The Giant-Slayer (34 page)

Dickie tipped his head on his pillow. “What’s going on, Mr. Valentine?”

“She’s coming awake,” he said. “Her eyes are twitching.”

James went on his crutches and called for the nurse. It wasn’t Miss Freeman who came, but another that Carolyn
and Chip knew well. She elbowed Mr. Valentine out of the way and started prodding and poking at Laurie.

“Yes, she’s coming round, I think,” said the nurse. “It’s a good sign, but too early to hope for too much.”

Dickie was watching. Laurie looked the same to him—even worse right then for not waking with the noise and the prodding of hands. It was scary to see her like that—barely alive, but not dead, with her breath making whistles in the plastic pipe.

“But she’s getting better, isn’t she?” asked Mr. Valentine. “She’s going to be her old self again. Isn’t she?”

The nurse straightened the cotton padding on Laurie’s neck, arranging it around the edge of the rubber collar. “There’s a doctor on his way. A specialist,” she said.

The iron lungs wheezed and whooshed. The stretching of the rubber lungs made shifting shadows on the floor.

Dickie turned away, distraught. “Boy, you better say what they wished for, Carolyn,” he said.

The day seemed long with waiting. The shadow of the stick crept so slowly across the grass that Jimmy the giant-slayer kept looking up at the sun, willing it to hurry.

At noon the shadow was a short little spike. Then it stretched and shifted, swinging round more quickly. Jimmy, the Woman, and the witch all crouched beside it. They watched as the shadow touched the pointer stick that the Wishman had set on the grass.

Right then, across the valley, came a jingling sound. And from the trees on its far side emerged the Gypsy wagons.

They came rolling right across the grass, pitching from side to side. The drivers, in their seats, looked like sailors tossed by stormy seas. In the wagons clattered pots and pans, bracelets, jewels, and tambourines.

Jimmy stood up and watched them. The Gypsy King was in the lead. The Woman suddenly raised her hand and waved. At the same time, the Swamp Witch dashed for the pond with her little basket in her hands. She crossed the grass in three long bounds and slipped into the water.

The Gypsies ranged their wagons like spokes on a wheel, in a circle round the pond, all facing in toward it. The boys leapt out to care for the horses; the girls stared shyly from the doors and curtains of the wagons.

The Gypsy King came in a swagger, greeting the Wishman with a loud shout across the pond. The gold in his teeth flashed in the sunlight. He came with his head tipped back, looking up at Collosso’s red cap roofing the strange-looking wagon. Then he saw Jimmy and grinned.

“I never doubted you would kill the giant,” he said.

“Yes, you did,” said Jimmy.

The King of the Gypsies laughed. “Well,
now
, I never did,” he said.

“I don’t get it,” said Dickie. “The Wishman brought the Gypsies? What kind of wish was that?”

“It was just the first part of it,” said Carolyn. “You’ll see; it will all work out in the end.”

“I think it will,” said Chip.

The three lay hopeful and content, stretched out in their iron lungs. They slept peacefully that night.

The doctor came just after midnight, while the room was dimly lit.

He was a tall man, his black hair in a ducktail that shone with oil. He moved like a ghost in his white coat and soft-soled shoes, a gray shape that walked without sound. He passed along the row of iron lungs, looking down at the children, reaching out to softly touch their heads.

Carolyn didn’t wake up, and neither did Chip. But Dickie stirred at the touch of the doctor’s fingers. He opened his eyes and saw, in the mirror, the doctor passing by, moving on to Laurie.

Mr. Valentine was slumped forward in the chair. He had his chin on his chest, an arm dangling down. The map of the future had slipped from his fingers and was lying on the floor. His snoring was quiet, a pleasing sound for Dickie, who had often found comfort in the snoring of his father after waking from a nightmare.

The doctor picked up the map from the floor. He put it carefully on Mr. Valentine’s lap but didn’t disturb the sleeping man. Then he stood over Laurie, and with his back toward Dickie, worked away in his silent manner, making barely a sound at all.

Dickie could see nothing but the man’s broad back and the shine of his hair oil. He could see his arms moving, but not what he was doing.

“Is she going to be okay?” he asked.

“Shh.” The doctor looked back. “Yes, she’ll be fine,” he said very quietly. “Don’t worry.”

He went right back to his work, moving from Laurie’s head to the side of her iron lung. He put his hands through the portals and leaned over the machine.

“When will she wake up?” asked Dickie.

“In the morning,” said the doctor. He moved back to her head and talked in whispers to Laurie.

The respirators whined and whooshed. Mr. Valentine snored in his chair. And the doctor kept working, talking in a quiet voice.

“You’re safe now. Don’t be frightened,” he said, as though Laurie were already awake. “You’re at Bishop’s, Laurie.”

Dickie asked, “Is she going to be all right?”

The doctor turned to him now, big as a polar bear in that white coat. “Yes, she’ll be fine. Just sleep—hush now—and let me work.”

Dickie couldn’t see the man’s face very clearly. But he saw his hand reaching out, as though floating toward him as gently as a falling feather. And he heard his voice saying, “I’m Dr. Wishman.”

And just as Dickie felt the doctor’s fingers touch his forehead, he was asleep again.

It was a sound of tapping that woke Mr. Valentine just after dawn. In the dream that he was having, a big black bird was pecking at his bedroom window, trying to smash
through the glass to get at him. He woke with a start, raising his arms to shield himself.

He saw right away that he wasn’t in his bed at home, that no enormous bird was trying to kill him. But the great relief that came with that lasted less than a second. When he saw the iron lungs, his heart sank.

He realized only then that the sound that had woken him was still going on. It wasn’t very loud at all, but it was hurried and frantic, and Mr. Valentine looked up to see Laurie’s hand moving in the window of the iron lung.

Her fingernails were hitting the glass, tapping faintly on the little window.

Mr. Valentine was on his feet in an instant. “Laurie, I’m here,” he said.

But she was still asleep; she couldn’t hear him.

“Laurie!” Mr. Valentine gestured frantically with his hands, as though trying to hold on to her, but not seeing how to do it. He grabbed the legs of the iron lung and shook the whole machine.

He shook everyone awake.

For Dickie, the room was suddenly full of light and noise. He had been awake in the night, in the quiet and the dark, and now—the next instant, it seemed—Mr. Valentine was shouting beside him, and on the other side Carolyn was crying out with each breath of her respirator, “What’s going on?”

But Mr. Valentine just kept shaking the legs of the iron
lung, shouting his daughter’s name. He made so much noise that Mrs. Glass came barging into the room, bringing a doctor behind her.

“She’s moving!” said Mr. Valentine. “She’s moving in there!”

In his mirror, Dickie watched the doctor rushing by. He turned his head and saw him push Mr. Valentine out of the way, then bend down to peer through the window of the iron lung.

“She’s not moving,” said the doctor.

“She was,” said Mr. Valentine. “She was still asleep, but she was tapping at the glass.”

“Well, that’s a good sign. A very good sign,” said the doctor.

He was young and tanned, more like a lifeguard than a doctor. He put his hand on Laurie’s forehead. “She’s been in a coma how long?”

Mr. Valentine had to count back through the days. “I can’t remember,” he said. “It’s all a blur.”

Dickie grunted, but nobody looked toward him.

The doctor took a small flashlight from his pocket. He pried Laurie’s eyelids open and peered this way and that. When he finished he turned off the flashlight and spun it absently in his fingers, like a gun slinger with a six-shooter.

“Well?” Mr. Valentine was squeezing one hand with the other. “When will she wake up?”

“A coma’s a strange animal, Mr. Valentine.” The doctor slipped the flashlight back in his pocket. “There’s no telling how long it will last.”

Dickie grunted again. He piped up from his pillow. “She
was kind of awake in the night. When the other doctor was here.”

Mr. Valentine glanced at Dickie. So did Mrs. Glass and the doctor. They all gave him the same sort of look—puzzled and disbelieving. And Dickie sensed that Carolyn and Chip were doing the same thing on his other side; he could feel them looking at him.

“What doctor’s that?” asked Mrs. Glass, too casually. Dickie knew she didn’t believe he had seen a doctor at all, that
none
of them believed it.

“He came in the middle of the night,” said Dickie. “His name was—” Suddenly, he didn’t want to say it.

“His name was
what?”
asked Mrs. Glass. She looked at him sharply. “Dickie, what was his name?”

“Dr. Wishman,” he said.

Chip didn’t laugh. Neither did Carolyn, though she did say, “Oh, Dickie.” She said it in the very nicest way, just as kindly as Miss Freeman would have done. “Oh, Dickie,” she said, “you got that name from the story.”

“No I never,” he said. “That’s what the doctor told me himself. He was here.”

“I think you were having a dream,” said Mrs. Glass.

“It wasn’t a dream,” said Dickie.

The doctor was watching more intently than anyone. Now he raised his eyes to look beyond Dickie, over his head to Carolyn and Chip. “Did either of you see this?” he asked.

“No, they were asleep,” said Dickie. “But
I
was awake, and I know it’s true. I talked to Dr. Wishman.”

They began to look away from him now. Mr. Valentine
turned back toward Laurie. Mrs. Glass straightened her little nursing hat and fussed with one of the envelopes of papers on Laurie’s iron lung. Only the young doctor kept looking at Dickie. He said, “A dream can fool anyone, you know.”