Harold ate quickly, eager to get back to the elephants. He shoveled the sauerkraut into his mouth and barely bothered to chew it. Then he heard the scrape of benches and looked up to see a lady settling in at the next table.
He saw her from the back, nylon stockings rising to a yellow skirt belted tight at her waist. She held a tray in her left hand, and in her right a baby. Just the crown of its head poked above her shoulder; its hand clung to her blouse. She put down the tray, and her hand went up to take the baby.
“Hi, Esther,” said Tina.
The lady turned her head, and Harold felt his eyebrows jump. Esther had a beard, a great black beard that covered her cheeks nearly to her eyes. “How’s it going?” she asked in a man’s deep voice. Then she sat, and the baby crawled down to the table.
And Harold’s fork fell from his hand.
It wasn’t a baby at all. It was a man, with wrinkles on his face, with red and wiry hair. He had no legs and no arms; miniature hands grew straight from his shoulders, tiny feet—like flippers—directly from his hips. He lay on his stomach, pushing forward on his fingers and toes, crawling over the table to the tray full of food.
“Hi, Wallo,” said Tina. She leaned sideways. “You look happy today.”
“Sauerkraut.” Wallo tipped up his head. It was wider than his shoulders, and nearly half of all he was. “I love sauerkraut,” he said.
Harold shuddered. He remembered how Flip had said she’d marry Wallo the Sausage Man if she had to. He tried to imagine that, Flip in her wedding dress, Wallo beside her … But he couldn’t.
Wallo ate straight from the tray, slurping up the shreds of cabbage. He said between mouthfuls, “Is that the elephant boy you’ve got with you?”
Tina nodded. “This is Harold.”
“Welcome to Hunter and Green’s,” said Wallo. He burped. “Excuse me.”
“Harold’s come to meet the Cannibal King,” said Tina.
“Good luck,” said Wallo. “The King’s miles from here, scouting a path toward the mountains.”
Samuel picked up Harold’s fork and put it back in the boy’s hand. “Eat,” he said softly. “You’ll make him uncomfortable if you stare.”
Harold looked down at his dinner, at the strands of pale yellow on his plate. The fork felt as heavy as a shovel, but he forced himself to eat. He saw Wallo just in the corner of his eye, a bizarre shape like a turtle without its shell. He said, as though to his cabbage, “Is he coming back?”
“Naw, not the King.” Wallo slurped and grunted. “Right now he’ll be sleeping. At the side of the road, in a field or a forest. When the sun goes down, so does the King. Then he rises with the moon and travels on, and he never goes back, only ahead. At night he’s a wild man.”
Harold smiled to himself. It was just as he’d pictured the Cannibal King, dancing in moonlit jungles with his strange tribe of Stone People. He even heard the drums, or thought he did, and saw Wicks beating on the counter with the handle of his spatula.
“Come on,” said Wicks. “Come on. There’s people waiting now.”
Wallo looked up. “We’d better hurry,” he said.
The moment they were done, Wicks chased them from the tent. “You can’t sit around all day,” he shouted at Harold. “It ain’t a restaurant.”
Harold got up. “Samuel?” he asked. “Does the Cannibal King ever eat here?”
“Take your talk outside,” shouted Wicks.
Tina levered up on her arms, her shoulders rising to the table. “It’s okay,” she said. “We can tell you about him later, Harold. Say, you’re coming to the trailer, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” said Harold. He watched Esther take Wallo in her arms and carry him toward the door. He put his bat over his shoulder and followed Samuel down the rows of tables, past the counter where Wicks picked at his teeth with the spatula blade.
“About time,” said the cook. “Show some consideration, for crying out loud.”
Harold didn’t answer. He followed Samuel through the door, past a line of people who stood along the canvas or leaned against the guy ropes. He squinted at faces that were blurred and indistinct, and spotted Flip in a group of four, her yellow hair shining. But she turned away as though she hadn’t seen him, and suddenly he felt ashamed to be coming from the tent with Samuel and the others. He ran a hand through his black hair and heard the voices asking, “Who’s that kid?” and, “What’s he doing here?”
He tightened his fingers around the bat. Someone laughed and said, “It’s the Babe.” And another voice said, “Look at his hair! Maybe it’s Jackie Robinson.”
Harold blushed. As dark as his hair was, no one could mistake him for Jackie, the Dodgers’ Negro infielder. He shrank inside himself, bewildered by the teasing. Didn’t he look the same as everyone else?
Tina hurried to his side. “Come on,” she said. “We’re all going back to the trailer.”
Harold tried to look away, but she circled around before him, her little legs, her little shoes, flashing through the grass. “Don’t you want to come?”
“Later,” he said. “Okay?” He veered off and broke into a run, heading for the elephants.
Chapter
26
“Swing!” shouted Harold. “Now you’ve got it!”
The elephant was catching on. Conrad nearly always swung the bat, though often wildly, and rarely hit the ball. He swung it like a golf club as the ball passed overhead, like a tennis racket as it skittered on the ground. And sometimes he just let go and sent the bat spinning in the most frightening directions. Then it bounced past Harold’s feet, and Canary Bird picked it up and held it in his trunk.
“You want to try?” asked Harold. “You want to have a turn?”
He tossed the ball. “Swing!” he shouted. And Canary Bird hit a long and sizzling drive that ricocheted off Conrad’s head with a wooden-sounding thunk.
Conrad looked so shocked, so startled, that Harold had to laugh. Then the big brown eyes blinked, and the trunk hung down like a wilted mustache. Harold ran to touch him. “I’m sorry,” he said, stroking the trunk. “I shouldn’t have laughed. You’re trying your best, and I shouldn’t have done that.”
He gave the bat to Conrad, and Canary Bird pouted like a child; he kicked at the ground and whimpered. “Oh, gosh,” said Harold. He couldn’t keep all of them happy. “You want to be the catcher? Huh? You want to try that out?”
He maneuvered the elephants into position, amazed by their grace, amused by their strange, rolling gait and the skin that drooped like sagging diapers from their haunches. He pitched and fetched, tossed the ball and ran to get it; Canary Bird was a better backstop than a catcher. But the elephants were learning, and he kept at the game with the patience he had used to teach Honey all her tricks.
It started to rain, but he kept on practicing. He never got angry when the elephants missed, when they stood accidentally on the ball and buried it deep in the mud. Sprinkles turned to showers, to short and heavy bursts.
Canary Bird was hitting one ball out of every ten, almost, when Flip came by. She stood in the shelter of the tent, and watched with her hands in her pockets.
“He’s not Pee Wee Reese,” she said.
“He’s batting nearly a hundred,” said Harold.
She laughed. “Gee, Harold, what if it works? You know something? People would come for hundreds of miles to watch elephants playing baseball.”
He took the ball in his glove and walked across to Flip. “I was thinking,” he said. “They should wear little caps. Little socks, maybe. A clown can be the bat boy, and you can wear an umpire’s shirt. Maybe the band could play ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’”
She was staring at him.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Your hair.” She touched her face. “It’s leaking.”
He didn’t understand.
She touched Harold’s face, stroking down his cheek, and her fingertips came away black.
Harold gawked at them. He rubbed his cheeks,
his forehead, smearing black across his face. He squeezed a hand through his hair and saw the water dribble black as mud down across his shirt.
“The dye!” he said. “The dye!”
“The what?” asked Flip. She giggled. “Harold, your hair’s going white.”
Harold panicked. He clamped a hand across his head; he covered it with the baseball glove. Flip laughed, and Harold turned to dash away. He ran into the tent rope and stumbled back, and Flip doubled up with laughter.
He ducked his head and dashed away again, under the rope, around the tent, across the field to the trailer.
He burst through the door, into the sitting room, and Tina looked up from the armchair; Samuel too. They laughed to see him, and he whirled down the corridor with the trailer rocking on its wheels, ripped open the door to the bathroom and locked himself inside. For only a moment he saw his face in the small mirror, and he was shocked by the streaks of black that dribbled down his cheeks. Then he tore his glasses off and twisted the faucets as far as he could. He shoved his head down in the sink, into the stream of water, and it poured and splashed around him, swirling down the drain in a black and inky stream.
He cried for himself, for his shame. He could never be anything better, he thought, and he was stupid to have tried.
Someone knocked at the door. Harold didn’t answer.
The knocks came again, not loud but gentle.
“Go away,” said Harold. “Leave me alone. Please leave me alone.”
The door swung open. “That lock doesn’t work anyway,” said Tina. “It hasn’t ever worked.”
She came in and closed the door; she climbed up onto the frilly cover of the toilet seat and leaned across to take Harold’s glasses from the corner of the sink. She folded them neatly and balanced them on the cushion of a toilet-paper roll.
“I should have known,” she said. “I should have guessed this would happen.”
Harold sniffled in the stream of water. He kept hearing Flip’s laughter, and imagined the joy she must have taken in his black-streaked face.
“I’m sorry I laughed.” Tina picked up a bar of soap that was twice the size of her hands and worked a froth into Harold’s hair. “I shouldn’t have laughed. But you looked so funny. All that black dripping off you. You looked so darned surprised.”
The bar of soap squirted from her fingers. She was laughing again, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’d be laughing yourself if it was someone else you saw.”
Harold shook his head. He would never laugh at anyone.
“Say,” she said. “You’re not angry with me, are you?”
“She knows,” said Harold.
“What do you mean?” asked Tina, busy with the soap again. “Who?”
“Flip,” he said. It was like being back in Liberty, but even worse. She would tease him now not only for what he always had been, but for what he’d tried to be as well. “She knows all about me.”
“Well, of course she knows.” Tina turned off the faucets and squeezed the water from Harold’s hair. “She knew right away, Harold. You don’t see a lady walking down the street in a rabbit-skin coat and say, ‘Oh, look! There goes a rabbit,’ do you?”
“Then she pretended she didn’t,” said Harold.
“That’s Flip. She was just having a bit of fun and sort of leading you on.” Tina patted his neck. “Head up.”
Harold lifted his head from the sink. He took the towel Tina held toward him. “She’ll hate me now,” he said.
“Oh, gracious sakes, she won’t. Not Flip.”
He covered his head, rubbing with the towel. It muffled the sound of Tina talking, and the tremendous crash that followed—that shook the trailer—seemed all the louder for it.
“What on earth!” said Tina.
Harold tore off the towel.
“Something hit us,” she said.
They ran down the hall and out through the door. Samuel was already there, standing on the grass under the small bathroom window. He scratched his head as he stared up at a dent in the metal, a crater perfectly round. But no one else was near; the circus lot was empty.
“It must have been one of those disks,” said Samuel. He turned around, looking up at the sky. “Everyone’s seeing them now, those flying disks.”
“Oh, they’ve got to be bigger than that,” said Tina.
“They’re from outer space,” he said knowingly.
She stooped, tipping her head to see under the trailer. “You lug, it’s just a baseball.”
A figure came running over the lot, shooting out from the tents, skidding on the wet grass. Only a blur for Harold, it stopped, then started again, sprinting straight toward them.
“It’s Flip,” said Tina.
Harold gasped. He fumbled through his clothes, feeling at his pockets. “My glasses,” he said.
“You don’t need them,” she said. “You don’t see any better with them.”
“But I look a lot better.”
She stopped his hand as it groped frantically across his hip. “Oh, Harold,” she said. “Don’t you ever learn?”
Flip came running, jumping, toward the trailer. “He did it!” she cried. “Harold, he did it!”
He turned to face her; there was nothing else to do. He faced her white from head to toe, his hair rubbed into standing tufts, his eyes like drops of water. He felt like a criminal turning to face a judge.
“It was Max Graf!” she shouted, fifty yards away. “I gave Max a turn, and he hit it clear across the lot.”
She ran straight to Harold and bowled into him. She spun him around and carried him along, and they slammed their shoulders on the trailer. “They can do it,” she said. “You were right, Harold. It’s going to be the greatest show that ever was.”
Then she leaned back, her hands on his arms. She looked at his hair, his eyes, his face as white as flour. “Well, that looks better,” she said, and hugged him tightly. “That looks a whole lot better now.”
Chapter
27
Elephants chased Harold through his sleep on the Airstream’s narrow sofa. Feet trampled around him, and he jolted awake, slamming his hand on the trailer’s wall. He heard a far-off bugling that frightened him for a moment, then the rasping rumble of Samuel’s snores.
He closed his eyes and felt as though he was back in Liberty. Almost every night he’d been lulled to sleep after troubling dreams by the sound of his father snoring. Then he put his hand on the metal wall and felt it shake very slightly as Samuel breathed, and he wriggled down into the cushions feeling safe and happy.
But it wasn’t Samuel that he thought of, nor his father, as he drifted back to sleep. He thought of Flip, of how she’d hugged him and danced him in a circle. He could still feel her arms around him, the sparks her fingers made. And Harold the Ghost, for the first time in years, fell asleep smiling.
In the morning they went back to work, the two of them together. Flip showed him how to feed and groom the horses, how to clean the stables. But all the time it was the elephants she talked about.
“They’re hard to teach, but once you’ve taught them something they remember it forever. They like to learn. Sometimes I’ve seen them dancing by themselves.” She laughed. “Or sorta dancing.”
She talked to him across the stables, leaning her head now and then past General Sherman to catch his eye as he worked.
“They cry, you know that? Elephants cry,” she said. “And tricky? Oh, you gotta watch them all the time, ’cause they’re always up to something.”
Flip showed him how to comb the horses’ manes, standing beside him as they worked on General Boggs. “Like this,” she said, and put her hand on his to show him how, her tanned fingers holding his, whiter than the horse’s mane. He grinned a stupid grin, feeling giddy and sort of sick.
He loved her more than ever now. She hadn’t said another word about the way he really looked, and he felt as though they shared a secret. He watched their hands moving together and
thought he could spend the rest of his life combing horses with Flip. But then she said, “It’s just like brushing your dog,” and that made him sad to think of Honey. His clear, pale eyes filled with tears, and he thought he had to wipe his nose but didn’t want to take his hand away. And he stood there crying, thinking of Honey and then his mother, seeing them both staring out the big front window of his house.
Flip stopped brushing. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He sniffed. “I feel sort of squirly inside.”
She frowned, then giggled, and that made him smile. “You know, you’re kinda cute,” she said.
They combed all six horses, going from stall to stall. They brought in hay and water, and the chores were nearly done when Tina came by to tell him that breakfast was ready.
Flip was pitching hay through the open gate to General Jackson’s stall. “We’re not quite finished,” she said.
“But he’s got to eat,” said Tina. “The kid’s done a day’s work already.”
“He’ll eat,” said Flip. “Don’t worry.”
“When?”
“With me.” Flip closed the gate. “He works with me, I guess he’ll eat with me.”
“Well, okay,” said Tina. But she sounded doubtful, even sad. “And you’ll make sure he gets two eggs?”
Flip laughed. “Geez, you’re not his mom.”
“I wish I was,” she said.
Harold felt a twinge inside as the little princess wandered off. But it didn’t last very long. He shook it off and went back to work, until the second bell rang for breakfast. Then he walked with Flip toward the cook tent and was surprised to see Mr. Hunter lining up for his breakfast like everyone else, waiting for the freaks to finish theirs. He looked so thin in his waistcoat, the watch chain looping down, that he might have been a nail that had snagged a bit of thread.
“He’s the stingiest man in the world,” said Flip. She chewed on a stem of hay as she matched her steps to Harold’s. “And he doesn’t like to argue, so whatever he tells you, just nod and say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
Harold nodded and bumbled along beside her. And Mr. Hunter smiled to see them. He shook Harold’s hand with fingers that felt like pipe cleaners. “Ah, we meet again,” he said. “I’m hearing a prodigious lot about you, son.”
Ghost Boy Page 11
