The Adventures of Flash Jackson by William Kowalski Read Free Book Online Page B

first place—to be changed. I was looking for adventure, you see, and the war came along at just the right time.”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” I said. “I mean, Elizabeth.”
    â€œSomeday I’ll tell you some more of the story,” she said. “I think you’re the kind of woman who would appreciate it. You’ll come by for tea this week, yes?”
    â€œAll righty,” I said, though two tea parties in one week was about twice as many as I thought I could handle.
    â€œSee you then, dear,” she said, “and by the way.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œCome alone, if you don’t mind.” She winked at me. I smiled.
    â€œI don’t mind one bit, Elizabeth,” I said. I guess Mother had gotten on her nerves after all. Well, she’d certainly done a good job of hiding it.
    Elizabeth turned and marched on up the road like marching was what she’d been doing all her life. I had completely forgotten to ask her about Flash—the other Flash, I mean. That could wait until Isaw her again. As far as I was concerned, I was the original: Flash Jackson, stuntman extraordinaire, who on top of having to suffer the indignity of living in a girl’s body was now confined to crutches, and to having a twenty-pound deadweight attached to his leg.
    You’re probably wondering by now whether I wasn’t just as crazy as poor Frankie, what with my carrying on about this invisible person inside me. Did she really believe there was a man trapped inside her? you may be asking yourself. Was she plumb loco? Did she have a screw loose? Well, that’s actually a separate question. Living out in the country will make anyone crazy, if that’s not what they’re cut out for. And just because you’re born in a place doesn’t mean you’re cut out for living there. I didn’t mind it much, to be honest, apart from the occasional bout of mind-numbing boredom, but I certainly had to come up with my own ways of entertaining myself, and pretending I was Flash Jackson was one of them.
    It was actually my old Dad who came up with that name, not me. We used to play games together when I was little—hide-and-seek, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, and my particular favorite, stuntman. Stuntman involved doing all kinds of things that seemed awful exciting, such as swinging out of trees on a rope, or locking myself in a trunk and then making my daring escape. Of course, the branch I swung from was only about three feet high, and the trunk was never locked at all. My dad was always standing right there in case anything went wrong. But it was his imagination that made it all seem so dangerous and exciting—that, and the fact that I was about seven years old.
    We both had stuntman names. Mine was Flash Jackson, and his was Fireball McGinty. Fireball McGinty’s specialty was jumping a bicycle off a ramp and over a row of my dolls. I wasn’t allowed to do that one, because it really was dangerous—I mean, it wasn’t life threatening, but there was always the chance that I would fall over and crack a tooth or something when I landed. We would drag a piece of plywood out from the storage area under the house and prop it up on cinderblocks. Then Dad, who had a bit of a wild streak in him, would start off on his bicycle at the far end of the driveway. He’d race down as fast as he could, shouting at the top of his lungs, and then launch himself over. The ramp was only about a foot high, if that. It was hardly death defying. But it seemed to me at the time that it was.
    Poor old Fireball. As it turned out, his stunt name was sort of a prediction of how he would die. I wasn’t home when it happened—I was in school. The principal came and got me out of my classroom, which was nothing new. I figured I was in trouble again. In fact, I’d been in a fight that very afternoon, my fortieth or forty-first of my career—I was a great brawler in