After picking out her tenth song on the jukebox, Nepenthe returned to the table. The waitress followed her, hanging back nervously.
“You guys are like a bunch of existentialists. Stop it with the moping, already.” Nepenthe pulled out the chair next to Brunhilde and flung herself down onto it. “Jesus God.”
The first strains of “Mack the Knife” filled the air. Several feet away, the waitress timidly waved a receipt.
“I have the check for y’all,” she offered. Her voice raised an octave in forced levity. “Now, who gets it?”
“Give it here.” Nepenthe turned around and reached toward her. Between the glove and her sleeve, an inch of flaky grey skin revealed itself. The waitress smiled, but the receipt trembled in her hand.
“All righty.” The waitress continued to smile as she edged around the table.
“No, give it to me, I said.” Nepenthe straightened her veil, but behind it her green eyes burned.
“Here you go.” The waitress reached in and dropped the check. “Oops.”
Nepenthe snatched it out of the air. Her tight grip crumpled the lower corner. She stared at the waitress, who grinned back, frozen with terror.
“Now, let’s see, what’s the damage.” The waitress darted back into the kitchen. Nepenthe unfolded the bill against the table and peered through her veil at the list of charges. “Who ordered the tomato juice? That you, Eng?”
Since Webern had first met her, Nepenthe had come a long way in controlling her temper. Once, several towns back, a saleswoman in a department store had refused to let her try on a dress, and Nepenthe had thrown a tantrum, knocking over mannequins and screaming about “contagion” until two security guards dragged her out of the store, hissing like a snake. She hadn’t talked to anyone for hours afterwards, hadn’t even come out of her tent for dinner. When Webern brought her a plate of cold franks and beans, she would only say, “I wish to God that bitch knew who my father was. I just wish to God she knew that.” Webern had nodded, not knowing quite how to respond. Even he didn’t know who Nepenthe’s father was. She’d never told anyone her last name.
“I can’t make sense of this.” Nepenthe shoved the check away and leaned back in her chair. “Somebody else divide it up, huh?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t pay yet,” said Webern.
Brunhilde reached over and picked up the check from the table. She removed her pince-nez from her pocket and carefully scrutinized the numbers.
“We have to keep waiting for Dr. Show. We should order another pot of coffee or something.”
“Let us not be like little children. We cannot stay here all night.” Brunhilde lifted her embroidered handbag up onto the table and reached inside for a handful of dimes. She stacked them deliberately beside her plate.
“Maybe not, but where are we supposed to go?” Explorer Hank scratched the white fur of Ginger’s belly. “Bernie’s right. Doesn’t make sense to cut out just yet.”
“I suggest we all check into a decent hotel. In the morning we will return here to retrieve Schoenberg, if he has arrived at all.” She folded her hands and looked around the table at each face. Though she was probably only in her early forties, her beard made her look older at such moments—even presidential. Maybe part of it was the way she dressed, in watered silk evening gowns that draped like old opera curtains. She always wore nylons, even in muggy weather, and around her neck hung a locket, as heavy and round as an ancient gold coin, which she never took off. She fingered it thoughtfully now. “Tonight’s events are his fault, are they not? He should be the one to wait.”
Al snorted. “Hotel, sure. And how we gonna pay for that?” He shook a forkful of pancake in Brunhilde’s direction. “I’m not gonna blow the last of my dough on room service.”
“We have the cashbox. Schoenberg keeps it in the Cadillac’s glove compartment. Have you not seen him put it there?”
“And the key?” asked Vlad.
“I believe Nepenthe could help us get it open.”
Nepenthe sat up a little straighter. She cracked her knuckles inside her gloves.
“I believe our minds will be clearer in the morning. If Schoenberg has not arrived, we can discuss then what it is we should do.” Brunhilde looked around the table. Most everyone seemed to agree. Here in the warm, dry diner, clashing swords and leaky tents seemed very far away.
Webern looked down at his plate. He rubbed the French fry into the little top hat he had drawn until it became an unrecognizable smear.
“I don’t know if we should,” he said. His voice sounded plaintive and whiny, even to him—a boy’s voice, not a man’s. “Dr. Show trusted us with that cashbox. It’s not like he’s dead. At least—I mean, he’s coming back. He’ll be pissed off if we go through his stuff, especially if we take his money.”
“His money? His money?” Brunhilde exhaled sharply, the ghost of a laugh. “Webern, when was your last paycheque?”
“I dunno. Same as yours.” Webern peeked up at the faces scrutinizing him from around the table. They gazed back, not hostile but not smiling either. Nepenthe flipped her veil back down; he couldn’t read her expression. Brunhilde’s arms were folded, and her eyes probed him. He imagined her pulling his German name off like a mask, exposing the American underneath. “I just—listen, okay, it’s not his money. But it’s not ours either, not really. It’s the circus’s. If we just blow it all on a bunch of hotel rooms, that’s it, we’re sunk.” Webern shaped his hands into an airplane and, with a low whistle, nose-dived it into the table.
“It’s the circus’s money, sure.” Nepenthe shrugged. “But what if Dr. Show doesn’t come back? How long are we supposed to wait, Bernie?”
“Longer than a couple of hours, anyway. You said he’d meet us here.”
“He told Enrique that, yeah. But I’m not sure we can hold him to it, under the circumstances.” Nepenthe lowered her voice. “Think about it, kiddo.”
“Yes,” said Brunhilde. “Schoenberg may not have had a chance to make his escape. But let us be honest with each other. Even in the best of times, when has he really kept his word?”
Vlad and Fydor exchanged a glance. Eng touched his forehead to the diner’s floor. Hank sighed, and in his arms, Ginger mewed plaintively. Even Al gave a reluctant nod. Webern pushed his plate forward on the table. It was true, of course—Dr. Schoenberg certainly hadn’t kept all of his promises, at least not lately. He baited them with luxuries he could never afford, fame that eluded them with every measly audience that half-filled the bleachers in their big top. And now he was getting himself killed over a sword he’d most likely stolen from a psycho named after another planet. But he still seemed inherently honest, despite it all. He’d rescued Webern from an empty life in a town filled with the skeletons of houses. Was that really enough, though? When had he kept his word?
“I can think of a few instances.”
The circus performers turned in the direction of the voice. There, in the diner’s doorway, stood Schoenberg. His top hat and tuxedo dripped with rain, and a fresh bloody slash marked his cheek. But he held a sword. His dark eyes blazed. Walking out of the kitchen with a coffee pot in her hand, the waitress saw him and shrieked.
A few hours later, the yellow Cadillac was climbing a twisting mountain road; the jalopy followed not far behind, slowly negotiating the rusty red trailer around the curves. Both cars still burned their headlights, but all around them, the world was waking up. In the dishwater grey of early morning, Webern, sitting shotgun, looked out the windshield at the clapboard stands that stood along the roadside, selling bullets and maple syrup, and at the houses that clung to the slope on rickety stilts. Lights winked on in kitchen windows.
The circus had been travelling through New England for only a few weeks, but now the leaves were starting to change—it was time to head south. Next stop was Paradise Beach, Delaware. The circus chased summer all year long, first
south and then west. It was a practical decision, mostly—heating the tents would cost money, and who would go to a circus in the snow?—but to Webern it still seemed magical, a little arrogant even. It reminded him of the fairy tales he’d grown up reading, filled with men who outsmarted death with riddles and boys who brought home treasures from their dreams. The Boy Who Ran From Winter—yep, that was him.
Webern settled back and looked over at Dr. Schoenberg, who sat beside him in the driver’s seat. Schoenberg had changed into dry clothes; he now wore the black and white checkered coat that made him resemble a deranged vaudevillian. Much to Webern’s relief, the slash on his cheek, now bandaged with a fistful of paper napkins from the diner and several strips of Scotch tape, had proven to be only a shallow wound. As he drove, the pain didn’t appear to bother him in the slightest; his dark eyes focused on the road ahead with steely intensity.
Webern looked into the back seat where Nepenthe, Brunhilde, and Explorer Hank sat side by side by side, all three fast asleep. Ginger the tiger cub had returned to her cage in the red trailer. In a low voice, trying not to wake anyone up, he whispered to Dr. Schoenberg, “So, you had a close call with that Boulder guy, huh, boss?”
“Close call—ha! I only wish my opponent had been worthier. Alas, pity required that I spare his life.”
Webern glanced into the backseat again; Nepenthe’s eyelids fluttered, but otherwise the sleepers didn’t stir. “Brunhilde called him a Klingenschmiede. What’s that? Some kind of sword-maker?”
“That brute was no craftsman, I’m afraid.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“He’s a keeper of accounts.”
“Like a bookie?”
“Nothing like that.”
Webern nodded and looked out the window again. A passing sign predicted an avalanche of large, tumbling rocks. He yawned and was about to close his eyes when Show spoke again.
“I knew him long ago, in the Old Country.”
“The Old Country? I thought you were from New Jersey.”
“I travelled much in my youth. At any rate, some months ago, when he heard of my recent success, he wrote to me, offering to part with a few family heirlooms at a discounted price. Among these were his swords. Since this stop on our tour brought us near his home, I thought it would be worth my while to drop by and have a look.”
“Makes sense. We could use a new sword, too. It was kind of lame when Enrique swallowed that yardstick.”
Dr. Show sighed. “These swords, Bernie: they’re no simple props. When I saw them mentioned in his letter—ah! I remembered them from those long ago days, so light, so elegant, endowed with the power and mystery of generations. Our little company has many things: talent, spectacle, brash originality, and singularity of vision. But such blades, touched by the ghosts of history, would lend us gravitas, a mooring in the ages.” His tone darkened. “Little did I know that he meant to use them only as bait to draw me to his lair.”
“Jeez. What did you do to make him so mad?”
“In his fevered imaginings, what didn’t I do? I was a Casanova who defiled young women and drove them to suicide, an impresario who thought only of his own celebrity, a heartless charlatan whose mellifluous voice lured so many to destruction that his crimes cannot be numbered.” Dr. Show’s eyes strayed from the road. “Tell me, Bernie, am I as monstrous as all that?”
“Of course not. Maybe he has you mixed up with somebody else. How’d you meet him, anyway, back in the Old Country?”
“Oh, my dear boy, I won’t bore you with any more details.” Schoenberg trailed off as the bravado leaked out of his voice. “I’m not sure why you’re asking so many questions, actually. It’s a rather private matter, a dispute like that.”
Webern stared down at his lap. “I was just curious, that’s all.”
Schoenberg cleared his throat.
“In the future,” he said, “it might do you good to confine your curiosity to that which concerns you.”
Webern felt the car accelerate slightly. He hugged a knee to his chest and remembered the inside of his tent back at the abandoned campsite, the way the wind had rippled the walls like sails at sea.
“But it does concern me, Dr. Show,” he mumbled.
“Thank you, Bernie. I always knew you were a sensitive boy. But your worries were most unnecessary, I can assure you.” A strange glint lingered in Schoenberg’s dark eyes. “Don’t look so glum. I didn’t mean to snap at you. This evening has been draining for us all, I think.”
“Do you need me to help keep you awake?” Webern offered. “While you’re driving, I mean? We could start planning some new clown acts for the show. My notebook’s in the back seat, and—”
“No, no.” Dr. Schoenberg smiled faintly. “You needn’t amuse me. I couldn’t sleep if I tried.”
Webern looked at Schoenberg carefully. His black moustache, usually waxed impeccably, drooped at the corners, and through his napkin bandage, small dots of blood were beginning to show. Webern wanted to say something more, but he didn’t know what.
“I find,” Dr. Schoenberg finally added, “that morning is often the best time for solitary contemplation.”
“Okay.” Webern kicked off his sneakers. “Think I’ll take forty winks, boss.”
“Sleep well.”
As Webern leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, he tried to look forward to the meal they’d make at the next campsite (powdered eggs with off-brand Tabasco and Spam cubes skewed on sticks), and he thought about the clown act he was performing in the next show (a turbaned snake charmer, unable to get his cobra out of the basket). But he drifted off unsettled, nevertheless.
High above the big top’s dirt floor stretches a tightrope, trembling slightly, like the string of a guitar that has just been plucked. A single spot-light reveals the slow progress of a tiny figure moving hesitantly along it, now forward, now back again, surrounded by blackness on all sides.
It’s the clown, wearing a Pierrot suit of simple silky white, and he’s riding a unicycle. He’s juggling too—three silver batons—but his movements are uncertain, and the crowd seems bored. They sit silently, rustling popcorn bags and letting their babies cry. Only when the clown lets his batons fall down into the dark space beneath him do they respond at all, and then with nasty laughs.
The clown struggles to concentrate on the thin rope beneath his unicycle’s wheel. The spotlight seems to melt his silk costume on his skin, and he drips with sweat. Greasepaint rolls off his forehead in streaks. He pedals and pedals upon the high wire, but he barely seems to move at all.
It’s as if something—or someone—is holding him in place. Wiping his brow with one sleeve, the clown looks down. He feels the dread before he even sees them. Two pairs of hands grip the unicycle’s spokes, one pair pudgy and stub-fingered with dirt under the nails, the other pair bone white and knobby with brittle talons. The smell of burning leaves fills the clown’s nostrils, and the crowd’s cackles are high-pitched crow caws. The hands tighten their grip on the wheel, and two figures begin to pull themselves up. The clown squeezes his eyes shut. He cannot bear to see the masks they wear. He holds his breath and waits to fall.
Webern woke to the sound of snoring. Beside him in the driver’s seat, Dr. Schoenberg—despite his predictions to the contrary—had dozed off with his arms crossed over his chest. It relieved Webern to notice the car wasn’t still moving.
Neither was the jalopy. The two vehicles sat parked next to each other at a scenic overlook, near the top of the mountain they’d been climbing when Webern fell asleep. Through the windshield, he could see a wooden fence and a metal viewfinder mounted on a pole, though little of the actual view. He glanced into the backseat at Nepenthe, Brunhilde, and Hank. All three were still sleeping soundly; a strand of Brunhilde’s beard hair had found its way into Hank’s open mouth, and Nepenthe murmured softly beneath her veil. Webern quietly opened the
car door and stepped outside.
Webern hugged himself as he approached the edge of the parking lot, but he didn’t go back for a jacket. The cold air cleared his head. He climbed over the fence and sat down on the dewy grass that covered the steep slope on the other side. The valley opened out below him. A covered bridge, painted red, stretched over a brook beside a pasture dotted with grey ponies, haystacks, and a rusty abandoned school bus. Uneven rows of tombstones lined the yard behind a little stone church. Beyond that, patches of maple trees bloomed orange amid white wooden houses, and, even farther away, cars crept along the narrow road up into the Green Mountains on the other side.
Webern squinted into the distance. He couldn’t shake the way the dream had made him feel. He ripped out a fistful of grass and tried to throw it, but most of the blades just stuck to his hand.
Whenever Webern remembered his sisters, he thought of the little boy from the funny pages who had a dark, smudgy rain cloud hovering over his head. While he still lay in his cradle, they towered over him, eclipsing the light, and when he grew older, he began to notice the dark streaks they left on every lovely thing they touched.
When Webern was six, the girls were twelve. They wore soiled white nightshirts to school, cinched at the waist with their father’s leather belts. They played games Webern did not understand, games with headless dolls and trash can lids, black feathers and moths pinned to beds of gauze. Webern asked the girls to teach him their games, but in response they usually just offered him a bloated earthworm or a teacup full of dirt and watched, with glowering disgust, his frightened reaction. They spoke only in rhymes.
Willow and Billow had been born during a time in the family’s history from which there remained only one photograph. In this picture, Webern’s mother, Shirley Bell, stood on the front stoop of the house, wearing a large, shapeless coat that looked far too big for her. She held the twins out awkwardly, as if threatening the photographer with a pair of dangerous weapons. Willow was a stick of dynamite; Billow, a cannonball. Their mother’s eyes looked haunted and bruised.
Goldenland Past Dark Page 3