Dormia by Jake Halpern Page A

said something of the sort to Dusty."
    "Now listen here, Hill," said Judy. "In the future, you really shouldn't tell folks—" At that very moment, the door swung open and in walked Dusty with a big smile on his face.
    "Hope I'm not disturbin' ya," said Dusty. "I won't be but a minute. I just have some quick business to discuss with ya."
    "Business?" asked Judy.
    "Well," said Dusty, "as ya may or may not know, tomorrow is our annual ballast match against the Popov Longshoremen, and so ya might say that yer timin' is auspicious—mighty auspicious. Ya see, once a year the Magrewskis face off against those miserable Popovs in a match that the whole island gathers to see. Unfortunately, for the last decade or so, we've been havin' a very bad losin' streak. Then, to make matters worse, our mole rat has just gone missin'. Chances are, he probably ran away out of fear of losin' again. The fink! Anyway, we could use some help from young Alfonso here. If he's half as good as his old man was, he might just lead us to victory. And, ya see, a victory is just what we need right now. People are startin' to lose faith in the Magrewskis. There's talk that we ain't as tough or clever as we once was. That's bad for business—mighty bad. And so I've got a little proposition for ya: Alfonso, if ya lead us to victory, I swear I'll get ya a spot on the vice admiral's boat to the Urals. What do ya say?"
    "But I don't know the first thing about the game of ballast," began Alfonso. "So I really doubt I can do your team much good."
    "That don't matter a lick," said Dusty. "Your father didn't know the first thing about ballast either, but the minute he fell asleep, he performed like a champ."
    "This is a sorry business," declared Pappy, who up until now had been silent. "Hill is a grown man and he led us to this strange den of thieves. Let
him
be your blind mouse, or mole rat, or whatever you call it."
    "I would if I could," said Hill dejectedly, "but I was never any good at it."
    "It doesn't matter anyway," added Pappy. "Because neither Judy, nor Alfonso, nor I, nor any plant life that might be in our possession—
if you know what I mean
—is going to the Urals. For goodness sake, Hill doesn't even know where he is going."
    "I do too!" said Hill. "We know the exact coordinates."
    "I'd like to help," interjected Alfonso. "I mean, I guess I could give it a try..."
    No one replied to Alfonso's half-hearted offer and instead a tense silence descended on the room.
    "Tell me this," said Judy finally, "is this a dangerous game? I mean, could Alfonso get hurt playing it?"
    Dusty didn't reply immediately. Instead, he looked at Hill for some indication of how to answer this question.
    "Ballast just takes a little skill, that's all," said Hill confidently. "Alfonso will be perfectly safe."
    ***
    The next morning, just before breakfast, Hill led Alfonso to a cleared area of the beach. In front of them sat the remains of a massive old Russian cargo ship known as the
Nyetbezkov.
The ship had run aground during a bad storm in the 1920s and had been sitting there ever since. The
Nyetbezkov
was enormous—at least three football fields long—and completely covered with rust. Entire pieces of the ship had fallen off, including the rotting skeleton of a lifeboat. Bits of torn-away metal lay scattered everywhere across the sand. The whole ship leaned heavily to one side. The only evidence of recent attention were two new rope ladders dangling off the side. These ladders, apparently, were the means by which brave souls climbed onto the ship. But why would anyone want to do that? Well, as Hill explained, this bizarre vessel was the actual playing field for the annual game of ballast between the Magrewskis and the Popovs.
    The goal of the game was to remove ballast from the depths of the
Nyetbezkov.
Technically,
ballast
was the name for any heavy material placed in the hull of a ship in order to make it more balanced. Often ballast was just crushed