the mind of a hawk, freed from its cage, spreading her wings to fly.”

  The gathering crowd laughed and clapped their hands. Zou nodded, smiling. The gatekeeper frowned. I led the lady over to the doorway. I stood her inside it with her feet in each corner.

  “Close your eyes,” I said in a low even voice. “Do not speak. You are a hawk trapped in a narrow cage.” I moved her arms so the back of her hands touched against the inside of the doorway. “Push your wings up and against the cage.”

  The lady closed her eyes and pressed her arms up. The crowd leaned forward to spot any tricks.

  “Keep pressing your wings against the cage. You want to be free,” I said.

  The other secret of the trick is to keep your patter going for at least a solid minute. I filled it with a lot of talk about the cage closing in, the hawk wanting to be free, wanting to lift her wings and fly away.

  I looked around the circle of spectators. Travelers, and now some soldiers, watched the lady carefully. Fred, Sam, and Honda were sucked in too.

  The beautiful part of the trick is that it isn’t really a trick or Mind Power at all. It’s more like a reflex. After your muscles press for so long, they automatically tighten when you stop pressing.

  I kept up my patter. The tension built. “When I count to three,” I said, “I will release you from your cage. Then you can step forward, drop your arms, and your wings will rise. One. Two. Three.”

  The lady opened her eyes and stepped forward. I held my breath. Her arms hung loose and then to her surprise, they rose, rose, rose up to her shoulders. The crowd oohed and ahhed.

  The lady laughed and covered her mouth. “I felt my wings! I wanted to fly!”

  The crowd clapped and cheered. Even the lemon-sucking gatekeeper looked amazed.

  “Joe the Magnificent,” yelled Fred, raising a fist in the air.

  I bowed.

  And life would have been great—if a certain red-armored samurai hadn’t chosen that moment to ride up on his horse.

  “What is all this noise?” the samurai demanded. He had a scar that made his lip curl into a nasty sneer. Even his horse looked mean, stamping around. The crowd backed away, leaving Fred, Sam, and me.

  We copied everyone else bowing. Zou stepped forward to save us. “A small entertainment, sir.”

  The samurai scowled down at us. “No one disturbs our master’s peace with their entertainments unless they ask me, leader of the Red Devil body-guards, Owattabutt.” The samurai posed proudly.

  Fred’s eyes bugged out. I couldn’t stop him.

  “Oh what a butt?” asked Fred.

  “Owattabutt of Minowa,” said the samurai.

  “Oh—what a butt,” repeated Sam.

  We tried our best not to laugh. We really did. But you know us.

  It took us about three seconds to crack up, freak out Owattabutt, have our hands tied behind our backs, and get surrounded by a gang of red samurai warriors with spears.

  Then things really went bad.

  Owattabutt gave us a very nasty look and said, “Now you will woof woof woof bark bark bark meow meow meow.”

  NINE

  “Let me guess,” said Sam, staring at the point of the closest spear. “Something’s wrong with the Auto Translator again.”

  “Eeka weeka wakka,” said Owattabutt.

  “I think so,” I said. “But I don’t know how ... if we don’t even have The Book.”

  “WAKKA WEEKA EEKA!” screamed Owattabut. He was standing right over us now. The samurai spears closed in.

  “Sam, what’s he saying?” said Fred.

  “I’m guessing it’s something like, ‘Let’s poke Fred full of holes for laughing at my name!”’ said Sam.

  “You laughed, too,” said Fred.

  “Only because you started,” said Sam.

  “I don’t think so,” said Fred.

  “I think so,” said Sam.

  Owattabut spoke loudly and slowly, one word at a time.

  “Ichi.”

  “What is that?” I said.

  “Ni.”

  “It sounds familiar,” said Sam.

  “San.”

  “Well don’t hurry,” I said. “But just let us know what it is before we get poked full of holes, okay?”

  “Yon.”

  “Sam?” I said.

  “Go.”

  “Go?” said Sam. “That’s ‘five.”’

  “Roku.”

  “Six,” said Sam.

  “Shichi.”

  “Seven,” said Sam. “He’s counting.”

  “Hachi.”

  “Eight,” said Sam.

  “He’s counting?” I said. We all realized what was happening at the same time, but there was no time to time-warp slow it down or stop it.

  “Kyu.”

  “Nine,” said Sam in a very squeaky voice.

  “He’s counting to ten before he gives the order to do us in!” I yelled.

  Fred, Sam, and I backed against each other, but there was nowhere to go. Hands tied behind our backs, circled by samurai spears, we had just one more number.

  And we didn’t need a translator to tell us it was a final “ten.”

  TEN

  “Stop!” yelled a girlish voice.

  “Stop?” said Sam. “I thought ‘ju’ was ten.”

  “Hold your spears, samurai. These boys are special friends to the Lady li Naomasa,” said the voice.

  I opened my eyes, which I hadn’t even realized I had closed.

  Owattabutt looked like he was going to explode. His face was almost as red as his armor.

  The girl who had spoken waved to us from the bridge. She wore a bright green kimono. Two other girls stood with her.

  Fred, Sam, and I had no idea who they were, but we waved back.

  Owattabutt spoke to the girls. “I have disappointed Lady Ii Naomasa. I request permission to kill myself.”

  “Permission denied,” said a lady, stepping out of one of the traveling boxes the guys carried on poles. “You are the most loyal warrior of the regiment. You were performing your duty to protect Lord Ii as you should.”

  Owattabutt bowed deeply. “So sorry for my rudeness,” he said to us. He jumped back on his horse and galloped off to the head of the procession. His spear-pointing samurai followed him.

  The lady spoke to the girls and got back in her traveling box.

  The three girls walked toward us. As they came closer we c
ould see that they weren’t Japanese. Something about them looked very familiar.

  “Hi, Joe,” said the girl who had spoken.

  “Hi, Sam,” said the girl with the crazy wild hairdo.

  “Hey, Fred,” said the girl wearing samurai pants like Honda’s.

  Just when we thought things couldn’t get any stranger, Fred, Sam, and I said hello to our great-granddaughters.

  Now I realize a sentence like that last one has probably never been written before. Most people don’t get a chance to say hello to their great-granddaughters. It’s a long and complicated story. I’ll give you the short version.

  In the past we went one hundred years into the future. We met our great-granddaughters-Jo, Samm, and Freddi. They inherited The Book. So they can travel anywhere in time, too. Don’t ask me how or why or if it messes up the universe. I have no idea. We’re always too busy saving ourselves to answer any questions. Check out our adventure called 2095 if you still think you need to know more.

  The girls untied our hands. We tried to act like we knew what we were doing.

  “Oh hey,” I said.

  “What’s up?” said Fred.

  “Ancient Japan,” said Sam.

  “Do you realize you were about to get speared for insulting a samurai?” said the crazy-hair girl, Samm. “I don’t know what you said to Owattabutt, but he’s the wrong guy to get mad at you.”

  “Oh what a butt,” said Fred.

  Sam and I laughed.

  The girls gave us a blank look. I’m pretty sure I saw Jo roll her eyes.

  “You should be more careful about flipping the Auto-Translator off and on,” said Samm. “You had it off, you know.”

  “We know,” said Sam. “We were just ...uh ... practicing counting to ten in Japanese.”

  “We’re visiting our friends, Lady li Naomasa and Lady Ieyasu Tokugawa,” said Jo, holding out her arms to show off her kimono. “Isn’t seventeenth-century Japan amazing?”