Ghost Boy Read Online Free Page B

went fishing, where’s your pole? Huh? If you
really
went fishing, where’s this
world-famous
sucker of yours?”
    â€œI lost them,” said Harold. He scrunched up his eyes to keep from crying. He hated coming home.
    â€œYou can’t go out without losing
something
.” She shook her head, her mouth in a frown. “You’d think money grew on
trees
, the way you treat the things we buy you.”
    â€œIt was just a crummy old stick,” he said.
    â€œAnd why is
that
? Huh?” Mrs. Beesley tugged at her dress; it was stuck to the steps with sweat. “Because you
lost
your good one. You lost your
reel
and your
knife
and your
net
.” She counted the things off on her fingers, whapping her hand with the paper. “Two pairs of
shoes
and
eight
pairs of mittens over the winter. Where have they gone? Huh? Where have they
gone
?”
    Harold shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. Everything she’d named had been snatched away; he didn’t know where they were.
    â€œYou don’t know
nothing
,” she said. “I should send you out like Farmer Hull’s old
beat-up
Dodge, all tied together with bits of string and wire.”
    He couldn’t help it then. He started to cry, and the tears rolled out from under his little dark glasses. He missed his father terribly, his father and his brother. They had never shouted at him, and in those days neither had his mother. Hopalong John was right; the war had ruined everything, and the war had made her crazy.
    â€œAnd what’s
that
in your hand?” she asked.
    Harold looked at the paper as though he had never seen it before. “A ticket,” he said. “To the circus.”
    â€œHuh!” she cried. “And I suppose you caught
that
while you were fishing.”
    â€œI was given it,” he said.
    â€œWell, if you think you’re going off to the circus, you’ve another think coming,” said Mrs. Beesley. “Your father’s not going to stand for your going to the circus.”
    Harold said stubbornly, “He isn’t my father.” Then he climbed up the steps and went right past his mother, into the house and through to the kitchen. Honey went behind him.
    Strips of brown tape hung from the ceiling, matted with the bodies of flies. They spun slowly in the drafts of warm air that came through the window screens. Harold filled Honey’s water dish and watched for a while as she drank. Then he opened the white slab door of the refrigerator and found a jug of iced tea inside, with wedges of lemon and lime bobbing on the surface.
    â€œI wondered how long it would take you to sniff that out,” said Mrs. Beesley, suddenly filling the doorway. “Now you just keep out of that icebox, you hear.”
    â€œIt’s a refrigerator, Ma.”
    â€œOh!” she said. “Well, you just keep
out
of it, because that iced tea’s for your
father
, you hear? He’s going to be hot, and he’s going to be tired, because he’s out there in this
devil’s heat
searching all of God’s acres for you.”
    Harold didn’t answer. He closed the door with his hip.
    â€œAnd here he is now,” she said, hearing his step on the porch. She fussed at her dress, at her tangles of hair. Suddenly she was smiling. “Oh, all right,” she said. “You can have one glass. A
little
one, mind. And bring a large one for your father.”
    Walter Beesley had blisters on his feet and a mass of burrs clinging to his pants. “I walked right to the Rattlesnake,” he said. “Clear to the Rattlesnake.”
    â€œYou poor thing,” said Mrs. Beesley. She sat him down in the big armchair, beside the card table covered with his albums and stamps. She knelt on the floor and untied the laces of his banker’s shoes.
    He leaned back, exhausted. He could barely lift an arm to take the glass from Harold. “Well, at