Black and Blue Magic (14 page)

Harry’s skin was still a little crawly as he turned north and headed away from Alcatraz, but by the time he reached Angel Island he was feeling more normal. He flew over the island and kept going up the bay. He practiced dives and figure eights and belly-rolls until he saw the camel-backed outline of the Richmond Bridge just ahead. Then he turned and headed for home.

On the way back he passed a place where some people were having a party on the deck of a yacht that was tied up to a pier. The fog was quite thick now, so Harry was able to land in the little crow’s nest on the tallest mast, without any danger of being seen. But the deck was lit up so brightly with strings of colored lights, that he could see the people dancing, or just milling around talking and laughing. At first, it was fun to sit up there over their heads and spy on them, but after a while Harry decided it was a pretty boring party, so he went on.

Just a little way below the ship-party, when Harry was still flying quite low near the coast, he heard a strange sound. It seemed to come out of the fog from somewhere farther out in the bay, and at first Harry kept right on going because he was so sure that he must have imagined it. After all, why would a baby be crying somewhere out there on the dark lonely water. But then he heard it again.

Harry lifted his right wing and slid into a turn, out towards the center of the bay. In a moment he heard the crying again and someone, it sounded like a very little kid, called, “Help!” Harry knew then that he wasn’t just imagining.

The sobbing grew louder, and finally Harry saw them—two little tiny kids, adrift in a small plastic dory. As he coasted silently in a circle above them, he could see that the crying was coming from the littlest one, who lay all crumpled up in a heap on the bottom of the small rowboat. She didn’t look much bigger than a baby, and she was wailing steadily in a hopeless, exhausted way. The other one was a boy, maybe four or five years old. He was sitting up on the seat and rowing, but with only one oar, and missing the water half the time at that. The rowing was only making the boat go in a small circle, but the tide was moving it, too; down the bay towards the Gate and the big ship traffic, and beyond that the waves of the ocean.

As Harry watched, the little boy stopped rowing and called, “Help!” again, but his tear-choked voice seemed to go no place at all in the muffling fog. He sat very still for a while as if listening, but except for the steady wailing from the baby on the floor, there was no sound but the far-off bellow of foghorns.

Harry’s first thought was to go right down and land in the boat, but for once he thought again before he acted. For one thing he wasn’t sure he could land on a little tiny boat like that without tipping it over, and even if he did manage, it would be even harder to take off again. It took quite a backwards kick to get air-borne, and the tiny dory didn’t look as if it would be able to stand anything like that. And once in the boat, unable to take off again, Harry would be almost as helpless as the two little kids.

Besides, there was the “public notice” business. He had to find a way to help those kids without letting anybody see him, and that wasn’t going to be easy.

After careful consideration, he was pretty certain there was only one safe way to do it. He would fly home just as fast as he could and make an anonymous phone call to the Coast Guard. Of course, it would be a little hard to tell them just where to look, what with the fog and the tide and all, but he could give them a pretty good general idea. Then, if the Coast Guard believed him, and if they got started right away—before the kids drifted in front of some big freighter, or got to moving around and tipped the boat over—

Just about then the one with the oar started talking to the smaller one on the bottom of the boat. “Don’t cry, Donna,” Harry heard him say. “See how hard I’m rowing, Donna. We’ll be home in a few minutes. Don’t cry any more.”

That did it. He couldn’t go off and leave a brave little kid like that; not with all that fog and tide and only one silly oar. “Public notice” or no “public notice,” Harry dropped a little lower and yelled, “Hey kid, look up here!”

The little boy looked up. “Hi,” he said, and then without even hesitating, “Are you an angel?”

The question might have been more of a jolt if Harry hadn’t gotten a little used to the idea already. So he just yelled back, “Yeah, I’m an angel. And I’ve come to help you get home.”

The little boy didn’t say anything for a minute, but Harry could see his turned-up face, a pale oval in the dim foggy light. “That’s good,” he said at last. “I was getting tired. And Donna won’t stop crying. And we’re all wet ’cause the oar splashes.” His voice began to quaver, “And it’s awful cold.”

“Well, everything’s okay now,” Harry called. “We’ll have you home in a flash. But don’t start crying. You may have to help out.”

The little boy wiped his face. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

That was just it. Harry didn’t know what he was going to do. He didn’t dare land, and he wasn’t at all sure he could fly carrying anything as heavy as the boy, and he certainly couldn’t carry them both at once. “Why don’t you come down?” the boy called.

“I think I’m too big for your boat,” Harry yelled back. “But don’t worry. I’ll think of something.” He circled some more, trying to come up with an idea, but all he decided was that the kids didn’t need a fake angel, they needed a real one.

While Harry worked on the problem of just what a fake angel could do, since there wasn’t a real one around, the little boy got on his knees on the seat and reached for something off the front end of the boat. “Hey, sit down!” Harry shouted. “Do you want to fall out?”

When the boy sat back down, he had a rope in his hand; a rope that was attached to the front end of the boat. “Could you pull us home by our rope?” he asked.

Well, for Pete Squeaks! The kid had more sense than he did. “Yeah, sure,” Harry said.

He had the boy sit on the bottom of the boat and hold the end of the rope up as high as he could with one hand. “And as soon as I grab the rope, you lie down flat by your sister,” Harry said, “because there may be a jerk. And stay there until I tell you.”

Then Harry made a big turn and came in as slowly and as close to the water as he dared. As he passed over the boat, he reached down with one hand and grabbed. There was an awful jerk when Harry caught the end of the rope. The boat almost stood on its tail, and Harry thought for a second that he was going to take a nose dive into the water. But the kid had done what he was told, and he didn’t fall out. When Harry got himself leveled out again and looked back, he could see the two of them lying there as the dory sped through the foam like a motorboat.

It was pretty scary flying so close to the bay. If just one wing tip dipped too low and hit the water, he’d be sure to lose control, and that would be that—not only for Harry, but for the little kids, too. So he concentrated harder than he ever had before, and in a few minutes he saw the dark foggy outline of the shore.

He turned just a bit and followed the shore line until he saw some lights shining dimly through the fog and then the outline of a pier. It was a small private pier with a motorboat tied up near the end.

When Harry was close enough for the dory’s momentum to carry it on in, he dropped the rope and landed on the pier. By flopping down onto his stomach, he was able to reach down and guide the boat to a gentle stop. Then he lifted the kids out and put them on the dock.

The littlest one was a baby girl, with wet curls hanging across her face. She had quit crying, but she looked sort of dazed, as if she didn’t know what was going on.

When Harry put the boy down on the pier beside his sister, the boy held out his hand and said, “Thank you, Mr. Angel, for saving us.” Harry shook hands gravely and took off as soon as he had got the two of them started down the pier towards a brightly lighted house. It was bad enough to be seen by kids, but there was just a chance that Mr. Mazzeeck’s bosses wouldn’t consider it “public notice” unless grownups saw him, too. Just to make sure everything was all right, though, he circled back over the house the kids were heading for. He came down on the ridge of the roof and crawled to the edge on his hands and knees. Just as he got to the edge, he heard a woman saying, “Why you poor little darlings. Call the police, Herbert, immediately. No, no. Call the hospital. No, don’t do that, we’ll call their parents first. Well, don’t just stand here, Herbert, do something!”

Anyway, it sounded as if something was going to get done eventually without any more help from Harry, so he headed for home.

T
HE NEXT MORNING WHEN
Harry picked up
The Chronicle,
the first thing he saw was a story headline reading “Tots Adrift on Bay.” His heart sank. It looked like “public notice” this time for sure. But as his eyes skimmed down the column, to his surprise, he found no mention of an angel or a flying boy at all. He went back and began to read more carefully.

The little boy’s name was Tommy Gibson and he was five years old, and his little sister was three. While their mother was busy making dinner they had gone out to play and climbed into the little boat that a neighbor had beached near their home. Tommy had had one rowing lesson from his father and thought he knew how to take his sister for a ride. But once in the boat, he had found it was harder than he thought it would be, and after a while he had lost one oar. Darkness had fallen, and with it came the fog before the searchers had even noticed the absence of the tiny boat and begun an almost hopeless search of the huge fog-bound bay. And then, four hours later and almost three miles from home, something—perhaps the tide, or Tommy’s one oar—had brought the little boat to a dock owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Henderson, who had heard about the missing children on the radio and had notified the children’s frantic parents.

Tommy and Donna were in the hospital recovering from exposure and exhaustion, but they were both going to be all right. There was a big picture of Tommy smiling from his hospital bed. He was even cuter looking than Harry remembered, with big dark eyes and a cocky grin.

It wasn’t until the very last paragraph that Harry read:

After reaching safety, Tommy refused to take any credit and insisted that he and his sister had been brought to shore by an angel. Doctor Grant attributed Tommy’s angel to delirium brought on by exhaustion, but Tommy’s mother had another explanation. “Tommy has always been a very imaginative child,” Mrs. Gibson stated.

When Harry read that he slammed the paper down on the table. “How do you like that!” he said right out loud. Delirium! Imagination! It just went to show that grownups ought to pay more attention to what their kids said. Of course, it was a good thing for Harry that nobody had listened to Tommy’s story. Still, it seemed too bad that no one would believe the poor kid. Harry hoped that somebody had the good sense to pretend at least that he thought Tommy was telling the truth. It was just like Lee said, “A little more believing would do the world a lot of good.”

Thinking about Lee reminded Harry of the Plan and how long it had been since he’d worked on it. He decided to really make an effort the next week end when Mr. Brighton was home. So on Sunday afternoon he cleverly got Mr. Brighton into the kitchen by asking to hear about how he used to play football for UCLA. Sure enough, Mom sat down to listen, too, and when Mr. Brighton began to run out of stories, Harry excused himself and went out, leaving them sitting cozily side by side. He stayed away a nice long time, but what he saw when he came back was very discouraging. There was Mr. Brighton, almost upside down in the old washing machine, which had been acting up again lately, and Mom was running back and forth bringing him wrenches and things. It wasn’t a very romantic scene.

It was a few days after that that Harry had another close call with the “public notice” business. It happened one night when he arrived home a little later than usual. It was a clear night and he had flown down along the coast all the way to Half Moon Bay and back.

As he came in over Kerry Street he decided it was too clear to risk a landing on the carriage house, so he came down on Madelaine’s roof. He made a good quiet landing and tiptoed to the front of the building to make sure the coast was clear before he crossed the alley to his back door.

He was just peeking cautiously over the edge of the building when a car pulled to a stop almost directly below him. A man got out of the old dark-colored sedan, carrying some sort of a bundle. He stopped for a minute to whisper to the driver, who was still at the wheel of the car. Then he walked quickly to the narrow alley that separated the cleaner-ballet building from Wong’s Grocery.

Harry couldn’t think of any good reason why a guy would be going down that alley at that hour of the night, so he ducked under the clothesline and crept over to the other side of the roof to take a look. He reached the side of the building and peeked over in time to see the man take something out of the bundle and start to work on the back door of the Wongs’ store.

It took Harry a minute or two to make himself believe that he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing. It just didn’t seem possible that anyone would want to rob the Wongs. But then, all of a sudden, he remembered a rumor he’d heard about how old Mr. Williamson Wong didn’t believe in banks and kept all his life-savings in a safe in the back of his store. Harry had even seen the safe when he and Mike were playing hide-and-go-seek in the big storeroom at the back.

It made Harry so mad to think that anyone would be mean enough to steal the life-savings of two nice old people like the Wongs that he almost flew right down on top of the guy. But on second thought, he realized that it wouldn’t help the Wongs any for him to get himself shot, or maybe hit over the head with a crowbar. He’d be a lot smarter to go for help—and as quickly as he could.

He scooted back across the roof and down the fire escape. Once inside the back door, it was only a few steps to the kitchen phone.

The policeman at the other end of the wire sounded awfully calm about the whole thing, as if he didn’t really think Harry knew what he was talking about. He took the address of the Wongs’ store, but then he said, “We’ll have to have your name, sir.”