Chapter 7

Fun and I were up early to dress in some casual business clothes so we could see the dog school people. First we needed to go by the Stevens to check on Cassie and Sue.

As we walked up to the Stevens' home, Mrs. Stevens, Cassie and Sue were walking back from the beach. When we were together, Sue remained right with Cassie instead of frolicking with Pink and Flower.

Mrs. Stevens said, "This morning when I woke up I looked in on Cassie and Sue. I asked quietly if she needed to go outside. The little critter beat me to the door. She was out and back so fast the door hardly had a chance to close. She went right back to be with Cassie, resting her head on the bed next to her."

Cassie was excited, "When I ate my breakfast this morning, Sue ate with me. She eats funny tasting things almost like lettuce but it isn't. We were just out on the beach. Sue went swimming and Momma says she was going way up and high then diving into the water. Thank you for bringing Sue to me. I really love her."

We told them we were on our way to the seeing eye dog school to demonstrate what Flower can do and to get acceptance of Sue and Cassie for their next class.

Fun and I drove into Corpus to the location in the phone book. It was a small building with several large fields behind it. There was also a kennel building on one side.

We walked into the reception area which had a frosted sliding window at waist height with a bell in front of it.

I rang the bell and half the window slid open. "What can I do for you young man?"

I explained that we wanted to sponsor a girl and a pet to go through the school. We were willing to put up the money for the regular school or a special school to make sure the training can be done quickly.

The lady asked us to wait a minute then shut the window. A few minutes later an older lady opened a door and asked up to come in. When she saw Pink and Flower she stopped, "You can't bring animals in here without a leash or a handling harness. You'll have to leave right now."

Fun said, "We're sorry, we didn't know of your requirements but we want you to meet a type of dragon that we wish for you to train."

The lady did stop to take a longer look at the two dragons sitting quietly at our feet. "I've seen your dragons on TV a couple of times already but so far they haven't shown me any special intellect or ability to be trained."

I asked, "Would you come out to one of your training fields and go through a couple of commands. The yellow dragon, Flower, is used to taking commands and can be told what to do in advance of doing it."

"Well, I would really like to see if they are as intelligent as you imply. Come with me, I'll get one of our trainers and we'll go out to the street scene."

We all went through the building then out into an area that looked like several small city blocks. There were traffic lights as well as just stop signs. The lady had asked a trainer to come out with us and told the trainer that the yellow dragon would take direction from her and would act accordingly.

The trainer walked Flower to an intersection and then was talking to Flower while pointing at the light. She pointed to the pedestrian walking sign and to the pedestrian stop signal.

The trainer said it was awkward without having a harness but I told her to just lay her hand on Flower's head. The trainer walked toward the intersection and the light began changing the pedestrian sign flashing red. Flower stopped but trainer continued. Flower jumped in from of the trainer and held her in place until the light changed again then flower went back to the trainers side with her hand on Flower's head.

"That was very good," the trainer said. "It usually takes a dog a week or so to begin to stop people who aren't paying attention to what the dog is telling them to do."

Fun asked, "Can you do another task so you know how easily they are to train?"

The trainer took a white walking cane, had an extensive conversation with Flower then they began walking toward an open intersection. There were automatic cars going back and forth in the intersection so Flower stopped the trainer then watched the intersection for a couple of minutes then when there was plenty of room, Flower pushed gently at the trainer and the two walked quickly across the street. They did this through the other two intersections going around square but then as they crossed the last street, the instructor intentionally dropped her cane and stopped to stoop to get it. Flower pushed the instructor up, pushing her toward the curb. When they were at the curb, Flower leaned against her to make sure she would stay still then checked traffic and darted out to get the cane bringing it back to the trainer.

"This is a smart little animal. It sure is different looking. Nothing like a dog."

The administrative lady asked the trainer, "Would you have any problem training a dragon like this and a young girl?"

The trainer was enthusiastic, "I'd love to work with one of these dragons. I still think a harness with a handle would be better but I would like to train one. These little dragons could be very good for a blind person."

"When can your student start?" The administrator asked. "If she can start right away, this instructor has completed her class and has a two week break before her next scheduled class."

I held up my hand and said, "Let me call right now."

Mrs. Stevens answered on the first ring. I asked her if Cassie and Sue could start right away, Mrs. Stevens said the faster the better. I told her that I would call her for what time the driver would pick her up in the morning.

The administrator, the trainer, Fun and I all went into the administrator office where we filled out several sponsorship forms and I wrote what I thought was an exorbitant check for the classes. I promised that Cassie would be here at nine and that her Mother would probably come along at first.

When we left feeling pretty smug about what we had accomplished, Sue reminded me we had to find either a limo or car service to haul Cassie back and forth. Knowing one person who knew about limo's I called our new friend, Sally Forth.

She was happy to hear from me, "Hi Chuck. I was just thinking of coming over to let my guys play with yours. What can I do for you?"

I explained what Fun and I were doing and we needed a limo service and thought she might be able to direct us to one. She asked all the details including the addresses of the Stevens home and the school and said, "Don't worry about a thing. A car will be there to take them to the school at eight in the morning. That's a wonderful thing you're doing Chuck. I'm glad to be a part of helping."

"If this works our Sally, we'll donate dragons all over the USA to help blind people. I think we can use orange ones for this as well. The purple guys are just too big so we're going to try a yellow one first."

"Chuck, I'll help you and Fun to sponsor as many blind kids as we can find to have seeing eye dragons. We'll have to think of some other ways these dragons can help people."

I called Mrs. Stevens to tell her a car would be there by eight for the first day of school. I also told her that there was plenty of room for her to ride along if she wanted to and the school said it would be fine if she wished to attend Cassie and Sue's classes.

Fun and I went by the store to note the usual crowd with people playing with the dragons then went home for a few minutes. The home answering machine showed a message.

Mr. Sleezeman's voice said, "I've begun looking for locations in ten cities just like you asked me to. They are all prime locations and are easily accessed with adequate parking. None are in a walking only environment. When do you want to look at them."

Fun and I looked at each other questioning our sanity. Fun smiled and called, "Mom, we need to talk?"

We heard the booming voice in our heads, "What can I help you two with today?"

Fun asked, "Who told the agent we wanted locations in ten cities?"

Mom looked a little sheepish and she said that she had Flower call Sleezeman and to use Fun's voice. "This is the next step. If we can open the next ten stores and do some good will in each of the areas, we'll get ten times as many dragons out into people's lives."

Fun angrily said, "So Flower can imitate my voice. What else can she imitate that I do. Perhaps we're letting Pink and Flower get to close to us. Perhaps we should put them into the store so they can go imitate someone else's voice."

"Mom, that was not good. If you had talked to us about it, we might have just gone along with you and even let Flower do the talking. But for you to do something this important without even telling us is wrong. The move can't be undone but we're going to have to operate considerable more open between us."

Fun told Flower and Pink to go back with Mom for right now. She was too mad for them to be around.

Fun and I took a walk down to the beach and walked until we got to the marina where we went to sit on my boat. We pulled a couple of beers from the cooler that was hooked up to shore power and talked about all of the plans that were being worked on.

There was the building of the island, the ten stores, possibly more children than just Cassie to get a seeing eye dragon, and several personal appearances on TV that were planned. We talked for a long while then Fun called, "Mom, talk to me."

In our heads Mom said, "Make yourself invisible so we can talk eye to eye."

As we became invisible, Mom appeared right behind our boat. We could see what looked like thousands of various colors of dragons all line up in rows far enough away that what we were saying was private.

Mom said, "I'm sorry to have had Flower use your voice to begin the search for new stores. I did help out your agent by putting the right places right in front of him while he was looking. I can't take back what I started but I will promise not to do something like that again without asking you first."

Fun looked around then said to Mom, "I forgive you but please don't do that again. I miss our two little friends so can you tell them to come back?"

There were two "Poofs." Pink and Flower appeared sitting right in front of us. Both had worried looks on their faces. We held our arms out to them and both were on our laps quickly smiling their warmest friendliest smiles.

Mom said, "Okay you two, no more flames from your mouths. Just because you were mad at me didn't mean you should shoot fire at me. Next time be sure I have permission before I do something like that."

Fun said, "Tomorrow we have to go to New York again to talk on the Fox morning show. Then later we will do a short interview with CNBC. On the way back home we're supposed to stop in Atlanta to do an interview on CNN. So Mom, are you going to help Sleezeman to pick out honest workers for our stores? They need to be remodeled quickly so we can open."

I suggested, "How about we begin bringing in the dragons we want to sell at the other stores. We won't charge any more for them than we do now and if the community causes problems we'll just move to another. If you figure we're selling about thirty to forty dragons a day now, that will be almost five hundred a day with ten stores. We'll have to bring over thirty-five hundred dragons a week. Mom? Maybe that's too many stores."

Mom sat in the water with a confused look on her face.

Fun asked, "Do you know how many dragons you have that will want to be pets?"

Mom still had a funny look on her face. She finally said, "I'll be right back, we will have to count."

An orange dragon popped up behind the boat and shrilled something to Pink and Flower. Our two friends looked at us and we heard in our heads, "Mom wants us to help." The dove over the side of the boat and were gone.

I said to Fun, let's cast off and go out a ways. That way we can talk to Mom better. I don't like being invisible when we're near everyone.

Fun and I materialized inside the cabin then came out to disconnect shore connections and prepare to start the engines. It took us fifteen minutes to go through the necessary steps to cast off the last line and engage the props in reverse to ease away from the dock.

Soon we were cruising out into the gulf at our near maximum twenty-nine knots, moving along at a rapid clip. We lost sight of shore soon and were heading east south east sort of toward where the secret island was being created. Fun decided to make up some rice and beans for us in the galley. I was trying to think of any good locations right through this area that would be good to catch a fish. There was an old schooner wreck in this direction that should yield a grouper so as soon as we neared the GPS numbers, I cut the power back and tried to sit on top of the wreck. Fun used a piece of fish bait with some heavy line on a weighted hook and dropped it straight down letting out line until the bait was down about three hundred feet.

She bobbed the line around hoping to attract an unsuspecting hungry grouper. It would have been better to have some live bait but we didn't so it was going to be this thawed bait or a piece of Spam.

I kept the boat in a tight circle for about ten minutes when Fun's rod bent way down then began moving sideways. She said, "This doesn't feel like a grouper, more like a shark or barracuda. I didn't think there were any barracuda in this part of the gulf right now."

I kept Fun's line behind the boat maneuvering around to make it easier on her. She exclaimed, "This is too big for us to eat in a month if I can land it. Whatever it is, it's huge, way over a hundred pounds."

We kept up the fight for almost forty-five minutes and then you could tell the fish or shark or whatever it was, was tiring. Fun began reeling it in. I grabbed the big gaff and was read to bring in up quickly.

Son of a gun, it was a hug gag grouper. This fish was probably fifty years old, maybe even more but it was huge. We didn't bring it up from so deep that the depth change would kill it so I hung on to the side of the boat on the diving platform and reached down with my pliers and pulled the big hook free. After handing the pliers up to Fun, I rubbed the fish's side hoping it would realize it could leave. The big old fish seemed to turn and look at me then began sinking. As soon as it was about a foot so down, it flipped it's tail and was gone.

Fun was standing there with the movie camera. I had not noticed that she had gotten it out. She said, "At least we have proof that I landed one of the biggest grouper I've ever seen."

I laughed as I said, "All that and we still only have rice and beans to eat."

Fun pointed, "Here, take the cast net and I'll get over by all those bait fish on top there."

The water was teaming with small fish with dolphins jumping up and down feeding on them. Fun guided the boat right to the edge of the milling bait fish. I tossed the cast net spinning in an arch to watch it settle over hundreds of fingerling up to two to three inch bait fish. While I pulled the net closed back toward the dive platform Fun brought me a bucket and put some water in it. The net was so full I couldn't pull it out of the water so we sorted through the fish to get a few dozen good bait fish then we were about to dump the net when there was lots of splashing inside the net. We kept pulling handfuls of baitfish out of the net until we found the cause of the splashing. There was a real nice sea trout about six or seven pounds that had been feeding on the bait fish and was caught in the net.

Fun shoved her hand into the gill and mouth and lifted it out of the net saying "Supper." I was able to dump all the rest of the bait fish back into the water while watching dolphins continue to charge through the masses of bait fish. While I was messing with the net and bait fish, Fun had gone up to get a knife to clean the trout. It only took a couple of minutes for her to reduce the fish into some big fillets.

While she took the fresh fillets to the galley, I washed off the platform and climbed back on deck, pulling up the platform as I came.

Sun and I took quick showers as this boat didn't carry a lot of fresh water. It was good to get clean though so we began fixing supper. I went back up to the helm and set course for the islands off Mexico where we were supposed to have found our dragons. I left the engines at an efficient fifty percent so we were doing about eleven to twelve knots but hardly burning any fuel.

Our rice and canned beans was now a meal with the addition of the fish. We gorged ourselves followed by sitting out on the rear deck enjoying the sunset. I checked our GPS and told Fun that I was going to idle down to about six knots so we could sleep but be awake for when we reached the outer islands that were about a hundred miles off the coast of Mexico.