The Boy Who Invented the Bubble Gun

by Paul Gallico

  Marshall said, “You’ll find his gun under that seat.”

  The trooper kept his head and began to get a glimmer of what might have happened. He rolled Wilks over, took one look at him and said to Marshall, “Sorry! Okay, brother. Take care of the kid.” Other troopers joined him and the first one shouted, “Okay, okay, everybody quiet down. We’ve got the guy.” One of the others snapped cuffs on to Wilks’s wrists and two more dragged him erect. A third peered into his face and said, “Say this bastard’s wanted. They just sent over a description of the guy who shot that filling station attendant at Carlsbad. A woman saw him from a window but was scared to report it . . .”

  The swift, smooth action turned the chaos into the more orderly pandemonium of everyone trying to tell how it had happened:

  “He was gonna blow us all up!”

  “He aimed his pistol at my baby!”

  “The kid! It was the kid shot him with a water pistol!”

  “No, it was a gas gun!”

  “The driver’s a hero. The driver saved us all!”

  Marshall picked Julian up, got him on to his knees beside him, brushed him off and helped him rearrange himself. He said, “Sorry if I was a bit rough, but . . .” He noticed then that the boy still had the little black pistol in his fist and said quickly, “Put that thing away in your pocket!” and helped him stow it. It seemed to him not a good time for anyone but the police to be seen having anything resembling a gun. But then to his surprise he found himself saying, “If anybody asks, say it was a water pistol. It makes it even better, see? You want to keep it secret until it’s patented, don’t you?”

  Julian shook himself a little like a dog just out of water and said, “You got the grenade, didn’t you?” All the fears and fantasies had evaporated. Reality was big brother Marshall who in the nick of time had grabbed the grenade and saved them all.

  Marshall said, “Uh huh. Listen, what was all that about, you and those bubbles?”

  There was no way Julian could tell him about how and what he had felt or about his imaginings so he said, “I loaded my B-b-bubble Gun when I was in the you know. There was some soap in there. I thought . . .” He trailed off and didn’t finish the sentence.

  Marshall looked at the child sharply, “You thought what?”

  “I dunno. Well, maybe if he saw the bubbles he’d forget about shooting anybody. He was sort of crazy in the head, wasn’t he?”

  In all the hubbub swirling around them, the two seemed to be unnoticed kneeling together there, an island, isolated. Marshall studied Julian again. How much did children know and how could you tell? Had Julian guessed how near to death he, Marshall, had been, how frightened, and had he tried to distract the killer without a thought as to what might happen to himself? Or had it been all just another scene re-enacted out of some television western—Bang, Bang, you’re dead?

  Julian suddenly seemed to levitate. A passenger had discovered him, seized him by the elbows and hoisted him up shoulder-high, shouting, “Hey, everybody, if you want to know who the real hero is, here he is!”

  A reporter who had managed to squeeze into the bus queried, “Who? Where? What did he do?”

  Julian looked down to Marshall for help but the latter only grinned up at him, “You’re gonna be a hero, kid. Don’t forget it was a water pistol.”

  There were plenty to give testimony:

  “Bravest thing I ever saw. Walked right up to that murderer and squirted stuff in his eyes. He coulda been killed.”

  “What was it, some kind of gas gun?”

  “Picked up the grenade and threw it out the window.”

  “Gave the driver the chance to conk him.”

  “What’s your name, sonny? You ought to get a reward.”

  There was a diversion as the troopers called for a momentary emptying of the bus with, “Everybody out please. Just for a moment. Let’s get this bus cleared.”

  The confusion that had been within was nothing to what developed by the side of the road, with sheriff’s men, rangers, state troopers, army officers, copter pilots, excited passengers and reporters milling about while to the north and south, a king-size traffic jam of cars, single lorries and huge trailer trucks built up, leaning on their horns, or abandoning their vehicles to see what all the excitement was about.

  The rangers had herded the passengers into a neighbouring field along with the reporters in an attempt to sort out what had happened and interrogate witnesses. Photographers and reporters had cornered Julian in one group, the driver and his wrench which he never let go in another. Marshall hovered about the fringe keeping an eye on Julian. Nobody seemed to connect him with the episode of the grenade in all the excitement, which suited Marshall who did not like cops or newspapermen. Not one of two dozen eyewitnesses was going to get the story right anyway. Marshall was still considerably shaken by what he had been through, the narrowness of his escape, the escape of all of them, but what was taking precedence in his thoughts was the little black gun in the boy’s hand, which in obedience to Marshall’s instruction he was describing as an ordinary toy water pistol.

  What had Marshall winging was all the palaver and the odd things that had happened before: the kid showing his diagram of what he claimed was his invention of a Bubble Gun, the colonel of ordnance taking it seriously, some kind of cloak-and-dagger crumb photographing it and then during the crisis, the kid coolly walking up the aisle, pulling the trigger and producing—soap bubbles. The goddamn thing worked.

  The driver was posing for another picture and saying for the ninth time, “. . . so when he started yelling about his eyes, I seen my chance and let him have it with this . . .”

  The bulk of the reporters and cameramen had Julian ringed.

  “What did you say your name was, sonny?”

  Marshall had meant to warn him not to give his right name—Smith, Jones, Brown, even Marshall. Within him was the heartbreak certainty that here was the finish of the boy’s odyssey.

  “Julian West.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “S-S-San Diego, C-C-California.”

  “Travelling all by yourself?”

  Julian did not see Marshall making frantic signals on the edge of the crowd and pointing to himself. “Uh huh.”

  “Where were you going?”

  It was Marshall who spoke up quickly to answer that one, “He was going to Washington to visit his grandmother . . .”

  “Tell us again how it all happened!”

  Julian knew that, for good form, his reply should have been, “Aw, it was nothing; I just did what anybody would have done.” But within himself he was quite well aware that it had not been “nothing”, that something really tremendous had taken place which he did not understand at all, except that for a little he had not been Julian, but somebody else moving somehow through the dream of yet a third person, Marshall’s perhaps. And so he remained silent and did not reply.

  During the interviewing, two intelligent-looking, smartly dressed state troopers, sergeants both, had emerged from their black and white radio car and stood by watching and listening. One finally nodded to the other and said, “That’s the boy, Buck.”

  The other watched and listened for another moment and then said, “I think you got something, Rick,” and then to the crowd as he pushed forward with his companion, “Okay, okay, break it up. That’s enough. You got the story.”

  They towered over Julian. Marshall could not understand the extent of the slightly sickish feeling that gripped him—There goes Julian.

  The trooper named Buck bent down and said gently enough, “I think maybe your daddy would like to know where you are, wouldn’t he?”

  Julian looked up at him miserably. Marshall turned and walked away.

  One would have said that Aldrin and Ellen West had been turned to stone, sitting there endlessly by the telephone, staring at it and waiting for it to ring with their anguished and haunted eyes, rather than their ears. There is no hell greater than the pictures limned by t
he imagination of the fate of a lost or stolen child.

  When the telephone at last delivered its signal, it took West three rings before he could unfreeze to seize it by its throat, fumble the receiver and face the news, good or bad.

  He said, “Hullo! Yes, yes, West speaking. You say you’ve got him . . .?” He turned to his wife, “Mother, Mother, they’ve found him. They’ve got him.” The voice was still coming from the receiver and West turned back to the phone, “Sorry, lieutenant, I didn’t get that. You say you’re in touch with a radio car in . . . ? Where did you say? New Mexico? What, what? On a bus . . . ? A hero . . . ? Shot a hijacker . . . ?”

  It was too insane and unbelievable, but the voice of the police lieutenant at the other end was firm. West shouted to Ellen, “He’s a hero. Shot a hijacker or something. And he’s okay. Yes, yes, go on, lieutenant . . . He’s right there at the radio car. Oh thank God—Ellen, do you hear?”

  She began to cry. “Please, Aldrin, I want him back. Tell them I want him back . . .”

  The excited words came tumbling from West. “Listen, lieutenant, can you . . . can they send him home? Sure, sure, the fastest way . . . anything . . . I’ll pay transportation, charter a plane or whatever. Thank you, thank you, lieutenant. And you’ll keep us posted won’t you? We’ll be right here.”

  He hung up nearly sick with relief, but when he turned to his wife again there was a puzzled frown building. “What did they mean he shot him with a water pistol; you can’t shoot anybody with a water pistol. My God, Ellen, it must have been his Bubble Gun . . .”

  They were over by the radio car—the two troopers, Julian, and within the radio operator wearing a headset and working a powerful unit. The operator removed an earphone and spoke to the trooper named Rick who relayed the message on to Julian: “They’ve just been on to your home in San Diego, and I guess your Ma was plenty worried about you. Now you just wait here a minute till we get this road cleared and we’ll have you started home in a jiffy.”

  The trooper had unwittingly edited the message of West’s concern and his offer to pay for a charter plane. Thus Julian’s vivid imagination could picture his mother, but not at the moment his father. He supposed his father would laugh at him again when he got home and probably take his Bubble Gun away as punishment.

  A tall sheriff came up to the car and drawled, “Looka here, sarge, if we don’t get this road opened up . . . Mebbe you fellers better take charge . . .”

  Buck said, “Yeah, okay,” and to Julian, “Stick around, we’ll be back,” and to the operator, “Keep an eye on him, Jim.”

  In the neighbouring fields, the situation had calmed down somewhat, though there were some excited knots discussing the event, with the driver still demonstrating his backhand technique with the wrench and one particularly voluble group of constabulary, state troopers, sheriffs and FBI men arguing over jurisdiction of the prisoner, now conscious and sullen, as to who was to take him in, where the hijacking had actually taken place, where begun, where ended and what state lines had been crossed.

  The Press, satisfied and eager to get to a wire and photo labs, had retired to their helicopter, as had the army, which had no more interest in the affair. All three helicopters rose from the fields almost simultaneously, their rotors beating up a fog that for a few moments caused the entire neighbourhood to vanish in a choking cloud of brown dust which shut off visibility.

  When it cleared Julian was no longer beside the radio car. The operator wondered whether he ought to notify Buck, but just then a bleep from his set called him. He figured the kid wouldn’t have got very far anyway.

  Julian hadn’t. He was just a small piece down the road fighting back tears of anger, and kicking viciously at the dry weeds at the side of the highway.

  Marshall appeared out of the settling dust, brushing himself and muttering, “Christ, those bastards don’t care if they choke you to death.” He saw Julian. “Hey kid, you all right? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know you’re a hero—picture in the papers. Don’t fold up now.”

  Julian took another savage kick at a tumbleweed. “The p-p-police!”

  “What about the police?”

  “They’ve talked with Dad. They say I’ve got to go home. I d-d-don’t w-w-want to go home. I want to patent my Bubble Gun. What does Dad care?”

  Marshall nodded. He had just wanted to be sure. He said, “Yeah, I know.” He was thinking hard. “Sure, your Bubble Gun. I understand.” He patted Julian’s shoulder absently for a moment and then said, “Let’s see that thing again.”

  Gloomily Julian fished into his pocket and handed him the Bubble Gun. No one was paying any attention to them. They were surrounded by a madhouse of arm-waving, whistle-blowing police and troopers, men shouting and cursing, motors rewing up, giant trucks roaring their engines and over all the still settling dust of the copters.

  Reflectively, Marshall played catch with the little gun, squinting down the muzzle and then, aiming it at nothing in particular, pressed the trigger. A single bubble emerged, detached and floated away into the air. By a curious refraction of the sun piercing the last remains of the dust whirled up by the aircraft the bubble turned to pure gold and for a moment shone in the air like a little sun. It was borne aloft on a wave of hot air, seemed to twinkle at them for an instant and then, plop, it was gone.

  Marshall gave the Bubble Gun another flip, caught it by the muzzle, looked down at the unhappy boy and said, “You wanna get to Washington?”

  Julian could only nod assent. He didn’t want to burst into tears before this man and if he had spoken all his pent-up misery might have let go.

  Marshall said, “Okay. We go to Washington. You just trust your Uncle Frank, keep your mouth shut, your nose clean and do as I say. Here, put this away,” and he stowed the Bubble Gun back into the boy’s pocket. He took Julian by the hand and said, “See? We’re just out for a nice little walk, you and I, so don’t get jumpy.”

  They strolled casually through the pandemonium past assorted lawmen, past the bus with its passengers who under the direction of the driver were beginning to return to their places, past the black and white radio car.

  Marshall said, “Just like that! Now we’ve gotta have maybe a little bit of luck.”

  They walked on down the line of still stalled north-bound traffic, past cars and transport vehicles. Passing the latter Marshall merely glanced up into the cabs at the drivers and then walked on until he came to a huge double job, truck and trailer, canvas-covered. The pilot of this one was young, tough looking, short haired and bored. He was leaning on his elbow at the window in an attitude of Okay, so I can stay here all day. On the side of his cab was a sign, NO RIDERS.

  Marshall said, “How ’bout giving us a lift, Mac? Me and my kid brother got to get to Albuquerque.”

  The driver looked them over lazily and said, “What’s goin’ on up front there?”

  Marshall replied, “I dunno. They caught some crook hijacking a bus. Big deal. Look, if you’re going through Albuquerque, our old lady’s took sick and we’re tryin’ to get there.”

  The driver said, “Yeah?” and with one finger tapped the NO RIDERS sign.

  Marshall said, “I saw that. Looks good.” And then said, “You been over?”

  The driver nodded, “Uh huh.”

  “Where?”

  The driver looked more interested and replied, “Ben Hoa. Thirty-first carriers,” to which Marshall said, “Oh brother.”

  The driver queried, “You?”

  Marshall replied, “An Loc. But you guys really caught it.”

  The driver nodded, “You said it. Okay, get in. I go through Albuquerque.”

  Marshall took a fast look around to see if anyone was noticing. No one was. They quickly climbed up into the cab of the truck, Julian squeezed between Marshall and the driver. From up front came the shrilling of more police whistles and the hot sound of engines starting up all along the way. The line was about to move.

  Julian was in a state of p
ure bliss. He was with Marshall, he was free of police, a new adventure was beginning.

  Marshall was figuring that the cops would be notifying the bus driver that the boy was being sent home. And this was exactly what was happening at that moment. As for himself turning up missing, Marshall thought, with six passengers lost off the trip, a seventh would be accepted by the driver as fate.

  Slowly the file began to move, the truck joined the crawl.

  Marshall said to Julian, “Your shoelace is untied.”

  Julian looked down at his feet. It wasn’t. Before he could protest Marshall snapped, “You heard what I said,” but managed to tip him a wink. “Christ, it’s hot,” he said, removing his jacket and holding it in his lap as Julian bent down, carefully untied both laces and then tied them again. The young driver was staring stonily ahead, his eyes on the tailgate of the truck preceding him. Traffic was beginning to speed up in both directions and the next moment they were passing the scene of the action with troopers waving the vehicles through.

  One glimpse showed Marshall all he needed to see, the bus loaded and ready to take to the road again, the black and white radio car parked in the field now surrounded by troopers, agitatedly arguing. Marshall quickly turned his face away from the troopers and towards the truck driver and said, “That musta been where it happened. They sure got a lot of law around.”

  The driver turned and looked squarely at Marshall and said, “I don’t go much for cops,” and then they were past, rolling up the road at thirty, and as traffic spaced even more, up to fifty and every turn of the wheels put distance between them and those left behind.

  Marshall apostrophized himself. Well, you stupid bastard, if this isn’t the craziest caper!

  Back in San Diego, Lieutenant King of the Missing Persons Bureau, not too ably supported by Sergeant Cassidy, was going through one of the most unhappy and uncomfortable moments of his life trying to explain to a man with a thundering temper and a woman on the verge of screaming hysterics. It seemed he could get no further than, “. . . I’m afraid, sir, for the moment we just don’t exactly know. Those hicks down there in Morellos fouled things up. We’re in touch with them every minute. See, they had it all set up and then suddenly they said the kid was gone . . . ,” and thereupon the storm burst over his battered head again. “Gone where? Gone why? Who was in charge? Call the police commissioner, get through to the governor.” Words, shouts, threats, but nothing took away from the fact that Julian and his Bubble Gun had vanished into the blue again.