The Adventure Team
By Tom Miller
Chapter 1
The phone rang. Fred answered it. It was Bob McGillicuty from the Rare Fish Society. When Bob was a kid, he used to deliver newspapers in his neighborhood until that fateful day when a badly tossed paper resulted in Harry Blackball, an amateur magician and pyrotechnics expert, losing his eye due to injury.
"My eye, my eye!" Harry screamed as the corner of the Daily Times Union pushed his eye clean out of the socket. "You God damned kid, now I got no eye! I'm half-blind because of your poorly thrown efforts to deliver my paper. And they pay you! They paid you to put out my eye! How's that for an irony in the polluted and crime ridden world we live in. What ever happened to the good old days when the paper boy would walk up to you and delicately place the paper into the willing hands of the recipient and then before leaving, he would invent some helpful phrase or poem to lighten the spirits of the customer, like for example, 'Don't worry about the tip sir, I just wanted to make sure you have your paper.' or, 'Have a beautiful day, sir, and I'll bring you a freshly baked cake from my mother's kitchen first thing in the morning, sir.' No, today it's a different world. Today, the paper is crammed into your eye and then the surgery, the horrible painful surgery. And while I'm shelling out money, you're going to get a raise, aren't you kid. They are going to give you a raise because you met your quota of eye damage for the week, isn't that right?"
"No sir," Bob said, as earnestly as he could, but there was no denying the small crowd of one-eyed neighbors running down the street to get the boy and stomp his little head into the dirt. Strangely, as fate would have it, a small bird in Nebraska was making quite an effort to imitate its mother and fly like the big birds. It stepped off the edge of the nest and fumble-dumped itself into the hard cold ground effectively breaking one of its wings and by coincidence, rendering one eye inoperative.
So anyway, Bob quickly got on his bike and pedaled extremely fast to escape the infuriated crowed. As he turned to assess their progress, he could have hardly seen that his speeding bike was heading for the opening door of a big fancy black limousine. Bob and his bike wound up in the lap of Millionaire Matheson Avenue. The door closed, and the car took off to Nebraska where a small baby bird was suffering.
Breaking from the flow of this novella, I, the writer, would like to espouse on the direction of the plot and somewhat develop the relationship between the characters so far introduced to the artistic integrity of the potential situations which will follow. So far, we have Fred answering the phone. We know that Bob McGillicuty was the caller and that he has an association with the Rare Fish Society or the R.F.S. We don't know why he called. At this time, I, the writer, chose to evoke a writing technique known as Sidestep Flashback, or S.F. in which a character just introduced in a narrative is sidestepped in the present time for a flashback of sorts to recap events in the history of the character which gives the reader a sense of where this person came from and why this person does the things he does.
The S.F. begins with the young Bob delivering papers, and apparently each paper thrown results in an injury to the recipient's (Harry Blackball's) eye. This is made clear at the beginning of the second paragraph as the crowd chases after the young bob to enact revenge. Though it is not expressly indicated, we can infer the possibility that this early eye damage situation so infuriates Harry Blackball, the magician and pyrotechnics expert, to the point that one could imagine him to hold such a grudge that he would in effect become the villain, using his magical and pyrotechnic skills to bring an end to Bob, who as was indicated in the first three sentences, will have some form of interaction with Fred. As yet, Fred is an unknown in this literary equation. More to follow on this Fred matter.
Next, Bob, in an effort to escape the crowd, inadvertently rides his bike into a Limousine that belongs to a millionaire named Matheson Avenue, obviously named as a humorous pun taken from the infamous street located in Midtown Manhattan as well as similarly named streets in other towns, but the Manhattan location is the really famous one and the very one parodied by the author, and that's me. Next, in a writing technique known as Parallel Interfused Extrapolation or P.I.E., the incident with the bird is added to juxtapose the meridian on which the plot device is confutiated and vermiculated into the construct of the vernacular.
With the Limousine on route to the same location as the bird, one can infer that the character of the baby bird and the Millionaire and Bob McGillicuty from the Rare Fish Society will meet. I hope the reader appreciates this diversion into the techniques of such a brilliant writer as me are, and now back to the story.
"So, what's your name, son?" Matheson Avenue asked. He was a well-dressed gentleman, handsome, big eyebrows, and lips so red one could swear he wore make-up. The pallor of his skin was that of fresh honeydew melons, yet the author am sure he know not what this peculiar analogy means in the context of the plot device construct S.F. vernacular vermiculated P.I.E. extrapolation.
"Bob." Bob replied, "But my friends call me Ralph."
"Very good, Bob," said Matheson, "then Ralph it shall be. Since we're friends now, why don't you call me West Boulevard? That's what my friends call me, and you can bet I have plenty of friends. After all, that's what money is for."
Matheson Avenue studied the boy for some time. He felt an instant bond for he had never a boy of his own, and also, Bob or Ralph reminded Matheson Avenue or West Boulevard of himself when he was a young boy.