The Patty Cakes float passed them on the left. As it went by Adam grinned at Freddy. Adam called out, “Oh, and just so you know, any float that doesn’t pass by the reviewing stand is automatically disqualified.”
Alfred and Freddy looked at the engine. Alfred snagged one of the floating bubbles and took a sniff. “It seems that someone poured a bottle of shampoo into our gas tank,” he said.
Freddy looked back at Chief Spanker. That bottle he’d been holding!
Adam yelled, “So long, loser!”
“What’s going on, Dad?” asked Nancy.
“I’m working on it, Nanny Boo-Boo.”
“For the last time, it’s Nancy! Now where was I? Oh, right. ‘O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!’”
“Treasure this,” called out one of the Spanker gang as he nailed Nancy with a soggy tomato, right in the nose.
Freddy watched as his sister was getting bombarded, as his father worked on the sabotaged gas tank, and as the Spanker float drew ahead of them while the crowd cheered. It would be over for the Burger Castle. They would have to leave Pookesville. The Spankers would win.
And yet right in the middle of it all something clicked in Freddy’s big brain. The fight was not over yet. He grabbed his father’s walkie-talkie from the tractor cab and raced to the float.
CHAPTER19
Freddy opened the trapdoor underneath the Burger Castle float and stuck his head through the opening.
“Fries, we’ve got a problem,” he said.
“I know,” said Ziggy; “we’re not moving.”
“Spanker sabotaged our engine, and unless we do something they’re gonna win the competition,” explained Freddy. He looked at Si and Meese. “Okay, guys, you know how when you hold your breath it turns to helium? Well, we’re gonna use that little talent right now.” Freddy handed a walkie-talkie to Theodore and quickly explained his plan.
Everyone put their hands together and said, “One Fry for all and all Fries for one, plus Freddy.”
Freddy came out from under the platform, jumped in the driver’s seat of the tractor, and said, “Uh, Dad, you might want to move back.”
Alfred looked up from the tractor’s engine, bewildered, “What was that, son?”
“Hey, get that float out of here!” shouted all the people on the floats lined up behind the Burger Castle.
“Hit it,” yelled Freddy into his walkie-talkie.
Inside the Burger Castle float, Si and Meese took twin enormous breaths, filling up their hollow insides. After five seconds the air inside them turned to helium, the same gas used to fill balloons and make them fly. Inch by inch, the Burger Castle float began to rise into the air.
The crowd along the streets watched, mesmerized, as the float rose above their heads. Nancy, thinking that the crowd was mesmerized by her performance, smiled and said, “Thank you my fans, an encore? Well, if you insist.” After taking ten bows in a row Nancy Funkhouser-still oblivious to the floating float-started reciting favorite movie lines. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” she said. “Play it again, Sam.” She winked and exclaimed, “Rosebud!” She spread her arms to the sky. “Oh, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
But when she finally looked down and saw how far up she was, she started screaming.
Alfred wiped his hands on a rag, adjusted his glasses, and smiled.
“Go, Freddy,” yelled Howie from the crowd. He was so enthralled by what he was seeing, he actually stopped nibbling on a cheese cube.
Freddy steered the float to the left and then to the right. “Okay, Wally,” he said into his walkie-talkie, “full speed ahead.”
Wally put his mouth against a back window in the float and blew out an enormous breath. The float shot forward. Pilot Freddy Funkhouser knew exactly what his target was, and it was dead ahead.
“Okay,” said Freddy into his walkie-talkie, “Let out half of your air.”
Si and Meese instantly did so, and the float went into a nosedive.
Nancy, hanging on to the turret for dear life, screamed, “What is going on, Dad?” She managed to turn around and saw Freddy at the controls.
“Freddy Funkhouser, you put this float back on the ground this instant.”
“That’s where I’m going, Nanny Boo-Boo.”
“Oh, all right, then. AAAGGGHHH!!!”
Wally had let out an enormous burp and the air force had knocked the Burger Castle sideways and then nearly upside down.
“My bad,” Wally admitted sheepishly.
However, the crowd cheered wildly at this maneuver. Freddy smiled. “Okay, let’s give them a show, guys! Back up!” he barked into his walkie-talkie.
Si and Meese filled themselves with air again.
The float soared into a vertical climb as the crowd watched in awed silence, all heads uplifted to the sky. The only sound was the hysterical screams of Nancy Funkhouser. Freddy barked commands to the Fries, and Wally and the other Fries raced around the insides of the Burger Castle float, blowing air out different windows.
After a series of loop-the-loops, roller coaster plummets, and other stunts that rivaled the best of any barnstorming pilots, Freddy set his sights once more on his original target: the Patty Cakes float.
“Okay, reduce altitude and full power, guys.”
Si and Meese let out their breaths as fast as they could and Wally blew as hard as he could out the window.
The Burger Castle float went into a tight dive, aimed right at the Patty Cakes behemoth. The Spankers saw what was coming, and they all started scrambling off the float. Adam Spanker looked so scared that Freddy actually felt sorry for him.
Okay, Freddy thought, if I bust up the Spanker float, I’m as bad as Adam is. He barked into his walkie-talkie, “Hard to port and then come in for a landing.”
Right at the very last instant, the float went into a sharp turn and buzzed right by the Patty Cakes float. The Burger Castle float made a perfect landing directly in front of the reviewing stand to the cheers of the crowd.
Stewie Spanker was so angry by this that he kicked the machine that was blasting the Patty Cake ditty and knocked it over. It kept playing, in a long moan that sounded like, “Poopy kook, poopy kook, spank me, man,” before dying out completely.
Freddy climbed out of the cockpit and waved to the cheering crowd. Judge Thackery beamed down at him from the reviewing stand. “I think we have our winner,” he said.
Alfred Funkhouser came running up while Nancy untied herself and climbed down from the turret, boiling mad.
“Freddy, I’m going to kill you,” she shouted.
Freddy said, “But Nanny Boo-Boo, we won, we won!”
“What!”
“WE DID! WE DID!” shouted her father as he picked up Nancy and swung her around before setting her back down.
Nancy turned and saw the crowd cheering her and her family, and she immediately started smiling and waving. “Thank you, my loving fans,” she murmured. “Another encore? Well, if you insist.”
The Funkhousers were up on the reviewing stand and about to accept the award from Judge Thackery when the Spankers stormed up.
“This is outrageous,” sputtered Chief Spanker. “Floats can’t fly. They obviously broke the rules. You have to disqualify them.”
“Oh yeah? Well, you sabotaged our float by putting shampoo in our gas tank,” Freddy shot back.
Chief Spanker tried to look innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Adam, do you know what he’s talking about?”
“No, father, sir,” answered Adam politely.
“There,” roared Chief Spanker. “It’s this juvenile delinquent’s word against ours, Thackery. So you have to believe us.”
The Judge was thinking about this when Freddy spotted in the crowd the big-shot designer from New York he’d seen at the warehouse.