The strange entourage of toons and humans – Red, Dot, Harpo, Wakko, Buster, Scooby and the crew – departed by sunrise the next morning. Leaving the Island Soul in some capable hands (that she'd met in a poker game), Dot wasn't too worried about land property; her mind was solely on the golden property that lay many miles out to sea.
The day before had been spent several different ways by several different people. While Red poked, prodded and screamed at the Green Shark's engines to make sure they were ready for another long haul on the ocean, Scooby and his crew went about getting all of the scuba gear they needed with the meager budget that Dot had allotted them. Scooby had insisted that Wakko and Buster learn to scuba dive (because he was terrified he'd accidentally blow himself up underwater if it was he who had to do the actual setting of the detonators) and, much to everyone's surprise, Harpo asked excitedly if he could be taught to dive as well. That meant scuba gear for three extra people had to be bought in addition to all of the gasoline, food, and explosives that needed to be purchased before the Green Shark ventured out to sea again.
Wakko and Buster had been having a renaissance of sorts as they shopped in a ramshackle black market building on the edge of the island for the explosives they'd need for the job. Though nursing a bad hangover, Buster found himself laughing and joking with his best friend as if they'd never been apart; stories, names and old comedy bits he hadn't remembered in years came back to him effortlessly. Harpo, who had decided to tag along with them rather than listen to Red's rants about engine efficiency, listened with a kind of quiet awe to their conversations; all of the snippets of hushed dialogue between Yakko and Babs concerning Wakko, all of the clips of Wakko's cartoons he'd seen, and all of the stories he'd heard about his infamous father were suddenly coming to vivid life. By mid-afternoon, Harpo had silently and unequivocally forgiven Yakko for trying to tell him, without much success, who his father had once been. It was the first time it occurred to him that his uncle might have been right.
The day of departure dawned muggy and uninspiring. By six o'clock in the morning, just as the sun had broken free from the horizon line, it was a humid eighty-eight degrees with no wind. From years of a nomadic lifestyle, Dot never felt comfortable for long in one place and was already eager to get moving just as everyone else was wiping the sleep from their eyes. She did all of the final checks, impatiently ushered everyone on board, drew in the lines and shoved off as the Green Shark's engines roared to life. Harpo watched Little Trouble Island slowly disappear on the horizon and waved goodbye to it, wondering if he'd ever set foot on the island again.
Over the next few days as the Shark made its steady way to the Charlotte's final resting spot, Scooby explained the basics of diving and, whenever the boat would slow down for an hour or so while Red and Dot ate lunch, Wakko, Buster, Harpo and Scooby would jump in the deep blue water of the Caribbean sea and do a few practice dives. Wakko and Buster had complained bitterly in the beginning, exclaiming vehemently that a toon didn't need dive gear, that he could just "hold his damn breath"; he was "a toon, for chrissakes, we don't need all this damn equipment!" Scooby had calmly suggested that Wakko and Buster demonstrate exactly what they meant. A few minutes later, two soggy and out-of-breath toons broke the surface and gasped, "All right, let us try the stupid gear."
Harpo had taken to the bulky equipment and dive rules quickly for a beginner, and by the end of the first day of diving practice had promised himself to make scuba a lifelong hobby. There was something infinitely peaceful about being one with the ocean surroundings; nothing from the surface world could bother him when he was fifty feet below and watching a school of tangs float past him. He was always reluctant to return to the world of, "Where's the fucking gas can?" "Hey, what's in this sandwich?" "Wakko, do you remember that hot chick with the big tits we met at the Martini that night after the Toon Awards Show?" "Stop it!" "Hey, that's my ace!" "If you say one more word, I'm going to rip the tongue out of your mouth," and the like. Although he was beginning to enjoy the company of misfits and eccentrics aboard the Green Shark, he was always more than ready to descend to the silent world of the ocean floor.
Meanwhile, Yakko and Babs had found their way to Little Trouble Island almost four full days after the Green Shark's departure. It didn't take long to prove Babs' theory that Little Trouble had been Dot's home for almost twenty years; everyone on the island knew her name and swore they'd know her on sight. Upon learning that their nephew was off island and probably would be for some time, Babs had grown despondent that she might never see her little guy again – to which Yakko promised, quite sternly, that they would find Harpo.
Well, sooner or later.
"Honey, the Caribbean is a big place," Babs said as she stirred her drink at the Island Soul Bar. "It's not like calling up the neighbors and businesses in downtown Toontown and asking where Harpo is. People value anonymity down here and they are willing to defend it. Plus, it seems like every island belongs to a different European country; we can't rely on police cooperation for this because the organization isn't good enough. It's all us, baby, and it's a big world down here."
"You make it sound like we should just forget about the whole thing and go home," Yakko said with a frown.
Babs shot him an irritated look. "That's not fair and you know it. That's not what I'm saying at all."
Yakko crossed his arms in front of himself, shooting her a look of his own. "All right, then what exactly are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying we shouldn't have left the porch light on at home, because this is going to take a hell of a lot longer than we anticipated," she growled. "But you're just ignorant if you believe I'm going to give up that easily. Hell Yakko, I'd go to the ends of the earth a hundred times over for Harpo." Babs buried her face in her hands. "I'm the closest thing to a mother he's ever had. He's my baby. I love him, Yakko."
Yakko sighed and bit a couple of his fingers. "Whoever thought I could be a worse father than Wakko, eh?"
"You're not. At least you didn't mean the things you said. Sounds to me like Wakko, back in his Alballa days, meant every word he said to and about his son." Babs cupped her face and stared out at the water. "I know you're sorry about what happened. But I swear to God, Yakko, if anything happens to Harpo, I'll kill you myself."
"Babs, if anything happened to Harpo, I'd kill myself long before you ever could," he said, almost cheerfully.
"Do you think he's ok?" the worried tone of a mother asked him.
"Wakko wouldn't let anything happen to him," he responded quickly. Babs gave him a look of surprise.
"A few days ago you weren't about to let Wakko breathe the same air as Harpo."
Yakko sat up and tentatively put his arm around Babs. "Things change. I was in defensive mode. Look…I've started to think that maybe I was…you know…wrong about Wakko. Everyone deserves a second chance. I know that now, because I'd sure as hell like one myself." He squeezed her shoulder. "I'm just sorry that this is the way I had to find that out. It might have cost us your son."
"Our son," she corrected.
"Wakko's son."
"Yes. Wakko, my and your son. Ours," Babs said gently, gazing wistfully at the water. Though Harpo was not her biological son, Babs felt he was in every other way that counted. She longed to wrap her arms around him and kiss him, tell him that everything was going to be all right and that she loved him more than life itself. Babs looked up at the stars and closed her eyes, some tears falling from her cheeks, and whispered in her mind, I'm coming, Harpo. Don't worry, baby. I won't – can't – rest until I know you're ok. If it takes me the rest of my days and I have to travel to every corner of this tired old earth, I'll find you. I won't stop until I do.
"We'll find him. He's out there somewhere..."
'Somewhere' at the moment was a nameless shoal that the Green Shark had moored on for the night, many miles away from where Yakko and Babs sat on a beach as a pair brooding parents. Things were quiet on board as they always were at night, and Wakko, Harpo and Buster were engaged in a rather dull game of Blackjack 21. As always, it was never the game that counted so much as the conversation that went along with it.
"So I walk into the Brown Derby one night – this is back before they tore it down of course – and I said – hit me – I said to the bartender – don't try that old gag, Buster, it's not funny anymore, I mean hit me I want another card – geez, a toon never forgets a gag, does he? Anyway, so I'm in the Brown Derby, and this is, oh I don't know, in the thirties sometime, and who do you think I see sitting at the bar? Harold Lloyd! So I go over to him, and I say – "
"You met Harold Lloyd, Dad!"
"Yes, let me finish – so I say, 'Mr. Lloyd! I'm a huge fan!' – and you know what he says to me? 'Oh gee, I appreciate that kid, but I'm all washed up. No one knows who I am anymore.' And I say, 'I know who you are, I've seen all your old reels!' And he said – hit me – he said – Buster, please – he said, 'How? I own all of my movies! They aren't being shown anywhere!' And – I wanted to smooth things over, see, because I'd seen the cheap bootleg copies in the old movie theater on the east side of Toontown, you remember that place, Buster? – but anyway, I didn't want him to know about that because I was such a big fan, and so I said, 'Well, maybe that's why no one knows you, Mr. Lloyd, if you own all of your own stuff and you never screen it!' And he said – he was a nice man, but didn't quite understand us toons – he said, 'I'm sorry kid, but what does a toon know?' So you know what I did? I made up these phony posters for a 'Harold Lloyd Nite' at that old movie theater in Toontown, and don't you know that half of Toontown came? I mean, granted, there weren't as many toons in those days, but – hit me – but there were still a lot of them, and that stupid Mouse came, and don't you know that the next week a new Mickey Mouse cartoon came out, and there was that damn mouse hanging off the clock like Lloyd does in Safety Last – you seen that one, Harp? – and suddenly the whole town is abuzz with those old Lloyd reels! I mean it was like a rebirth for that guy! And everyone gives that stupid mouse credit for something I did!"
"Did Mr. Lloyd know?"
"Hell if I know. But a good comedian, at least as good as Keaton and Chaplin. Too bad very few people remember him now, but – shit, let's have a new deal, come on – if only he'd put more confidence into doing talkies, more people would know who he was. He missed out on that. Ruined Keaton too. Well, the alcohol helped too, I suppose. Hit me. But of course, talkies weren't profitable at the very first, so very few people did put confidence in them. Look at Chaplin. It was straight into the thirties before he made a talkie. They just didn't make as much money, so no one started making them consistently until at least 1929 – "
"Just like Oscar Wilde!" Harpo piped up excitedly. Buster and Wakko shot him oblivious looks, but Harpo was going through 'intelligent discussion withdrawal' and needed an audience. "See, the only reason Wilde did plays was because he needed money and plays made money in Victorian England. But he missed his calling, because Dorian Gray is brilliant, and he knew it! But novels didn't make money so he continued to write plays! Well, until he was jailed, that is – " Harpo looked up to see confused expressions on his compatriots' faces and cleared his throat, feeling it might be better to make comparisons that they might have some frame of reference for. "It's sort of like…like Ed Wood."
"Now there was a character," Buster said, coming out of the literary fog and stepping back into territory he knew. "You knew him, didn't you Wakko?"
"Sure! He loved us toons. Of course, he loved everyone. I have never man so sweet nor untalented. But he meant well. Too bad he was always broke."
"Though never so broke as to not be buying angora sweaters."
"A man has to have priorities. His were just a little…different." Wakko threw down his cards. "Well, that's it for me. The numbers are swimming in front of me."
"Me too," Harpo said, grabbing the cards and beginning to reshuffle the deck.
Red surfaced from the engine room, hair wild but triumphant. "All systems go for another few hundred miles!" he cheered. Buster stretched and yawned.
"What time izzit?" Buster called up to Scooby, who was standing near the back of the boat and fighting with tangled regulators.
"Late," he said simply, not looking up.
"You want some help with that?" Harpo said to him.
Scooby shook his head. "If you're going to be diving the rest of your life, you're going to be doing this plenty, kid. Enjoy the peace while you can!"
Harpo laughed as Wakko sat down behind him on the gunwale and ruffled his hair. "You enjoying yourself down here?" Wakko said quietly to his son.
"Yeah," Harpo said, sounding surprised. "I really am."
"Good. Because if you weren't, you know I'd make Dot turn this boat around."
"Like hell you would," Dot said as she lifted herself back up on deck from the water where she'd been taking a late-night swim. She smiled at Harpo and pinched his nose. "Plus, the kid likes us. Right?"
"We're like a sort of weird, makeshift family," Scooby said.
"The closest thing to family as most of us will ever get," Buster said with a sad shrug.
"And about as dysfunctional as you can get," Dot agreed. "But for us, it seems to work."
Through nighttime silence came a distant voice on the radio, the beat of a song so familiar and welcome that all souls present felt as though they'd just arrived home. Scooby unconsciously turned up the dial on the beat up old radio and took a slow sip of his beer, losing himself in the song as his faded, worn eyes watched the horizon. "No woman, no cry," Scooby croaked along softly as he wiped some of the condensation from his drink.
"This song…" Harpo started softly, pointing to the radio. "We used to dance to this song in our kitchen. Yakko, Babs and I." A wave of silent sadness suddenly washed over him and he was quiet, not able to finish his thought, the memories coming back strong.
"You know where I was the last time I heard this song?" Wakko said. "I was in that horrible toon prison, in the laundry room. I had been washing the sheets, which was one of my duties there, and thinking how unkind fate had been to me." He began to pace on deck, lost in his own memories. "Then this song comes on the radio, real scratchy because it was coming all the way from Reno – it's about the past, but it's also about decisions. About friends and those who have helped us out. And I realized it was my own decisions that had brought me to that place and time, but that I had a wonderful brother who cared about me and a son that made my life worth living. This song always reminds me of Yakko, too. It's such a wonderful song – I'm sorry the memories of it are painful to you now."
"But I don't hate Yakko," Harpo stammered. "I don't hate him at all…but I can't go back. I can't. Not after that night. I can't make myself do it." He sniffed and looked out to sea. "You guys weren't there. You don't know what his words did to me." Everyone was silent a moment, listening to the reassuring reggae beat come softly from the radio. "I wish I did hate him!" Harpo suddenly burst, standing up and clenching his fists. "Do you know how much easier my life would be if I could just stop caring about he and Babs? I wish I could forget all of the good things about Yakko! Why should I love anyone who thinks of me that way? Those words – that look on his face – that should have made me stop loving him, right? Every rational fiber in my body tells me that I shouldn't still love him!"
"Love isn't as cut and dried as that," Scooby interjected. "Toons and humans alike have been trying to figure out love since the dawn of time, and we're still totally lost."
"So what am I supposed to do then?" Harpo said quietly. "If I can't go home but I can't stop thinking of home, what am I going to do?"
"Harpo," Wakko said as he placed his hand back on his son's shoulder. "Take it from a guy with plenty of bad memories – it's time to make some new memories. It's the only way, kid."
"Toontown and whatever happened there is in the past," Buster said, handing Harpo a cold drink. "This family is never going to judge you. We can't. We've made too many mistakes ourselves." All of them laughed.
"We don't care what your last name is, who your father or uncle is, where you're from or even if you're proud of any of it," Red said. He smiled. "We're all stray cats here. But we always land on our feet because we stick together."
"Life ain't always kind, kiddo," Dot said, sitting down next to her nephew. "But if you can find a group of people who will stick by you even when the rest of the world is against you, then you've got everything you need in this life, Harp."
"I remember when we used to sit," Buster sang, closing his eyes. "In the government yard of Trenchtown…"
"Observing the hypocrites, as they would mingle with the good people we met…" Wakko sang with a small smile. Buster opened his eyes and smiled at him. Wakko grinned back, placing his arm around the shoulders of his best friend.
"Good friends we've had, and good friends we've lost along the way…" they crooned along together, both smiling widely.
Harpo was captivated by the magic of the moment and found himself singing back, "In this bright future, you can't forget your past…"
"So dry your tears, I say!" Dot sang, placing a protective hand on the top of her nephew's head and grinning down at him. Harpo laughed slightly as they all burst into the chorus.
"No woman, no cry…no woman, no cry…"
"I remember when we used to sit in the government yard of Trenchtown," Red sang while doing a funny, slow dance on deck that echoed his time in the remote areas of the Caribbean. Dot stood up and began to dance with him, mimicking his slow movements and oddly understanding what moves he was going to make before he made them. "Georgie, he would make the fire light…"
"…log wood burnin' into the night," Buster sang.
Wakko put his arm around Harpo's shoulders and pulled him nearer. "Then we would cook corn meal porridge…"
"…of which I'll share with you," Harpo finished.
"My feet is my only carriage…" Wakko sang, looking down at his son. They both grinned. "So I've got to push on through…"
They'd come from all corners of the world and all walks of life. Neither of them could be counted as the same, and yet an old sentimental song playing on scratchy airwaves hundreds of miles from shore put them, for the first time, in the same place at the same time. The words, sung with the reverence of a hymn to what went before, guided them past all differences; past all mistakes; no longer bound by their shortcomings, for just a moment they no longer had to count who was wrong or right and why. Certain songs in history have bridged gaps of time, space and individual greatness; it was either luck or fate that one of those songs was echoing off the waves all around them, emanating from a plastic box no bigger than anyone's arm.
Dot dancing with Red, Scooby drinking slowly, Buster to the waves, and Wakko and Harpo sang at the top of their lungs, pulsating with their hopes and dreams, all found in the magical voice of one Robert Nesta Marley,
"Everything's gonna be all right! Everything's gonna be all right! Everything's gonna be all right!"