THA GHOST OF BEANIE WEENIE

Time ground to a crawl as the shortened school day reached its middle hour. After the students finished their Learning System, Miss Erica and Miss Renee led them back into the fifth-grade Team Lair, which was a set of three different classrooms arranged around a central common area. The students sat crisscross in five rows to face a screen, and the teachers turned on the projector.

Perry loved The Phantom Tollbooth. Daddy Deke had read it to him and to Brendy years ago. The rise and fall of Daddy Deke’s voice, the way he performed the characters rather than simply reporting what the book said, had fired Perry’s imagination, made him dream of far-off places and people, of taking up a quest of his own—even if such things weren’t possible in real life, certainly not for shy, bookish boys like Perry.

Perry still remembered what Daddy Deke had told them the day he finished reading the final chapter. “Let me tell y’all sumn for free: Nola is a pure wonder of a city. You are truly blessed to call it home—but there’s other places out there. Make sure to get out and see ’em when you can. The city will always be here when ya get back.”

At the time, Perry hadn’t understood what his grandfather meant. Of course there were other places, and of course they mattered. But why go traveling far and wide when Nola was enough?

In years past, he had looked forward to seeing the movie on the last day of school. He was lucky they showed it at both his old school and his new one. After all, that screening was the first real sign that summer had officially begun. Today, though, with the hours standing still, the minutes creeping by, and the seconds moving not at all, the film felt like a sentence to be endured. Besides, Perry very much preferred the book. He had gone through three copies since he got his first one for Christmas however long ago, and his newest copy was on its way out. The paperback was dog-eared in the extreme, some of its pages ready to fall right out. The spine had long since been broken, and every time Perry opened it, he felt the book sigh softly, as if it were getting tired.

Some nights, when he couldn’t sleep, instead of reading comics or Billy 7 Adventures, Perry would get out his flashlight and his trusty Phantom Tollbooth and read under the covers in a fort made of pillows and blankets. Well, what he did couldn’t quite be called reading. He would hold his flashlight like a telephone receiver between his chin and shoulder and thumb through the pages, running his fingers over the letters without sounding the words inside his head. He didn’t need to. He knew them all better than if he’d written the book himself. He’d mouth a word or sentence—Dodecahedron, Doldrums, killing time—and realize dimly that he didn’t actually need the flashlight to enact this rite. The words flowed into him through his fingertips—or no, they didn’t, because they already lived deep inside him, inhabiting his core. Perry needed only to touch the print in order to create a sympathetic vibration in his chest, and the story would tell itself to him, and every last word was magic every single time.

Perry liked the movie version—liked it a lot. Most everything was more or less the way he imagined it when he first read the book—well, mostly less—but he didn’t care to sit through it today. He wanted to jump from his seat on the floor by the column and disappear behind it, then, on tiptoes, skulk right out of Jelly Roll Morton Academy to freedom and the boiling Nola summer.

Instead Perry pulled his right leg up so he could rest his elbow on his knee as he stared at the screen almost without seeing. Milo had just discovered the giant red-and-white striped package in the foyer of his row house.

Hey. Perry.

Perry frowned. Milo had found the card whose envelope read FOR MILO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME.

Perilous Antoine Graves!

Distracted from his sort-of watching, Perry looked around. At first he thought he’d heard Peaches trying to get his attention, but anyone who knew her knew that Peaches would never set foot inside a school. He couldn’t find the source of the whispering anyway.

Don’t look round, boy. Act like you ain’t heard me.

Perry’s heart lurched in his chest. That was definitely Peaches’s voice! She must have broken her cardinal rule to sneak into Morton Academy and sit at Perry’s side, unnoticed by the teachers or the students.

Teacher ain’t looking. Get up and head straight outside. Now! Now!

Perry wavered, then slowly folded himself into a crouch. Creeping slowly, he edged around the column to keep it between him and everyone else. Then, carefully, soundlessly—holding his breath, even—he crept out into the hallway. He froze, staring at his red-and-white shoes contrasted against the beige linoleum tile. One, two, three, four, five beats passed as he stood with his back to the Team Lair, and no voice called him back.

“Castle in the air!” the tollbooth called out from the movie. “By way of Dictionopolis and alllll points west!”

Keep it movin’, baby. Don’t get caught. She sounded just as near to him as she had inside, her voice insistent and distinct, but coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Peaches!” Perry whispered back. “Where you at?”

When she didn’t answer, Perry resumed his creep, walking on the sides of his feet so as to make no sound in the hall. When he reached the Academy’s front doors without incident, he pressed the handle slowly, then waited a couple more beats before pushing the door open into the summer air.

Outside, sunlight fell like rain. It was so thick, so powerful that Perry expected it to ring as it bounced onto Esplanade Avenue. He held the door, careful to let it swing noiselessly shut, then visored his hand over his eyes to survey the scene before him.

The air smelled intensely of day and of outside. The avenue was silent. Not a single car, not a single zombie. Tall, fat oaks stood sentry along the opposite sidewalk, scattering the shadows of their leafy branches to break the light like mosaics upon the walk. A patch of graffiti rippled in the air several yards down toward City Park. Perry was a little surprised to see it. P-bodies never came to this part of town, because the graffiti got cleared away so quickly here. Perry stared at the stylized letters, trying to read the tag. After a moment or two, he was mostly confident that it said BOAT AKK.

But reading it solved nothing. If Peaches had called him, where was she?

“Peaches!” Perry said, almost at full volume. “Here I’m is!”

Now the whisper giggled at him.

“Stop playing,” Perry said. “I get caught out here, I’ll be grounded for a month!”

Doooooown dem steps!

Perry took one look behind him through the glass of the front door. The hallway stood empty. Nobody seemed to have detected his escape. Satisfied—more or less—Perry descended the steps to stand on the sidewalk outside the school. The rectangular shadow of the Jackson/Esplanade sky trolley slid slowly up the avenue, and Perry looked up to see the trolley’s glass belly puttering along its route. It stopped a couple blocks up and descended gently to the street, purring hoarsely like an elderly cat. A couple passengers stepped off and ambled on their way.

Perry looked the other way down Esplanade toward City Park. The graffiti made it hard to tell for sure, but he saw nobody lurking that way.

Crooooooss dat street!

Perry checked both ways, then did as he’d been told.

On the other side of the avenue stood a venerable old house with dark purple paint and red trim. It sat back from the street at the end of a twisty little walk, and low hedges lined its yard. What would Peaches be doing here? Perry knew her taste, and she would call this house “daaaaawg oogly!”

Perry shrugged and started toward the front door.

“Here I’m is!” a giant voice rang out, and Perry whirled so fast he lost his balance and spun right down on his butt.

Brendy was so thrilled with herself that she danced a little jig. “I got you!” she crowed, shaking her little fists. “You got got! Oh! Aw! Ha!”

Perry glowered at her. “What you even doing outside? We’re gonna get in so much trouble!”

“You ain’t in no trouble,” Peaches said as she emerged from the hedge. There hadn’t been room enough for her inside the branches, but she must have used some trick to make herself and Brendy fit.

Seeing Peaches in her worn red dress with its white collar and buttons caused a slight constriction in Perry’s chest. Her knees and elbows were knobby and a little scuffed, and her hands and feet were both too big for her body. Her legs had lengthened out in the time Perry had known her, and he noticed now, to his embarrassment, that her chest was beginning to grow.

Perry’s face heated, and he hoped the darkness of his complexion would hide his blush. “You came in the school?” was all he could think to say.

“Not me, baby,” Peaches said. “I already got my brains.”

“She throwed her voice,” Brendy said with a nod.

“That far?” Perry asked.

“I’m pretty strong,” Peaches said with a smirk. “I throw far as a mug! Now, let’s get to steppin’.”

Without the barest effort, Peaches lifted Perry to stand before her.

“What song Doctor Professor played last night?” she said, her brown eyes wide.

“‘Missed Yo Chance Blues.’”

“Ooooh. My favorite!”

Perry couldn’t help but feel that would have been her response no matter his answer. “So where you been?” he asked.

“Here and there. Keepin’ it cool. But later for all that,” Peaches said. “Right now, we got bidness. Somebody took something from me, and we finna get it back.”

Brendy clapped both hands on her cheeks and bugged out her eyes. “Somebody stole from you?”

“Baby, ain’t nobody more surprised than me,” Peaches said.

“Who would do that?” Perry asked. “I mean, Kill Grems is probably still pretty mad at you for beating his butt right in front of everybody in Audubon Park.”

“It ain’t him, though,” Peaches said.

“What did they take?”

Peaches took a breath. “It’s complicated,” she said. “But it’s sumn real special, heard? Something I need. I’m pretty sure I know who got it, and I know where he at.”

Perry wanted to ask more questions, to plan the heist or whatever this was, but being near Peaches again after so long made him giddy. He felt a tingling in his chest that made him—well, he wasn’t sure what it wanted him to do. Going with Peaches to steal her property back would give him a chance to—to smell Peaches, to look at her and listen to the rhythm of her voice.

“Well, all right then,” Perry said. “You know we ready to back you up.” But he had to ask: “You didn’t leave town, though, right?”

Peaches wrinkled her nose. “Leave town?” she said. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

As the three of them headed for the sky trolley stop, Perry found himself thinking on the past. Previous events loomed large for him today, and now that Peaches was back, Perry thought about how they’d first met.

Just after the Storm, when Perry turned five, his parents threw a cookout in the Graves family yard. Brendy was still a toddler, so she wasn’t up to much. Perry’s mama stayed with her on the porch, bobbling the girl on her thick honey-colored knee as Perry, his twin cousins, and some of the neighborhood kids ran around the yard or frolicked in the bouncy castle. As the party wore on, the twins got tired of jumping, and Perry caught them trying to sneak away.

“Where you going?” he asked as Pink and Danni stood at the edge of the sidewalk just at the border of the lawn.

“We gone check out the ghost house,” Pink said. Even then, she wore her hair combed straight up into a kinky tower.

“You stay here,” Danni said. “We report back.”

“I want to go,” Perry said.

“Naw, you can’t—” Danni said.

Pink cut her off. She called the shots between them. “Let him come,” she said. “We won’t let nothing happen. Besides, what if there really is a ghost? We’ll need a big strong man to protect us.”

Perry was a little scared, but he puffed out his chest anyway, and together they went.

“It looks like a big cake,” Perry said as they stepped into the house’s overgrown yard.

“Moldy cake, maybe,” Danni said. “All creepy.”

It was creepy, Perry had to admit. While the house itself reminded him of a wedding cake, the gnarly, leafless oaks, the sagging porch, and the falling-off shutters reminded him of Scooby-Doo.

Pink led them around the side of the house and to the screened-in porch in back. The rusted storm door stood open, fallen half off its hinges. Inside stood a splintery porch and what looked like a stack of newspapers made mush by the wet, but still bound together by a yellow plastic ribbon. The place smelled damp and old, the way Perry imagined a mummy’s tomb would—or no! Dracula’s coffin room!

“You scared?” Pink asked.

Perry couldn’t tell whether she was asking him, her twin sister, or herself. “I ain’t scared,” he said, just to be safe. “But if you scared, we can go back.”

“I ain’t scared,” Pink said. “Let’s go.”

WHAT Y’ALL WANT?

The voice boomed hollow. At the sound of it, without a word, Danni up and left. Perry saw her go out of the corner of his eye, and he could tell from the way Pink stood very, very straight that she would have gone, too, if terror hadn’t rooted her in place. Perry’s own limbs felt light and springy. He knew that if he turned and ran, his legs would carry him faster than they ever had before, but he stood his ground because this was something new, and such strangeness so close to his everyday world could not be ignored.

WHO YOU IS, LITTLE GURL? WHAT Y’ALL WANT WIF MY HOUSE?

Pink reached down and grabbed Perry’s left arm. The motion had been painfully slow, but her grip was hard enough to hurt. “Let’s go,” she said.

“I ain’t scared,” Perry said, and this time, even as he said the words, he realized they were true. “What you want, haint?”

I WANTS YOUR TOY CARS AND A MONKEY ON A UNICYCLE, said the voice. AND BRING ME ONEA DEM SNO-BALLS FROM THE MACHINE WHILE YOU AT IT.

“Haints don’t need toys,” Perry said. “And haints can’t eat sno-balls, noway. You the dumbest haint I ever met.”

Pink yanked at Perry’s arm, but she couldn’t seem to get herself moving any other way. They just stood there while Perry challenged the disembodied voice that rang from the darkness of the haunted house.

WELL, THEN WHAT ABOUT MY MONKEY? AND ANYWAY, HAINTS CAN TOO EAT SNO-BALLS. I EATS ’EM ALL THE TIME. SNO-BALLS IS HAINT FOOD. ERRYBODY KNOW THAT.

Now Pink seemed to realize that while the voice was scary, its words were utterly ridiculous. “Wait a minute. Who that is?”

WHO YOU IS? I AXED YOU FIRST!

“I’m Pink Marie-Antoinette Duvally.”

WELL, I’M THA GHOST OF BEANIE WEENIE!

Silence descended, and then, moments later, the air broke with the silliest laugh Perry had ever heard. It sounded almost like Goofy from the cartoons—but girlish and brimming with joy. Perry laughed himself, just to hear it.

“You ain’t no haint!”

“Got me there, baby,” she said, and out she stepped from the shadows inside the porch. Back then she was shorter, leaner, and her limbs weren’t quite so knobby, but she had the same big red Afro puffs, the same wide brown eyes, and her skin was the exact color of Daddy Deke’s morning coffee.

“Here I’m is,” she said. “My name Peaches—Peaches Lavelle—and I done sailed the Seven Seas.” She paused, seeming to consider. “I guess you can forget the monkey. Y’all do got sno-balls, though. I seen ’em from my window. What your name is?”

“Puh-Perry,” Perry said.

“Well, happy birthday, Puh-Perry. How old you is?”

The trolley smelled of clean laundry. Peaches took up her own seat, sitting with her legs crossed and her arms spread out over the back of it. She bobbed her head gently, humming silently to herself, and every so often, she met Perry’s gaze and wiggled her bubble-gum tongue at him.

Brendy sat next to Perry, leaning down with her head between her knees as her chubby legs dangled above the transparent floor. Her feet were bare—as they almost always were when she and Perry adventured with Peaches. Perry held his sister’s patent-leather Mary Janes for her, thinking dimly and without much interest that he should complain about that one of these days.

The man sitting in front of Perry wore cheap headphones, and Perry could hear his music, tinny and faint.

Brendy had ridden the sky trolley more times than anyone could remember—they all had—but she always seemed transfixed by the view. Perry guessed it was Brendy’s limited sense of propriety that kept her from lying spread-eagled on the floor, her entire body pressed against the bottom of the sky as she watched the city scrolling underneath her.

After meeting up, the three of them had caught the 91 up to Rampart Street, then walked up St. Claude to wait for the Elysian Fields trolley. The noonday sun was boiling hot, so they’d stopped at Gene’s—a ridiculously pink house at the corner of St. Claude and Elysian Fields—for virgin daiquiris while they waited for their transfer.

As they stood at the corner, Perry looked down the avenue toward the lake and saw a crazy lady marching up the way. Tall and long-legged, she wore a bright red fortune-teller’s turban and a long, flowing coat that looked made from several different sweaters all sewn together. Even though she wore a turban, the coat’s hood was up, but it was so long and pointy that even from where he stood, Perry could see its length bouncing behind her in time with her steps. The woman seemed unaware of anyone else on the street; she just trudged on, wide-eyed and frowning.

“Look,” Perry said. “Look at her go.”

“Who?” Brendy said, looking round. Her gaze fell on the woman. “Oh!”

“She just a street crazy,” Peaches said. “Don’t matter if she dressed like a Mardi Gras. Crazy is crazy.”

On the corner across St. Claude, a fortyish man with salt-and-pepper hair stood talking on his cell phone. He gestured wildly, obviously giving orders or yelling at someone. He stood right in the crazy lady’s path.

Either she didn’t see him or she didn’t care. The woman didn’t slow her gait. The man caught sight of her and tried to move aside as she reached him, but he was a little too slow. She brushed past, knocking him down.

Then, without looking for the light, the crazy lady stepped right into traffic. Cars honked and swerved, but she just kept going. Nothing seemed to touch her or draw her interest.

“We better get out the way,” Peaches said.

The three of them stepped back into the parking lot of the Foot Locker behind them and watched the woman stride past. As she rushed by, Perry heard a quick snatch of music. It was just a couple quick piano chords, and he couldn’t identify the song. He couldn’t tell for sure, looking at her back, but he didn’t think the woman had been wearing headphones. Still, if she was, that might account for her behavior, just a little. She was lost in the music, marching instead of dancing. But that didn’t explain the flowing hooded coat or the turban—or why she didn’t seem to see anyone or anything in her path.

“That was—I dunno what that was,” Perry said.

“That was a street crazy, Perry,” Peaches said. “You seen your share.”

The Elysian Fields trolley had arrived. It purred to the ground and Peaches climbed on. Perry let Brendy on, then climbed in after. As he paid both their fares, he thought about what he’d seen. The lady was crazy, all right, but Perry couldn’t help but feel there was more to her than that.

He watched the man with the headphones, considered asking him to turn his music down. Something in the idea made Perry feel small and craven. The music wasn’t bothering him, after all, so why hassle anyone about it?

Goddamn jungle music.

The thought bubbled up from somewhere dark, in a voice not Perry’s own. He knew it, though. It was the voice of—

Perry tensed. He’d almost fallen asleep. He had promised himself never to fall asleep on the sky trolley again.

Brendy sat back. She slouched a little, crossing her arms over her chest. “So,” she said. “Where we going, anyway?”

Perry adjusted his own posture. Peaches sat on the forward-facing bench at right angles to him and Brendy, gazing thoughtfully at the grubby fingernails of her right hand. She was due for a wash—the bottoms of her bare feet were nearly black with grime—but as far as Perry knew, Peaches never bathed indoors. It had been almost a week since the last good rain, and wherever Peaches had been and whatever she’d been up to in that time, she hadn’t taken her usual weekly swim in Big Lake at City Park. It was a wonder she didn’t stink.

Perry looked down through the rose-colored glass as the trolley hummed along. The humming stopped abruptly, and the trolley glided silent for a few seconds as its motor rested.

“We going to a boneyard,” Peaches said.

“Foy Street!” the pilot called over his shoulder.

Peaches reached up and pulled the bell. This was their stop.

If they were getting off at Foy, heading to a cemetery, Peaches must mean Mount Olivet—which happened to be where Doctor Professor was buried. Could this mission be connected to him somehow? Surely, he wouldn’t have stolen from Peaches…

The trolley drifted down, and the three of them disembarked. Perry started to sweat immediately, but it was only a few blocks to their destination.

At one time or another, the three of them must have been to every other cemetery in town to visit family or on school field trips. Mount Olivet, though, was outside their usual stomping grounds. The walk down Gentilly and up Norman Mayer went quickly enough, and as they went, Brendy babbled happily about this and that. She always talked this way after a longish trolley ride, but her companions didn’t have much to add. Peaches answered the occasional question in monosyllables, and Perry spent most of the time watching her. She’d seemed totally normal when they met up, but now she seemed extra quiet—not sullen, but… distracted.

Now they were in sight of the boneyard’s front gate. Perry expected to see at least a zombie or two hanging round, but the street—the entire neighborhood, it seemed—was empty of them. He frowned and reached for Peaches’s elbow. From her mood he expected her to shrug him off, but she didn’t, and they walked like that for several paces, Perry’s hand resting on her cool, dry skin. Perry realized now that he’d never seen Peaches sweat, and he wondered if she felt the heat the way normal folks did.

Perry pushed the thought away. It didn’t matter. Peaches was Peaches.

He curled his fingers a little, slowed his walk. “Hey.”

“Hey, what?”

“You okay?”

“You ain’t gotta be worrying bout me all the time, Perry,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

Perry just watched her, feeling caught without knowing why.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “I’m fine. How you doing?”

“I’m okay,” he said. He grinned and danced a few manic steps. “Summatime, baby!”

“Summa. Time,” she agreed. “Here I’m is.”

“Here I’m is!” Brendy crowed.

“Yeah,” Perry said. “Here we is together.” But a chilly unease had begun to gather in his belly.