The Summer Strikes Back, Part 13

Hank was making his way around cars parked on the curbs when he heard the tell-tale vroom of a massive black and white Honda. “Great.” He gunned the engine, at least as much as he could in the battered brick-colored hulk. “Let's see if I can out-maneuver them. These streets are pretty narrow.”

Chip had his hands over his spectacles. “They're also filled with Victorian homes that I'm certain are protected landmarks! Do be careful!”

A thump to the back of the truck nearly sent Chip and Leia flying into the street. “Hey!” Leia crawled over to the fat jerk with the gray Triumph t-shirt. “You could have killed us!” She swung her wide straw purse with the woven flowers hard over his head until he pulled back with his men. Another one pounding the side sent her back across the front. “Can't you make this thing go any faster?”

“Sorry, sweetheart.” Hank dodged two trash cans and an older couple walking their Pomeranian across the street. “We're wedged in as it is. They didn't have high-speed car chases in the Victorian era. Not to mention, this truck ain't like that sporty thing you and Luke drive.”

Leia would have hit him with her purse if he wasn't driving. “Would it help if I got out and pushed?”

The look Hank gave her over his shoulder was equally heated. “It might!”

“Mr. Solokowski, look out!” Chip tried to duck further down in the truck bed as they flew around a curb and back onto Hamilton Street. “Oh, this is suicide!”

Leia clutched the side as she watched the bikers whiz around the corner. “Hank, they're gaining on us!”

Charlie opened his side of the back window. “How's the air back there?”

“It would be nicer if there weren't assholes on vehicles faster than ours coming at us at speeds that will more than likely attract cops.” Leia raised an eyebrow as Hank turned onto Victoria Drive, flying past stately old homes and local bars and over the small grated bridge into Roseman's Landing. “Where the hell are we going?”

“They can't follow us on a boat. I'm pretty sure none of these idiots are sailors.” Hank pulled down Calamari Lane and up to the gravel parking lot for Ackbar's. “We're taking the slow Falcon north. I have a friend who's managing a dance club on Bespin Island. Said he had his own condo and everything. I could probably get him to take us in until things die down here.”

“Bespin Island?” Chip gasped. “Surely, you're not serious? They have a bit of a reputation as a popular spot for partygoers and college students and other types who would rather spend their summers terribly hungover. The possibility of us just disappearing there is approximately 3,798 to 1!”

Hank snorted. “Never tell me the odds!” Everyone jumped out and headed for the Falcon in the back of Ackbar's Restaurant. Hank went to tell Ackbar that they were finally heading out for that fishing trip they'd talked about since mid-July.

Leia was helping Charlie with the anchors when they heard the first tell-tale screeches and revving. “They're coming!” Chip raced up the plank, his face snow-white against his gold-rimmed glasses and blond hair. “They're going to kill us!”

“Not if they can't get us.” Hank was hot on his heels. “Everybody, in the wheelhouse.”

Chip looked out the window as yelling and crunching was heard in the lobby. “Oh dear. I think they may have knocked the big shellacked lobster on the floor. The Admiral won't appreciate that. I heard he caught that lobster himself, with his own traps, when he was a lad.”

“If I were still out there...” Leia started.

Hank grabbed the wheel. “No time to discuss this as a committee.”

Leia glared at him. “I am not a committee! Besides, as you may have forgotten, this is a Saturday. You can't achieve top speeds with all the dolphin watching boats and pleasure cruisers and yachts out there!”

“Sit down, sweetheart!” Hank gunned the engine. “We're taking off!” They barely missed a sight seeing cruise and two yachts coming back from fishing and crabbing trips before sprinting out of Ocean View Harbor.

Vader could do nothing but watch them zip across the clear bottle-green water. “God damn it to fucking hell!” He turned to the burly blond with the thick mustache, his leather-gloved fist clenched. “Ozzel, you're a fat dumb shit. I told ya not to surprise 'em!” Ozzel backed up, but Vader grabbed him and twisted his arm behind his back. “I don't like Imperials who got cotton in their ears, man.”

“Hey, man!” Veers, a skinny kid in a gray Honda t-shirt and black jeans, waved his hands. “He thought surprise was the wise thing.”

“Yeah, well, he's a dumb ass.” He looked up at Piett in his good white polo shirt and pressed gray shorts as he yanked Ozzel's arm tighter. The blond man gasped as the sounds of cracking bones competed with the squawking seagulls and the hum of boat engines on the harbor. “Yo, Piett, you're my right-hand dude now. You're in charge when I ain't around. Take the rest of these guys over to Bobby Fett at Brentwood Marina. I wanna talk to him.” He waved his fingers at two men in gray and white “Imperials” jackets. “Except for you two. Jerrod, Veers, I'm gonna need your help with this dick.”

“N...no!” Ozzie gasped as Vader lifted him by his neck. “Wha...wha...you gonna...do?”

“You've failed me for the last time, Ozzie.” Vader continued to hold him by his neck as they headed towards the Exxon gas station that was the last building one saw before going over the Ocean View Bridge. “We're going to take out the trash.” The blond man tried to struggle, but Vader just continued squeezing as they half-dragged him across the back of the parking lot.

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Arturro, what are we doing here?” Luke groaned at the map on his knees. “We're lost. We're never going to find this Yoda. If he even exists.” He sighed at Arturro's gibberish as he pulled up to yet another dead end.

After leaving the Phineas Estate, Luke made a brief stop at his and Leia's cottage to call Yoda, tell Ben where he was going, and get directions. He wish he knew where Leia was. None of her things were disturbed. Her clothes were still hung neatly in the closet and folded in the whitewashed drawers. Charlie and Hank's cottage was empty, too. When Arturro knocked on his door, a battered brown tweed suitcase in hand, he shook his head “no” sadly to Luke's question about Chip being home.

They'd been looking for Yoda for over an hour. His syntax on the phone was...odd, to say the least. For a man who had lived in the United States for almost fifty years, he didn't seem to speak English very well. It was hard to understand his garbled sentences.

Dagobah was a series of swamps and creeks that bordered Delaware Bay, a few minutes from Dantoonie. Most of the area was an estuary and county park, but there were several communities nestled between the wetlands. He'd heard they were popular with bird watchers, fisher-folks, and locals and tourists alike looking for peace and quiet away from the noisier Shore towns.

“I don't know, Arturro,” Luke began. “Maybe you'd better go on ahead and go to your family's house.” He looked around. Except for one withered old man clipping hedges in his front yard, the street seemed to be deserted. Luke was just about to turn the car around again when it sputtered and stalled, shuddering to a stop on the curb next to the old man's house. “Oh, no.” He threw the map aside. “Oh, this is just great. Arturro, can you walk to your family's from here? I'll ask the old man if I could borrow his phone to call the nearest gas station.”

Arturro shook his head. He went around to the front of the car and flung open the hood. His head – and most of his body – quickly vanished under the hood's cover. Luke frowned “Arturro, I know you're good with machines, but have you ever fixed a car before?” The Eastern European's only response was to point to the trunk and open his palm. Luke sighed, pried the box of tools he and Leia used to change tires out from under his surfboard, and handed him a wrench.

“There's something funny about this place,” Luke admitted as Arturro checked the engine. “I don't know. I feel like...”

The scratchy old voice came from behind him. “Feel like what?”

Luke grabbed a crow bar from the box of car tools. Arturro jumped and waved his wrench. “Like we're being watched.”

The old fellow was covering himself with his bony arms. “Away with your weapons. I mean you no harm. I am wondering, why are you here?”

Luke shrugged. “I'm looking for someone. We got lost.”

“Lost, you are not.” The old man gave him a nearly toothless grin. “Found someone, you have, I'd say!” He seemed to be inordinately interested in Luke's tools. “Here, help you with your car, I will.”

“Hey!” Luke ducked away as he threw tools all over the street. “Don't play in there! We need those!”

“Light!” The old man pulled out his old yellow flashlight. “Oooh, pretty, it is!” Arturro grabbed it, letting out a stream of annoyed gibberish in his own language. “Mine! Or I will help you not!”

“I don't want your help,” the young surfer nearly whined. “I want my flashlight back. I'm going to need it to get out of this dirty swamp.”

“Dirty! Swamp! My home, this is!” He finally tugged the flashlight away. “Rude, your little friend is.” To the surprise of both Arturro and Luke, he responded to Arturro in his own language. “Your family, two blocks down, they are. Wait for you, they do. Good people, they are. Hopefully, their manners will rub off on you.”

Arturro finally managed to grab back the flashlight and toss it into the tool box. He slammed the hood, then tugged a torn piece of paper out of his pocket. Luke noted the letters and the last name. “Your relatives' phone number?” Arturro nodded. “All right. Maybe we could get together later in the week, hang out on the bay while I learn surfing.” His friend patted him on the back before heading down the street.

“But now, we eat. Have dinner on the stove, I do. Hope you like Kenchin Jiro Soup. Vegetarian, I am. No meat in household.” He shuffled down the sidewalk. “Good for you, it is not.”

Luke wasn't sure about this. At least the little fellow seemed to be friendly, and he was hungry. “All right. But as soon as we get there, we contact Yoda.”

“Not far,” the little old fellow chirped. “Yoda not far. He is very close.”

That was when Luke noticed the number on the tiny brown one-story cottage, right over the wrought-iron mail box. “You're at number 18? But Yoda said he was at...” Luke's eyes widened. He stepped back a little. “You're...him.”

“Yes.” Yoda opened the door for him. “Will talk inside. Have much to discuss. But for now, we eat.”

Yoda's house was tiny but cozy. It was so stuffed with bric-a-brac and furnishings, he could barely move around. The house itself, like most of the others in the neighborhood, was fairly recent, if the mustard and avocado walls and dark wood paneling was any indication. Any wall that didn't sport wood was awash in vintage photographs, some of them black-and-white daguerreotypes that went back to the turn of the century. Luke admired them as his host shuffled off to what he presumed to be the kitchen.

“Wow,” Luke gasped. “you really did surf everywhere.” There were photos of a younger, more spry Yoda with his boards all over the world, from Guam to California to Ocean View to his native Japan. “Is that one with Duke Kahanamoku? The famous Hawaiian surfer?”

“Him, it is. Surfed together in 1921, we did. Saw again in 1930's, when movies, he did. Good man. Taught me many things about surfing, he did.” The older fellow waved his gnarled hands for him to follow.

“Well, it smells pretty good.” Luke sat down at the Formica table and the pea-green chairs with the metallic metal legs that were popular the decade before. A pot bubbled on a stove the same color as the chair.

Yoda brought their bowls in bamboo bowls. “Good food, huh? Good food! Before you surf, you eat!”

Luke sipped the soup, enjoying the fragrant broth and odd vegetables. “How long before we can start surfing? I only have two weeks before the contest!”

“Not long. Not long at all.” Yoda ate his soup much slower, chewing each white, green, and gray chunk down until it was mush.

“Can we do it tonight?” Luke pushed aside his dinner. “Do some night surfing?” He made a face. “I don't know what we're doing here. We're wasting our time!”

Yoda continued chewing for a few moments. When he finally swallowed, he looked up at Luke, his greenish lips turned down. “I cannot teach you. No patience, you have. Ben was wrong. You are too old to begin training.”

“But I've learned so much!” Luke bit his lip. “I'm sorry, Yoda. I guess I'm just worried. I need to learn these moves, and you're the only one left who can teach me.”

Yoda watched him from across the table with his dark brown, almond-shaped eyes. “Will you finish what you begin?”

“I won't fail you.” Luke raised his chin in the most determined manner he could. “I'm not afraid.”

“You will be, boy,” Yoda whispered. “You will be.”