Ghost Boy (6 page)

Chapter

11

T
hey sat at the trailer's small table, in rickety chairs that squeaked and chattered on the floor, a tall one for Tina, a low little stool for Samuel. They drank the Gypsy Magda's tea, a wicked brew as dark as the night, from china cups with painted roses on the side. She had cast a handful of leaves in the pot, and they swirled on the surface of each white cup.

Samuel was happy, even jolly. He towered above the Gypsy, his china cup like a thimble in his hand. “We might as well make the best of it,” he said. “We could be here for days.”

“Why?” asked the Gypsy Magda.

“The river. It hasn't even crested yet.” He drank his tea in slurps, spilling it down his beard. “It'll take three days at least to fall. There's not a chance we'll cross before that. Not a hope in the world.”

“Ach,” said the Gypsy Magda. “She's nothing, that river. Just a trickle, just a nothing.”

Samuel laughed. “Then it's a whole lot of nothing,” he said, and finished his tea. He put the cup on the table and poked it, with a claw, toward the Gypsy Magda.

“Not now,” she said.

“But you always read my leaves.” He sounded disappointed, so pathetically so that the Gypsy Magda in all her scarves took his cup and set it upside down.

She turned it slowly; four times she turned it, so the handle faced north and then west, south and then east. Her lips shrunken in around her toothless mouth, she chanted as she turned. “Withershins we go. Back to where we start. Withershins we turn. To see inside the heart.”

Samuel leaned forward as she picked up the cup. “What does it say?” he asked.

“I see a storm. Much rain, much thunder. I see trouble, a person in trouble.”

“Me?” asked Samuel.

“Someone else. He comes to you with trouble.”

“When?”

“Soon,” she said, and put down the cup. “That is all.”

“It wasn't very much,” he said, pouting.

She shrugged. “You spill too many leaves.”

“Now me,” said Tina. “You did Samuel, you've got to do me.” Her cup seemed too big, her fingers loose inside the tiny handle. She put it down and slid it over the table.

Bracelets jangled. The Gypsy Magda turned the cup onto its brim. There was a stain of tea on the table. Again she turned it, and again she chanted.

Tina grinned at Harold. Little fists clunked together, knuckles to knuckles. The Gypsy Magda took the cup in her hands.

“What do you see?” asked Tina. “What do you see?”

“Happiness. Great happiness.” The Gypsy Magda leaned forward, peering at the cup.

“What else do you see?”

“Kindness. Love. It is dripping from you, this kindness.”

“Money? Do you see money?”

“No.”

“Nuts!” said Tina. “What else?”

“A game. A great game and much laughing.”

“What kind of a game?”

“It is hard to see.” The Gypsy Magda tipped the cup. “You are running. Shouting.” Suddenly her head shot back. She looked sharply at Harold. “That is all.”

“What do you mean, that's all?” asked Tina. “Say, what's in there anyway?”

The Gypsy Magda shook the cup, hard. Leaves sprayed across the floor in a smear of black and tea. She tugged at her scarves, at her bracelets. “It's not enough, this happiness? You will be more happy than you ever dreamed. But it's not enough?”

“Sure,” said Tina. She sat back, not as happy as Harold might have thought.

He held his cup close to his chest, tightly in his hands. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know what was in there.

“I'm tired,” said the Gypsy Magda. “I must sleep.” She pushed back her chair and stood wobbling by the table. “The boy, he will walk with me.”

They went out into the darkness and the soft chirruping of crickets. The Gypsy Magda slipped her arm through Harold's, and they walked across the grass.

“Are you frightened of me?” she asked.

“No,” said Harold.

“Of the future, then?”

He nodded. She leaned against him, her weight not half of his.

Her bracelets and her bells made a music in the night. “It is good you ask no questions. You are brave to go in darkness without the lamp to show your way.”

Harold shivered. He wasn't brave. He was scared to know his future.

He helped the Gypsy Magda into the high, covered back of her truck. There was a little door that she crawled through, into a cave that smelled of spices and candles. She looked down at him from above.

“Hurry back,” she said. “Your friends, they have something for you.”

He walked through the darkness, into the trailer, and saw that his friends had gone to bed. Down the narrow corridor, underneath the cabin doors, slits of light sprayed across the floor. But in the little living room a blanket was hung from the ceiling, suspended in front of the sofa. Pinned to it was a piece of paper, and on it was written Harrolds Rume.

The cabin doors banged open. Samuel came through one, the princess through the other. “Surprise!” she shouted, her hands in the air. “Do you like it?”

Harold squinted at the bit of the paper and the curtain. “What is it?” he asked.

Tina frowned. “Why, it's your room,” she said. “What do you think?”

He was touched by the gesture. The Airstream trailer was small and cramped, but this little bit of it was his. He thought of the tiny woman and the monstrous man, and how they must have planned it out, then waited for a chance to give him this small surprise.

He pulled the blanket aside and sat on the sofa; there wasn't room to stand. His bundle of clothes had been opened, everything unpacked and set neatly on little shelves. The baseball bat, the glove and the painted ball, everything was there. A coverlet and pillow were laid out for him.

Harold the Ghost stretched out on the sofa, in the first room that had ever been his own.

“You like it?” asked Tina.

“Very much,” he said. “Thank you, Samuel. Thank you, Princess Minikin.”

Tina laughed. “You don't have to call me that,” she said. “Just call me Tina, okay?”

Chapter

12

T
he Gypsy Magda was right. In the morning the river was gone. Just a thin, dark line of water flowed through its wide channel, the banks and the prairie on either side blackened with mud and debris.

The trucks started in coughs of smoke, with rattles of fenders and cowlings. They lurched across the river, spewing mud from whirling wheels, and staggered up the other side. They gained the road and headed west, with the morning sun behind them.

“I love traveling days,” said Tina, wedged between Samuel and Harold. She sat on an apple box, her fat little legs braced across it. “Sometimes I wish we could travel forever.”

The day was hot and bright, the roads covered again in dust. It rose from the wheels in feathers at first, and then in a cloud that thickened behind them, bubbling over the trailer.

All that day and all the next they drove toward the west. They sang “Roll Out the Barrel” as the telephone poles went whooshing past and the wind came hot through the windows. They sang “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and Samuel made the sound of a drum with his fist on the wheel, and Tina had tears in her eyes.

Then Harold saw the mountains. He pushed back his helmet and gazed at them rising from the prairie far ahead, a blur in his poor, bad eyes. “The mountains!” he cried, and pointed. “That must be Oregon, I bet.”

Tina laughed, and so did Samuel. He laughed so hard he started coughing, and the big truck wandered toward the ditch before he brought it straight again.

“Those aren't mountains,” Tina said. “They're only hills.”

“Only hills?” asked Harold. They seemed enormous.

“When you see the mountains you'll know it,” she said. “And, say, you know what we'll do? We'll stop and have a party. Won't we, Samuel? We'll stop in the middle of the road if we have to, and—jeepers, creepers!—we'll have ourselves a party.” She squirmed atop her apple box. “There's nothing better than seeing the mountains when all you've seen is prairie.”

They came to a farmhouse that afternoon, and a big barn with gaps along its walls. In a moment they were past it, and the fence posts went by in a ragged, crooked line.

Then Samuel pointed suddenly and cried out, “There! Look there!”

A piece of paper was stapled to a post. Tattered by the wind and rain, it curled across itself, a square of red and an arrow in the middle.

Samuel touched the brakes, and the truck skittered, pushed by the trailer behind it. “Which way is it pointing?” he shouted.

Harold put his head from the window. His helmet straps lashing at his cheeks, his white face looking back, he shot along across the prairie.

“Up!” said Tina. “Oh, it's a happy day.”

When Harold pulled his head inside, his glasses were grimy with dust. He took them off and cleaned them on his sleeve. “What was it?” he asked.

“A sign,” said Samuel. “The Cannibal King goes ahead and puts them up to mark the way.”

Harold smiled. He faced ahead again, pleased to think he was going where the Cannibal King had gone, down the very same road, just days behind him.

Chapter

13

T
he truck labored up the hills, its motor overheating, steam wafting from the hood. Then it crossed the top and started down toward the valley, toward a little city that seemed tremendously big to Harold.

“We'll stop and get supper,” Samuel said. “We'll have a bite to eat.”

Harold turned toward the window. “I've got no money,” he said.

Tina laughed. “Don't worry about that. We've got lots,” she said. “Don't we, Samuel?”

“A bit,” he said.

“You big lug, we've got lots.” She slid from her seat and opened the glove box. She pulled out a thin wad of paper. “We sell these,” she said. “After the show we sell postcards.”

Harold squinted at them, inches from his eyes. There were pictures of Tina in a tiny tiara, signed in spidery writing, “Princess Minikin.” There were pictures of Samuel in nothing but a pair of shorts, his chest and his stomach all covered with hair.

“We get to keep nearly half of what we make,” said Tina. “Mr. Hunter's a swell guy.”

There was a picture of the two together, Tina in Samuel's arms. Another showed her on a pony. In every one Tina was smiling; in every one Samuel scowled.

The truck jolted down the hill. Samuel worked the gearshift, and the engine growled and backfired.

The last postcard was of the Cannibal King. It showed him sitting on a huge throne, surrounded by coconut palms. Harold frowned at it, bending forward, his nose nearly on the picture. The coconut palms seemed to shake as his eyes jiggled back and forth.

“Is this Oola Boola Mambo?” he asked. “All these trees?”

Tina laughed. “You crazy nut! Sure, that's Oola Boola Mambo, isn't it, Samuel?”

Samuel wiped his mouth, flattening a grin. “That's what it is, all right.”

Harold stared at the picture. “What's so funny?” he asked, and they laughed all the harder. “I don't get it,” he said.

“They're just such funny trees,” said Tina.

The postcards were packed away as the truck came down toward the city. Harold goggled from the windows. He'd never seen buildings six stories tall; he called them skyscrapers. He marveled at the traffic lights, at the flashing neon signs. He was astounded by the traffic; he could count thirty cars at once, and it seemed to him like chaos.

If there was ever a time when Harold wished his eyes were normal, that time was now. He squinted so hard that his eyes hurt. He pointed to the left, to the right. “Is that a television set?” he asked, and Tina laughed. “It's a newspaper box,” she told him.

The truck stopped at a light. A knot of people streamed past on the crosswalk. He heard a child shout, “Look at that!” and turned to look himself.

“Oh, yuck!” said the child, right below him. “Why's he so white? And look at the guy that's driving!”

“Roll up the windows,” said Samuel. Already his thick, hairy arm was cranking the handle, and the glass was rising, sealing them off. “Roll it up!” he snapped.

All around, the people stopped. “Freaks,” said a man. “They're circus freaks.” And a woman said, “Oh, the poor boy!”

Harold couldn't move. Tina reached across him and turned the handle, and the window shut with a squeak. The people swarmed around them.

They stared through the windshield, up past the mirrors. A pimply boy stood on the running board and leered at Harold through the window. His fingers were flattened pink blotches on the glass.

“Look ahead,” said Samuel. “Just keep looking straight ahead.” The light changed, and he rammed the truck into gear, scattering the people. But at the next corner different people gathered, and at the third it happened all over again.

Harold sat perfectly still; only his chin was quivering. He stared straight ahead, as Samuel had told him to do. He was the Ghost again, Harold the Ghost, small and invisible. He chanted to himself, under his breath, the words that he used for a charm, his little incantation:

“No one can see me, no one can hurt me. The words that they say cannot harm me.”

They didn't stop at a restaurant. They passed through the city and traveled on. Bugs came soaring up and splattered on the windshield, and the engine droned beneath the hood.

Harold fell asleep, his head against the window, and the trucks went roaring through the night, chasing cones of yellow down the road. Small and white, the Ghost went flying across the prairie, dreaming his old dream of being a dark-haired boy.