by B. B. Wurge
I didn’t like to think about that possibility. It made me shudder. But then I had a happier thought. “What do you think the gorilla will do,” I said, “if it climbs into the basement and finds Mr. Earpicker and the policemen?”
“Eat them, I hope,” she said fervently.
We didn’t say anything for a long time after that. We were too short of breath. It was very hard work going up, much harder than it had been coming down, and took a lot longer. We climbed miles and miles without a break. Hours later we reached T29, and crawled into the cave on top of the fossil to rest.
“That’s done me in,” my grandmother said, sitting on the floor of the cave and panting, her face glistening. All the mud had been washed away by sweat. “Only three hundred feet to go, Billy, but I need a breather. I don’t suppose you have any food left?”
I opened up the pack and rummaged around, but everything was eaten. Even the water bottle was empty. All we had was a wad of dirty paper napkins with some jelly smeared on them, but neither of us felt like eating them.
“Good fiber,” my grandmother said, “but you need water to get those things down.”
We settled back against opposite walls of the cave to rest and my grandmother looked around in the light from my helmet. “That’s her handwriting,” she said, pointing to the lettering on the rock. She looked sad.
“What was she like, Grandma?” I asked.
“I told you, she was wonderful. She was very intense about her work and could forget about everything else. You wouldn’t believe how focused she could get. Once, after a fossil had been hauled up from the shaft, she sat in the corner of the basement to work on it, picking the rock off of it, and reaching out now and then for a sandwich on a plate next to her. Well, every time she finished that sandwich I replaced it with a new one, and she didn’t notice. She thought it was the same one that she kept taking bites out of. And do you know how long she stayed like that, working on that fossil? Nine days. Nonstop. And when she was done, she came up the basement stairs a little stiff into the kitchen and she says, ‘Ma, I just put in a good hour or two of work. And I’m hungry. But somehow I don’t want a sandwich right now. You have anything good in the fridge?’ That’s how focused she could get. I can still see her perfectly clearly, working at her computer with a glass of catsup yogurt at her elbow—”
“A glass of what?”
“She liked to pour catsup into her yogurt and sprinkle in little bits of boloney. Not bad. I could do with some right now.”
“But that’s disgusting!”
“What’s disgusting to one person, Billy,” she said, “is a delicacy to somebody else. The French eat live snails. And the Skruponians eat ladybugs. And those birdfrogs, remember, they eat people.” She scowled fiercely and added, “They probably ate my daughter.” She looked up at the ceiling of the cave and shook her fist in the direction of that hit gorilla.
After we were rested, we began the last three hundred feet. My grandmother insisted on going first this time so that she could protect me from the hit gorilla. When we were near the top she paused and whispered down to me, “Turn off the light now. Stay where you are and I’ll take a look around.” She had one of the rods ready in her hand as a weapon, her wrinkly fingers clamped tightly around it. I switched off my helmet light, and she eased herself up the last few feet and stuck her head out of the opening. I waited, my heart hammering. I could hardly breathe, I was so anxious. Then she pulled her head back down.
“I don’t see anything,” she whispered.
We both climbed out. Nobody was in the basement. No gorilla. No policemen or Mr. Earpicker either. Sunlight came in the basement window. I didn’t know what time it was, or even what day.
My grandmother clutched my arm and peered around the room suspiciously. “I bet it’s lurking upstairs somewhere,” she said in a low voice. “Keep your weapon handy, and let’s go look.”
We went up the basement steps. The door at the top of the stairs was still welded closed but the hole I had made in the wall was much bigger now. The police must have broken it open. It was big enough for a large person to walk through.
“This is it,” my grandmother whispered to me, holding my arm tightly. We stepped through the hole into the kitchen, but the room was empty.
“I don’t think anybody’s here,” I said.
“Quiet,” she said in an urgent whisper. “Don’t you hear that?” She pointed up at the ceiling.
I held my breath and listened. Something was scraping or clicking just above us. We crept out to the hall and went up the staircase. On the second floor, we looked in the door of the schoolroom and saw someone sitting at my desk working on the computer. We stared at the woman, but she was so busy looking at the computer screen that she held up a hand to signal us to wait.
“Just . . . one . . . moment. . . ,” she said.
She had a mug on the table beside her, filled with some disgusting reddish pinkish squishy material. It looked like pureed goldfish. She was skinny and had long curly blonde hair that was almost down to her elbows. She had wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, a piercing blue gaze, and very, very dirty and tattered clothes. Except for the tattered clothes and the extra long hair, and the traces of chocolate and banana and pinkish squishy stuff at the corners of her mouth, she was straight from the photograph in my grandmother’s bedroom. But she was full of an amazing wiry energy and intensity that could never come across in any picture.
My grandmother seemed to go rigid and her eyes bugged out of her head. I could feel her swaying next to me and I thought she was about to fall over backward, so I clutched onto her to hold her up. Her metal rod fell to the ground with a clang, and the woman finally looked up.
“Mom,” she said, “this is great. Wow, what’s happened to the Internet? It’s so fast. It’s amazing. I need to order some laser guided survey equipment. By the way, this yogurt tastes a little old. It was in the back of the fridge.”
Chapter 22
Mabel Begins to Understand
My grandmother tottered into the room and I stayed at her side in case she fell over. “Mabel?” she whispered.
“Oh, right,” the woman said, glancing up again. “Thanks for the rope. Was that your rope? I was wondering when somebody would come after me. I climbed up as soon as I saw it. We’ve got to bolt a ladder down there so we can get up and down more easily. Maybe a cable with cross-pieces.”
“But Mabel,” my grandmother said, lurching forward a few more steps and reaching out her trembling hands.
The woman looked at my grandmother intently. “Mom,” she said, “what’s the matter? Did you fall in a puddle? You look awful. You smell really bad, too. You’re acting like I’ve been away for years.”
“Mabel,” my grandmother said in a choked voice, “do you know how long you’ve been down there?”
“Well I. . . . Are you saying. . . ? To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. I sort of lost track of time, it was so fascinating. You know how I get. I found an entire society of Gorilla minimus! I’ve been studying them. They’re really friendly and they even built a house for me, right at the edge of their city.” She took a drink from the mug of pink squishy material and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I suppose it was really two weeks instead of two days. You weren’t worried about me, were you?”
“Worried?” my grandmother said. Her voice was getting stronger and a huge trembling smile was spreading into the wrinkles all over her face, right back to her ears. “Worried? Mabel! Do you know who that boy is?” She pointed a finger at me.
My mother turned her eyes to me. They were like two swords, they were so sharp. But they were friendly, too. “Nope,” she said. “Nice to meet you. Mom, did you remember to change Billy?”
“Change Billy?!” my grandmother roared, pouncing on my mother, grabbing her hard around th
e head, and hugging her.
My grandmother is very strong and a sincere hug from her can sometimes cause damage. My mother made a squawking noise like a bird getting its head pulled off. But she also started to laugh. “Mom! Help! Stop!”
“You! You runaway! You worthless Smarty Pants! Change Billy? That cable came back up again all smashed and cut and covered with—”
“Come on, Mom,” my mother said, tugging and pushing and trying frantically to get her head back. “It wasn’t my fault. I always bring a snack down with me, and when those rocks fell they smashed the jar. My jar of catsup yogurt. I had it in a pickle jar. I’m sorry I ruined your pickle jar.”
“Is that what it was?” my grandmother said, still roaring. “Catsup yogurt? I thought the little baloney bits were parts of your fingers.”
“Mom, stop being disgusting. Come on, I wasn’t gone that long, was I? And I need to order this equipment. Can’t you decapitate me some other time? Let go!”
“Not until you tell me who that boy is!” my grandmother shouted.
“Mom, this is a joke, right? That’s not Billy. Billy’s upstairs in my bedroom, in his crib.”
“Oh yeah? Go look,” my grandmother shouted, suddenly letting go.
My mother felt around her neck to make sure it was still the right shape and length. “All right, Mom, all right, let’s go look. But this had better not take too long.”
She got up, but before she left the room she looked at me very closely and very curiously. I felt like her eyes were boring into me. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t help grinning at her.
We went upstairs, my mother first, my grandmother second, and me last, and we reached the fourth floor. I realized that my bedroom must have once been my mother’s. She stopped in the doorway, stared in, and then turned to us and said, “This is some gigantic joke. Who’s that man in the bed?”
My grandmother and I scrambled up the last few steps and ran to the door to look in. Mr. Jubber was stretched out on the mattress, fully clothed and snoring gently. His hands were folded together on his chest, moving up and down with each breath. Two empty wine bottles lay on the floor beside him.
“Holy birdfrogs!” my grandmother said, jumping back from the door. “Who the heck’s that?”
“That’s Mr. Jubber,” I said. I didn’t understand how he could sleep so peacefully through all of our shouting, but maybe the two bottles of wine had made him especially tired. His round and puffy face had a slightly puzzled expression, as if, even while he was asleep, he still couldn’t get rid of his worries. “He’s been living here,” I explained. “He’s Mr. Earpicker’s friend. I don’t think he likes Mr. Earpicker very much, but they’re in business together. I mean, Mr. Earpicker takes care of his money.”
“And who,” my mother said, looking intently at me, “who exactly are you?”
I started to grin like a maniac. I couldn’t stop it. I could feel all the smile muscles in my face working very hard as if they had come to a decision of their own. “I’m...”
Suddenly we heard the front door of the house crash open. Footsteps came trampling in. Not just a few footsteps; it sounded like a dozen people in steel boots charging into the house. “Quick, down the basement!” someone shouted. It was Mr. Earpicker’s voice. “We’ll get the little rat this time!” We could hear the footsteps trampling into the kitchen and down the basement stairs.
Chapter 23
Mr. Earpicker and Miss Pointy Are Entangled in Their Own Net
We ran down the stairs to see what had happened. The front door of the house was standing open and we could see five police cars parked outside. The policemen must have all followed Mr. Earpicker into the basement. We could hear them shouting and talking below us. We went into the kitchen, through the jagged hole in the wall, and down the basement stairs. Nobody was in the first basement room. They were all in the second room, the room with the hole, and we could hear Mr. Earpicker shouting.
“Blast that little bird-brained idiot! I want him out of my house! Before he ruins any more of my potato peelers! I say we throw grenades down the hole! Then we can go down with a bucket and scrape him off the walls, and take the bucket to jail! Don’t you stock grenades in your squad cars? What good are you guys anyway? Let’s get this over with! It’s taking too long! Pointy, as soon as that boy sticks out his head, we’ll throw the net over him. Don’t let him get away!”
I stepped through the door and suddenly everyone went silent. They stared at me. The room was crowded with ten policemen, Mr. Earpicker, and Miss Pointy. Mr. Earpicker and Miss Pointy were untangling a large net made out of thick, knotted rope, but they had stopped moving and were now frozen with their hands tangled in the net, their eyes fixed on me.
Then Mr. Earpicker jumped in the air and shouted, “Oh my God! Look at that! There he is! He snuck out of the hole when we weren’t looking! And now he’s back! The twerp!”
“Bobby,” Miss Pointy said, smiling at me in a ferocious way, her eyes glittering, “you have been dysfunctional. We’re going to have to remediate you.”
“And then,” Mr. Earpicker screamed, “we’ll drop you from the fourth floor! We’ll rub your nose on a cheese grater! We’ll. . . .”
As he shouted, he jumped up and down and made violent movements with his hands. He was getting himself and Miss Pointy more and more tangled in the rope net.
I wasn’t afraid of them anymore, of course. I stood quietly and smiled politely.
“What’s he smiling at?” Mr. Earpicker shouted. “What did he do, rattle his brains on a stone down there? He’s an idiot! His head’s empty! It’s full of tennis balls! Look at him stand there, grinning like a doofus! He’s. . . .”
The room went silent again. My grandmother had just walked in behind me and put her hand on my shoulder.
Mr. Earpicker’s face turned purple and then white. Miss Pointy let out a shriek. The two of them began to back away.
“You’re dead!” Mr. Earpicker gibbered. “I saw you! You were splattered. You were squelched. You were flattened! You can’t be alive again! It’s my house, I tell you, not yours! I’m about to sell it at 200% margin! You only got it because that lousy bone-digging daughter of yours, who did us all the favor of getting killed eight years ago. . . .”
He went silent for a third time. My mother had just walked in the room and stood beside me, putting her hand on my other shoulder.
Mr. Earpicker began to tremble. He looked like a marionette that someone was shaking violently. His arms and his legs shook and his face turned the gray color of the cement floor.
He and Miss Pointy backed away, step by step, until he stumbled against the cement rim of the hole. He lost his balance. He tried to stick out a hand to stop himself from falling, but both of his arms were tangled up in the net. Miss Pointy, who was just as tangled in the same net, lost her balance too. They struggled for a moment with their eyes popping and their arms wrapped up like two giant moths in a spider web, and then they fell over backward down the hole. Mr. Earpicker fell first and dragged Miss Pointy after him.
I could hear his voice trailing down the hole. “Blast! I hate this! Pointy, do something! Catch hold of something! Ow! My hands are all tied up! How deep is this thing anyway? What are we going to do? Oh my God! This is unbelievable! Somebody do something!”
When his voice had faded away, my grandmother turned to the policemen. “Can I help you?” she said.
“Ma’am,” the head policeman said, “we’re responding to a breaking-and-entering. Apparently the perpetrator has been hiding down that sewer access port for two days. We’ve been called in to extricate the suspect.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” my grandmother said firmly, “it’s all a misunderstanding. There’s no need for you. You can go now. I’m sure you have more important work to do.”
“Right, M
a’am,” the policeman said, nodding curtly. “Thank you, Ma’am.” He looked into the black mouth of the hole. He was very professional and showed almost nothing of his private feelings, but I was pretty sure I saw a flicker of relief cross his face. I don’t think he wanted to climb down that hole. “All right, men, let’s get out of this!” he shouted, and the ten policemen trampled out of the room and up the basement stairs with a thunderous sound. A moment later we could hear their squad cars starting up and driving away down the street.
We were all alone now. Just the three of us were left in the room.
My mother turned to look at me. Her eyes, as always, were like two bright blue swords gleaming with intelligence and sharpness, but now they were also full of amazement and love and pride. “You’re the one who saved us,” she said. “You climbed down with that rope and got us out. It’s really you, isn’t it? You’re really Billy?”
“Yes, Mother,” I said.
Even though I had only just met my mother fifteen minutes ago, she didn’t seem like a stranger. She seemed like someone I had known all my life. For a moment we seemed to be a little shy of each other. Then, at exactly the same time, we threw our arms around each other.
Chapter 24
What Happened Afterward
Over the next few months my mother typed up her notes and wrote a book on Gorilla minimus. It was hundreds of pages long, complete with sketches and diagrams of the many things she had found out. She had even learned how to talk to them, which was very difficult because they spoke in thick Brooklyn accents. Also, they were very shy and hard to get to know. They trusted my mother, but only because she had lived for so long right among them, eating their food, watching their behavior, and participating in their city council meetings.