Ghost Boy Page 10

  “Just go and look,” said Flip.

  He poked his head around the corner. In a patch of open ground stood three enormous elephants. They grazed at the grass, pulling whole clumps of dirt and roots from the field. They swung them lazily over their heads and knocked them, in clouds of mud, against their shoulders. Each one had an iron collar fastened around a hind leg, a chain leading back to a stake in the ground. In a great circle around them the field was broken and torn, and the elephants pulled their chains taut to reach for the fresh, new grass at its edge.

  “Those are roses?” asked Harold.

  Flip giggled. “That’s Canary Bird there. That’s Max Graf beside him. And this big one here, this is Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, or Conrad for short. We name them after roses, see?”

  “They’re beautiful,” said Harold. Their legs were thick as tree stumps, their skin a mass of wrinkles. But they had a majesty and a grandeur that came from more than just their size. They seemed exotic and ancient, half animal and half machine. They tore up the ground like bulldozers.

  Conrad was the tallest by a yard. “He’s a giant,” Harold said.

  “She,” said Flip. “Circuses only use females. But we talk about them like they were boys because they’re so big and strong.” She touched Harold’s arm. “It’s like they should be boys, you know?”

  Harold looked down at her fingers curved across his sleeve. They made his whole body tingle.

  “What do you think?” asked Flip.

  He could hardly think at all. Then the fingers fell away and left little dents in his shirt, but the tingling stayed in his skin.

  “I guess you’ve never seen elephants, either,” she said.

  “No,” said Harold. They were so big, so different from anything else, that they made him feel small, and a little bit scared. They could pick him up in their trunks and knock him on their backs like clumps of grass if they wanted. Still, he wished he could see them better; he wished he could know what they felt like.

  “Can I touch them?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Flip, and they started forward. “But watch for Conrad. He’s a strange one.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone knocked him around a bit.” Flip rattled her bucket of peanuts, and Conrad slowly swung his head, his big ears flapping. “It was years ago. Before we got him. But he’s got scars on his mouth from a bullhook, see?”

  Harold paused, and Flip went on past him. He touched his glasses and peered across their tops. The elephant was watching him, the trunk lifting up in a curl.

  “The last guy we had for your job quit because of Conrad,” said Flip. “I don’t know why exactly.”

  The elephant trumpeted. It was a wonderful, frightening sound. The trunk dropped close to the ground and swayed back and forth. His ears spread wide, Conrad lumbered toward them, until the chain came taut with a clank. The head tilted and shook; it moved as Harold’s might, to see something blurred in the distance. And Harold waved his arms. He shouted at the elephant.

  “Don’t do that!” cried Flip. “Oh, Harold, you’ll scare him!”

  It was too late. The elephant stomped at the grass. It made that awful rumbling noise, and its ears flapped forward and back. Then, with one pull of its leg, it tore up the stake that held it. And Conrad came thundering forward like a dusty, bellowing engine.

  Chapter

  23

  The elephant roared with its head up high. Its enormous legs hammered at the ground, and it came in a spray of muddy water, dragging its chains behind it.

  “Don’t run,” said Flip.

  Harold ran. He bumbled across the lot as fast as his boots would let him. He ran like an ostrich, with high and ungainly steps, his elbows flapping like stubs of wings. He went three miles an hour, and the elephant went thirty.

  He looked back once and saw its bulk, the dirt and clumps of grass falling from it. He looked again and saw only a great flat forehead, wicked eyes and dull white stumps of tusks. Then he caught his toe in a gopher hole and tumbled across the ground.

  The elephant’s feet thumped around him, each toe bigger than his fist, the soles sagging loose as the feet came up, flattening as they thundered down. There was a sound like a rising wind, and the trunk came groping over the grass. It touched his leg and then his back; it crawled across his neck.

  The touch was strong and rubbery, a hot, wet suction on his skin. He heard the rumbling from the elephant’s chest, and the trunk curled underneath him. It lifted him clear from the ground, so high that his legs dangled down. They looked at each other eye to eye, and then it sat him down but didn’t let go.

  Flip, who was running, slowed to a walk. She stood beside him and put her hands on the trunk where it wrapped around his chest.

  Harold smiled at her. “This is great,” he said.

  Conrad’s ears, as big as tablecloths almost, curled and flapped beside him. Harold saw how the elephant’s hair grew in sparse little clumps along the ears and the lips. It made long, shaggy lashes over eyes that were nearly like a person’s. The mouth was open, and he saw a tongue that was pink and thick and pointed. He heard the rumble deep behind it, and thought the elephant was purring. And then he saw the scars, the ragged tears in Conrad’s lip, and wondered how anyone could do that.

  “He could have stomped me if he’d wanted to,” said Harold, looking down. “For a minute there, you know, I thought he might. I really thought he might.”

  “Tell him to let you go,” said Flip.

  He stroked the trunk, looking up at the elephant’s eyes. “You’ve got to let me go now,” he said. “Okay, Conrad?”

  Flip laughed. “Not like that. Slap him on the trunk, Harold. Slap him hard. He’s not real smart, and you have to tell him what to do.”

  But Harold nearly whispered. “Come on, Conrad,” he said. “Please let me go.”

  And the trunk unwound. It fell away from him in leathery loops, the tip touching his shoulders, moving down his arm, lingering at his fingers. He got up and Conrad nudged against him, almost toppling him from his feet.

  “That’s amazing,” said Flip. “I’ve never seen him so gentle.”

  They started back toward the tent, and Conrad swayed along behind them, swinging his trunk, grunting in his throat. The chains clanked across the ground.

  “What do they do?” asked Harold. “In the circus, I mean.”

  “Not very much,” she said, and laughed. “They sort of stomp around and bump into each other. It’s meant to be dancing, but it’s sure not the jitterbug.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, they work. They raise the big top and help load the trucks. If someone gets stuck, they pull him out.”

  Flip bent down and picked up the stake. She shoved it back in the hole and stamped the dirt around it. Over the top she dropped the ring on Conrad’s chain.

  “Is that all that holds him there?” asked Harold.

  “It doesn’t hold him at all. It’s just the thought that keeps him here.”

  Conrad swaggered in among the other elephants. He bellowed at them and thumped against them. His massive ribs curved high above Harold’s head.

  Flip shook the bucket, and all three of the elephants came wandering over. They took the peanuts from her palm with the tips of their trunks.

  “Can I feed them?” Harold asked.

  She held the bucket toward him, and he took out a handful of nuts. With a rumble and a snort, Conrad shoved the others aside to eat from Harold’s hand.

  He laughed at the delicate touch of the elephant, a tickling at his skin. “Maybe I could teach them some other tricks,” he said.

  “Don’t make me laugh.” Flip tipped her bucket onto the ground. Max Graf and Canary Bird groveled at her feet, snuffling up the peanuts. “They’re getting old,” she said. “They’re all worn out, like everything in this stupid little circus.”

  “It’s a great circus,” Harold said.

  “Yeah? How many times have you watched it?”

 
“I guess I haven’t seen it yet.” Harold tossed a peanut. Conrad’s trunk snaked up and caught it.

  “It’s a long-grass outfit,” said Flip with a sneer. “It’s a crummy, gyppo circus, and I’d do anything to get out of it. I’d marry Wallo the Sausage Man if I had to, and he makes Samuel look like Clark Gable.”

  Harold tossed another peanut. The elephant missed, then swept it off the ground. “Why don’t you quit?” he asked.

  “I won’t have to quit.” She watched as Conrad caught three nuts in a row. “We’re going broke so fast it isn’t funny. And I can hardly wait until the end. Anything would be better than this, traveling around to every one-horse town with a bunch of freaks and con men.”

  “Why’s it going broke?”

  “Because it’s a crummy little mud show!”

  Harold tossed a nut to Max Graf, but Conrad’s trunk shot out and caught it in the air.

  “We need something big,” said Flip. “Something fantastic. Something that nobody else has ever done.”

  Harold threw the last peanut high in the air. It tumbled end over end, and Flip turned her head up to watch. Conrad took a lumbering step backward, his trunk stretching up. The peanut slowed and started down.

  “Like elephants playing baseball?” asked Harold.

  And Conrad reached out and snatched the peanut as it fell.

  Chapter

  24

  Flip told him it would never work. “Elephants can’t play ball,” she said. “No one’s ever taught them that.”

  “Maybe no one’s ever tried,” said Harold.

  “Yeah,” she scoffed. “Because it can’t be done.”

  But it seemed to Harold that if he could learn to hit a ball, then anybody could, and certainly an elephant, with its two enormous eyes. “Let’s just try,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Well, suit yourself.”

  Harold brought his glove, his bat, the gaudy painted ball. He said, “I guess I’ll start with batting,” and Flip squatted down to watch him.

  He stood under Conrad’s chin, and the trunk draped across him like an enormous snake. Its tip was almost like a pair of fingers, and they groped along the bat as the elephant sniffed at the wood.

  “Hold it like this,” said Harold, arranging the trunk with his hands. “You swing it back, and you swing it forward. See?” He held on to Conrad’s trunk. “Back and forward. Back and forward.” He looked at Flip. “Okay. Throw us the ball.”

  She groaned and got up. “It’s not going to work,” she said.

  “Just try it.”

  She threw underhanded, in a long and gentle arc. Harold saw the ball come spinning from her hand. And then he closed his eyes.

  “Just try it,” his brother had told him. “Watch the ball as long as you can, then close your eyes and swing.” And after that, Harold had never missed. It was as though he knew where the ball was, though if he tried to see it rushing past he couldn’t. A moving ball was just a blur, and he always batted with his eyes closed.

  “Swing!” he shouted now, and pushed against the trunk. He heard the crack of the ball against the bat and felt the tremor of it through Conrad’s trunk.

  “That was you,” said Flip.

  “Well, he’s got to learn,” he said.

  They tried it again, and then again, until Flip panted from running back and forth. Harold never missed. Every time he swung, he felt the thud through Conrad’s trunk, then opened his eyes to see Flip hurrying after the ball, to see Max and Canary Bird watching the game. They trumpeted and shook on their feet like fat, excited fans.

  “See?” said Harold. “I think it’s going to work.”

  “But it’s you that’s hitting it,” said Flip. “Not him.”

  And they let the elephant try it by himself.

  Flip tossed the ball to Conrad; Harold stood behind him. “Swing!” he shouted, but the elephant didn’t move.

  “Try to hit the bat,” said Harold.

  “Geez!” said Flip. “I’m not Dazzy Vance!”

  They pitched and caught, and pitched and caught, as though the elephant wasn’t there between them. Conrad never moved until the ball thumped against his shoulder. Then he hurled the bat across the field and wandered off, grumbling in his throat.

  “Forget it,” said Flip. She gave the ball and glove to Harold and left him there alone. “If you think they can learn this, you’re as dumb as they are.”

  But Harold kept practicing. He arranged the bat in Conrad’s trunk and pitched the ball from seven feet away. He tossed and shouted, “Swing!” and got the ball and pitched again. He played as patiently and happily as David once had played with him.

  The broken clouds filled and darkened. The afternoon went by. But Harold didn’t give up. He went on and on in his lonely corner of the circus lot. And on the three hundred and thirty-first pitch, Conrad swung the bat and hit the ball.

  The sound it made was like a fence rail breaking. The ball whizzed past Harold’s head. It bounced with a squirt of mud from the ground behind him, and when he spun around to look he saw Max trundling along, dragging his chain, chasing the ball with his trunk.

  But no one was there to see it.

  Harold ran to Conrad. He threw his arms around his trunk and pressed his cheek against the warm and leathery skin. “You did it,” he said. “You did it.”

  The elephant dropped the bat and held him. The trunk coiled around his shoulders, squeezing hard but not too hard, and once again Conrad purred like a cat.

  Chapter

  25

  Princess 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 Harol
d 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.”