Goldenland Past Dark

by Chandler Klang Smith

  Dr. Show manoeuvred the Cadillac carefully between the ticket booths and concession stands, and they lashed the merry-go-round to its back bumper with the tightrope he kept in the trunk. But when they went to get back in the car, he stopped at the driver’s side door and lightly drummed the roof. A strange expression still lingered on his face, and he looked at Webern almost pleadingly, as though he expected his young accomplice to dissolve into nothing at any moment and was trying, through sheer willpower, to keep him from vanishing.

  “Bernie,” he said. He spun his keys around one finger. “You are sixteen now. Wouldn’t you like to drive?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY. Webern grimaced at the warning sign and the decapitated Barbie that lay on the ground beneath it. He could swear he’d seen them before. Maybe he was driving in circles. In the dark, all of Lynchville looked the same. Not that he had the greatest view. Even sitting on Schoenberg’s copy of the collected Shakespeare, he could barely see over the steering column.

  At three foot ten he wasn’t really tall enough to drive, but he hadn’t been able to protest when Dr. Show asked him. After all, the Cadillac was Schoenberg, as inseparable from him as his curling moustache or his pale, winglike magician’s hands. And it was true that there, in the faint drizzle of the amusement park, Schoenberg had looked haggard, feeble even—certainly in no condition to operate heavy machinery. Getting behind the wheel Webern had felt like he had the morning of his mother’s funeral, when his father loaned him a tie and showed him how to tie it: though he’d wanted nothing more than to run away, he knew he had a duty to stay and let the knot tighten around his neck. Now he already rued the moment he slammed the car door shut. A bottle of rye whiskey filled the gap between his foot and the gas pedal, and he could hear it slosh as he pressed down on it, carefully accelerating. If he was going to keep this up, he’d have to invest in a pair of elevator shoes.

  “Dr. Show—” He bit his lip. “—do you know where we’re supposed to turn?”

  “Hmmph.” Schoenberg wrestled a road map down onto the dashboard. “Allow me to get my bearings. Which direction are we headed now, may I ask?”

  “I don’t know.” A thin icy sweat had started all over Webern’s body. He glanced in the rearview mirror, but of course he couldn’t see anything past the merry-go-round. It had seemed small back there in Goldenland, but here, out on the road, it might as well be a parade float. At least the rain was letting up. “I guess I don’t have a very good sense of direction.”

  “Hmm.” Schoenberg traced his finger down a blue-green squiggle. His map was torn at the creases.

  Webern was sure now: he heard another car behind them. Its engine made a different sound than the Cadillac’s, a kind of quiet coughing. He glanced over his shoulder, then quickly back out at the road. The important thing was not to panic, not to act suspicious, not to speed or slam on the brakes or break the traffic laws. The traffic laws? What were they, anyway? What did you do at a four-way stop? And which meant no passing—solid or dotted lines?

  No—better just concentrate on the road ahead. Don’t speed, that was the main thing. But what if the car behind got fed up with him creeping along like a snail? What if the other driver got mad and tried to run him off the road? It wouldn’t be hard to do, not with that damn dog and pony show trailing off the back. Or what if the other driver suspected something and called the police? In all the stories they’d told about Schoenberg getting hauled off to jail, the other circus players had never predicted Webern would be locked up in there along with him. Webern saw himself in prison, speaking to Nepenthe through telephones separated by a pane of glass. He’d touched her breast that afternoon, or rather the fabric of the dress above the fabric of the undergarment that cupped and concealed her breast. Now he would never touch it again. He felt the rough scales curving against his hand like living stone, like the black, crackled surface of lava, and for an instant he allowed himself to imagine Nepenthe weeping for him, weeping for him and maybe later helping him escape—a metal file baked in a cake, a rope thrown up to his barred window. But then the truth occurred to him: she’d be furious. Nepenthe didn’t have much patience for Schoenberg’s crazy schemes. The other day, down at Beer Can Creek, they’d been talking about Brunhilde and all the complaints she’d made over the last few months about the circus. Webern had said he believed Dr. Show was planning a new itinerary, booking locations even—hadn’t he made some phone calls from the gas station the other day?—and that soon Brunhilde and the others would be sorry they ever doubted him at all. Nepenthe had just laughed.

  “If you believe that, the old guy might as well pull a nickel out of your ear,” she’d said.

  Webern had glanced around nervously, half expecting Schoenberg to spring from the bushes with a gallant retort, but he hadn’t, he hadn’t appeared at all, and Webern had felt the strange shame he always felt when he watched one of his fellow players flub a performance onstage. Now he felt a different shame: the shame of imminent disaster. He just needed to calm down, that was all. Most likely the other car would just pass him as soon as the road opened up.

  A red light flashed behind the monumental silhouette of the carousel, and a siren wailed. Schoenberg jumped in his seat; his hands flew up from the map as if it had just bitten him. Webern felt a sudden, sharp headache pierce the front lobe of his brain, and his hands fell limp on the steering wheel. He struggled to keep them there.

  “Should I pull over, Boss?” His voice squeaked into falsetto.

  “Don’t be a fool, Bernie! Drive!”

  Webern pressed the gas pedal to the floor and prepared himself for the rush of speed that he associated with car chases in late-night movies on TV. But a luxury car pulling a hunk of rusty steel couldn’t accelerate quite the way he was hoping. With a high pitched whine, the Cadillac lurched forward half-heartedly. The needle of the speedometer crept up to forty-five and hovered there, quivering.

  “What do I do now?” Webern honked the horn for no reason. He glanced back at the merry-go-round, then desperately at the road. A four-way stop lay just ahead. “Tell me what to do!”

  “Turn!”

  “Which way?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Webern jerked the wheel abruptly right. The Cadillac cleared the stop sign by inches. The merry-go-round didn’t. The one-eyed mechanical squirrel crashed into the sign’s steel pole and, with a terrible ripping sound, wrenched loose from its mooring in the carousel floor. It fell onto the street behind them like a piece of giant metallic roadkill. As the cop slammed on his brakes, his growly voice filled a bullhorn: “Stop immediately! Please remain in the vehicle!”

  But it was too late for Webern to obey even if he wanted to. He was still flooring the gas pedal, and the Cadillac was flying down a steep hill in the dark. The weight of the carousel fell on the side of motion, and as they sped down the road, it loomed larger and larger in the back windshield, until it slammed into the bumper with an awful thud.

  Webern’s hands went white on the steering wheel, and his eyes squeezed shut. A too-familiar memory flashed through his head: his parents’ Studebaker, smoke pouring from its crumpled hood; his mother’s purse spilled on the asphalt. He’d feared cars for years afterwards. What the hell was he doing here?

  “My good man, come to your senses!”

  Still gripping the wheel with aching hands, Webern opened his eyes a narrow slit, then wider. Before him, the road was flattening out; more incredibly, they had come to a street he recognized, only a block or so from the campsite. Behind a chain link fence, a pack of Rottweilers bayed.

  “You’ve done it, my boy!” Schoenberg clutched Webern’s forearm. His dark eyes gleamed. “We are delivered!”

  “Oh, jeez, Dr. Show.” Webern’s heart still thumped in his ears. A whip-poor-will crooned in the distance. The night closed around them again, soft as wings.

  Webern turned the Ca
dillac left, up the final hill before they reached the campsite. So many hills—at least they were going up one this time. They passed a lone streetlight and the engine of a tractor. As they climbed, the road narrowed until branches scratched the windows. No one would come looking for them up here. The carousel rolled back; now it was trailing the car at a safe distance. Webern’s hands finally relaxed, and he leaned back in the seat as far as he was able. Cars weren’t so bad after all, not once you knew how to drive them. And he was a quick study. Maybe one day he’d have a little Italian sports car, small enough to fit him to a tee. He’d wear elevator shoes and Nepenthe would have on big sunglasses and a scarf to hold her hair down, just like the President’s wife. In the road ahead, one of the feral cats stood hissing. No problemo. Pressing his hand down on the horn, Webern avoided it with a slow, leisurely swerve. It was at this particular moment that the Cadillac spurted forward and the carousel disappeared from the rearview mirror.

  This time, Dr. Show didn’t have to tell him what to do. Webern pulled onto the shoulder in a hurry, splattering mud everywhere, and he and Schoenberg jumped out of the car. The tightrope still hung from the back bumper, Webern saw, worn clean through, but the merry-go-round was bump-bump-bumping its way down the long dark hill. As it picked up speed, some long unstirred gears began to clank inside it, and Webern saw the three remaining figures—unicorn, rabbit, and swan—move eerily through the motions of their final dance. But it didn’t last for long. At the bottom of the hill, the carousel rolled like a tank over a patch of scrub pine and slammed straight into a thunderstruck oak. RRRRSCREEEcrunch! One cog, the size of a dinner plate, rolled back out into the road and clattered onto its side.

  The air hung heavy with silence for a full minute as the two men stared down the hill at the clockwork carnage. Then Schoenberg began to laugh. He bent at the waist, his shoulders rising and falling, his mouth stretched in an open grin. He chortled and snorted. He clutched himself across the chest, as if to hold it inside, but the laughter still bubbled up. He rocked. He gasped and punched himself in the knee. Webern smiled uneasily as the laughter grew louder, more theatrical. Schoenberg laughed until he cried.

  Nepenthe lay in the back seat of the Cadillac on top of a pile of sleeping bags. She rested her head on the concertina, grimaced, and reached beneath her back to remove a boutonniere of Dr. Show’s: a squashed paper rose, its stem a crooked green wire. Slowly, she shredded its crepe petals with her hard grey fingertips.

  Webern, shotgun, watched her in the rearview mirror. When he’d woken her up, explaining in a frantic whisper what had happened, she’d told him he and Schoenberg both needed psychiatric help: “It’s not a diagnosis, it’s a verdict: criminal insanity.” Since then, she hadn’t spoken a word to him. It was hard to tell if she was sleepy or disgusted. Now she stretched out across the seats, everyone’s bedding crammed and pillowed beneath her. They hadn’t had long to make their escape.

  “Is it really safe to keep driving this car, Dr. Show?” Webern asked. “What if the cops recognize it?”

  “Don’t be foolish. The carousel obscured our vehicle entirely.” Schoenberg brushed a bit of rust from his sleeve. “Besides, we’ll cross state lines well before dawn.”

  The Cadillac’s headlights briefly illuminated a billboard of an angelic girl advertising bread. With her sun-kissed hair and rosy smile, she could have been from another world. Webern thought of the boys at his school who claimed they could tell time by the sun, the inevitable retort: “What’ll you do when it’s dark outside?” He knew the answer now. Nights like this, time just didn’t pass.

  Dr. Show forced a faint smile. “We mustn’t allow ourselves to be too dispirited, my boy.” Insects pelted the windshield, and he switched on the wipers to smear them. “Our quest was ill-advised, perhaps, but the old saw is true: nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  In the backseat, Nepenthe smirked and shredded another petal on the rose. Dr. Show cleared his throat.

  “Besides, such a large apparatus would no doubt encumber us needlessly. A true showman cannot be weighed down by his accoutrements, however spectacular they may be. He can only thrive when his imagination and skills are given free reign.” Schoenberg’s expression darkened. “I have seen too many promising artists crippled by their dependence on majestic arenas, elaborate devices that spewed electricity and altered time, exotic beasts, and tantalizing assistants. Though the temptation has been great, at times, I have taken care in my career not to make that same mistake.”

  Webern wished Dr. Show would stop talking. All he wanted to do was sleep, preferably somewhere dry. He stared out the window at a barbed wire fence. It was starting to drizzle again.

  “The life of a performer is hard, perhaps, but true mastery is its own reward.” Dr. Schoenberg’s wet tuxedo jacket was releasing ghostly steam. “Wouldn’t you agree, Bernie?”

  “I don’t know, Dr. Show.” Webern rubbed a mosquito bite his ankle. He felt like he was delivering lines from a play written for Nepenthe’s benefit, a play entitled, I’m Not as Crazy as This Guy, or None of It Was My Idea. “I mean, I don’t think I’m exactly a master yet.”

  “Ah. Well, all in good time, all in good time.” Schoenberg glanced over his shoulder. “I apologize if our conversation is keeping you awake, my dear.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Nepenthe tossed the ruined flower on the floor and rolled over on her side. “I don’t think I could sleep in here anyway.”

  An hour or so later, they made camp in an abandoned barn. Dr. Show claimed it belonged to an acquaintance of his. No one really believed him, but they were too exhausted to argue. Sheets of rain blew in through the wide front doors that none of them could manage to shut. After parking the Cadillac and the jalopy inside, Schoenberg decided that the company should sleep up top, in a hayloft accessible only by a splintery ladder. Al ascended first, carrying a flashlight, and when he called down that it seemed safe enough, if none too clean, the other players scaled the rungs one by one.

  Webern held his breath until he reached the very top. When he stepped onto the dry boards above, his knees continued to shake. Even with the flashlight switched on and positioned at the centre of the floor, it was very dark. The sloping planes of the roof hung low above his head; beneath his feet, the floor felt tilted and unstable, with nail heads poking out of the planks. A bat swooped down, squeaking, and he screamed. Vlad and Fydor, who had already unrolled their sleeping bag, murmured something in Russian; one of them chuckled. Nepenthe flopped down on a blanket; she fanned herself with one hand. Then from below, they heard Brunhilde’s voice.

  “I will not sleep here, Schoenberg. I will not sleep where animals feed.”

  “My dear Brunhilde, I assure you these accommodations are temporary in the extreme.”

  “Just the same, I refuse. Pay me what you owe. I want no part of this Albtraum, this circus.”

  “My lark, please reconsider. You may sleep in the Cadillac, if you like.”

  “I will not reconsider. Pay me what you owe. One month’s back salary. The cashbox, if you please.”

  The hayloft looked out on the lower part of the barn. Al, Eng, and Nepenthe gathered at the edge to peer down.

  “Bernie, come see this,” Nepenthe hissed. Webern shook his head. “Come on.”

  Webern stepped forward hesitantly. Between two boards, he could see a chink of light. “I’m scared of heights.”

  Nepenthe rolled her eyes. From down below, he heard the Cadillac door open, then the sound of metal against metal—tinny and faint.

  “One dime? This is all you have saved?”

  “Ah. Er, if you’ll allow me to—I have some small bills, I believe—perhaps a personal cheque?”

  The ladder creaked. After a long moment, Brunhilde hefted herself up to the hayloft floor. She strode up to the edge, tossed her silk pillow on the ground, and lowered herself onto it with grave dignity. She ran her fingers
through her beard.

  Webern unfolded his sleeping bag in one corner of the hayloft, as far as he could get from the ladder and the edge. Husks of grain crunched beneath him as he curled up. After a moment, Al switched off the flashlight. The others began to breathe slowly and deeply—Al started to snore. Webern rolled over. A small leak from the ceiling dripped onto his nose. He heard cautious footsteps, and Nepenthe’s rough hand touched his.

  “Some digs, huh?” Her long curls brushed his face. He could hardly see her in the darkness. “Hey. I’m sorry you’re afraid of heights.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “And I’m sorry Dr. Show made you crash that thing into a tree.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You’re just such a dope sometimes.”

  “I thought it was criminal insanity.”

  “That, too. Plus paranoia, acrophobia, teratophilia, an Oedipal complex . . .”

  “What’s teratophilia?”

  “Trust me, I’ve done my research, and you have it.” She poked his chest. “You’ve got a whole system of pathologies. It’ll take years to sort them all out.”

  Webern ran his finger in the grooves between the scales on her wrist. “Lots of years?”

  Nepenthe kissed him on the forehead. “Consider yourself involuntarily committed.”

  She padded back to her blanket. Webern savoured the warm feeling that lingered where her lips had touched him. But he still couldn’t get to sleep properly. Every time he started to doze off, he jerked awake again, convinced that he was falling.

  In reality, Webern hadn’t fallen since his sixth birthday, the day of his accident, when he had climbed up into his new treehouse and refused to come down again until the magician arrived. Up in the tree, Webern had stared down, owlish and blinking through his round, thick eyeglasses, while in the yard below his mother folded card tables, setting each one with brightly coloured napkins and orange paper plates. Webern wore a pink dress shirt that day, as well as blue velveteen shorts and a yellow conical party hat. His eyes were red from crying.