by James Kahn
Chunk's face fell, but he sighed and lifted his shirt to show his pudge, and then he did the Twist, so it all jiggled around. This cracked Mouth up like it always did, but it just depressed me even more. I mean, Chunk was a stand-up kind of guy, and it wasn't like Mouth didn't have stuff we could laugh at. Or me, for that matter.
“Cut it out, Mouth,” I said, and walked to the window. We have this rigged-up way of opening the gate from the window, so I dropped this rod from the sill onto the porch onto a bowling ball that rolled down a track and fell into a bucket that pulled down on a string that closed a bellows that blew up a balloon into a pin that popped it, and the noise scared our pet rabbit, Felix, who started running on the treadmill in his cage, and the revolving treadmill opened the valve that turned on the hose to the sprinkler in the front yard, and the blades of the rotating sprinkler were tied to another string, which was fastened to the gate and pulled the gate open when the sprinkler turned.
Goonies are into stuff like that. I think it's because we can't control anything else about our lives, or the world, like nuclear war or famine or toxic dumps or where we might be living next week or what's for supper, but we can control every last detail about some contraption we build or joke we tell or between-meal snack we snatch.
Anyway, I opened the gate the way that I wanted to, and Chunk came in.
I hadn't seen him, so excited… since the Burger King Sweepstakes.
“You guys shoulda' seen it!” he said. He could hardly wait to get inside. “Cop cars chasin' this four-wheel deal! It was the most amazing thing I ever saw!”
“More amazing than the time Michael Jackson came over to your house to use the bathroom?” I said.
Mouth said, “More amazing than the time you ate your weight in Straw Hat Pizza?”
“More amazing than the time you saved those old people from that nursing home fire?” chipped in Brand.
Like I said, Chunk tended to lie like a rug, so none of us believed him.
“Honest, you guys, this time it's for real. I was in Maloney's playin' Star Wars and—”
“Did you blast all the Towers?”
“No, I was just startin' when this car drives by, riddled with bullet holes—”
“Riddled? Where'd you hear that word—Dick Tracy?”
“No, man, it's the truth, and the cops were chasin' it, and they were all shooting—”
“So you turned your Star Wars guns toward the bad guys and vaporized 'em.”
“No, really—”
“Chunk, did you happen to be drinkin' Maloney's new double chocolate shake at the time?”
“Yeah, so what.”
Mouth nodded. “It's the sugar rush. Makes some people wacky. I remember once—”
Before Mouth could mouth off any more, or any of us could put down Chunk's tall one again, we suddenly heard the James Bond Theme song blaring from just outside. Well, I knew what that meant. I stood up and pulled the big side window open wide.
It was Data, flying in the window. Well, not flying, exactly. See, we had this two-hundred-pound-test nylon clothesline strung between his second-story bedroom and our first-floor den, so whenever he wanted to do it right, he'd signal with some 007 music on his cassette, then I'd open the window, then he'd hang onto this pulley contraption and ride it down the rope right into our house.
So that's what he did this time, only he was closer than I expected and I didn't get out of the way in time, and he shot right into me. We both tumbled, and I rolled into Brand, who clunked into Chunk. Chunk was not the swiftest guy ever assembled, so he fell flat-footed backward into this statue on the coffee table, knocking it solid to the floor—statue of this naked guy named David done by this big-shot artist Michelangelo, who painted the Sistine Chapel for the pope and then did part of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, I think. Anyway, Mom loved this statue.
Chunk got kind of nervous and picked himself up and picked the statue up and started to put it back when we both noticed something at the same time—the statue's you-know-what was broken off. I mean, I don't want to sound gross, but like I said, it was a statue of a naked guy, so I think you know what I'm talkin' about.
So this was really bad news, and Mom was gonna have a cow when she found out. It made me a little wheezy just to think about, so I took a hit on the Promotene Inhaler. Chunk put the statue back in place, then I found the you-know-what under the table and held it up to the statue.
“This is my mom's favorite piece,” I said.
“You wouldn't be here if it wasn't,” cracked Mouth. Always wisin' off.
Data pulled a map of the U.S. out of the backpack he always wore, and opened it up on the floor. “Any you guys ever heard of Detroit?” he asked. He still had a little Chinese accent—his parents hardly spoke American at all. They ran a restaurant over on Algonquin Avenue that Mom said was good because it didn't use much MSG.
“Detroit—great place,” Mouth said. “It's where Motown started. Also got the highest murder rate in the country. They sing the blues, cement shoes, bad news.”
Data looked kind of lost. “My father has brothers there with a big fancy restaurant they want him to help run. That's where we're moving when we lose our house tomorrow.”
“You shut up about that stuff,” I told him. I'd put that all out of my mind for a while, and I didn't want to think about it now. “It'll never happen. Dad'll fix it.”
“Not unless he gets his next four hundred paychecks by tomorrow afternoon,” said Brand. He wasn't one for living in any fairyland, which is what he said I did sometimes. But I figure, sometimes there's no reason not to, reality is so messed up. Once I saw some graffiti in a stall in the boys' locker room john that said, “There is no gravity, the earth just sucks.” Well, there's times when that's about right. And like he was tryin' to prove it just then, Brand walked over to the front window and motioned us. “C'mere. Check this out.”
We joined him and looked.
Three guys in leisure suits were standing out front, looking our house up and down. Our house. One of them was talking, sweeping his arm out across the lay of the land like he was an explorer or some damn thing, claiming it all for his country. I expected him to plant a flag any second. The guy next to him had one of those surveyor's deals like a telescope on a compass and three legs, and he was aiming down our driveway. Then he pointed and said something, and the three of them laughed. Then the third guy picked a straight branch off the ground and imitated a golf swing with it, and then they all laughed again. It made me sick.
“Look at 'em. Smilin',” said Brand.
“Practically droolin',” said Mouth.
“They just can't wait until tomorrow when they foreclose on all the foreclosures,” said Data.
“And trash the Goon Docks,” Mouth added. “Money talks, Goony walks.”
Brand said, “When they wreck our house, I hope they make it the sand trap….”
“And they never get their balls out.” I sort of laughed a thin kind of laugh.
“This is war,” said Data. He looked real angry. I knew what was coming. “Go on, Mikey, open that window, I'll get 'em. I got my special-agent assault options all rigged.” He opened his jacket and removed the cassette player that was hanging around his neck. Tied across his chest was this homemade box-thing with cords sticking out of it, and small plastic rings at the end of each cord, like the thing you pull at the back of a Chatty Cathy when you want to make her talk.
So then he whips a pair of aviator shades out of his backpack and puts them on and plugs them into the box on his chest with a sort of adapter plug and shouts, “Glasses of Death!” out the window and pulls the yellow ring on the box.
We all stood back, 'cause you could never tell what was going to happen when Data jerked his chain. What happened this time was too little suction darts shot out of the sides of his sunglasses and stuck to the window, pulling the glasses off with them.
I wasn't sure if that was what was supposed to happen or not, but Data didn't seem too
pleased with the results. He screamed even louder, stepping back, “Pinchers of Peril!” We stepped back even farther. He pulled another cord.
A set of mechanical chatterbox teeth shot out of his chest on the end of a thick metal coil, sort of like a Slinky, only more. The teeth chattered away across the room, on a super-spring, so they sounded like a machine gun until they bit onto our front curtains and just hung there, clamped down like a junkyard dog on a dead rat.
Data tried to pull it free, but it wasn't letting go. He pulled a couple more cords, but nothing happened. He was startin' to get real worked up, but Mouth put his arm around Data's shoulder and said, “Cool it, double-oh-negative-seven.” He said it nice, though.
It didn't matter that Data's contraptions didn't work much, it was the thought that counted. And we all appreciated his efforts, just like he appreciated Mouth's thought now, even though Mouth's mouth didn't know exactly what to say.
Just then my mom came in. She was pretty old, forty or so, but still better-looking than most moms. She used to model parkas for the Sears catalogue. Anyway, her arm was broken now and in a sling, from her accident with the spin dryer. I remember I broke my arm once when I fell into the excavation at that new housing development, Cuesta Verde Estates, and the doctor had to break it back in the other direction to set it. He said that was the only way to make it straight. I thought of that when Mom came in the room, so it was on my mind later, when we got to the lighthouse, but I'll tell about that later.
Anyway, Mom came in now with this maid from Mexico or El Salvador or one of those places Mom won't go because of the water or the rebels. “Boys,” she said, “this is Rosalita.”
The boys waved. Chunk stood in front of the broken statue of David so Mom wouldn't notice.
“Rosalita doesn't speak much English,” Mom said, “and she's got to help me with the packing. So I was wondering if one of you… well, I know some of you have taken Spanish in school….”
“I speak perfect Spanish, Mrs. Walsh,” said Mouth. Like I said, he had a mouth in a bunch of languages.
“That's wonderful, Clarke.” Mom smiled at him. His paper-name was Clarke, so that's what most of the parents called him. “I need help explaining some things to her, so if you'd just come with us for a few minutes…”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Mouth, and shot to her side. Data rolled his eyes at me. Brand went back to hangin' upside down. Mom split with Mouth and Rosalita. Chunk looked at me with this sick face and picked up the statue. There was like a giant hole in the thing's crotch. So Chunk gives me this pukey grin and says, “Think your mom's gonna notice?”
I gave him a bottle of Elmer's glue and told him to do something right for a change. Then I went after Mouth to make sure he wasn't grossing out my mom.
They were in my parents' bedroom at the dresser. I stood back, at the door. Mom was talking to Rosalita, loud and slow like that was going to make her understand. “Socks and underwear in the top drawer. Shirts and blouses in the second. Pants in the bottom. Always separate the clothes.” Then she turned to Mouth and said, “Can you translate that?”
“Sure, Mrs. Walsh.” He nodded. Then he turned to Rosalita and said a bunch of Spanish stuff that he told me later meant “The marijuana goes in the top drawer. The cocaine and speed in the second. The heroin in the bottom. Always separate the drugs.” Anyway that's what he said he said, but I believe him because Rosalita looked kind of weirded out.
Mom just smiled.
Then they went out the other door, into the hallway, and Mom pointed to the trapdoor in the ceiling. “That's the attic. Mr. Walsh doesn't like anybody up there. Never.” Then she nodded to Mouth again.
This time he told me his rap went, “Never go up there. It's filled with Mr. Walsh's sexual torture devices.” And there was no doubt; this time Rosalita's face turned white under the brown, so she looked kind of beige.
The Mom opened the supply closet. “This is the supply closet. You'll find everything you need inside. Brooms, mops, insecticide, Lysol.”
And this time after Mouth finished sayin' it in Spanish, Rosalita seemed ready to head back south of the border, rebels or no rebels. What he'd told her was, “If you do a bad job, you'll be locked in here with the cockroaches for two weeks without food or water.”
Anyway, the way Rosalita was lookin', I got the idea, even if Mom didn't, so I just left. I didn't much like it when Mouth jived like that, whether it was on Chunk's lard-belly or some poor lady who couldn't speak English yet. But thinking of Chunk, I wondered how he was doing with the glue job, so I headed for the rec room where I heard the TV on.
When I got there, Brand was watching the tube, and Data was watching Chunk finish repairing the thing. Its back was to me, so I walked around to face it just as Chunk took his hand away. “How's that?” he said.
The dork had glued the thing upside down. So it was pointing up.
We all rolled over laughing, even Brand, who took a second first to slap Chunk in the head. It was just a crack-up to look at. I knew trouble was on her way down the hall, though.
Brand made a dirty joke, but I guess I won't tell it right now.
We heard everyone coming downstairs from upstairs. Data snapped his fingers and pulled a leaf off the potted philodendron and taped it to the David's crotch, and we all got down to play marbles in front of an old Abbott and Costello movie just as Mom came in with Mouth and Rosalita.
Rosalita looked positively nauseous. Mouth didn't tell me right then what he'd laid on the sorry woman, but I could see it wasn't any winning lottery ticket.
Mom just kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Clarke, that was so nice of you.”
“Nice is my middle name, Mrs. Walsh.”
Made me wanna barf. Then Mom spotted the statue. She had a sixth sense for stuff like that.
“Lawrence…” she said with a tone in her voice. Lawrence was Chunk's other name. Mom also had a seventh sense for knowing who did stuff like that. She pointed to the statue and held out her hand. Chunk handed it to her.
She took off the fig leaf and looked. And wouldn't you know it, the glue began to stretch, and that old you-know-what started tilting down right at Mom, while she was lookin' at it.
I took a slug of Promotene. Rosalita made the sign of the cross. I think we were the only two in that whole room that had any sense.
Mom was about to say something, then decided it just wasn't worth it. So she said something else. “I'm taking Rosalita to the grocery store. We'll be home in about an hour. Brandon, you stay inside with Mikey. It looks like rain, and I don't want him out in that with his asthma.”
I pocketed my inhaler.
“He should be in a plastic bubble,” said Brand. My asthma gave him a pain.
“I'm serious, Brandon,” said Mom. “He takes one step outside, and you're… you're…” She thought for a second, trying to come up with something hip enough to make Brand do what she told him. “Or you're dead meat.” She gave this real cazh smile. Way to go, Mom, you're too cool for school.
Brand rolled his eyes, and Mom and Rosalita split. The second they were out the door, Brand jumped me.
“You want a breathin' problem?” he said. “You got one.” He put me in a headlock I couldn't come close to breaking, but I got a couple good jabs in. He finally let me go when I started to wheeze.
Mouth had this thoughtful expression on his face, which was always a dangerous sign. “Hey, what's your father gonna do with all that stuff in the attic?” he asked.
It was museum stuff. When the Astoria Historical Museum moved to the Endicott Building three years ago, they had a big fund-raising show of all their oldest stuff, and my dad was in charge of moving it, and some of the stuff that didn't fit in the show got stored here “temporarily” until the move was complete, only it turned out to be temporary storage that the honchos at the museum sort of forgot to stash elsewhere.
“He's gonna give it back to the museum,” I said. “Or to whoever they pick to be the new assistant curolator
.”
“Curator,” Brand corrected me again. Sometimes he was really a pain, asthma or no asthma.
Mouth's eyes got big as his mouth. “That means it's all gonna go to the rich people, anyway. Let's go up and see if there's anything we can take for our parents!”
“Yeah!”
“Cool!”
“Let's do it!”
They all jumped up and ran off to the attic like this was the best idea they'd ever heard.
All except me. “Hey, guys, my dad's responsible for all that stuff. Don't wreck anything… Brand? You know, I'll bet the museum's got a list of it all somewhere. Guys?”
But they were history. So I just put my marble bag in my pocket and followed.
Actually history's what it's all about—and we were about to discover some… and then make some.
By the time I got upstairs they had the stepladder out and the trapdoor open. Brand was first up, with a flash-light, and the others were right behind. As usual I was last.
When we got up there, we just stopped and stared in amazement. I'd never been in the attic before—Dad never let us—and I was as blown away as anyone.
First of all it was pretty dark. There was a skylight in the ceiling, but the storm clouds Mom had seen were really thick now, kind of black and purple. Even so, with Brand's flashlight we could see plain enough: it was a huge old dusty room, jam-packed with the far-outest stuff you could imagine. Historical stuff, some of it must've been like centuries old. Oil paintings, sculptures, broken antique furniture, costumes, whaling harpoons, pirate stuff, Indian stuff. Great stuff.
“I can't believe somethin' this cool is in your house,” Mouth whispered.
“This is the best junk I've ever seen,” said Chunk.
Suddenly this wild rip of lightning tore over the skylight, with a thunder crack in its shadow, and in a second rain was spattering the glass and throwing funny patterns on all of us. And I don't mind sayin', I was just the slightest bit touchy.
“Okay. You guys saw it,” I said. “Now let's get outta here.”
“Whatsa matter, scared again?” said Brand.
