by Cary Fagan
Well, then, he would be practical.
Here was an idea. He could take an inventory of everything in his backpack.
He flipped back the flap and began to pull things out of it, laying them on the ground.
Three peanut-butter granola bars.
One stainless-steel water thermos, one-third filled with water.
One oversized sweatshirt with a grape-juice stain on it.
Several school textbooks and workbooks.
One cellphone, useless.
One full-sized plastic garbage bag, intended for tomorrow’s volunteer park clean-up.
One harmonica.
Four paper clips.
Nail clippers.
One pencil.
One metal ruler.
One DVD of School for Zombies 3.
One by one, Danny put each of the objects back into his pack. All except for the harmonica, which his grandfather gave him last weekend. Doug didn’t like going to visit the “old geezer” as he called him, but Danny always looked forward to it. His grandfather had a box of amazing old photographs. Some showed him in his army uniform, or leaning against a gleaming car with giant fins on the back. In one photo he was on the beach holding a bathing beauty (who later became Danny’s grandmother). Danny’s grandfather still had his traveling-salesman’s case full of googly-eyed glasses and trick playing cards, kaleidoscopes and whirligigs.
The harmonica had been in there, too. Danny thought it would be cool to be a great blues harmonica player, so he was glad to have it.
He slid down against the dirt wall until he was sitting. Then he put the harmonica to his mouth and blew. It would have been nice if some heartbreaking blues came out — music that matched the mood Danny was in.
But instead, all that came out was a wheezy note, like the sound of a donkey with a cold.
4
Blah!
DANNY SHOOK THE HARMONICA, put it to his lips again and blew. This time he managed some long notes that he slurred up and down in a forlorn song. It didn’t sound like blues, exactly. More like some primitive lament played on a hollow bamboo flute by an ancient cave dweller.
He closed his eyes and let the notes linger in the air.
Then he thought he heard something.
Someone was humming.
He stopped.
The humming went on for a second. Then it stopped.
Danny started playing again. The humming started, too.
Danny stopped. The humming went on.
“Hmmmm..uhhh...ooohh...”
Danny quickly looked around.
“Is someone there?” he said, trying not to sound afraid.
The humming stopped, but still Danny saw nothing.
And then, on the wall across from him, about as high as his shoulders, he saw some dirt fall. Then a little more.
Actually, it didn’t just fall. It jumped out, like something was pushing it from behind.
Danny took a step closer. And another. He saw something small push out of the earth.
A small, black snout. The snout was followed by tiny eyes and a sleek head with no visible ears.
A rat?
Danny took a step back.
“Hey, why did you stop playing?” said the animal in a wheezy, grumbly sort of voice. “It was real sweet. Made me think of my mudder.”
“What?” Danny said, his eyes wide.
“She used to sing to me. She sang to all us mole pups. That was a long time ago. Is this your hole? Got to say, it’s a bit showoffy, don’t you think? I mean, you’ve done a bang-up job and all, but who needs this much room? And by the way, what sort of mole are you? Never seen one so big. Not that I can see very well, of course. And how’s the worming around here? Any juicy ones?”
Danny took two more steps forward. He stared at the pinched face of the mole as it sniffed in his direction.
Maybe he was still lying in the dirt. Any minute now he would wake up and this talking Muppet would disappear.
“Hang on a sec,” the mole said. It rooted its nose into the dirt wall and pulled out a large black beetle. The beetle waved its legs.
“Want a piece of this?” the mole mumbled, careful not to let go of the beetle.
“No, that’s okay.”
“More for me-o.” It flipped the beetle into the air and caught it again. Snap, gulp. Gone.
This made no sense.
“How come I can understand you?” Danny asked.
“I’m in the dark on that one, as we moles like to say. I guess all moles speak the same language, even if the accent is different. I had a cousin, came from way out past Fat River, used to roll his r’s. R-r-really r-r-raining, he’d say. And an aunt from Nobby Hill whose voice always went up like she was asking a question. I love the crunch of armadillo bugs? That mole never washes his whiskers? Regional variations, you might say. Now, you? You’ve got a kind of nervous tremble that reminds me of the moles from Mush Valley. You related to them?”
“No. I’m not a mole at all.”
“You aren’t? Explains the flat face, no offense. What sort of creature are you, then? Come closer. I can’t see.”
Danny took a step forward.
“Come on. I don’t bite. Not often, anyway.”
Danny moved closer until his own nose was just inches away from the mole’s. The animal had a musky scent.
The mole tilted his head and squinted hard.
“You a pig, maybe?”
“No.”
“Porcupine?”
“Uh-uh.”
“I give up. Tell me.”
“I’m a human.”
“A human!”
The mole screamed. It was a terribly loud, high-pitched scream that hurt Danny’s ears.
“Why are you screaming?”
“Sorry, sorry. I just…well, not to put too fine a point on it, but humans are … blah!”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I don’t know why you hairless soft-skins can’t leave the underground to us. All that digging! All those pipes and wires and hibbledegibbits! Do we smash your houses? Do we rip up your walkways? I mean, I’m not exactly fond of foxes, either, but at least with a fox you know where you stand. But I can see I’m hurting your feelings. My apologies. You can’t help what you are. It’s just smelly bad luck.”
Danny closed his eyes hard. But when he opened them again, the mole was still there.
“If I’m a human and you’re a mole, I still don’t understand how we can talk to each other,” he said.
“How should I know?” said the mole, wagging his head. “You’re the one from the so-called higher species. Well, I’ve got to go a-beetling and a-bugging. Later, human.”
“Wait a minute,” Danny said.
But the mole had already slipped back into the hole.
5
Most Beautiful Baby
FOR A LONG MOMENT, Danny stared at the hole. He rubbed his forehead and then looked up at the light and blinked.
Real or not, he was a little sorry the mole had gone. The small creature had been interesting, if strange, company.
One thing for sure, he was awake now. And since he was here, he might as well look on the bright side. Being trapped in a hole did have some things going for it. For one thing, nobody was telling him to unload the dishwasher or cut the grass. For another, his brother wasn’t grabbing the video game or calling him Danny Dogbreath.
In fact, Danny couldn’t remember a time when somebody wasn’t bugging him about something.
What’s more, his parents were probably starting to ask each other where he was. They were beginning to wonder why he hadn’t come home. No doubt they would start looking in the usual places where he liked to hang out — up the tree in the backyard, sprawled on the floor behind his bed. They would stop think
ing about themselves for once and start worrying about him.
Hey, Sheila, you don’t suppose our son has run away?
No, not Danny. He’s too sensible. Doesn’t have the imagination.
His revolting brother would be sent out on his bike to check the school yard and the park. They would talk about calling the police.
Do you really think it’s necessary, dear? I’m sure the police don’t like to be bothered.
Well, let’s wait a little longer. He’ll probably walk through the door any minute.
They would wait for another hour.
They would become frantic, pacing back and forth, weeping, blaming themselves.
They would call the police.
And when the police officers came to the door, what would his parents say?
Danny was a little upset. Perhaps because we were going to destroy his life by selling the house and making him live in two different places where he has no friends. And, oh yes, we got rid of his dog.
Wouldn’t they sound stupid!
Good, Danny thought. Let them worry.
He opened his backpack and dropped in the harmonica. He took out his math textbook, his workbook and his pencil.
He might as well do his homework. In fact, he wanted to do his homework. It would be a pleasure doing it down here in his hole without anyone bothering him.
Danny opened the book.
A woman has to get to work by nine a.m. It takes her fifteen minutes to take a shower, twenty minutes to have breakfast and thirty minutes to walk to work. What time does she have to get up?
“Ah, this is too easy,” he said aloud. He figured out the answer and wrote it down. Then he checked the back of the book.
Wrong.
“Oops.” Danny re-did the question. He finished his math homework and then did the bonus questions. He did his grammar homework, too, underlining the adverbs in a series of sentences.
For geography he was supposed to use a dictionary and look up the meanings of the words “village,” “town” and “city.” Since he didn’t have a dictionary, he decided to make up his own definitions.
VILLAGE: A place with a few stores that sell stuff like old-fashioned toffee and straw hats, and the kids swing on a rope over the swimming hole while their dogs jump around and bark, because every kid has a dog.
TOWN: A place with a Main Street, a movie theater and a high-school football team where you used to go to cheer on your brother but now you don’t because he’s such a jerk.
CITY: Traffic, coffee shops, punk rock clubs, bank tellers with tattoos, schools where kids play the drums all day, and grownups who spend their time trying to fulfill themselves by singing songs in strange languages.
Pretty good, Danny thought. In fact, this was just about the best homework he’d ever done.
What now?
Danny put his books back in the backpack and felt the DVD with his fingers. Too bad he didn’t have a DVD player. School for Zombies 3 was definitely the best of the series. He particularly liked it when the principal of the zombie high school got appointed to a regular school and started to chase the kids around. Then the kids threw basketballs and other stuff at him.
Since he had nothing else to do, he could practice being a zombie.
Danny stood up, stretched out his arms and began walking forward on stiff legs, rocking back and forth, mouth half open.
“Aarrr...ooogghh,” he moaned as he stumbled around.
He did a pretty good zombie. But the truth was that down in this dim hole, not knowing how he was going to get out, the thought of zombies was freaking him out a little.
So he stopped being a zombie. And he realized something else.
He needed to pee. Really, really badly.
6
Life Story
ONCE DANNY REALIZED he had to pee, he began to dance on the spot as he looked around. The deep hole in the ground was not, unfortunately, equipped with a toilet.
This, Danny thought, is what they never write about in books.
Fortunately, it was a very big hole. So Danny walked to the other end. Using his shoe, he scraped a hollow out of the soft earth. He aimed carefully. Afterwards he brushed the loose dirt back over it.
Well, that was all right. Just as long as he didn’t have to do more than pee.
“So what’s your name, anyway?”
Danny spun around. Behind him, looking out of a new hole in the wall, was the mole. His paws were large for his size, like furry oven mitts with long, curved nails. He grunted as he pulled out the rest of his egg-shaped body.
Suddenly, he popped out like a cork and landed flat on the ground.
“Umph!”
“Are you all right?” Danny asked, leaning over.
“Never better.” The mole sat up and began to groom his belly.
“I didn’t think you were coming back. I didn’t think you could come back.”
The mole stopped to sniff the air.
“Am I wrong, or does it smell like a dog’s favorite tree around here?”
“Sorry. We’re standing in my washroom. Let’s go to the other side. And by the way, my name is Danny.”
“Glad to meet you, Darnit.”
“Not Darnit. Danny.”
“Touchy, you humans. And I’m Mole.”
“You don’t have a name?”
“That is my name. I know. It can be confusing. Somebody calls, ‘Hey, Mole!’ and everybody in the tunnel turns around. Now, tell me something, Darnit. What exactly are you doing down here?”
“It’s a bit of a long story.”
“You think I’ve got something better to do?”
So Danny told the mole what had happened. And although it felt a bit strange to converse with a small, furry animal, Danny was glad to have somebody to listen.
It was a relief to tell it all. The announcement by his parents, how his brother didn’t seem to care, his own boiling over, and how he ran and ran until he fell into the hole.
Every so often the mole would ask a question. “So let me get this straight. They’re moving to separate holes?” Or, “You mean you actually lived with a dog?” At other times he would make a sympathetic noise — “Ungh!” or “F-f-fah!”
When Danny was finished, the mole said, “That is some story. Good job telling it. Did you make it up yourself?”
“What do you mean, make it up? I didn’t make it up at all! That’s the whole point. That’s what really happened. It’s how I got here. It’s true.”
“Oh, I see,” said the mole, rubbing his whiskers. “No wonder you got all hot and bothered. But, frankly, I don’t know if living in a hole is the answer. Not that I can tell if you’ll be happy as an Undergrounder or not. We moles aren’t very good at looking into the future. Truth is, we can’t see much past our own noses.”
Danny sighed. Maybe there were limits to talking with a mole. He decided to change the subject.
“So what about you? What’s your story?”
“Ah, you’re just being polite,” said the mole. “You don’t want to know.”
“I do. I’ve never heard about a mole’s life before.”
“Well, then, pull up some earth and open your ears. First — and this is really good — I was born. Naked, blind and deaf. Waaa! Where’s Mudder? I’m scared! Get it? Then I found her right beside me and began to nurse on her teat. I had to fight my brothers and sisters to get one. They were pushy. And I was the smallest in the litter.”
“Where was your father?” asked Danny.
“Who knows? He met Mum, he was like, ‘You’re the mole of my dreams, babe, let me kiss that cute snout of yours.’ And the next minute he’s tunneling out of there. So I never met him. But Mudder always said I look like him. Mind you, she said we all look like him.”
“That’s rough.”
&nb
sp; “So, anyway, I grew fur, began to hear, opened my eyes. One minute it’s cuddling with Mum, sleeping and slurping, the good life. The next minute she’s giving us the boot. ‘Time to grow up!’ she says. ‘There’s a world of worms out there.’ And quick as you can chew through a root, I’m on my own. But I got used to it. And you know, the single life does have its benefits. You can eat in bed, sleep whenever you want. No listening to somebody drone on about the centipede that got away. I was enjoying myself.”
“You didn’t get lonely?”
“Nah. Moles don’t get along with each other. It was just me, myself and I. Had my own tunnel system, a nice nest. Worms and insects would burrow through the earth and drop into my tunnels and I would scoop ’em up. Yup, it was the good life.”
The mole sighed. Then he pointed his snout at Danny, and his beady eyes grew hard.
“And then all these big machines came. The ones up top. Vroom! Gracchh! They ripped up my home and all my tunnels. I’m digging to save my life! I was so scared I didn’t know which way was which. I guess that’s how I ended up here. And now I really need to find a new place to scratch my bottom in peace. It was swell chewing the fat. But I’d better go. As we moles say, dandy digging into you.”
Danny had hardly taken in all the mole had said before the creature touched his ear — or where his ear might have been — as if tipping an invisible hat. Then he stuck his snout into the earth wall, set his claws on either side, and began digging like a crazed wind-up toy. Earth flew back into Danny’s face.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Danny called, spitting out dirt.
The mole stopped. Only his rump was visible.
“Yes?” came a muffled voice.
“Do you have to go just yet? The bulldozers won’t start up again until Monday. Maybe you could hang around for a while.”
The mole’s rump wiggled as he reversed his way back out of the hole.
“What’s a Monday? Anything like a nice fat grasshopper?”
“Nothing at all. It’s hard to explain.”
