The Goonies
Authors: James Kahn
WATCH YOUR HANDS. TOUCH ME AGAIN AND I'LL BOP YOU A GOOD ONE
.”
Stef had turned to Mouth, who was right behind her, and glared at him kind of hacked off. Mouth looked kind of puzzled and
just shrugged. A few seconds later she said, “I warned you,” and lifted her hand to slap him.
In the second it took her hand to come around, this giant squid shot up out of the water, and no lie, she slapped the squid.
It slapped her right back, knocking her into the water. It had this giant bloodshot eye and was kind of pinkish-grey. The
thing was huge. And then, like it was letting us know what was what, it slapped the water with another tentacle, sounding
like a cracking whip.
It scared me to death. I mean, I knew the thing was a giant squid, but I still screamed “What is that?”
“Giant sushi!” shouted Data.
The giant eye moved just above the surface, and Hook's crocodile never looked so mean. Another arm grabbed Andy around the
waist, pulling her towards its disgusting beak-mouth. And another arm got me around the ankle. Then the thing opened its beak
to gobble on Andy's leg…
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1985 by Warner Bros. Inc.
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
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First eBook Edition: October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56768-8
Contents
I will never betray my Goon Dock friends,
We will stick together until the whole world ends,
Through heaven and hell and nuclear war,
Good pals like us will stick like tar,
In the city, or the country, or the forest, or the boonies
I am proudly declared a fellow Goony.
—The Goony Oath
Astoria Evening Standard
, Saturday, October 24
In a daring daylight escape this morning, convicted armed robber Jake Fratelli broke out of State Prison and fled to a waiting
getaway car. Fratelli, 33, apparently faked his own suicide while the other inmates were at breakfast, and when the guard
entered his cell to cut the body down from where it was seemingly hanging by the neck, Fratelli knocked him unconscious, exchanged
clothes with him, and simply walked out of the moderate-security facility.
According to guard Emil Yonis, “He looked dead as a jackrabbit road kill to me—hangman's noose, and his tongue stuck out.
But when I went to check him, I saw it was just a harness around his waist. That's when he nailed me.” Yonis has been hospitalized
for observation.
Moments after Fratelli left the compound the guard's naked body was discovered, and the alarm sounded. Prison guards gave
chase, but a black off-road vehicle was waiting
for the escapee just opposite a hill adjacent to the penitentiary. Driving the vehicle was the prisoner's mother, 56-year-old
Mama Fratelli, herself a fugitive; and the prisoner's brother, Francis, 31, currently sought for questioning following a string
of arsons last winter in Portland.
The escape had obviously been well planned. As Jake approached the waiting vehicle Francis lit a long stream of gasoline that
had been poured twenty yards from the car, creating a wall of flame that effectively cut off immediate pursuit.
Police were notified, however. As authorities closed in, the escape vehicle was seen again on Route 27 near Hillside, and
a high-speed chase ensued, leading across the waterfront area, past the high school, through the Municipal Waste Disposal
area, around the marina, and finally—with a stroke of precision bravado by the Fratellis—into the midst of a cross-country
race of over 50 other off-road vehicles. It was in the confusion of this camouflage that the Fratellis made their escape.
There were no license plates on the vehicle, but it can be easily recognized by the numerous police bullet holes in its side.
It was last seen heading north toward Janesville, although there are now reports of a similar vehicle sighted near Fresno.
Prison officials now are conducting an investigation into security procedures at their facility. Guard Emil Yonis has been
placed on inactive duty, pending the results of this inquiry.
The Fratellis are armed and considered dangerous.
My Name is Mikey Walsh… The Goonies… Nothin' to do… Chunk's Story… Three Guys in Leisure Suits… Museum Stuff… I Find the Map…
X marks the Spot
.
So my name is Mikey Walsh. Michael, actually, except nobody ever calls me that but Grandpa, when he can remember who I am
at all. Mostly he just lies in the hammock in the backyard remembering when
he
was thirteen. That's what I am. Thirteen.
Short for my age, though. Not like a midget or anything, and I'm no chicken, but on the other hand, you're not going to find
me in the parking lot after a football game with Glenoaks West waiting to mix it up with those trolls. Brand calls me a wimp.
He's my brother.
I'm not, though. A wimp, I mean. I've just got better things to do than hoot about who creamed who at the game.
Adventures
are my game, even though they're usually pretty hard to come by in a junky little town like this.
Brand says it's not that I'm short for my age, it's that I'm short for my size. He cracks himself up with that one. Mom just
says I'm “slight.” I know what they're talking
about, though. It's about how I'm not on any of the teams like Brand is, and I've got braces and asthma, and I get colds a
lot, more than most of the other kids, especially in the fall. Fall is when this story all happened, but I'll get to that
in a minute.
Actually October's my favorite month, even though Mom freaks out about “flu season” and my “condition” and stuff. October's
great for leaves, though. They get these dynamite colors and fall off, and I get to rake 'em into piles to burn and it's the
greatest smell. Of course, it rains a lot, too. But when it doesn't, there's this special, mysterious kind of wind that seems
to come out of the earth and go right through me, like through my heart or something. I mean I know it doesn't, but that's
how it seems. Kind of old-time magic. And, of course, Halloween's in October.
So I love the fall. What I hate is my braces, especially when Dr. Hoffman tightens them once a' month to correct my malocclusion,
which is like an execution done about as slow as marshmallow taffy. Also, once when I kissed Cheryl Hagedorn—actually she
kissed me—our braces
locked
, so we were like joined at the mouth, it was really a gross-out, and I had to unhook us with her eyebrow tweezers in the
rearview mirror of her dad's Chevy. After that it turned me off just to look at her, and probably her, me, too. Dr. Hoffman
wanted to know if I'd been chewing nails or what.
The other thing I hate is my asthma, which Brand says is all in my head. Mom says no, it's in my lungs—my
brain
is in my head. Then Brand generally says something like, “That's not where Mikey's brains are,
his
brains are where he
sits
.” Then Mom tells him to button it up and stop being so crude. But he's not, really, he's just being Brand.
He's actually a pretty cool dude. Only just about half as cool as he thinks he is. He was sixteen when this mess all happened—starting
his junior year at Astoria High, already varsity in wrestling but just J.V. in football. Anyway, he's not anything like me—he's
blond and blue-eyed and he pumps iron, and he's not just a jock, either. He knows a lotta stuff.
Mom and Dad are just regular. I mean, they're okay, but they don't know what's goin' on. Dad works at the museum, and Mom's
a mom.
We live in a big old three-story white frame house in the part of town called the Goon Docks. It's not too far from the docks
themselves—Astoria is right along the coast, way up Oregon—and it's mostly what Dad calls a blue-collar neighborhood. Mechanics,
fishermen, construction workers when there's construction work around—that's who lives here. People like us. If there were
any tracks in town, we'd probably be on the wrong side, at least according to the people who belong to the Hillside Country
Club. They're the ones who call this the Goon Docks and us the Goons. That's okay with us, though, 'cause we like who we are.
That's why we call our gang the Goonies.
It's not a gang, really. More like a club. Dad calls it an assortment, but then I told you, he works for the museum.
First there's Mouth Devereux. He's the oldest, and he's definitely the clown of the group. He's always cracking jokes or pulling
pranks or just generally mouthin' off. I've like never seen him without a smirk. He used to get
D
s in conduct all the time. Just trying to get attention is what the school counselor said. Just trying to get the last laugh
is what I say. He can get laughs in different languages, actually. He's like a language expert or somethin'. A man of many
mouths. He can tell dirty jokes in French,
Spanish, German, and Portuguese, and I don't even know where Portugal
is
. He's also like a rhymin' fool. Like he can't help himself, sometimes, he just automatically talks in rhymes. And not only
that, you can give him any topic, like cows, for instance, and in about five seconds he can come up with a little rhyming
song about it. Like “The old brown cow, sure knows how, to pull that plow, without sayin' 'ow.” Only Mouth can do it a lot
better than me. And a lot funnier. If there's a joke floating around or a wisecrack begging to be made, Mouth is always the
one who can't resist. Anyway, his dad's a plumber, and that might have a lot to do with it, since it seems like that's a business
where it's better to have a good sense of humor.
Then there's Chunk Cohen. You can imagine why he's called Chunk. But the other thing about him is that he's maybe the biggest
storyteller in this hemisphere. I mean, we're talkin' major-league fabrications. Don't get me wrong, he's a really great guy—it's
just that there's times he can be truly bogus. I don't think he lies, exactly, 'cause he thinks he's tellin' the truth. But
somehow the story changes over in his mind from something that he wished happened, to something that might have happened,
to something that sort of happened, to something that actually happened. And then once he tells the story, it's like he heard
it somewhere, so it really must have happened. Then, once he's convinced himself it happened, he takes liberties polishing
the story. The other thing about Chunk is that his parents were rejected from joining the Hillside Country Club, Chunk says,
because they're Jewish, and the place is what he calls “restricted,” but I think it's just because they're assholes—the country
club, I mean, not his parents. His parents are real nice, even though they dress just as bad as Chunk does. But I wouldn't
join that
country club if you paid me, and I'm
glad
Chunk's folks didn't get to drag him over to where he'd have to learn how to play golf instead of how to jump the barrels
in Donkey Kong.
The last Goony's my next-door neighbor, Ricky Wang. We call him Data. The guy's a genius. He knows all there is about computers
and electronics and stuff like that, and he's always making things, too—cool stuff like rings that have flashlights in them
and belt buckles that shoot smoke bombs. Really cool stuff. Except a lot of it doesn't always work exactly right. He loves
007 movies, and that's where he dreams up some of his gadgets, but I think sometimes he must've gone for popcorn and missed
something important.
So that's the bunch of us. Not too rowdy, but then nothing much ever happened around here. Until last spring when we found
out the country club owned most of the land and all of the houses in our section of the Goon Docks—and they were going to
foreclose and tear it all down and build a lousy golf course right on the spot where we lived.
Well, there were public hearings and investigations and impact studies all through the spring and summer, and at one point
it looked like some big corporation in Portland actually owned half of it, but then it turned out that was just a holding
company, whatever that is, for the country club doodahs, so then it looked like all was lost, especially because those Hillside
snobs were known to have a lot of pull in Eugene, but then there was a last-minute court appeal, and the judge said we goonies
had the right of first refusal, so we could buy out all our own mortgages if we wanted to and if we had the money, so then
we
knew
all was lost, because if any of us had any money,
we wouldn't have been living down in the Goon Docks to begin with.