The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee (10 page)

He assured himself that this was the sensible thing to do. If the storm became as mighty as predicted, no matter how tightly he clung to his hat, somehow the wind might whip it off. Then, off Little Lydia would blow, and what would happen to her next? A challenge even harder than rescuing her from Monstrous! One rescue was enough.

But the most important thing of all was that in her own lofty domain she was far away from his strong box with the thunder and lightning bolts. He put the box on a boulder and began to sweep out his headquarters.

Still, he was worried. "Sound of the waterfall pretty?" he asked.

Little Lydia did not answer.

"Do the nuts and bolts all around you make you feel like you're back in Truro?" Jimmy McGee asked.

Still Little Lydia did not answer. She just lay

there, looking at the other boulder near her, just above her, like a shelf, the way she used to stare at the ceiling of his headquarters in North Truro just after the rescue and before she caught the zoomie-zoomies. She was like a doll in an exhibition.

Jimmy McGee put his thunder and lightning bolt box back into his hat and clamped it on his head. But now there was no Little Lydia in it. He was reluctant to leave, but he had to. He had to get to Garden Lane before the family arrived.

"Well, bye!" said Jimmy McGee. "I'll be back soon. And soon, if you keep on improving, back to Amy you shall go!"

Little Lydia did not bebop. "That's very good," thought Jimmy McGee. "She really is making tremendous progress toward getting back to being a do-nothing doll."

He looked at her tenderly. All she was doing was staring with those electric blue eyes straight up at the boulder, shelf-like, just a little above hers. Staring at what? Or at nothing? "She can't move her eyes, so she has to stare somewhere," he reasoned.

Jimmy McGee then was ready to go. He slung his bombazine bag with his most needed hurricane work tools in it over his shoulder, and off he zoomied.

He was still uneasy about leaving Little Lydia alone. Curious how those electric blue eyes of hers seemed to light up the semi-twilight look the cave always had! But it couldn't be helped. He had to leave her and go about his hurricane business.

He did a great deal of regular Jimmy McGee plumber work here and there. Then he sped over to number 3017 Garden Lane, where, right now, the old gray Dodge, headlights on, was slowly rounding the corner and heading for home. It had just barely beat the hurricane home, for now, as Papa parked the car in front of the pretty three-story red-brick house, the fury of the storm broke. Wind snatched the orange fruit off the ginkgo trees and sent them flying through the air like Ping-Pong balls.

"Don't step on the ginkgoes!" screamed Amy. "They smell awful!"

"Don't mind that!" screamed Mama. "Everybody get into the house as fast as you can! Branches might fall on you or trees topple over!"

Mama frantically unlocked the front door. Wags was the first one in, tripping everybody up as they staggered in with cartons, suitcases, and boxes. He was so glad to be home that he raced back and forth all over the house and then back to the front door, counting them all. Jimmy McGee watched all this from the cellar window, where he was already at work.

The family set the cartons and suitcases down wherever they could, many of them in the kitchen. Wags sniffed each one of them, wagged his tail when he saw his red bowl, and dropped Papa's soggy old sock in it. This meant he was hungry ... and thirsty! Then he picked his sock up again and tore around the house with it dangling from his mouth and looking absurd.

But no one had time to laugh. And they did—just in time—get everything in!

Down below in the cellar, Jimmy McGee thought, "The way they're tearing around up there, you'd think they all had the zoomie-zoomies and without benefit of Little Lydia."

Now the rains came down, tearing in a horizontal streak up Garden Lane, going in the direction of Mount Rose Park, up the hill.

"Look at that rain!" exclaimed Amy at the front window. "It's tearing by in one straight sheet."

"It's traveling," said Clarissa. "It's not coming down!"

"Don't you believe it isn't coming down, too," said Papa. "Look at the street. Gushing rivers in the gutters, rushing down toward the Potomac!"

But everybody and everything was in, in their pretty, strongly built house. Clarissa's house, painted a pale pink, was just a few doors away, but her family had not returned yet from their important travels. She was going to stay with Amy until they did get back.

"Everybody here," said Amy happily. "Everybody except Little Lydia!"

"Maybe we'll see her go rushing by in the gutter river!" said Clarissa.

Little did anyone know how very near Little Lydia really was ... just up the hill in Jimmy McGee's winter headquarters.

But now Jimmy McGee slam-banged the pipes in the cellar. He, too, had Little Lydia on his mind and wanted to get back to her. He made the house reverberate like the strings of a giant and explosive bass violin! This was Jimmy McGee's way of giving the family a rousing welcome.

Then he paused for a moment and listened to the homecoming upstairs. At first they could not tear themselves from the windows. But then they began to drag suitcases and cartons from the kitchen all over the house so Mama would have room to work. They were all hungry.

Papa lugged one carton down to the cellar. "Hey!" said Amy. "Those are my things, not cellar things!"

"I'll bring it up later," said Papa, panting. "Right now we need the space in the kitchen. My back aches. I'll turn on the water while I'm down here." He hummed and sang a little old-time song to remind himself how you do this. "'On at the bong, then on with the faucets! And then we have water!'" The "bong" in the cellar was the main cutoff of water for a whole house.

In his corner Jimmy McGee nodded his head in appreciation. He could have done this for them, but he didn't want to deprive Papa of the joys of doing cellar work.

Meanwhile, Mama was preparing snacks from the food they'd brought back from Cape Cod. "Ouch! My back!" she said. "Wags! You just plain take up too much space in the front seat. You don't give me enough room..."

Wags, dejected, slunked behind the dining room door for a moment. Then he backed out with his limp old sock dangling out of his mouth when Mama said, "There, there, Wagsie. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Good old Wagsie boy!"

Heartened by these words, Wags backed all the way out and tore all over the house ... up the stairs to the third floor, then slid the two flights back down on his belly, and then raced through the living room and the dining room, bunching up the rugs, and then to the kitchen, where he pawed Mama's skirts and pushed his red bowl all over the floor, panting and imploring Mama for water!

Jimmy McGee, down in the cellar, tightening some loose bolts here and there, was enjoying the upstairs sounds. "That dog Wags is practically a zoomie-zoomie dog already," he thought. "Imagine the whole population of this house with the zoomie-zoomies, speaking in bebop and walking on zigzag streaks of lightning!"

The thought was staggering! Luckily Little Lydia was safe and sound in his winter headquarters, where she was contaminating no one. If she were still in his stovepipe hat, she would perhaps be bebopping, "
Fun! Fun! Funny fun!
"

He wished she were up there in his hat enjoying with him the homecoming! He missed her. He would really be sorry when the right and proper time came for them to part.

Now Papa came up from the cellar, having turned on the tap so Mama could get water from the kitchen faucet. At the same time Jimmy McGee gave a big rousing slam-bang on the water pipes, a welcoming bang, and the water spurted out ... bang-spurt-spuff! "Like Old Faithful in Yellowstone!" said Papa, and everybody laughingly said, "Let's all have a glass of Old Faithful!"

"Old Washington, D.C., water is good enough for me," said Papa. He eyed the water pouring out in a steady stream now. "Have to let it run a bit," he said. "Been shut off all summer."

"O-o-oh..." Everybody groaned. All had glasses in outstretched hands for some D.C. water to quench their thirst.

"Phew!" said Papa. "I'm thirsty! Whatever was in that last carton I lugged downstairs? Weighed a ton of bricks!"

"Books are not bricks," said Amy. "That carton has my books, my dolls—all but one of them anyway..."

Jimmy McGee had already seen what was in that last heavy carton that Papa was talking about. And what he had seen, tucked in at the last moment in Truro, was the
Who's
Who Book
by Amy. This box was to be Little Lydia's final destination, and the final end to all the perplexing hero business. From then on, bang-bang, zoomie-zoomie, back to his real, right regular jobs—being just a plumber, a little fellow, a banger on pipes. Mission of having to become a hero accomplished ... well, almost accomplished ... for a second time.

For a moment longer, Jimmy McGee listened to the sounds upstairs in the kitchen. What a happy life Little Lydia, the do-nothing doll, had here! Much better kind of life than going on the zoomie-zoomies with him all the time, stashed away in his stovepipe hat. Ah, now, soon he'd see if her recovery had really been complete.

Upstairs everybody was drinking water now. "Ugh!" said Amy, and spit her mouthful into the sink.

"You'll get used to it again," said Mama.

Clarissa didn't care what the water tasted like and drank two full glassfuls almost without stopping. Papa, too. "D.C. water, not Old Faithful," he said. And Wags. How he drank! He slurped down his whole bowlful of water without taking a breath. Most seemed to go on the floor. People stood back while he then shook his head and his whole body as though he had been in for a splendid swim.

"He drinks like a horse," marveled Amy. "He wants some more."

All of them stopped short in what they were doing to watch Wags drink and to hear him! It was a spectacular sight and almost made the water they were drinking taste really good. Anyway it
was
wet. Then they went on with fixing the picnic supper.

Jimmy McGee decided that it was time to get on with his hurricane work, which he did in six-sixty time, because he so desperately wanted to get back to headquarters and make certain Little Lydia was safe and sound there, staring, staring with her electric blue eyes at the rock near her...

He zoomie-zoomied off in the wind and the rain and the crackling sound of branches being torn from the trees. He checked everything ... cellars, bridges, parks, trollies, seeing what wires were down. He even went to Echo Park to make certain the carousel had been boarded up and the flying horses made safe. Then he banged the cellars where he found those people who were not doing what they were supposed to be doing, but were carousing, partying, saying, "Ho-ho! What's a little old hurricane anyway?"

The worst thing! There was a little aquarium near his headquarters, and he found that the careless man in charge of it had not barred the door. Goodness knows how many rare fish might have been swept away in the rain!

Jimmy McGee bolted the door tightly and then zoomie-zoomied home. Never before had he traveled as fast as he did now.

Was Little Lydia all right? She must be all right. By now she must be the real, right do-nothing Little Lydia again, as she had been when he rescued her from Monstrous, before he had turned her into an electrified bebopping doll.

Yet what about that stare in her eyes as though she were mesmerized by something? It seemed as though those electric blue eyes of hers
could,
the way a real person could, see something. The thought had been in the back of his mind all afternoon. So now, behold Jimmy McGee, rounds finished, returning to his headquarters in six-sixty time.

The high winds were whipping the waterfall away sideways from his entranceway, pitching the water somewhere else. A little water was spraying into his home, but not much ... just enough to create a nice little shallow pool. Maybe when the storm was over, it would remain there. In it he could clean his tools and nuts and bolts ... also his stovepipe hat!

He zoomie-zoomied in and went right up to the boulder where he had laid Little Lydia on its pale mossy pelt. But there was no sign of Little Lydia.

Little Lydia was gone!

Where was Little Lydia? Frantically Jimmy McGee checked from top to bottom and side to side and under the roots of trees, in every nook and cranny. No sign. He even looked where he kept his pipes filled with scrolls and writings, his "library." She might have somehow gotten into a pipe and pretended she was a scroll, not a doll! She was that smart.

But no. He returned over and over to the place on the flat rock where he had laid her and where, looking at her eyes, he was struck by what an electric blue they were. Still he found no sign of Lydia, the do-nothing doll.

But there were others here in his headquarters! One by one they had been coming from this cranny or that, land animals and birds, all refugees from the storm.

At first, all of them eyed Jimmy McGee with caution, even fear. But soon, realizing they had nothing to be afraid of, they began, one by one, to follow him around. He was like a pied piper now, with one of his little probing pipes in hand.