The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee (8 page)

But none of these thoughts irritated Jimmy McGee for very long. He was under an ever-deepening spell watching and listening to Little Lydia!

Once she bebopped, "
Now I jump over the candlestick
/" and the whole place lighted up. Of course there wasn't any
candlestick!

Jimmy McGee had to laugh, and he clapped his hands. She must have learned that line from listening to Amy reading Mother Goose to Clarissa.

Now and then, from habit, he scanned his storm book ledger. He was reminded then that Hurricane Lobelia was soon coming, or not coming. He had not bothered to check her course, not bothered to figure whether it was coming, today, tomorrow, next week, and where? Or ever?

He didn't care. Let hurricanes come. Let hurricanes go. But let him laze and ponder the phenomenon of Little Lydia, the bebop doll, caught up in curious magic.

Sometimes, bemused, Jimmy McGee wondered what he used to do before he had rescued Little Lydia from the wave named Monstrous and become a hero.

He now slept more than the two-three sees he used to allow himself. But one evening he was awakened as by a bolt! He was shaken out of his sloth by an ominous signal from Little Lydia herself!

Wide awake now and sitting in his doorway—at least he still had the sense to always do that—he was prepared to see and
did
see Little Lydia poised on one of her zigzag stilt walks, poised as though to go somewhere. She bebopped, "
Wake up, lazy McGee! You have missed the Cape Codder. The fish and lobster may spoil! Then what will people in the Copley Plaza do? I'm off
" and bebopping again her favorite threat, "
Now I jump over the candlestick!
" she did jump over Jimmy McGee's head and was out to see the world, catch up with the fish train, and not let lobsters spoil!

But Jimmy McGee grabbed her by her sparkling frizzy hair in the nick of time! For all he knew, she might by now be able to zoomie-zoomie even faster than he, and then he'd never catch her!

But he had her! He popped her in his stovepipe hat along with his thunder and lightning bolt box, which he had the sense to retrieve, and he clamped the hat tightly on his head.

Little Lydia could not get out. After a few sharp bing-bangs up there, zigzag, petulant stomping, she subsided and lay low.

That attack of the zoomie-zoomies had worn itself out. Jimmy McGee wished that would be the end forever. But he knew she would recharge herself on account of sharing company with the little strong box holding the tiny thunder and lightning bolts, tiny bolts to be sure, but large enough for Little Lydia—or for anybody.

Suddenly, like a streak of lightning, there came the bebop words from the stovepipe hat, "
Get to work, lazy Jimmy McGee!
"

"Can't you just bebop,
'Fun, funny fun?'
" pleaded Jimmy McGee. He was affronted. A busy, busy pipe-and-bong plumber man being talked to in this rude way! Where were those pretty manners of hers?

"
No!
" bebopped Little Lydia. "
Or, I will have to do your work for you!
"

All this bebop conversation was accompanied by the zigzag hopping around upstairs in his hat, not at all comfortable. But the effect on Jimmy McGee was electric! While trying to gather his wits, there came the next bebop.

"
Remember the hurricane, Lobelia, lazy Mr. McGee! Get to work!
"

"Yes. No," said Jimmy McGee. No one had ever before spoken to him, much less given him orders. As far as he knew, only one special person, Amy, who had listed him in her book, even knew about him at all. Even the great dog Wags didn't sniff around the cellar for him. He was a private man, a little fellow, a plumber, a hero!

"You're right," he said.

He put his best banging pipes in his bombazine bag along with other special nuts and bolts needed for hurricane work. He slung it over his shoulder like a soldier. As though electrified, he got back into being the real, right Jimmy McGee again.

He swung into action with Little Lydia and his important bolt box stashed safely away in his stovepipe hat. Up top all was quiet right now...

Jimmy McGee, grateful for the silence, had a few moments to study his notes and the quotes in his pipes concerning hurricanes, past, present, and future. The one that concerned him now was, of course, Lobelia. According to his calculations, she might be coming this way any day now, very soon!

But Little Lydia couldn't keep still for very long. She did not like being back in captivity in the stovepipe hat! She began to hop around again and to make a terrible clatter not only on its tin top lid, but also on the strong little box with the thunder and lightning bolts.

"
Let me out!
" Little Lydia bebopped.

"No!" said Jimmy McGee. "You have to stay up there, and please be quiet! I'm thinking. You take my mind off my work with your curious hops, skips, and jumps. You know—you learned it from me—that there is going to be a hurricane, coming any time soon. And hurricanes, whatever their names, mean
work
for me. You get yourself back to being a regular do-nothing, say-nothing doll again. Then you can be free and go home and be Amy's Little Lydia again. Practice!" he urged her.

All the answer he got to this eloquent plea was the same old message, "
Let me out!
"

But Jimmy McGee just clamped his hat down even more firmly so that it would be impossible for her to escape and expose the population to the zoomie-zoomies. He hoped that she had not made a dent in his elegant and famous hat, which he had worn on so many strange and curious adventures, all written up in his scrolls.

So now, really to test his own recovery from the many days of sloth, but also to see how Little Lydia would react to being out of headquarters, he zoomie-zoomied to The Bizzy Bee, checked the cellar and the faucets, but did not bang them hard, for they had all gone to bed, everyone there in the cottage.

In bed, Clarissa was whispering to Amy. "Amy," she said. "Has it strucken you that there haven't been as many bang-bangs on the pipes as there used to be?"

"Of course," said Amy. "Just means Jimmy McGee is off on one of his strange and curious adventures. Nighty-night."

Jimmy McGee overheard this bedtime talk. Strange and curious it had been all right; and all had happened just a few feet away from The Bizzy Bee.

In the cellar he gave just the faintest little tap on one of the pipes, a good-night tap, and he and Little Lydia returned to headquarters.

Little Lydia had been remarkably quiet.

After this short trial excursion to The Bizzy Bee with Little Lydia in his hat, Jimmy McGee bebopped up to Little Lydia, "You are a heroine! You'll be in a library maybe some day, in one of my scrolls anyway. You waked me up. Thank you!"

"
You're welcome!
" she bebopped.

"We're partners," said Jimmy McGee. "The hero-heroine partnership!"

"
No!
" Lydia, Little, bebopped vehemently. "
Not as long as I'm trapped in your stovepipe hat! I don't like the smell of stove polish!
"

"Too bad!" said Jimmy. "But I can't let you out. You might get lost again. Another Monstrous might grab you. Make the best of it. We're going on my rounds. You used to say,
Fun!'
"

"
Fun!
" bebopped Lydia faintly, almost like a whisper, an echo.

Hesitantly, Jimmy McGee thought, "Well, maybe her magic is wearing thin?" So he hoped anyway and went off in six-sixty time to do the work he loved ... whamming pipes here, whamming pipes there. He didn't even stop to take one of his short one-two sees' rests.

Very early the next morning he zoomied over to The Bizzy Bee cottage. Making up for lost time, did he ever wham-bang the pipes there! He waked everybody up much earlier than usual because ... look at the clouds!

The sky was dark, brooding, menacing. All was quiet. "The calm before a storm," thought Jimmy McGee. A great storm was coming—Lobelia! He whisked off on his rounds up and down Cape Cod, the north side, the south side, the end up to Provincetown; and he saw to the dogs, the cats, the train ... choo-choo-choo ... banging all pipes where necessary, tightening a bolt here, looking at switches there ... everything in his usual line of business. He was the real, right Jimmy McGee again ... no longer that strange, slothful do-nothing Jimmy McGee.

His do-nothing days were over! You have to thank Little Lydia for that. First she had enchanted him with her own case of the zoomie-zoomies. But then she had roused him, saved him, restored him to his true self ... Jimmy McGee, a plumber, a banger on pipes! Now people would know about the storm. Hurricane Lobelia might or might not come this way. Hurricanes can be capricious! But at any rate, he had sounded the alert!

His rounds took him far, far away, even to the little church near Ipswich, where he had captured his rare bolts, safely stored in the tight little box still, and he sped even way, way down to Maine and all the little islands off the coast. Here he was warning everybody about Lobelia with his bangs on shutters and pipes, his ringing of church bells and fire alarms, helping them to close up and get their boats moored, to batten down the hatches, to go away from home, if home were near the sea, and to take refuge inland. He thought of everything, and his magic was so strong that people got the message and did what was expected.

"Close up! Close up! Go home!" many said, and frantically made preparations.

The wind was rising now. At The Bizzy Bee, Amy's mother said, "My! Look at the sky ... so gray! Hear the shutters banging? And we had only just latched them!

"Maybe it is a hurricane. I haven't listened to the radio or read the
Boston Globe,
have you?" she asked some neighbors.

Most people had not. They were too busy having last clambakes and cookouts, farewell-to-summer get-togethers, picnics. "See you same time next summer," all that sort of happy, yet sad goings-on. Summer gone, hard work, a long winter ahead...

"If it
is
a hurricane, what's the name of this one?" someone asked. "Lobelia!" someone else replied.

"Is the eye of it going to be here in North Truro on Cape Cod?" an indignant, elegant elderly man asked. He consulted his fine gold watch as though that might tell him. And he waved his handsome cane in the air, back and forth, as if to blow the storm away ... rid Cape Cod of it.

"Maybe we should leave a day earlier than we had planned," suggested Papa. "After all, school starts in just a few days anyhow."

Mama agreed. They'd all rather be back at home on Garden Lane in Washington, D.C., than here in a hurricane.

"Something told me we should get ourselves ready to leave ahead of time this summer," said Mama, "so I have already packed most of our things. We should be able to finish up quickly."

"Everyone be ready by seven o'clock," said Papa.

Amy and Clarissa had already been having fun packing, unpacking, and repacking their little suitcases and the carton of toys and books. They now hurried off to pack the shells, some big, some little, that they had collected during the summer.

Many of their neighbors decided to leave, too, and scurried around here and there. "Don't forget this, don't forget that!"

"I loaned Frank Gunther my binoculars. Did he bring them back?" someone asked his wife.

"Don't know. Don't know," she answered.

All this activity was thanks to the doings of Jimmy McGee, a banger on pipes, a little fellow, a plumber ... a
hero!

He was happy to see and to hear the activity in the cottages. He'd just gotten back from his rounds, Bar Harbor, everywhere, and he, too, was impatient to be off to his winter headquarters in Mount Rose Park behind a little waterfall tumbling into a sparkling brook with violets on its banks.

Then he would unpack his bombazine bag, lay aside his summer banging pipes, and replace them with sturdier wintertime pipes and tools. He wanted to get over to Amy's house on Garden Lane before Amy and her family and Clarissa and Wags arrived there in the old gray Dodge. Get the whole house in apple-pie order for them!

He intended that Little Lydia, who had been singularly quiet while all this hustle and bustle was going on, would be there at number 3017 when Amy would open the front door and say, "Hello, house!" And what a joyous surprise she would have if it all worked out as he hoped!

But he was ahead of himself. Still here in Truro, he banged the pipes once again to remind people about faucets, to empty out all the water so the pipes wouldn't freeze and burst, to roll up the hose, to turn off the taps in the cellars and the faucets upstairs.

He felt exultant. He was back to work again and with no more orders from Little Lydia, the bebop doll. Now
he
was the boss! In some houses where lazy, slowpoke types of people lived, he banged the pipes so hard that the owners thought they were bursting and yelled for the plumber, who couldn't be everywhere at once. So he took the phone off the hook and went back to bed with liniment on his legs.

By now Jimmy had checked all his charts and had his bearings. He knew the eye of the storm would not be here in Truro. Though it might veer out to sea and wear itself out, the edge of the storm would be bad anyway. He was glad he had slam-banged the pipes as hard as he had.

He did know, though, that the storm would be worse in Washington, D.C., and he wanted to be back home in his winter headquarters before the storm broke there and to have Amy's family get home before then, too.

The waters of the Potomac might be so high they might whish right over the feet of the great, beautiful statue of Abraham Lincoln ... who knows? The accuracy of Jimmy McGee's forecasting had been more than a little bit dimmed by the magic spell he had been under while watching the curious antics of Little Lydia. A certain foreboding about Little Lydia did persist now and then, but he shrugged it off.

His rounds completed, Jimmy McGee zoomied back to The Bizzy Bee, and from the cellar window he surveyed the going-away preparations. He was happy to see that Papa had backed the old gray Dodge to the kitchen door. The back was open and all the car doors, too. Everyone was busy putting luggage inside somewhere, wherever there was room. Amy was clutching her
Who'
s
Who Book
in her hand like a person taking inventory and making sure everything and everybody was accounted for.