Ghost Boy Read online

  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

  The 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.

  Chapter

  14

  Harold’s head swayed sideways and banged against the window. He came awake to find the truck lurching off the road, to hear the sound of gravel popping underneath the wheels. He saw a building with red and yellow lights, a bank of gas pumps waiting there like a row of little fat men, each with one skinny arm and one hand in a pocket.

  The motor was oddly quiet, the voices in the cab little more than whispers.

  “It’s not quite empty,” said Samuel. “A couple of people inside.”

  “It’ll do,” said Tina. “We’ve got to stop somewhere.”

  Harold yawned and stretched. “Where are we?” he asked.

  Tina patted his arm. “We’re just getting some gas. Something to eat.”

  A sign blinked redly at him: Gas. Food. Worms. It sizzled in the summer night.

  Samuel parked beside the pumps. The Gypsy Magda drew up beside them, and the light glared off her windows so that it seemed the cab was empty.

  They climbed down, Harold and Tina from one side, Samuel from the other. The Gypsy Magda, with her shimmering of bracelets, came around her truck, and they stood together in a little group below the crackle of the lights.

  A bell jangled as the door opened in the building. A man came out, dressed in blue, walking quickly in leather boots with the laces loose. His head down, he wiped at his hands with an oily rag. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Gas,” said Samuel. “Please.”

  The man lifted his head. “Jesus!” he said. He looked at Harold, at the Gypsy Magda, down at Tina and up at Samuel. He took a step backward. “Oh, Jesus,” he said again.

  “Have you got a bathroom in there?”
asked Tina.

  His mouth was open, his eyes as round as Harold’s glasses. “Huh?” he said. “You’re going to go in?”

  “We’d like something to eat,” said Samuel. “If it isn’t any trouble.”

  “No,” said the man. “No problem.” He dabbed at his face with the rag. “But my wife’s in there. And she’s …”

  “What?” asked Samuel.

  The man fumbled with the rag. “Sort of scared. You know?”

  “Yes,” said Samuel. “Can you fill up both the trucks?”

  “Sure. No problem.” The man’s face shone with sweat. “You’re, uh—you’re going to pay for it, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Samuel smiled with his horrid teeth, his little eyes gleaming. “Sure. No problem.”

  The man’s hands shook so badly that gasoline sprayed across his boots. Harold laughed, until Samuel’s hand clamped with its claws on his shoulder.

  “Don’t stare,” Samuel told him gently. “It’s not polite to stare.” He put his hand on Harold’s back and turned him toward the building.

  It looked warm and safe in there, all the colors bright as fire. Through the windows Harold saw a rosy shine of padded chairs, the red of Coke machines, a fountain fizzing Orange Crush.

  There were three booths at the window, and behind them a counter where a young girl sat on a stool of chrome and orange. She was six, or maybe seven, and she twirled a finger through her hair as she worked with crayons at a coloring book.

  When the bell rang over the door, she looked up. Her eyes, full of wonder, flickered over Harold and Tina and the Gypsy Magda to settle, finally, on Samuel. “You’re very big,” she said. “You’re more hairy than my grampa, even.”

  Samuel covered his mouth with his hand. He was smiling behind it, Harold could see, and hiding his teeth from the girl.

  “What’s your name?” asked Tina. “You’re a sweetheart, kid.”

  “Doris,” she said.

  “What a pretty name.” Tina waddled toward her. “We’re just traveling through and we wanted something to eat. Is that okay?”

  Doris frowned. “Well, I’m kind of busy.”

  “We can see that,” said Tina. “You’ve got your coloring there and all. Say, why don’t we just sit at a booth, and you can tell your mama we’re here?”

  Doris nodded.

  “That’s swell,” said Tina. “Say, where should we sit anyway?”

  The little girl sighed and tilted her head. “It really doesn’t matter,” she said so seriously. “We’re not very full right now.”

  She turned the stool to watch the four go by. It squealed and tilted, and she looked down at Tina. “You’re mighty small,” she said.

  “Gee, thanks, kid,” said Tina brightly.

  “And you.” She pointed at the Gypsy Magda. “You make music when you walk.”

  Harold blushed. He felt a hotness rushing through his chest. He dreaded what the girl would say to him. And he turned away when she pointed at him with a crayon.

  “You’re an albino.” She said it slowly, making three words out of one. An al-bye-no.

  Harold felt sick, as though she’d called him a gargoyle. He hurried past and slipped into the booth. He saw his fingers clasping the table like white sausages and shoved them underneath. The Gypsy Magda sat beside him, her old face lined with worries. Tina scooted up the other bench, and Samuel squeezed in by the aisle.

  Doris climbed down from her stool, sliding on her stomach. Her little crimson skirt rode up around her legs. She stood at the side of the booth. “He’s a nice al-bye-no,” she said. “And that other one was a big fat liar.”

  “What other one?” asked Samuel.

  “I dunno.” She shrugged. “He came in a big old car. As big as a boat almost, pulling an island behind him. And he didn’t even pay for his gas.”

  “He didn’t?” asked Samuel.

  “No!” She shook her head solemnly. “He got really mad. Really, really mad.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes! He got mad like this.” She put her legs wide apart, her arms straight out from her shoulders, bent down at the elbows. She stomped up and down the narrow floor. “I’m not taking this,” she said, her voice mockingly deep but childish in its shrill. “I’m the Cannibal King! I’m the Cannibal King!”

  Tina shrieked with laughter. “That’s him,” she said. “That’s him all right.”

  Harold only gawked. He saw the child somehow magnified, eight feet tall, bellowing in an awful rage. She became, for a moment, the Cannibal King, with a necklace of bones and the fierceness of a savage.

  The little girl stomped and swayed, and behind her came a woman. She flew around the end of the counter on clattering heels. “Doris!” she said. “You get away from there!”

  “Say, it’s all right,” said Tina. “She’s not bothering us. She’s a swell little kid.”

  The woman grabbed the child. She pulled her backward across the floor and whirled her around, holding the little face against her dress. The child burst into tears, and her mother was red with rage. “You bunch of freaks. You goddamn monsters,” she said. “You stay away from her. Don’t you touch my child.”

  Samuel’s hands clenched into fists; Tina looked utterly shocked. The Gypsy Magda trembled all over, and Harold the Ghost—who had never fought back in his life—said, “No one touched your child.”

  He surprised even himself. His fingers were shaking under the table, and his eyes jittered madly behind his glasses. When he was nervous or frightened he could hardly see, and now the room and the woman blurred around him.

  “What’s she going to make of you?” the woman demanded. “A midget and a monkey man. An old witch and a boy like a ghost. What’s she going to make of you?”

  “Friends?” said Harold.

  Tina clapped her hands. “Yeah!” she said triumphantly. “We were making friends, that’s all.”

  Samuel’s fists opened and closed. The heels of his hands pushed at the table’s edge. “I think we’d better go,” he said.

  The woman laughed. “You’re goddamn right you better go.” The child was crying hysterically, almost climbing up her mother’s skirt. “Go on, then. Get out of here.”

  Harold started to rise. But Samuel leaned across the table and pressed him back. “I changed my mind. We’ll stay,” he said. “The boy has to eat.”

  The Gypsy Magda stiffened. “The old man is coming on.”

  A door latch clicked. Footsteps echoed in the building. They grew louder, a heavy step. Harold pulled his glasses off and pressed at his eyes. He wanted so badly to see.

  There were batwing doors behind the counter, and they swung open as the cook came through. He wore a battered fedora that was cracked down the middle like an egg. “What’s all the noise?” he said. “What in tarnation is going on out here?”

  The woman was staring down at the Gypsy Magda. The child still cried against her, blubbering now, “We were talking. We were only talking, Mom.”

  The cook put his hands on his hips. “You go on to the back, Betty,” he said, ushering her away. Then his hands went into his pockets. “You’re all with the circus, are you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Samuel.

  He shook his head. “Fifty years I been here and never saw a freak, and all of a sudden you’re coming like flies to the butter.”

  “The storm split us up,” said Samuel. “It washed out a couple of bridges.”

  “You ask me, freaks belong in a tent.” The cook sucked air through his teeth. “If I looked like you, I wouldn’t be showing myself to no one, but that’s me and you’re you. I guess you’ve gone and frightened the daylights out of that little girl. So, here’s what I’ll do, and it’s just what I told that other al-bye-no.”

  He rubbed his cheek, then scratched at his head through the slit in his hat. “I’ll give you sandwiches, coffee, whatever you want. But you can’t eat ’em here. What if someone respectable comes in? What would happen then?”

  He rock
ed forward, and he smiled. He actually smiled. “So you just tell me what you want and then clear on out of here. I’ll bring it to your truck, but you’ll pay for it now, see.”

  He hauled out a little pad from his back pocket, a stub of pencil that he licked with his tongue. “Now let’s see your money.” He shouted at Samuel. “Do you understand English? Huh? Do you have any dough?”

  Samuel looked sadly at the table.

  “Can’t he talk?”

  “Sure he can,” said Tina.

  “Then what does he want? Ask him what he wants.” And he added with a sneer, “Little lady.”

  Tina touched Samuel’s hand. There was an awful, beaten look about her, a look of sadness and despair. She said, “You order, Samuel. I don’t care what I get.” Samuel looked back at her, and his eyes were wet. The Gypsy Magda sat shrunken into her scarves, her face blank, her eyes empty, as though she wasn’t there.

  “I don’t have all day,” said the cook.

  “Denvers,” said Samuel, his eyes still on Tina. “We’ll have denvers.”

  “And you?” asked the cook. “You. Whitey.”

  Harold winced. He saw then that no matter how far he went from Liberty, it would never be far enough.

  “What do you want?”

  Harold straightened his shoulders and looked directly at the man, though all he saw was a blur. He said, “I want to be bigger, sir. I want to be darker.”

  The cook snorted. “You’re a wise guy, huh? Well, I guess you’re a pretty hungry little wise guy. Now get out of here. All of you. And I’ll bring you three sandwiches.”

  “Two,” said the Gypsy Magda.

  “Huh?”

  “Just two.” She stood up, stiff and proud. Although she was shorter than the man by a third of his height, she was full of a great dignity that made her seem larger. “I want nothing from you,” she said, and went past him, down the worn tiles, in a beautiful tingling of bells. And then Samuel got up from his bench, and then Tina. They waited for Harold.

  He wished he was stronger, as big as the Cannibal King. He would bellow and stomp; he would flatten the cook who stood there, openmouthed, in his stained and dirty shirt. But he wasn’t big, and he wasn’t strong, and he went without a word. Samuel’s hand settled on his shoulder, and they went together to the door.