They Stole Whopper's Snapper

By Colin B. Hyde

They Stole Whopper’s Snapper is not a children’s story. It is a story for the YOUNG AT HEART. When Sandy donned a shark suit and went swimming, in her naïve effort to save the sharks, Strangler and his gang were not amused. They thought of eating her, but for fear of reprisal from the humans they kept their mouths shut. It was salt in their wounds, a lot more to swallow, when young Cyrus started getting friendly with Sandy. Strangler found his casus belli when the disrespectful humans stole little Whopper’s ritual snapper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colin B. Hyde
• Release date: Aug 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311873163

Colin B. Hyde

About the author -Colin B. Hyde writes stories for the young-at-heart. Find them at Smashwords.com - The author wasn’t a very studious boy. An ‘incentive’ made me into a scholarship winner in primary school, and an ‘incentive’ made me pass the five O’ levels I sat in high school - English Language, English Literature, History, Mathematics, and Biology. I almost failed Standard Five (the seventh grade in some countries). My dad, who knows a good gamble, knew he couldn’t lose when he offered me a bike if I aced the scholarship exam in Standard Six. If I miraculously won a scholarship he would have to buy me a bike. But he wouldn’t have to pay my school fees. I drifted through high school. Thanks to my mom, who threatened to throw me out of her house if I didn’t sit my O’ levels, I signed up for five of them. But I was set to fail them all, until the school’s principal, Sister Mary Sarita Vasquez, found my key—and turned it. The best thing about school was sports. I was the leader of the sports program at my high school - Belmopan Comprehensive School. Football is my favourite sport but I didn’t play it that much in high school because we didn’t have enough serious players to make a team. Our best players came from the villages – Roaring Creek, Camalote, Teakettle, and Ontario. They had to take the bus, or ride bicycles, to get home after school, so it wasn’t often they could stay after school to practice. Our football team didn’t have much success. We lost twice to Sacred Heart College (Cayo), and drew with them once. We lost in overtime to the Belize City Champions, St. Michael’s College. The boys in Belmopan preferred basketball. That game was completely new to me. I remember the first time I went out to play. I couldn’t reach the rim (with the ball) from the free-throw line. I got a little ‘fundamentals’ in my game when I was in Third Form. I noticed the younger boys at school hanging around a gentleman named Larry Scott, a Peace Corp, and I asked to join in. Through Larry Scott I learned to ‘pick-and-roll’, run a ‘two on one’ and a ‘three on two’ fast break, and to lead a one-two-two zone defense. I learned to shoot a basketball during my fourth year at high school. One day we took down the backboard to repair it. That was the first time I saw a basketball rim up close. I couldn’t believe how easily the basketball fit inside it. We played four games and won them all. We vanquished Sacred Heart twice. We defeated St. Michael’s College. And we blew out Nets, the second place team in the Belize City Junior Competition. Somebody didn’t like how I was using her school—just to play ball. One afternoon I was lounging about the school building we called Block B, when the principal came up beside me, pinned one of my ears, backed me against a wall, and said very sternly: Hyde, if you fail your exams not another boy will play ball in my school. I loved being the ‘lead dog’ but I wasn’t a greedy player. Basketball and football are team sports. If you don’t love team you’re in the wrong games. After our annual intra-school competition ended in February, I quit playing ball and set about doing right for the younger heroes at our school. When I walked away from sports in high school, I thought that was the end of my basketball career. But I did play again, briefly, after one of my brothers died. I thought maybe I could find some joy on the court so I tried out for a team in the senior basketball league in Belize City. It didn’t work out. My body was a little rusty, after not playing basketball for almost two years, and there was no ‘competition’ in my heart. I handed in my gears after just a couple of games. My five O’ levels were sufficient to get me into junior college on a scholarship, but I went to sea instead - to fish, to dive conchs, and to trap lobsters. After two years at sea, I took a year off to study at the newly formed Belize School of Agriculture, my intent being to work on both land and sea after I graduated from school. I performed well at the school, earning the prestigious student of the year award, the very first. My plan to work both land and sea didn’t pan out. I became a full-fledged landlubber; I didn’t go back to sea for over twenty years. My work on the land took me to every district, city, town and village in my country. I worked as a supervisor on a farm that produced citrus (Belize Food Products Ltd.), and on a farm that produced cacao and plantains (Hummingbird Hershey Ltd.). I worked as a research technician in the production of rice and soybeans (Cardi-Caricom Farms Ltd.). I worked as a private farmer (vegetable production). And I worked as an educator of farmers (Belize Pesticides Control Board). It was during my stint as an educator, while producing training manuals and pamphlets, that I discovered that I enjoyed writing. In 2003 I got the opportunity to write for Belize’s leading newspaper, the Amandala. I produced a weekly essay for a little over ten years. During this period I also wrote a number of small books (novels, plays, and poetry), some of them published here at Smashwords. com Colin Hyde the novelist is very different from Colin Hyde the sportsman. I was a fierce competitor in the sports arena. I didn’t sleep well when my team lost a game. If I met a boy who had a better game than I had, I ‘went all out’ to make sure that when we met again, I was boss. I love my stories and want people to appreciate them. But I don’t sweat about my place in the world of writers. Maybe that’s because I discovered my passion for writing when I was well past my childhood. Colin B. Hyde was born in Belize City, British Honduras (Belize), in 1957. He is married and the father of two children. His published pieces include: Unbridled (poetry), They Stole Whopper’s Snapper (prose), First Encounter (prose), The Curse of the Hnf (prose), Borly and the Slick Jaymz Gang (prose), Invasion of the Mangrove Goons (prose), Growing up in Old Belize (childhood autobiography), Possession Woes (prose), and You Must Take Naomi (play).

Book preview

They Stole Whopper’s Snapper

By

Colin B. Hyde

Copyright © 2003 by Colin B. Hyde

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

All characters in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 976-95110-0-5

Published by Colin B. Hyde of Mile 50 Camalote, Cayo District, Belize C.A.

Email – [e-mail]

Cover painting by Renu Singh

Cover design by Jessica Hyde

Special thanks to Rachel

Colin B. Hyde is a Belizean author who has written under the pen-names Cypher, Sixes & Sevens, and Colin bh.

They Stole Whopper’s Snapper first published in 2003 (paperback - 150 copies) under the pen name, Cypher. This version revised.

Contents

Chapter 1 -Teacher’s pet

Chapter 2 - Invitation to a feast

Chapter 3 - A call for peace

Chapter 4 - Ramona in jail

Chapter 5 - The eve of battle

Chapter 6 - Coast guard not to the rescue

Blurb

About Colin B Hyde

Other books by Colin B Hyde

Connecting with Colin B Hyde

Chapter 1

Teacher’s pet

It was that damned A+, with a little gold star in the corner to emphasize the grade. Yes, a gold star…just a little thing, really…except that Sandy didn’t deserve it.

Her paper, Save the Innocent Animals of the Sea too, was quite flimsy. It was supposed to be an eight-hundred word essay but it barely made four hundred. Ai, Teacher Ross’s duty was to grade according to merit, not be subjective. But she was manipulative and she used her corrupt little system to control and punish those she didn’t like, and pamper those she did. She liked Sandy...She gave her a grade she most definitely didn’t deserve.

Little Jeffrey’s dream was to be a doctor. Poor fellow, Teacher Ross wasn’t too particular about him. Jeffrey did such extensive research and accumulated so much material he had to severely edit his paper to not exceed the mandated eight hundred words. He got a C. Minus. He never dared aim that high again.

After he graduated from high school Jeffrey set his sights on becoming a police officer. During the day he works as a lifeguard at the public beach and at night he goes to a school for underachievers to prepare himself for his career. Poor Jeffrey, he has a secret crush on Sandy but he is too below her status to make sense of any relationship. But maybe that is for the best. Sandy is very wishy-washy.

Then there was poor little Roberto. His dream was to follow in his father’s footsteps, work as an investigative reporter at the Belize Daily. Roberto was devastated by the grade Teacher Ross gave him. To tell you the truth, Teacher Ross didn’t even look at that little boy’s paper. She was peeved by an article his father wrote, and she had her bias. So she punished his son.

Boy, seemingly benevolent Teacher Dominic, whose life’s purpose apparently was to lick the slippers of Teacher Ross, completed the coup on young Roberto with this devastating observation on the boy’s final report—Effort (A), Achievement (C). What with that boy’s latent inferiority complex, it’s a wonder he never hung himself. Poor Robbie, he surrendered to crack cocaine before his final year at school and is now a regular between the halfway house and the district jail.

But all these misdeeds paled beside what Teacher Ross did to the budding Katarina. She must have envied that girl’s blossoming womanhood. Blesséd Katarina’s self-esteem plummeted so low that she dropped out of high school in her second year, bore a child to a most unsavory sort—a close blood relation if truth be told—and put on forty two pounds of wholly unacceptable baggage. In short shrift, and in a blaze of flames, that beautiful young lady transgressed childhood, consummated young womanhood, and stumbled into adulthood a smoldering shell, a travesty of what the master shipwright had originally designed as the fabulous ship, Katarina.

Ah, Sandy’s paper. After performing the necessary surgeries and embellishments, Teacher Ross entered it in the district competition. Well what do you know, Sandy won the essay contest and a couple years later, wow, she would get a scholarship to the prestigious Reef University at Calabash Cay.

Whoa, whoa, I am getting ahead of my story. Yes, Sandy got an A+, her very first. She ran home from school that day, straight to the sewing room where her mother, Mrs. Bernice Belyde, was repairing a zip in one of her school uniforms.

Sandy. Mommy, Mommy, I’m—I’m going to be a mermaid.

Mrs. Belyde. A what, Sandy?

Sandy. A mermaid, Mommy—a doctor mermaid. I’ll take care of all the fishes.

Mrs. Belyde. Goodi! We’ll have only the choicest seafood for our Sunday meals now.

Sandy. Oh no, Mommy! No more fish for me. I’m not eating fish anymore.

Mrs. Belyde. What? No more fried silk snappers, Sandy?

Sandy. No, Mommy. Fishes are our brothers and sisters. It’s a sin to eat them.

Mrs. Belyde. No more barbequed lobster marinated in butter and garlic, Honey?

Sandy. No, Mommy, no more lobsters for me—only corn―and beans― and vegetables.

Mrs. Belyde. Hmmm, aren’t they our brothers too, Sandy?

Sandy. Well, yes, in a way. But not like fishes and animals.

Mrs. Belyde. And how do you distinguish that?

Sandy. Easy. They don’t bleed, Mommy.

Mrs. Belyde. I see. Well, you know I’ll have to discuss this with your father. I can’t see him giving up his silk snapper. And you need your protein. And just think about the extra work to prepare two different meals, Sandy. We really will have to talk this over with your father.

A human sharkgirl

Her father, Roland Belyde, a sports addict who had yet to master the fine art of juggling time between his work, the game, and his family, more often than not was only too glad to indulge Sandy in her whims, especially when they allowed him more time to invest in his fancy. Mrs. Belyde’s hopes to maintain protein balance in Sandy’s midday meal crumbled on the rocks of expediency.

Being kind to Roland, maybe he thought Sandy going vegetarian was just the transient fad of teenagehood. So many girls those days were ignorantly cutting down on their meat and fish—for the good of their figure.

Her victory at the dinner table a complete success, Sandy went on to conquer new worlds. Well, she tried. Sandy shooed mosquitoes away instead of crushing their bones, but gave in on a particularly bad night in August when one got inside her net and refused to let her sleep. She tried liberating Ruff, the family’s ten-year old pet dog, but that veritable sage, hopelessly addicted to free rations and sleeping late, refused to leave home.

Sandy immersed herself in her fascinating world. National Geographic was prescribed reading so her parents had to take out a subscription. She locked her television on Animal Planet and the Discovery Channels. She devoured Jacques Yves Costeau. She knew the dates of every trip that the great man made, every part of the ocean he and his celebrated team explored. She scanned newspapers only for the Green section, the parts that discussed the heroic battles and limited triumphs of kindred