Beneath this painting lay a bright blue bed, usually neatly made under a comforter dappled with rocket ships. But today, pressing his nose to the glass, Webern saw something in the miniature room that he’d never seen before. Tucked snugly under the covers lay a tiny boy with smooth gold hair and a face a lot like Webern’s.
For a second, Webern thought that the little boy might be a doll. But, as Webern’s mouth fell open in amazement, the little boy’s mouth also opened wide, into a slow sleepy yawn. He stretched his arms out, then swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He put on a little leather cap with a feather in its brim and a pair of white knee socks. He was already wearing lederhosen.
Webern stood there, open-mouthed, unable even to gasp, as the little boy buckled on his heavy German shoes and reached down to touch his toes. But when the boy stood up straight, snapped the straps of his lederhosen, and clicked his heels together, Webern found his voice again.
“Knock knock, who’s there?” Webern asked, bumping his finger clumsily against the glass.
“Dwayne,” said the little golden boy.
“Dwayne who?”
“Dwayne the bathtub, I’m dwowning!”
The little golden boy danced a jig, and Webern clapped his hands.
“But what’s really your name?”
“Wags, Wags Verder, at your service.” Wags doffed his leather cap and bowed till his head touched the ground. Then he turned a somersault. Webern grinned.
“I’m Webern Bell.”
“Well, what do ya know? I wouldn’t have took you for a ding-a-ling.”
“Bernie?”
Webern turned around. His mother and the toy doctor were standing there, looking at him. The bulb on the miner’s cap shone right into his eyes.
“Bernie Bee, who’re you talking to?” Webern’s mother asked from inside the blinding light. Blinking away spots, Webern turned back around to the display case and started to point.
“I just met . . .”
But before Webern could show his mom and the toy doctor, Wags dove through the bedroom wall, leaving a boy-shaped hole. He zipped through the museum so fast, Whistler’s mother and the tapestry unicorn turned their heads to watch him go. Then he leap-frogged through the feast, stampeding over sandwiches, capsizing a cornucopia, and finally plunging into a pink punch bowl from which he did not emerge.
“Did you see him?” Webern cried. “Did you see how fast he ran?” His mother and the toy doctor exchanged a puzzled glance. Webern pounded on the glass case. “Hey, Wags! Wags, come back!” But the little boy in lederhosen would not return.
All the way home, Webern scowled out the car window. He sat with his arms folded over his chest and refused to play with the new toy—a ping-pong paddle with a red rubber ball attached—that his mother had bought when he refused to pick out any other present. He didn’t talk. For the first time, he had seen something that his mother hadn’t seen, that she hadn’t even believed in. Something was gone from his life now. He felt the new empty place like the socket of a missing tooth.
When they got home, it was time for Webern’s nap.
“Do you want me to read you a story?” his mother offered brightly. But Webern just shook his head and stomped up the stairs.
When she came up an hour later, she found him sitting cross-legged on his bed, looking at picture books. They lay open all around him. Webern was staring at the picture of the night forest from Hansel and Gretel when she sat down beside him.
“There are seventy-two eyes,” he said glumly. “I don’t think they’ll ever get home.”
Webern’s mother stroked his hair. It was starting to grow in, thin and fuzzy and mousy brown, like the fluff on a baby chickadee.
“You don’t believe me, that Wags was even there,” Webern continued. “You didn’t see him. You think I’m making him up.”
She pecked the top of his head. “I didn’t see him,” she admitted, “but I certainly don’t think you’re making him up.”
“How come I saw him and you didn’t?”
“I don’t know, Bernie. It’s a doll hospital. Maybe Wags is the ghost of a little doll who’s not born yet.”
Webern rubbed a finger against the glossy page of the picture book. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, maybe he’s your conscience.”
“No, not that either.”
“He could be your guardian angel, you know. And maybe he won’t come back again until you really need him.”
Webern stared again at the picture of the night forest, the starved children and the fingers of dark trees, grasping. Then his sisters arrived home from school.
The morning after Webern’s sixteenth birthday began quietly enough. Webern watched the sunrise and saw the seagulls come to land on the beach. He looked at the boardwalk, which had finally shut down sometime in the very early morning, and the spiky, uneven skyline the rides made against the pale clouds. The spokes of the Ferris wheel looked delicate in the morning light, as faded as crosshatchings in a dime store comic book.
Webern was half nodding off at last, when around six thirty, he heard rustling in one of the circus tents. He nudged Nepenthe. She opened her eyes slowly, first one, then the other.
“They’re waking up,” he whispered.
“Jesus God. Thanks, Bernie.” Nepenthe wrapped the blanket around her and pulled part of it up over her head like a cowl. She squeezed his hand quickly. Her bare feet shushed in the sand as she hurried back to her tent.
Nepenthe had barely zipped the front flap when Brunhilde came gliding out to what was left of the campfire. In a grey dressing gown and ancient brocade slippers, she looked well-rested—she was probably the only one without a hangover this morning, since she didn’t drink. She looked disparagingly at the charred logs, then at Webern.
“Chilly, isn’t it.” Brunhilde had a way of saying a question so it wasn’t a question at all. She tossed the pillow she’d brought onto the ground and lowered herself down upon it. Pointedly, she breathed on her hands to warm them, then extended her palms toward the few remaining flames. “I see you returned, Webern.”
“Yeah. Dr. Show came and found me.” Webern dutifully got up and started piling more driftwood on the fire.
“I knew you would return when you had your fill of our attention. But he, he wanted to be a hero. Your rescuer. The two of you share a taste for amateur theatrics, it seems.”
The logs bumped, releasing a shower of sparks. Webern grimaced. Great. She was still mad about what happened at the diner. Well, if he had to choose sides between her and Dr. Show, he’d definitely made the right decision. He wasn’t going to let Brunhilde ruin his morning now. He thought about Nepenthe instead: her tousled hair, her emerald eyes, the way her hard grey feet had looked, burrowed in the sand. Involuntarily, he glanced at her green tent, and Brunhilde followed his gaze.
“Poor girl,” she said. “She was not bred for this kind of life.”
Webern shrugged. “She seems to like it okay.”
“Are you certain of that.” Brunhilde smiled. “The day will come, and soon, I think, when our little eidesche returns to her rightful place.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know.” Webern nudged the kettle toward the fire with a stick. Some coffee was still leftover from the night before, and once it started to bubble, he refilled his mug.
Brunhilde removed her pince-nez from one pocket of her dressing gown and pulled out a well-worn paperback from the other. Die Deutsche Katastrophe. It seemed appropriate to Webern that she spoke a language where they said “die” every other word. He sipped his coffee. Last night almost felt like a dream. Even his hangover was nearly gone, the headache just a dull echo of its former self. But somewhere inside him, the memory still glowed, warm and secret.
In a few minutes, most of the others had joined Webern and Brunhilde at the campfire. Explorer Hank cooked up sa
usages in a skillet, and Eng, a vegetarian, put his little pot of beans and rice on to boil. Eggs slid into sizzling fat as Vlad and Fydor bickered over who had slept worse, and Enrique mixed the powdered instant coffee with water before he put the kettle back near the flames. Explorer Hank handed Webern a plate of eggs and sausage. Webern hadn’t realized how hungry he was, or how tired. He’d have to get a nap that afternoon before the show. He hoped no one would send him trekking into town.
Webern was about to nod off when Dr. Show came out, wearing his undershirt and suspenders but looking immaculately frightful just the same. His black moustache, glossily waxed, curled at the corners, and his hair, newly slicked back, drew parallel black lines on his scalp. Enrique poured him a mug of coffee as he unfolded his director’s chair and exchanged good mornings with the other performers. Brunhilde gave him a nod, courteous but distant, as though glimpsing a half-forgotten acquaintance across a crowded room.
“You brought the kid back, boss.” Al, who’d just arrived, helped himself to a skillet full of eggs. He jerked his head at Webern. “Good job.”
Schoenberg smiled beatifically. “All in a day’s work.” He sipped his coffee and looked over at Webern. “Have you seen Nepenthe yet this morning, my boy? She was quite concerned, you know. You ought to tell her you’ve returned.”
Webern’s face grew hot. He felt like he should make an announcement, but what would he say? What had even happened last night anyway? Back at his high school, boys had “pinned” the girls they went steady with, but he couldn’t imagine pinning Nepenthe. If they got into a fight, she’d pin him.
“I think she knows,” he mumbled.
“Ah,” said Dr. Schoenberg. Reflexively, he touched the inside of his forearm. He changed the subject: “How are the tigers this morning, Hank?”
“Oh, fine, fine, they’re doing fine. I’m a little worried about that abscess in Freddy’s paw, but other than that—well, and his ear mites . . .”
Dr. Schoenberg gazed down the beach as Hank droned on about the cats. At first, his expression looked content, languid even, but then his dark eyes fixed on something in the distance and he sat up straighter in his chair.
“. . . and Ginger—well, this whole thing with the formula’s been a nightmare, but now that I’m getting her onto solid foods, her constipation . . .” Hank speared another sausage on his fork; he was eating them right out of the skillet.
“Who is that?” Dr. Show interrupted. He pointed down the beach. “Do you know that man?”
Hank looked over his shoulder, and most of the others stood up to look, too. Some distance down the beach, a low-built tank of a man was rolling in their direction.
“He’s back.” Enrique’s words were more like a punctuation mark.
Mars Boulder came into focus slowly, like a face forming in a dream: first his smashed-in nose, then his heavy brow, then the gargoyle grimace of his protruding lower jaw. Al ducked behind a tent—Enrique’s—near the fire, and Brunhilde remained reclining on her pillow, but the others stood frozen. No one tried to run away. Webern felt turned to stone by those oily, heavy-lidded eyes, gazing at him from down the beach.
Mars Boulder stopped a few yards from Dr. Schoenberg, just beyond the tent that Al crouched behind. A sword hung from a scabbard on his right hip. He wore thick leather gloves.
“Why are you here?” Dr. Schoenberg, stepped behind his director’s chair. He looked whiter than Webern had ever seen him—even his lips were pale. “What is your business with us?”
Mars Boulder said nothing.
“What do you want from me?” Dr. Schoenberg glanced around at the others, then added, “I paid for that sword.”
Mars Boulder still didn’t reply. He stepped closer.
“If you have no business here, I must demand you remove yourself from the premises,” Schoenberg cried. He grasped the back of his chair. His moustache trembled. “Will you go? Answer me!”
Mars Boulder didn’t budge. Above him, clouds moved soundlessly.
“I have asked you once.” Dr. Show’s voice, thunderous under the big top, sounded thinner with no walls to hold it. “I will not ask again.” He lifted the chair and shook it threateningly. “Back. Back, I tell you. Back from whence you came!”
Dr. Show hefted the director’s chair into the air and, with a roar, brought it crashing down on Mars Boulder’s head.
Except it never crashed. With an almost inaudible “shing!” Boulder drew the sword from his scabbard and sliced through the chair’s canvas seat. The wooden frame folded into jumbled sticks at his feet. Dr. Show leapt back. He glanced wildly at his performers.
“Traitors! Will none of you save me?”
Around the campfire, the circus players held their breath. Wood popped on the fire. Seagulls squabbled down the beach. Mars Boulder touched his blade’s edge with one gloved finger. He tested its weight in his hands. In one graceful move, Brunhilde grasped the handle of Hank’s sausage skillet and cracked it against Mars Boulder’s skull.
Boulder thudded to the ground. He lay there face first, motionless.
“Is he dead?”
“Check his pulse.”
“Should we call the cops?”
No one wanted to go anywhere near him. Brunhilde stood over Boulder and stared down. Finally, she knelt beside him and flipped him over on his back. A crumpled paper fell out of his pocket. For a long moment, they all listened with relief to the snuffled breaths the smashed-in nose made. Brunhilde mopped her brow with the cuff of her dressing gown. Then Hank reached down to pick up the piece of paper that lay beside the unconscious hulk. He held it up. It was their travelling schedule.
Nepenthe came out of her tent then, yawning, in a summer hat adorned with wooden cherries and a white veil. She still had on her butcher boy pyjamas, but she kept her hands hidden in the sleeves.
“What the hell’s happening out here?” she demanded. “I’m trying to get some sleep.”
Fortunately, the day before they’d already taken down the big top and lashed its orange canvas to the back of the jalopy; all that was left was the campsite, and the performers were getting used to tearing down their own tents in a hurry. Within a few clattering, scattershot moments, they were kicking out the fire and pulling the last of the poles from the yielding sand. It was like they’d never been there.
Al wanted to dig a pit and throw Mars Boulder into it before he came to—he figured leaving a knocked-out guy in the ruins of their campsite might draw suspicion. But getting away fast seemed more important to the others, especially Brunhilde.
“Leave him, leave him,” she kept repeating as she circled the prone figure. “We have done damage enough.”
In the end, they compromised: with fistfuls of sea-wet sand, the circus players built a mound over Boulder where he lay, then covered what still showed—his hands, his feet—with a striped beach blanket. When Webern stood over the body, though, something still looked wrong. With quivering fingers, he added a pair of sunglasses and swiped a streak of white greasepaint across the smashed-in nose in place of zinc oxide. It snuffled when he touched it. They left Mars Boulder there, a tourist asleep on the beach.
They also took his sword. Webern was never certain who peeled back those thick, leathery fingers from the jewelled hilt, but when they arrived at the next stop, it was lying in the trunk, alongside its shining twin. This sword was older-looking than the first, bevelled and opaque, its edge dulled by use. Schoenberg, out of bravado or fancy, took to hanging the two blades in his tent, crossed against each other like a coat of arms.
But that was all much later. That hot, sunny afternoon, the circus players sped down the Delaware highways, their bodies tense with acceleration. They didn’t know where they were going, and Dr. Schoenberg, grim and silent behind the wheel, did not seem inclined to tell them. They were off the schedule now, and the world seemed as mapless as the open sea.
Webern sat between Brunhilde and Dr. Show in the Cadillac’s front seat. He hadn’t slept in a day, but despite his exhaustion, or maybe because of it, his mind raced. Traitors. Will none of you save me? And Webern had just stood there. What a coward. Even his father had the guts to fight when he was called to. Webern let a bearded lady do his fighting for him. He had to be crazy to think any girl would put up with that, least of all Nepenthe. He thought of what he could do to toughen himself up—do pushups maybe, stub out cigarettes on his arms, take a job as a rodeo clown and wrestle bulls with his bare hands. He made a fist and stared at it there in his lap for a long time.
In the backseat, Vlad and Fydor played a chess match, using only a paper, a pencil, and coordinates they named in confident English—“Knight to b3,” “King to d7”—interspersed with grumbled Russian. They draped their arms around each other’s shoulders, twin icons of manly camaraderie that tapered to a single waist. Fydor was winning their game. Webern wondered what it would be like to face off with someone who was an extension of yourself, whose heart beat in your chest, whose blood quite literally flowed through your veins. He was glad he’d never have to find out. The only person he’d been so connected to was Wags, and he was long gone.
Eng meditated with his back to all of them; his hum filled the car along with the vibrations of the road. It had nearly lulled Webern to sleep when, at long last, Schoenberg finally cleared his throat and spoke.
“Brunhilde, my dear, I hope you know your sang-froid in this matter will not go unrewarded.” He lowered his voice. “I understand our accommodations, of late, have been somewhat modest. Of course, for most of the players they present a marked improvement, but for someone of your valour—and upbringing—”
“Schoenberg,” Brunhilde said stiffly, “I should not have needed to protect you from that man.”
Goldenland Past Dark Page 7