CHAPTER XVI

REEL HEROES

We were glad when we got back to the chasm; anyway I was, I know that. Our little tent looked good, standing there. Dub said he wished we could camp there all summer, just us four. “Yes, and what would I be doing?” I said. “Cooking meals for the four of us. Do you think all I came up to Temple Camp for was to cook flapjacks for a human famine?”

“What are we going to have for lunch?” Pee-wee wanted to know.

“I’d make some angel cake if I only had some angels,” I told him. “How about spaghetti and rice pudding? Only we haven’t got any cream.”

Oh boy, it was nice sitting around eating lunch. I know how to make dandy spaghetti. You have to have a can of tomatoes and you pour them over it. Once I flavored it with chocolate but it wasn’t any good, but licorice isn’t so bad. Once I used a lot of long strings of licorice that they call shoe strings--you get them three for a cent--I used them instead of spaghetti. Only tomato sauce doesn’t go good with it. Black spaghetti, that’s what we called it. It was only just an experiment--experiments are all right as long as you don’t eat them.

“I can eat experiments or anything,” Pee-wee said.

Sandy said he’d like to be in Italy where the spaghetti grows. You could just go out in the fields and pick it, that’s what he said.

“Do they plant it in grated cheese or just in the earth?” I asked him.

He said, “They plant it in the earth and they call it wop-weed over there.”

I said, “Well, that’s news to me, I never knew where spaghetti came from.”

“Well, anyway, we know where it goes to,” Dub said.

“Sure,” I told him, “but I never knew it grows just the same as macaroni.”

“You’re crazy!” Pee-wee shouted. He was trying to keep some spaghetti from wriggling away from his mouth.

“Hold your mouth up in the air and eat it by the attraction of gravitation,” I told him.

“Spaghettidoesngrow,” he said.

“Explain all that,” I told him. “Here, have some more.”

“Are we going down to the other end of the chasm to see those movie people this afternoon?” Sandy wanted to know.

I said, “Sure, we positively are, and I’ve got an idea. It’s an inspiration, accent on the third syllable. _Look at Pee-wee!_” all of a sudden I said. “He should use sandpaper to hold spaghetti--this is terrible.”

Honest, I wish you could have seen that kid. He was trying to shovel spaghetti into his mouth and it was slipping every which way.

“Take some salt in your hand so it won’t skid,” I told him.

“Whatsthinspiration?” he managed to get out.

“Go into second and don’t jam your brakes on too hard and you’ll make it,” Sandy told him.

I was laughing so hard I couldn’t speak for a couple of minutes--seeing Pee-wee eat spaghetti. I said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get any rough spaghetti but it’s very expensive.”

“How about the inspiration?” Dub wanted to know. “This expedition is getting worse and worse.”

“Yes, and even he’ll write it up in a book and expect fellers to read it,” Pee-wee said.

“It will sound all right as long as they don’t read too hard,” I said. “You read a book too hard and you spoil it--I’ll leave it to Sandy. That’s what knocks the back covers off most books.”

“This one will be the worst of any of them,” the kid said.

“Just the same,” I told him, “I’m always getting letters from Scouts who want to join my hikes. I have to refuse them because they’re not crazy enough. One fellow that lives in Nutley, New Jersey, said he could prove he was a nut. Even I wouldn’t let that fellow in.”

“What’s the inspiration?” Dub wanted to know.

I said, “Oh yes, listen. What’s the name of that movie hero up the chasm? Don’t you know, the man in the candy store told us?”

“Bunko Bravado,” Sandy said.

“We’ll go and see him,” I told them, “and we’ll dare him to do something dangerous. And if he does, Pee-wee will save his life. There you are. What could be nicer? Nothing whatever, said our young hero preparing to jump from the cliff.”

So in the afternoon when we were all good and rested, we took a hike to the other end of the chasm to see the movie people. Sandy said if they were using rag dummies we might throw one down from the top of the chasm and have Dub jump down after it and we’d take a picture of him and he’d get the Gold Medal and the Burnside award.

“Is that the way you talk to new fellers at camp?” the kid shouted. “Telling them to be crooked--gee whiz!”

“Didn’t you say that movie actors were crooked?” I said. “Did you say they don’t really do things? Didn’t you say they were not regular heroes?”

“I didn’t say they were crooked,” Pee-wee said, all excited. “I said they’re not real heroes like Scouts, because they double and they use dummies and it’s just kind of acting, the things they do. Do you think they really walk up buildings and drop from telegraph wires and all that?”

“You’d better look out how you talk to them,” Dub said.

“Do you think I’m afraid of them?” the kid asked him. “Gee whiz, they’re only just actors. When they have to do things where you have to have prowesses and things like that--and reckless daring----”

“Goodness me,” I said.

“I bet there isn’t one of them can dive like Hervey Willetts does,” Pee-wee said. “They just do things that kind of make it _look_ as if they’re brave. Scouts are real heroes because they no fooling take their lives in their hands----”

“Like spaghetti,” Sandy said.

“Geeeeeee whiz,” the kid went on, “didn’t I see Freddie Fearless in the _Leap of Love_ and he gave a good big jump into the ocean where it was all rocks and a lady next to me nearly fainted and people were giving sighs and everything but I didn’t because I had a wild cherry jaw-breaker in my mouth----”

“That shows how really wild he is,” I said.

“_Will you shut up!_” he yelled at me.

“He wouldn’t eat tame cherries----”

“I wouldn’t eat tame cherries--I mean--will you _shut up_!” the kid just screeched.

“He eats wild animal crackers,” I said. “Yes, yes, go on with your story.”

“He went kerplunk into the water,” the kid said, “and I could see it was only a dummy and they zipped the film quick. Then when he was climbing into a boat it was that feller--Freddie Fearless. Geeee whiz, he gets thousands and thousands of dollars for bein a ’fraid cat. Do you think I’d be afraid to jump that?”

“What became of the wild cherry jaw-breaker?” Sandy asked him.

“It wasn’t rescued,” I said. “It was never heard of again.”