Free 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill Page A

of the school?"
    "What's your problem?" Billy asked. "You on the rag?"
    I grabbed Art and jumped down. Cassius blanched. John Erikson tottered back. I held Art under one arm, feet sticking towards them, head pointed away.
    "You guys are dicks," I said—some moments just aren't right for a funny line.
    And I turned away from them. The back of my neck crawled at the thought of Billy's wiffle ball bat clubbing me one across the skull, but he didn't do a thing, let me walk.
    We went out on the baseball field, sat on the pitcher's mound. Art wrote me a note that said thanks, and another that said I didn't have to do what I had done but that he was glad I had done it, and another that said he owed me one. I shoved each note into my pocket after reading it, didn't think why. That night, alone in my bedroom, I dug a wad of crushed notepaper out of my pocket, a lump the size of a lemon, peeled each note free and pressed it flat on my bed, read them all over again. There was no good reason not to throw them away, but I didn't, started a collection instead. It was like some part of me knew, even then, I might want to have something to remember Art by after he was gone. I saved hundreds of his notes over the next year, some as short as a couple words, a few six-page-long manifestos. I have most of them still, from the first note he handed me, the one that begins, I don't care what they do , to the last, the one that ends:

    I want to see if it's true. If the sky opens up at the top.
     
 
    At first my father didn't like Art, but after he got to know him better he really hated him.
    "How come he's always mincing around?" my father asked. "Is he a fairy or something?"
    "No, Dad. He's inflatable."
    "Well, he acts like a fairy," he said. "You better not be queering around with him up in your room."
    Art tried to be liked—he tried to build a relationship with my father. But the things he did were misinterpreted; the statements he made were misunderstood. My dad said something once about a movie he liked. Art wrote him a message about how the book was even better.
    "He thinks I'm an illiterate," my dad said, as soon as Art was gone.
    Another time, Art noticed the pile of worn tires heaped up behind our garage, and mentioned to my dad about a recycling program at Sears, bring in your rotten old ones, get twenty percent off on brand-new Goodyears.
    "He thinks we're trailer trash," my dad complained, before Art was hardly out of earshot. "Little snotnose."
    One day Art and I got home from school, and found my father in front of the TV, with a pit bull at his feet. The bull erupted off the floor, yapping hysterically, and jumped up on Art. His paws made a slippery zipping sound sliding over Art's plastic chest. Art grabbed one of my shoulders and vaulted into the air. He could really jump when he had to. He grabbed the ceiling fan—turned off—and held on to one of the blades while the pit bull barked and hopped beneath.
    "What the hell is that?" I asked.
    "Family dog," my father said. "Just like you always wanted."
    "Not one that wants to eat my friends."
    "Get off the fan, Artie. That isn't built for you to hang off it."
    "This isn't a dog," I said. "It's a blender with fur."
    "Listen, do you want to name it, or should I?" Dad asked.
    Art and I hid in my bedroom and talked names.
    "Snowflake," I said. "Sugarpie. Sunshine."

    How about Happy? That has a ring to it, doesn't it?
    We were kidding, but Happy was no joke. In just a week, Art had at least three life-threatening encounters with my father's ugly dog.

    If he gets his teeth in me, I'm done for. He'll punch me full of holes.
    But Happy couldn't be housebroken, left turds scattered around the living room, hard to see in the moss brown rug. My dad squelched through some fresh leavings once, in bare feet, and it sent him a little out of his head. He chased Happy all through the downstairs with a croquet mallet, smashed a hole in the wall, crushed some plates on the kitchen counter with a