Ghost Boy (12 page)

Chapter

25

P
rincess Minikin wouldn't come very close to the elephants. She shouted at Harold from the corner of the tent, waving her arms to get his attention.

“Supper's starting,” she said. “Didn't you hear the bell?”

Harold shook his head.

“You have to come and eat,” said Tina.

“Now?” Under the elephant's shoulder she looked like a small, frightened mouse. “I think they're starting to—”

“It's not a restaurant,” she said. “Come on.”

He dropped the rings over the stakes, and the elephants straightened their chains. They followed him as far as they could, until the stakes wavered in the ground. Standing at the edge of their worn-away circle, they made sounds he hadn't heard before, that reminded him of Honey and how she had cried when he left.

“I'm coming back,” he told them, and remembered with a shock that he'd said the same thing to Honey. “Don't worry,” he said. “You bet I will.” Then he put the bat over his shoulder, slipped the glove on the handle and hurried after Tina.

They went together to the cook tent, where a metal triangle hung at the entrance.

“That's the dinner bell,” said Tina. “When you hear it, you've got to come.”

She took him past it, through the flap to rows of white tables and benches. There was room for fifty people, but in the middle, all alone, sat only Samuel and the Gypsy Magda. They were eating from trays, Samuel's hairy arms sprawled across the table.

Tina led him to the counter, and they each took a tray from a stack at the end. A cook in a greasy apron, strands of cabbage in his teeth, ladled sauerkraut into battered metal bowls.

“Say, that looks delicious,Wicks,” said Tina, though the smell was just awful. “You'd better give lots to my friend here.”

Wicks didn't talk; he served the food in a glum silence, never looking farther than his bowls and plates.

Samuel made a place for Harold, pulling his elbows in. “Hello, stranger,” he said, and smiled a gruesome smile. “You got a job, did you, Harold?”

“Yes,” he said. “It's great. I'm working with the elephants.”

“Good for you.” Samuel clapped him on the shoulder. “We knew you would. You're one of us; didn't we tell you that?” And then he got clumsily to his feet, stepping backward over the bench. “Excuse me,” he said. “But I have to squeeze this geezer.”

He was delighted, as pleased for Harold as Harold was himself. He wrapped his big arms around the boy's chest and rocked him on the bench.

Harold felt the furry jowls scrape against his cheek and looked across at the Gypsy Magda, who sat stone-faced, watching, a fire burning in her eyes. “Aren't you happy for me?” he asked.

“You get a job, that's good it makes you happy,” said the Gypsy Magda. “But do you remember what I told you?”

He nodded.

“Say it,” she said.

He remembered the words exactly, even the sound of her voice on the prairie. “‘Beware the ones with unnatural charm. And the beast that feeds with its tail. A wild man's meek and a dark one's pale. And there comes a monstrous harm.'”

“Good,” said the Gypsy Magda. “Now eat. We keep the others waiting.”

“Where are they?” Harold asked.

“They wait, I said!” she snapped. Then her face softened, and her hand jingled as it reached across the table. “I'm sorry; the rules, they are strange to you.”

Harold looked around the empty tent, at the cook with his back toward them. “What are they waiting for?”

Tina smiled at him over the edge of the table. Only her face could be seen. “They eat later,” she said. “It's the same at every circus. The freaks eat first.”

She said it so simply, as such a matter of fact, that Harold laughed with surprise.

“You think it is funny?” asked the Gypsy Magda.

“No,” he said. “I just don't see why.”

“Tradition,” said Samuel, climbing back in his place. “It's the way it's always been, and circuses don't change.”

The Gypsy Magda snorted. She pushed her plates away. “Power,” she said. “That is the reason. It is the same as you feeding your dog, but in the circus, the dogs—they eat first.”

“My dog eats when I do,” said Harold.

“I bet she does,” said Tina. “That's a lucky dog.”

Harold ate quickly, eager to get back to the elephants. He shoveled the sauerkraut into his mouth and barely bothered to chew it. Then he heard the scrape of benches and looked up to see a lady settling in at the next table.

He saw her from the back, nylon stockings rising to a yellow skirt belted tight at her waist. She held a tray in her left hand, and in her right a baby. Just the crown of its head poked above her shoulder; its hand clung to her blouse. She put down the tray, and her hand went up to take the baby.

“Hi, Esther,” said Tina.

The lady turned her head, and Harold felt his eyebrows jump. Esther had a beard, a great black beard that covered her cheeks nearly to her eyes. “How's it going?” she asked in a man's deep voice. Then she sat, and the baby crawled down to the table.

And Harold's fork fell from his hand.

It wasn't a baby at all. It was a man, with wrinkles on his face, with red and wiry hair. He had no legs and no arms; miniature hands grew straight from his shoulders, tiny feet—like flippers—directly from his hips. He lay on his stomach, pushing forward on his fingers and toes, crawling over the table to the tray full of food.

“Hi, Wallo,” said Tina. She leaned sideways. “You look happy today.”

“Sauerkraut.” Wallo tipped up his head. It was wider than his shoulders, and nearly half of all he was. “I love sauerkraut,” he said.

Harold shuddered. He remembered how Flip had said she'd marry Wallo the Sausage Man if she had to. He tried to imagine that, Flip in her wedding dress, Wallo beside her … But he couldn't.

Wallo ate straight from the tray, slurping up the shreds of cabbage. He said between mouthfuls, “Is that the elephant boy you've got with you?”

Tina nodded. “This is Harold.”

“Welcome to Hunter and Green's,” said Wallo. He burped. “Excuse me.”

“Harold's come to meet the Cannibal King,” said Tina.

“Good luck,” said Wallo. “The King's miles from here, scouting a path toward the mountains.”

Samuel picked up Harold's fork and put it back in the boy's hand. “Eat,” he said softly. “You'll make him uncomfortable if you stare.”

Harold looked down at his dinner, at the strands of pale yellow on his plate. The fork felt as heavy as a shovel, but he forced himself to eat. He saw Wallo just in the corner of his eye, a bizarre shape like a turtle without its shell. He said, as though to his cabbage, “Is he coming back?”

“Naw, not the King.” Wallo slurped and grunted. “Right now he'll be sleeping. At the side of the road, in a field or a forest. When the sun goes down, so does the King. Then he rises with the moon and travels on, and he never goes back, only ahead. At night he's a wild man.”

Harold smiled to himself. It was just as he'd pictured the Cannibal King, dancing in moonlit jungles with his strange tribe of Stone People. He even heard the drums, or thought he did, and saw Wicks beating on the counter with the handle of his spatula.

“Come on,” said Wicks. “Come on. There's people waiting now.”

Wallo looked up. “We'd better hurry,” he said.

The moment they were done, Wicks chased them from the tent. “You can't sit around all day,” he shouted at Harold. “It ain't a restaurant.”

Harold got up. “Samuel?” he asked. “Does the Cannibal King ever eat here?”

“Take your talk outside,” shouted Wicks.

Tina levered up on her arms, her shoulders rising to the table. “It's okay,” she said. “We can tell you about him later, Harold. Say, you're coming to the trailer, aren't you?”

“Sure,” said Harold. He watched Esther take Wallo in her arms and carry him toward the door. He put his bat over his shoulder and followed Samuel down the rows of tables, past the counter where Wicks picked at his teeth with the spatula blade.

“About time,” said the cook. “Show some consideration, for crying out loud.”

Harold didn't answer. He followed Samuel through the door, past a line of people who stood along the canvas or leaned against the guy ropes. He squinted at faces that were blurred and indistinct, and spotted Flip in a group of four, her yellow hair shining. But she turned away as though she hadn't seen him, and suddenly he felt ashamed to be coming from the tent with Samuel and the others. He ran a hand through his black hair and heard the voices asking, “Who's that kid?” and, “What's he doing here?”

He tightened his fingers around the bat. Someone laughed and said, “It's the Babe.” And another voice said, “Look at his hair! Maybe it's Jackie Robinson.”

Harold blushed. As dark as his hair was, no one could mistake him for Jackie, the Dodgers' Negro infielder. He shrank inside himself, bewildered by the teasing. Didn't he look the same as everyone else?

Tina hurried to his side. “Come on,” she said. “We're all going back to the trailer.”

Harold tried to look away, but she circled around before him, her little legs, her little shoes, flashing through the grass. “Don't you want to come?”

“Later,” he said. “Okay?” He veered off and broke into a run, heading for the elephants.

Chapter

26

“S
wing!” shouted Harold. “Now you've got it!”

The elephant was catching on. Conrad nearly always swung the bat, though often wildly, and rarely hit the ball. He swung it like a golf club as the ball passed overhead, like a tennis racket as it skittered on the ground. And sometimes he just let go and sent the bat spinning in the most frightening directions. Then it bounced past Harold's feet, and Canary Bird picked it up and held it in his trunk.

“You want to try?” asked Harold. “You want to have a turn?”

He tossed the ball. “Swing!” he shouted. And Canary Bird hit a long and sizzling drive that ricocheted off Conrad's head with a wooden-sounding thunk.

Conrad looked so shocked, so startled, that Harold had to laugh. Then the big brown eyes blinked, and the trunk hung down like a wilted mustache. Harold ran to touch him. “I'm sorry,” he said, stroking the trunk. “I shouldn't have laughed. You're trying your best, and I shouldn't have done that.”

He gave the bat to Conrad, and Canary Bird pouted like a child; he kicked at the ground and whimpered. “Oh, gosh,” said Harold. He couldn't keep all of them happy. “You want to be the catcher? Huh? You want to try that out?”

He maneuvered the elephants into position, amazed by their grace, amused by their strange, rolling gait and the skin that drooped like sagging diapers from their haunches. He pitched and fetched, tossed the ball and ran to get it; Canary Bird was a better backstop than a catcher. But the elephants were learning, and he kept at the game with the patience he had used to teach Honey all her tricks.

It started to rain, but he kept on practicing. He never got angry when the elephants missed, when they stood accidentally on the ball and buried it deep in the mud. Sprinkles turned to showers, to short and heavy bursts.

Canary Bird was hitting one ball out of every ten, almost, when Flip came by. She stood in the shelter of the tent, and watched with her hands in her pockets.

“He's not Pee Wee Reese,” she said.

“He's batting nearly a hundred,” said Harold.

She laughed. “Gee, Harold, what if it works? You know something? People would come for hundreds of miles to watch elephants playing baseball.”

He took the ball in his glove and walked across to Flip. “I was thinking,” he said. “They should wear little caps. Little socks, maybe. A clown can be the bat boy, and you can wear an umpire's shirt. Maybe the band could play ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.'”

She was staring at him.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

“Your hair.” She touched her face. “It's leaking.”

He didn't understand.

She touched Harold's face, stroking down his cheek, and her fingertips came away black.

Harold gawked at them. He rubbed his cheeks, his forehead, smearing black across his face. He squeezed a hand through his hair and saw the water dribble black as mud down across his shirt.

“The dye!” he said. “The dye!”

“The what?” asked Flip. She giggled. “Harold, your hair's going white.”

Harold panicked. He clamped a hand across his head; he covered it with the baseball glove. Flip laughed, and Harold turned to dash away. He ran into the tent rope and stumbled back, and Flip doubled up with laughter.

He ducked his head and dashed away again, under the rope, around the tent, across the field to the trailer.

He burst through the door, into the sitting room, and Tina looked up from the armchair; Samuel too. They laughed to see him, and he whirled down the corridor with the trailer rocking on its wheels, ripped open the door to the bathroom and locked himself inside. For only a moment he saw his face in the small mirror, and he was shocked by the streaks of black that dribbled down his cheeks. Then he tore his glasses off and twisted the faucets as far as he could. He shoved his head down in the sink, into the stream of water, and it poured and splashed around him, swirling down the drain in a black and inky stream.

He cried for himself, for his shame. He could never be anything better, he thought, and he was stupid to have tried.

Someone knocked at the door. Harold didn't answer.

The knocks came again, not loud but gentle.

“Go away,” said Harold. “Leave me alone. Please leave me alone.”

The door swung open. “That lock doesn't work anyway,” said Tina. “It hasn't ever worked.”

She came in and closed the door; she climbed up onto the frilly cover of the toilet seat and leaned across to take Harold's glasses from the corner of the sink. She folded them neatly and balanced them on the cushion of a toilet-paper roll.

“I should have known,” she said. “I should have guessed this would happen.”

Harold sniffled in the stream of water. He kept hearing Flip's laughter, and imagined the joy she must have taken in his black-streaked face.

“I'm sorry I laughed.” Tina picked up a bar of soap that was twice the size of her hands and worked a froth into Harold's hair. “I shouldn't have laughed. But you looked so funny. All that black dripping off you. You looked so darned surprised.”

The bar of soap squirted from her fingers. She was laughing again, tears in her eyes. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But you'd be laughing yourself if it was someone else you saw.”

Harold shook his head. He would never laugh at anyone.

“Say,” she said. “You're not angry with me, are you?”

“She knows,” said Harold.

“What do you mean?” asked Tina, busy with the soap again. “Who?”

“Flip,” he said. It was like being back in Liberty, but even worse. She would tease him now not only for what he always had been, but for what he'd tried to be as well. “She knows all about me.”

“Well, of
course
she knows.” Tina turned off the faucets and squeezed the water from Harold's hair. “She knew right away, Harold. You don't see a lady walking down the street in a rabbit-skin coat and say, ‘Oh, look! There goes a rabbit,' do you?”

“Then she
pretended
she didn't,” said Harold.

“That's Flip. She was just having a bit of fun and sort of leading you on.” Tina patted his neck. “Head up.”

Harold lifted his head from the sink. He took the towel Tina held toward him. “She'll hate me now,” he said.

“Oh, gracious sakes, she won't. Not Flip.”

He covered his head, rubbing with the towel. It muffled the sound of Tina talking, and the tremendous crash that followed—that shook the trailer—seemed all the louder for it.

“What on earth!” said Tina.

Harold tore off the towel.

“Something hit us,” she said.

They ran down the hall and out through the door. Samuel was already there, standing on the grass under the small bathroom window. He scratched his head as he stared up at a dent in the metal, a crater perfectly round. But no one else was near; the circus lot was empty.

“It must have been one of those disks,” said Samuel. He turned around, looking up at the sky. “Everyone's seeing them now, those flying disks.”

“Oh, they've got to be bigger than that,” said Tina.

“They're from outer space,” he said knowingly.

She stooped, tipping her head to see under the trailer. “You lug, it's just a baseball.”

A figure came running over the lot, shooting out from the tents, skidding on the wet grass. Only a blur for Harold, it stopped, then started again, sprinting straight toward them.

“It's Flip,” said Tina.

Harold gasped. He fumbled through his clothes, feeling at his pockets. “My glasses,” he said.

“You don't need them,” she said. “You don't see any better with them.”

“But I
look
a lot better.”

She stopped his hand as it groped frantically across his hip. “Oh, Harold,” she said. “Don't you ever learn?”

Flip came running, jumping, toward the trailer. “He did it!” she cried. “Harold, he did it!”

He turned to face her; there was nothing else to do. He faced her white from head to toe, his hair rubbed into standing tufts, his eyes like drops of water. He felt like a criminal turning to face a judge.

“It was Max Graf!” she shouted, fifty yards away. “I gave Max a turn, and he hit it clear across the lot.”

She ran straight to Harold and bowled into him. She spun him around and carried him along, and they slammed their shoulders on the trailer. “They can do it,” she said. “You were right, Harold. It's going to be the greatest show that ever was.”

Then she leaned back, her hands on his arms. She looked at his hair, his eyes, his face as white as flour. “Well, that looks better,” she said, and hugged him tightly. “That looks a
whole
lot better now.”