Rap! went the Marley knocker.
Slam! went the door.
And the boys were gone running, running down through the ravine and up along the street gasping hot gusts of ai
r, their masks falling to be trampled until at last they stopped on Pipkin's sidewalk and looked at the far hospital and back at Pipkin's front door.
"You go, Tom, you," said Ralph.
And Tom slowly edged up to the house and put his foot on the front step and then the second step up and approached the door, afraid to knock, afraid to find the final answer about dear old Pipkin. Pipkin dead? Pipkin in a last funeral? Pipkin, Pipkin gone forever? No!
He tapped at the door.
The boys waited on the sidewalk.
The door opened. Tom went in. There was a long moment of the boys on the sidewalk standing cold and letting the wind freeze their most awful thoughts.
Well? they yelled silently in at the house, the shut door, the dark windows, well? well? What?
And then at last the door opened again, and Tom came out and stood on the porch not knowing where he was.
Then Tom looked up and saw his friends waiting for him a million miles off.
Tom leaped off the porch, yelling.
"Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh, Gosh!"
He ran along the sidewalk, shrieking: "He's okay, he's all right, he's okay! Pipkin's in the hospital! took his appendix out at nine tonight! got it just in time! doctor says he's great!"
"Pipkin--?"
"Hospital--?"
"Great--?"
The air jumped out as if each had been punched in the stomach. Then the air went in and out again in a great rave, a yell, a ragged shout of triumph.
"Pipkin, oh, Pipkin, Pip!"
And the boys stood on Pipkin's lawn and the sidewalk in front of Pipkin's porch and house and looked with numb curiosity at each other as their smiles spread and their eyes watered and they yelled and the happy tears ran down their cheeks.
"Oh, boy, boy oh boy, oh boy oh boy," said Tom, exhausted, and weeping with happiness.
"You can say that again," said someone, and they all said it again.
And they all stood there and had a fine happy cry.
And since the whole night was turning soupy with tears, Tom looked around and revved them up. "Look at Pipkin's house. Don't it look awful? Tell you what we do--!"
And they ran and each came back carrying a lit pumpkin and lined them up on Pipkin's porch rail where they smiled outrageous smiles to wait for Pipkin to come home.
And they stood on the lawn and looked at the lovely sight of all those smiles, their costumes tattered upon their arms and shoulders and legs, and the greasepaint dripped and running on their faces, and a great wondrous happy tiredness gathering in their eyelids and arms and feet, but not wanting to go yet.
And the town clock struck midnight--GUNNNG!
And gunnng again, to a full count of twelve.
And Halloween was over.