Ghost Boy Read Online Free PDF

from above, the little children holding hands with parents as the calliope played them to the circus.

Chapter
    6
    H arold lay on the bed on his back, gazing up at a jagged, toothy line of baseball pennants. Beside him was a gun rack holding Louisville Sluggers instead of rifles. And beside that was a shelf eight feet long crowded with trophies, with a catcher’s mitt stuffed inside a mask, a fielder’s glove bound by string around an oversized softball that was painted red and yellow.
    They were David’s; everything was David’s. “Don’t cry because I’m going,” he’d told Harold the morning he left for the war. “Ghosts never cry,” he’d said, and punched Harold’s arm lightly.
    â€œI’m frightened,” Harold had said. “I’m scared you won’t come back.”
    David had laughed. “Of course I will. And we’ll get a couple of horses and follow the Oregon Trail like Dad always talked about doing. We’ll see the ocean.”
    â€œAnd the mountains?”
    â€œAnd the forests,” David had said.
    â€œAnd we’ll live like mountain men?”
    â€œSure.” David had laughed once more. “On the weekends we’ll ride down to the ocean.”
    Then David had put on his soldier’s cap and picked up his duffel bag. “Look after Ma,” he’d said. “And don’t go touching my junk.” And Harold never had. Every week he dusted, whisking at the pennants and the trophies with a big feather duster, taking great care that nothing was moved.
    Only one thing was gone: the top bunk of the pair. His mother had taken it away more than a year ago, but still it was strange for Harold to look up from the bed and see the ceiling high above him instead of the boards of his brother’s bed.
    â€œHe’s gone,” his mother had said. She was just starting to change then, getting fat, going crazy.
    â€œHe’s not,” he’d said. “He’s missing, that’s all. Just missing in action.”
    â€œBut he’s not coming back,” she’d told him. “And it’s high time you faced up to that.” Then she’d taken the bed in pieces because Harold wouldn’t help—the headboard and footboard, and then the big hollow base that boomed on the stairs as she dragged it down by herself.
    Harold gazed at the pennants. He watched them flutter in his poor, weak eyes. And he waited, and the calliope played.
    At ten o’clock there were heavy thumps in the hall as his mother went off to her bed. At eleven Walter went too.
    Harold got up. He pulled his pillow out of its slip and stuffed the bag full of clothes. He worked as quietly as he could, glancing at Honey to see that she didn’t come awake. He stepped around her, back and forth, sorting out socks without holes, the best of his shirts, the cleanest of his underwear. From the shelf he took the fielder’s glove, knowing that David wouldn’t mind; Harold had worn the glove as often as his brother. “I’ll never make the majors,” David had said. “But
you
might, Harold. You’re a natural.”
    A natural. Even then, Harold had known he wasn’t that. David had got the biggest ball he could find—a softball, the sissy’s ball—and painted it as yellow as sunflowers. Then on top of the yellow he’d painted red stripes, so that even Harold could see it. And then he’d spent hours pitching the ball as slowly as anyone could—never laughing, never getting angry—until Harold learned to catch it and hit it as well as anyone else.
    Now the paint was cracked, the white of the softball showing through the yellow. It nestled in the glove like a colorful egg about to open.
Take it
, David’s voice said.
It’s yours. Just take it.
    Harold shoved the ball and the glove into the pillowcase. He squashed it down and tied a knot with the corners, and it weighed