It was a mixture of violets and morning sunlight after a rain and white velvet and puppies, and the out and out unexpectedness of it filled Snotty with panic. “That’s it for me,” he thought, stumbling backward. “I’m out of here.” In his hurry to get away he almost fell, but he got his balance back and ran down the alley to Hamercy Street, where Mick, unfortunately, was waiting. Snotty ran slap into him.
“G-got you!” Mick said, wrapping his stubby arms around our hero and squeezing for all he was worth. Snotty, smothering there, smelled tar and sweat and stale beer.21 With a muffled shout, he shoved as hard as he could, and brought one scrawny knee up harder.
Mick yowled and let go. Snotty raced back the way he came.
But Mick, who was faster than he looked, caught up with him right outside the Seventh Garden. With an angry bellow, he pounced and brought Snotty down in the dirt, both of them shouting and coughing. Snotty pummeled Mick on the chest, but as his fists were extremely little, this didn’t count for much. So instead he yelled as loud as he could.
Alan and Terry, getting out of their car on Hamercy Street, heard this and ran. Terry shouted. Alan shouted, too.
There was a lot of shouting at this point in the story.
“Other side,” Alan shouted. He meant Terry should block their exit out the other end of the alley. And this Terry sprinted to do.
Mick cursed. Snotty tried to push him off. But it was no use. So instead he shouted some more. Mick shouted back.
“Okay,” Alan said more quietly now that he was near. “That’s enough, now. Give it up.”
“A f-f-fine th-thing when a man can’t b-beat up his own b-b-b-boy!” Mick said, aggrieved. But he stopped shouting. He didn’t, however, loosen his grip on Snotty.
“I’m NOT his boy!” Snotty howled. All he got for that was a slap across the face.
“Don’t sh-sh-shout while the officer’s t-t-talking. It’s r-r-r-rude.”
“Okay, let the boy go,” Alan said.
“Sure, sure, sh-shure,” Mick muttered. Reluctantly releasing his hold, he stood up and dusted off his trousers in an ingratiating way, just to show there were no hard feelings between him and the police.
Snotty’s eyes snaked back and forth, looking for the best way out, while Mick pretended to search through his pockets for his i.d.
“I know it’s here somewhere...”
Snotty started to inch backward. But a hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Oh, no you don’t,” Terry said, coming up from behind.
Snotty was in a jam, of that there was no doubt. The only good thing was that his money was still buried in the skip. Other than that, he couldn’t think of a good word to say about the whole scenario.
But Snotty was, at bottom, a true entrepreneur. And your real entrepreneur knows that you’re never out until they’ve put you in a cell and thrown away the key. Snotty knew he had a ways to go till then—only not very far.
The Dog saved him. An ominous growl came from the Seventh Garden, and when the others looked up, startled, it leapt out, teeth bared, a whirling mass of black and gray. Mick screamed and staggered back, while a startled Terry let his grip loose just enough so Snotty could yank away and run. With Alan on one side, and Terry on the other, he had no choice, really. It was the Seventh Garden for him. That or jail.
“Just get to the other side, over the fence, onto Hamercy Street,” he thought, running. The Dog ran by his side. “Almost there, almost there, we’re out of here, yeah!” But his luck gave out. When Snotty (with the Dog following him) jumped onto the springy weeds at the center of the Seventh Garden, he felt them buckle and give. He skidded and froze, but it was too late for any of that. The weeds bounced and then gave way entirely. And with a faint ‘plop,’ Snotty and the Dog disappeared.
It was the Seventh Garden for him. That or jail.
The next thing Snotty knew, he was falling. He grabbed hold of a weedy vine that stretched taut, but it broke. Then he tumbled down a hole. He felt the Dog leap past him as he fell straight into the darkness underneath.
Snotty fell and he fell and he fell. He fell past other smells he didn’t know. Cedars on a hot day. Mushrooms frying in butter. Seaweed floating in a blue-green cove.22
He fell and he fell. Once he heard the dog howl, and then he thought that he could see stars above him. “Which makes no sense at all!” he thought. It had been many years since you could see stars in Megalopolis.23
Then he blacked out. Though he kept falling, he didn’t, for a time, see or hear or feel anything more.
“Where is he?” Terry said wildly. Mick lay groaning in the dirt, clutching a torn pant leg where the Dog had stuck its teeth.
“He went into that garden,” Alan said. “He’ll be long gone by now.”
“What garden?” Terry said.
And when Alan looked, there was no garden there.24
Chapter IV
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
“Drip...drip...drip...drip....”
“Snnnuuurrrgggghhh....”
“Drip...drip...drip....”
“Snoarrrgggghhh....”
Snotty lay on his back, eyes closed tight. His nose twitched. The air smelled damp and moldy. His head hurt.
“SSNNNARRRGGGGHHH?”
Something lay heavy on his stomach. It was making grunting noises, and its breath spread, warm and smelly, on Snotty’s face.
He opened one eye. This made his head hurt worse—a piercing throb through his temples. The light was dim, but he could just make out the source of the grunting: the Dog, its gray and black snout lying across his chest. When the Dog saw Snotty was awake, it lifted its head and placed its paw on Snotty’s arm.
Snotty groaned. Water dripped down the rock walls behind him and ran in rivulets down his collar. The Dog’s brown eyes looked at him, and its nose prodded his face.
“Hey!” Snotty said weakly. “Don’t!” He tried to lift his head up, had one dizzy impression of slate gray walls and damp moss, when another sharp pain went through his head, and he blacked out again.
When
