“Oh, Jim, Will, something is going on. Can you hide, keep out from under, the rest of the day? We got to have time. With things like this, where do you begin? No law’s been broken, none on the books, anyway. But I feel dead and buried a month. My flesh ripples. Hide, Jim, Will, hide. I’ll tell your mothers you’ve got jobs at the carnival, good excuse for you not coming home. Stay hid until dark, then come to the library at seven. Meantime, I’ll check police records on carnivals, newspaper files at the library, books, old folios, everything that might fit. God willing, by the time you show up, after dark, I’ll have a plan. Walk easy until then. Bless you, Jim. Bless you, Will.”
The small father who was very tall now walked slowly away.
Its cigar, unnoticed, fell from his hand, dropped in a spark shower through the grate.
It lay in the square pit glowing its single fiery pink eye at Jim and Will, who looked back and at last snatched to blind and put it out.
36
The, Dwarf, bearing his demented and wildly lighted eyes, made his way south on Main Street.
Stopping suddenly, he developed a film strip in his head, scanned it, bleated and blundered back through the forest of legs to reach for and pull the Illustrated Man down where a whisper was as good as a shout. Mr Dark listened, then fled, leaving the Dwarf far behind.
Reaching the cigar store Indian, the Illustrated Man sank to his knees. Clutching the steel lattice-grille, he peered down in the pit.
Below lay yellow newspapers, wilted candy wrappers, burnt cigars, and gum.
Mr Dark’s cry was muffled fury.
“Lose something?”
Mr Tetley blinked over his counter.
“The Illustrated Man clenched the grate, nodding once.
“I clean under the grate once a month for the money,” said Mr Tetley. “How much you lose? Dime? Quarter? Half dollar?”
Bing!
The Illustrated Man glared up.
In the cash-register window a small fire-red sign jumped high:
NO SALE.
37
The town clock struck seven.
The echoes of the great chime wandered in the unlit halls of the library.
An autumn leaf, very crisp, fell somewhere in the dark. But it was only the page of a book, turning.
Off in one of the catacombs, bent to a table under a grass-green-shaded lamp, lips pursed, eyes narrowed, sat Charles Halloway, his hands trembling the pages, lifting, rearranging the books. Now and then he hurried off to peer into the autumn night, watchful of the streets. Then again he came back to paper-clip pages, to inset papers, to scribble out quotations, whispering to himself. His voice brought forth quick echoes from the library vaults:
“Look here!”
“…here…!” said the night passages.
“This picture…!”
“…picture…!” said the halls.
“And this!”
“…this…” The dust settled.
It had been the longest day of all the days he could remember in his life. He had mingled with strange and not-so-strange crowds, he had searched after the searchers, in the wake of the wide-scattering parade. He had resisted telling Jim’s mother, Will’s mother, more than they needed to know for a happy Sunday, and meantime crossed shadows with Dwarf, traded nods with Pinhead and Fire-eater, kept free of shadowed alleys, and controlled his panic, when, doubling back, he saw the basement pit empty under the cigar store grille and knew that the boys were at hide-and-seek somewhere nearby or somewhere, praise God, very far away.
Then, in the crowds, he moved to the carnival ground, stayed out of tents, stayed free of rides, observed, watched the sun go down, and just at twilight, surveyed the cold glass waters of the Mirror Maze and saw just enough on the shore to pull him back before he drowned. Wet all over, cold to the bone, before night caught him he let the crowd protect, warm, and bear him away up into town, to the library, and to most important books which he arranged in a great literary clock on a table, like someone learning to tell a new time. So he paced round and round the huge clock squinting at the yellowed pages as if they were moth-wings pinned dead to the wood.