“Charlie…?”
His wife’s hand moved to his.
“You…all right…Charlie?”
She drowsed.
He did not answer.
He could not tell her how he was.
15
The sun rose yellow as a lemon.
The sky was round and blue.
The birds looped clear water songs in the air.
Will and Jim leaned from their windows.
Nothing had changed.
Except the look in Jim’s eyes.
“Last night…” said Will. “Did or didn’t it happen?”
They both gazed toward the far meadows.
The air was sweet as syrup. They could find no shadows, anywhere, even under trees.
“Six minutes!” cried Jim.
“Five!”
Four minutes later, cornflakes lurching in their stomachs, they frisked the leaves to a fine red dust going out of town.
With a wild flutter of breath, they raised their eyes from the earth they had been treading.
And the carnival was there.
“Hey…”
For the tents were lemon like the sun, brass like wheat fields a few weeks ago. Flags and banners bright as blue-birds snapped above lion-coloured canvas. From booths painted cotton-candy colours fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam with the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed.
“It’s just a plain old carnival,” said Will.
“Like heck,” said Jim. “We weren’t blind last night. Cone on!”
They marched one hundred yards straight on and deep into the midway. And the deeper they went, the more obvious it became they would find no night men cat-treading shadow while strange tents plumed like thunder clouds. Instead, close up, the carnival was mildewed rope, moth-eaten canvas, rain-worn, sun-bleached tinsel. The side-show paintings, hung like sad albatrosses on their poles, flapped and let fall flakes of ancient paint, shivering and at the same time revealing the unwondrous wonders of a thin man, fat-man, needle-head, tattooed man, hula dancer…
They prowled on but found no mysterious midnight sphere of evil gas tied by Mysterious Oriental knots to daggers plunged in dark earth, no maniac ticket takers bent on terrible revenges. The calliope by the ticket booth neither screamed deaths nor hummed idiot songs to itself. The train? Pulled off on a spur in the warming grass, it was old, yes, and welded tight with rust, but it looked like a titanic magnet that had collected to itself, from locomotive bone-yards across three continents, drive shafts, flywheels, smoke stacks, and hand-me-down second-rate nightmares. It did not cut a black and mortuary silhouette. It asked permission but to lie dead in autumn strewings, so much tired steam and iron gunpowder blowing away.
“Jim! Will!”
Here came Miss Foley, their seventh-grade schoolteacher, along the midway, all smiles.
“Boys,” she said, “what’s wrong? You look as if you lost something.”
“Well,” said Will, “last night, did you hear that calliope — “
“Calliope? No — “
“Then why’re you out here so early, Miss Foley?” asked Jim.
“I love carnivals.” said Miss Foley, a little woman lost somewhere in her grey fifties, beaming around. “I’ll buy hot dogs and you eat while I look for my fool nephew. You seen him?”
“Nephew?”
“Robert. Staying with me a few-weeks. Father’s dead, mother’s sick in Wisconsin. I took him in. He ran out here early today. Said he”d meet me. But you know boys! My, you look glum.” She shoved food at them. “Eat! Cheer up! Rides’ll open in ten minutes. Meantime, I think I’ll spy through that Mirror Maze and — “
“No,” said Will.
“No what?” asked Miss Foley.
“No Mirror Maze.” Will swallowed. He stared at fathoms of reflections. You could never strike bottom there. It was like winter standing tall, waiting to kill you with a glance. “Miss Foley,” he said at last, and wondered to hear his mouth say it, “don’t go in there.”
“Why not?”
Jim peered, fascinated, into Will’s face. “Yeah, tell us. Why not?”
“People get lost,” said Will, lamely.
“All the more reason. Robert might be wandering, loose, and not find his way out if I don’t grab his ear — “
“Never can tell — “ Will could not take his eyes off the millions of miles of blind grass — “what might be s around in there…”
“Swimming!” Miss Foley laughed. “What a lovely mind you have, Willy. Well, yes, but I’m an old fish. So…”