“I’ll go home now.” she said.
“Miss Foley, we’ll — “
“No. Stay. I’m just fine. Have fun, boys. Enjoy.”
And she walked slowly away, alone, down the midway.
Somewhere a vast animal made water. Ammonia made the wind turn ancient as it passed.
“I’m leaving!” said Will.
“Will,” said Jim. “We’re staying until sundown, boy, dark sundown, and figure it all. You chicken?”
“No,” murmured Will. “But…anybody want to dive back in that maze?”
Jim gazed fiercely deep into the bottomless sea, where now only the pure light glanced back at itself, help up emptiness upon emptiness beyond emptiness before their eyes.
“Nobody.” Jim let his heart beat twice. “…I guess.”
16
A bad thing happened at sunset.
Jim vanished.
Through noon and after noon, they had screamed up half the rides, knocked over dirty milk-bottles, smashed kewpie-doll winning plates, smelling, listening, looking their way through the autumn crowd trampling the leafy sawdust.
And then quite suddenly Jim was gone.
And Will, not asking anyone but himself, absolutely silent certain-sure, walked steadily through the late crowd as the sky was turning plum coloured until he came to the maze and paid his dime and stepped up inside and called softly just one time:
“…Jim…”
And Jim was there, half in, half out of the cold glass tides like someone abandoned on a seashore when a dose friend has gone far out, and there is wonder if he will ever come back. Jim stood as if he had not moved so much as an eyelash in five minutes, staring, his mouth half-open, waiting for the next wave to come in and show him more.
“Jim! Get outa there!”
“Will…” Jim sighed faintly. “Let me be.”
“Like heck!” With one leap, Will grabbed Jim’s belt and hauled. Shuffling backward, Jim did not seem to know he was being dragged from the maze, for he kept protesting in awe at some unseen wonder: “Oh, Will, oh, Willy, Will, oh, Willy…”
“Jim, you nut. I’m taking you home!”
“What? What? What?”
They were in cold air. The sky was darker than plums now, with a few clouds burning late sun-fire above. The sun-fire flamed on Jim’s feverish cheeks, his open lips, his wide and terribly rich green shining eyes.
“Jim, what”d you see in there? The same as Miss Foley?”
“What, what?
“I’m gonna, bust your nose! Come on!” He hustled, pulled, shoved, half carried this fever, this elation, unstruggling friend.
“Can’t tell you, Will, wouldn’t believe, can’t tell you,in there, oh, in there, in there…”
“Shut up!” Will socked his arm. “Scare heck outa me, just like she scared us. Bugs! It’s almost suppertime. Folks’ll think we’re dead and buried!”
They were striding now, slashing the autumn grass with their shoes, beyond the tents in the hay-smelling, leaf-mould fields, Will glaring at town, Jim staring back at the high now-darkening banners as the last of the sun hid under the earth.
“Will, we got to come back. Tonight — “
“Okay, come back alone.”
Jim stopped.
“You wouldn’t let me come alone. You’re always going to be around, aren’t you, Will? To protect me?”
“Look who needs protection.” Will laughed and then did not laugh again, for Jim was looking at him, the last wild light dying in his mouth, and caught in the thin hollows of his nostrils and in his suddenly deep-set eyes.
“You’ll always be with me, huh, Will?”
Jim simply breathed warm upon him and his blood stirred with the old, the familiar answers: yes, yes, you know it, yes, yes.
And turning together, they stumbled over a clanking dark mound of leather bag.
17
They stood for a long moment over the huge leather bag.
Almost secretively, Will kicked it. It made the sound of iron indigestion.
“Why,” said Will, “that belongs to the lightning-rod salesman!”
Jim slipped his hand through the leather mouth and hefted forth a metal shaft clustered with chimeras, Chinese dragons all fang, eyeball and moss-green armour, all cross and crescent; every symbol around the world that made men safe, or seemed to, clung there, greaving the boys’ hands with odd weight and meaning.
“Storm never came. But he went.”
“Where? And why did he leave his bag?”