Ghost Boy (19 page)

Chapter

39

T
he band played a brassy, jangling song, and Flip led the parade on Conrad's back. The three elephants linked trunk to tail, a pair of clowns and the six gleaming horses marched around the hippodrome, and more came after that. Mr. Hunter, in a morning coat of red and gold, in the center of the ring, called out names as people entered through the huge rear door. As the elephants went marching out, others were marching in to join a circle without an end, right around the tent. And last of all the elephants were sent around again, to make the show seem that much bigger and grander than it was.

Harold watched from the assembly hall, a vast square of canvas at the back of the big top. There were five hundred people in the bleachers, but he would have guessed five thousand by their cheering and the stomping of their feet. The sound made Conrad nervous; he came bellowing from the ring with his trunk swinging wildly.

“Hold him!” Flip shouted. She pushed her horse against the elephant. “Harold, grab on to his harness.”

“I can't stay,” said Harold. He had seen the beast that feeds with its tail. “I have to—”

“You have to
hold
him,” said Flip. “You have to hold him every second.”

Harold groaned, but he did as he was told. He slid his hand through Conrad's harness, and the performers swirled around him, passing in and out of the big top as Mr. Hunter announced each act in turn.

“The Fearless Flying Frizzles!” he shouted. And out past Harold ran a man and a woman dressed in white. The woman was chubby, the man very short, and both so old that their hair was gray. A drum beat a slow roll as they climbed up dangling ropes to platforms at the top of the tent, where the sun made dappled patches on the canvas. The crowd went silent as the Frizzles stood there. Then a trumpet squeaked, and the band burst into “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” The Frizzles swung out in the air. For nearly five minutes they soared from trapezes, back and forth, crossing in the air. Harold watched through the entrance, glad in a way that he had one hand stuck in Conrad's harness. The Frizzles weren't good enough to make him want to clap.

The music changed to “Waltzing Matilda,” and a tightrope walker came on, but he trembled like a leaf. The audience stopped cheering, and the tent seemed hollow and empty. The clowns barely got a laugh; the woman with the dogs got booed. Harold blushed, embarrassed for them all. Then Flip was standing beside him, her white robe nearly touching the ground. “Pretty sad,” she said. “Isn't it?”

Harold didn't answer.

“Well, it's gonna get worse right now.”

Mr. Hunter's voice echoed from the tent. “They dance, they waltz, they do the tango. They weigh seventeen tons, but they're as light on their feet as Ginger Rogers. Ladies and gentlemen, the pachyderms!”

Flip took Conrad's harness. “You gotta see this.”

She led the elephants into the big top, and Harold couldn't leave, not then. He stood right in the doorway as the roses went dancing to the swing of “Mairzy Doats.” They bumbled around like pigs in a sty, lurching backward and sideways as the tune bounced merrily on.

Harold was glad when it ended. He rubbed Conrad's trunk and said, “That was pretty good,” to make him feel a little better.

The tumblers passed him, dashing out and puffing back. And just as Harold thought he might sneak away, he saw Flip leading her horses in a snorting row through the assembly hall.

“And now!” shouted Mr. Hunter. “She's amazing, she's astounding, she's ab-so-lute-ly beautiful!”

Flip untied the black ribbon at her waist. She pulled off her robe and gave it to Harold. “Hold on to this,” she said. “Okay?”

“S-Sure.” He stammered and blushed. Underneath the robe she wore nothing but spangles, just a tiny suit that gleamed and glistened as she climbed onto General Sherman.

“Wish me luck,” she said. But Harold couldn't speak.

The crowd had fallen deathly quiet; they'd long ago stopped clapping. Mr. Hunter's voice was the only sound in the tent. “She's a fearless, fabulous fabricator of wonder. She's the one you've always heard about, the girl on six white horses. She's …” A drumroll started. “Filipina Pharaoh!”

“Filipina?” said Harold.

“Don't laugh.” She nudged the horse, and it leapt forward.

Into the ring she went at a gallop, leaping the bank to the sawdust-covered ring. The band played “She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain” as she galloped around and around the ring, the five other generals falling into line behind her, as perfectly spaced as cogs on a wheel. Light sparkled on her spangles; sawdust flew at the horses' hooves. But there was just a spattering of applause, a feeble sound.

Then Flip stood up. She teetered and caught her balance, then leapt from the horse, somersaulting backward. She landed on General Grant, and leapt again to General Lee as he passed. The horses ran, their tails sweeping back, and she somersaulted from one to another without seeming to move at all.

The applause grew louder, then louder still when she turned and ran from horse to horse as they thundered by below her. Then half the horses turned and raced the other way, and she rode two at once, switching as they crossed paths. The crowd whistled and applauded loudly enough to drown out the band.

Harold took his glasses off. His eyes were blinking as fast as insect wings. The horses were a blur of white and Flip a streak of blue, but he had never seen a thing even half as great as that.

A hand fell on his shoulder. Big red fingers squeezed him. “She's good, for a white girl,” said Thunder Wakes Him.

The old Indian stood in his headdress and his leggings, his chestnut horse behind him. He held his lance upright, with the feathers hanging at the top. “You sleep well,” he said. “I told you so.”

“Told me what?” asked Harold.

“That when you woke, I'd be gone.”

Flip rode General Grant out from the ring to the hippodrome. She circled the track twice and came through the door at a gallop, to a deafening din of applause. She was glowing with pleasure and pride, her face as bright as her spangles.

“Oh, hi, Bob,” she said to Thunder Wakes Him. She took her robe from Harold.

“You did well, little rider,” said the old Indian.

“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” boomed from the tent, and another tumbler went somersaulting out and nearly sprained his ankle. He came limping back as Mr. Happy passed him, his welded rings spinning. The voice of a child carried through the silent tent: “I bet they're stuck together.” And then Mr. Hunter held up his hands, as though to call for a quiet that was already there.

“Our grand finale,” he said. “A sight you will never forget.”

The old Indian tugged at his buckskin. “That's me,” he said, and pulled his horse toward him. From its back he took his roll of leather and hides and placed them on the ground. “Will you keep this safe?” he asked. “My medicine bundle's in there.”

Mr. Hunter stood alone in the ring in his top hat and tails. “From the untamed West!” he cried. “From the battlefield of the Little Bighorn! The last of a tribe of red men! The most daring, the most dashing, the most death-defying rider you will ever see! The man who counted coup on Custer! The man who rode with Sitting Bull! We are proud to present Thunder Wakes Him!”

The old Indian rode out from the assembly hall at a slow, sedate walk. He circled the hippodrome, and the only sound was the hooves of the chestnut horse beating at the hardened ground. The tail of his headdress hung behind him; the feathers on his lance rippled back. Then, with a whoop, he threw down the lance and flung off the headdress, and put his heels to the big brown horse. It broke into a run, but a very slow run that wasn't much faster than its walk.

The band played a war dance full of drums and bugle shrieks, and Thunder Wakes Him did tricks on the horse's back. But the music was fast, and Thunder Wakes Him as slow as molasses. He was like a mechanical toy at the end of its clockwork, creaking from one side of the horse to the other, now sitting frontward, now backward, all the time moving as though surrounded by water. The crowd started to laugh.

The old horse came panting around the track, and a clown stepped out with a rifle. He held it up for the old Indian to grab, and he stood there for a long, long time—checking his watch, pretending to yawn—until the horse went plodding by. Thunder Wakes Him reached out and snatched the gun, and he made it seem—somehow—as though he'd done it on the fly. He spun the rifle end over end in such a slow and laborious way that the crowd cheered when he'd finished, and laughed all the harder.

He stretched out along the horse's back, and it seemed that he might have gone to sleep. Then the gun poked out under the horse's neck, and he fired blanks toward the bleachers as the horse plodded on.

The clown turned and chased the horse. In his baggy pants and enormous shoes, it took him twenty yards to catch it. He hung on to the tail and sledded on his shoes as Thunder Wakes Him did his slow, pathetic tricks. And the audience laughed hysterically. Then the clown's pants fell down and he tumbled along the hippodrome, leapt up and overtook the horse, and raced it from the ring. He beat it by a dozen yards.

The old Indian came a minute later. He reined the horse and patted the side of its head. “Did you hear them out there?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Harold.

“They cheered me, didn't they?” He grinned down from the horse's back. “Didn't they cheer me, Harold?”

“Yes, they did,” said Harold.

“They cheered me more than Flip, I think.” His ancient face cracked across the wrinkles. “Did you hear them laughing at the clown?”

“Sure I did,” said Harold.

The old Indian smiled. “Where is my bundle? My medicine bundle?”

“There,” said Harold. “Where you left it.”

Thunder Wakes Him took the bundle and tossed it on the horse's back. “I'll carry it now,” he said. “In the closing parade.”

“It's over?” asked Harold. “The whole circus?”

The old Indian nodded. He was lashing his bundle in place.

Harold gazed all around him. The band began to play the jazzy song that had opened the circus. Flip, in her spangles, was hauling Conrad down to his knees.

The music swelled inside the tent and then grew soft as Mr. Hunter announced the closing parade.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” he said. “For one last time, in all its entirety, I present to you the great Hunter and Green's Traveling Circus.”

Cymbals clashed and drums beat fast and loud. It was a wave of music that crashed through the big top.

“At the head of our parade,” said Mr. Hunter, “is the paragon of pachyderms, the largest living thing that ever walked in Trickle Creek.”

Harold turned to leave, but hands grabbed him, pulling him sideways. There were many hands, a sudden blur of faces. Only by their voices did he know the people there. The Frizzles shouted at him, “Come on, Harold.”

Mr. Happy grumbled. “Just pull him over.”

“Stop,” cried Harold. “I have to go.”

He heard Flip laugh. She was right in front of him, pushing him back toward Conrad. “You can't,” she said. “Not yet.”

A trombone whooped; a piccolo shrilled. “And on his back,” said Mr. Hunter, “is a boy called Harold Kline!”

Then all those hands were lifting him up, hoisting him onto Conrad's velvet blanket. He scrambled for a handhold as he felt the elephant rise.

“He's the pachyderms' pal,” said Mr. Hunter. “He's the mentor of the monstrous mammals.”

Conrad went forward at a high-stepping trot. Harold swept through the entrance and into the ring. The music seemed to crash around him like waves, and he saw a crowd of faces on his left, a blur of hands applauding. And on his right was Mr. Hunter, turning in the center of the ring.

“He will bring to Salem, for those with means to see it, a feat never before accomplished in the known universe. Drive to Salem in your motor cars; take the bus or catch the train; walk there if you have to, and if you cannot walk, then crawl. But take yourselves to Salem or forever rue the day you did not see … pachyderms playing baseball!”

The bleachers shook, and voices cheered. Conrad trumpeted as he circled through the tent with Harold clinging to his back. Every spotlight was aimed at the Ghost, and they glinted off his little black glasses; they shone in his colorless hair. And he raised one hand, one small white hand, in the tiniest little wave.

He blinked at all the people, though he couldn't tell the men from boys, or the boys from girls, the way his eyes were shaking. But Conrad trotted on, his head so high and his trumpeting so loud that he might have thought the cheering was all for him. Behind him came Max Graf and Canary Bird, the Frizzles and the high-wire men. When Harold was halfway around the ring he could see the performers still coming out, Mr. Happy rolling his rings like a wheel, Flip with her six white horses. They spaced themselves so perfectly that Harold passed the old Indian right in the entrance. He steered through the flaps to the assembly hall.

And waiting there was Roman Pinski. He stood in the shadows, close against the canvas. His voice came up through the din of noise, through a clatter of bleachers as the audience flooded from the big top.

“You think you're really something, don't you, Whitey?”

Harold didn't stop. He urged Conrad into a faster walk, into a trot through the rear door. Roman shouted after him. “Come back here, Maggot.” But the elephant pounded from the tent, and Harold nudged him to the right, past a startled man who fell away like a toppled chair. Conrad hurtled along as Harold bounced on his back, steering always to the right, until he reached the elephants' tent. The hose was still running, the patch of mud now wide and deep. Conrad splashed through it and stopped on dry grass.