John Kendrick Bangs
Bikey the Skicycle and Other Tales of Jimmieboy
BIKEY THE SKICYCLE
I
HOW IT ALL CAME ABOUT
Jimmieboy's father had bought him a bicycle, and inasmuch as it was provided with a bag of tools and a nickel plated bell the small youth was very much pleased with the gift.
"It's got rheumatic tires, too," he said, when describing it to one of his little friends.
"What's that?" asked the boy.
"Big pieces of hose pipe," said Jimmieboy. "They run all around the outside of the wheel and when you fill 'em up with wind and screw 'em up tight so's the wind can't get out, papa says, you can go over anything easy as a bird."
"I s'pose," said the little friend, "it's sort of like sailing, maybe. The wind keeps blowing inside o' those pipes and that makes the wheels go round."
"I guess that's it," returned Jimmieboy.
"But I don't see why they call 'em rheumatic," said the other boy.
"Nor I don't, either," said Jimmieboy, "unless it's because they move a little stiff at first."
It was not long, however, before Jimmieboy discovered that his father had made a mistake when he said that the pneumatic tire would enable a bicycle to ride over anything, for about a week later Jimmieboy tried to ride over the shaft of a lawn mower with his wheel, with disastrous results. The boy took a header, and while he himself was not hurt beyond a scratch or two and a slight shaking up, which took away his appetite, the wonderful rubber tire was badly battered. What was worse, the experience made Jimmieboy a little afraid of his new possession, and for some time it lay neglected.
A few nights ago, however, Jimmieboy's interest in his wheel was aroused once more, and to-day it is greater than ever, and it all came about in this way. His father and mother had gone out to make some calls and the youngster was spending a few minutes of solitude over a very fine fairy book that had recently been sent to him. While he was gazing at a magnificent picture of Jack slaying two giants with his left hand and throttling a dragon with his right, there came a sudden tinkling of a bell.
"Somebody's at the telephone," thought Jimmieboy, and started to go to it, when the ringing sound came again, but from a part of the house entirely away from the neighborhood of the telephone.
"Humph," said Jimmieboy. "That's queer. It isn't the telephone and it can't be the front door bell I guess it's the "
"It's me Bikey," came a merry voice from behind the door.
"Who?" cried Jimmieboy.
"Bikey," replied the voice. "Don't you remember Bikey, who threw you over the lawn mower?"
Jimmieboy turned about, and sure enough there stood his neglected wheel.
"I hope you weren't hurt by your tumble," said the little bicycle standing up on its hind wheel and putting its treadles softly on Jimmieboy's shoulders, as if it were caressing him.
"No," said Jimmieboy. "The only thing was that it took away my appetite, and it was on apple pie day. It isn't pleasant to feel as if you couldn't eat a thing with a fine apple pie staring you in the face. That was all I felt badly about."
"I'm sorry about the pie," returned the little bicycle, "but glad you didn't flatten your nose or put your teeth out of joint, as you might easily have done. I knew a boy once who took a header just as you did, and after he got up he found that he'd broken the brim of his hat and turned a beautiful Roman nose into a stub nose."
"You mean snub nose, don't you?" asked Jimmieboy.
"No, I mean stub. Stub means more than snub. Snub means just a plain turn up nose, but stub means that it's not only turned up, but has very little of itself left. It's just a stub that's all," explained the bicycle. "Another boy I knew fell so hard that he pushed his whole face right through to the back of his head, and you don't know how queer it looks to see him walking backward on his way to school."
"I guess I was in great luck," said Jimmieboy. "I might have had a much harder time than I did."
"I should say so," said the bicycle. "A scratch and loss of appetite, when you might just as easily have had your whole personal appearance changed, is getting off very cheap. But, I say, why didn't you turn aside instead of trying to ride over that lawn mower? Didn't you know you'd get yourself into trouble?"
"Of course I didn't," said Jimmieboy. "You don't suppose I wanted to commit soozlecide, do you? I heard papa talking to mamma about the rheumatic tires on his bicycle, and he said they were great inventions because they made the wheel boy boy well, boy something, I don't remember what."
"Boyant?" asked the little bicycle, scratching its cyclometer with its pedal.
"Yes that was it," said Jimmieboy. "He said the rheumatic tires made the thing boyant, and I asked him what that meant. He said boyant was a word meaning light and airy like a boy, you know, and that boyancy in a bicycle meant that it could jump over almost anything."
"That is so," said Bikey. "That's what they have those tires for, but they can't jump over a lawn mower unless" Here Bikey paused and glanced anxiously around. It was evident that he had some great secret in his mind.
"Unless what?" asked Jimmieboy, his curiosity at once aroused.
"Unless a patent idea of mine, which you and I could try if you wanted to, is good."
Bikey's voice sank into a whisper.
"There's millions in my idea if it'll work," he continued. "Do you see this?" he asked, holding up his front wheel. "This tire I have on is filled with air, and it makes me seem light as air but it's only seeming. I'm heavy, as you found out when you tried to get me to jump over the lawn mower, but if I could only do a thing I want to you could go sailing over a church steeple as easily as you can ride me over a lawn."
"You mean to say you'd fly?" asked Jimmieboy, delighted at the idea.
"No not exactly," returned Bikey. "I never could fly and never wanted to. Birds do that, and you can buy a bird for two dollars; but a bicycle costs you anywhere from fifty to a hundred, which shows how much more valuable bicycles are than birds. No, I don't want to fly, but I would like to float."
"On water?" asked Jimmieboy.
"No, no, no; in the air," said the little bicycle impatiently "like a balloon. Wouldn't that be fine? Anybody can float on the water, even an old cork; but when it comes to floating in the air, that's not only fun but it means being talented. A bicycle that could float in the air would be the finest thing in the world."
"That's very likely true," said Jimmieboy, "but how are you going to do it? You can't soar."
"Not with my tires filled with air," replied Bikey, "but if you'll take the hose from the gas stove and fasten one end to the supply valve of my tires, the other to the gas fixture, fill the tires up with gas and get aboard I'll bet you we can have a ride that'll turn out to be a regular sky-scraper."
It sounded like an attractive proposition, but Jimmieboy wanted to know something more about it before consenting to trifle with the gas pipe.
"What good'll the gas do?" he asked.
"Why, don't you know that gas makes balloons go up?" said Bikey. "They just cram the balloon as full of gas as they can get it and up she sails. That's my idea. Fill my rubber tires with gas and up we'll go. What do you say?"
"I'll do it," cried Jimmieboy with enthusiasm. "I'd love more than anything else to go biking through the clouds, for to tell the truth clouds look a great deal softer than grocery carts and lawn mowers, and I wouldn't mind running into one of them so much. Skybicycling"
"Pooh! What a term," retorted Bikey. "Skybicycling! Why don't you use your mind a little and call it skycycling?"
Jimmieboy laughed.
"Perhaps skycling would be better than that," he suggested.
"Or skiking," smiled the little bicycle. "If it works you know I'll be simply grand. I'll be a sort of Christopher Columbus among bicycles, and perhaps I'll be called a skicycle instead of bicycle. Oh, it would be too beautiful!" he added, dancing joyously on his hind wheel.
"It will indeed," said Jimmieboy, "but let's hurry. Seems to me as if I could hardly wait."
"Me too," chuckled Bikey. "You go up and get the rubber tube, fasten it to the gas pipe, and inside of ten minutes we'll be off if it works."
So Jimmieboy rushed off to the attic, seized a piece of rubber tubing that had been used to carry the supply of gas to his little nursery stove in the winter, and running back to where Bikey was waiting fastened it to the fixture in the hall.
"Now," said Bikey, unscrewing the cap of his pneumatic tire, "hold the other end there and we'll see how it goes."
Jimmieboy hastened to obey, and for five minutes watched his strange little friend anxiously.
"Feel any lighter?" he said.
"Yes," whispered Bikey, almost shivering with delight. "My front wheel is off the floor already. I think twenty feet more will be enough there, and when you've filled up the hind tire ta ta ti tum ti too ha ha! Then we'll go skiking."
The plan was followed out, and when both tires had taken in as much gas as they could hold Bikey called hoarsely to Jimmieboy:
"Quick! Quick! Jump aboard or I'll be off without you. Is the door open?"
"No," said Jimmieboy, clambering into the saddle, after turning off the gas and screwing the caps firmly on both tires, "b but the par par parlor window is."
"Good," cried Bikey. "We'll sail through that! Give the right pedal a good turn; now one two three we're off!"
And they were off. Out of the hall they flew, through the parlor without touching the floor, and then sailed through the window out into the moonlight night.
"Isn't it great," cried Bikey, trembling with delight.
"Greatest that ever was," said Jimmieboy. "But, hi! Take care, turn to the left, quick."
A great spike of some sort had loomed up before them.
"Excuse me," said Bikey, giving a quick turn. "I was so happy I wasn't looking where we were going. If you hadn't spoken we'd have got stuck on that church steeple sure enough."
II
WHEELING ON THE BIG RING OF SATURN
"Hadn't we better go a little higher?" asked Jimmieboy. "There's a lot of these tall steeples about here, and it wouldn't be any fun if we pricked a hole in one of these tires on a weather vane."
"We are going higher all the time," said Bikey. "There isn't a steeple in the world can touch us now. What we want to keep away from now are eagles and snow clad Alps."
"Ho! snow clad Alps," laughed Jimmieboy. "There aren't any Alps in America, they're all in Europe."
"Well, where are you? You don't suppose we've been standing still all this time, do you? If you'd studied your geography lessons as well as you ought to you'd be able to tell one country from another. You are wheeling directly over France now. In ten minutes we'll be over Germany, and in fifteen, if you turned to the south, you'd simply graze the top of Mont Blanc."
"Let's," said Jimmieboy. "I want to see a glazier."
"A what?" asked Bikey.
"A glazier," answered Jimmieboy. "It's a big slide."
"Oh, you mean a glacier," said Bikey, shaking all over with laughter. "I thought you meant a man to put in a pane of glass, and it struck me that Mont Blanc was a curious place to go looking for one. Shall we turn south?"
"If you don't mind," said Jimmieboy. "Seems to me we might coast down Mont Blanc, and have a pretty good time of it."
"Oh, if that's what you're after, I won't do it," said Bikey. "Coasting isn't a good thing for beginners like you, particularly on the Alps. Take a hill of your own size. Furthermore, we haven't come out to explore the earth. I was going to take you off to the finest bicycle track you ever saw. I never saw it either, but I've seen pictures of it. It's a great level gold road running about another world called Saturn. We call it Saturn's ring down home, but I've ideas as to what it is."
"Seems to me I've heard papa speak of Saturn. It's got eight moons, I think he said. One for every day of the week, and two for Sunday," said Jimmieboy.
"That's the place," said Bikey. "You don't need a lamp on your wheel when you go out at night there. They've got moonlight to burn. If you'll pedal ahead now as hard as you can we can get there in time for one turn and then come back; and I tell you, my boy, that coming back will be glorious. It will be down grade all the way."
"How far off is Saturn?" asked Jimmieboy.
"I don't know," returned Bikey, "but it's a long walk from your house. The ring is 18,350 miles from Saturn itself. That's why I think it's a good place for bicycling. Nobody'd take an ice cart or a furniture truck that far just to get in the way of a wheelman, and then as it doesn't go anywhere but just round and round and round, they're not likely to have trolley cars on it. It doesn't pay to run a trolley car nowheres."
It all seemed beautifully reasonable, and Jimmieboy's curiosity grew greater and greater as he pedalled along. Up and on they went, passing through huge fleecy masses of clouds, now and again turning to one side to avoid running into strange little bits of stars, so small that they seemed to be nothing but islands in the ocean of the sky, and far too small to be seen on the earth.
"We can stop and rest on one of those if you want to, Jimmieboy," said Bikey; "are you tired?"
"Not at all," Jimmieboy answered. "Seems to me I could go on this way forever. It's easy as lying down and going to sleep."
Bikey chuckled.
"What are you laughing at?" said Jimmieboy.
"Nothing," said Bikey. "When you said it was easy as sleeping I thought of something that was all."
"Dear me," said Jimmieboy, ruefully. "I am awake, ain't I? This isn't like all the other experiences, is it?"
"Not at all," laughed Bikey. "Your other adventures have been quite different. But, I say, we're getting there. I can see five moons ahead already."
"I can see six," cried Jimmieboy, quite elated. "Yes, six and one more."
"You've got nearly the whole set, as the boy said when he came to the other boy's Nicaragua page in the stamp album. There are only eight altogether only I think your seventh is Saturn itself."
"It must be," said Jimmieboy. "It's got a hello around it."
"What's that?" asked Bikey.
"I forgot," said Jimmieboy. "You never went to Sunday school, and so of course you don't know what a hello is. It's a thing like a gold hoople that angels wear on their heads."
"I'll have to get one," said Bikey. "I heard somebody say I was an angel of a bicycle. I don't know what she meant, though. What is an angel?"
"It's a a good thing with wings," said Jimmieboy.
"Humph!" said Bikey, "I'm afraid I'm not one of those. Don't they ever have wheels? I'm a good thing, but I haven't any wings."
"I never heard of an angel with wheels," said Jimmieboy. "But I suppose they come. Angels have everything that's worth having."
Bikey was silent. The idea of anything having everything that was worth having was too much for him to imagine, for bicycles have very little imagination.
"I wish I could be one," he said wistfully, after a moment's silence. "It must be awfully nice to have everything you want."
Jimmieboy thought so, too, but he was too much interested in getting to Saturn to say anything, so he, too, kept silent and pedalled away as hard as he could. Together and happily they went on until Jimmieboy said: