The Boy Who Invented the Bubble Gun

by Paul Gallico

  The bus driver had a try. He said, “Man, use your nut. You’re crazy. When we get to Juarez them Mexican cops’ll grab you.”

  Wilks laughed and flipped the grenade again, pretending to miss it before catching it. “Haw! Not with this they won’t. You talk into that thing and tell ’em to fix it up with them greasers on the other side to lay off me, see? And the dough gets handed to me this side of the border.”

  At police headquarters in Oklahoma City, a police captain was snapping orders into the telephone. “I want the road cleared through to the border. Get it? There’ll be a man there with the money . . . No, no, no! For chrissake, don’t try anything, you fools. And tell that goddamned FBI if there’s a shoot-out they’ll have the blood of these passengers and kids on their hands.”

  He listened for a moment and then repeated with emphasis, “You heard me. I said no! This man is a dangerous lunatic. We’ve contacted the Mexicans at Juarez Oeste, but you better cover the main border station and El Paso as well. We’ll worry about the international end of it later. I want outriders at the front, say at fifty yards to clear the way and no one to approach closer than that. I’m holding you responsible.”

  By this time 396 had picked up an escort of some thirty motor-cycles and state troopers’ cars following at the required distance. Ahead another squadron of troopers were clearing the way, waving trucks and cars to the side of the road. Above a helicopter clattered.

  The size of the escort and the utter helplessness in the face of his power was obviously giving Wilks pleasure and he could not keep a half smirk of self-satisfaction from his face. The bus entered, and was about to roll down the long main street of, the fairly sizeable town of Morellos. The way had been cleared. Nothing moved in the street, local constables and sheriffs kept townspeople back and under control. The cortège roared through even more loudly as the sides of the brick and wooden buildings threw back an echo.

  The smirk of self-admiration turned into one of amusement as they emerged from the other side of town. Wilks said, “Well now, wasn’t that purty? Them cops sure had that town fixed up right nice. That’s the way it’s got to be all the way. Everybody settle down now peaceable-like.” He tossed the grenade into the air again. Then, grinning, he looked over at Marshall and said, “That’s what got you scared, ain’t it? Some he-ro. Now, I got the guts to take the ride with this thing if I got to, but yer nuthin’ but a yellowbelly.” His satisfaction with the way things were going had made him forget that he had intended to kill Marshall, but Marshall did not know this. He was still white and visibly shaken.

  With a swift sidelong glance Marshall became aware of Julian and two disappointed and reproachful eyes, magnified by the spectacle lenses, regarding him, questioning him, trusting him and waiting for him to do something, increasing the extent of Marshall’s bitterness and frustration to the point where it almost overcame his fear. He knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet. The man with the pistol would remember. Christ, all this hero stuff and all that crap the goddamn movies and TV kept feeding people. Bang! Bang! You’re dead! A lightning hip draw, or the guy getting up after being punched, kicked, slugged, and knocking the baddies on their asses. What shit! So when it really happened you stood there shaking with the sweat pouring out from under your arms and wanting to pee in your pants. The man with the gun and the grenade was in command. Marshall had noted that when he flipped it he always caught it so that one finger was at the loop of the pin already half pulled out. One twitch and the bomb would be armed.

  C H A P T E R

  9

  Curiously the fantasy that was now being entertained by Julian had no beginning, no end, but only a middle. In the fantasy the Bubble Gun became the classic long-barrelled Colt. He would beat the baddie to the draw and save Marshall and all the rest.

  The thought was clouding his bewilderment over Marshall’s strange behaviour. Julian had nothing against which to compare the vast gulf between the dream world of the idiot box in which puffs of smoke issued from six shooters and rifles but somehow the good guys never seemed to get hit except one or two expendable extras and the extraordinary cruelty of reality in which live people, good, bad and indifferent, innocent and guilty, suddenly found themselves torn and shredded, dead or suffering excruciatingly. He had no measuring stick as to the speed with which a tragic situation can explode from static quiet into the most monstrous horrors. Nor had he the slightest inkling of the mind of Wilks who, ill-favoured though he seemed, spoke to the woman in the understandable language of reasonableness. “Why ma’am, I like kiddies and kiddies like me. I got kiddies of my own at home I wouldn’t want to see no harm come to any more’n you would yours.” Nobody had been hurt, there had been no violence and within that context Julian’s scenario would work. Headline: BOY HERO SAVES HIJACKED BUS.

  However, to reach the middle part where this sweet and beautiful dream would be realized he had to get there and so Julian arose and stood in the aisle. Automatically, the black Colt came up and followed him, the muzzle at one end of an imaginary line and the boy’s forehead at the other.

  Wilks said, “Hey, where do you think yer goin’, sonny?”

  Julian said, “I want a drink.”

  Stiff with horror, Marshall hissed, “Sit down.”

  Julian darted a swift glance at him and then looked quickly away for there was the same frightened man, something he had never seen before, a grown-up in the grip of almost abject fear. But this was not at all the Marshall of his fantasy, his friend who had been looking after him and offered to be his big brother if he came to any trouble, the Marshall that he, Julian, was now going to repay by saving him. A curious reversal. Julian suddenly had become Marshall and the cowering Marshall was Julian.

  Julian said, “B-b-but I’m thirsty.”

  The fear that Marshall had known for himself was nothing to what gripped him now as he expected to see the child killed before his eyes, the heavy bullet smashing his skull, blood and brains spattering the surroundings. Out of the corner of his mouth he said, “For Christ’s sweet sakes sit down, you little bastard. You want to get us all killed?” But he was careful not to move. There was no telling what could light the fuse to that filthy, unstable package of maniacal explosive up front there.

  As it happened, it was the self-adulation, self-pity syndrome that took over at that moment. Wilks sneered, “Well now, mister, that ain’t no way to talk ’cause the little feller wants a drink.”

  A kind of blind anger suddenly replaced Marshall’s fear of what Wilks might do and he lost his common sense. He said, “You’re just looking for an excuse to kill someone, aren’t you?”

  It did seem that the more one accused Wilks of villainy, the more eager he became to exhibit the sweet moderation that lay behind the deadly weapons he wielded, and he whined, “Now, now, you folks got me all wrong,” and then addressed Julian directly, “Young feller, don’t you pay no mind to that yellowbelly. You just go and get yourself a drink.”

  And so there it was, things as they were actually happening, and the words out of the man’s mouth, and nothing really of which to be frightened.

  Politely Julian said, “Thanks,” turned and marched down to the water cooler where he pulled a paper cup out of the dispenser and, with his eyes watching Wilks and the whole frozen static scene over the rim of his spectacles, took a long sip. The water cooler was just outside the door of the lavatory. Julian asked, “Can I g-g-go in here a minute?”

  The kink of Wilks’s mind now suddenly led away from death and down the path to comedy and he laughed, “Sure, sure, kid. When you gotta go, you gotta go. Ain’t that right?”

  Julian studied Wilks for a moment and then glanced again briefly at Marshall who was still sitting stiff and immovable, staring straight ahead, that Marshall who was a stranger to him. He went into the lavatory and shut the door behind him carrying his cup of water.

  Inside the lavatory Julian was now firmly in the grip of how it seemed to him things could go and, using a piece of the
scented soap from the wash basin, he did what was necessary to implement the big and glorious dream.

  And all the while the bus was rolling down the road to Mexico with its weird escort of armed and helpless outriders front and rear and two more helicopters from the army raising dust overhead. Fields, fences, adobe houses, staring cattle flashed by. In city rooms far and near, wires were humming and early edition stories were being written about the first hijacking of a transcontinental bus.

  The momentary euphoria of his joke still had Wilks in its grip and he shouted to Milo Balzare, the little black-haired foreign musician, “Hey you, why don’t you play some music to cheer the folks up like before. That was right nice.” He waved the .45 in his direction. “You heard me.”

  Music was indeed all that was lacking in that weird, unbelievable scene. Balzare took up his hurdy-gurdy, touched the strings with his dark head bent over it for a moment and then picked out a slow, meditative and melancholy tune with the drone underlining the strangely repetitive sequence of the two interwoven melodies. None but he knew that he was playing Pavane For a Dead Princess by Ravel.

  Wilks said, “What the hell kind of music do you call that? C’mon, give us some of that stuff like before.”

  Balzare, his eyes half closed from the effect of his playing but his face utterly composed, said evenly, “If I am to die this is the kind of music I choose to die to”, and as though to emphasize his defiance he stepped up the forte of the drone and the melancholy melody rang through the bus more loudly as the door to the lavatory opened and Julian emerged, no longer carrying his paper cup but with his right hand in his jacket pocket.

  Wilks turned his attention to him and asked, “Feel better, kid?”

  The way he talked made it somehow so much simpler to go on. Julian said, “Uh huh. Thanks. Say, would you like to see my Bubble Gun I invented?”

  Wilks queried, “Your what?”

  At that moment Julian was level with Marshall and Marshall noting Julian’s hand tucked into his pocket had a frightful prevision of what was coming and what the results could be and could only breathe in anguish, “Oh, God no, Julian don’t.”

  But there was no Marshall for Julian then, only his own line to be followed and he moved past him and produced his Bubble Gun.

  In miniature it was almost an exact replica of the big army cannon which for the moment had been held loosely but now stiffened in Wilks’s hand and again levelled at Julian’s freckled forehead, topped by his tousled carroty hair and Wilks shouted, “Hey!” and for that instant there was the smell of death filling the bus, though Julian was unaware of it as he pulled the trigger of the only existing model of the Bubble Gun. A large iridescent soapy sphere blossomed from the muzzle, detached itself, floated away, caught a splinter of reflected light which turned it first gold, then blue and pink, after which it vanished in mid air leaving a single drop to fall into the aisle.

  The anti-climax was as much of a shock to all the passengers held in the thrall of terror as it was to the terrorist, as though the bubble had exploded with the roar of the hand grenade in the man’s hand. Somebody laughed hysterically and Wilks, lowering his own gun, said, “Well, whaddya know. You say you invented that? C’mon up here and lemme have a look at it.”

  Julian said, “Yes sir,” pulled the trigger again and produced a second bubble. This one chose to sail off in another direction to burst upon the pocket chess board held between the pair of chess fiends, causing them to look up angrily as it left a small damp spot.

  Wilks said, “Well now, ain’t that purty. But shucks, sonny, that’s nuthin’ but a l’il old water pistol.”

  Julian continued down the aisle protesting, “It’s not a water p-p-pistol. It’s my Bubble Gun. I did so invent it. I’m g-g-going to get a p-p-patent for it.”

  Wilks said, “Go on now. I don’t believe it. You show me.” How he was enjoying the kindly, paternal figure he was cutting behind his control of the situation and the ever-present threat of his weapons! They could all see that Sam Wilks was a human being just like everybody else and loved children. He let the big .45 hang loosely from his trigger finger and held out his hand. “Let’s have a look.”

  Close to him now Julian raised his Bubble Gun, pointed it into the face of Wilks and pulled the trigger for the third time and here that middle part of the fantasy which had no real start or finish did come to an end. Reality, but of an unexpected nature, took over.

  Instead of the fat, soapy sphere ballooning from the muzzle there came a stream, squirt, a succession of small bubbles like a flight of coloured bees and indeed which, like such a swarm, suddenly enveloped Wilks’s face, bubbles pouring seemingly endlessly like rounds from a machine-gun, momentarily blinding him. He yelled, “Oh, my eyes, my eyes. I’ll kill . . . ,” but that was as far as he got even though by reflex he raised both gun and grenade, but for that instant there was nothing he could see to shoot. That momentary distraction of the hijacker was all the bus driver needed. He was ready with the big wrench that he had managed to sneak to his side. He had it in his hand as he leaped up from his seat, leaned over and with a backhand stroke hit Wilks with all his force on the side of the head and, even as the hijacker began to fall forward on his face, the driver trod on the brake and jerked the bus to a halt.

  And so for the end to Julian’s fantasy it was still Marshall who saved the situation, for as Wilks began to topple forward, the ex-soldier saw that the finger looped in the grenade pin had reacted and pulled it loose. He had ten seconds. He needed only seven of them to whip out of his seat and flash down the aisle, knocking Julian out of the way, to dive, scrabbling frantically under the unconscious Wilks, and come up with the grenade in his hand, half sitting on the floor, one leg twisted under him almost in the position of a shortstop knocked off his feet by a hard-hit grounder. The driver’s head was fortunately out of the way as he came on with his wrench for a second blow if it was needed. His window, the only one in the bus which was workable, was open. With all his force, Marshall, from his sitting position, flung the grenade. It sailed through the opening, over a farmer’s fence and into a cabbage patch, where with a shattering roar, it sent up a tremendous geyser of earth, knocking two state troopers off their motorcycles. Pieces of metal rattled against the side of the bus and starred one of the shatter-proof windows. A shower of dirt and cabbage leaves descended. One of the overhead helicopters bucked like a mustang from the blast but was fought back into control. And then it was over.

  Thereafter, for the first few minutes until rangers and state troopers regained control, there was the ugliest and most dangerous kind of chaos and hysteria, a mêlée of arms and legs within the bus, the sounds of heavy breathing, blows, the screaming of the women—and all in a swirl of dust invading the interior from a landing helicopter.

  It was dangerous without too, with the copters disgorging armed men, others milling about, their fingers on the triggers of rifles, pistols and automatic weapons, knowing little, identifying no one, but jangled nerve ends ready for messages to shoot.

  At the front, piled up and writhing in the aisle of the bus was a heap of humans-into-animals, blindly and insanely trying to hammer at the prone figure of the unconscious hijacker, shouting curses at him, losing all sense of ordination, striking one another, flailing, tearing, scratching. As the lawmen crowded in, blocking, pushing and jostling one another at the narrow doorway, their weapons at cock, the danger was far from over.

  At the bottom of the heap, Marshall was covering Julian with his body and at the same time trying to protect his own head and neck with his arms while shouting, “All right, all right, it’s over! Get off! It’s over! Stop it, stop it!”

  There had been just one remaining moment for him before the wave of hysterical passengers engulfed him and Julian to pluck Wilks’s .45 from his fingers and fling it away under a seat for he knew that anybody caught with that weapon in his hand during the first confused moments was likely instantly to be shot.

  The dust swirled thi
cker as yet another helicopter this one bearing Press, touched down; someone outside let off a rifle by accident and the crack of the shot brought about one of those curious moments of stunned total silence while the forces of hysteria gathered themselves anew.

  But now there were new, savage voices to be heard, and thumps of blows, cries of pain and orders—“Okay, okay, break it up, break it up . . . where is he?”

  One by one, some half stunned, the men trying to get at Wilks were beaten and dragged off the heap and flung away down the aisle. The weight lifted and Marshall risking a glance upwards saw two massive leather booted legs and a rifle butt about to descend upon him.

  He yelled up, “Hey, wait! I got a kid under me!”

  The steel edge stopped an inch from his skull and the big trooper said—“Git up and git your hands up . . .”

  Marshall climbed slowly to his knees, his hands raised, careful to make no sudden movement. Beneath him Julian stirred, his clothing rumpled, his glasses knocked awry, his expression still dazed.

  Then it was fortunate that the driver took a hand, his voice pitched high with still present hysteria. He pointed to the now revealed figure of Wilks, prone and motionless on his face. “There he is! That’s the guy! That’s the son of a bitch. The kid squirted something in his face and I let him have it with this.”

  The trooper glanced from the prone figure, to Marshall kneeling, to Julian trying to pull himself together and adjust his spectacles and finally to the driver standing there with the heavy wrench.

  “I hit him with this,” the driver repeated and showed the wrench.