The trucks started one by one, lurching over the field, joining in a column streaming to the west. The Airstream trailer passed in a flash of sun, and the Gypsy Magda drove behind it. A quarter mile of trucks and trailers and huge black cars stretched along the road in a growing cloud of dust.
Then the yellow jeep came bouncing across the field, its wheels spraying dirt as it turned in a tight circle. It stopped behind the Diamond T, and Mr. Hunter leaned across the gearshift. He was wearing a pair of big goggles. “Harold,” he said. “Jump in.”
Harold clambered up through the low open door. He dropped into a seat that surprised him with its hardness, then clung to the windshield frame as the jeep leapt forward. It hurtled across the field, climbed to the road and sped along through the dust from the convoy. It passed the trucks one by one, with little toots of the horn as each cab went by. Gravel banged from the fender, and the dust went by in clouds, and Harold looked up at the drivers.
He saw the Gypsy Magda standing as she drove, but she didn’t look down. Then he passed the Airstream, and Samuel’s truck was swaying beside him. Harold pulled himself up by the windshield; he raised his head above it, and gritty air blasted hard against his face. Dust spewed from the truck’s front wheel, boiling like smoke beside him. Then he waved to Samuel, the wind snatching his hand and pulling it back.
Samuel glanced down. His lips moved behind the bush of beard, and Tina suddenly appeared in the window, grinning and waving back. But Samuel neither waved nor smiled, and his hands stayed tight on the steering wheel. Then he fell away behind the jeep, and the other trucks passed in dust and gravel, until the jeep shivered on the road and zoomed ahead, through air that was clear and warm.
Harold dropped into his seat. He wiped the dust from his glasses and watched the road twist and open ahead. It seemed to leap toward him, to throw itself under the wheels, and the fence posts skidded past beside him; the dust filled in behind.
Mr. Hunter pulled off his goggles. The lenses were gray with dust. He tossed them into the little backseat as the air whistled past the windshield. “So,” he said. “You had a run-in with Roman.”
“Yes, sir,” said Harold. They had to shout above the sounds of wind and engine.
“Don’t let him intimidate you,” said Mr. Hunter. “He’s a bully; that’s his job.”
“I thought he was a rigger,” Harold shouted.
“Yes. But that’s a mindless means of making money.” Mr. Hunter smiled. “When the show starts, he prowls around the big top. He chases off the boys who endeavor to crawl beneath the tent. I pay Roman to run them off. Rapidly,” he added.
Harold nodded. He imagined it was the sort of job Roman would love.
“Any more trouble, you tell me,” said Mr. Hunter.
“Yes, sir.”
“We don’t stand for trouble at Hunter and Green’s.”
Harold watched the fences pass. Behind them were forests of corn, and now and then a farmhouse. Then a man passed, standing close beside the road, and Mr. Hunter laughed to see Harold’s hand come up to wave. Harold blushed. It was just a scarecrow, though he could tell that for sure only when he saw the birds perching on its stiffened arms.
The jeep drove west all afternoon and into twilight. Harold and Mr. Hunter stared ahead, rarely looking at each other. Talking took such an effort that they did it only in bursts, then sat back, panting, for another dozen miles. And then Harold would become uncomfortable, thinking it was his turn to talk, and he’d lean sideways and shout across the jeep.
“When will I meet Mr. Green?” he asked.
Mr. Hunter frowned. Harold thought he hadn’t heard him and shouted again, louder.
“Soon enough, soon enough,” said Mr. Hunter. “I don’t see any hurry.” Then he tilted across the gearshift. “But you shall meet him, as you say. Don’t worry about that.”
It sounded to Harold as though he should be worried, but he didn’t know why. And he rode along at a slant, knowing it was his turn again.
But Mr. Hunter spoke first. “I feel fortunate for finding you,” he said. “It’s been a difficult season; you know that. My best clown deserted me a month ago, a sad and somber separation. Then the lion tamer left with his lions. Took his tiger, too.”
“Gee, that’s a shame,” said Harold.
“Problems at every turn. The great Hunter and Green’s shrinking away. Slipping slowly, steadily, sorrowfully …” He moved his hand, searching for another word that started with an S. “Away,” he finished lamely.
“Gosh,” said Harold, because he couldn’t think of anything else.
“But the elephants. Ah, there’s our hope. You’re our baseball benefactor, boy. You’re our saving grace, the foundation for a firmer future.” His head bobbed at the end of his thin neck. “Yes, Harold, I have great trust in you.”
Then he straightened in his seat, and the wind eddied between them. Harold leaned back, watching telephone wires curve up and down from passing poles. He fell asleep, and woke, and fell asleep again. And the next thing he knew, the sun was streaming through the windshield and Mr. Hunter was shaking him by the arm.
“Wake up,” said Mr. Hunter. “We’re here.”
“Where?” asked Harold.
“Trickle Creek.”
It was a tiny little town. The main street was only half as wide as Liberty’s, but the stores that lined it shone and sparkled. Trees grew from planters on the sidewalk, and every window sported a bright box of flowers. The road was paved, and the jeep hummed along it at seven miles an hour.
Harold looked back. The convoy was bunched behind him, the trucks nearly bumper to bumper. They crawled down the street as people ran out from the stores, from their houses and their cars, lining the curb to watch the circus pass. They waved and cheered, and Mr. Hunter grinned.
“You feel like a soldier, don’t you?” he said. “You feel as though you’re liberating something. It’s just like Holland, Harold.”
“You were there?” asked Harold.
“I saw the newsreels,” said Mr. Hunter, and he waved at the crowd. He shouted, “Evening show at six! Wave, Harold.”
Harold waved. He was frightened at first, and he wished the jeep was moving faster. But no one laughed at him; they hardly seemed to see him. One by one, as Harold drew beside them, they tipped back on their feet, trying to look at every truck at once. It made him think of a row of sunflowers rocking in the wind, of the wheat that had nodded in the convoy’s rush of wind. Then he stood up, his hands on the windshield, his head above the glass, and he did feel like a soldier. He felt like a hero.
The people kept cheering. A boy looked down from a treehouse. And then, already, the town was behind them, and Mr. Hunter pressed the gas pedal. The jeep jolted forward, speeding past scattered houses. It turned to the left, at a pole hung with three of the crimson arrows, then left again to a big football field stretching out to vacant lots. And there, parked at its edge, was the home of the Cannibal King.
It was an Airstream trailer, smaller than Samuel’s, hitched to a huge black car. Painted all across its surface, covering every inch, was a jungle scene in bright enamel, the grass along the bottom browned by dust and chipped by gravel roads. Coconut trees swept up the sides and met at the top in a tangle of fronds where monkeys played on swinging vines. Gaudy parrots flitted past the trees. In the grass lay heaps of grinning skulls.
“He’s here,” said Harold, holding his breath. “The Cannibal King.”
“He’s been waiting for us,” said Mr. Hunter. He bent a wiry leg out of the jeep. “Now hurry, son. We’ve got a circus to build, and not a moment to lose.”
Chapter
37
The children came like bees, in a swarm from every side. Sunburned, scruffy boys followed Mr. Hunter as he paced across the field with a paint can and a brush. They bent down when he bent down, and watched openmouthed as he dabbed the grass with whitewash. But they left him when the roustabouts came, naked to the waist with their hammers on their sho
ulders, and formed circles around their circles, around Mr. Hunter’s gleaming marks. The boys chanted the roustabouts’ chant as the sledges rose and fell to drive the stakes to hold the tent.
Girls in grass-stained white dresses watched the horses stepping from the truck. They watched Flip Pharaoh lead them down the ramp, two abreast with white manes flashing, and wished they were her.
But every child in Trickle Creek, every boy and girl, came running to the bugle call of Conrad.
Harold, high on the elephant’s back, hauling poles across the field, saw them coming from every side. He heard their voices; he saw how they raced each other, and fear tingled through him to see an army of boys running at him.
Conrad always knew how he felt. The big, floppy ears grew wide and stiff. The trunk curled up and blasted out an angry, frightened sound. And the chains clanked taut, pulling harder at the bundled poles.
Harold saw the children mob around him. Twenty, thirty children, they moved in a mass as the elephant moved, coming forward behind him, going backward ahead. Conrad’s ears were as big and wide as doors. His head lowered and swayed, and the trunk slashed back and forth. It was only the poles that held him back; he ran in slow motion at a redheaded boy the way he had hurtled at Roman.
But Harold found he wasn’t frightened anymore. He was part of the elephant, a little white growth on its back, the brains of a creature nearly twenty feet high. He swaggered through the children, his hands on his hips, rocking with the elephant’s roll.
They called him “mister.” “What’s his name, mister?” they shouted. “How much does he eat?” “Mister, how much does he weigh?”
But Harold didn’t answer. He bullied through the group of children, then steered Conrad toward a blur of people and the fuzzy shapes of elephants. Max Graf was there, and he called to Conrad; they bugled back and forth.
Harold knew people by their voices as much as by their faces. He knew Roman’s right away.
“Hey, Whitey! Bring those poles over here.”
He nudged the elephant with his foot. The poles slid and rattled behind him. He steered straight for Roman Pinski.
“Okay, Maggot. That’s good.”
But he went a little farther, until he towered over Roman, and still he kept going.
“Stop, you freak!”
Harold smiled inside himself to see how Roman leapt away, how he cowered from the elephant. The boy ran a dozen yards before he stopped, quivering, as laughing men unhooked the chains and sent Harold off again.
He went in a dead straight line no matter who was in his way, seeing with a sort of pleasure how people scampered from his path. He brought the side poles and the quarter poles and then the rolls of canvas. And he saw, in snapshots, the big top going up; the center pole standing in its rigging, the tallest thing in sight; the canvas spread around it like a rippled, colored sea as men waded in to lace the parts together; the side poles like a forest of dead trees; the elephants hauling on ropes, and the canvas rising, swelling into shape.
The tent was smaller than he’d thought, all worn and faded by the sun. The new section of canvas was bright and clean, and all the rest looked sadder for it, so often patched that there were patches on the patches. But still it impressed him, and it swallowed whole a huge flatbed truck loaded with ring banks and bleachers.
He brought the pieces of the sideshow tent, the pieces of the cook tent. And the canvas city grew around him, until he rode the elephant down narrow lanes where—an hour before—there had been nothing but an empty field.
Through the afternoon, people came from miles around as news of the circus reached them. They wandered through the lot, around the tents and down the line of trucks. And Harold bullied through them. He knocked aside a farmer and his children, turned a corner, and came upon the painted trailer.
He hadn’t planned to go there, or didn’t think he had. But he leaned forward, his elbows on Conrad’s back, and stared at the home of the Cannibal King. When the trailer started to shake, he thought it was only his eyes. But the trees broke apart as he watched, and a black hole appeared between two trunks, growing wider as the door swung open. Harold straightened.
Out through the door came the Cannibal King, as though he had stepped right from the jungles of Oola Boola Mambo.
He wore a leopard skin that draped to his knees and left one shoulder bare. And underneath he was white as bones, just as white as Harold was. His hair had that color that had no color, like sunlight on the water. But it ballooned from his head in a tremendous bush that shook as he walked on legs like springs from the trailer to his car.
“An albino,” said Harold, half aloud. He breathed the word atop the elephant. He had never seen one before, except himself—the mirror boy he’d always found so white and freakish. But the Cannibal King was handsome, almost beautiful, and graceful as a cougar. He stalked toward the car.
Behind him came a group of children, creeping around the trailer, dashing from there to the shadows of another truck. They giggled with their hands over their mouths, stealing from shadow to shadow, from wheel to wheel. But the Cannibal King turned on them suddenly, spreading his arms, shouting at them in what must have been the grunted words of the Stone People.
“Bunga!” he roared, his enormous arms shaking. “Unga dooloo makena!”
The children scattered, and he walked on. He opened the car’s rear door and pulled out a huge cardboard box, which he dropped to the ground with a rattle and a thud. He pushed it along with his foot.
The children came back, like birds frightened briefly from a feeder. They peered around fenders and bumpers and wheels as the Cannibal King shunted his box toward the trailer. Then he bent and reached inside it. He pulled out a bone, another bone, an arm with fingers at the end. He waved them at the children, roaring at the top of his voice, “Pago pago manihiki!” And the children shrieked and darted away.
The Cannibal King laughed deeply. He hoisted the box through the trailer door and closed himself inside. The door vanished, overgrown by the painted jungle.
Harold stared at the trailer, at the parrots and the monkeys. He wished he lived in a place like that, in the land of the Stone People. He’d be normal there, the same as everyone else, and the freaks would be people like Roman Pinski and Dusty Kearns. He longed for the door to open again, for the Cannibal King to appear.
“Go and meet him,” a voice told Harold. It might have been his conscience, but it came from down below. He looked past the elephant’s shoulder and saw Tina staring up, the Fossil Man beside her.
“Go on,” she said. “You’ve come all this way to meet him, and it’s just a few more feet you have to go.”
“Can I do that?” Harold asked. “Can I just go up and talk to him?”
“Sure.” Her little hands rose in a shrug. “Why not?”
“He’s a king. You can’t just go and talk to a king.”
“Oh, nuts,” she said. “I talk to him all the time, and he’s just the same as me.”
“But you’re a princess,” Harold said.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, and laughed. “You want to meet him, go ahead.”
Samuel never raised his head. “Forget it,” he said. “You’re wasting your time. Look at him up there, bigger and better than anyone else. You’ll never get him down to our level again.”
Harold blushed on the elephant’s back. He wished Samuel would at least lift his head.
“Come on, Tina. We’d better go before he tramples us.”
“Not Harold,” she said. But she wasn’t much taller than the elephant’s ankle, and she did step away from the enormous front leg. “Harold would never turn on his friends.”
“His friends?” said Samuel. “I don’t see anyone like that around.” He bent down and took Tina in his arms. “If we had our little house, I bet he wouldn’t come near it. Not even to hear the cuckoo sing.”
Tina looked over his shoulder as he carried her off. Her arms around his thick, hair-covered neck, she looked b
ack at Harold.
“He’ll be welcome at my house,” she said. “He’ll always be welcome there.”
Samuel said something that Harold couldn’t hear. Then he passed the next truck, hidden for a moment by its khaki hood, and when he came out on the other side the Gypsy Magda was walking beside him, as if she’d been waiting there for them. Samuel knelt, and Tina slipped down to the ground, and they walked away, three in a line.
It felt to Harold as though they had left him behind, as surely as he’d fled from Liberty. It felt as though he would never talk to them again.
“Well, who needs you?” he muttered. “Bunch of freaks; who needs you?” He was better than them now. He had a job; he had a girlfriend, didn’t he? He certainly had the best seat in the cook tent, and he couldn’t even move without everyone saying hello. He wasn’t the same boy who had left Liberty. That was for sure.
He watched them until they were gone, then turned again to the painted trailer. But the jungles of Oola Boola Mambo shimmered now in his eyes, and that feeling was gone, that urge to meet the Cannibal King. In a way, he was frightened to meet him.
Chapter
38
Conrad hurried along as he came closer to the other elephants. His feet hammered on the ground as his plodding walk quickened to a trot. Women pulled their children out of his path; men whirled aside with angry shouts. Even Harold was nervous; the elephant felt out of control. It trumpeted, another bugled back, and Conrad hurtled around the big top with his ears pinned back.
In the shadow of the tent Flip was dressing Max Graf in a feathered crimson headpiece. The elephant was kneeling, and she stood atop his forehead as Conrad pounded up beside her, scattering the people who had gathered to watch her work.
“Stop showing off,” she said. “Don’t run him like that.”
“He ran himself,” said Harold.
“Then at least he knows he should have been here.”
Ghost Boy Page 17
