Blossoms and the Green Phantom Read Online Free PDF Page A

garbage?” he moaned. He lifted his head, clasped his hands over his chest. “Please, please, somebody come with some garbage.”
    There was a noise in the corner of the Dumpster. Pap had forgotten about the puppy, and he looked around.
    The puppy was there, watching Pap from his nest of trash. “I can’t coax you out,” Pap told it. “I’m half killed.”
    The puppy wagged its thin tail.
    “I was going to call you Dump if I got you out of here,” Pap said.
    Again the puppy wagged its tail, setting the garbage around him in motion.
    “But it’s no need to call you anything now. Plus, you’re the one got me into this.”
    Now the puppy’s body went into motion. He squirmed with pleasure.
    With one hand on his sore neck, Pap looked around. “And the big trouble is that there ain’t enough garbage in here. There was enough to break my fall, thank God, but not enough to climb out on.”
    He sighed. “Maybe somebody’ll come along.” He batted a fly away from his face. “The world changes, but one thing that don’t change is garbage. People always have had garbage, and they always will, and sooner or later somebody’ll decide to get rid of theirs, and you and me will get out of this mess.”
    At that moment, Pap heard a car. He lifted his head. He couldn’t believe it was true. “They’re here,” he said. He began to struggle to his feet. “Somebody’s already come!” He grabbed the top of the Dumpster and pulled himself erect. His arms trembled with the effort.
    He looked out of the Dumpster for the first time since his fall. A car was there—a two-tone Buick—but it had not pulled over by the Dumpster.
    The car was parked just off the road.
    Pap called, “Hello! Hello!”
    There were two people in the Buick, but neither one heard him. The windows were closed, and the engine was running.
    Pap changed his call to “Help! Help!”
    Still they did not hear. The man and woman had pulled off the road, apparently, to finish an argument. He was yelling at her and she was yelling at him.
    “People in the Buick! Hello! Hello!”
    The fight continued. The man was slamming his fist against the steering wheel for emphasis. The woman was shaking her head.
    Pap extended both arms over the side of the Dumpster in a pleading gesture. “Please, couple in the Buick, please, look where I’m at. Help me! Please!”
    He began pounding his hands on the side of the Dumpster. That got the woman’s attention, and she turned and glanced out the window. She was frowning, and even without the frown she would have been an ugly woman. With it, she was the ugliest woman Pap had ever seen in his life.
    “Please! Help me!” he begged her.
    The woman kept frowning at him through the glass. Pap made a gesture begging her to roll down her window. She turned and said something to the man. To Pap’s shock, the man began to drive off.
    “Wait, wait! Oh, please don’t leave me in this Dumpster. Please don’t go! Help!”
    The Buick pulled onto the road. It disappeared around the bend, and the sound of the engine faded.
    In the silence that followed, Pap rested his forehead against the rust-flecked Dumpster. He sighed deeply. After a long moment he turned and looked down at the bag of garbage he had been sitting on.
    It had taken on the shape of Pap’s body, like a beanbag chair. Pap sat down slowly. He took out his old handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
    The banging on the side of the Dumpster had sent the puppy deeper into the loose garbage, but now he started crawling out on his belly.
    “Ugly women,” Pap told the puppy, “never have cared for me.” He wiped his face again. “And right now I don’t care for them neither.”

CHAPTER 8
The Secret Ingredient
    Junior had never been on the receiving end of a Blossom promise before, and he had not realized how awesome it would be. Oh, he had always known that a Blossom promise was sacred, that it was the way knight’s promises used to be. That was why he had always been