Horrible Harry Moves up to the Third Grade (4 page)

“That's what salt is, Sid. Rocks.” Harry leaned back in his chair just enough so he wouldn't fall, and sprinkled some more salt in his mouth. “Deeeeelicous!”

Sidney crossed his arms. “I ran myself ragged to see you eat salt?”

“Yup,” Harry said, licking his lips.

Mary and Ida smiled. Song Lee giggled. I just put two thumbs up. Sid had it coming for killing Harry's spider.

I was actually enjoying third grade, until Miss Mackle made that dreaded announcement.

The next morning Miss Mackle said, “Boys and girls, we are going to the Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine September thirtieth!”

When everyone cheered, I motioned to Harry to meet me at the pencil sharpener. I had to talk with him.

Harry broke his pencil on the side of the desk, then joined me.

“What's up?” he asked.

“Remember how you were kind of scared to ride the elevator in the Drop of Doom?”

Harry paused. He never liked admitting he was afraid of anything.

“Yeah ...” he barely whispered.

“Well, I never went down into that copper mine. I was ... afraid.” It was hard for me to say it, too.

Harry flashed his white teeth. “Hey, Doug, you can do it. If I could do the Doom ride, you can walk through a mine. Pretend you're a spider. They love cool, dark places.”

“Thanks, Harry,” I groaned.

After I sharpened my pencil, I added, “You'll stick close by?”

“Like Elmer's glue,” he whispered.

September thirtieth came too soon.

Song Lee and Ida and Mary sat in front of Harry and me on the bus. The girls played hangman. Their first word had eight letters.

PRISONER

I sure felt like one sitting next to Harry. I was trapped, and there was no getting out of it.

Harry could tell I was getting nervous. My knees were shaking. He opened his backpack. “Try not to think about it. Think about other things, like ...”

Then Harry pulled out something wrapped in aluminum foil. “Remember this?”

I watched Harry unwrap it.

“Sidney's burnt wiener!” I said.

“Shhhh!” Harry put a finger to his mouth. “He's sitting across the aisle. It's a secret. Ol' Sid doesn't know I have it.”

“What are
you
doing with it?”

“I'm not sure. I might just keep it until it becomes a fossil.”

“A wiener fossil?” When I laughed, my knees stopped shaking.

“Sure. Or ... it might come in handy sometime for something else.”

Harry

He was a piece of work.

I sure was glad he was my partner. He made me forget about things when we were on the bus.

An hour later, we got to the mine. We got off the bus and walked over to the little museum shop. It was fun to crunch through all the autumn leaves. The trees were red, orange, yellow, and brown. It was a beautiful sunny day, I kept telling myself.

The inside of the museum was small. There were all kinds of books for sale, some rocks, and Granby copper coins. There were also soda and candy machines, but Miss Mackle stood in front of them like a football guard. “Spend your money wisely,” she said.

Sidney made a long face. He had his coins ready. “Man, that's no fair. I wanted to get a crunchy chocolate bar.”

As soon as I spotted the boys' room, I ducked inside. I always have to go when I get nervous.

Later, when everyone had bags of souvenirs, a gray-haired man said, “Welcome, boys and girls, gather ‘round. You are about to visit the first copper mine in the thirteen colonies. It also was our first state prison. Back in the 1700s, prisoners worked in the mine.”

“What crimes did they commit?” Mary asked. She had her pencil and notebook and was taking notes.

“Most of them were horse thieves, counterfeiters, and burglars.”

“What did the burglars steal?” Sidney asked.

“Well, in 1780, seven men broke into Captain Ebenezer Dayton's house and tied up his wife with a torn sheet.”

“Where was Ebenezer?” Mary snapped.

“He was out of town.”

Mary rolled her eyes.

“So, what happened?” Harry asked.

“Well, they kept her tied up in a chair for two hours while they ransacked the house. They took coats, cloaks, gowns, silk handkerchiefs, silver shoe buckles, a spyglass, two muskets, four halberds, and four hundred fifty pounds of gold, silver, and copper coins.”

“What's a halberd?” Mary asked.

“It's a long-handled ax.”

We followed the elderly man outside to a courtyard and brick wall. When he leaned over, he picked up some rocks. “Just about everywhere you look you can see copper rocks. If it has green on it, it's copper.”

Mary bent down and pointed at something green. “This isn't copper,” she said. “It's someone's half-eaten lime lollipop.”

“Gross,” Ida said. “There's a spider on it, too.”

“Don't kill it,” Harry said, looking at Sidney.

“Single file please,” the guide said. “We're about to enter the mine.”

“Oh boy,” I said to Harry. “Here we go.”

Harry walked right behind me. He was so close I could feel his warm breath on my neck. “Remember, Doug. You're a spider. You love the underground world.”

“I'll try,” I whispered. Slowly, I walked into the mine. The path ahead of me zigzagged down a sloping hill. The space seemed to get smaller and darker. I clung to the railing when there was one.

“Neato,” Harry said. “This is cool.”

The guide heard Harry. “Actually, it is fifty-two degrees all year round in this mine.”

“Cool,” Harry repeated.

I stopped walking and looked at my arms. There were goose pimples on them!

“Keep moving,” Harry said.

“I like the lanterns along the path into the mine,” Mary said. “They're neat.”

“Hey! Water is dripping on my head!” Ida said.

“It tickles!” Song Lee giggled.

The guide smiled. “There's water in the earth. We're inside the earth now.”

I was really underground!

As the hike got darker and wetter, and the stone ceiling got lower and lower, I got more afraid. I wasn't going to tell anyone, though. I just bent over as I walked, and stayed closer to Harry.

Ten minutes later, it seemed like we were miles inside the earth. My heart was beating like one of those huge gongs.

Song Lee took a picture. “I love rocks,” she said. “Maybe I'll be a miner when I grow up.”

Not me,
I thought. What if some boulders fell and blocked our way back? What if I fell down a hole like Injun Joe?

Finally, I had to ask the question. “How much longer are we going to stay down here?”

“About ten minutes,” the guide said.

Ten minutes. That was ten times sixty seconds, which made six hundred seconds to go.

I started counting backward. “Six hundred, five hundred ninety-nine, five hundred ninety-eight ...”

Sidney must have noticed I was nervous because he started teasing me about it. “Got a case of the heebie-jeebies like
Harry
did on that Drop of Doom ride last summer?”

Harry raised a fist.

When Sidney laughed, I could hear Harry growl.

“You can see over here, there is a large deposit of copper,” the guide said, as he shone his flashlight in the corner.

Sidney turned around and whispered, “It's really the green boogeyman.”

Suddenly, I got mad. I never believed boogeyman stories. Sidney wasn't going to frighten me! Now I was more determined than ever to pretend I was not afraid. I kept on counting, only this time I didn't say it out loud.

Harry gave Sidney a final warning. “You'd better stop fooling around, Sid the Squid.”

After we turned and entered a small empty room, the guide asked everyone to sit down for a while and rest. His voice echoed off the stone walls.

“I have a ghost story to tell you,” he said.

I grabbed Harry's ankle and held on to it tightly.

“What was he in for?” Mary asked.

“Counterfeiting money. He was serving a twenty-year sentence.”

The guide continued the story.
“Starkey offered the cash to a guard if he helped him escape. The guard agreed because he wanted the money. He told Starkey about a path in the mine that was rarely used. It was behind a locked metal door. It led to an underground well that had an old rope used for pulling buckets. The guard said Starkey could use it to climb to freedom.