How the hell, Mr. Bethune, do you threaten a rose?
He swallowed, rubbed his mouth, and coughed into a fist. People on the sidewalk glanced at him, or ignored him, but none of them stopped to ask what was wrong.
He chuckled to himself — he was practically invisible. The postman is drunk, folks, so pretend he’s not there. What the hell, that should be easy, they do it when he’s sober.
He swallowed again and held his breath, released it in spurts, and pushed away from the building, heading south, heading home where he could dig out the telephone book and see where Hobbs lived. He doubted she had flowers. He doubted she even had a yard. She probably stayed in a boardinghouse and bossed the landlady around.
He made it as far as the corner of his block before he had to stop and prop a shoulder against a lamppost. Deep breaths. Swallowing. Walking once more, not quite straight, not quite staggering, glancing at the houses he passed, knowing that the woman in there has trouble with her medical bills, the family over there subscribes to nine magazines and two out-of-state newspapers, the unmarried couple in the place across from his receives letters from France at least twice a month. He knew them, he thought as he turned to look back the way he had come; he knew them all and knew them well and didn’t know them at all unless he had an envelope in his hand.
“Oh god,” he said. “Oh god.”
He bypassed his front door, went around the side into the shade.
The roses were dead, petals strewn on the ground, fluttering in a breeze as if trying to crawl to the grass.
He dropped to his knees, hands weak on his thighs, counting the bushes, reaching out and grabbing a stem, snatching his hand back and staring dumbly at the blood bubbles welling in his palm. There was no pain. Just the blood. He sucked at the punctures while he looked up at the house and saw, below one window beneath the eaves, a long blister of white paint pulling away from the wood. Higher, and there was another, just under the gutter, a section of which had somehow worked loose from its bracket.
This wasn’t right.
This couldn’t be happening.
But he was too befuddled to think straight and so didn’t try. He crawled instead on all fours into the backyard, shook his head once at the spectacle he was and shoved himself grunting to his feet, climbed the stoop, banged open the kitchen door and tripped over the threshold as he went in.
He hung on to the nearest counter and lowered his head until it cleared. Cold shower. What he needed a long, cold, stinging shower, a gallon or two of hot coffee, clean clothes and some food — in that order. After that, he’d hunt down Norma and . . . he rubbed his eyes, his temples, decided he would cross that bridge when he came to it. As it was, unless he sobered up, he’d probably kill himself first.
A laugh.
He began to strip as he headed for the bathroom.
“. . . waltz ’cross the floor,” he sang, badly and loudly and not giving a damn, “with the girl he adored . . .”
Right, he thought; right!
She wanted to see him tonight.
How the hell could he have forgotten? A beautiful young woman had made a date with him, and it had completely slipped his mind. And there, he scolded himself, is the reason, you jackass, why you’re not rich, why you don’t have a love life, why you ain’t never going to be more than a carrier all your life — you don’t believe the good things even when they drop on your thick, fat skull. Jackass is right. You got to be clobbered with a two-by-four before anyone can get your attention.
All right. Well, she had his attention now.
Yard called while he was eating: “Heard you tied one on this afternoon, m’friend.”
“Nigel has a big mouth.”
A television shouted the evening news in the background,
Until someone else shouted to turn the damn thing down.
Casey grinned, took another bite of his steak.
“So, hey,” Yard said, “you okay?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“Sort of.” An intentionally loud sigh. “So look; the family’s going to the Travelers tonight, rumor saying it being the last and all. You want to come along? Be glad to have you. I need someone to tell me what the tricks are.”
“Very funny.”
“Maybe we’ll bump into the teacher.”
Casey looked at the back door and saw a rose petal on the floor, curled, a baby’s fist. “Dead,” he said quietly.
“What? She is?”
“My garden, Yard. The last one.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“I got home and all the roses were dead. And are you ready for this? Even the paint’s starting to come off the walls outside.”
“Can’t be. We worked for three days, that paint’s on there for life.”
“It’s coming off, Yard. I swear it, it’s coming off.”
“We’ll check it tomorrow. First thing. Some damp might have gotten underneath it.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“So look, Case, are you coming —”
“Hey, Yard?”
“What?”
“Do you know what a penny tune is?”
“Never heard of it. You sure you’re still not a little in a bag there?”
Casey hung up, gathered his plates and dropped them in the sink. Then he picked up the petal and dropped it into the trashcan. The wall clock — hands and numerals in the belly of a crowing rooster — told him it was already past seven. An hour to kill before the sun went down, then a check in the mirror to be sure he was still human, and off to the fair.
The telephone rang.
Christ, he thought as he slapped up the receiver; nobody calls for two weeks, then everybody calls.
It was Tina.
“Listen,” she said, speaking rapidly, her voice nervous, “Norma and I are going to the carnival tonight and we thought maybe you’d like to come with us? I mean, she’s feeling pretty bad about what she said the other day, she wants to make it up to you, buy you a hot dog or something? I thought maybe if you were going . . .”
Waltz ’cross the floor.
“Damn, Tina,” he said, “I’m really sorry but I already have . . . that is, I’m already meeting someone.”
“Oh.” Silence, but not long. “Well, hey, that’s fine, that’s great. Anybody we know?”
He felt suddenly awkward, almost defensive. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, maybe we’ll see you there, okay?”
“Sure. Probably.”
“And Casey,” she said, “Norma really is sorry.”
Waltz ’cross the floor, all the roses are dead.
“I doubt it, Tina,” he said flatly, and hung up.
She was there.
The midway was crowded, all the concessions busy, but he saw her the moment he stepped into the oval. She was on the Octopus, alone, hair yanked and tossed by the ride’s private wind. He stood back and watched her, grinning, waving once when she spotted him and raised her hands in a boxer’s victory salute. For a moment he didn’t want her to come down, and didn’t watch her until she’d reached the top of each arc. She was among the stars; she was a star; she was, he thought with an abrupt tightening across his chest, his own star, nameless and distant no matter how close she came to touching the ground.
A woman walked by, a rose in her hair.
The roses are dead.
His brow broke sweat in warm running beads, and when the strawberry blonde was momentarily lost to view, he tried to spot Tina and the poisoning bitch in the crowd, whose faces were frozen in manic grins and widened eyes. And in failing, failed to notice that the Octopus had lowered its arms until he looked back and couldn’t find her.
Damn, he thought in near panic, and raised himself on his toes. But he was too short to look over heads and so forced himself to wait, half praying, half fearful, sagging at last when she broke around a man following his paunch around the track.
He grinned.
She smiled, leaned over and kissed his cheek
.
“Corri,” she whispered, hands holding his shoulders, his own hands fluttering, not knowing where to go. “Corri Pilgrim.”
His mouth opened; she closed it with a finger.
“You wanted to know my name,” she reminded him, slipped an arm around his waist and nudged him into moving.
“Oh.” His own arm and her waist; she didn’t pull away. “You the boss’s daughter or something?”
“We’re all Pilgrims here.”
He stared.
She winked. “That’s supposed to be a joke.”
“Oh.” She felt soft, hot without discomfort, hip against hip. “Oh.”
Clockwise around the oval.
“You don’t feel right, Casey,” she said, head tilting and quickly touching his cheek. “Are you sad?”
“Not anymore.”
A shy glance at the ground. “But you were?”
“I guess. Yes.”
He told her about the past two days, about the destruction of his gardens and all the unsuccessful attempts to discover the reasons; he tried to make light of his suspicions of Norma Hobbs, but he could hear the hate prowling around the edge of his voice and it startled him, quieted him for a moment, until she hugged him as they walked and said that what he needed, tonight, wasn’t a solution but an evasion.
“A what?”
They paused at a stand to buy cans of soda, stood to one side to drink and watched a hard-tested mother coax a young boy from the cab of a tiny train engine, but he was having none of it. He wanted to ride. He didn’t want to give up pulling the cord that rang the bell or pushing the green button that tooted the steam whistle.
“Sometimes,” Corri said, “it doesn’t pay to fight.”
He thought she was talking about the woman and the child until he felt her looking at him. A brief scowl as they walked away, hand in hand this time.
“You’re not suggesting I forget about my flowers?”
No answer.
“I can’t do that. Really. I mean, if the lack of rain had killed them, my neglect, something like that, I’d feel like hell, but I wouldn’t give up gardening. Hell, you can always plant more, in a case like that. But this . . . this wasn’t my fault. Somebody . . .” A shuddering deep breath. Her hand tightened around his. “Somebody deliberately . . . it’s like they came into my house and stole everything I owned that meant something whether it was valuable or not” He rubbed his brow. “I’m sorry, I’m not making much sense.”
“You are,” she said, twirled around in front of him, stopping him while she kissed him again. On the lips. Sweet candy and warm breezes, a hint of strawberry when his amazement finally allowed him to kiss her back.
“Well,” he said when they were done.
Nobody looked.
A train whistle sounded.
“Sometimes,” she whispered, lips close to his ear, “it’s all right to run away, even for just a while.”
He didn’t know, didn’t understand.
“It clears your head.” Lips at the other ear. “Lets you think.cvLike counting to ten, Casey. It’s like counting to ten.”
“Ah. Okay. So when I see that bitch I won’t tear off her head before I say hello.”
“Something like that”
Still close, not moving, nobody looking.
“So.” He gestured to gather the fair in. “This is my evasion?”
She shook her head, winked, led him around the track until he saw the carousel. “Maybe we’ll get lucky tonight.”
A quick look this time, but there was nothing in her expression to tell him what she meant. If, he thought with a flush of guilt, she meant anything at all.
They stood in line. Held hands. Didn’t speak as the carousel turned and the line moved and the cacophony of the fair settled into a buzzing that was soon no sound at all.
Evasion.
He supposed that was a natural response for someone who lived with a carnival that seldom stayed in one place for more than a week or two at a time. Don’t worry about problems; next Monday they’ll still be here but we won’t. Our lights will blind you, and while you’re rubbing your eyes we slip out of town.
The carousel turned, animals and riders sweeping forward, up and down.
Dead roses, dead paint
It was as if, he thought with a start, the Station was rejecting him. Slice by slice, carving him away from whatever he knew, whatever he had.
The idea terrified him, and he gripped Corri’s hand more tightly.
But what if it were true? What if his presence here was no longer required, what if he had fulfilled his function and was now being eased out? Dead roses. Dead paint. He and Yard had worked for days scraping and patching and replacing and painting and trimming and wiping up. Last fall. Last September. The paint couldn’t be dead. But neither could the roses.
The carousel stopped.
The riders scrambled off, waving, pretending to be dizzy, some racing back along the track to get on the end of the line.
Casey felt a tug and stumbled forward.
“Come on,” Corri urged. “Our lucky night, remember?”
He climbed onto the platform, into the pale-green light, and followed her, weaving through the frozen bestiary until they found the llama and the giraffe. His foot fumbled with the stirrup, his palms were unaccountably slick, and, shamefaced, he was about to give up and ask for a boost. Then it worked, and he was on, grinning at the grinning bears on their bandstand to his left. They shuddered, a bell rang, and the carousel began to move as the bears began to play.
Up, and he saw straight ahead a huge billy goat, head tilted to the right, roses carved into its-beard.
Down, and he saw his smeared reflection in the pole, covered it with his hand, looked quickly right and saw his face in the lion’s saddle.
Corri waved at him. He blew her a kiss.
Abruptly the music stopped, nothing now but the creak of gears and the hiss of the wind.
He held his breath for a second, fearing the ride had broken down, that the rest of his turns would be spent listening to nothing but the machine below the magic. A quizzical look to Corri, but he couldn’t see her face because beyond her, in the fair, nothing moved, nothing stirred. He was going up, going down, had to squint in the wind his passing created, but outside, on the oval, everything had frozen.
A single note from a xylophone.
Corri pursed her lips and kissed the air. “I knew it!” she cried, and gestured frantically at the lion.
He couldn’t move.
A single beat of a drum.
“Hurry!” she called. “Casey, hurry!”
A horn played two notes; chimes played two more.
Up and down.
Awkwardly, keeping a one-handed grip on her pole, she leaned over and snatched at his sleeve, tried to pull him out of his seat. “Damnit, Casey, come on, move!”
But nothing moved. Three notes, four beats.
He wiped his hands on his shirt, felt a twinge and examined his palms. Red dots where the thorns had pricked him; on the other side, lines of garden earth in the lines of his knuckles. For what? he wondered.
A firm grip on his arm pulled until he had to slap a hand on the lion’s back to keep from falling. Corri glared at him, urged him, while the lion flew up and down between them.
“I can’t do it, I work here,” she said, desperation around her eyes. “Please, Casey, before the band plays.”
He was afraid.
It was stupid, he knew it, but he couldn’t help feeling a touch of ice in the air that made him blink rapidly, as if casting snow from his lashes.
“Let go of the damn pole, swing your leg over.”
So what would he win if he did?
Would it bring back the roses and make the paint fresh again? Would it somehow, magically, give him a larger paycheck, put him first in line for the postmaster job? Would it prevent the Station from tossing him aside?
It might, something answered; what the hell, it just might.
>
He nodded.
She laughed.
With much twisting and near slipping, in a move he was sure was laughable to those who watched, he transferred to the back of the sinking gold lion, grabbed on, held on, as the beast rose and the lights flared and the band played its song as if it had never been interrupted.
Corri cheered.
Casey laughed.
He raised his arms in triumph and looked around to see how many others knew what he’d done. Yard would have a fit; it would be great to see the look on his face.
The carousel was empty.
“Hey, Corri —”
She was gone.
Behind him, the animals rose and fell, rose and fell, forever charging and never closing mouths frozen open, eyes wide and blind, rising, and falling, leaning close, and away; before him, they fled, hooves and paws and tails and manes, rising, and falling, never quite reaching the turn in the bend.
The band played a little faster.
The carousel turned a little faster.
“Corri!”
God damn, he’d been tricked. She was a shill after all, some kind of gag played on the local yokel and everyone out there having a good laugh at his expense. He glared out toward the oval, ready to tell them he didn’t think it was funny, but the glare disappeared when he saw nothing but the night beyond the fall of green light.
No lights, no rides, no people — only what looked like a vast field, and a vast field of stars out there on the horizon.
The band played. The carousel turned.
Off, he ordered then; get the hell off, find out who’s in charge and get the bitch fired.
He couldn’t
As much as he tried, his feet wouldn’t leave the stirrups, and as much as he lunged side to side, back and forth, he couldn’t lift off the saddle. Frantically, then, he shoved and pushed and kicked and punched, until something stabbed a muscle at the base of his spine, until his arms wilted at his sides and his legs wouldn’t obey.
The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel Page 5