Afterwards, Webern picked up his rock candy and gathered a handful of spilled pocket change from the floor. He felt woozy and wished he’d had a decent night’s sleep. If he didn’t keep moving he’d pass out. Fortunately, he didn’t need to bring much of anything along: when he’d run away to join the circus, he’d left most of his clothes at home, and before coming to get him his father had packed him a bag.
Webern cringed to think of what he’d find in there: cardigan sweaters, no doubt, penny loafers, and pale pink collared shirts—probably even his old pyjamas, with tiny images of Roy Rogers printed all over them in patterns. But these clothes would be in better shape than the ratty jeans and armpit-stained T-shirts he wore in his off-time, and it wasn’t like Nepenthe would be around to laugh at him and call him a square.
Just before he got into his father’s car, she kissed the top of his head, and he hung on to the sleeves of her pink bathrobe for a moment after she released him, trying to take in the texture of her skin, her musty smell, her warm and quick-beating pulse.
“What’ll you do when I’m gone?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about me, kiddo.” She ran a hand over his forehead, then smoothed her veil of hair into place. “Catch you later.” She disappeared back inside the boxcar before they drove away.
Webern’s father had just gotten a new car, a Chrysler, and Webern spent the first few minutes of the trip feigning interest in the array of dials and knobs that lined the space-age dashboard.
“That’s nothing,” said Raymond. “Watch this.” He pressed a button, and he and Webern both watched the passenger side window roll down.
“Pretty neat.” Webern licked his rock candy. He didn’t really want to keep eating it, but there was nowhere to put it down—he was surrounded by supple leather upholstery.
Webern’s father cleared his throat. “You and her . . . quite a pair.”
Where had his father learned to make conversation? Neptune? Rows of corn scrolled past the car windows. Webern’s head ached. He needed a cup of coffee soon.
“Yep. We’ve been together a few years now.”
“Does she—work—too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Work like you do?”
“Not quite.”
Raymond set his jaw. He squinted at the windshield, which was flecked with tiny dead bugs.
“I don’t believe in a woman working outside the home.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“But if she has a sort of—talent—I guess she shouldn’t waste it.”
“I guess not.”
“God gives us all our gifts.”
“Yeah.”
“And it’s good to save up. God knows insurance doesn’t cover everything.”
“Right.”
“Some people can’t be insured. They’re uninsurable.”
“That’s true.”
“You meet her parents yet?”
“Nope.”
“It’s good to meet a girl’s parents. You see how your kids turn out.”
“Sure.”
“Say the girl’s red-haired, but her parents are blonde. Well, there’s a blonde baby for you. But if her parents are red-haired too—”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, why haven’t you gone out to meet them?”
“I don’t know, Dad, because they netted her in a swamp and sold her to the freak show?”
Raymond didn’t say anything. After a moment, he rolled the window back up.
Over the years, Webern had gotten used to the rumbling, halting progress of the train; he hadn’t been in a car since leaving Schoenberg’s circus, and now it affected him strangely. He wasn’t used to seeing the world rushing towards him through the huge clean pane of a windshield. It was like falling forward at a tremendous speed. He could only look for so long before he switched on the radio. A call-in show came on, and Webern found himself listening to a local woman arguing that the “snoot-nosey” draft boards shouldn’t “favouritism” college students, but should put them in the front lines for causing all the trouble. It would have sent Nepenthe through the roof, but after a few minutes it started to wear on him, too.
“Is it okay if we listen to some music?” he asked. Raymond shrugged.
Webern flipped through the stations until he found something innocuous and swingy; no reason to start another argument about rock music he didn’t even like. Just as he started to relax, though, a terrible thought occurred to him.
“Willow and Billow aren’t going to be there, are they? At Bo-Bo’s?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call them that.”
“That’s what they call themselves.”
“When they were kids, maybe.” Raymond shook his head. “Bernie, you know Wanda and Betsy left home years before you did. Your Bo-Bo and me, I guess you could say we’re all alone in this world.”
“You haven’t heard from them at all?”
Raymond sighed. “Well, now that you mention it, they did stop by the house not too long ago. Apparently they’ve made quite a name for themselves with their dog catching. I never could understand them much, the way they talk, but from what I gathered they were curious about you.”
“What? You didn’t tell them where I was, did you?”
“Nah. I was tracking you down myself, then.”
“I can’t believe you saw them. Do they really have jobs? Where do they live?”
Raymond gave him a sidelong glance. “You starting to miss your sisters all of a sudden? From what I remember, you used to lock yourself up in closets to get away from them.”
“That’s because they threw dead turtles on me when I was in a body cast.”
“It’s a sad thing, when a man’s children don’t get along.”
“I wouldn’t have even been in a body cast if it wasn’t for them.”
“Now, I won’t have that. Your sisters aren’t perfect, but you can’t keep blaming them for everything that goes wrong. You had an accident. People do.” Raymond lowered the sun visor. “One of these days they’ll be the only family you’ve got left.”
Webern leaned back and shut his eyes. He could see them, even now: Willow and Billow with their halos of smudgy dark, their fingers moving like spiders, like wind, like the scratching, grasping branches of malevolent trees, and always toward his throat.
A long time after he pretended to fall asleep, he actually began to doze. Images from Bo-Bo’s house flitted through his mind: pearly teeth smiling in a jelly jar, a bathtub with claws, radiators that leaned against the walls like skinny dogs with all their ribs showing. Going back there would be like opening an old picture book he hadn’t seen since childhood. Only it would be stranger, because he wouldn’t be able to shut it again so easily.
Raymond decided they would stop for lunch at a place called the Buzzard’s Den, and as Webern looked at the menu, he found himself wondering if his father was nostalgic for the subtle flavours of Bo-Bo’s cooking. Raccoon was conspicuously absent, but quail, frog, and hare dotted the list, along with the mysteriously named “Meat Stew.”
“Guess they’re getting easier to catch. Wild animals.” Raymond took off his fedora and set it on the table. Beneath it, his scalp shone; an isolated wad of hair squashed down in the front. Almost unconsciously, Webern ran a protective hand over his own short mop. “Lot of construction round here lately. Driving them out of their nests.”
“That’s a shame.” Webern decided to get a burger and shut his menu. He was still a little queasy. Maybe he’d feel better with some food in his stomach.
“Nah. I remember when this was all fields. Flat as a pool table, boring as hell.”
Webern thought back to the Dolphin River of his childhood. He’d hated a lot about it, but it sure was easy practicing his unicycle on the flat, wide sidewalks.
“That sounds about right,” h
e said. He read the back of the mustard bottle, then looked at his menu again.
After a few minutes, the waitress came by and took their orders. When she left, Raymond made a great show of unfolding his napkin and setting it in his lap. His hands shook a little. Webern wondered if he’d had a drink yet today.
“Do you think we’ll make it to Bo-Bo’s tonight?” The waitress put Webern’s coffee down in front of him, and he took it gratefully. The mug felt warm and secure, heavy in the familiar way diner mugs always did.
“Oh, I’d say so. We got a pretty early start. We’ll probably get up there just after dark sometime.”
Webern nodded, gulping his coffee. The car trips to Bo-Bo’s had always seemed epic when he was a child, but she was only about five hours north of Dolphin River. Compared to all the travelling he did now, that didn’t seem like much.
“What exactly is wrong with Bo-Bo? Just so I can prepare myself.”
“Well, if you were a little younger, I’d tell you her ticker’s getting tired. But medically, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Okay.”
“Your Bo-Bo liked her suet and her game meats, and a good pat of butter just like the rest of us. She stayed fit and trim, but I guess her veins got blocked up just the same. Including one in her heart. Now, here’s the kicker. Where most people would have a heart attack, Bo-Bo grew a whole new vein.”
“What?”
“It wraps around her heart, since the blood can’t go straight through the middle. Wait, let me draw you a picture.” Raymond grabbed a pile of napkins from a dispenser on the table and drew a shaky heart with one line passing through it and a second looped around the outside, like a noose. He tapped the second line. “See? Longer, but it still gets there. A scenic route.”
Webern turned the napkin toward himself and studied it. His father always drew everything out—whenever he gave street directions, described new models of cars, or recounted the events of the latest baseball game, he had a pen in hand, and his dinnertime conversations with Webern’s mother had come with their own booklets of illustrations. Images came easier to him than words. But even discounting the years they’d been apart, this was the first drawing he’d done for Webern in a long, long time. Webern folded the napkin in half and tucked it in his pocket. “So, what’s the problem, then? If the blood’s still getting through?”
“Because the new vein doesn’t give the heart room to pump. It’s squeezing the heart on every beat.”
“Bo-Bo’s heart is choking itself to death?”
“That’s right.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Their food arrived. Raymond lifted his hands in a little gesture of surrender as the waitress plunked down his chicken-fried muskrat.
“You know a lot of people with . . . conditions. You’ve got a condition yourself. I remember, when your mother and I took you to the hospital, they’d never seen anything of the kind.”
Webern ground his teeth. He thought of Dr. Show, his mother, Bo-Bo, even his little friend Wags. It was ridiculous: of all the people he’d loved in his life, his father was the one he got to keep.
“Bent up like a paper clip, but you could still wiggle your toes. Let’s put him in a body cast. Okay.”
This day was hell on earth. Maybe at dinner they’d rehash Mom’s funeral. Webern bit into his hamburger. The inside was cool and raw as earthworms. His stomach turned.
“I’ll be back.” Webern threw his napkin on the table.
In the bathroom, Webern splashed cold water on his face and held onto the sink with both hands. For a second he squeezed so hard he felt like he might break the porcelain, and he thought of Zeus Masters, the strongman, bending barbells into figure eights above his head. Nepenthe and Venus were probably watching him practice right now, giggling and nudging each others’ hips the way they did. The thought of that made him even madder, but not any stronger, and he finally let go of the sink. Maybe he could work this into a clown act sometime—the weak little harlequin trying to vent his rage—but he doubted it. He couldn’t see much humour in the situation yet.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As they neared Bo-Bo’s house, the landscape changed. It reminded Webern of the thorny, overgrown path to Sleeping Beauty’s castle: wild rose bushes grew along the roads, their lavender blossoms shedding moth-eaten petals; the naked trunks of birch trees shone like tarnished silver; train tracks thudded beneath the car’s wheels, and out of the corner of his eye, Webern saw the hulking shell of an abandoned luxury caboose.
Bo-Bo lived in Tarantula, Illinois. The town’s name was pronounced “tare-ann-TOO-lah” by natives; until seeing the sign this trip Webern had never associated it with the venomous spider. Tarantula was a sleepy town, with thin soil the colour of eraser dust; what crops grew here were spindly and frail, propped up by trellises in old ladies’ backyards.
Raymond turned the car onto Bo-Bo’s street, a narrow lane paved with smooth stones like the bed of a river. He parked in the driveway, and as Webern got out, he saw the place was just as he remembered it. Bo-Bo’s house, grown thick with ivy, sprang from a yard full of tall, seedy grasses and steel-jawed raccoon traps. As Webern followed his father up to the door, he was careful to stay on the path. Purple twilight gathered in the house’s shadow. Maybe they should have called before showing up like this. Last time he checked, Bo-Bo was pretty trigger-happy with her shotgun.
Webern and his father scaled the uneven steps to Bo-Bo’s front door. The porch, a shelf of limestone, glittered dully in the early evening; from its ceiling hung a wooden swing that could seat two on its wind-worn slats. Webern touched the seat and it began creaking back and forth on its chains.
Raymond cleared his throat and looked toward Webern as if he was about to speak. Then he lifted the iron knocker and let it fall. Both men heard the hollow knock echo into the house. After a long moment, a bolt scraped, and the door swung inward on its hinges. A greying chimp glared up at them, her long prehensile fingers still wrapped around the knob.
“Marzipan,” said Webern. He could hardly believe she was still alive. He stepped forward to hug her, but she was too quick for him. She turned on her heel and swung on her knuckles into the dark house.
Outside the sky was purpling, but inside it might as well have been the dead of night. The living room was a cavern, with dark green curlicues seething on the wallpaper and a crystal light fixture dangling from the ceiling like a dripping stalactite. In one corner, Webern saw the grand piano, large and black. When he was a child, its curving, wing-shaped body comforted him—it was hunchbacked too, but, as Bo-Bo once explained, the lopsided frame gave its music particular loveliness. She used to play in the evenings, after her Scotch but before her pipe. Now the piano grinned to no one; its yellow teeth collected cobwebs in the gloom.
Marzipan left the living room and climbed the ancient stairs to the second floor. Beneath the faded red and gold carpet, boards groaned. Webern looked at the photographs that lined the walls as they passed. Some were daguerreotypes of people he’d never known: an angular woman in a tuxedo and top hat, a fleecy-bearded man standing with one arm around a cigar store Indian, a stout, stern baby wearing what appeared to be a wedding dress. When Webern had asked Bo-Bo about these characters, she’d only shook her head and replied, “That was long ago.” But as they neared the top of the steps, Webern did recognize some of the faces he saw: first Bo-Bo, young and furious, with one bright eye and a second, even brighter, made of glass; then Raymond with Uncle Eddy, dressed in suits with shorts, each holding a wooden box and a butterfly net. A third photograph showed Bo-Bo with the boys on the porch’s steps. In this picture, an additional figure had been razor-bladed out, leaving behind only the jagged shape of a man. Even when he was a child, Webern had known well enough not to ask Bo-Bo about this o
ne.
In the upstairs hallway, it was almost too dark to see. Marzipan’s fur brushed along the ancient wallpaper as they walked toward Bo-Bo’s room. The cut glass doorknob turned in her rubbery hand.
Bo-Bo lay in bed, under comforters piled so thick that they hid the shape of her body. Only her head protruded. But even this was enough to reveal changes. Her hair, once tightly curled in a blue poodle cut, was now an azure wisp, and next to the black of her eye patch, her skin paled to the fragile white of old Bible pages. She was asleep, and as she dreamed her mouth moved soundlessly. On her nightstand, a set of teeth floated in a highball glass.
Marzipan stretched her lips into an exaggerated pucker and blew the loudest raspberry Webern had ever heard. Bo-Bo stirred. She slowly rose to her elbows. She squinted her one eye at Webern and Raymond. Then she drank the glass of water, teeth and all.
“Well, don’t look so frightened, Bernie.” Her face formed a new, more familiar shape around the teeth. “I’m not about to sit up and grab you.”
Webern walked up to where she was lying and perched on the edge of the bed. Looking at her up close, he could see that her one eye had dimmed considerably. He thought of her antique rifles, the midnight target practice that always woke the neighbours. Bo-Bo, the crack shot, nearly blind.
Bo-Bo reached up and touched his face. Webern closed his eyes, and she touched his eyelids, too. It was like she was sculpting his face with her knotted hands.“Bo-Bo,” Webern finally said, “I’m sorry I haven’t come to visit.”
“Don’t start with an apology. That’s worse than a weak handshake.” She released his face, then reached behind herself to set up the pillows. “I’d ask what you’ve been doing with your life, but with young people these days, maybe I’d rather not know.”
“I joined the circus. I’m a clown now.”
“I danced the Charleston once, but I didn’t make a career of it.” Bo-Bo smiled. Her false teeth shone unnaturally; Webern had forgotten that some of the ones toward the back were silver. “A traveling show. That explains the postcards. What else?”
Goldenland Past Dark Page 20