The Smoky Corridor

4

Pettimore Middle School’s chief custodian, Wade Muggins, was putting in a little OT.

Overtime.

So while everybody else was all the way over on the other side of the so-called soccer green, having fun at Back to School Night in the auditorium, he was down in the cellar of the cafeteria, working late.

Earbuds stuffed in deep, he bopped into his office: the janitor’s closet, in the basement of the cafeteria. Actually, “janitor’s lounge” was more like it, because Wade had (without telling anyone) expanded the cramped room by busting through a wall to connect it to the root cellar of the old Pettimore mansion. He figured it might make a good rehearsal space for his rock band if he ever, you know, was in one. Nobody else knew about the root cellar. Heck, Wade only knew about it because one day, while nailing a Metallica poster to the back wall, he had accidentally swung his hammer too hard and bashed a humongous hole through the plasterboard wall.

To make certain no one ever found his secret underground Wade Cave, he had rigged up a swinging supply rack—fitted with a false back that matched the wall—to act as his private doorway. With a spring-loaded latch, all Wade had to do was lean against the third shelf, and the steel rack (fake wall and all) swung open.

He was only working late the night before school officially started to show some of what the crabby assistant principal (and royal pain in the patootie), Mr. Carl D. Crumpler, called “initiative.” Wade found out from the school librarian that “initiative” meant taking charge before somebody else did. It meant stepping up to the plate and hitting a home run.

“We are under siege by an infestation of mice!” Mr. Crumpler had screamed at Wade that afternoon when a chunk of cheddar cheese had mysteriously disappeared from the faculty lounge.

It was Mr. Crumpler’s cheese.

The bald-headed stooge had taped his name on it.

“Show some initiative, Mr. Muggins! Get rid of these rodents!”

For sure. He’d show old chrome dome.

Wade dragged the canister he’d taken off his barbecue grill through the secret portal and into the root cellar room. Its dirt floor rambled back about twenty feet. The only cool things in the dank place were a couple of rock star posters he’d duct taped to the walls and one of Horace P. Pettimore, who looked like he could’ve been a rocker. He even had the fancy soldier coat.

Wade lugged the white tank back to the spot where, earlier, he had heard mice scratching against stone.

“I’m comin’ to getcha!” Wade screeched at the wall.

Then he’d pumped his fist and diddled out an air-guitar riff that would’ve sounded totally awesome if, you know, he’d had a real guitar and known how to play it.

There was a tiny arched hole where the fieldstone wall met the dirt floor. It looked like the entrance to a tunnel on a model-train set. Wade worked the rubber hose snaking off the gas tank into the hole.

“Time for beddy-bye, dudes!”

He twisted the valve and propane hissed through the nozzle.

Wade waited.

Ten minutes later, nothing had happened.

No mice came stumbling out of the hole, gasping for air so Wade could bop them on the head with a rubber mallet like the cats always did in cartoons.

So he figured he’d go ahead and smoke a quick cigarette.

He lit up his cancer stick and flicked the still-flaming match to the floor.

That was when the wall exploded.