The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee (5 page)

"Get up! Get up! Mama! Papa! Clarissa! Wags! Get up!" she said.

Amy hated to stay in bed with all that ocean out there and with Little Lydia's castle and its surrounding town. She had to get up! Clarissa was impatient, too. As for Wags, he tore to the screen door and scratched at it, banging his beautiful big head against it because he heard the milk train and was anxious to get out. He wanted to chase it if he could, "woof" at it, scare it so that it would go away and never come back.

Amy and Clarissa began to bounce on the springy, creaky double-size iron bed they shared. Higher and higher they bounced and sometimes bumped each other's head. "Ouch! Ouch!" they screamed and collapsed limply on the soft bedcovers only to begin again, bouncing and chanting, "It's time to get up! It's time to get up, get up, get up 'cause it's morning!"

"Jumping jacks!" said Mama.

Finally Mama and Papa got themselves up and stood dressing and yawning marvelously. Papa's yawn could be heard in the next town probably. Mama filled the teakettle, made the coffee, and started the oatmeal. Amy and Clarissa splashed water on their faces and made plans for the day.

"We'll take Little Lydia to the beach. She can watch us make a little schoolroom, with children sitting in it. And we'll put a flat piece of driftwood over the moat, even if there isn't any water in it ... might rain, you know."

She picked Little Lydia up. She said, "Lydia, Little! You know you are a princess, Princess Lydia of Sand Castle Number One, at the foot of the dune. Princesses are always captured or have a spell cast over them. You may be captured by some Monstrous something. But, don't worry! Someone will rescue you."

Amy and Clarissa had a wonderful day. They found a flat piece of driftwood and laid it across the moat for a drawbridge. "People will have to walk across it," said Amy.

"There should be water," complained Clarissa.

"People have to 'magine something," said Amy indignantly.

"I was only thinking of what you said," Clarissa explained. "I didn't want some Monstrous something to just plain walk across a board and grab Little Lydia."

"M-m-m," said Amy. "But, come on. We're going to make a little schoolroom, remember? And little kids to sit in little sand chairs ... remember?"

"Yes," said Clarissa.

They moved down to the part of the sand town where they had built a little sand school, with desks, but no children in it yet. But Amy said, "Ooooh!"

"What?" asked Clarissa.

"Look how dark it's getting. There's going to be a squall!" said Amy. "We'd better gather up our toys and towels."

Amy's mother came to the top of the twenty-six steps and said, "Children, come in! There's going to be a squall, I think."

Amy handed her things to Clarissa and said, "Hold mine for a minute. I want to show Little Lydia a big wave. She's always lying there on her couch in her castle. So far she's never even seen a huge wave. We won't go very close..."

Amy ran as close to the water as was safe, she thought. She held Little Lydia in her outstretched hands. "See? Little Lydia? Monstrous big wave!"

And this wave
was
truly Monstrous. Amy backed off in a hurry. In doing so, she dropped Little Lydia, and the big wave rolled in and grabbed her and tossed her around in its lacy froth and rolled back to sea, where it began to gather force for the next big splash on the beach.

But Little Lydia was gone! She was not riding in on the next, or the next wave. No sign of her. The tide was turning, going out, the waves receding and leaving no Little Lydia behind. She was gone.

Amy and Clarissa stood there by Little Lydia's castle. Somehow, Amy thought, Monstrous may

have a kind heart and whisk her back over the sand to her home? No. Not so. They went up to the bench at the top of the stairs, where they sat in stunned silence.

Mama came out to see that Amy and Clarissa were coming up to The Bizzy Bee. "No need to come in now," she said, "if you don't want to. This is a funny storm." Half the sky, far away, was still sunny. The other half, this side, was still the deep dark purple the sky gets before a storm. "I think the storm will bypass us," she said, and she went back inside The Bizzy Bee. "No need to run around closing windows, anyway."

And this was true, for now the sun burst through the dark clouds and it was as though the squall had never been around these parts ever. Except that now they did not have Little Lydia. She was riding the waves somewhere. As they wiped the sand off their feet, tears crept down Amy's cheek. They talked about Monstrous.

Jimmy McGee zoomied back from his fruitless search at this moment. He had not had the good fortune to track down a single thunderstorm where it might have been possible for him to catch his treasured bolts. No thunderbolt, no lightning bolt yet in his special strong box. He sat down in his doorway and listened to the conversation taking place on the little bench at the top of the stairs.

Amy and Clarissa looked woebegone, but talked excitedly as people do when an out-of-the-ordinary event has taken place. Amy was acting something out, waving her arms about, holding a pretend something in her little hands, then stretching them out for something to where, and for what? Now and then she wiped her eyes. Clarissa handed her her towel to wipe them.

Jimmy McGee listened carefully. He took off his hat and put the little safety bolt box into one of his back vaults, its special place when it was not in his hat or his bombazine bag. He put his hat back on, returned to his "front porch," and from behind its lacy curtains heard this:

AMY:
Poor Little Lydia! Lost! Drowned!

CLARISSA:
Maybe we'll find her tomorrow. Maybe another big wave will toss her back on the beach, maybe right into her own castle! On her own couch!

AMY:
Been eaten by a fish, maybe, or ... well ... something Monstrous did grab her!

CLARISSA:
O-o-oh! The Monstrous thing you were talking about?

AMY:
Yes! The Monstrous wave was that thing! I should'a hung on to her and backed away sooner and faster.

CLARISSA:
Yes! That's it! It was that very same Monstrous that grabbed her up and swirled her away! I'm glad Pee-Wee didn't get grabbed by Monstrous! She's my only doll.

AMY:
But Little Lydia is my only Little Lydia! So cute. With that frizzy golden hair they put on her head, not a wig, but as though it had grown there naturally. And those blue eyes, electric blue, I'd call them. Did you ever notice that, Clarissa?

CLARISSA:
No, Amy. But now I think of it, I think you are right. But could we go in, Amy? I'm shivering. Are my lips blue?

AMY:
Blue, yes. We'll go in. But first I have to write something in my
Who's Who Book.
(Amy took her book out of her beach-coat pocket.)

CLARISSA:
How are you going to write something out here without a pencil?

AMY:
I keep a pencil in this crack between these two boards. There it is. My blue pencil. (And Amy wrote something in her book.)

CLARISSA:
What did you write, Amy, in your book that I'm in and also out of, and Pee-Wee, and...

AMY:
Next to "Lydia, Little: a teeny, tiny doll with bright blue eyes, a do-nothing doll. Can't walk, can't talk, can't say 'Mama.' Has bristly, curly, long golden hair. Named after Lydia, Big," I added, "Lost in the ocean. Captured by a Monstrous wave!"

CLARISSA:
That makes it real, to put it in the book like that! Now you'll never find her.

AMY:
Wait! I have added something else: "But I hope she will be rescued by a Hero!"

CLARISSA:
You did say in your
Who's Who Book
under McGee, Jimmy, "HERO." So maybe he will be the one who will rescue her. It's funny about that book. Maybe it is magic. Once you thought you wouldn't find it, but then you did ... even after leaving it out all night!

AMY:
Someone found it, probably read it, then put it back, an honest person, not like some crooks. Just didn't wash his hands. Smudges still here. (Two tears were finding their way down Amy's cheek.)

CLARISSA
(taking Amy's hand in hers): I bet we'll find her tomorrow when the tide comes in ... all the way in. She may roll in with it. So don't be sad...

AMY:
I hope so. Oh-h, I hope so. She's like a little princess. I'll put Bear at the foot of the hammock in the front yard, looking out to sea, like the captain of a ship, the
S.S. Bizzy Bee.
On the lookout for lost Little Lydia. Oh! And remember! She is made of rubber, and rubber floats. She may be having a good time.

In this way Amy tried to cheer herself up, and that was the end of the conversation. Amy and Clarissa, arms around each other's shoulders, went into The Bizzy Bee.

And Jimmy McGee went back inside his headquarters. He pondered about all that he had overheard. Especially, he pondered Amy's latest entry in her book. He'd have to bring his scroll copy up to date. "But I hope she will be rescued by a Hero!"

There was that word again ... hero. Under his name and now also under Lydia, Little. He lay down in his bombazine hammock to think about this. Hero? Him?

Sitting in the doorway of his headquarters, Jimmy McGee mulled over all that he had overheard Amy and Clarissa say. This time Amy had not left anything like the book behind her. But she had left words that echoed and echoed in Jimmy McGee's mind.

"Lydia, Little ... a do-nothing doll.... Lost in the ocean. Captured by a Monstrous wave! But I hope she will be rescued by a Hero!"

There was that word again, always that problem, hero! In Amy's
Who
's
Who Book
he, Jimmy McGee, was labeled a hero. Now the word hero was on Little Lydia's line in the book, the line right before his. Was there a connection? There might be!

Jimmy McGee went to his library and took his bebop code copy of Amy's
Who
's
Who Book
out of its scroll pipe to bring it up to date. Next to Lydia, Little, he scratched in the words, "Lost in the ocean. Captured by a Monstrous wave! But I hope she will be rescued by a Hero!" Who would that hero be? Perhaps ... probably ... he himself. And he put the scroll back in its proper scroll pipe.

Perhaps Amy could predict the making of a hero out of an ordinary plumber, the way he could predict storms and hurricanes and hot spells or cold. This thought satisfied him. So now all he had to do was to fulfill a prediction, that made by a little girl named Amy who had chosen to include him in her book of names along with her mama and her papa and her friends and dolls and the great dog Wags ... and also Bear. There he was propped right above him in Amy's hammock, a watcher of the sea by day and by night. A teddy bear captain, looking for Little Lydia. He should have binoculars.

Not to let this prediction of Amy's interfere with his work, that was the important thing. Be a hero on the side ... his sideline. The trouble was he had very little time for hobbies and sidelines and fulfilling other people's predictions. Especially now, at the height of summer, with Hurricane Lobelia coming in late August, according to his predictions.

Think of all the work a plumber, a banger on pipes, had to do then ... getting people out of their houses if Lobelia decided to come to Cape Cod, helping them close up their cottages, not to forget to turn off the tap in their cellars. Does that seem to allow much time for sidelines?

"And don't forget," he reminded himself, "that my main aim, no sideline to this, is the capture of the tiny tip end of a lightning bolt and the final rumble of the thunderbolt!" Sometime soon he must catch these important bolts. Tiny they would have to be, but big as a whale in his mind. He smiled. Big as Monstrous! He laughed out loud. He liked hard work. Two big jobs! Rescuing Little Lydia and rounding out his nuts-and-bolts collection!

Tonight there was a full moon. This meant that the tide would be especially high. Already the waves were quite high. Many summer people down on the beach, taking advantage of one of the lovely evenings of late summer, were having barbecues, but would soon begin to get ready to go in. The smell of hot dogs and hamburgers lingered in the air. Jimmy McGee enjoyed the sound of laughter, the high-pitched sounds of the ladies, the sudden outbursts of the men, the squeals of delight of the children. But soon, all was quiet. Just the smell of the smoking embers was all that was left.

Amy's family had long since gone in, and the two little girls were probably in bed. The tide had not shifted yet, and the light of the moon made the sea rosy-hued or a deep violet, ever changing, ever beautiful. The wet sand mirrored these colors, so sea and sky melted together in the moonlight.

Often on such nights Jimmy McGee found good lost things, some nut or some bolt, a strange piece of driftwood, and would sling these in his bombazine bag to take back to headquarters. But tonight he had something different on his mind.

Because of the full moon, the tide was now coming in closer and faster. Some children, who had built their castles too close to the high-water mark, would find that theirs had melted in the waves. Not Amy and Clarissa's, though. They and many other children had been smart to build their castles close to the dune. So Little Lydia's castle and her little town were going to be safe, not swept away when the waves rolled in closer and closer.