Ghost Boy (20 page)

“Down trunk!” shouted Harold. “Conrad, down!” He slid too soon from Conrad's back and fell four feet to the ground. A little girl standing there looked in amazement as he sprawled in the grass.

She was holding a pen and a piece of paper. “Can I get your autograph, mister?” she asked.

Harold struggled up. “I can't,” he said. “Not now.” And he went off at a run, straight for the sideshow tents.

         

T
HEY FORMED A STREET
, a narrow lane that stretched before him. A stream of people flowed along it, making eddies at a ring-toss booth, around the men who sold balloons and birds, at a cart where popcorn popped in a glass box that glowed yellow like butter.

He waded into the stream and let it sweep him off to the side. He was the Ghost again, flitting along.

On a platform draped in bunting, a man in a black-tailed coat shouted at him—at everyone—“Step right up and see the freaks of nature!” He held a cane, which he swung to his right and then to his left, toward enormous painted banners of Samuel and Tina. They made Samuel seem twice as monstrous as he really was, while Tina stood atop his palm, no bigger than his thumb. “You'll never see the likes of this again,” the caller shouted. “A living fossil from the jungles of deepest Africa. A full-grown princess smaller than a baby.”

From the tent, through the canvas, Harold heard a roar and a clang of metal, then a woman's startled shriek.

“We've got him caged!” The caller rapped his cane on the platform. “Bars of steel between you and the Missing Link.”

On another platform, another man in another black-tailed coat shouted about the Cannibal King. “He's fierce, he's frightening, he's right inside this tent.” And Harold stopped below the stage, in a backwater in the stream of people. Jostled by the crowd, he stared at the banner behind the caller, the same picture of the Cannibal King he had seen for the first time in Liberty. The shrunken head that dangled from a white fist was now the size of a dog. The Cannibal King's eyes glared straight at Harold and followed him down the midway as the crowd caught him again in its stream.

He flowed along with it, down to the foot of the midway, where the calliope shrieked and whistled. Then he turned to his left, into a small striped tent, under a banner that said, Fortunes Told, Secrets Revealed. He swept aside the flap and let it close behind him.

The Gypsy Magda sat at a little table, behind a crystal ball. The scarves she wore were red and gold; from her ears hung hoops of silver.

“It happened!” cried Harold. “I saw it. The beast that feeds with its tail.”

She looked up at him. “Sit,” she said, and waved him to a chair.

There was only one. It stood away from the table, turned aside, as though someone had suddenly pushed it back to go running from the tent. Harold pulled it closer. He dropped to the seat. “It happened,” he said again.

“And this surprises you?” The lamplight flashed around her hoops. “Didn't I tell you it was so?”

“Yes,” said Harold. He rhymed it off, what she had told him. “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.”

The Gypsy Magda smiled. “You know all that I know,” she said.

“But not what happens next.” He rubbed his hands together. “Won't you tell me that?”

“I can't,” she said.

“Look in the ball.”

“It won't be there.”

“Just look,” he said.

She reached out, her bracelets jangling, and cupped her hands around the ball. Her rings clinked against its surface. “You may not like it,” she said. “What I see.”

Harold leaned forward. He heard the whistle of the calliope, the shouting of the callers on the midway. And then he heard the little silvery tinkles of the Gypsy Magda's rings as she moved her hands along the crystal, and that was all he heard.

She swayed in her chair. Her golden scarves glistened in the lamplight.

“I see a boy,” she said. “He is angry, I think; he is like a storm inside himself. Others, they are scared of him. But he likes this fear, this boy.”

“Yes,” said Harold. “That's Roman; I know him.”

“Shhh! Don't speak.” The Gypsy Magda rubbed the crystal ball. Her hands fondled it the way Thunder Wakes Him coaxed his fires from little embers. She peered down at the glass. “This boy, he will bring about the harm, the monstrous harm. There is nothing now to stop him.”

“What will happen?” Harold asked. “The death you smelled, is that the harm?”

“Ach, it's gone.” The Gypsy Magda took her hands away. “I told you not to speak.”

“Look again,” said Harold.

She shook her head. “You cannot look twice.”

“Then guess!” he said, more sharply than he meant. “Tell me what you saw.”

She leaned back. The hoops in her ears turned in sparkling light. “I'll tell you what I
see,
” she said, staring at him. “I see one who's changing. A boy who's growing up. I see a boy who's stronger than he was, but one who will not learn from what he's done.”

“I don't understand,” said Harold.

“The soldiers,” she said. “They were boys like you. They came from farms and villages—from cities, some. It does not matter; they were only boys, not good or bad. What was it, do you think, that made those white, blond boys the way they were?”

“I don't know,” said Harold.

The Gypsy Magda pointed at him with a gaunt finger. “I told you once never to think that you are less than other people. I should have told you too never to think that you are better.”

Chapter

40

T
he crowd was thinning when Harold left the tent. He pushed his way easily against the stream, to the enormous billboards of the Cannibal King. And he stood there, staring up. He had to meet him now. Now or never meet him. He wanted to throw himself at the feet of the King and say, “I'm Harold the Ghost. I'm scared and I don't know what to do.”

There was no one waiting at the door. He could go straight inside if he wanted.

But suddenly he found himself thinking of the grassy schoolyard with its rusted swings, and the time he'd played Five Hundred with Samuel and Tina and the Gypsy Magda. It was more than thinking; he was
there
. He smelled the grass again and felt the hot sun that had fallen on him. But he didn't know why, until he realized the calliope was playing the same music that had carried to him so faintly that day, the tune that Samuel had called the breaking-down song. Then he heard the roar of truck engines and saw that one end of the big top was already sagging, the canvas coming down.

Flip would be furious that he wasn't there. Mr. Hunter would be angry too. “I told you to stay with the pachyderms,” he would say. If Harold wasn't there, Flip would do his job; Flip would work with Roman.

He didn't know what to do. The doorway gaped at him, wide open and empty. The big top towered up at the end of the sideshow. He took a step in one direction, a step the other way. And those eyes of the Cannibal King watched his every move. But in the end, he couldn't go past the door; it sucked him in like a whirlpool.

A roustabout stood on a ladder, taking down the panels of a metal grate. Behind it was a huge stage built of many steps, a velvet carpet climbing to the very top, to an enormous throne of wood and crimson leather. All around that majestic chair stood coconut trees that bent toward each other, their fronds meeting, making a giant parasol.

Harold moved closer. He was looking at the scene from Tina's postcard, at the very same thing she had shown him as they drove west chasing the Cannibal King. He remembered that she'd laughed.
They're just such funny trees.

He bumped against a wooden bench. The roustabout heard him but didn't look down. “Show's over,” he said. “Get outta here.”

“Where's the Cannibal King?” asked Harold.

“You missed him.”

“Already?” But it only made sense. The Cannibal King would always be the first to leave, he thought. He'd be driving west right then, marking a trail for the circus to follow.

The roustabout pulled off a panel. He dropped it behind the grate, and it clanged against the stage. The coconut trees swayed as though in a hurricane. Then one of them fell against another and—like dominos—they tumbled from the stage.

Harold couldn't believe it—they barely made a sound. They sort of scratched against each other, then landed with just the faintest bumps. They were only paper trees.

“Hey,” said the roustabout. “I told you to go.”

Harold stumbled out. And Harold started running. His elbows pumping, his boots flailing, he ran to the elephants' tent.

He groaned to see Conrad. The huge elephant was rolling in the puddle, his collars and feathers and blanket all coated with mud. Max and Canary Bird were splattered with round clots. Their feathers drooped like bedraggled crows.

“Oh, gosh,” said Harold. “Look at you. Just look what you've done to your clothes.”

He laughed to hear himself; it might have been his mother's voice. “I sound just like my ma,” he said. “But I better wash you down, I guess.”

He pulled the hose out of the mud. He found the bucket but not the brush. “Where's the brush?” he asked.

And Roman Pinski came out from the darkness. “Looking for this, Maggot?” he asked. The brush was in his hand.

Harold stopped. He held the hose, and it dribbled water on his boots. Behind him, Conrad growled as he thrashed on his side, kicking at the mud.

“Whitey thinks he's really something,” said Roman, as though to the elephants. “But Whitey's just a piece of dirt.”

“Leave me alone,” said Harold.

“Leave me alone,” whined Roman. “Yeah, he's right. He sounds just like his ma.”

Harold squinted. Flip was there, behind Roman. She stepped out of the same shadows, tugging at her little spangled suit. The fear he'd felt changed into something worse. He wondered what they were doing just before he got there.

Roman put the brush on his shoulder. “Whitey's getting too big for his britches.”

“Quit it,” said Flip. “Just quit it, okay?”

“Whitey's got to learn a lesson.”

Harold dropped the hose and started backward. “Don't let him push you around,” Mr. Hunter had said. But Mr. Hunter wasn't here.

“Where's your ma now? Where's your ma, you little freak?”

Harold stumbled back. Roman came after him.

“Whitey, don't you want your brush?” He held it out.

Harold tried to pluck it away. He ran at it, but his hand touched nothing but air. He staggered and straightened, turning again to face Roman.

“Close,” said Roman. “You had me scared. Ooh, you had me shaking there.”

“Oh, stop it!” said Flip.

Conrad rolled onto his chest. His legs were still bent below him, and his body heaved as he struggled in the mud. He roared, and Roman looked back.

“He's stuck.” Roman laughed. “Too bad. Eh, Whitey? Isn't that too bad?”

The brush rose in Roman's hands. It stood above his shoulder, then came swinging down. Harold covered his head.

But the blow never came. Conrad's trunk shot out and looped around Roman's ankles. It pulled him back, dragging him down. Roman dropped like a falling tree.

“No!” screamed Flip.

But Conrad hauled the boy into the mud. Roman writhed in the elephant's grasp, twisting like a snake until his back was on the ground. His hands left long ruts in the ground. The trunk curled inward, and Roman's legs, and then his hips, and then his shoulders slithered through the mud.

“Help!” he shouted.

“Up trunk!” cried Flip. She ran forward and grabbed Roman's hands. She pulled as hard as she could but only skidded forward. Feet as thick as stumps pounded down by Roman's shoulders. “Up trunk! Harold, stop him.”

Harold was too surprised to move. He saw the trunk come loose, then rise in a long curve.

Conrad trumpeted with that awful, blood-chilling howl. He rose from the ground, towering in a shimmering coat of mud. Then he tipped forward and pressed his great, broad forehead onto Roman's chest. Mud squirted around the boy's shoulders, around his ribs and hips. Flip was still screaming. “Up trunk! Conrad, up trunk.”

She threw herself at the elephant. She battered her fists at Conrad's head. Underneath it, mud welled around Roman's ears; the boy was being pushed right into the ground. And beside him, Flip hammered her fists on the elephant's cheek.

It had all happened in seconds, in the time it had taken Harold to cover his head, to close and open his eyes. And it seemed that those seconds lasted for minutes, and the minutes forever. It occurred to Harold in that strange, extended time that he could leave the elephant to its fierce revenge. He saw, vanishing into the mud, every boy who had ever taunted him, every bully and giggling girl who had made his life a misery.

“Help!” said Roman. His arms clawed up from the mud, his hands pushing at the trunk. “He's going to kill me!”

Harold ran forward. He slipped and fell and ran again. He grabbed big flaps of the elephant's ear, and he shouted, “Stop it, Conrad! Let him up. Let him go!” The elephant's forelegs were bent, all his weight on his knees and his head; he would crush the boy in the mud.

“Please,” said Harold, “Oh, please let him up.”

He pushed, straining with his arms: ninety pounds of skinny boy and seven tons of elephant. “Conrad, up,” he said. “Up trunk!”

And slowly Conrad stood up. His legs straightened; his head lifted from the ground. He snorted, and he nuzzled Harold with his stump of a tusk.

Roman squirmed through the mud. Flip grabbed on to his shirt and pulled him all the faster. He didn't stop until he was twenty feet away. And then it was Harold he shouted at.

“You stinking freak!” he screamed. “You lousy, stinking freak!”

Conrad's trunk was dripping mud. He raised it high and trumpeted.

“Get him away from me!” screamed Roman.

Flip scraped gobs of mud from his hair and his cheeks. Then she helped him to his feet and led him away from the river.

“You see what you've done?” she said, glaring at Harold. “Are you happy now?”

Harold didn't answer.

“Stay here,” she told him. “You just stay right here and wait for me.”