The Giant Smugglers (22 page)

Furnishings were sparse. A lone leather chair and empty coffee table stood across from a wall adorned with framed pictures. Charlie tiptoed around the sleeping giant and took in the shots: a forest of incredibly tall trees blanketed in snow; a dented coffeepot atop a campfire; several shots of Powder running through the wintry wild. The display was a reminder that had there been a different turn of events, it would have been Hank riding in the car. Charlie turned away.

Positioned near a far window, several potted plants rested atop a large box with a slatted wood-panel surface. Next to the box, Charlie opened the door on a small enclosure to find a tiny bathroom. Perfect—he was worried that he'd have to leave the car to find a place to relieve himself.

“Me too.”

Charlie wheeled around. The ceiling was just high enough for Bruce, and there he stood. Of course he hadn't made a sound. “You got to go?”

“Yep.”

“Number one or number two?”

Bruce held up three fingers.

“There is no number three, man.”

Bruce crossed one leg in front of the other, a distressed look on his face. He was serious about having to go. “Bad.”

Charlie looked around—there wasn't a giant enclosure for … wait. He looked more closely at the box. The slats on the surface were spaced close together, but Charlie could see through them—the boards concealed a monstrous toilet! “Looks like Hank thought of everything,” he said, holding up a “just a second” finger. He began pulling the potted plants from the giant toilet lid, looking for a place to put them so Bruce could flip up the top.

“Now!”

“I'm going as fast as I can,” Charlie protested.

But it wasn't fast enough for the giant. He pushed the button at the back of the car, and the hinged panel folded down to expose the outside world. In contrast to the colorless clouds overhead, autumnal America streaked by in vibrant golds and greens. They were long gone from Illinois, rolling along a horizon that stretched into forever. This was what the middle of nowhere looked like, and it was beautiful. Bruce stepped out onto the platform, hiked up his tunic, and relieved himself off the back of the train.

Bruce had it right. To heck with toilets. If it was good enough for the giant, it was good enough for Charlie, who joined his friend on the back of the train. The two christened the tracks, expressing their newfound freedom to the fullest. When they'd finished their business, they shouted out to the plains—no actual words, just whoops that traveled into nowhere with no chance of being heard over the roar of the train.

Finally, they returned to the car, and Charlie raised the wall. As it shut tight, a clicking sound at the front of the car startled them. Had somebody heard them? Charlie looked around frantically for a place for Bruce to hide, but the car offered no such cover.

Then the door at the front opened. A white cane with a red tip poked through. Bruce balled his fists, ready to take on a dangerous intruder, but Charlie held up his hand. He'd seen that type of cane before. It was the kind blind people used.

A large man dressed all in black followed the staff into the car and shut the door behind him. He wore dark sunglasses and a long tangle of white billy-goat whiskers hung from his chin. His cane explored the floor with a wooden
tap-tap-tap
. Charlie had been right—the man couldn't see a thing. As long as Bruce kept his mouth shut, he wasn't in immediate danger of being discovered.

The man stopped tapping and held very still. “Who's there?” he croaked in a raspy voice that sounded like Charlie's Uncle Harvey, a man who smoked too many cigarettes.

Charlie tried not to breathe.

“Come on, I know you're there.” The man rapped the floor with his stick.

“Who are you?” The words rocketed from Charlie's mouth. “What are you doing in my car?”

“Name's Parran. I'm aiming to take a rest,” he said, revealing a wide smile full of tobacco-stained teeth. He poked his cane in Charlie's general direction. “This is the sleeper car, ain't it?”

Charlie winced. He hadn't checked the front entrance to ensure it was locked. They were lucky that it had been a blind man who had wandered in. “No, this is a private car,” the boy said, trying to make his voice sound deep and grown-up. Bruce gave him a funny look.

“That so?” Parran reached into his front pocket and pulled out a toothpick. He rolled it between yellowed fingertips before stashing it in his cheek. “The door was open.”

“You're going to have to leave,” warned Charlie, clearing his throat. The deep voice wasn't working so well. “Sorry.”

Parran paused as if he was going to argue with Charlie, or perhaps call a porter to sort it out. But instead, he turned and shuffled back the way he came. “Sorry to trouble you, good sir. I'll show myself out.” He tapped his way through the door, and Charlie locked it tight behind him.

“Trouble?” Bruce asked.

“I don't think so.” Still, it was a close call. Charlie plopped down in the easy chair by the coffee table and pulled out the smugglers' map, trying to figure out how much longer they'd need to hide on the train. He remembered Wertzie's time estimates from the night before. “My guess is we're somewhere in Tennessee, not far from Louisiana. Almost there, big guy.”

Bruce didn't respond. He was staring at the pictures on the wall, inching closer for a better look. He reached out, touched an imperceptible seam, and pulled to the side. The wall parted, revealing a hidden compartment. A light snapped on inside. Bruce leaned in, and Charlie got out of the chair. Hanging inside the partition was a second series of framed, faded pictures, ones that were not meant to be seen by just anyone.

“Whoa,” said Charlie. He gawked at a picture of an unfamiliar giant, bearded and noble, staring up at a towering tree twice his size. The shot captured an eagle leaving its nest, soaring high above the giant. “Where is this?”

“Home,” Bruce said.

Other shots included a giant wrapped in some kind of animal skin throwing a spear the size of a small tree, a catch of silvery fish large enough to fill a dump truck, and a close-up shot of a giant woman's face, smiling and peaceful. A mountain stood in the distance behind her.

Bruce pointed to the snowy mountainside and let his fingertip linger on the glass. “House.”

“You lived on that mountain?”

“Caves,” Bruce responded. He pulled the picture from the wall and carefully pointed out several openings in the mountain, joining them with his finger.

“A bunch of them, all connected together?”

“Yep.”

“Jeez, dude, weren't you freezing?”

Bruce smiled and shook his head.

Charlie imagined the world's most amazing collection of underground forts, all connected by enormous tunnels. “I'd love to see your caves sometime.”

Bruce's brow furrowed. “Gone.”

“What? How could they just be … gone?”

“Hank,” the giant explained. “Boom.”

The old man had talked about blowing up the dam back in Richland Center, so he knew his way around dynamite. And the smugglers were pretty serious about keeping the giants a secret. Charlie guessed that meant making sure nobody could visit their former address. That didn't mean Bruce had to like it. Charlie hated moving all the time. No place ever felt like home. “Sorry, man. You excited about going to your new place?”

Bruce thought about that one. His lips tightened, and finally he shrugged. “Big world.”

Charlie thought about Bruce's future, secluded and safe with the other giants in a new home but cut off from everything the world had to offer. He had never known about hamburgers or trains or carnival rides before, but he sure seemed to like them. And there was so much more that he had yet to see. “What would you do if you didn't join up with the other giants? Just … hang out? Watch movies?”

Bruce's face brightened. “Sure,” came the matter-of-fact reply.

Charlie chuckled. “It's not that easy, man. You can't just hang all the time. People in my world have to do something, like work or go to school before they get to watch movies…”

Movies. Of course! It was a crazy idea, but why not? With Bruce, movies wouldn't need special effects. He
was
a special effect! A giant who could do martial arts moves? Charlie couldn't think of anyone who wouldn't pay money to see that. They were on to something.

“What?”

“It probably wouldn't work.” One of the giant smugglers had to have thought of this idea before and dismissed it for some good reason he hadn't thought of yet. But why couldn't Bruce be a movie star? Charlie began to reconsider. The giant was a couple of years older than Charlie, close to the age when Tim started making his own decisions and ran off on his own. “But maybe you could be in the movies!”

Bruce's mouth curled up at the corners. “Me?”

“It wouldn't be a sure thing,” Charlie said, realizing he really had no idea how someone got into the movie business. “We'd have to go to California, probably, and we'd need some money to get started.”

“Gold,” offered Bruce. He broke into his fist-pumping dance move, excited that his friend was even considering the idea.

Charlie had forgotten all about the gold. A stick or two could probably buy a mansion, and Bruce was entitled to his fair share. “What about your parents? Won't they be worried?”

“Visit,” Bruce offered as a compromise.

The boy's head spun. His own mom would put up a fuss, that was for sure, but with that kind of money, maybe he just could talk her into moving out west. She could leave both her crummy jobs and finally get the big house she deserved.

“Movies!” the giant insisted. Now that Charlie had planted the idea, Bruce wasn't going to let it go easily.

“Movies?” Charlie said again, testing the idea out loud to see if it sounded as crazy as he feared.

“Movies!”

“Okay,” the boy said, becoming convinced himself. The giant's enthusiasm was contagious. “Okay! Let's do it, man. Let's get your share of the gold and go to California!”

 

31

The afternoon hours flew by as the train sped to their Louisiana destination. Charlie and Bruce spent the rest of the ride planning the giant's movie career. And what better place to start than their current adventure? It was a natural. Who wouldn't want to see a movie about a bunch of giant smugglers when the main part was played by an actual giant? The story wrote itself: Bruce coming to town, Charlie finding him in the warehouse, sneaking out to the drive-in, fighting Giant Fitz in the quarry. Bruce wanted that part changed a little bit—less Giant Fitz hitting him and more him hitting Giant Fitz. Charlie had an idea about spinning Bruce off into a video game:
Total Turbo: Giant Trouble
. Even if Bruce's career as an actor didn't take off, his future as a celebrity was all but assured.

Finally the train pulled to a stop. Charlie wanted to take a victory lap—it wouldn't be long now until they collected Bruce's gold and set off on another adventure, leaving his boring old life behind forever. But when he parted the curtains and looked out the tinted windows, the feeling of triumph deflated to confusion.

He'd expected to see the Gulf of Mexico or at least a sleepy town deserving of the name “Grand Isle, Louisiana.” Their destination was just a speck on Wertzie's map, even smaller than Richland Center. But outside, even though it was nighttime, the train yard was bustling with activity. Towering above the dozens of tracks full of freight and passenger cars, Charlie saw brightly lit buildings reaching into the sky. This couldn't be the end of the line.

The giant was antsy. “Out?”

“Not yet.”

Charlie made a peephole in the space between the thick red curtains, trying to get a sense of what was going on. A tram rumbled past, the back end full of passenger luggage. Stenciled on the vehicle's side were the words
New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal
.

New Orleans?

Charlie fumbled the map open again. New Orleans was close to Grand Isle—close in the sense that both cities were in the state of Louisiana—but they had to be a hundred miles from their final destination. Wertzie never mentioned anything about the train not going all the way! How were they supposed to cover a hundred miles? That was one heck of a walk, even for Bruce.

In the space between the curtains, Charlie saw motion near the front of the double-decker car. Someone was snooping around. He closed the drapes just as the lock in the forward door clicked and turned.

Tim quickly slipped inside and shut the door, locking it behind him. Bruce stuck out a fist for Charlie's brother to bump, but Tim's usual crooked grin was nowhere to be found. “What were you guys thinking, running off like that?”

Charlie was in no mood for lectures, especially after Tim had betrayed him back in Peoria. “What did you think we'd do? Wertzie told us everything! You were going to send me home!”

Tim shook his head. “Wertzie told you … Wait, what did Wertzie tell you?”

“That DJ was coming. Don't act like you didn't tell him to.” It felt good to call out his brother on his bullcrap for once. It was about time someone did.

“I can't believe he told you that.”

“Wertzie,” agreed Bruce, endorsing the smuggler who'd confided in them.

“Forget Wertzie,” Tim said, opening a streaming-video app on his phone. “Let's talk about this.”

“Movie!”

“Yep, it's a movie,” said Tim. “Starring you two dopes. Somebody named Adele found my e-mail and sent me the link. She's worried sick about you, Charlie.”

Bruce made kissing noises, and Charlie slugged the giant in the shin as hard as he could. “The link for what?” he asked. He wasn't surprised that Adele had tracked them down online; it was her specialty.