The Giant-Slayer (4 page)

Behind her came a boy. But not in a chair. He was lying on a platform with four little wheels, like something a mechanic would use to roll himself under a car. He was paddling with his feet as he pushed with his hands, and he rolled round the corner like a pinball.

The girl hurtled past. She raised a hand for a moment, high above her head. “Hi ho!” she shouted as she barreled past.

The boy followed behind her, laughing all the time. His platform spun sideways, and he paddled and kicked like a frantic swimmer caught in a current. He hit the wall and bounced away. “Hi, Miss Freeman!” he cried.

Miss Freeman waved as he passed. “See what I mean?” she asked Laurie. “There’s usually a wheelchair race or something going on. Last week I saw eight kids in one chair, all piled up like a pyramid.”

“Really?” asked Laurie.

“Sure. Sometimes it gets kind of crazy.”

Laurie followed Miss Freeman around the turn in the corridor, past a large room where many people—mostly children—were busy with different things. A girl with braces on her legs was pushing a doll in a stroller. A boy was using Lincoln Logs to build a sprawling cabin. Others were watching television, staring at a tiny screen in an enormous wooden cabinet.

The corridor turned again. Laurie looked through half-open doors at identical wards, at tall hospital beds with wheels on the legs and railings on the sides. She passed room after room, turned again, and went on to the end of the corridor. The last door was propped open. Miss Freeman stopped just before it.

“This is the respirator room,” she said. “It’s not so much fun in here.”

Her expression had changed; she wasn’t smiling anymore. Laurie could see only a corner of the room through
the doorway. She heard a hum and whir of machines, a steady whoosh of air.

“Now listen,” said Miss Freeman. “When you see Dickie it’s going to be a bit of a shock. You’ll feel pretty bad for him, but don’t let him see it. Okay? If you think you’re going to cry, just go look out the window. It won’t do him any good to think people are sorry for him.” The nurse looked at Laurie. “Can you do that?”

“Okay,” said Laurie.

“There are two others in here as well,” said the nurse. “They’ve been here quite a while, and there’s one I think might never come out. But don’t feel sorry for
them
either, because they’re not as alone as you’ll think. They get visits from actors sometimes, from magicians and clowns.”

Miss Freeman took a step toward the room, then paused again. “These are the bravest kids you’ll ever find anywhere,” she said. “You know the story of David and Goliath? Well, these kids, they’re all Davids to me; that’s how I think of them. They got knocked down something awful, but every day they get back up—even if it’s only on the inside—and keep throwing their little stones.”

Miss Freeman rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. She sniffed and said, “I’m sorry. I get mushy about it.” Then she went breezing in the open door, her voice happy and excited. “Hey, Dickie! Guess who’s here.”

Laurie had never seen an iron lung, except in the films for the March of Dimes. Now four of them were right in front
of her, and she could hardly believe how big they were, how high they stood on their framework of metal legs. They reminded her of the Martians’ spaceships from
The War of the Worlds
, the big cylinders that had smashed into Earth with tiny creatures inside them. There was a blond-haired girl in the first one, a boy in the second, little Dickie in the third. But only their heads stuck out from the ends of the metal tubes, resting on pillowed shelves. It looked as though their bodies had been swallowed by the cylinders, because the metal things seemed so much alive. The huff and puff she’d heard was the breathing of the machines. Their rubber lungs worked below their bellies, and she watched them stretch and shrink, fill and empty.

The fourth machine was vacant. Still and quiet, its lungs frozen, it seemed to be dead. Or waiting.

Laurie saw this all in a moment, in the time it took the children to turn their faces toward her. Dickie grinned. “Oh, boy,” he said. “It’s Laurie.”

The others just stared: the boy in the middle with a curious look, the girl with no expression at all. Their skin was pale, their faces gaunt. Dickie said, “Laurie’s my best friend.” And the girl said, “Whoop-de-doo.”

Laurie hurried past her, and past the boy, to stand beside Dickie. Just as the nurse had warned, it was a shock to see him lying on his back, trapped in the iron lung. Around his neck, sealing the opening, was a rubber collar that pulsed with the breathing of the machine—in and out, like the throat of a frog. He was so small that he moved a little distance with every mechanical breath—drawn in, pushed out—as though the machine were a short, fat snake that
was forever trying to eat him. But he seemed as happy as ever, a big grin on his face.

“Boy, it’s neat you came,” he said.

They looked at each other as the respirator hummed and puffed. Dickie had his coonskin cap and his wooden tomahawk hanging on the front of his iron lung. Struts and brackets held a mirror above his head, tilted so that he could look back at the big window in the wall. Along the brackets were cream-colored envelopes stuffed with checklists and medical charts. Between them someone had put up a little picture of Fess Parker, cut from
TV Guide
.

It made Laurie sad to see the cap and the tomahawk, and to think that Dickie couldn’t even reach up and touch them, with his arms sealed inside the respirator. It seemed mean to Laurie to dangle those things in front of him—but always out of reach—like a carrot in front of a mule.

His grin, she saw, was fading away. He looked worried now as he stared at her. She forced herself to smile again, but it was too late. Dickie turned his head aside.

Already, Laurie wished that she hadn’t come to Bishop’s. She didn’t know what to say, and neither did he. They just looked at each other, and then at everything else
except
each other.

“Wow. Some friend,” said the girl in the iron lung.

Miss Freeman came up beside Laurie. “Dickie’s not planning to stay around very long,” she said, smiling down at him. “He wants to be at Disneyland on opening day, and you know, I think he’s going to make it. When the first steamboat heads off to Frontierland, Dickie’s going to be right at the front. Aren’t you, Dickie?”

“You bet!” His grin was back already. “I can move my fingers, Laurie. Want to see me move my fingers?”

“Of course she does,” said Miss Freeman. She guided Laurie to the side of the iron lung, where narrow windows were spaced along the metal. Inside, Dickie was covered by a white sheet. His naked feet and ankles poked out at the bottom, his bare shoulders at the top. His right hand rested at his side.

“You watching?” he asked.

Muscles strained in his neck. His face flushed red with the effort he was making. But his hand lay perfectly still.

His mouth stretched into a grimace. His eyes closed; a straining sort of grunt came from his throat. Then the tips of his fingers twitched.

They rose a quarter of an inch from the mattress. They straightened just a tiny bit. Then they fell back into place, and Dickie seemed exhausted. He was immensely proud, but utterly worn out.

To Laurie, it was the most pathetic little effort she had ever seen. Just weeks before, Dickie had been running down the Shenandoah, bounding from bank to bank with the fringes leaping on his jacket, the raccoon tail flapping from his cap. And now all he could do was twitch the tips of his fingers? She couldn’t understand why it made him so proud.

But Miss Freeman squealed with delight. “Oh, Dickie!” she said with a clap of her hands. “That’s wonderful. You’re on your way to Disneyland for sure.”

Dickie looked at Laurie with such a grin that he might have just hit a home run in a stadium full of fans. “Did you see it?” he said.

“Yes,” said Laurie. “That was great.” She paused a moment. “But, you know, I think—”

She was going to say
I think I should leave now
, but again Miss Freeman stepped in.
“I
think you should meet the others.” And she started with the girl.

Her name was Carolyn Jewels.

She was maybe fourteen, and though her face was very thin and very pale, she looked as pretty as a movie star. Her hair was like Rapunzel’s, a golden braid that tumbled from the pillow nearly to the floor. She looked not at Laurie but up at her tilted mirror.

“Carolyn’s been with us for almost eight years,” said Miss Freeman. “We’re going to have a heck of a party next month, aren’t we, Carolyn? A real blowout.”

“Sure.” The girl could talk only when the iron lung was breathing out, when the bellows were shrinking below her. “We’ll all do the 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, and
his 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.