Jack felt a firm strong hand grab the back of his neck, and he swung his head around.
"Come on, Jack. Let's go." His father smiled down at him—safety, reassurance, order in that smile.
Jack relaxed his grip on the coins in his pocket and looked up gratefully at his father. He grabbed his father's arm and the two of them started to walk down the midway toward the funhouse, where Baker was waiting. As he walked, he turned back to look at the dwarf.
The little man was scowling at him. "I'll get you, you little son of a bitch." His voice was a low, rough growl.
Frightened, Jack looked up. But his father, ears at a higher level, hearing different sounds, was unaware of the threat. He had not heard it. Jack gripped his father's hairy arm tighter and stared straight ahead, toward Baker, making a conscious effort not to look back. Beneath his wind-breaker and T-shirt, his heart was thumping wildly. He knew the dwarf was staring at him, waiting for him to turn around again. He could feel the hot hatred of the little man's eyes on
his back.
"I'll get you," the dwarf said again.
Jack sorted through the mail in his hand. The envelopes were ordinary—junk, bills, a couple of letters—but they felt tainted, looked soiled to his eyes, and when he thought of those stubby fat fingers touching them, he dropped the envelopes onto the table.
Maybe he could sell the house. Or call the post office and get the mailman transferred. He had to do something.
The fear was once again building within him, and he picked up the remote control and switched on the TV. The Wizard of Oz was on, a munchkin urging Dorothy to "follow the yellow-brick road!" He switched off the TV, his hands shaking. The house seemed suddenly darker, his unpacked boxes throwing strange shadows on the walls of the room. He got up and switched on all the lights on the first floor. It would be a long time before he'd be able to fall asleep.
Jack unpacked in the morning but spent the afternoon shopping, staying far away from his house. He noticed two mailmen on the way to the mall, but they were both of normal size.
Why hadn't he checked?
How could he be so stupid?
He arrived home at five thirty, long after the mailman was supposed to have come and gone. Was supposed to have. For there he was in his absurd blue uniform, lurching ever so slightly to the right and to the left, not quite balanced on his stumpy legs, three houses up from his own.
Jack jumped out of the car and ran into the house, shutting and locking the door behind him, hurriedly closing the drapes. He crouched down behind the couch, out of view from any window, closing his eyes tightly, his hands balled into tense fists of fear. He heard the light footsteps on the porch, heard the metal clack of the mail slot opening and closing, heard the small feet retreat.
Safe.
He waited several minutes before standing up, until he was certain the dwarf was gone. He was sweating, and he realized his hands were shaking.
"Gimme a quarter."
His experience with the dwarf at the carnival had been scary, but though he'd never forgotten the rough voice and small cruel face, it would not have been enough to terrify him so thoroughly and utterly that he now shuddered in fear when he saw a man under four feet tall. No, it was Vietnam that did that. It was the camp. For it was there that he saw the dwarf again, that he realized the little man really was after him and had not simply been making empty threats. It was there that he learned of the dwarf's power.
The guards were kind to him at first; or as kind as could be expected under the circumstances. He was fed twice a day; the food was adequate; he was allowed weekly exercise; he was not beaten. But one day the food stopped coming. And it was three more days before he was given a cupful of dirty water and a small dollop of nasty tasting gruel served on a square of old plywood. He ate hungrily, drank instantly, and promptly threw up, his starved system unable to take the sudden shock. He jumped up, pounding on the door, demanding more food, delirious and half-crazy. But the only thing he got for his trouble was a beating with wooden batons which left huge welts on his arms and legs and which he was sure had broken at least one rib.
Sometime later—it could have been hours, it could have been days—two guards he had never seen before entered his cell. "Kwo ta?" one of them demanded angrily.
"English," he tried to explain through cracked and swollen lips. "I only speak—"
He was clubbed on the back of the neck and fell facedown on the floor, a bolt of pain shooting through his shoulders and side.
"Kwo ta?" the man demanded again. He nodded, hoping that was what they were looking for, not sure to what he was agreeing. The men nodded, satisfied, and left. Another man returned an hour or so later with a small cupful of dirty water and a few crusts of hard bread smeared with some sort of rice porridge. He ate slowly this time, drank sparingly, and kept it down.
He was taken outside the next day and, though the brightness of the sun burned his light-sensitive eyes, he was grateful to be out of the cell. Hands manacled, he was shoved against a bamboo wall with several other silent, emaciated prisoners. He glanced around the camp and saw a group of obviously high-ranking officers nearby. One of the men shuffled his feet, moving a little to the right, and, in a moment he would never forget, he saw the dwarf.
He was suddenly cold, and he felt the fear rise within him. It couldn't be possible. It couldn't be real. But it was possible. It was real. The dwarf was wearing a North Vietnamese army uniform. He was darker than before and had vaguely Oriental eyes. But it was the same man. Jack felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Kwo ta.
Quarter.
The Vietnamese guards had been trying to say "quarter." The dwarf smiled at him, and he saw tiny white baby teeth. The small man said something to another officer, and the other officer strode over, pushing his face to within an inch of Jack's. "Gi meea kwo ta," the man said in a thick musical accent.
And Jack began to scream.
He spent the rest of his incarceration in solitary, where he was beaten regularly and fed occasionally, and when he was finally released he weighed less than ninety pounds and was albino white, with bruises and welts and running sores all over his body. He saw several guards on his way to the airstrip, but though he looked wildly around before stepping onto the plane, he saw no sign of the dwarf.
But the dwarf was waiting for him when he arrived at Vandenburg, disguised as a cheering onlooker. Jack saw the horrible face, the oversized head on its undersized body, between the legs of another POW's family. He had in his hand a small American flag which he was waving enthusiastically. He was no longer Vietnamese—his hair was blond, his light skin red with sunburn—but it was without a doubt the same man.
Then the face faded back into the crowd as friends and families of the newly released men rushed forward onto the tarmac.
He had avoided dwarves and midgets ever since and had been pretty successful at it. Occasionally, he had seen the back of a small man in a mall or supermarket, but he had always been able to get away without being seen.
He had had no problems until now.
He picked up the mail from where it had fallen through the slot, but the envelopes felt cold to his touch, and he dropped them on the table without looking at them.
The next day he left the house before noon and did not return until after dark. He was afraid of seeing the dwarf at night, afraid the small man would come slinking up the steps in the darkness to deliver the mail, but the mail had already been delivered by the time he returned home.