The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin

by Josh Berk

  I try not to look anywhere. My eyes fall on Devon. Without looking at me, he makes these letter shapes with his left hand. “W-H-A-T A B-U-N-C-H O-F A-S-S-H-O—” And then he points to the clock. Saved by the bell. And by Devon Smiley, at least a bit. Hmm …

  CHAPTER NINE

  Time for the joyride that is the bus trip home. Retards sit in the front, so there I am. Simple deduction. (I can hear the voices of Mom, a bevy of guidance counselors, and the entire self-esteem industry revving up for a speech, but please, folks, hold your breath. For once, shut up. It’s just a joke. If I can take it, so can you.)

  I watch the crowd, anxious to see if I can get more information about yesterday’s card drama. At first I see the weird football fan raving. “We are going to kill Wilkes, how ’bout it!” he says. This guy has the coordination of a drunk walrus combined with the physique of a nine-year-old girl. Why does he say “we” when he is not on the team? I notice that his book bag has his name written on it with marker. I put it into my notebook: PLANDERS = INSECURE JOCK FAWNER.

  “Yeah!” Planders yells, punching the back of the seat in front of him. “We’re gonna kill ‘em! Undefeated in the new stadium.” Then he says something that baffles me for a minute until I realize he is throwing a bit of Spanish in there. I’m pretty sure he said, “Thank you, número 45!”

  Marie Stepcoat, the girl from math, who’s wearing one of those name necklaces, rolls her eyes at this burst of school spirit, like she is way above all that, even though I am pretty sure she is not. I guess we all enjoy having someone to make us feel better about ourselves. Look at me, ripping on Planders’s physique. This from a guy with the body of a sedentary manatee. Before long, Jimmy Porkrinds lurches the bus toward my stop, and day two is over.

  I storm into my house and head straight for the kitchen. I am ready for an after-school snack that could easily be mistaken for a second lunch. For ten. Slices of cheese eaten right out of the wrapper, two pickles, a bowl of ice cream. I suck it all down like a stoner on a binge. It doesn’t make me feel better. Just fatter. My pants (which are already my designated “fat pants”) are tight, and I feel gross about the whole thing. But I eat one last giant scoop of ice cream anyway. Damn.

  I bust out Freedom Isn’t Free: The Story of America, and I flip it open to the assigned chapter and quickly find where I had left off. What had started as mild interest suddenly turns to a lump of anthracite in my throat. Right there in black and white is mention of a coal miner who not only was deaf but also, apparently, is me.

  Cave-ins were not unusual and death lurked around every corner. Even in this cruel history, some events stand out as unusually tragic. Take, for example, the case of William Halpin. “Dummy” Halpin, as he was known, was a deaf coal miner who worked in the mines of northeastern Pennsylvania. Halpin was able to mine quite well, reports say, despite being unable to communicate normally with the other miners.

  July 9, 1901, began as a typical day for Dummy and his crew. Dummy took the lead position, driving deeper into the shaft.

  William Halpin? A deaf person with my name had been living right here in northeastern Pennsylvania? Too weird. I stop and imagine how Pat and his crew will be cracking up at the phrase “driving deeper into the shaft.” It is sort of funny. The text continues:

  Halpin’s fellow miners heard a loud splintering from above, a sign they recognized as the foreshadowing of a possible collapse. They purportedly screamed, “Dummy,” but to no avail. Sadly, he could not hear them and was out of reach, making a rescue impossible. While the other miners scrambled to safety seconds before the mine collapsed, Halpin was crushed to death.

  For weeks following the collapse, townspeople and other miners reported seeing or hearing the ghost of Dummy Halpin near the spot of the cave-in, scratching at the ground, clawing to get out from under the rubble.

  I stare at the words on the page. It is as if a unicorn has entered my room. Is Will “Dummy” Halpin a relative? My great-grandfather? Why hadn’t I heard this story before? How could a ghost story be so famous that it found its way into a history textbook but remain a secret from me, the ghost’s namesake?

  I head up to the computer to do some research. I spend time online every day, usually goofing around on message boards. I love to start flame wars, firing up strangers just for fun. I argue the other side of some issue everyone agrees on, make bizarre allusions and overblown statements, attack people in strange ways—anything as long as I cannot be ignored. Stuff like “Attention, vegetarians: vegetables have feelings too!! Stop the slaughter of innocent radishes!” I just like getting a reaction, I guess. I never engage in the actual fight. That is key. After the first post, I just hang around, watching, waiting, haunting. Like a ghost. A family trait?

  I log on to my mail. Oy. A message from Ebony. I should delete it without reading it. I don’t want to know what’s happening at my old school. Must live in the present. But I open it up. Of course!

  hey, will: we miss you. i never realized what a large presence you were. ha-ha! sorry. had to get at least one in there. but, yeah, you should think about coming back. you belong with us. i always had your back. it wasn’t fair that they made you feel like you had to choose. it’s not your fault you come from a hearing family. we had fun first-day stuff: i tricked a freshman into thinking the teachers’ lounge was really a special hangout for freshmen. he walked right in and sat on the couch, started drinking coffee. got detention for a week! ha-ha. you probably have 9 million stories to tell and 10 million public school girlfriends by now. don’t forget me! ebony

  Why do girls break up with you and then worry that you’re missing them? Is it because they’re totally unfathomable? Ah, the classic freshman-into-the-teachers’-lounge move. Well, fun stuff has been happening at CHS too, I think. Shoot. I’m famous! I type “Will Halpin” into a search engine:

  MYSTERIOUSHAUNTINGS.COM: William Halpin, the ghost of a deaf coal miner also known as “Dummy,” has haunted northeastern Pennsylvania …

  COALCORNER: Miner deaths were all too common, including such horrible tragedies as the death of William Halpin, a deaf miner …

  CARBONTIMES.COM/OBITUARIES: Carbon County, PA. July 9.—William “Dummy” Halpin, a coal miner for Lackawanna Mines, was killed when a mine he was working in suddenly collapsed. His body has not yet been recovered. Halpin was unmarried and is survived by his brother Kenneth …

  Whoa. My dad’s name is Kenneth.

  On the newspaper’s Web site, there is an option where you can request a copy of the original newspaper obituary with a picture and everything. It costs a few bucks, but luckily I have my mom’s credit card number memorized. Have my parents intentionally hidden this fact from me? Is he really our relative? I fill in the request. I can’t believe it: Will Halpin is a sort-of-famous dead guy.

  My parents rarely mention their extended families. On both sides, most are either dead or in Florida—arguably the same thing. From what I am able to piece together—our family tree looking most like a dying sapling—it seems logical that Dummy would have been my grandfather’s uncle. The Ken mentioned in the obituary would have been my great-grandfather, Kenneth Halpin Sr.

  Why do I have to learn about my own life this way? Personal history found through Google? Traditions passed down on Web pages? While I sit there wondering what it all means, an instant message window pops up on my screen. The name: Smiley_Man3000. Devon starts chatting like we are old friends. Give the guy an O for optimism.

  Smiley_Man3000: How does the afternoon find you, my good man?

  HamburgerHalpin: who talks like that?

  Smiley_Man3000: My mother is an English teacher, and my father is a policeman. They are very strict!

  HamburgerHalpin: do they beat you if you split an infinitive? bust out the tazer each time you forget to capitalize proper nouns?

  Smiley_Man3000: I believe it’s Taser. And no.

  HamburgerHalpin: a girl can dream

  Smiley_Man3000: What?

  HamburgerHalpi
n: whaddayu want anyway?

  Smiley_Man3000: So, did you hear about Pat’s party?

  This grabs my attention. Of course it would be Pat Chambers who’d have a party that the A.J.’s of the world would get their BVDs in a bunch about.

  HamburgerHalpin: i don’t hear anything, remember?

  I press Enter, letting the message sit there for a minute. Letting Devon sweat. Even he knows more about what is going on at school than I do.

  HamburgerHalpin: some people on the bus were talking about it

  He must have been typing at the same time I was, because his message appears a split second after I press Enter. It has a carefully placed comma and exclamation point.

  Smiley_Man3000: Oh, man! Please accept my sincerest apology.

  I wait for him to get my second message.

  Smiley_Man3000: Everybody is talking about it. Pat’s dad is renting a hotel. It’s going to be a casino theme: roulette, real slot machines, and possibly showgirls flown in from Vegas. It’s going to be the most extravagant party ever.

  HamburgerHalpin: how the hell is he going to get real slot machines?

  Smiley_Man3000: You don’t know who Mr. Chambers is? He runs casinos. He set up a bunch of them out west before moving here. He’s part of the cabal that’s trying to open up casinos out by Summit Hills. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.

  HamburgerHalpin: i don’t hear anything, jerkface

  He apologizes again. Then something clicks from before: A.J. said, “Playing card in his playing face.”

  HamburgerHalpin: of course i knew all that, and you get a playing card when you get invited

  Smiley_Man3000: Precisely! There are 52 invitations exactly. Like 52 cards in a deck. People would kill for one of those cards.

  Devon could kill all fifty-two people and still not get invited to clean up after the party. He has as good a chance of getting a playing card as I do. Which is about as good a chance as me getting invited as one of the showgirls. Which is too bad, because I can really fill out a halter top. Sexy.

  I sign off without saying good-bye, feeling somewhat satisfied that my questions were answered. Maybe Smiley_Man3000 is good for something after all. …

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Who is Will Halpin?”

  I ask Mona this question the moment she comes in the front door. (Note: Sign language doesn’t translate like regular speech. For example, there is no past tense. I must always live in the present. But I hooked you up. You’re welcome. Please send checks. Interpreters make, like, fifty bucks an hour. You know where to find me.)

  Mom gives me a confused, head-tilting look and begins fumbling with her satchel-type thing and the two coffee mugs she is carrying. My mother is an angular woman, with a constantly worried expression on her narrow face. She looks even more frazzled than normal when I greet her this way. It’s not that she doesn’t understand. She is very good at sign language, the result of years of long hours studying with me and a few months of intensive training one summer at Camp Arrowhead, where I was the only kid rooming with his mommy.

  A second later Dad is right behind her. They’ve been car-pooling ever since she hired him at the insurance company. I hate to admit it, but he looks just like me. He is round with the same big baby blues and the annoyingly ironic (in my case anyway) oversize ears. He is heavily bearded and not deaf, although he pretty much lives in a little cocoon anyway. He hardly ever says anything.

  “What?” Mom asks. You need both hands for this sign, so she just gives up and drops her stuff. She knows I prefer sign language, so she never makes me read her lips, even though it would be easier for her.

  “Who is Will Halpin?” I repeat.

  “Wow,” she says. “They have you doing some heavy studies in that school. Is this from a philosophy class? Who am I? What does life mean? Things like that?”

  “It’s from history,” I answer bluntly, slapping my fingers.

  She gives me her extraquizzical wrinkly eyebrow face.

  “I do not follow,” she says. There are several different signs for “history,” so I try another. Dad is trying to keep up, but we are using words like “philosophy” that don’t come up very often. He never attended Camp Arrowhead. He heads into the kitchen, presumably to drown his sorrows in ice cream. It is another thing we share.

  I motion for her to come over. My finger jams into the paragraph, leaving a little indentation in the offending page. I poke the words “Dummy Halpin” over and over again. Dummy Halpin. Dummy Halpin. Dummy Halpin.

  “Ken,” she says, calling to my father in the kitchen, “would you look at this?”

  After a second Ken comes in, double-chocolate swirl dripping from his beard. I have no idea what he says because his mouth is full and he’s always mumbling.

  Mom turns her back to me, presumably to fill him in. I grunt.

  “Do not turn your back on me,” I sign to her when she returns to face me.

  “Sorry, it is just … I do not…,” she says. And then she stops. Dad mechanically spoons ice cream into his hairy mouth, gazing off into the unknown. “I don’t know who this is.”

  Dad stares at the page, reading the short paragraph. It takes him forever to do anything. He looks up at me with a smile. He does a sign everyone knows: that thing where you make a circle motion with your finger while pointing to your head. Crazy. It is crazy.

  “What do you know about this?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “He’s not your grandfather. Maybe an uncle?”

  “Can’t we learn more?” I ask.

  “Let it go,” she says. “Don’t go digging up ghosts.”

  But I don’t want to let it go. I want to dig up every ghost.

  Dad gives me a conspiratorial look. Maybe he knows something more?

  “Can I go to the library? Do some research?” I ask. Normally, a parent would love that, right?

  “It’s getting dark,” she says, making a scared face as she shades her eyes from the light.

  I make the face that means “So what?”

  “It is not safe. It is our job to protect you,” she says.

  When she does that, makes that sign for “protect,” holding her hands up, warding off an unseen enemy, I get pissed. I am so tired of being protected. It isn’t just the stupid library. It isn’t just stupid Dummy Halpin. It’s everything unspoken in my whole silent life. I feel my face go bright hot. I storm downstairs to my room. I slam the door behind me over and over again, hoping the noise hurts their damn ears. And then, to prove how seriously irked I am, I go to bed without any dinner.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It is about 1:30 a.m. I am wide awake. And starving. What was I thinking? I tiptoe to the kitchen for a snack. Mom has saved that night’s dinner, lasagna, on a plate wrapped in tinfoil. She even wrote a note: “You’re the only Will Halpin for us!” The i in “Will” was dotted with a smiley face. I really love lasagna, but I can’t eat that just on principle. Instead, I eat a weird dinner of cheese slices, cashews, salt and vinegar potato chips, and heaping handfuls of chocolate chips. Then I try to go back to bed, but my stomach is unsteady, and more than that, my brain is itchy. I try counting sheep, deer, cows, and every other stupid animal I can think of. The bovines get spooked, haunted by a coal-smeared Dummy Halpin laughing in the darkness.

  I lie on my side, staring at the sick blue glow of my giant alarm clock. It’s huge—a special industrial “alarm clock for the deaf (it actually says that on the box) that shines a bright light and literally shakes you awake in the morning.

  So restless. I think about sneaking up to the computer room, spending some time online, maybe haunting some message boards, taunting a few environmentalists or religious conservatives or religious environmentalists, but, no, I need to move. Nothing crazy, just a walk. To watch. To haunt. Be ghostly.

  I know it will be risky to sneak out, but at least I have an easy escape route. My basement bedroom has a half window above my bed, just big enough to slide out of. It opens easily from the ins
ide. I worry that it might make a noise when I pop the rusty latch, so I wait after prying it ajar, give Mom and Dad a few minutes to come check on me. I’ll just tell them I need some air if Mom comes down in her pink robe or Dad saunters down in his matching blue one. But there comes no terry cloth sentry. Ten minutes tick (another offensive term) by on my alarm clock. I pull myself out of the window quick like a cat (or pretty darn rapidly for a fat bear), thrilled to feel the fresh air in my lungs. I keep one eye on the house, checking for lights flicking on or the panicky sweep of a flashlight. Nothing. I proceed, with no real idea where I am headed, out into the night.

  It is misty and cool. The streetlights are a waste of electricity, pointless Q-tips of fuzzy light eaten by the fog well before reaching the ground. It is, I think, not unlike a ghost town. I walk across the yard, careful to avoid our gravel driveway. A stupid conversation about this driveway comes to mind.

  “Why do we have the only unpaved driveway in town?” I had once asked in a friendly way. “What, are we stuck in the 1800s?” In fact, we are sort of stuck in the 1800s—our house is an ancient farm cottage in a little swath of town as of yet untouched by the modernizing influence of big homes and new money.