Lewis backed away and took his seat, and nothing happened.
Silence fell on the tent and some of the audience began to shift and look around uneasily. Lewis stood and nodded to Herman Hettman, and the little band burst out in an energetic rendition of “The Bonny Blue Flag.”
From his seat beside Helen, Charlie saw Lewis’s signal and looked up at her.
“What’s wrong? Where’s Harley?”
“I don’t know. Probably fussing with his costume, is all.”
The boy ignored her words, caught the note in her voice instead, and fastened his gaze on the entrance. The murmurs of the crowd grew louder and he heard an old man asking if the magician had left town, and the child felt a rising panic in his chest. He stood, felt the weight of Helen’s hand on his shoulder, and then the old man appeared inside the tent as though he’d been there all along.
Charlie felt the breath leave him, heard someone mutter “My Lord,” wanted to say something but found that his tongue no longer worked. On Lewis Tully’s rough-hewn benches, the captives of the patchwork tent buzzed, he could almost feel their shudder through the tired pine, and he understood.
The figure drawing their eyes was straight-backed and white haired, dressed in a scarlet robe edged in black, and leaned on an ebony staff with an air of impatience. To the boy he seemed taller, younger, his face redder, so that the white hair glowed in contrast. Harley took a long moment to scan the crowd, letting his gaze fall on almost every person in the room, and then he moved to the middle of the tent followed by his cat, and when he reached the center, a fight in the back row would have gone unremarked.
Charlie shook his head at the transformation, fighting the notion that this man in the ring was no longer the same man who’d befriended him, and then he heard Helen give a little murmur.
When he looked at her, she was staring, and for a moment he didn’t think she was breathing. She noticed and gave him an embarrassed glance.
“I saw him like this once, long ago. I was sixteen or seventeen years old.” After a moment she added, “You know he’s not really like all of us, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but…” He shook his head.
“I don’t understand either,” she said.
The old man in the heart of the Blue Moon tent seemed to notice the cat then, peered down at it in what seemed to be irritation, and then tapped the black staff on the sawdust in front of the animal and began to raise the end of the staff. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the cat rose, its levitation accompanied by the low moan of wonder that rose from the stands.
Harley Fitzroy kept the cat in midair for a long ten-count, until the crowd swallowed its voice, and all that could be heard was a faint plaintive mewing. The old man held the staff out straight and then tapped it on the sawdust-covered ground, and Xenophon dropped to the floor. The crowd whooped; the cat gave his master an irritated glance and trotted off to nurse his wounded dignity.
Charlie stared and then jerked up in his seat. “He don’t have his bag. He don’t have any of his things.”
Helen gave him an uneasy look. “Oh, I reckon he’s got what he needs, honey.”
The magician scanned his crowd as though daring anyone to make a sound, then from beneath his robe, produced a pigeon. The pigeon was followed by a mouse which he viewed with obvious distaste and which he made disappear almost immediately. A man in the second row guffawed and shrank back from the magician’s cold eye. Harley stepped back, threw open his robe, and released his finches, a dozen of them.
“He didn’t have but four,” Charlie muttered.
The birds fluttered about, chirping gaily, and one by one he made them all disappear once more. In the next few minutes the magician produced boxes, bells, paper fans, and a small dog, then drew them back whence they’d come. He moved closer to the crowd and began rapidly pulling eggs, balls, and coins from the ears, noses, and hair of the audience, tossing the small treasures into the air and watching the children hold up their hands like flowers catching the rain. He sprinkled them with pennies, with candy, with hair ribbons and chewing gum.
Then he stepped back and waited for the laughter and excitement to abate and frowned at them. When they were perfectly still, he produced a beautiful gold silk scarf and held it up for inspection, then another, a red one. He continued to pull the scarves out until there were six.
Charlie looked up at Helen. “He’s gonna tie ’em in knots and make the knots disappear. I seen him practice this one.”
The woman shook her head, never taking her eyes off Harley.
“No,” she said.
Harley stood over the little puddle of color as though he couldn’t remember what came next. Then a scarf began to separate from the others. It moved until it hung suspended several inches off the ground and then was joined by a second, by a third, eventually by all the scarves, so that all six scarves hung in the close hot air as if by string.
Then the scarves marched.
They marched and wheeled and turned, and when they began to dance so that it was clear no hand held them, no string or thread could possibly move them, the crowd lost the gift of speech.
The boy sank back against the bench behind him and listened to the hammer blows of his heart and could say nothing.
Harley waved his hand and the scarves fell to the ground, and the crowd got to their feet and yelled. Harley ignored the little pile of scarves, cocked his head, and leaned on his staff until the crowd was silent.
“The magic you have seen,” he said in his reedy voice, “exists in your own hearts. I thank you for your courtesy, and for coming to see the show of my great friend Lewis Tully. And now I bid you good evening,” and he bowed low and left the ring to the cheers and stomping of the people of Allanville.
***
The last person left on his benches was a woman in her seventies.
She wore a dress that had gone out of fashion when Teddy Roosevelt held the White House, and she gave Lewis the wry smile of one who has seen prophecy come true.
“I knew you before you opened your mouth, Lewis Tully.”
“Hello, Mrs. Hayes.”
“You’ve got a good memory. Though I’d bet you remember this town and its people better than most places you’ve seen. You were at that age.”
“Yes. I remember it well.”
She nodded. “It’s why you’re back.”
“Most of them are gone.”
“Of course. It was forty years ago or more. They’re dead or moved away, Lewis, most of those people, the bad or the good. My brother foremost among them. He died in 1914.”
“I heard he was dead.”
“I liked your show, Lewis. I’m not even sure what I just saw, some of it. That magician of yours…” She shook her head at the recollection. “It’s plain these people are fond of you, they respect you, but the people here, back then, wouldn’t have been surprised at how you’ve turned out.”
“I think you’re wrong, ma’am. I was just an alley kid to most of them.”
“To some. But they never stopped talking about you after you run off, Lewis. Especially when you took that little boy with you.”
“Mr. Shelby, my partner.”
She nodded. “That impressed people, even the ones thought you’d be found dead in somebody’s irrigation ditch. I knew they wouldn’t be finding you in any ditch. Glad I was right.”
“So am I.”
“Why a circus, Lewis?”
He looked around him at the tent and shrugged. “I never felt quite as good as people who had homes till I joined up with the circus. As long as I was with a show, or later when I had my own, I felt like I was something after all, good as anyone.”
She eyed him for a moment and asked, “Did you ever marry?”
“No, ma’am.”
“And you’re still roaming around after all these years. High ti
me you found a wife, you’re still a young man.”
“I’m fifty-two.”
She raised an eyebrow and he smiled.
“Good-evening, Lewis. It was nice to see you.”
“My pleasure, Mrs. Hayes.”
FORTY-TWO
Back Pages, Old Scores
He sat for almost a half-hour in the tent, staring into the darkness, reliving the performance and fighting off the images of the past. Those scenes seemed to surround him now, to intrude, and he saw faces and events that he’d long buried. He saw himself riding in the back of a wagon going into town for supplies, working the field, riding herd, mending fence, cutting wood. Blistering his hands, sweating through his clothes, falling into bed in those clothes. A short, skinny laborer for a lonely stranger with an evil temper and a quick hand.
He made a long circuit of his camp. The animals were quiet except for Rex, whom he could hear belching and farting into the night. In the long tent the canvasmen were passing a jug and playing cards, and Emmett McKeon was singing. He headed toward his tent, where Shelby and maybe Sam and Harley would be playing cards, and the boy would be in his cot, wrestling with the blankets, a fretting bundle of excitement and jumpiness.
She was leaning against the doorpole of her tent in her heavy blue flannel robe, arms folded and an odd look in her eyes.
“I heard the shuffle of a tired man so I came to have a look.”
“That’s what I am. I didn’t think you’d be up.”
“Oh, I won’t get to sleep for hours. Want to come in and set for a while? I’ve got some of Mr. Royce’s iced tea.”
Lewis looked at her, blinked, looked away, and then made a little nod, working to hide his eagerness. He patted his hip pocket.
“If you want, I can buy us a drink.”
“Liquor is illegal in these forty-eight states.”
“That’s what I’ve heard. This is just for medicinal purposes.”
She smiled and met his eyes and then held the tent flap to one side for him. He bent under it and entered, feeling slightly ridiculous, and Helen followed.
Lewis Tully stood in the center of her tent and tried not to look like a stranger at a wedding. Except for her attempt at doctoring, he had not been alone with her like this in many years.
He noticed her candles, she still used candles, always fond of the soft light.
“It’s been a very long time since we visited like this,” she said, and Lewis wondered if she could read his thoughts.
“I can’t even remember the last time we…” No, lies were snakes and he bit this one’s head off. He remembered perfectly the last time he’d been alone with her late at night in a small tent, they both remembered the last time. But two lifetimes had passed since that last occasion.
He pulled out his flask and set it on her table. From a cardboard box she came up with two small tumblers and held them up for his inspection.
“I always bring this set with me in case I have visitors, and most of the time, I don’t even get to bring them out.” She said it without complaint, simply a woman remarking on the changes in her life.
She put the glasses next to his Oscar Pepper, and Lewis poured them each three fingers. He handed her a glass, picked up his own and lifted it.
“Here’s to you.”
She shook her head. “To your circus, Lewis. And to your friends.”
He drank half his down and looked at her, no more than inches away. She sipped at it, made a face.
“I’ve always thought Oscar Pepper’s such a hot whiskey.”
“I had some Belle of Marion but I drank it with Shelby and Harley. Now, Old Mock, that’s a fine whiskey, and Grommes and Ulrich, which is a real nice whiskey, outfit from Chicago originally…” He was babbling, spouting nonsense, and he drained his glass just to put a stopper in his mouth. She was smiling at him, that little amused look when she knew she had the better of him. Then she set her glass down, he remembered how she did that too, making a little demonstration of it.
He remembered what came next, at least what used to come next—he remembered an afternoon in ninety-five degree heat in a little patch of woods in Michigan. He’d remember that time if he lived another eighty years. He thought of what used to happen next and realized that his knees had gone rubbery. She shot him a little look rich with certainty, self-assurance, coyness, anticipation. He wiped whiskey off his lips with his fingers and looked at his empty glass for help.
“Shall I pour you another, Lewis?” She was looking at him, wide-eyed and innocent as she reached for the bottle. She bent forward, brushing against him.
Instinctively he reached for the bottle. “Here, I can pour ’em,” he said, and his fingers touched hers. He stopped completely and watched, unwilling to believe this could happen again after so long. She turned from the table and straightened so that they were inches apart and met his eyes. She feigned surprise and looked a question at him. Lewis Tully could feel his heart beating, hell, he could hear his heart beating. He wrapped his long arms around her. She put her lips on his and the robe seemed to come to life, pulled itself back and dropped to the floor at her feet.
He had his hands on her waist and remembered what a slender, delicate young girl she’d been all those years ago. She wasn’t slender anymore, she would never see her youth again, but it felt to him like a young girl’s skin.
He moved his hands across her back and down her sides as she worked at the buttons on his shirt and she had it off in seconds. She moved back, pulling him with her, and sat on the bed, unfastening his belt and the top button on his pants.
He touched the skin of her shoulder, felt a constriction in his chest, and wanted to say something.
“Helen…”
“Get the candles, why don’t you,” she said, and moved backward onto her narrow bed.
He got up with his pants falling to his ankles, blew out the candles, tripped over the pants and fell on the floor, and she laughed. He got up, banged a knee on a chair, and then was climbing into her bed, unable to shake the feeling that he was an intruder. She grabbed him by the shoulders and then stopped.
“Oh, Lewis—your ribs?”
“No, they’re better.” He put his arms around her and for a second they held one another, and then she put her lips on his.
***
“I used to feel,” he was saying, “like I owed you an apology for, for all that went on back then, and later I realized you were happy, only person who regretted anything was me.”
She was leaning on an elbow watching him in the dark, and though he couldn’t see her face he knew the look. “That’s not the truth of it, Lewis. I was hurt, terribly hurt, I thought it would kill me. But I decided if I carried that with me, I’d never have any life at all.”
“You wouldn’t have had much of a life with Lewis Tully, that’s certain.”
“Lewis Tully wasn’t even sure he wanted me. That’s why I gave up and found myself a different man and settled in on having a family.”
“Something you wouldn’t have had riding around the country with every mud show that came along. Will was a good man, all right.”
“He was, and I loved him. I still do, I think about him all the time—you work with your hands in a little tent like this without any company most of the time and your mind wanders. We had a good life and I loved him, and I’m sorry he’s gone. But I met a boy almost thirty-four years ago, a handsome, skinny, arrogant boy working for Dan Gustafsen’s circus, and there probably hasn’t been a week gone by that I haven’t thought about him. That Lewis Tully who thought since he’d been living by his own wits when other boys were still in the schoolhouse, he didn’t need anybody for anything.”
“I remember him. He was a thick-headed punk in need of a kick in the ass.”
“Sometimes I close my eyes and I can see you, Lewis, a whole line of you at different times: I
see you with Dan’s circus, you’re a cocky young cowboy working with Dan’s herd, and I can see you working with his animals.
“And I remember you running Dan’s show when he got too old, and running the Verblen Brothers’ show, but everybody really knew it was yours, you were about thirty and you had that look in your eyes said you’d found the Star of India in a circus wagon.”
Lewis laughed and shook his head. “Well, I had to try being pleased with myself, Helen, to keep from feeling foolish about you. Took me years to accept the fact that you’d gone and married someone else. You see, a fellow thinks his girl will wait forever.”
“Almost forever, some of us.” She looked away and then made an irritated shake of her head. “And I can still see you in that damned army uniform—that was the stupidest thing you ever did, Lewis, and you got poor Shelby into it with you, and you both got hurt.”
“I gave up trying to make sense of that myself.” He looked away, realizing that was a lie. “No, it made sense at the time. I was trying to change everything in my life. I’d just heard about you…you know, about you and Will.”
She looked at him for a long moment and then just said, “So many things we do, so many things that don’t need to happen.” She sighed and smiled.
“Something I ought to tell you: I’ve always felt lucky all these times we’ve run into one another over the years, the times we did shows together, those times you worked for my shows—even when I knew you belonged to Will Larsen. You were still in my life somehow. There’s been times I’ve wished I could call it back again, that time when we were just kids, when you…”
When you were mine, he finished silently.
He waited for her to say something, and when she was silent, he felt embarrassed. Then she patted him on his shoulder. “If I told you how I felt all those years, I’d feel ridiculous.”
“Do you ever regret the past?”
“That’s a fool’s work, Lewis.”
They lay in silence for an hour, and just when he thought she’d dropped off, she murmured that it was time to get back to his tent, in case the child was still awake. He tried to think of something to say, something about the two of them, so that this time might repeat itself, but he couldn’t. He dressed and then stood next to her tiny bed for a moment and watched her dozing.
The Blue Moon Circus Page 33