The Giant-Slayer Read online

  “You said she’s getting better,” said Laurie.

  “Oh, there’s lots of ways she can make improvements.” The doors closed and the elevator hummed as it started down. “If wishing was medicine, Carolyn would have been home a long, long time ago. What she needs right now is a little understanding. She craves that, though she’d never admit it. Not many people come to visit Carolyn.”

  “No wonder,” said Laurie.

  Miss Freeman smiled. “If you showed some interest, it might surprise you what could happen.”

  “I think I should go home now,” said Laurie.

  “Of course,” said Miss Freeman. “But if you want to come back and see Dickie again, I think I could allow it.”

  “I’d like to,” said Laurie. “Sometime.”

  “Saturday would be terrific.”

  For the rest of the week, Laurie kept thinking about the polio ward and the iron lungs. She kept seeing the faces floating in the mirrors: Dickie Espinosa smiling as though he had no worries at all, Carolyn Jewels turning angrily aside. The first image made her happy, the other made her miserable. She wanted to talk to someone about it but didn’t dare say a word to her father.

  At the Valentine house, it was a week like any other. Mrs. Strawberry came and went, never particularly happy nor particularly sad. Mr. Valentine commented on stories in the newspaper, about Eisenhower and the atom bomb. On Saturday morning he settled at the dining table with his tax forms and a shoebox full of receipts. He grumbled about the tax man. “I slave away while he gets richer.”

  Laurie went out right after breakfast. She said she would be at the library, but of course she went back to the hospital.

  Miss Freeman came down to the lobby, and all the way up on the elevator she fussed with her hair and her little white cap. She pulled out all her bobby pins and held them in her lips as she put everything back in order. “I don’t know how you plan to spend the day,” she said, mumbling past the pins. “But don’t think you have to be everybody’s entertainment. You don’t need to do a song and dance.” She looked at her reflection on the elevator’s shiny wall. “Chip likes to read his car magazines, so maybe you can turn the pages for him if it isn’t much trouble. Carolyn would drop dead if she knew I told you this, but she likes to hear about the movie stars. If you could mention something about Marilyn Monroe or Rudy Vallee or—”

  “I don’t know anything about them,” said Laurie.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter.”

  The number 4 lit up. Laurie felt the elevator slowing. “Last time,” she said, “I started telling them a story.”

  “Well, I guess you could always do that,” said Miss Freeman. “I would think they get their fill of stories from books and things, but I suppose you never know.”

  There was no one racing wheelchairs that morning. In the big room at the bend of the hall, everyone was crowded in front of the television, cheering as a tiny Roy Rogers galloped across the screen on Trigger, his palomino. On the little round screen, his white hat was the size of a pencil eraser.

  In the respirator room, Carolyn and Chip and Dickie lay in their row, in the steady pulse of their machines. The mirrors above them had been turned around, and on their backs were metal clips and straps. Carolyn had two books fastened to her mirror, held side by side in the fastenings. Chip had a car magazine, Dickie a comic book. All three twisted their necks to look toward the doorway.

  It was clearly Miss Freeman’s first visit to the room that day. She went in all happy and chirpy, talking about the weather, about things she’d seen on the way to work. All the time, she kept moving between the iron lungs, looking into each of them through the windows in their sides. She unfastened the clips on the mirrors and turned over pages.

  “Who’s this?” she asked Dickie as she put his comic back in place. “This man with the black hat?”

  “Gee, that’s Clay Harder,” said Dickie.

  “Is he a bad guy?”

  Dickie laughed. “Boy, I don’t think so! He’s the Two-Gun Kid.”

  It was a surprise for Laurie to see what Carolyn was reading. On the left side of the mirror was Silas Marner, and on the right was The Catcher in the Rye. Both were too difficult for Laurie, and she thought they made her story of a giant-slayer seem silly and childish. It seemed no wonder that Carolyn wasn’t interested.

  Miss Freeman brought a wooden chair for Laurie to stand on, to turn the pages. “I’ll be back in an hour or two,” she said, and left the room.

  Laurie sat with Dickie, reading the comic aloud. But every few minutes Chip or Carolyn asked for pages to be turned, and she had to drag her chair along the iron lungs.

  She was clumsy with the clips. Silas Marner tumbled from the mirror, hitting Carolyn square in the forehead. When the same thing happened with The Catcher in the Rye, Carolyn lost her patience. “Just leave me alone!” she snapped. “Get away from me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Laurie. She felt as awkward as a hippopotamus.

  As though to comfort her, Chip said, “Come look at this hemi.”

  Laurie stood at his side. There were four pictures on the pages of his magazine, and she had no idea where the hemi was, or even what a hemi was. So she looked instead at the wonderful clutter of photographs as he rambled on about valve stems and piston rings—a few words at a time. She looked at the boy and the man, at the boy in a soapbox racer, at the boy flying a kite, at the boy playing football. She tried to arrange them chronologically in her mind, hoping to track the life of a child who would one day end up in an iron lung. But the pictures wouldn’t fit in any order, because the boy kept changing.

  She became so lost in the pictures that she forgot about Dickie and the Two-Gun Kid. She forgot about everything, until Carolyn spoke up beside her: “So … who was outside?”

  Laurie didn’t understand.

  “You stupe,” said Carolyn. “The inn. The Woman. She said there was someone outside.”

  Laurie wasn’t sure why Carolyn brought up the story. She wondered if the girl was jealous of Chip, or just bored half to death by Silas Marner. But whatever the reason, Carolyn saved the story.

  And by doing that, she changed the lives of all of them.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  THE STORY OF CAROLYN JEWELS

  Fingal was standing very close to the window. When the Woman told him to look out, all he had to do was straighten his arm and open the shutters. But he didn’t move.

  “You want to know who’s there, get up and look,” he said.

  The Woman grew furious. She shouted at him to open the window. She commanded him to do it. But he stood there like a stone man, until she finally got up and barreled past him, leaving Jimmy on the bed. She wrenched the latch and flung the shutters wide.

  Up through the window came the jingling sound of a harness, the stomp and snort of horses. The Woman leaned out, looking nearly straight down at the roadway. The back of her nightdress lifted from the floor, showing stockings that had been darned so many times that they were nearly all patches.

  The sight of the Woman’s legs made Fingal want to take hold of her ankles and tip her through the window. He could see himself doing it—so clearly that he imagined the rough feel of her stockings, the great weight as he levered her over the sill. Then she snapped at him—“Come and look!”—and the picture dissolved. He squeezed in beside her at the open window.

  Down below him was a fancy carriage, trimmed with gold. Its four black horses wore helmets of silver, and the harnesses glistened with jewels. Fingal had never seen a finer carriage in all his life. He thought the King himself must have come to visit, so he carefully spat on his fingers and smoothed his hair into place.

  The driver was wearing a uniform of scarlet, black, and yellow. He had a pair of round goggles that he whipped off and placed on the seat. They left white circles round his eyes, for his face was caked with gray dust. Then he climbed from his seat and opened the carriage door.

  Fingal peered down. He s
aw a long, black boot of shiny leather. On the toe was a cap of silver, and at the other end of the boot was a thin and wretched man with a small hat and voluminous cloak. His neck seemed as narrow as a pipe stem, while his nose was enormous, every bit as red as the driver’s bright tunic. He paused on the step and blew into a white handkerchief.

  “Who’s the fancy Nancy, then?” asked the Woman.

  “It’s the tax man,” said Fingal, annoyed. He had combed his hair for nothing. “I’d better go and meet him.”

  He hurried down the stairs, arriving in the parlor just as the travelers were leaving by the back door. The tax man looked over Fingal’s books, then helped himself from the cash box. He demanded that the Woman come downstairs, and when he saw little Jimmy in her arms, he whipped out a folding ruler and measured the length of the giant-slayer. Then he blew his nose a second time, levied a tax on the child, and dipped again into the cash box. In a big black book he recorded the population of the Dragon’s Tooth Inn:

  One Fingal

  One Woman

  One baby, twenty-two inches

  Fingal had many faults. He was mean and stingy, and he didn’t bathe very often. He was sly as a fox, as homely as a hound. He was boastful and full of himself. He was rather stupid, if the truth be told. But one thing he wasn’t was lazy. Each day Fingal rose with the sun and worked until dark, when he paused just long enough to eat his supper. Then he labored on by candlelight, counting and sorting his coins.

  He had little time for Jimmy. Tending the baby was the Woman’s job. But there came a day when the Woman had to go to the market along the high road, and she left little Jimmy with Fingal.

  There were two travelers in the parlor, one a gryphon hunter heading south, the other a woodsman going north. The hunter was filling the woodsman’s head with stories of the dark forest and of the mountains at the edge of the world. The woodsman, all a-tremble, was drinking glass after glass, so Fingal spent half his time pumping the beer engine and the other half trotting back and forth to the table.

  “Fingal, you’ll have to mind wee Jimmy,” said the Woman. She put the baby carefully into his arms. “Now hold him tight.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. No babby was ever held tighter,” said Fingal. But as soon as the Woman was gone, he put the baby on the floor.

  Jimmy was a crawler. His little arms and legs pumped madly as he dashed toward the door, racing to catch his mother.

  Fingal snatched him up and brought him back. But the baby only crawled away again and sat screaming at the door. So Fingal chopped a hole in the side of an empty brandy keg to make a cradle for his son. He stuffed the boy inside and set it on the polished top of the bar, where the drafts of wind from door and chimney kept it rocking merrily.

  At noon the door flew open. The cradle rocked, and into the parlor came an old man with a stooped back, using a walking stick to balance himself. He heaved the door shut and stood squinting into the gloomy parlor. He had a white moustache that fluttered as he breathed.

  Fingal called out from the bar, “Are you going north or south, sir?”

  “North,” said the old man.

  “Mind you touch the tooth, then. For luck,” said Fingal. “Put a coin in the offering box, and you’ll be safe as houses.”

  The man had to use his walking stick to touch the tooth. He fumbled with his coins. But he bought his luck and got himself seated.

  Fingal went to serve him. “What takes you north?” he asked.

  “Trolls,” said the old man.

  Fingal had no idea what business a man could have with trolls, but he certainly didn’t care enough to ask. He brought the man an ale, then perched himself on the stool behind the bar.

  To him, travelers were like snakes. If you tossed snakes in a pit, they couldn’t stop themselves from tangling together, and travelers were the same. They shouted back and forth, then leaned toward each other, and finally the old man got up to join the others.

  He took the long route past the bar, where he stopped to fill his glass. He slammed it down and swabbed his arm across his moustache. At his elbow the cradle rocked, with little Jimmy gurgling inside.

  The old man smiled. “There’s a baby in there,” he said, as though Fingal might not have noticed. He made silly googly faces into the brandy keg as Fingal filled the glass. He puffed air against his big moustache, making it ripple like a snowy caterpillar. When he got his change—a six-sided Rhodes—he slipped it into the cradle, down at Jimmy’s feet. “For luck,” he said with a wink. “Tip a baby, and fortune follows.”

  Stupid old fool, thought Fingal. You could have bought him for that. And the cradle as well. But he only smiled and nodded. Then he poked the cradle with his fingertip, to make it rock in a tempting fashion.

  The woodsman was next to put a coin in the cradle. He hoped to travel along with the old man, and so was quick to please him. And the gryphon hunter, not to be left out, tossed another Rhodes into the keg.

  Fingal’s eyes were gleaming then, bright with the shine of gold. When the Woman came home from the market and ran to collect little Jimmy, Fingal steered her away. “Here, leave the babby with me,” he said. “He’s a wee pleasure to have about, that babby. I’d miss him like the devil.”

  The Woman was delighted. She went up to her bed and had the first good sleep that she’d had in a year. From her room upstairs she could hear the cradle rocking and the baby laughing inside it.

  Fingal made up a sign that night: Tip a babby; fortune follows. In the morning he salted the crib with a few copper Constantines, to add a musical jingle to the pitching of the cradle. By evening, Jimmy was sloshing about on a bed of coins.

  Salting the cradle became a daily ritual, a chore as happy as the watering of the ale or the draining of used glasses back into bottles. From then on, no traveler passed through the inn without slipping a coin into the keg. Shepherds and hunters, nobles and thieves, they all touched the tooth and tipped the baby. For the first time, the “Jimmy” column in Fingal’s ledger began to show a profit.

  Fingal was finally a happy man. But of course it didn’t last.

  There came a day when Jimmy didn’t fit in the cradle. For a week or more, Fingal had been jamming him into it, like a cork into a bottle. But now, no matter how he squeezed and pushed, it was no use. His little boy—sadly—was longer than the keg.

  Fingal replaced the keg with a small barrel. But even as he did it, he knew it was at best a temporary solution. The barrel was only two inches longer, and Jimmy was steadily growing.

  “Don’t let him splint his legs,” said Chip.

  “What do you mean?” asked Laurie.

  Chip was wincing. He had listened to the story quite happily up to now, just lying with his eyes closed, his mouth in a peaceful smile. Now he tried to turn his head far enough to look at Laurie. He said, “I don’t want Fingal to splint the baby’s legs.”

  “Why would he?” asked Laurie.

  “That’s what they did. To polios.”

  “They did it to me,” said Carolyn.

  Above the girl’s head, The Catcher in the Rye was sagging from its clips. Laurie took it down and put it away. She turned the mirror in its frame so that Carolyn could see the sky and trees outside the window. “What’s it like?” she asked. “Splinting.”

  “It’s like a torture,” said Carolyn. “Remember the old iron maiden? It’s just like that.” Splinting, she said, was something that Cotton Mather would have done to a witch in Salem if he’d been cruel enough to think of it.

  Her iron lung breathed in and out, and she talked in the whoosh of air. “First,” she said, “there’s nothing more painful than polio. It eats away at your nerves. Then the muscles start to wither. They shrink and tighten. Your legs and arms go crooked; they twist like corkscrews. Your knees bend backward. Your arms look like gnarly little sticks.

  “The doctors say, ‘We’ll help you.’ First thing they do, they stick a tube in your spine. They suck out some of the fluid. That’s the only way to
make sure you’ve got polio. But they don’t tell you if you’ve got it or not; they don’t tell you anything, ’cause you’re just a kid. They go away, and you don’t know when they’re coming back. You think maybe they’ll never come back, but they do.”

  Carolyn wetted her lips with her tongue, then went on as before, talking in snatches between the breaths of her respirator.

  “They put wooden splints around your legs. Or they put on plaster casts, or metal things that look like armor from a knight. They pin you down like a butterfly to make sure your bones won’t bend. But it happens anyway, and then they start to operate.

  “They put you to sleep and smash your legs. They break your bones, then straighten them out and stick them together with pins. They put on the splints and casts again. They bind your legs so tightly that the bones can’t grow. And maybe they leave out a bit so you won’t have one leg that’s longer than the other, ’cause they sure don’t want you to look weird.

  “They tell you, ‘There! Now you’ll be better.’ It hurts so much that you wish they’d take away the splints and casts and leave you alone. But you trust the doctors; you think you must be getting better. Then they come back and tell you, ‘Well, we have to operate again,’ and it all starts over.

  “By then you hate the doctors. You think there’s nothing in the world more scary than a doctor.”

  At the window, Laurie nodded. “Yeah, I know!” she said loudly. “When I was five I had my tonsils out and—”

  “Big deal. Big hairy deal,” said Carolyn. “It’s not like tonsils.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Laurie.

  “How can you say that? How can you be so stupid?” Carolyn glared at Laurie. “I hated my doctors. I wished they would die. They stole me, you know. That’s what they did. They took me away from my mom and my dad, and they locked me up in hospital.”