Read Online Jack's Black Book by Jack Gantos - Free Book Online Page A

started.”
    â€œStarted on what?” I asked. “What?”
    â€œIt’s a surprise,” he replied coyly.
    â€œWell, if I’m gonna bankroll your lazy butt,” I stressed, “everything you earn belongs to me.”
    â€œI’ll save you from rats eating your face off,” he said, and made a bucktoothed rat face.
    That got me. I gave him the ten.
    He jammed it into the pocket of his cutoffs, then began to half flop and half crawl across the sand like a fish with feet. After he had gone about ten yards he turned to grin at me. “When I come back, I’ll have evolved,” he said.
    â€œYeah. You’ll be a newt,” I muttered under my breath.
    As soon as Pete left I opened my black book and began to wonder what awful things I could write about. I looked around the beach. I knew that beneath the normal surface of society lay hidden the twisted underbelly of life. That’s the good stuff I wanted to write about, but everything looked pretty normal from where I was sitting. The lifeguard stood in his orange tower. The tourists were spread out on hotel towels, and after baking under the sun all morning they looked like neon-pink hors d’oeuvres on crackers. The palm readers were setting up their striped tents, and the ice-cream vendors were working the crowd. Nothing looked suspiciously abnormal. I stared at the blank pages of my book and thought, Don’t panic, you’ve always been a magnet for weirdness. Sit tight, it will come your way.
    Suddenly a bald guy with a swollen belly and a gold chain around his neck so thick you could anchor a ship on it slogged a path through the sand and stood in front of me. He had on so much suntan lotion he glowed like a freshly glazed donut.
    â€œI want ten cards, dated the next ten days. On each one I want you to make up an excuse why I can’t return to prison on time. And make it believable. You know, like my mother died and I have to attend her funeral. Or they’re throwing me a parade for pulling kids out of a burning building. Stuff like that. I’m on a furlough and I have to send them to my parole officer. Fil pick ’em up after lunch.”
    He pulled a folded ten-dollar bill from the little mesh pocket inside the waistband of his stretchy tiger-print swimsuit.
    I held out my hand, and he dropped it in. The bill was damp. I’ll sterilize this later, I thought to myself as I smiled up at him.
    â€œMake ’em good,” he warned me. “You have a nice typewriter. I’d hate to see something bad happen to it.”
    â€œDon’t worry about a thing,” I said nervously, then smiled at him as I recited my business jingle. “You go free, and leave the writing to me.”
    He marched off, probably to go kick sand on little guys with cute girlfriends.
    I gave him ten days of the worst bad luck I could imagine: Sun-poisoning rash on privates from day at nude beach. Stung on eyeballs by man-o’-war. One hundred stitches in foot from stepping on child’s rusty sand shovel. Inner tube swept out to sea by rogue dolphins. Needed blood transfusion after wicked mosquito attack. Witness to a lifeguard mugging. Ear infection from sea monkeys. Amnesia caused by heat stroke. Buried in sand whilesleeping and left for dead. Needed hip replacement after crippled by suicide surfer.
    I closed the typewriter case with a snap. I figured if my postcard business didn’t work out I could write headlines for the
National Enquirer
or
The Weekly World News.
    When he returned he read each one, slowly, with his lips moving. “You have a sick mind, kid,” he declared.
    I was thrilled. “I’m going to be a writer,” I said to him. “The sicker the mind, the more money you make.” I held out my hand for a tip.
    â€œI’ll give you a tip,” he said, and ripped the cards in half. “If my parole officer read this junk he’d probably track me down and have me