Near one of the shooting galleries, Casey Williams turned toward me, smacking Jeff Gilles on the shoulder to get his attention. And then the whole group of them turned to look at me, and I could feel myself shrinking.
“Hey farmer boy,” someone called.
I ducked behind one of the trailers that had been pulled onto one of the baseball diamonds. Its side panels were opened up to reveal a carnival game, a shooting gallery with moving targets and plush prizes. I checked inside the dugout to be sure it was empty, then went inside, tucking myself into the corner furthest from the grinding motor on the back of the truck, the one that moved the targets, belching blue clouds of gassy smoke into the August sky.
Settling onto the bench, I pressed my back into the corner, against the concrete wall, and pulled my knees into my chest.
No one would find me here.
Not that anyone would be looking.
For a long time I sat there, thinking about what I had said to Bob. Wondering how it was possible to know something without even knowing you knew it.
I had known for a while that Bob wasn’t going to come back, not in any meaningful way. Once he packed up his motorcycle and headed east, he would be gone. If he came back, he would just be a guest, someone visiting. He wouldn’t be around the way he always had been. It would be like the 4H all over again, the way he had slipped out of the fabric of things. He wouldn’t be there after school anymore, or on Saturday afternoons, the sound of his bike a thunder in the driveway that I could hear no matter where I was on the farm.
How many more times would I hear that sound, run to where I could see him, wave until I caught his attention?
He had looked so surprised when I said what I did. Was he surprised that I knew, or had he never really thought about it?
Gone. Already gone.
Like my parents. My dad.
I don’t know that I had put that together before the words were coming out of my mouth, but the surprise on Bob’s face then had been clear: I wasn’t supposed to know. Not yet.
But it had been obvious for a long time. There had been too many nights I had woken to the sound of raised voices, distant, a floor away, the words indistinguishable but the tone clear. I lay in bed awake those nights, eyes wide, my head buried in the pillow, trying to drown out the sound, until the voices stopped, until I heard the creaking tread of feet on the stairs. Too many mornings coming downstairs to the hints that something was wrong: pillows out of place on the couch, the coffee table moved. Like someone had slept there, but they didn’t want anyone to know.
They didn’t want me to know.
Too many times I had come into the living room, or kitchen, and the conversation stopped so quickly I could practically hear their mouths slapping shut, an almost electrical silence filling the room, crackling around us until one of them asked something like “So how was school?” Forced smiles slipping over their faces like masks.
My parents were splitting up.
Bob was leaving.
Nothing was ever going to be the same.
It was almost too much to bear.
Closing my eyes, I slumped my head back against the cool concrete roughness of the dugout wall.
“And what have we here?”
The voice was so close to my ear it seemed almost like a whispering inside my head. I jumped, practically pushing myself up the wall. My eyes flashed open as my neck scraped along the concrete, my hands flailing out to push away whoever had whispered in my ear.
But there was no one there, no one within the range of my weak, wheeling arms.
A man was at the far end of the dugout, a smile breaking through the darkness of his goatee.
“Mr.—” It seemed too surreal to possibly be true. “—Zeffirelli?”
The smile widened, and the man took a small bow, the tails of his black suit jacket swishing dramatically around his legs.
“At your service,” he said, tipping his top hat toward me.
“I’m sorry,” I said haltingly. I didn’t know why I was apologizing; it seemed like the right thing to do. “I just—”
He shook his head, cutting me off. “No need to explain,” he said. “We all need to take a moment to ourselves sometimes.” With a shrug of his shoulders and a twitch of his arms he straightened the sleeves of his jacket. “A world of wonders can be overwhelming.”
I looked down at the scuffed, dusty ground.
“Ah,” Zeffirelli said, and I heard him moving. When I looked up, he had taken a couple of steps closer to me. “But it’s not that, is it?”
I shook my head, and the corners of his mouth turned downward.
“Well,” he said, snapping the fingers of his right hand. “That is most unfortunate.” Between the fingers he had snapped he held the stem of a carnation, the flower so red it looked almost like a rose. “No, that’s not right,” he said. He was looking at the flower, but I couldn’t tell if he was talking to it, or to me.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the flower, transfixed as he slipped the stem into the front pocket of his jacket, shifting it until it met some sort of internal test. It looked like a corsage.
He brushed his lapels down with both hands. When he lifted his right hand, he seemed surprised to see a handkerchief dangling from between his thumb and forefinger.
“Oh,” he said, as if genuinely flummoxed. “That’s—”
I couldn’t help but smile.
“That’s more like it,” he said, tossing the handkerchief in the air. Then he snapped his fingers, and the white square of cloth vanished.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My eyes kept moving, back and forth, between the flower in his pocket and the space in the air where the handkerchief had disappeared, my stomach roiling and surging, my heart beating in my chest like I had been running.
He didn’t seem to notice, was patting his pockets as if looking for something.
“Now, where did I—” He reached into his pants pockets and turned them out, limp and white and empty.
I wanted to say something but I didn’t trust myself to speak, had no idea what sounds my mouth might make if I dared to open it.
“Ah, here we are,” he said, reaching toward me with an open, empty hand. He snapped his fingers again to reveal a gold coin, which he extended toward me. “Here,” he said. “This is for you.”
I didn’t take the coin. I didn’t take my eyes off it, either.
He looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Ah,” he said, a little sadly. “Of course.” The hand withdrew, and I watched as he slipped the coin into his jacket pocket. “I should know better.”
The disappearance of the coin caused a pang in me, in my stomach, my chest, and I wanted to reach out for it, to ask for it. But I didn’t do anything except wish for that moment back, for another chance to make that decision.
To make things turn out another way.
“Of course you’ve been told not to take gifts from people you don’t know. Candy from strangers. Rides from drivers who pull over to offer you a lift.” He nodded deeply, repeatedly. “I understand entirely. Your parents have done a good job.”
Something flickered in his eyes as he looked at me, a response to something in my face.
“But there’s something I bet your parents didn’t teach you,” he said, his voice low. He took another step toward me.
“What?” I asked.
He smiled, then snapped his fingers again. The gold coin appeared in his hand, like he had snatched it out of thin air. “Sometimes—” He snapped again, and the coin disappeared. “You have to take a chance to trust.”
I looked between his hand and his face.
“Trust yourself.” He snapped, and the coin reappeared. “Because life is too short to live in fear.” Snap, and the coin was gone. “And opportunities—” Snap. Coin. “Are like circuses.” Snap. Gon
e. “They’re here.” Snap. “Then gone.” Snap.
He waved his hand in the air, as if to indicate that the coin was well and truly gone this time. Inside me, something broke.
“I know that it’s a hard world,” Zeffirelli said softly, his lips creasing in something between a smile and a frown.
I hesitated, then nodded.
“It’s up to us to find what joy we can, where we can,” he said, nodding. “It’s often hiding in the most obvious of places.” His eyes shone as he straightened up. “Promise me you’ll enjoy the circus,” he said, meeting my eyes. “At least give yourself that.”
I looked back at the ground. “I’ll try,” I said, with no idea how that might actually work.
When I looked back at him, he was frowning. “I suppose that will have to do,” he said, starting to turn away. “Oh,” he added, stopping. “Perhaps this will help.”
He snapped his fingers one last time as he turned and stepped out of the dugout. Then he walked away, holding himself tall and straight as he turned around the back of the wagon.
I felt a strange warmth in my pocket, an unfamiliar heaviness.
My hand shook as I pushed it into my pocket, as I pulled out the gold coin.
It felt like the ground might give way underneath me.
I couldn’t have been there for very long, but in that time, the world seemed to have changed. Stepping out from the dugout, stepping around the motor and the trailer, clutching the coin in my right hand, I had to stop. Though the high sun had given away to lengthening afternoon shadows, everything seemed brighter somehow. The lights on the games, the flags twitching in the warm breeze, the paintings on the sides of the trailers, all seemed to sparkle and pulse, so vibrant they left streaks of colour on the insides of my eyelids whenever I blinked.
The air was warm, but not hot, and thick with the smells of the circus: buttery popcorn. diesel, sweet cotton candy, the familiar richness of barbecuing chicken, all laced faintly with an ever-present background tang. I had no idea what animal made that.
Tightening my grip on the coin, I set forth to figure it out.
The crowds were heavier now, the passages between the tents and trailers congested and loud, but it didn’t seem to bother me anymore. I slipped into the river of people and let it carry me along, content to let myself drift among the smiling faces and laughing voices. It felt like everyone in town was there, the fairgrounds even more packed than they were for the Harvest Festival.
Unlike the festival, though, no one seemed to know where they were going. Because the Harvest Festival had been happening every September for over a hundred years, everyone knew their way around: the shortcuts to avoid the midway, the washrooms with the shortest lines. The prize fruits and vegetables, baking and crafts were always in the Ag Hall, the 4H animals in the Pavillion, the demolition derby in the gravel lot where people parked for softball during the summer. The whole thing was an institution, a world as familiar to everyone as anything else in town.
But this was different. There might have been circuses in Henderson before, but not within my memory, and everyone was wending aimlessly through the sudden unfamiliarity. They seemed to be enjoying the strangeness, eyes questing and wide, full of questions.
Questions and . . .
Wonder.
That was what Zeffirelli had described in the dugout, and now that I was looking for it, I could see it everywhere. Not just in the faces of the little kids, who were gaping around like their minds had exploded, but on the faces of their parents and grandparents too, in the expressions of the teenagers, usually too cool to reveal anything even remotely genuine.
And more than seeing it, I could feel it, too, a warmth that spread through me, from the pit of my stomach to the tips of my toes, a warmth that seemed to concentrate in the bones and muscles of my face, leaving me uncertain if I wanted to laugh or cry. So I just drifted, my fingers locked around the coin in my pocket.
A crowd of people were gathered in the center of the gravel parking lot, in a rough ring in the middle of the circled wagons. A man in a long red coat, with a top hat and a luxurious moustache—he looked like he could have been Zeffirelli’s brother—had stepped toward the back of one of the wagons, reached for the heavy latch, then stopped, his hand poised in the air.
“Step back,” he shouted, staring at the crowd. “Step back, all of you. I can’t guarantee your safety.”
As we all took several uncertain steps back, glancing at one another in confusion, he flung the doors of the wagon open.
For a moment, there was just darkness inside—shadows and a sense of something lurking there, something watching. Then the lions spilled out through the door, their golden fur flashing and burning in the late afternoon light.
I almost stumbled, stepping backward, unable to tear my eyes away. When I had looked at them through the bars of the trailer a while earlier, the lions had been draped across the hay-strewn floor, eyes half-open, their bodies strong and powerful, but limp and soft. They had looked like barn cats, sleeping out a hot afternoon in the shade of the hay loft, occasionally opening a lazy eye to check on the world around them.
But now, bursting out of the trailer . . .
A startled cry ran through the crowd as the male reared his head back and roared, his mane shivering. He roared again, and someone screamed, and the whip that had appeared in the trainer’s hand, like a flower, or a coin, cracked with a sound like a gunshot.
And then, as if on cue, the music started, an explosion of hurdy-gurdy and tuba that seemed to be coming from all around us. We all spun in place, trying to see what was going on without losing sight of the lions.
A band of clowns was marching into the circle from between two trailers.
No—marching is the wrong word.
The band, led by a tall man in white-face with a blood smile and fluorescent green hair, carrying a tasselled staff, lurched into view, their movements mirroring the chaotic, cacophonous sounds of their instruments.
They came right for us. It looked like they were going to crash right into the crowd, like they didn’t even see us, but at the last moment the conductor wove and led the band around us, calling out, “Come on, everybody! The show is about to begin!” as they careened in the direction of the big top.
The crowd surged behind them, laughing and shrieking, lurching in step and sing-shouting along to the music. Everyone was focused on the clowns, on the tent, utterly caught up in what was happening, and what was about to happen. Everyone had forgotten about the lions.
Except me.
As the crowd dispersed, I edged forward, closer to the lion tamer. Still far enough away—I thought—that I was safe, but close enough to smell the heavy musk that wafted from their every movement like an African breeze.
The lions were pacing now, walking calmly in a small circle around the trainer, who held his whip in the air like an antenna, not moving it.
He didn’t need to.
With one word in a language I didn’t recognize, a single sharp syllable, the lions turned and began to circle him in the other direction, no hesitation, no resistance, a seamless tumble of golden fur and another wave of that smell.
Another word, and the lions stopped in place and sat, their attention entirely focused on the trainer’s face, ignoring the whip hand altogether.
The lion tamer smiled, lowered the whip, making a sound that seemed affectionate, almost maternal. It was easy to imagine him stepping forward to scratch the big cats behind their ears.
Instead, he lifted his head and looked directly at me, meeting my eye. He tipped his hat to me, the way Zeffirelli had done in the dugout. “You should go,” he said, placing the hat back on his head. “But I will see you soon.”
With one last look at the lions, his words echoing faintly in my ears, I turned and started for the big top, and ran directly into Bob, face first into his le
ather jacket.
“Whoa, there,” he said.
The jacket smelled like him: leather and aftershave and smoke.
“Hey,” he said, a moment later, like it had taken him a second to realize it was me. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Come on,” I said, doing everything but pull on his arm to get him to follow me. “We have to go.”
He fell into step beside me, slightly back. “What’s going on?”
“It’s about to start!”
The grounds were almost empty, just a few people rushing toward the red and white tent.
“I know,” he said, “That’s why I was looking for you. I saw the clowns—”
“Did you see the lions?” I asked, too impatient to let him finish.
He wrinkled his face and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, in a tone almost like regret.
“Weren’t they cool?” Practically vibrating with excitement.
“Did you really think so?” He looked down at the ground. “I thought they looked . . . sad.”
I slowed. “Sad?”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said, but his face was twisted like he had smelled something bad.
We walked in silence for a few steps before he asked, “What about you? You doin’ okay?”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what he meant. Then I remembered what had happened at the gate. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
And I was surprised to realize that I really was. I hadn’t forgotten about mom and dad, or about Bob leaving, but I didn’t seem to have any trace of the desperate, drowning feeling that I had had earlier in the afternoon.
Mostly, I just wanted to get inside the big top.
“Are you sure?” His voice creaked a little, something I don’t think I had ever heard before. “I was looking for you. . . .”
I nodded. “It’s all right,” I said. Then, gesturing, “Come on.”
Seven Crow Stories Page 19