The Goonies

by James Kahn

  “Well, you can imagine I'm kind of embarrassed that he recognizes my voice, but I say, ‘Ah yes sir, it is.’

  “So he snaps back, real rude, ‘When the hell are you gonna stop buggin' me? Do I have to call your mother again?”

  “Meanwhile I'm watchin' Sloth devour a whole frozen turkey. He cracks off one of the legs, but it's like solid ice, so it slips out of his hand and flies across the room and bounces into the fireplace. So he chases after it—I have a feeling like the drumstick is his favorite part.

  “But I hear the sheriff still raggin' at me in the phone, so I say, ‘But Sheriff, this time I'm tellin' the truth.’

  “‘Sure,’ he says, ‘just like the time you told me fifty Iranian terrorists took over every Sizzler Steak House in the city.’

  “‘Okay, I'll admit that was a joke,’ I say. Then he starts bellyachin' again, and now Sloth is stickin' his head down the hole in the fireplace floor to see where his turkey leg went to. But it's not there, I guess, because he lets out this roar down the hole that sounds like an elephant in heat. Then, about two seconds later, the roar echoes back outta the passageway. So the big guy jumps back like his mom yelled at him or somethin', and then he laughs. Then he sticks his head down there and roars again, and sure enough, it echoes back again, and he laughs even harder. I think, he thinks he found another friend down there who talks his language or somethin'.

  “Anyway, the sheriff is slartin' to sound like a broken record, so I try to be nice and sincere and stuff. ‘Honest, Sheriff, you gotta believe me.’

  “‘I do?’ he says. ‘Just like that last prank about all those little creatures that multiply when you throw water on 'em?’

  “I can see I'm not getting anywhere with the bozo. I mean, just because I've exaggerated a little from time to time, he hasn't got that police-thing down to know when I'm really on the level. And besides, Sloth is beginning to climb down into the passage under the fireplace, and I don't wanna be left alone here now, in case the Fratellis show up again, so I say, ‘Sheriff, hold on a minute,’ and I call out to Sloth, ‘Wait! Get back here! Hey!’ But when I make my move to go toward Sloth, I accidentally pull the phone out of the wall. Cheap equipment.

  “So Sloth is down under the basement now, chasing his echo, or maybe he's just after the turkey leg. So I decide to follow along with him. I mean, I figure I told the sheriff where we are, that's all I can do. If we turn up missing, at least he'll know where to start. Besides which, I'm afraid to be alone, and I don't know where I can go now that is safe. Besides which, I'm worried about you guys, and I want to find out where you've gone to. Besides which, I'm startin' to really like this Sloth guy, and I don't want him gettin' into any deep shit, 'cause I'm afraid he's not too bright. I mean, it's probly just a learning disability or something, the guy probly just needs tutors.

  “So I climb down into the passageway with a flashlight I find in the cabinet. I thought about takin' one of the guns, too, but I figure my mom would kill me if she found out, and besides, I'd probly blow my toe off.

  “Sloth is rooting around down in the dirt, and he comes up with his turkey leg, gnawing on it, and yells into the tunnel, and the tunnel yells back, so he looks at me and giggles and starts walking down the passage. So I run along behind him. I mean, his legs are pretty long. We go down and up and around… it's like a maze down there. Any minute I expect to find this big piece of cheese.

  “And at every new turn Sloth lets out this loud scream, and his echo answers him, and he chuckles like he just heard somethin' pretty damn funny.

  “Finally I grab his arm, 'cause I figure if somebody doesn't tell him, he's gonna be in for a big letdown. ‘Wait, listen to me,’ I say, ‘that's not a person. That's just your echo. Understand? Your echo. Echo.’

  “So he holds up and thinks about it a minute, and all of a sudden, his face lights up and he nods like he understands. ‘Eggo,’ he says, ‘Eggo Waffle!’

  “Then he turns and starts walkin' down the tunnel again, repeating it over and over to himself, real excited. ‘Eggo Waffle! Eggo Waffle!’

  “I follow along, trying to reason with him. See, I still don't think he's got it like crystal-clear. ‘No, not Eggo,’ I say. ‘Echo. Echo!’

  “He just smiles, though, and keeps on truckin' and mumblin' to himself.

  “We twist around through all these tunnels, and he finally does quiet down, though. We get to this cave all filled with pipes leakin' and sprayin' water everywhere, so I figure we must be on the right track, 'cause it looks like Mouth's handiwork, tryin' to fix a pipe that wasn't broken before he got to it. Sloth was real thirsty after his steak and turkey, so he just sucks on one of the gushers for a while, and then we set off again.

  “We get to this tunnel full of boulders, and the first one is sitting on top of the crushed skeleton of an old miner, no lie! Pretty cool. We just moved on, though. You know, my, Uncle Sydney was a miner, and he told me never hang around in a cave where you find a dead miner, 'cause you never know what killed him, like it could be natural gas. You know, they used to bring canaries in cages down to the mines with them, and if the canaries dropped dead, the miners knew there was a gas leak, so they split in a hurry—so, seeing a dead miner just lying there is kinda like havin' a free dead canary. Now like I said, this miner was crushed under a boulder, but you can't jump to conclusions in these matters. It still might've been gas that killed him. I ever tell you about the times Uncle Sydney took me down to the mines with him? Oh, yeah, he relied on me. See, I was a lot smaller than him, so there were holes I could crawl into to get stuff that he couldn't, so I'd crawl through these little tight spaces, sort of explore it for him, then come back and tell him about it. Never found any gold, o' course, but we weren't lookin' for any—aluminum is what Uncle Sydney was after, raw aluminum ore. Sells for millions up in Canada. They make cans with it, but they don't have the resources up there, so they gotta import the stuff. Still drink most o' their beer outta bottles, that's how underdeveloped they are.

  “So, anyway, I know a thing or two about mines and miners, and I know it's best just to move along now before gas overcomes us and we get too groggy to dodge the boulders.

  “We go through this hole in the wall into this big cavern, which is obviously where the bats came from, and that leads us down this real narrow passage, and then things get tense—'cause way up in the distance I can hear voices. And it sounds like the Fratellis.

  “I look at Sloth right away, to see what he's gonna do, to see if I have to run and hide somewhere or what. But he just gives me this big sneaky grin and holds his finger to his lips like he wants me to be quiet and then snickers and covers his mouth with his hand so he don't make no noise. Then he motions me to tiptoe up with him, so we do, until we're close enough to the Fratellis to see 'em and hear 'em but far enough back to be hidden in the shadows.

  “The Fratellis are standing in this shallow pool of water, with moonlight shinin' down right on 'em, when suddenly they start squawkin' and jumpin' up and down and yellin' that there's leeches all over 'em. Makes me shiver just to think of it.

  “So they get out of the pool, and they all light cigarettes, and they start burnin' the leeches off their skin with the lit ends. Talk about gross. Then Mama looks down at the ground and says, ‘They went this way. There's little Nike prints all over the ground.’ So they walk on.

  “So we sit there a minute, figuring what to do. I don't wanna follow too close, 'cause I don't want the Fratellis to see us. On the other hand, I wanna see where they're goin', 'cause if they're in front of us, they're not behind us. Right?

  “And Sloth just seems like he thinks it's the greatest trick since bubbles that he saw them and they didn't see him. So we just sit there a minute. Pretty soon he crosses his legs and leans forward and starts drawing something in the dirt—it's a circle with these spoky things and like a grid, and I can't figure it out at first, and then all of a sudden it hits me—it's a TV test pattern, from when they sign off the air. This one's chan
nel nine, I think. So he finishes drawing, and then he stares at it real intense, sitting there cross-legged with his hands on his knees the way Mom sits when she's doin' yoga, and he starts breathin' in and out real deep and fast like he's out of breath or somethin', and then all of a sudden he takes a deep, huge breath and lets out this long, soft, high-pitched sound. It sounds just like the test-pattern sound, like when the radio does its emergency-test sound for a minute sometimes. It sounds like ‘Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.’ Only Sloth makes the sound a lot longer than a minute, and without takin' a breath, too, he just keeps sayin' ‘Deeeeeeeeeeeeeee,’ and pretty soon his eyes sorta glaze over, and I realize he's in a trance.

  “No lie, he looks just like my mom did when she was doin' meditation a lot to try to stop eating, only instead of saying ‘Ommmm,’ he's sayin' ‘Deeeeeee.’ So I realize then that Sloth is actually a very spiritual guy. Probly a highly evolved person. I feel like honored to be in his presence.

  “So he does this for a while, and then he finally stops and like snaps out of it and takes a big, relaxed sigh and smiles, like he's ready to go on.

  “But he doesn't get up. Instead he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a Jew's harp, and knocks the lint off it and brings it up to his mouth and starts playin' away.

  “‘Hey!’ I tell him. ‘That's a Jew's harp, and I'm Jewish. What an incredible coincidence!’ He just nods and keeps playing, and then I realize it's probly not such a coincidence at all. We actually have a lot in common, like we share mutual interests and stuff.

  “Anyway, he gets up and starts stompin' his feet as he plays, and I start,clappin' along. It's real familiar but I can't quite place it, and then I realize he's playin' the Gilbert Chevrolet commercial they do on channel thirteen late at night. Then he starts doin' a whole medley of TV commercials, like, ‘You deserve a break today at McDonald's,’ and ‘Ajax the foaming cleanser.’ Stuff like that. I guess those are the only songs he knows.

  “So he goes through his repertoire, and now he's completely cooled out and ready to go. So we march on again, in the direction his mom and brothers went.

  “We're real careful to walk around the pond with all the leeches in it, even though there's a whole shitload of coins at the bottom. Maybe the leeches put the money there to try to lure people in so they could suck their blood, I don't know.

  “Anyway, we walk along for a while, around a bunch of other tunnels, until we come to this dead end with a hole in the floor, and a grappling hook snagged on a rock at the end of a rope that dangles down into the hole. I look down the hole, but I can't see bottom, and I think I can hear the Fratellis' voices at first, but then they disappear.

  “I'm kind of reluctant to shinny down this black hole, though, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm not the best climber in class, anyway. But Sloth kind of understands that, I think. So he hoists me up on his back, and I hang on, and he lowers us both down the rope. Nice and slow and steady.

  “So my face is right next to his now, so I get to study it real close. And the walls are startin' to glow from this sea-slime stuff I think, so I can see pretty good. And lookin' at him that way, in that light, from the position of being carried on his back, he doesn't look so bad. I mean, he's not gonna be in Playgirl next month or anything, but I've seen worse. You ever see my Uncle Grobnick?

  “So I say to Sloth, ‘Ya know, you're not such a strange-lookin' guy. I used to have a snake with two heads.’

  “So he grunts at that, sorta like he knows what I'm talkin' about. So I keep talkin'. ‘And I got this other friend, Mitch, and he's got this big hairy thing growin' out of his neck, and people always make fun of it, so he only goes out to play at night. I bet you only like to go out at night, huh?’ He nods, so I go on talkin'.

  “‘Yeah, I know how you must feel,’ I say. ‘It's like when I go swimmin' at the public school and I gotta take my shirt off, I get really embarrassed, 'cause all the other guys got dark tans and ripples in their stomachs, and I'm this Pillsbury Dough Boy. So I swim in a sweatshirt.’

  “So he grunts with total understanding, you know? Like he knows just how I feel. Right then he reaches the bottom of the rope and steps down to the floor, which is covered with these giganto wooden spikes under the shaft, so if we'd fallen, it would've been Chunk Kebab.

  “We look around. It's like a big cave, and at one end is this pirate skeleton that's pointing to these three tunnels at the other end. I mean, it's this mummified human skeleton dressed in pirate clothes. So what does Sloth do? He takes the pirate hat off the skull and puts it on himself and wiggles his eyebrows at me. I mean, c'mon, what was I supposed to say to the guy? So I say, ‘Man, you are a stud.’ So he smiles at me, kind of embarrassed, you know? Funny guy.

  “Then he pulls himself together, real suavelike, and gets a cigarette out of his coat pocket and sticks it in the corner of his mouth and lights up with this Bic lighter and takes a long drag and leans back against the wall and takes a coin out of his pants pocket, and he starts flippin' it and catchin' it, flippin' and catchin', just like that smoothtalkin' mobster in that old gangster film. Musts seen it on TV.

  “But, anyway, I tell him, ‘Hey, man, it's not cool to smoke.’ So he gets this real bummed-out look on his face and throws the cigarette away and holds up his hand like he means ‘Wait a minute,’ and reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a ratty old deck of cards, which he fans in front of me, and says, ‘Pick a card.’

  “Well, you coulda blown me away with a straw. I mean, this guy never ceases to amaze me. So I pick a card and look at it and stick it back in the deck, and he shuffles like a pro from Vegas. It was the four of diamonds. Then he throws the pack into the air, and the cards flutter down all over the place, except there's one card sitting in the palm of his hand, and I'm damned if it isn't the four of diamonds.

  “Well, he can see I'm impressed, but he just kinda nonchalantly picks up the cards and pockets 'em, still wearing his pirate hat. ‘You know, you're an interesting kinda guy,’ I say. He just sorta smiles, though, and tips his hat back.

  “Anyway, while I'm helpin' him pick up the cards, I find this Twinkie wrapper on the ground, so I know you guys have been here, and I see all these footprints goin' into the middle tunnel, so I figure this must be the place. So this time I take the lead. ‘Come on, men,’ I say, and Sloth follows me into the middle tunnel.”

  So that got Chunk to where I left off with my story, except I was there first. Or second, actually, although the only guy there ahead of me was One-Eyed Willy, and I was about to meet up with him soon enough. But he wasn't the first cutthroat I met down in those caves—first was the Fratellis, and that was sooner than enough.

  CHAPTER 7

  My Story Continued… The Lake… Data's Story… Stef's Story… The Fog… Mouth's Story… Brand's Story… Andy's Story… Dreamy River.

  So, anyway, I went back through the middle tunnel—the nose hole in the skull—and joined the gang, and we started down the next section of twisting corridors. And the farther we went, the more the caves echoed with the sound of rushing water, first louder, then softer, like a tide. We kept pretty quiet. Thinkin' to ourselves, I guess.

  After walking in silence for about thirty minutes, we came to a cave the size of our house, with only one exit—tunnel—and it was filled with water.

  Floating on the water in the tunnel was a huge wooden raft made of tarred logs strapped together with chains and rope and tied to a rock in the cave. And scattered around the stone floor of the cave itself were a dozen more rafts of different sizes.

  Stef said, “This must've all been filled with water once. Like a harbor or somethin'.”

  “Well, it's a dry dock now,” said Mouth.

  “Except for that waterway. Where do you suppose it leads to?”

  “Well, since it's the only way outta here, I think we're about to find out.”

  “Maybe we can go back,” said Data. He looked more worried than the others about goin' down this underground river.

  Far be
hind us, though, we could hear maybe footsteps, and maybe voices.

  “I don't think we can go back,” I said.

  So we hopped on the raft, unhooked the rope from its anchorage, and cast off.

  The water looked smooth, but there was a pretty good current comin' from somewhere, 'cause we immediately started driftin' downstream. There was no way to steer the thing, but that didn't matter, since it was about fifteen feet square, and the tunnel was only about twenty wide. So we just bobbed down the water, turning slowly, bumping softly into one wall, and then, a minute later, into the other.

  After about ten minutes the tunnel started to widen, though, and the current picked up.

  “I've got a bad feelin' about this,” said Mouth.

  The raft began to bounce a little. There were spots of white water now and then. We all gathered near the center, away from the edges, touching each other. The logs were so big, they floated high, at least, so we weren't getting very wet. Just very scared.

  We plunged down a three foot drop-off, and Data nearly went overboard before we leveled off again. That got us wet. And very, very scared.

  The raft was spinning now, really out of control, and Andy was cryin', and Data shiverin', and Stef stickin' her feet over the edge to try to steer a little bit, and me tryin' to light a flare so we could see better… and suddenly we spewed out into a huge, quiet lake, in a huge, sparkling cavern, and drifted slowly toward the center of it.

  Now, when I say huge, I mean we couldn't see the far side. It might have been two hundred yards across, or it might have been a mile. The ceiling was at least a hundred yards high, and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

  Crystal formations hung down like fine-cut chandeliers, ruby-colored and sparkling in the light of my flare. They hung down, then splayed out, interconnecting with each other, then dangled again in this like incredible jumble of cut-glass spiderwebby crystalline icicles. Like a light show.