Dreaming Jewels Read Free Page B

sing out to be heard; and because he had to sing out, he leaned on the song, giving something of himself to it as a high-steel worker gives part of his weight to the wind.
    He finished. The fat boy said “Hey.” The unaccented syllable was warm praise. Without any further comment he went to the front of the truck body and thumped on the square pane of glass there. The truck immediately slowed, pulled over and stopped by the roadside. The fat boy went to the tailgate, sat down, and slid off to the road.
    “You stay right there,” he told Horty. “I’m gonna ride up front a while. You hear me now—don’t go ’way.”
    “I won’t,” said Horty.
    “How the hell can you sing like that with your hand mashed?”
    “I don’t know. It doesn’t hurt so much now.”
    “Do you eat grasshoppers too? Worms?”
    “No!” cried Horty, horrified.
    “Okay,” said the boy. He went to the cab of the truck; the door slammed, and the truck ground off again.
    Horty worked his way carefully forward until, squatting by the front wall of the truck-body, he could see through the square pane.
    The driver was a tall man with a curious skin, lumpy and grey-green. He had a nose like Junky’s, but almost no chin, so that he looked like an aged parrot. He was so tall that he had to curve over the wheel like a fern-frond.
    Next to him were two little girls. One had a round bush of white hair—no; it was platinum—and the other had two thick ropes of pigtails, bangs, and beautiful teeth. The fat boy was next to her, talking animatedly. The driver seemed not to pay any attention to the conversation at all.
    Horty’s head was not clear, but he did not feel sick either. Everything had an exciting, dreamlike quality. He moved back in the truck body and lay down with his head on the fat boy’s jacket. Immediately he sat up, and crawled among the goods stacked in the truck until his hand found the long roll of canvas, moved along it until he found his paper bag. Then he lay down again, his left hand resting easily on his stomach, his right inside the bag, with his index and little fingers resting between Junky’s nose and chin. He went to sleep.

3
    W HEN HE WOKE AGAIN THE TRUCK HAD stopped, and he opened unfocussed eyes to a writhing glare of light—red and orange, green and blue, with an underlying sheet of dazzling gold.
    He raised his head, blinking, and resolved the lights into a massive post bearing neon signs: ICE TWENTY FLAVORS CREAM and CABINS and BAR—EAT. The wash of gold came from floodlights over the service area of a gas station. Three tractortrailer trucks were drawn up behind the fat boy’s truck; one of them had its trailer built of heavily-ribbed stainless steel and was very lovely under the lights.
    “You awake, kid?”
    “Uh-Hi! Yes.”
    “We’re going to grab a bite. Come on.”
    Horty rose stiffly to his knees. He said, “I haven’t got any money.”
    “Hell with that,” said the fat boy. “Come on.”
    He put a firm hand under Horty’s armpit as he climbed down. A jukebox throbbed behind the grinding sound of a gasoline pump, and their feet crunched pleasantly on cinders. “What’s your name?” Horty asked.
    “They call me Havana,” said the fat boy. “I never been there. It’s the cigars.”
    “My name’s Horty Bluett.”
    “We’ll change that.”
    The driver and the two girls were waiting for them by the door of a diner. Horty hardly had a chance to look at them before they all crowded through and lined up at the counter. Horty sat between the driver and the silver-haired girl. The other one, the one with dark ropes of braided hair took the next stool, and Havana, the fat-boy, sat at the end.
    Horty looked first at the driver—looked, stared, and dragged his eyes away in the same tense moment. The driver’s sagging skin was indeed a grey-green, dry, loose, leather-rough. He had pouches under his eyes, which were red and inflamed-looking, and his underlip drooped to show long white lower