The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee (3 page)

That night he did his work in zoomie-zoomie-zoomie time—that means three times faster than usual. It wasn't easy work either. There was trouble in the electric bolt box in the cellar of a motion picture house—the lights kept coming on and going off right in the middle of the best part of the show. In spite of much stomping from the outraged people above him, he fixed everything and then returned to headquarters.

He took off his bombazine coat, folded it neatly, and put it at the foot of his hammock. He put Amy's book inside his stovepipe hat, which was the safest place for it, and kept his hat on his head. Sometimes he hung his hat on a hatrack, a tough root near his hammock, where he could grab it in a hurry. Not tonight, though. His hat with this book in it was going to stay on top of his head until bright morning sunshine, when he'd put the
Who's Who Book
back on the bench.

He sat down in his entranceway and repeated the words in that Amy book. "McGee, Jimmy: a little fellow..." All of it, ending with "HERO."

He said the words over and over again so often that they made him laugh. They were like the lines in a play. "Ha-ha!" He surprised himself, laughing like that. "That
Who's Who
girl has gotten the wrong idea of me ... that's the trouble. I'll think of something else, maybe some of the other people in the book. You can't think of yourself all the time ... that's vain! I'll study the book, learn it by heart..."

A lovely breeze rustled the grass above and behind him. The moon was high, and its path sent silver ripples across the sea on the waves rolling in, way down below. Try as he did, though, the word
hero
would not get itself out of his head.

Just thinking about how you get to be a hero was hard enough, let alone already being labeled one. He liked hard work, was used to it, but he was not used to the idea of being a hero. He wondered if he
had
to be one just because Amy said so in her book. Still, he sort of wished he could keep this book he was in.

Sitting in his doorway, Jimmy McGee began to study the clouds—the moon, the stars, the planets—and watched them slowly move across the heavens. He learned a lot this way. He knew that toward the end of summer there would be a hurricane and the name of it would be Lobelia. He knew these things long before regular weather forecasters did.

At hurricane time he always had plenty to do! Lobelia. He liked the sound of it, a really pretty name for a hurricane, and might bring some curious surprise along with it besides wind and rain and tidal waves! And the name would fit right on the same page in Amy's book as his own hero name did. There was an empty space there, empty as though it were saying, "Write me a name here."

O.K. That he would do! He took the book out of his hat, and by the light of the pale early dawn, in his tiny scrawl, he wrote Lobelia.

His writing looked like marks left by a little bird. This amused him. It would give Amy something to puzzle about. Just even things up; like her having given him all this hero business to puzzle about.

Today was going to be a beautiful day, the first day of vacation for Amy and her family in The Bizzy Bee. Soon the sun would rise. He must put Amy's book back where he had found it when the bench was good and dry. She would never know that her book had spent the night in the stovepipe hat of a character in her book by the name of McGee, Jimmy ... hero.

He was reluctant to part with Amy's book, so he went inside his headquarters, and by the light of the early dawn seeping through his grass curtains, he made a copy of Amy's book to keep for himself. He had a nook where he kept scraps of paper he gathered from a newspaper printing shop down Provincetown way. So now he had his own copy of Amy's
Who's
Who Book.

He had several books written in his tiny script, a kind of code. He kept each book rolled up tightly in its own piece of pipe. They were his "scrolls"...a pipe library, which he arranged neatly in a back corner of his cave. This was his summer library. He had another "scroll-pipe library" back in his Washington, D.C., winter headquarters.

A learned little plumber, this tiny Jimmy McGee was. But hero?

Sitting there quietly, not going on his rounds, he mulled over this hero business and mulled over it. Took his mind off his real work. But he had to figure it out, what Amy meant. He figured there were three kinds of heroes, the long-ago kind, the present-day kind, and the future kind, the hero-to-be kind.

He mused. "Ah!" he pondered. "Maybe, just maybe, mind you, maybe in some long ago past time, long, long ago, I once
was
a hero, and I have forgotten about it ... if I ever knew it then when it was happening. Or, hey! Maybe there is,
maybe
I'm saying, another Jimmy McGee that I never heard of but Amy has? Some hero of long ago. Maybe I was named after him, a sort of fellow who always gets himself put into books by other people, say a book with a name like
Stories of Famous People.
Or the little boy who held his finger in a hole in the dike so the town would not get flooded if the dam burst. He probably didn't know he was being a hero and soon would be in books practically all over the world."

Or take a hero of more recent times, who gets to have streets and boulevards named after him and a statue of him on a horse in Central Park or some park somewhere, maybe, or in a museum, or in a little garden outside the museum with a fountain splashing water all over him all the time. Like himself, for instance, behind his waterfall in Mount Rose Park?

Or maybe a hero so recent he has ticker-tape parades down Fifth Avenue or Constitution Avenue, people clapping, shouting, roaring, "Hail! Hail!"

Or maybe Amy meant that he, Jimmy McGee, would be a hero in the near future. He had better keep his eyes out for that chance happening to bring Amy's book up to date. But not to let all this hero business interfere with his real work. "No! Never!"

The sun was not yet high enough for him to risk putting Amy's valuable book back where she had left it. The bench was still damp. Perhaps some seagull—they are curious birds, think everything they see is possibly good to eat, something novel, and squawk and scream over it—might fly off with it in its sharp beak to Gull Island or even Provincetown, scattering shredded pages of Amy's
Who
's
Who Book,
including the important L and M page, all over the ocean.

He couldn't risk that. Amy wouldn't be out of bed yet anyway. He had taken good care of her book and wanted to see her delight at finding it safe and sound; all he had done that was extra was to have added a little something for fun!

So he popped it in his bombazine bag. Then he zoomie-zoomied off to make his morning rounds, waking people up ... the ones who had to get to work early. Check the milk train. Was it on time? Slow? Check the switches.
The Boston Globe,
was it on the train? Well, all the usual morning chores. He went faster than ever, making the telephone wires hum, gathering extra electric speed, because he wanted to return Amy's book, which was bumping about in his bombazine bag along with a very special little box, about two inches long and one inch high and wide, an oblong very strong little box. This he always carried with him. It was what he was going to put two special bolts in some day. He called it the magic bolt box.

He had a good collection of bolts all right, but something was lacking. Then one day an idea, like a bolt out of the blue, had struck him. For a long time he had had a longing to have a thunderbolt and a lightning bolt represented in his collection. Perhaps he could capture in his box the tiny, very, very small tip end of a lightning bolt and the last rumble of a thunderbolt.

To try to capture these rare items for his bolt collection would help him forget the hero business. As far as his chores went, all was fine. All trains on time. No dogs hurt, no cats either, no little slowpoke hedgehog run over. Pipes everywhere, all O.K. All were banged on louder than ever, shuddering the cottages and shaking the people out of their beds.

The sun was up. He zoomie-zoomied back to his summer headquarters in six-sixty time. He went so fast he might have passed himself coming back! That was how curious he was about Amy's book. It was hard for him to part with it, but he was not a book thief or any other kind of thief. He placed the book on the bench in the sweet morning sunshine. It opened automatically to the M page. Though the breeze fluttered the pages, back they always came to the M page. This was a baffler!

Jimmy McGee got back to his headquarters just in the nick of time. Amy and Clarissa, still dressed in their nightgowns, barefooted—he hadn't even banged their pipes yet—tore over to the bench at the top of the twenty-six steps. "Shows how valuable that book is!" thought Jimmy McGee. "Something magic about it, maybe..."

He postponed finishing his usual business and stayed behind the lacy grass curtains of his headquarters and listened.

"Ah-ah," breathed Amy. "It's safe and sound. Opens as always to the M page. And you know who's on that page, don't you?"

"Why, Jimmy McGee, of course," said Clarissa. "But, Amy, what are all those funny-looking smudges below McGee, Jimmy, in that empty space there?" she demanded.

Amy looked closely. "Well, those are probably the footprints of some curious gull or an adventuresome sandpiper who made it up the twenty-six steps. I'm not 'sprized. At the beach anything can happen."

Amy smelled her book. "Smells like stove polish," she said, laughing. "Book! Have you been on adventures in the night? Like the midnight ride of Paul Revere?"

Clarissa laughed. Amy went on. "It's lucky I had written in the front, 'If this book should chance to roam, bring it back to Amy's home. Reward. No questions asked.'"

"That person saw that and brought it back and didn't wait for the reward," said Clarissa.

"We will bring a pancake out for him. That will be his reward for honesty. But come on in because it is pancakes for breakfast. I smell them."

"Smell better than stove polish," said Clarissa.

Amy hugged her little book. "I love you, book!" she said. "And I'm glad you're safe and sound. And I like the smell of stove polish."

Amy and Clarissa went in. Jimmy McGee heard all that talk. And he heard the last words before the screen door slammed behind them. Amy said, "After pancakes, we'll put on our bathing suits, go down to the beach, and we'll make sand castles."

Clarissa clapped her hands and jumped up and down. "Oh!" she cried. "I never have done that before in all my borned life!"

"We'll take Little Lydia," said Amy. "She's never seen the ocean either. We will make a castle for her, just for her."

"And," said Clarissa sternly, "Amy, you must leave your
Who's Who Book
in The Bizzy Bee!"

"Yes," said Amy. "I will tuck it under the mattress. Even Wags won't know where I hid it."

"Yes," agreed Clarissa. "Because maybe it
is
magic, opening up all the time to the same page."

And they went into The Bizzy Bee. Jimmy McGee heard that the screen door squeaked and thought he should fix it when no one was around. He could smell the bacon and the pancakes. But none of these things interested him now. What interested him now was this Lydia, Little, business.

He got his scroll copy of the
Who's Who Book
out of its pipe and read, "Lydia, Little: a teeny, tiny doll with bright blue eyes, a do-nothing doll."

"Well," thought Jimmy McGee, "soon I will see this Little Lydia doll." So he postponed his next rounds until after he had gotten a glimpse of her. What he wondered was this: Was there a connection between him and Little Lydia? "No," he answered himself. "A happenstance. Just the correct place in the alphabet for the two of us." He was Number 13 in the alphabet. She was Number 12. Still he mulled over this coincidence.

Was it tied up in any way with McGee, Jimmy ... a hero? Is that what Amy knew about and he didn't?

He should go out now on his rounds, do his work. But then Amy and Clarissa with towels and pails and shovels came out of The Bizzy Bee. Amy had some little thing clutched tightly in her fist. Might it be Little Lydia? The teeny, tiny doll? The do-nothing doll?

He had to wait and see. It might be Little Lydia. "If it is, I must wait and get a real good look at her," Jimmy McGee thought. "After all, in the book we're on the same page. In real life our paths may cross ... I must wait and see and be ready."

He tapped his stovepipe hat and sat down in his doorway and watched.

Amy and Clarissa, dressed in their bathing suits—Clarissa's was red, Amy's blue—with all their paraphernalia—towels, pails, shovels, Little Lydia in Amy's tight little fist—practically flew down the twenty-six steps.

"They'd be good at the zoomie-zoomies," thought Jimmy McGee in admiration. He waited to see where they were going to set up their beach headquarters.

They stopped right below Jimmy McGee's headquarters, not too far from the steps, not too near the ocean, close enough to the steep dune to get some shade from the afternoon sun. It was a perfect spot for them, and a good one for Jimmy McGee to take in all the goings-on from behind his lacy sea-grass curtain high above them under the edge of the dune.

It was Little Lydia he was most interested in right now. Here was the real Lydia, Little, the one who was on the same page as he was in the
Who's
Who Book
by Amy. Of course, this made a sort of connection between them. It might even be a clue as to why Amy chose to add hero to her definition of him in her book.

Amy said, as she spread out their towels, "This is a good place, Clarissa, not too near the high-water line and near the shade of the dune. Besides, other people will not be stepping all over us on their way to and fro. Do you see any horseshoe crabs?"

"I don't know," said Clarissa. "This is my very first day at the ocean. And I didn't know crabs wore horseshoes!"

"Well, I don't see any," said Amy. "They're big, Clarissa. But they don't bite, Papa says. Still, how do we know whether or not one of them might mistake Little Lydia for a rare fish, make off with her, capture her and keep her in prison under his hard brown shell?"