The Boy Who Invented the Bubble Gun

by Paul Gallico

  It was the sheer cosiness of the atmosphere aboard Bus 396 which at least temporarily spared Julian from the searching efforts of Sergeant Cassidy, for the sergeant had done his duty and notified all rail and bus terminals as well as police, state troopers and sheriffs’ offices in the vicinity. Luck and the bus driver’s preoccupation with the curious melting away of his passengers also helped Julian evade capture, for when the dispatcher in Oklahoma had routinely warned him to keep his eye out for a child travelling alone, the driver was still mulling over the mystery of his defecting passengers, and a further fact was that, except for a glimpse during the boarding at San Diego, he had never seen Julian actually travelling alone. The driver was not an intellectual giant and tooling one of those monsters across the continent called for the most intense concentration. The fact that one of the kids on his bus had been with three different parties failed to register. He had always appeared under the care of somebody.

  And none of the passengers seemed interested in the news broadcasts.

  It was shortly after two o’clock, the bus rolling at seventy miles an hour, a half an hour beyond Lordsburg bound for El Paso, that Julian’s incognito was to become violently destroyed.

  There had been a short halt at Lordsburg for the passengers to buy luncheon and Marshall had treated handsomely. They had changed seats again with Marshall by the window. Julian had a hamburger roll in one hand, a bottle of Coke in the other and on his lap a paper plate containing a sticky cream puff and a Mars bar.

  Marshall was munching a ham and cheese on rye and washing it down with a can of beer. His paper plate had apple pie and a slab of cheese on it. Elsewhere all over the bus luncheon parties were going on with the exception of the chess players who, now with only a few pieces remaining, were pursuing one another over the squares with increasing ferocity.

  Julian finished his hamburger and got his nose into the cream puff. He said, “Say, this is great. Thanks a lot. I was all out of tuna-fish. Can I pay you for what you spent?”

  Marshall said, “No, that’s all right, this one’s on me,” and as Julian got deeper into his cream puff and acquired a fetching white moustache, Marshall regarded him once more with a mixture of curiosity and in spite of his desire for non-involvement, with a strange growing affection. He said, “Look here, Julian, this crazy caper of yours. What about when you get to Washington? How much money have you got?”

  “Thirty-five dollars. My grandmother gave me a hundred and fifty for my b-b-birthday.”

  Marshall snorted, “Thirty-five bucks! You know how far that will go?”

  Julian shook his head and Marshall continued, “Look, I’ve got my last five hundred on me but in a town like Washington it might just as well be your fifty. If I don’t connect with a job when I get there I’ll be flat.” He grinned suddenly at Julian and said, “I guess you and me are in the same boat. Me and my kid brother. Both on our asses. Isn’t that something?” And then as Julian regarded him worshipfully, became serious and said, “Kidding aside, what do you do when the fifty is gone?”

  Julian thought that this was a stupid question and the tone of voice in which he replied indicated that. He said, “Sell my Bubble Gun. The colonel said it would work. I’ll have my patent.”

  In a sudden burst of exasperation Marshall cried, “Work, work, work! For chrissakes, kid, wake up. Don’t you see you can’t just go barging . . .”

  Here Marshall cut off without finishing his speech of admonition about the futility of Julian’s quest, for suddenly looking up towards the front of the bus his eyes had caught a glimpse of something that was not as it should be and that subliminal sense of danger not yet eroded by more than a year of civilian life again was there to warn him. He said, “Now, what the hell is going on up there?”

  Sam Wilks was a psychopathic killer, a piece of white trash turned thief and murderer. By almost incredible luck he had avoided the police dragnet at San Diego where he had been expected to try to get across the border at Tijuana. After robbing and killing a gas station attendant at Carlsbad between Los Angeles and San Diego, he had abandoned his stolen getaway car and vanished. There had apparently been no witnesses to the crime and there had been no accurate description of him available but everything pointed to his crossing over into Mexico. Nobody had either expected or looked for him on an east-bound bus.

  Hunched in the front seat of the upper level of Bus 396, his hat pulled down over his eyes, a map of the district in front of him, Wilks was full of himself and the Godlike feeling of knowing he was master of life and death. He had got away with it and he would still vanish into the badlands of Mexico until the heat was off. He carried two articles on his person which practically guaranteed this. One was a .45 automatic pistol, the other a hand grenade of a new army mark, a recently introduced model with the explosive force of a three-inch shell. The stability of this latter horror, from which Wilks always kept the pin half pulled, was no more reliable than the man holding it. He belonged to that new breed of self-justified terrorists spawned in the seventies and like all of them was prepared to risk everything including himself, with the cunning to let the dice roll on the gamble of trying something never before attempted.

  His map showed him that they were approaching the small town of Deming, about an hour or so from El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The authorities would not be looking for him coming from that direction and even if they were no one was going to stop him. He folded up the map, having committed to memory the spot where a secondary road branched off, put it away in his pocket, pushed back his hat to mop his brow for only the briefest moment of nerves which he shed by thinking that he would probably kill that good-looking son of a bitch who had been interfering with him and enjoy doing it. His right hand closed around the warm steel butt of the .45. His left hand curled against the fragmentation squares of the grenade in his pocket. He turned around once for a last look at the disposition of the passengers, where they were and what they were doing, another glimpse of the bus driver and the road ahead and then made his move.

  Julian said, “What? Going on up where?”

  Marshall said, “I dunno. Sit still.” But he thought he did know for having half risen out of his seat so that he could look over the heads of the other passengers he saw the character in the dirty clothes and ten-gallon hat get up, go forward and lean over the shoulder of the bus driver. He was holding something in his right hand, a second object in his left and Marshall had no difficulty recognizing either of them.

  Between his teeth Marshall muttered, “The son of a bitch,” and without a weapon felt completely naked and helpless and at the same time very angry. He watched the bus driver momentarily take his eyes from the road and stare up at the man Wilks with utter incredulity and then with a shaking hand pick up the microphone connecting him with headquarters.

  The main dispatcher’s office of the company in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was a vast, air-conditioned soundproof chamber filled with receiving and sending apparatus and men and girls serving them as the messages came pouring in from every corner of the country. At the end of the room there was a huge map of the United States with all the bus routes, and the messages were relayed to boys there who stuck pins and flags into the routes so that an overseer at a glimpse would know practically where every one of his vehicles might be within fifty miles at any given time. At the other end of the room the chief dispatcher sat at a high desk like a judge’s bench with earphones and a plug-in switchboard which could connect him with any of the incoming or outgoing circuits. The room was filled with the quiet hum of the voices of the dispatchers speaking sotto voce, livened by occasional interference crackle where somebody was encountering weather.

  At one of the receiving desks the instrument gave a long bleep and then came the muffled mechanical tone of a voice adulterated by electronics, “Three nine six, three nine six. Do you read me? Three nine six.”

  The dispatcher put on his headset with a yawn, but then suddenly looking up at the big electric clock on
the wall, wondered what the hell 396 was calling him for at that hour. He adjusted a dial for better reception and said, “Three nine six. I read you, Mike. What’s cooking?” and then his eyes popped as a voice clearly said, “We’re ten miles west of Deming. I’ve got a guy with a gun on me.”

  “You got what?”

  The bus driver’s voice said, “He’s going to take us down from Deming to the border. He wants to cross at Juarez Oeste. And half a million bucks. He says he wants half a million bucks. He’s got a bomb. He says he’ll blow us all up.”

  To the dispatcher it could be nothing more than a gag or maybe Mike had got loaded somewhere, but if he was that kind of a goddamned fool the chief dispatcher ought to know about it. He pressed a button at his desk and a red light glowed on the panel by the chief dispatcher’s rostrum. The chief threw a switch and donned earphones and microphone.

  The dispatcher spoke a curt message to his superior, “Three nine six claims he’s been hijacked,” and then to the bus said, “Aw, listen, you’re kiddin’, ain’t you? You trying to say you got a hijacker on board? C’mon, Mike, what is this? Cut out the clowning. Nobody hijacks a bus.”

  Even though distorted by electronics the fear and tension could be heard raising the pitch of the driver’s voice. “Oh, my God, listen, will you. He’s letting me get through to tell you to keep the cops off and he ain’t kidding. I got a .45 in my ear and a bomb at the back of my neck. And, listen, he says the half a million in small bills. It’s to be waiting at the U.S. Immigration Station at West El Paso.”

  The chief spoke into his microphone and said, “This is Olson, chief dispatcher. Look here . . .”

  The driver’s voice rose to a near hysterical pitch. “I don’t care who it is. He’s saying a cop comes within twenty yards of the bus and the thing he’s got goes bang. He says it’s one of them new grenades that’ll kill everybody on board. I got twenty-one adults and three kids.”

  The chief said, “Okay, okay, we believe you. Keep your cool. We’ll do all we can to help you. Do the passengers know yet?”

  Three nine six said, “They will now,” and clicked off.

  Standing on the top step at the head of the second level of the bus, the .45 in one hand, the grenade in the other, facing half to the rear but angled so that he could threaten the driver as well as the passengers below him, Wilks was in complete control. He could watch the sides and the rear should pursuit develop and too, he had a glimpse of the driver’s mirrors. He said to the driver, “Okay, bud, speak your piece.”

  One by one, in unbelieving horror, the passengers were becoming aware of the man with the gun and the grenade. The driver picked up his interior microphone. “Okay, folks, everybody please keep calm. Our friend here says he’d like to jump the border at Juarez and if you’ll just kindly keep your seats he says how nobody ought to get hurt. We should be there in about an hour. Is that right, Jack?”

  Wilks laughed and said, “Like you learned your little piece in school.” And then, “You told them other fellows about the money, didn’t you?”

  The driver said, “You heard me.”

  Speaking loudly so as to be heard over the bus noises and the roar of the big wheels on the tarmac, Wilks said, “That’s about the straight of it, folks. I don’t aim to hurt nobody if you all stay where you are in you seats, but I wouldn’t like this here thing to go off ’cause they sure make a powerful mess. And don’t nobody try to get brave neither. See this here little pin?” He held up the grenade so that they could all see the clip pin at the side partly withdrawn from the ring holding it. “If this comes out the rest of the way, we all go.” He laughed. “That’s okay with me too, so don’t get any ideas that I ain’t got the guts to do it.”

  The bus erupted into fragmented sentences, little cries of alarm, notes of sheer incredulity.

  “What’s that? What’d he say?”

  “Oh my God, he’s got a gun and a bomb.”

  “What is it? A hijack?”

  Wilks laughed, “You might call it that. First one on a bus. So, let’s just keep nice and quiet on account of these here things are kind of nervous like,” and he flipped the grenade in his hand.

  A male passenger yelled, “Man, are you crazy? Whoever heard of hijacking a bus?”

  And another, “It don’t make no sense, feller. Why didn’t you hijack an airplane?”

  Wilks laughed again. “They don’t buzz you for hardware at bus stations yet. Maybe I’m scared of airyplanes.”

  A woman came out with, “For land’s sakes, ain’t a body safe nowhere no more? I had half a mind to fly, only my daughter says to me ‘Don’t you do it, Mom, with all them hijackers. You just go along on the bus and you’ll get there safe and sound.’ ”

  Wilks’s sarcastic, irritating voice suddenly turned oily with exaggerated politeness. “Now, don’t you worry for one minute, ma’am, and I’m mighty sorry to be disturbin’ of you. After we part company, maybe in an hour or so, you’ll git where yer goin’ to sure enough.”

  One of the male passengers had half risen from his seat. “But, listen to reason, man, you can’t get away with—”

  Wilks levelled the .45. “Sit down and shut up.” And his admonishment was unexpectedly followed up by one from Marshall not far away who cried sharply to the passenger, “Sir, sit down!”

  The man turned and looked at him saying, “Say, are you one of the gang?”

  Marshall said, “No, I’m not, but you don’t argue with a hand grenade when there’s a bus full of lives. Can’t you see he’s got the pin half out?”

  Wilks looked over the heads of the passengers to catch Marshall’s eye and called out sarcastically, “Well, now, Mister, ain’t you smart. I’ll bet yer one of them he-roes. Tell the folks what happens when one of these things goes off.”

  Marshall arose and said placatingly, “Listen, fella, you got a gun on us. Nobody’s gonna start anything. What about getting rid of that grenade. There are women and children on this . . .”

  Marshall’s voice trailed off for a bitter, sour expression had come to Wilks’s mouth and the big .45 was now levelled directly at Marshall’s head.

  The hijacker said, “Shut up and sit down. Don’t try no he-ro stuff with me. You been in my hair already a coupla times and I’m figurin’ on putting a bullet through your skull before I get off this bus. Maybe I’ll do it right now.”

  Marshall went white and large beads of sweat appeared upon his brow. He remained standing, but Julian, looking at him with surprise, saw that he was holding to the sides of the seat in front of him.

  Wilks laughed loudly, “Yer scared, ain’t you?”

  Marshall did not reply and Julian regarded him with sudden misery and a sense of overwhelming disappointment. There was no question about it. Marshall was indeed badly frightened but then Julian had no way of knowing that his friend was within a few seconds of being killed. Marshall had divined the hijacker as a psychopath, as dangerous and unstable as his bomb when the pin would be wholly removed.

  As Wilks’s trigger finger began to tighten the bus flashed by a small crossroads from which two state troopers on motor-cycles roared out and turned on to the main highway in pursuit, momentarily distracting Wilks who, relinquishing the bead he had drawn on the centre of Marshall’s forehead, now concentrated on the discharge mechanism of the grenade and ordered the driver, “Tell them cops if they come any closer this thing goes off.”

  Somehow the antennae of a four-year-old girl picked up the sense of horror and danger permeating the interior of the bus and she began to cry, “Mommy, mommy.” Her mother hugged the child to her and called out aloud, “Oh, you beast!”

  At once Wilks became transformed again and he replied with exaggerated courtesy, “Why no, ma’am, don’t talk like that. I ain’t no beast. Why, I got kiddies of my own at home I wouldn’t want to see no harm come to any more’n you would yours. I like kiddies and kiddies like me. That’s a fact. You got nuthin’ to be afraid of as long as nobody don’t try nuthin’ fun
ny.”

  If the two chess players were aware of what was going on about them they gave no sign. The first offered one of his remaining pawns with an evil grin, the other with an equally wicked grin took it with a bishop which he immediately lost to a lurking knight he had overlooked. The bus had gone silent inside and at the rear one passenger whispered to another, “Keep quiet. I know the type. He’s psychopathic. They’re the worst. Oh, God, don’t let him do it.”

  Marshall was still pale and tightlipped and staring straight in front of him and, during the momentary distraction of the two police, had sat down. The appearance of the law he knew could make matters worse. One could smell the fear in him. Julian threw him another anguished look. That wasn’t the way they behaved on TV.

  Back in the dispatcher’s office, the bus driver’s circuit had been switched on to a loudspeaker. The chief dispatcher was connected with the police by telephone.

  The bus driver’s voice now booming from the speaker said, “Listen, will you. There are cops following us. Tell ’em to lay off. And no roadblocks. He says if there’s a roadblock, he’ll . . .”

  The chief dispatcher repeated rapidly into his telephone, “. . . and he says not to try any roadblocks. Just tell your men to keep away from them.”

  The driver’s voice boomed again, “He was gonna kill a passenger a minute ago because he didn’t like his face.”

  “The driver says he’s a killer,” the chief relayed into the mouthpiece. “We’ve got women and kids on that bus.”

  Again the bus driver: “He’s asking what about the money.”

  The dispatcher quickly picked up the mike and said, “Tell him we’re rounding it up.”

  Number 396 was approaching the crossroads. The west-east highway showed a sign: DEMING 1 MILE, EL PASO 60 MILES. The road leading off to the right was marked: HEAVY TRUCKS. MORELLOS 30 MILES. EL PASO 63 MILES. JUAREZ OESTE 65 MILES.

  As the driver slowed for cross traffic, two more motor-cycle policemen, a sheriff’s car and two state troopers’ vehicles could be seen at the side of the road, but they made no move. Wilks tapped the driver on the shoulder with his gun barrel and with his hand waved him to the right. Reluctantly the driver tugged at his heavy wheel and, picking up speed, he headed south. The troopers and police joined the cortège.