“We got to hide her, until we can help — “
“Help?” panted Jim. “We can’t help ourselves!
“There’s got to be weapons, right in front of us, we’re just too blind — “
They stopped.
Beyond the thump of their own hearts, a greater heart thumped. Brass trumpets wailed. Trombones blared. A herd of tubas made an elephant charge, alarmed for unknown reasons.
“The carnival!” gasped Jim. “We never thought! It can come right into town. A Parade! Or that funeral I dreamt about, for the balloon?”
“Not a funeral and only what looks like a parade but’s a search for us, Jim, for us, or Miss Foley, if they want her back! They can march down any old street, fine and dandy, and spy as they go, drum and bugle! Jim, we got to get her before they — “
And breaking off, they flung themselves down an alley, but stopped suddenly, and leaped to hide in some bushes.
At the far end of the alley, the carnival band, animal wagons, clowns, freaks and all, banged and crashed between them and the empty lot and the great oak tree.
It must have taken five minutes for the parade to pass. The rain seemed to move on away, the clouds moving with them. The rain ceased. The strut of drums faded. The boys loped down the alley, across the street, and stopped by the empty lot.
There was no little girl under the tree.
They circled it, looked up in it, not daring to call a name.
Then very much afraid, they ran to hide themselves somewhere in the town.
33
The phone rang.
Mr Halloway picked it up.
“Dad, this is Willy, we can’t go to the police station, we may not be home today, tell Mom, tell Jim’s mom.”
“Willy, where are you?”
“We got to hide. They’re looking for us.”
“Who, for God’s sake?”
“I don’t want you in it, Dad. You got to believe, we’ll just hide one day, two, until they go away. If we came home they”d follow and hurt you or Ma or Jim’s mom. I got to go.”
“Willy, don’t!”
“Oh, Dad,” said Will. “Wish me luck.”
Click.
Mr Halloway looked out at the trees, the houses, the streets, hearing faraway music.
“Willy,” he said to the dead phone. “Luck.”
And he put on his coat and hat and went out into the strange bright rainy sunshine that filled the cold air.
34
In front of the United Cigar Store on this before-noon Sunday with the bells of all churches ringing across here, colliding with each other there, showering sound from the sky now that the rain was spent, in front of the cigar store the Cherokee wooden Indian stood, his carved plumes pearled with water, oblivious to Catholic or Baptist bells, oblivious to the steadily approaching sun-bright cymbals, the thumping pagan heart of the carnival band. The flourished drums, the old-womanish shriek of calliope, the shadow drift of creatures far stranger than he, did not witch the Indian’s yellow hawk-fierce gaze. Still, the drums did tilt churches and plummet forth mobs of boys curious and eager for any change mild or wild, so, as the church bells stopped up their silver and iron rain, pew-stiffened crowds became relaxed parade crowds as the carnival, a promotion of brass, a flush of velvet, all lion-pacing, mammoth-shuffling, flag-fluttered by.
The shadow of the Indian’s wooden tomahawk lay on an iron grille embedded in the sidewalk in front of the cigar store. Over this grille with faint metallic reverberations, year after year, people passed, dropping tonnages of mint-gum wrapper, gold cigar-band, matchstub, cigarette butt or copper penny which vanished below forever.
Now, with the parade, hundreds of feet rang and clustered on the grille as the carnival strode by on stilts, roared by in tiger and volcano sounds and colours.
Under the grille, two shapes trembled.
“Above, like a great baroque peacock striding the bricks and asphalt, the freaks’ eyes opened out, to stare, to search office roofs, church spires, read dentists’ and opticians’ signs, check dime and dry goods stores as drums shocked plate glass windows and wax dummies quaked in facsimiles of fear. A multitude of hot and incredibly bright fierce eyes, the parade moved, desiring, but not quenching its desire.