Free A Beautiful Truth by Colin McAdam Page A

and Dave said dirty, and Julie was red and happy. She sang happy birthday in the hard square room, with the lights of the machine and Dave’s face. She sang it quietly, like they hadn’t with Mama, and Ghoul missed sleeping Mama in a happy way, and he swung from the bar above the machine and hooled because tonight was rich as butter.
    Dave and Julie put Ghoul to bed and it’s a night he still thinks of and tastes.
    Please machine make party.
    Julie kept coming at night and sang quiet songs.
    When Julie stayed behind-the-room she gave Dave lots of kisses and Ghoul threw an apple at the window and screamed.
    But Julie always came into the room, even when Dave hung on to her and said no. She didn’t talk through the machine, she came in and said where’s my Ghoul, my big Mr. Ghoul, and sometimes if they were sitting still for a moment he would go to the machine.
    Dave looked different around Julie, like he was keeping a secret he really wanted to show. Sometimes Ghoul wanted to be alone with Dave and sometimes alone with Julie but he never wanted them together without him.
    Mr. Ghoul stopped using the machine at night and Dave didn’t like that.
    Julie said how’s big Mr. Ghoul, I missed you I brought you a present. He liked her so much he backed into her all the time, andshe would scratch him. Whose little butt. Is that Mr. Ghoul’s. He felt excited and calm at the same time like when he drank coffee. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with Julie but he could taste it in his hips.
    He pulled Dave’s hands off her whenever he could.
    When she touched, it didn’t tickle.
    I missed you Mr. Ghoul.
    During the day, Ghoul would say
    ? Where Julie.
    And Dave would say
    Julie later.
    And those were the days when Ghoul didn’t need to eat M&M’s when he made sentences.
    Dave taught her to talk on the machine sometimes.
    ? Ghoul want nature.
    Nature was a movie about trees.
    ? Ghoul want tickle.
    Julie walked in calm and warm.
    Then Dr. Duane came back one night and found Dave and Julie and Mr. Ghoul in the middle of games and talking on the floor with smokes. Dave and Dr. Duane shouted at each other and the Fool came in and took Mr. Ghoul to his bedroom.
    He never saw Julie again, and then there was no picture of Julie on the machine.
    Ghoul could only say
    ? Where.
    ? Why Ghoul make dirty.? Why Ghoul make dirty machine.
    The picture for Why was this: ↔.
    He knows the answer for When is Then and Where is There and What is That, and What is that, it’s a coin. But there is noanswer for Why, neither in the World nor in the Hard nor in the dreams of young Ghoul or old. He never understood it.
    Whenever Ghoul was asked Why, Ghoul did not know what to do, so Why, like Julie, disappeared.
    The walls and floors and ceilings of the Hardest were white and he jumped up the walls sometimes in ¡harag! and Dave stopped saying Why.

twelve
    The Wonder of Growing by Esther P. Edwards was a book which accompanied a range of toys, all designed for a child’s first few years of life. Judy had ordered the book and toys from the Sears catalogue when Looee was a baby. When she was a girl her parents did the same thing. She tried to enrich his childhood as much as she could.
    Most of the toys came from the Christmas Wish Book or the general Sears catalogue when Judy ordered things for the house. The Big Toy Box, Twisting Turning Teddies.
    When he was a toddler he bit everything in sight. When he grew up he could bite off a finger in minor irritation, bite off someone’s face or the scrotum of his tormentor. But Judy said no, Looee, we all have teeth but we don’t approve of biting.
    Naturally she did not expect as much from his encounters with books as she would from another child, but he liked the talking books whose pictures made noises. What he loved from an early age was drawing or painting or colouring. He marvelled at a line emerging from a pen.
    She bought a Little Learners two-sided wood easel, and she would stand and paint on