Brisket Jack the raccoon stared through a toilet-paper tube at the setting sun. He followed it down below the horizon of the farthest trash mound, then slapped his palms against both ends of the tube and tucked it under his arm, like he’d seen Yul Brynner do in The Buccaneer. He blinked spots out of his eyes and grinned like an idiot.
Stumbling down the mound of trash, still half-blind, he followed the smell of ozone until he found Vibrissa No-Tail under a Roman half-dome of compacted Volvos. Her deft raccoon-hands were welding a scrap of metal onto another scrap of metal. The arc light illuminated the crushed frames overhead in blue and silver.
She switched off the torch and swung up her visor. “It’s not ready.”
“It has to be, Vee!” Jack danced from foot to foot. “I can’t wait any longer!”
She gave him a hard look. “Are the stars aligned?”
“The stars…” He screwed his eyes closed until the strobing lights under his lids briefly lined up. “Yep!”
She sighed and rolled herself out from under the arch. He followed behind. She gazed at the darkening sky. Finally she said, “We’ll need a crew of ten.”
“Yesss!” he crowed. “I can do that. How many is ten?”
She sat up briefly to spin around on her improvised hindquarters. Then she came down on her elbows, facing him, her forepaws splayed out. “Ten,” she said. “One for each of my fingers.” She waggled her pinky. “This one’s you.” She tucked it. “This other one”—waggling the next finger—“that’s me.” She tucked it too, then zhuzhed her paws at him with their remaining fingers like they meant something. “We need eight more.”
“Yippeee!” he crowed. “I can do that.” He liked crowing. Peter Pan did it, and it gave him a sense of possibility. He ran off.
“When you have them, meet me at the thing!” Vibrissa shouted after him.
First, he found Maria Triple-XL, the biggest raccoon in the yard. Maria was easy; all he had to do was imply danger. “There’s gonna be a dog,” he told her.
Maria perked up. “Like Rufus?” The guard dog who used to terrorize every animal in the yard, before Maria settled his hash.
“A bajillion times meaner!” Jack's grin glittered with the promise of adventure.
She hauled her beefy bulk up to its full height. “I’m yer gal.”
From there, he just convinced her to collect Lazarus, who was still out cold from an earlier run-in with Eddie. “He’ll be fine in an hour,” he promised as she hefted Laz’s shaggy possum butt onto her shoulder. His pink tail thwacked her cheek.
They stopped in on Ratcliffe’s soirée to ask him politely.
“Darlings, nothing would please me more than to join your nighttime outing,” he said warmly. “But, as you can see”—he swept his arm to encompass several other rats, a few country mice, and a foundling hamster, all chewing away happily on a plywood remnant—“I’m entertaining. It would be in such bad taste to abandon my guests.”
Brisket Jack produced a postcard of Niagara Falls. With all formality, he said, “The honor of your presence is humbly requested.” Just like on that PBS show.
Ratcliffe took the card in both forepaws. His eyes shone. “For me?”
Satisfied, Jack and Maria scampered off. “Meet us under the tarp at the top of the biggest mound!” Jack called out over his shoulder, as Ratcliffe made abject excuses and threw essentials into a brocade coin-purse bag.
Finally … warily … Jack and Maria approached Eddie.
The meanest raccoon—meanest anything, meaner than Rufus—in the whole junkyard.
Nobody knew if he really had rabies. The name was a vibe, a warning, a one-word introductory lesson. It was also, let’s be honest, wishful thinking. If he had it, maybe it would kill him.
But probably not even rabies could kill Eddie. Probably.
He had a toilet seat around his neck, and he was eating what looked like a car battery made of plaster of Paris. Jack made sure to approach from the front, where Eddie could see him coming. He walked slowly.
“Shove off,” Eddie grumbled before Jack could open his mouth. He held up a paw built like a throwing-star with licorice jelly beans shoved down the spikes. “I’m not doin’ it. Whatever it is.”
Maria hulked up and waddled forward. “Jack says you gotta come with us. So let’s go.” Jack winced. Maria was being so brave. Eddie was gonna thrash her.
She stepped between Eddie and his feed. “We can do this easy ... or hard. What's it gonna be?”
“Get away from my dinner, tiny,” he growled.
In a flash, Maria snatched the unholy dinner-thing under her arm and ran away on two feet, Lazarus bumping on her back.
“@$&#%!” howled Eddie. Jack took off running after Maria, caught between the two chonky raccoons like the Devil and that other thing. Eddie galumphed so close, Jack could smell his hot breath.
Whatever his food was, it had had pepperoni in it.
Maria trundled up the tallest mound, toward where Vibrissa was tugging on a tarp. Jack, unburdened by a sleeping possum and a grotesque mockery of a calzone, sped ahead.
“I got yer crew!” He shouted triumphantly to Vibrissa as he crested the summit.
Ratcliffe was perched atop her head, gnawing at a guyline. Vibrissa peered skeptically down the hill. “I said ten.”
Maria arrived, panting. On her shoulder, Lazarus moaned, blinked, and rolled off.
“This is ten! … Isn’t it?”
Vibrissa exhaled, closed her eyes, and counted back from some large number.
Eddie roared into view. Without looking back, Maria kicked him squarely in the nose. He dropped like a Buick from the magnet crane.
Vee opened her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “But only because I need help trying it out.”
With a flourish, she yanked the tarp away. There, in the gloaming, sat the pin of all Brisket Jack's hopes.
It was an upside-down, wrecked 1983 Bluebird school bus. A Dyson vacuum cleaner formed a bowsprit off the front bumper. Overshadowing everything, rising from the bus's chassis, were the arms of an Octopus carnival ride. Each one ended in a big, red, U-shaped magnet, ends pointing down. They vibrated with barely contained force. The whole thing hovered a hand's breadth above the hill. A taut thicket of Bungee cords strained to keep the bus from springing into the air.
“Tonight,” Vibrissa proclaimed, “we fly.”
“It's happeniiing!” crowed Jack.
Thanks for reading! You can tell your own, better version of this story—plus all the trouble that follows—by playing Raccoon Sky Pirates! It's a GM-less tabletop RPG welded to a board game. It went out of print last year, but I'm launching a Kickstarter this spring for a deluxe version! I think you'll love it.
Join the crew at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hecticelectron/raccoon-sky-pirates-total-chaos-edition/ so I can tell you when we launch. We'll have early-bird rewards for the first backers and so much fun stuff.
Thanks again! All art by Robbi A Burns, except the title card at the end, by me.
