Ghost Boy (23 page)

Chapter

45

A
ll that morning, clouds rolled in from the west. They crept across the mountains and blotted them out. They covered the sky, and the rain started halfway through the matinee. It fell with an incredible roar on the big top. It flooded the field and streamed underneath the tent flaps, turning the sawdust ring to a brown sludge.

The old Indian splashed through his slow routine, then rode his chestnut horse out from the ring. He took off his headdress and put on a slicker. “I'll see you in Elysium,” he told Harold.

“What about the evening show?” asked Harold.

“I don't have time.” He was already moving off, into the rain. “I have a long ride to the valley of the Snake.”

It was just as well that he missed it. The evening show was a disaster, the sort of night that Mr. Hunter called a lash-up.

A clown's firecracker exploded too soon, blowing the fake nose right from his face. He writhed on the ground as the people laughed and cheered, thinking it all a part of the act. Mr. Frizzle, at the performers' entrance, sent two other clowns into the ring to bring him off on a stretcher.

Then Mr. Frizzle himself tumbled from his trapeze. He missed a handhold and hurtled down, bouncing from the rigging to land in the sawdust of the ring. His wife, her face stark white, swung above him, back and forth, like a tolling human bell. He was lucky and only twisted an ankle, but he wouldn't be back in the air in time for Salem.

And everyone waited for the third thing to happen.

“They go in threes,” said Mr. Hunter. “It's always the same: a terrible trio of tragedy.”

The tiny audience went out to a deluge that soaked them in an instant. No one stopped at the sideshow. No one could; the tents were like islands in a sea of mud. And the rain never stopped as the calliope played the breaking-down song.

On Conrad's back, Harold skidded poles and canvas through mud as thick as chocolate pudding. The trucks, when they left in a convoy, were like clods of dirt crawling through the rain.

Harold sprawled exhausted in his seat as the Diamond T growled through the darkness. The wipers swept back and forth, but the water from his clothes made the glass just as wet on the inside. Beside him, Wicks shifted gears.

“So you did it,” said the cook. “You got those big, dumb things playing baseball. And just in time, I guess.”

“I hope so,” said Harold. “I won't know for sure until Salem.”

“Well, Flip thinks you did it. She's pretty happy, isn't she?”

Harold shrugged. He had hardly seen her since the night before, when she'd fled crying from the tent.

“I see,” said Wicks. “She's a nice kid, but she doesn't think about other people.”

“Oh, she's good to
me,
” said Harold.

“'Cause it suits her. You can make Flip famous with those elephants. You can make her rich. She's
got
to be good to you.”

“What do you mean?” asked Harold.

“Those elephants belonged to her daddy. When he died, Mr. Hunter took them, sort of. Said he'd buy them over time, a little bit every week. It was kind of nice of him then; they weren't worth much, a bunch of crummy dancing elephants. But now he owes her a bundle, 'cause of course he never paid for them.”

The truck jolted, then swayed around a corner. “Now he's got no choice. He has to pay her, see?”

“But that's good,” said Harold.

“Good for Flip. Not so good for Mr. Green.”

Harold lifted his head at the sound of that name. He had wondered for a long time about the mysterious Mr. Green. “Where is he?” he asked.

“
What
is he, you mean,” said Wicks.

“Huh?”

“
Lincoln
Green?” Wicks raised an eyebrow. “
Jackson
Lincoln Green?”

Harold shook his head.

“Money, kid.” Wicks laughed. “Mr. Hunter thought his circus sounded better if he tacked on another name: Hunter and Green's. But there's too much Hunter and not enough green.”

Harold sat glumly in his seat. He couldn't believe all Flip wanted was to make the elephants more valuable.

“Hey, don't be a sad sack,” said Wicks. “It's not just Flip who's counting on those elephants. It's me and you and everyone. If they play ball in Salem, we'll all be in clover.”

Chapter

46

T
he convoy left the rain behind and carried on in silvery moonlight. It wove through forests and foothills, bending north and south again. Then it crossed the mountains and started down toward the great, flat plain of the Snake River. It crossed the mountains as Harold slept.

He was disappointed when he woke and saw them behind him, black against the morning sun, awesome in their size. As the trucks threaded down toward the river, he looked back at every turn. “Did we really go over those?” he asked.

“Over them?” Wicks laughed his mean laugh. “Are you out of your mind? You go
through
them, kid. You go around them.”

“Oh,” said Harold. He'd thought the road would climb to their very summits, jagging up and down across the backbone of America. “But we're almost there now, aren't we? We're almost in Oregon now.”

“Getting close,” said Wicks.

“How close?”

“Tomorrow night. We'll leave Elysium in the evening, and the next thing you know, we'll be over the line.”

Harold stared ahead. He saw one of the Cannibal King's arrows fixed to a tree. The road twisted up a hill, down toward a bridge where a burst of arrows appeared along the railing. Then Wicks shifted down through his gears, and the Diamond T swung to the left, following the convoy down a steep grade.

A dark pine forest closed around them. The road narrowed until branches scraped with a screech down the side of the truck. Other roads crossed theirs in all directions, and the red arrows were everywhere. Then the trees fell away on his right, and Harold looked down a hundred feet to a vast green field below him.

“Elysium,” said the cook.

A river twisted through it. A steam train, puffing smoke, crawled across a trestle. Then the trees closed in again, and the Diamond T, its motor growling, went down the hill, around a bend and out to the field of grass. It was so green and thick that Harold wanted only to lie in it, to stretch out on his back and do nothing at all.

He watched through the windshield as the convoy stopped in a ragged line. Doors flew open, and a swarm of people flung themselves into the grass. But Mr. Hunter came striding down, shouting orders and waving his hands.

“Pitch the cook tent,” he said. “Let's go, everyone. Get the canvas out, the elephants ready.”

He was met with a chorus of groans from the roustabouts and riggers. Little clumps of dirt sailed toward him from every direction. But the people got up and started to work.

Harold stepped down from the cab and met Wicks behind the truck. They opened the doors, and the smell of elephants came out. A fat bee buzzed around Harold's head, flying spirals past his hair when he tried to chase it off.

Wicks laughed. “This place is full of bees.”

Max Graf and Canary Bird were set free to root through the field. Harold felt sorry for Conrad, who turned his eyes balefully toward the grass as he knelt to get his harness on. “Don't worry. You'll have lots of time to play,” said Harold.

All along the line of trucks, doors were creaking, panels thudding open. Flip turned the horses loose; she sent them away with a shout, and they galloped off with the mountains behind them, their white manes flying.

The tents were pitched slowly, cautiously, with a great deal of shouting and anger. Roustabouts who sang at their work every day now went at it like sulking mules. There were a tension and an awful feeling of dread; everyone, from Mr. Hunter down to the boy who inflated balloons, knew that another accident would happen soon to complete the string of three.

Harold was especially careful. He had lived his dream; he had seen the beast that feeds with its tail. He was sure a death would follow, as certainly as the man in trouble had come from the storm. And somehow, he thought, it would have to involve Roman, the angry boy in the Gypsy Magda's crystal ball. He rode Conrad with an unusual caution, plodding through his labors.

Worried riggers fumbled at their work. A guy rope on the cook tent snapped loose from its stake, and the heavy center pole swung wildly side to side. Workers scrambled from the canvas at its base like fleas from a wet dog as it tilted, swayed and toppled over, nearly crushing Wicks. A job that usually took an hour stretched to three on this day, and by noon the heat was staggering.

When at last the tents were up, people talked in only grunts and shouts. The roustabouts did their laundry in the little stream, and an argument over a pair of socks ended in a fistfight.

Harold led the elephants to a willow grove beside the river. They tore the branches off and gorged themselves; they lashed at their backs with the fronds.

It was too hot to play baseball. Harold lay in the grass, his back against a tree. The sun made mirages out of the trees and the mountains around them. The air shimmered in the heat so that Flip, when she came, looked as shiny as an angel.

“You're not practicing,” she said.

“The heat,” said Harold. He waited for her to snap at him, to tell him to get up anyway.

But she laughed. “It is kinda hot,” she said, and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “I guess we can wait until evening.”

“Aren't you angry?” asked Harold.

“No. Of course not,” she said.

Harold frowned; he would never understand her. Then she sat beside him and twirled her finger in the grass.

“Harold,” she said. “There's something I haven't told you.” Her hair fell over her eyes. “When my father died—”

“Mr. Hunter took the elephants. I know,” said Harold.

Her head snapped up. She looked at him, then went back to twirling grass. “Yeah. But that's not all. You see, I got pretty close to Roman then. Pretty close, and …”

Harold felt his heart sink. He could actually feel it falling, just snapping away from whatever held it and plopping into his stomach like a big pudding.

“Well, we're sorta going to get married,” said Flip.

Harold wondered if his would be the death that followed, if he would just drop dead with a broken heart. He said, “How do you ‘sorta' get married?”

For a moment she blushed. “We're waiting for a bit. We decided that we'd better wait until—”

She stopped.

But Harold knew the rest. “Until you get some money.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. But then she faced him squarely and took his hands. “But listen, Harold. You can't think I was just trying to use you, 'cause I wasn't. You're a nice guy, just the sweetest guy, and I really do like you lots.”

He tried to turn his head away so that she wouldn't see him crying. But she leaned across him.

“I
do,
” she said. “Why do you think I'm telling you now? Why don't I wait until Salem?”

“Because I've taught the elephants everything,” said Harold. “I've got them all ready, and anyone can do the rest. Anyone!”

“No,” she said. “Oh, no. It's because you
are
such a nice guy. I thought how happy you'd be in Salem, and then how sad you'd get when you learned about Roman. That's why I'm doing it: so you won't be sad.”

“Gosh, thanks,” said Harold. “Gee, it's great not being sad.”

She almost laughed. She
did
smile. Then she took his glasses off and folded them. She wiped his tears away with her fingers. “You have the most incredible eyes,” she said, very gently.

Harold shivered. No one had ever looked right in his eyes without the glasses there in front.

“You won't believe me now,” said Flip. “But it's true; I wish I'd met you sooner. I wish I'd met you a year ago.”

The Ghost sighed. “You wouldn't have liked me then,” he said. “No one liked me then.”

They sat together for a little while. Her tanned fingers rested on his white ones. A bee came buzzing between them and darted off across the grass. The elephants covered themselves with willow branches. Then Flip got up. She said, “I better go.”

Harold stayed where he was. Hours passed, and he didn't move. He didn't even look up until he heard a splashing in the water.

Through a tunnel the willows made, their branches overhanging, rode Thunder Wakes Him in his feathered bonnet, his lance held at a slant. The big chestnut horse plodded wearily along, stumbling on stones that clinked and rumbled underneath the surface.

The old Indian urged the horse up to the grass, stepped down, and took his medicine bundle from its back. He put it on the ground, and the horse sagged, exhausted, its head and tail drooping down, its knees half bent.

“I had to run him hard,” the old Indian said. “We came a ways—a long ways—and this is the first time that we have stopped.”

“Since I saw you last?”

“Yes.”

Harold leaned his head against the willow trunk. “Gosh,” he said.

The old Indian sat beside him, just where Flip had sat. “You look sad,” he said.

“No wonder,” said Harold. His girlfriend was going to get married.

“I just passed the camp of the Cannibal King. He asked if I had seen you.”

“Where is he?” asked Harold.

“Downriver. His trailer is pushed among the trees.”

Harold shifted sideways as the old Indian leaned against the tree. Their shoulders touched.

“Are you frightened to meet him?” asked Thunder Wakes Him. “It is all right to be frightened about something that is hard to do.”

“I don't think I'm frightened,” said Harold. “I'm sort of … I don't know. Sort of worried, I guess.”

The old Indian nodded. He faced east and Harold faced north. “I was like that with General Custer when the warriors came and said he was riding toward us. ‘The Son of the Morning Star!' they shouted; he was just beyond the hills. Oh, I had a terrible fear that day. I put on my war paint, and my hands were shaking so that I drew my straight lines like lightning bolts. I gave away everything that I owned—my horses, my wives, my lodge, a pretty rawhide doll I was given as a child. I said, ‘Here, take it all; I won't be back for this.' I thought the Son of the Morning Star would kill me just by looking at me, he was that big and that powerful. Fire and bullets would come from his eyes, that was what I thought.”

Harold turned his head. He saw the old Indian in profile, his hooked nose and his braids hanging down.

“And then I saw him dead by the Little Bighorn, I saw him dead on the prairie grass, and I thought that the sun must have shrunk him like a raisin; he was a little man, that was all. He was just a little man with a big mustache, a funny man to look at.”

The old Indian rubbed his shoulders against the poplar bark. “So you see, there is nothing to be frightened of. A man is only a man, no matter what you call him.”

Harold swallowed. “Will you watch the elephants?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Thunder Wakes Him.