Roxie and the Hooligans

  “Someone tall and skinny who can hide behind trees,” said Roxie. “Someone like Simon.”

  “Oh, no! Not me!” said Simon Surly.

  “Why not?” asked Helvetia.

  Simon Surly thought for a moment. “I’m allergic to bark,” he said.

  “What?” said Helvetia. “One of you is afraid of the dark, and one is allergic to bark? What kind of hooligans are you, anyway?”

  This time Smoky Jo was the only one who laughed.

  “Then I guess I’ll go myself,” said Roxie. And—with the hooligans staring after her—off she went. She could never capture a rogue elephant, she knew, and she might never survive an avalanche, but she could do this.

  Her clothes were still damp from the day before. Her shirt clung to her body, her brown and green skirt had lost its pleats. The sweater was filthy from sand and seaweed, and her kneesocks had three holes in one and four in the other. Her shoes seemed to have shrunk on her feet.

  It was dark in the woods. It was scary. Roxie moved as if she were stalking deer. Ten slow steps forward and stop. Wait. Ten slow steps and stop. Wait—just as Lord Thistlebottom had instructed in his book. She did not know if the men were camped here in the woods at the south end of the island or camped in the trees at the north end. Ten steps more. Wait. Ten steps more. Wait.

  Finally she reached the sea grass, and peeping out from behind a tree, Roxie saw the two robbers heading off to the east side of the island with some fishing line. When she was quite sure they were out on the rocks, she crept through the sea grass until she finally saw their tent in the trees beyond. Her heart pounded so hard, she was almost afraid the men could hear it.

  Step by step, step by step, she pushed her way through the brush until she came to the tent. She stopped. She listened. Then she stepped just inside, afraid to go any farther.

  There were two sleeping bags, a pile of clothes, a couple of pans, sacks, and boxes.

  Somewhere in those boxes there must be water, but once inside the tent, there was only one way out. What if the men came back?

  Roxie went back out again and moved through the tall sea grass until she could see both men over on the rocks. Then, breathing hard, she slipped back inside the tent and over to the stuff piled in one corner.

  She looked through the sacks and stopped to listen for footsteps.

  A swish, swish sound came from outside. Frantically, she dived for the tent opening. But the men were still on the rocks, and what she had heard was only the wind blowing the sea grass.

  Roxie went back a third time. This time, when she lifted a sack, she saw that the box beneath was filled with plastic bottles of water. Quickly, Roxie took five of the bottles. She stuck one down the waistband of her skirt, tucked one under her left arm, one under her right, and with a bottle in each hand, she crept back out of the tent and started off through the sea grass.

  Looking toward the sea, however, she saw only one man on the rocks. Her heart leaped, and she stood frozen where she was. But then the second man’s head appeared a little farther on, and their backs were bent over their fishing gear. Roxie moved on, her footsteps in time with her beating heart.

  When she was quite sure she could not be seen, she stopped and took the cap off one of the bottles. Slowly, slowly, she drank four long gulps. Then she walked on to where the hooligans were waiting for her. When they saw her coming, they licked their parched lips and grabbed for the bottles, but Roxie held up one hand. “Only four swallows each,” she warned them.

  “Yeah? Who says?” said Simon, grabbing one for himself.

  “I says!” said Helvetia, whacking him on the head. “Four swallows each, just like she said. When it’s gone, it’s gone.”

  One by one, each hooligan took a turn with the bottle, the rest watching and counting the number of swallows.

  “Five! You took five, Simon!” Smoky Jo said accusingly.

  “So what?” said Simon. He handed the bottle back, however. “I’m hungry, I’m tired, and my clothes are still wet.”

  “Mine too,” said Freddy Filch. “I hate this place.”

  “How long are we going to be here, anyway?” squeaked Smoky Jo in her not-quite-so-mean little mouse voice.

  “Someone should be looking for us by now,” said Roxie. “The teacher will have missed us in class yesterday, and our parents know we didn’t come home from school.”

  “My parents won’t miss me!” said Helvetia, putting the cap back on the bottle. “I’ll bet they said, ‘Good riddance.’ ”

  “Yeah,” said Freddy. “I wouldn’t be surprised if my dad didn’t even know I was gone.”

  “Mine either,” said Smoky Jo.

  Roxie sat down at the end of a log. Her clothes were wet too, and she was hungry, just like the rest of them. But she knew for sure that her parents missed her. She knew for sure that someone wanted her back. And that meant she had something the hooligans didn’t: the best reason to go home.

  • BORROWING •

  Back in the village of Chin-in-Hand, Roxie figured, families were probably sitting down to simple suppers of cabbage and potatoes. Or beans and franks or biscuits and gravy. She wished she had some of that now. A single biscuit. Half a potato. An onion, even.

  “I’m hungry!” Smoky Jo complained. “I’m so hungry, I could eat my shirt.”

  “I’m so hungry, I could eat my sneakers,” said Freddy.

  “Help yourself,” grumbled Helvetia. “There’re plenty to go around.”

  “I’ll be glad to find some grubs if we have to,” Roxie offered.

  “Give it one more day,” said Helvetia. “I’m not that hungry yet.”

  The four hooligans sat miserably together, some on the log and some on the ground. All held their stomachs to hide the sound of their rumblings. All licked their lips, wanting another drink.

  “What if we drink all our water and still nobody comes?” said Simon. “What do we do then?”

  “We could make a bucket out of bark and collect rainwater,” Roxie suggested, thinking of the photo in Lord Thistlebottom’s book.

  “And what if it doesn’t rain?” asked Freddy.

  Roxie had an answer for that, too. “Then we could tear our shirts into strips and tie them around our ankles. Each morning just after the sun comes up, we’d drag them through the sea grass, and the rags would soak up dew. Then we’d hold them over our mouths and wring them out.”

  Helvetia’s eyes narrowed as she studied Roxie. “What’d you do, Elephant Ears? Memorize the whole book?” she asked.

  Roxie could not bring herself to tell the hooligans that she was the niece of the famous Mr. Dangerfoot or that she had sat down to tea on two occasions with the even more famous Lord Thistlebottom from London. How could a girl be connected to them in any way when she was afraid of someone chasing her on the playground?

  So Roxie just said, “I’ve been around.”

  Simon Surly turned to Helvetia. “Well, if she’s been around, why don’t you send her to the robbers’ tent again to bring back some food this time?”

  “I think you should send someone small enough to move through the sea grass, if the men are in the woods, and quick enough to dart into the woods, if the men are in the sea grass,” said Roxie. “Somebody little like Smoky Jo.”

  “Don’t look at me!” squeaked the leanest little hooligan of them all. “I . . . I . . . get lost really easy.”

  “What?” said Helvetia. “One of you is afraid of the dark, one is allergic to bark, and one gets lost really easy? I’ve sure got me a sorry band of hooligans, I’ll say that.”

  “Then why don’t you go, Helvetia?” asked Simon.

  “Because . . . because I’m the commander, and the commander never leaves her post,” said Helvetia.

  “Never mind,” said Roxie. “I’ll go myself.”

  Strangely, she wasn’t quite as frightened as she had been the first time. She had never jumped from a burning building or walked across quicksand, but she could do this. Off she went,
and when she reached the sea grass, she got down on her belly. She crawled like a crocodile through the willowy weeds, stopping now and then to listen.

  When approaching an adversary through high grass, Lord Thistlebottom had written, avoid the temptation to raise your head and look around. Stay calm and do not panic.

  Roxie’s ears—her wonderful, round, pink, handles-on-a-sugar-bowl ears—picked up the faraway sound of a small plane coming closer, closer, till it flew low over the island. Roxie longed to jump up and wave her arms. To yell and let the pilot see her. But she remembered to keep her head down, and she was glad, for as soon as the plane had gone, she heard men’s voices in the trees beyond, and it sounded as though Rat and Snake Eyes were having an argument.

  “There’s that plane again, Snake Eyes,” said Rat. “I’d sure like to know if they’ve seen us.”

  “And I’d sure like to know if you’re lyin’ to me about that water,” came the deep voice of Snake Eyes. “I count twenty-one bottles, and there should be twenty-six! We brought two cases of water with us, Rat, and we need every drop we can get. Now where are those other five bottles?”

  “Well, you tell me! How do I know you ain’t hidin’ a bottle every day or two in case we run out? How do I know you ain’t gettin’ ready to take all the money yourself as well as the food and water and leave me stranded out here?”

  “You’re talkin’ nonsense,” said Snake Eyes. “All I’m sayin’ is, if you got five bottles stashed away someplace, then I get five bottles to tuck away for myself.”

  “I tell you I didn’t take no five bottles!” said Rat, his voice rising.

  “Yeah? Says you.”

  “That’s right. Says me.” There was quiet for a while.

  Finally Snake Eyes said, “You check that rabbit trap yet?”

  “Goin’ off to do it now,” said Rat. “What about the fishnet we rigged up yesterday?”

  “I’ll tend to that,” said Snake Eyes.

  Roxie lay as still as a stick in the sea grass. She heard one man go off one way, one man go off the other.

  But now she had to look out in two directions, east and west. If she turned her head one way to follow one of the men, she was turning her back on the other. When their footsteps and grunts and coughs had died away completely, she slowly . . . slowly . . . raised her head. She had only a minute or so, she knew, for she suspected that each man was going to spy on the other.

  Roxie crawled on her hands and knees till she reached the end of the sea grass. Then she continued to crawl until she got to the tent.

  Quickly! Quickly! Roxie peeked in one sack. Then another. No food there. But in a burlap bag on one side of the tent she found tins of tuna and sardines, cans of beef stew and spaghetti and beans. She had no can opener, however, so she settled for a large smoked sausage and a round of cheese.

  Stuffing them both under her shirt and into the waistband of her skirt, Roxie began her crawl once more through the sea grass. She had not gotten thirty feet from the tent when she heard the men coming back. She flattened herself on the ground, knowing that if she continued to crawl, they might see the way the sea grass parted to let her pass. She felt as though her heart would explode as it thumped against the earth beneath her.

  “Anything in your trap?” Snake Eyes called to Rat.

  “Somethin’ took the dang bait, but I didn’t catch it,” said Rat. “Fishing line bring anything?”

  “Nuthin’ worth cooking up. By the time you take the bones out of it, it’d be just fins and tail,” grumbled Snake Eyes.

  Their voices seemed so close to her now that Roxie was sure they must be looking down on her at that very moment. She closed her eyes in terror. The silence went on for another minute or two, and then she could tell by the mens’ voices that they had gone back inside the tent.

  Roxie edged forward and stopped. Two feet more, and stopped. Two feet more . . . When she reached the trees at last and the men hadn’t followed, she was so relieved that she allowed herself one big bite each of cheese and sausage. Nothing had ever tasted so good. There would be no grub sandwich today, anyway.

  Just as before, when she got back, the hooligans rushed to meet her, and this time Smoky Jo tried to grab the food out of her hands.

  “Where are your manners?” Roxie said, jerking the food away again. “You can eat one bite of each. We’ve got to make it last.”

  “You already had a bite,” complained Simon.

  “And so could you if you had been the one to fetch it,” said Helvetia. “Shut up and eat your sausage.”

  When each of the hooligans had taken a bite, Helvetia wrapped the rest up in her sweater. They sat morosely on the log, wishing they could have more.

  “This time the men will know someone was in their tent,” Roxie warned them. “They’re bound to come looking again.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Freddy. “Where can we hide?”

  Roxie tried to think what her uncle would tell her to do. As far as she could remember, there was no chapter in Lord Thistlebottom’s book about where to hide from robbers on an island. But she remembered his advice on what to do when lost in the mountains: Do not panic. Use a stick to dig a trench in the snow. Get in it and cover yourself with leaves and branches.

  Digging in dirt was a lot harder than digging in snow, she knew, but the soil was loose and sandy, and there was nowhere else to hide. If they went down to the beach, the men might see them. If they went to the rocks, the men could corner them there.

  “Let’s dig a long trench we can sleep in tonight,” Roxie suggested. “We’ll cover ourselves with leaves and branches, and one of us will be the lookout.”

  Dig they did. Some of them used their hands, the others used sticks. After an hour or so they had carved out a trench just long enough and wide enough for all of them to lie in together. They spread out the pile of dirt they had unearthed and covered it with leaves so there would be no sign of their digging. Then they dragged over some branches to cover themselves.

  “Who will be the lookout?” asked Roxie, but before the question was out of her mouth, Helvetia and her hooligans had already crawled down inside the trench and were squeezed together all in a row.

  “Never mind,” said Roxie. “I guess I’ll do it myself.” She covered the four with thick fir branches, then stretched out on the log and studied the stars. For once she was glad that her ears stuck far out from her head, because she was able to hear the faintest birdcall, the slightest puff of wind, the merest snap of a twig. And so she lay, ears tuned to the night.

  • THE RABBIT NOISE •

  It was a bit lonely there on the log while the hooligans slept, Roxie decided. The night was dark, and she was still very hungry.

  She was more hungry when she had nothing else to do but lie on a log and think about food. A nice piece of fried chicken, perhaps. A chewy cookie with chocolate chunks. A hot bowl of her mother’s tomato soup with a thick slice of buttered bread . . .

  She wondered what her parents were doing right then. They must be sick with worry, she imagined. The people of Chin-in-Hand would wonder how five schoolchildren could just disappear in a single day.

  Roxie studied the little piece of sky that she could see through the leaves. There was only a sliver of moon, but the stars were bright, and as the earth moved and one star after another disappeared from view, Roxie reminded herself that she must not fall asleep.

  It was when she noticed that the black of the sky had turned gray and the gray was turning pink that she heard the noise—a far-off scrunching of twigs and leaves. Footsteps!

  She rolled off the log and tumbled over to the trench. “Someone’s coming!” she whispered. “Don’t move. Don’t sneeze. Don’t make a sound.” Then she hid herself in a thicket.

  In a few minutes Roxie could hear the voices of Rat and Snake Eyes but could barely see them in the early dawn. They stopped not ten feet from where the hooligans were lying, and Snake Eyes said, “See, Rat? There’s no one else on the isla
nd!”

  “Then if anyone’s eatin’ our food and drinkin’ our water, it’s you,” said Rat. “I don’t know why you don’t own up to it ’stead of sayin’ it’s me who’s eatin’ more than his share.”

  “Now, you listen,” said Snake Eyes. “I divided up that food fair and square. A can for you, a can for me. A bag for you, a bag for me. Now we got some missing, same as the water, and I think it’s you tuckin’ some of it away so if we run out, it’ll be me who goes with the empty stomach. I’m sorry I ever let you in on this.”

  “Well, don’t think I’m not sorry already!” said Rat. “Livin’ out here like savages, gettin’ eaten up by ’skeeters, runnin’ for cover every time a plane comes over . . . ”

  And right at that moment there it was again—the drone of a plane in the distance, growing louder all the time. It flew low over the island just as before, then it went on.

  Rat and Snake Eyes waited a minute to see if the plane would come back. When it didn’t, they moved on through the brush, coming so close to the trench that Roxie sucked in her breath, afraid that one of them might step through the branches and fall in.

  She heard Snake Eyes say, “Well, it’s not going to do no good to fight. When we get off this island, we can each have us a house with a dozen rooms in it, and we’ll never have to look at each other again.”

  “That’s okay with me,” said Rat. “Have to say I’m gettin’ right sick of seein’ your face each morning, last thing I look at before I sleep at night.”

  Grumpily, they went on, and Roxie gave a long, relieved sigh. She crawled over to the trench when she was sure they were gone and told the hooligans they could come out.

  Stiff and frightened, Helvetia and Simon and Freddy and Smoky Jo emerged from the hole and sat on the log, arms wrapped around themselves to ward off the chill.

  “You almost had those robbers down there in the trench with you,” said Roxie. “They were this close to stepping on you!” and she showed them with her hands.