For the things it most wanted were hidden in dark.
Jim and Will, under the cigar store sidewalk grille.
Crouch-pressed knee to knee, heads up, eyes alert, they sucked their breaths like iron Popsicles. Above, women’s dresses flowered in a cold breeze. Above, men tilted on the sky. The band, in a collision of cymbals, knocked children against their mothers’ knees with concussion.
“There!” exclaimed Jim! “The parade! It’s right out front the cigar store! What’re we doing here, Will? Let’s go!”
“No!” cried Will, hoarsely, clenching Jim’s knee. “It’s the most obvious place, in front of everybody! They’ll never think to check here! Shut up!”
Thrrrummmmm…
The grille, above, rang with the touch of a man’s shoe, and the worn nails in that shoe.
Dad! Will almost cried.
He rose, sank back, biting his lips.
Jim saw the man above wheel this way, wheel that, searching, so near, yet so far, three feet away.
I could just reach up…thought Will.
But Dad, pale, nervous, hurried on.
And Will felt his soul fall over cold and white-jelly quivering inside.
Bang!
The boys jerked.
A chewed lump of pink bubble-gum, falling, had hit a pile of old paper near Jim’s foot.
A five-year-old boy, above, crouched on the grille, peered down with dismay after his vanished sweet.
Get! thought Will.
The boy knelt, hands to the grille.
Go on! thought Will.
He had a crazy wish to grab the gum and stuff it back up into the little boy’s mouth.
A parade-drum thumped one huge time, then – silence.
Jim and Will glanced at each other.
The parade, both thought, it’s halted!
The small boy stuck one hand half through the grille.
Above, in the street, Mr Dark, the Illustrated Man, glanced back over his river of freaks, cages, at the sunburst tubas and python brass horns. He nodded.
The parade fell apart.
The freaks hurried half to one sidewalk, half to the other, mingling with the crowd, passing out handbills, eyes fire-crystal, quick, striking like snakes.
The small boy’s shadow cooled Will’s cheek.
The parade’s over, he thought, now the search begins.
“Look, Ma!” The small boy pointed down through the grille “There!”
35
In Ned’s Night Spot, half a block from the cigar store, Charles Halloway, exhausted from no sleep, too much thinking, far too much walking, finished his second coffee and was about to pay when the sharp silence from the street outside made him uneasy. He sensed rather than saw the mild intermingled disturbance as the parade melted among the sidewalk crowds. Not knowing why, Charles Halloway put his money away.
“Warm it up again, Ned?”
Ned was pouring coffee when the door swung wide, someone entered, and splayed his right hand lightly on the counter.
Charles Halloway stared.
The hand stared back at him.
There was a single eye tattooed on the back of each finger.
“Mom! Down there! Look!”
The boy cried, pointing through the grille.
More shadows passed and lingered.
Including — the Skeleton.
Tall as a dead tree in winter all skull, all scarecrow-stilted bones, the thin man, the Skeleton, Mr Skull played his xylophone shadow upon hidden things, cold paper rubbish, warm flinching boys, below.
Go! thought Will. Go!
The plump fingers of the child gesticulated through the grille.
Go.
Mr Skull walked away.
Thank God, thought Will, then gasped, “Oh, no!”
For the Dwarf as suddenly appeared., waddling along, a fringe of bells on his dirty shirt jingling softly, his toad-shadow tucked under him, his eyes like broken splinters of brown marble now bright-on-the-surface mad, now deeply mournfully forever-lost-and-gone-buried-away mad looking for something could not be found, a lost self somewhere, lost boys for an instant, then the lost self again, two parts of the little squashed man fought to jerk his flashing eyes here, there, around, up, down, one seeking the past, one the immediate present.
“Mama!” said the child.
The Dwarf stopped and looked at the boy no bigger than himself. Their eyes met.
Will flung himself back, tried to gum his body into the concrete. He felt Jim do the same, not moving but moving his mind, his soul, thrusting it into darkness to hide from the little drama above.