The Giant-Slayer Read Online Free PDF Page A

cha-cha.”
    “Oh, Carolyn!” Miss Freeman rolled her eyes. She let out a little sigh, but never stopped smiling. “You don’t want Laurie to think you’re a sourpuss, do you?”
    The bellows filled, then began to shrink again. “I couldn’t care less,” said Carolyn.

    The boy in the middle was older than Dickie but younger than Carolyn. His skin had shrunk around his bones, andhis scalp showed white as snow through the short hairs of his flattop haircut. It was obvious that he had a huge crush on Miss Freeman. He gazed at her with the dumb look of a sheep.
    “Hi, Miss Freeman,” he said.
    “Hello, Chip.” The nurse took a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed the boy’s chin. There was a line of spittle there, dried and crusty. “Chip came in last summer. He’s learning to breathe on his own. And his legs are fine; no trouble there. So it shouldn’t be long till he’s walking out.”
    The front of his iron lung was covered with so many pictures that they overlapped like crazy shingles. Most were postcards from different places, and magazine pictures of automobiles, mostly woodies and pickups and slim little sports cars. But set among them were family photographs—some in color, some in black-and-white—of people doing simple, everyday things. Right in the middle of the bunch, a man and a boy stood in front of an open garage, with a strange sort of car in the shadows behind them. The man was wearing a T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. He was resting a hand on the boy’s shoulder and he had his head back, laughing. The boy was about eight years old, strong and tanned. But his face was so smeared with black grease that he looked like a war-painted Indian.
    “Chip gets heaps of mail,” said Miss Freeman. “His dad’s always sending him a picture or a postcard or something.”
    Laurie was fascinated by the photograph. It was hard for her to see how that greasy kid had grown up to be the thin rake of a boy in front of her. The kid looked so healthy, so strong, that he might have been a different person altogether.
    “Chip’s a mechanic,” said Miss Freeman.
    Again, Carolyn interrupted. “Not a real one.”
    “Well, real enough for me,” said Miss Freeman. “Chip and his dad are building a car together. Can you imagine that, Laurie? Actually building a
car
?” She made it sound like the eighth wonder of the world. “It’s a hot rod, isn’t it, Chip?”
    “Stripped-out Model B,” he said. “Flathead Ford.”
    “Wow,” said Miss Freeman.
    “Ten-inch cam.”
    “My goodness!” She put her hands on her cheeks. “One day you’ll take me for a ride, now, won’t you?”
    “Sure.”
    “I know—you can take me to Disneyland.” She smiled, and that made him blush. “We can all go. You and me and Dickie …”
    “Oh, boy!” cried Dickie. “Can Laurie come?”
    “I’m sure there’s room for everyone. What about you, Carolyn? You want to go to Disneyland?”
    The girl could talk only in short sentences, in bursts of words with the bellows wheezing between them. “You’ll need long … extension cords.”
    “Yes,” said Miss Freeman. The happy conversation had fizzled, like a fire doused with water. The bright little sparks in Dickie’s eyes were gone. “Thank you, Carolyn.”

    Miss Freeman lifted the watch from the front of her blouse. “My, look at the time,” she said. “I’m supposed to be downstairs.”
    Laurie turned to go with her, afraid of being abandoned in the room of iron lungs.
    “Oh, Laurie, there’s no need for you to leave just yet,” said Miss Freeman. “You can stay and visit with Dickie if you want. I’ll check in every once in a while and make sure no one gangs up on you.”
    Well, she couldn’t say no. But she took the nurse’s advice and went quickly to the window. She looked down at the pond and the grass, at the distant gate in the wall. A black Cadillac with stubby fins was just pulling out onto the street, and she wished