“Where are we?” I ask, with my eyes closed.
–Remember the map? This is Bogway Fen, near the edge of the right hemisphere. Tomorrow we'll pick up the Parietal River, which will lead us through the Random Lands.
“Do we have far to go?”
–Are you anxious?
“No, not really.”
–Good. If you were anxious, it'd be far away. Everything seems far away when you're anxious. If we keep the rising sun in our eyes, the river under us, and Sid on our right hand, we should get to the Amyg Dale tomorrow. The Sudden Mountains aren't too far from there.
“Oh,” I say.
–Mind you, I'm anxious. So my estimate may be wrong.
For a moment, all is quiet. I'm drifting away, imagining the Dey as a little guy with a bowling shirt. I knock him down in front of his castle, and ring the doorbell. Its chimes sound like a ringing telephone.
I come back to the hotel room. The phone is ringing. I ignore it. It rings again. Norbert picks it up. I'm feeling comfortable and warm, not quite awake and not quite asleep. A nice place to be.
–What are you talking about? A party? I don't want to go to a party…. I don't care how much trouble you went to. I'm asleep…. What do you mean, it's not for me? I'm Norbert, of course it's for me…. Who's it for then? … Look here, Melon-for-brains! You've got the wrong room! There's no one named Crime Dog here.
I sit up. Norbert is sputtering into the phone.
–Yes, I called you Melon-for-brains! Want another nick name?
I cough to attract his attention. “Uh, Norbert, they mean me. I'm Crime Dog.”
–What are you talking about, Dingwall?
“Not Dingwall,” I say. “My name is McGriff.”
–Hang on, says Norbert into the phone.
Turns out that they're throwing a party for me – well, for Crime Dog – in the lobby of the lodge. The whole of Bogway Fen is baseball crazy, and it's not often they get a big leaguer in the neighborhood.
–But you're not a big leaguer, says Norbert.
“They think I am.” I decide to wear the bathrobe, but leave the knapsack in the room. “You're coming too, aren't you?” I ask, at the door.
– Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss it for anything. I want to hear all your baseball stories. Say, why do they call them, bases anyway?
“I don't know.”
–And why a shortstop? Why short? Is there a long stop?
“I don't know.”
–Okay, then, what about you? What position do you play?
“I don't know. First base, I think.”
He snorts. –Quite the well of knowledge, aren't you, Ding-Dog.
“Crime Dog. My nickname is Crime Dog. Geez, do you think they'll want to know stuff like that?” I check the card in my pocket. “I play first base, bat left, and throw left.”
–Come to think of it, Ding-Dog might be a good nickname for you.
“Shut up.”
–Sounds like a doorbell with a cold. Ding-Dog. Ding-Dog. Heu-heu-heu. He keeps chuckling all the way to the lobby.
The WELCOME FRED MCGRIFF! banner stretches right across the room. The noise level is high, and getting higher. The frog ladies and gentlemen and children are croaking at once. They all want to shake my hand and get my autograph. Then they want to feed me. I say thank you, and take bite after bite, sip after sip. Soon I'm full of Jupiter grapes, Jupiter artichokes, and Eye of Jupiter, which looks like fried eggs but tastes way better.
My favorite thing is an almond cake, maybe because it's served by an apparition – an incredibly beautiful girl. She looks like a model. What is she doing here? She stands out among the frogs like a unicorn in a pack of gophers. Everything about her is long: she's got long blonde hair spilling out from under her ball cap, long eyelashes, and long long tanned legs. I quickly look away.
“Hi, there!” she says brightly, coming right up to me, holding out a golden square in her long tapered fingers. Her voice is clear and bright.
I stare at her eyes. Blue as cornflowers. I don't dare stare for long anywhere else. Like the rest of the crowd, she's naked. In a magazine, she'd be modeling perfume, or suntans. Or else she'd be a centerfold.
“We can be friends!” she says, pushing the dessert into my mouth.
I nod vigorously.
Beside her stands Wilma from the front desk. “It's an old family recipe,” she explains to me. “Jupiter aligned with marzipan.”
“It's great!” I say, swallowing. “Could I have some more?”
“I can do that!” The girl hastens away.
“Thanks for being so nice to Barbara,” Wilma whispers to me. “She's my special child.”
“She's your daughter?” I say. “But she doesn't look like … I mean she's really … nice,” I finish, lamely.
Wilma smiles. “She's very special. I cried when she was born, but I'm used to her now. I love her for who she is, poor homely thing.”
“Ho-homely?” Remember, Wilma is a myopic frog, squatting waist high and belching cigarette smoke like a factory chimney. I guess it's all a question of context.
“She's so … hairy.” Wilma shudders. “And her skin is that pasty golden color, and her legs are scrawny.”
“Oh, I don't know,” I say, staring across the room. Barbara has her back to me. Her legs go right up, and her hair goes right down.
“It's okay, Crime Dog. You already told me you like 'em big. Ho-ho-ho.” Wilma stretches her own left leg out. It's as long as she is. She waggles her long webbed toes. “Now that's big,” she says.
Two guys hop up to me – one with a cigar and one with a porkpie hat instead of the usual ball cap. “Hey, Crime Dog,” says Cigar. “Settle a bet here. Wes and I were arguing about which pitcher you've had the most success against.”
Porkpie is Wes, I guess.
I go blank. I cannot recall the name of a single major-league pitcher. Not one. “Grunewald,” I say, at length.
They frown at each other. “Grunewald?”
“One game I hit four home runs in a row off him,” I say. I don't explain that it was in our backyard, and we were using a beach ball and a tennis racket. Grunewald is my friend Victor's last name.
“Grunewald plays for Cleveland, right?” asks Wes. His porkpie hat is the same pale yellow color as his underbelly.
I try to think how to put it. “I'm pretty sure he's heard of Cleveland,” I say.
I leave them muttering to each other, and go after Barbara. I find her standing in front of the cake. Here, at Bogway Park Lodge, they do things big. Big toilets, big beds, big cakes. This marzipan thing is like a section of wall, almost as high as the ceiling and as thick as the table it's resting on. Barbara is scooping a piece of the cake onto a plate for me. Beside her, a clutch of little tadpoles are digging in with spoons. An older frog is leaping to the top of the cake to get some icing for her plate.
“Hi, Barbara,” I say, coming up behind her. “That's some cake, huh?”
Her legs look perfect.
She turns. “Hi, there!” she says, the same way she did when she first saw me. “Let's be friends!” She seems glad to see me. A beautiful naked girl is glad to see me. All right, maybe that happens to you every day, but it's a new experience for me.
“Uh … sure,” I say. I swallow. “Sure,” I say again.
Smooth, Dingwall, very smooth.
I step forward, with no very definite idea in my mind. Her hand reaches for me. And that's when something heavy crashes into the side of the building.
The frogs stop talking at once. The room waits. “Is it him?” someone whispers.
There it is again. And again. Could it be an earthquake? No. An earthquake doesn't knock like a hammer on the wall of the building. An earthquake doesn't rattle the furniture – no, wait, it does do that. An earthquake doesn't cast a shadow when it crosses in front of a window.
“It's him!” croaks one of the frogs, in a voice loud enough for all to hear. I look over. It's Wes, my friend in the por
kpie hat. He's standing a bit farther down the cake, looking nervous. “He's back!”
And panic strikes, as suddenly as diarrhea. One minute it's not there, and the next minute you can't think of anything else. The lobby of the lodge is full of giant leaping frogs. They bound past me on the way to the door, crashing into one another in midair, falling, sprawling, flopping, hopping. The doorway is jammed with slippery green bodies.
Something is pounding on the outside wall, hard enough to shake the whole building. The hysteria mounts. I want to get out, but I can't seem to move my legs. The frogs are everywhere. I'm bigger than they are, but not faster. I can't push them all out of the way. I call for Norbert, but my voice is lost in the thunder of croaking.
And then the building starts to come down. I am curiously calm as I notice the wall nearest me detach itself from the ceiling, and fall towards me. Time slows down. Sound and feeling go away. The wall hits me, silent, painless, heavy, knocking me to the floor. My left arm is pinned beneath me. I scream silently, reach out blindly with my right hand. Then the floor hits me from underneath, and I can feel myself going up like an express elevator. I don't know how long this feeling lasts – not very long. When it stops, everything is quiet.
My mouth is full of something soft and tasty. I swallow instinctively. Almond cake. I can't see. Something is pressing on my eyes. And the rest of me. Something heavy, but bearable, like a dozen blankets. I struggle, but can't lift myself. My left arm has fallen asleep.
“Hello?” I say. When I open my mouth, more almond cake falls in. I chew and swallow. “Hello?” My voice sounds remote from the rest of me, the way it does after your ears have popped.
I can't move any part of me except my mouth and right arm. I feel around blindly. “Help!” I call. More almond cake. I chew and swallow. “Help!” I call again.
Something soft under my fingers. Soft and smooth and rounded. I have no idea what it can be. A water balloon? I squeeze it a bit, and hear a voice I recognize.
“Hi there!”
“Barbara?” I say. “Barbara, are you okay?”
“This is fun!” she says.
More almond cake in my mouth because my mouth is wide open. I think I know what I have my hand on. Not a water balloon.
“Sorry!” I say. I move my hand away from her … her….
With the rosy red tidal wave of embarrassment comes a – belated – dawning of sense. I realize that I am not quite as helpless as I feel. It wasn't a real wall that fell on me, but a wall of cake. It's as thick and almost as heavy as stone, but not nearly as strong. I snake my right hand back to my side, and use it to push cake away from my eyes. Some falls into my mouth. I swallow it. I shake my left arm, which is tingling, coming back to life. I can use it. I push some cake out of the way, trying to dig a tunnel to the top. You know those avalanche movies? It's sort of like that. Or The Great Escape. But with one key difference. There isn't any place to put the handfuls of cake I'm clearing away. I can't reach behind me. The only empty space I have is my mouth. I fill it quickly. When I swallow, it's empty again. So I fill it again. And again.
That's right, I end up eating my way to freedom. Handful after handful, bite after bite. Sounds like it'd be fun, but it isn't. For one thing, there's no milk to wash it down. And there's no stopping, even after I begin to get full. My mom calls me a bottomless pit, but I'm not. I'd like to be excused, but I keep eating anyway. I breathe cake. I live cake. My world is cake. I keep chewing and swallowing until there's enough space around me so that I can sit up. That's better. I move faster now, digging through cake like a dog, pushing the handfuls behind me, clawing, scrabbling, tunneling, until, at long last, my hands break through. I clear enough cake away to get my head out, and take a deep breath of air that doesn't reek of almonds. A few frantic after-dinner heaves later and I'm standing in waist-deep cake. I climb out without too much difficulty My space suit feels too tight, my hair is full of crumbs, and I've eaten enough dessert to last me all the birthdays of my life, but I'm free.
The lobby of Bogway Park Lodge is deserted, except for me, and Barbara under the cake, and Norbert.
Norbert is sitting on a chair with his hands clasped together. His anxious expression vanishes when he sees me.
–Well, if it isn't Ding-Dog, he says.
The night is silent. No more pounding and shaking and screaming. The intruder, whoever he was, seems to be gone.
“Shut up, Norbert,” I say, “and help me dig.”
–Buried treasure?
“Something like that.”
He picks his way past a broken coffee table and bits of fallen ceiling. –I was wondering where you were. I didn't think to look under there.
The slab of cake is the size of a limousine. I begin digging near the hole I came out of, scooping away handfuls and throwing them behind me. “What happened just now?” I ask. “The frogs knew what was going on. ‘It's him,’ they said.”
Norbert shrugs. –I didn't see anyone.
I lift him on top of the cake and tell him to dig down while I dig across. I hope he finds Barbara before I do. I'm a little shy of her.
“Crime Dog!” calls Wilma, from the doorway. “Have you seen my daughter? I can't find her anywhere.”
“She's in here,” I say, grabbing another handful of cake.
–Oh ho! says Norbert. A booby prize.
“Very funny,” I mutter.
Wilma hops over to help. “Barbara!” she calls. “Barbara, can you hear me?” Behind the glasses, her eyes bulge with a mother's love.
I clear a path into the cake, and reach as far forward as I can. The smell of marzipan sticks in my nostrils. Nothing, and then –
“Ouch!”
Feels like my finger is caught in a mousetrap. I yank hard and out pops Barbara's head – golden hair plastered down, beautiful face covered in crumbs, full-lipped mouth clamped around my index finger. “Hi, there!” she says. “Let's be friends.”
I slide out my finger thankfully and Norbert hops down from the cake. We stand back while Wilma sets her daughter free and embraces her. The bog-smelling frog and the beautiful girl seem happy together.
Wilma and Barbara say good-bye to us in the lodge's broken doorway. The night is blue-gray under the moons. The air is dank and buggy. The swamp is as flat as stale cola, and about the same color.
“I'm so sorry you have to go, Crime Dog,” she says, over her daughter's head. “You too, Prince Norbert. But I've got no choice. There's nowhere to put you. Usually the monster just makes a bit of a mess, but tonight he took down the whole guest wing.”
The monster, it turns out, is a famous feature of the Bogway Park Lodge. There are souvenirs and photographs of him for sale in the gift shop.
“You sure your monster isn't a black giant with a sword and a helmet?” I ask, thinking, of course, of the Dey
“Oh, no. Our monster's green.” Wilma hops forward and puts one smooth hand on my hip. Her fingertips are pale yellow. Her cigarette end glows red as she inhales. “You know, Crime Dog, we'll have this place repaired in a few weeks. Maybe you'd like to come back? Hmmm….” She winks. “Would you like a coupon? One night's free accommodation.”
“I, uh, don't know when I'll be traveling this way again,” I say.
“Think about it,” she says huskily. “Think hard. Bye-bye, now.”
She leads her daughter away. I can't help staring after them. Barbara's hair falls down her back like a blonde waterfall. There's a big piece of vanilla icing stuck to her, just below it. Looks just like the bottom half of a bikini.
Daybreak. The sun has not yet risen, but fingers of pale gold are reaching over the horizon. The sky is still blue-gray under the twin half-moons, the full moon (Sid), and the sliver of a new moon away to my right. Norbert and I are flying quickly. My bathrobe makes flapping noises around my knees.
Wilma, Barbara, Wes, and the rest of the gang at Bogway Fen are way behind us. With Sid on our right, we are now flying over rounded hills that look something like
a close-up of my aunt's bedspread. We're looking for the Parietal River.
I say we, but it's really Norbert doing the looking and the finding. I know what a river looks like when I'm swimming in it, or when it's on a map (that is, if it's labeled), but I have no idea what it looks like from fifty stories in the air. I'm really surprised when Norbert swoops down to chase after a silver-green streak.
I swoop right after him. I'm getting better at swooping. I'm not as fast as Norbert when we're climbing, but I can catch him every time when we're heading down. I crouch low, like a skier, and point my toes and whoosh right past him.
I'm not a bit tired. Too excited, probably. I'm sure not hungry.
Midmorning. The sun hangs above us like a picture, and the Parietal River unwinds below us like a spool of thread. We've been following it for the past two hours through the Random Lands. Now, these are interesting. They're called random from the way the landscape and weather make sudden and inexplicable changes. From minute to minute, you don't know what you're going to get. Right now the river is running quickly down a rocky hillside. Lots of boulders. The air is dry and cool. But just a few minutes ago the river was wide and lazy, and it was raining like Noah.
I keep my eyes peeled for a something called the Amyg Dale. That's where we turn north. I hope Norbert has his eyes peeled too. I have no idea what a dale looks like.
Norbert swings back to fly beside me.
–Thirsty, he says. I don't know if he's asking or telling.
“Yes,” I say.
He nods, and drops like a stone. There's a tree standing by itself on the banks of our river, just as it makes a bend. The lower branches overhang the flowing water. Norbert Surprise lands easily on one of these branches. I follow. The river chuckles away beneath us.
The branch creaks beneath our weight. –Careful, Dingwall, he says. You're a wide load here.
You know, I could get sick of all these size references.
“Am not,” I say.
Standing on the branch, Norbert can bend all the way over at the waist so that his face is just above the surface of water, and his antennae are actually submerged.
The Boy from Earth Page 6
