The tunnel went on a long time. I began to get hungry. Was it eleven o’clock yet? Was June out there waiting?
Then the boat stopped. And the walls went totally black.
If I’d just eaten, I would have gone ahead and thrown up. But those pancakes were long digested. Nevertheless, my stomach hurt, and I had to pee.
It was so dark and so quiet.
Was this what being dead was like?
I started to sweat, and I never ever sweat.
Then I heard, far away, a kind of splashing sound. Not like somebody walking, but like something else—a boat?—moving over the water.
“Hello!” My voice was reedy and thin.
No answer.
“Hel—” I shut my mouth. What if it was Tommy?
But how could Tommy have found me?
I was going to shout again, and not be afraid, when I saw something gliding toward me from the far end, the direction my canoe was pointed in. It was another canoe, white, with a kind of flashlight attached to its prow.
I waited. No way was this going to be Tommy.
And, as the canoe got closer and closer, I saw that there was a man inside, a man in a clam-colored suit.
He stopped his canoe inches away from mine.
I shivered. It was awfully cold in the tunnel. Then, to be polite, “Nice ride you have here.” Cartoon-mousetime with the voice again. “But my boat’s stuck.”
“There are laws,” the man announced after a moment. His was the indifferent voice of the Snowland.
My stomach felt like Stan’s shot put.
“There are laws for everything. Thieving, for instance.” He leaned closer, his ice-chip eyes glittering in the flashlight.
“Deane’s book.” The words came out before I’d even considered them, as if I had my own fourth dimension.
“Some things can be stolen, and some things can be bought.”
I saw the red leather book, felt its slick surface, even though I knew it was back in the motel room, inside my cigar box. I saw the pen-and-ink drawing of The Bad Thing, and then, presto, it was gone. My stomach didn’t hurt at all. I was so calm, I could have gone to sleep.
“Children steal things. Children don’t know what to do with them.”
“Who are you?” I asked. “My boat’s stuck, and I have to meet my sister.”
“You know my name is Sammy,” he said. “And I have something you need.”
“Me?”
“There is great danger ahead for your family. But there is always a way around every law. Each law with the penalty attached, each system connected to another system. Because you have something that I want, I’m prepared to—”
A faint slosh-slosh and a trembling light could be discerned at the distant end of the tunnel.
“I’m prepared,” Sammy whispered, “to offer—”
“Hal-looo?”
“Over here!” I yelled. “I’m stuck!”
Sammy gave me a look so strong, it could have been either anger or love.
The slosh-slosh got louder, the light closer, but then I saw that the creature was not a man at all! His head was huge and misshapen—
“Help!”
“I’m here to help,” said a kindly voice. “Little girl—”
“Help!”
His nose was long and horrible. “Dumbo!” he said.
I screamed again, the air filling up with tiny red ballerinas twirling and twirling before my eyes.
“I’m Dumbo,” insisted the workman. “Calm down, honey. It’s only a mask.”
I opened my eyes. Before me stood a workman in thigh-high waders and a Dumbo mask.
“The fumes in this tunnel are kind of bad,” he apologized. “I couldn’t find no gas mask.” He steadied the canoe, which had began to rotate from the waves of his passage. “What on earth are you doing in here, anyway? This ride’s closed. You okay?” He flashed the light in my face.
I squinted. “I was on Sammy’s Snowland. The boat got stuck.”
“Sammy’s Snowland?” All you could see was the Dumbo mask, but his voice sounded confused.
“You know,” I said impatiently. “The ride they put up while Storybookland’s out.”
“Look, honey. There’s no ride called Sammy’s Snowland. You shouldn’t be back here, it’s dangerous. Hang on, and—”
“Ask Sammy!” I said, then realized that he and his white canoe were gone.
Completely gone. When? How? And, naturally, had they ever been there?
“Whatever,” said the Dumbo man. “Hold tight. I’m going to tow you on out of here in a jiffy.”
He grabbed a rope at the bow of the canoe and, exactly as he had promised, sloshed us out of the tunnel almost immediately. Apparently, my boat had stopped right before the exit.
My eyes hurt from the light. We were over at the side of the whale’s mouth. The red and yellow and blue clothes of the pleasure-seekers were too bright, the smells of popcorn and orange drink too strong, the hurdy-gurdy sounds of the rides too loud.
The Dumbo man looked at me. Without a word, I jumped out of the canoe and ran, blindly, through all the density of the people and their haloes around them.
I was back where I’d been.
No June.
“Excuse me, sir,” I asked the ice cream vendor. “What time is it?”
“Quarter till eleven.”
I sat down on a bench, next to an old couple holding hands. Unthinkingly, I flipped through my unused coupon book, which I still clutched in my hand.
Inside was a thick cream-colored card, embossed in chocolate brown.
the card announced,
Chapter Five
“Why can’t we drive through the redwood?”
June had been pressing this point for the last half-hour and we were all weary of it, even her.
“Because,” Stan explained for the umpteenth time, “it’s out of our way. And besides, the car probably wouldn’t fit.”
Apparently, the redwood had been carved out back when they had skinny cars, Model Ts and so forth. We had a baby-blue T-bird, with serious fins.
“Out of our way! That’s a good one.” June snorted. “We don’t have a way.”
All too depressingly true; no one spoke. Late afternoon, and we were in the northern part of the state, where I’d never been before, almost to Oregon. After a week at Disneyland and another few days at Knott’s Berry Farm, with those adorable burros that move very slowly and don’t eat your hair, we had all grown bored with the constant insistence on fun. And besides, they’d gotten another phone call. Or at least that’s what June heard when she leaned against the door that connected our rooms.
So here we were in the gloomy redwoods, unending rain, leaves black and sodden against the gray October sky. You got used to riding in the car all the time. You stared out the window at other people’s houses, grocery stores, schools. You wondered what it would be like to be them, to live the way they lived. Were they happy? Were they just like us? Was there a place you could drive to, and there you’d be happy?
“You could get arrested for depriving us of our right to education.”
“Will you shut her up?” Stan asked Linwood.
“It’d be easier to drive through the redwood.”
I could feel June’s energy bristling at me across the backseat of the car. Times like these, it was best to be invisible. What I wanted to think about was the quick peek I’d taken in Deane’s book this morning while June was in the bathroom. Or maybe I didn’t want to think about it. Right after the picture of The Bad Thing, there was another one of me riding on Sammy’s Snowland. And the next page—as far as I’d gotten before June returned—showed me sitting in an old-fashioned hotel room, clearly not a Holiday Inn, wearing a necklace made out of what could only be poodle toys. Something about the look of that struck me: my picture was powerful, like a hex sign in reverse. Maybe the point of Sammy was some kind of angel warning from God? Maybe I could make up my own magic and protect us? The trouble was sneaking out the toys, with old Hawkeye in the backseat, watching my every move—