It was only when we started walking again that I realized I was still clutching the coin Zeffirelli had given me in my right hand.
I wondered, for a moment, how long I had been holding it. And why I hadn’t noticed.
The big top was at the centre of the maze of trailers like a beacon. There were still scattered people rushing toward it; we weren’t the last ones. I could hear the clowns’ music from across the field, and so long as the music was playing, the real show wouldn’t start.
Or so I assumed.
“Come on,” I urged Bob, as we passed the entrance to the side show, the golden rope and the red-beaded curtain and the sign that read No Minors. The man on the stool beside the rope tipped his hat to me as we passed.
There was one entrance to the big top, a seam in the side of the tent that had been pulled open and tied back, wide enough to allow just two people at a time to pass through side by side.
Bob and I joined the back of the crowd waiting to enter, a solid mass of heat and the smell of sweat. As more people filled in behind us, we were pushed forward, my nose almost pressed against Mr. Wilkes’ sweaty back in front of me.
He turned back and glared at me as I jostled him. I smiled helplessly, lifting my heads to gesture that somebody had shoved me from behind, that there was nothing I could do.
Bob reached out to steady me, rocked as someone shoved him. “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, drawing a glare from Mrs. Wilkes. Bob didn’t even bother with a smile, just glared right back. Then he half-turned toward me and started to smile as the crowd lurched again.
I reached out toward him, but this time the mass of people didn’t ebb, pushing me forward almost to the edge of the tent before my feet touched the ground again.
I felt Bob’s hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?” he mouthed, as we lurched forward again.
I nodded, trying to quell the feeling of panic rising in me as we passed into the big top. The crowd narrowed and funnelled between the edges of two sets of bleachers. It was dim and hot, and I couldn’t see anything except the shuddering mass of people around me and a faint glow in the distance.
The crowd bunched again, and I bit back a cry as I was carried several feet along in the dark, caught up in a spring-swollen river like deadfall. And then the forward motion stopped, and again the pressure from the people behind me pressed me into the man in front of me, not Mr. Wilkes now but someone I didn’t have a chance to recognize before I was crushed up against them.
The pressure was too much. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. I tried to turn. I struggled to free my hands, to bring them up, to try to fight free, but I couldn’t—
The people in front of me lurched forward, the crowd dispersing to either side as it reached the end of the bleachers and people broke off in both directions to find places to sit.
Bob reached out for me, caught my shoulder. “Are you all right?” His face was caught in an expression of incredulous disbelief, hot and flushed, his hair flipped over onto his forehead, sticking there.
“I’m okay.” I nodded as he reached up to flip his hair back.
I started to do the same, unconsciously mirroring his gesture, when I noticed that both my hands were empty.
I had dropped the coin.
People bumped into me and someone cursed as I stopped, digging my fingers deep into my pockets, knowing there was no hope.
The gold coin was gone.
“Are these all right?” Bob asked, pointing at two empty spots on the bleachers, about halfway up, off to one side.
I didn’t say anything as I checked all of my pockets again, front and back, patting outside my jeans, hoping to feel the round outline, then digging in, hoping despite the fact I knew they were empty.
“Hey,” he said, pointing at the seats.
“Sure,” I said, following him past the two people sitting at the end of the row close to the aisle. The seats were fine; the tent was so full we didn’t have a lot of options, and it didn’t really matter anyway. Nothing did.
“Are you all right?” he asked again, quietly, as I squeezed into the spot next to him, Mr. Abbot radiating heat against my other side. He looked so worried, so concerned, that I wanted to say something to comfort him.
“I’m okay,” I lied.
His face didn’t change, and his eyes remained focused directly on mine.
“My stomach,” I said weakly, gesturing vaguely in the air as if I didn’t want to say anything else.
He nodded and almost smiled, as if the idea—or the fact of an explanation—was somehow comforting. “Gotcha,” he said. “Too much junk food?”
I shrugged half-heartedly. “I guess.”
He patted my knee. “You’ll be all right.”
It didn’t seem that way to me. At that moment, it felt like I might never be all right again.
Losing the coin felt like a hole opening up inside me, a sucking darkness that seemed to lurk in the pit of my stomach. It made me feel like I was going to throw up, like maybe I hadn’t entirely lied to Bob. It just wasn’t junk food. It felt like I was full of poison, the black jelly of everything I had lost—my parents, Bob, the coin. It made me want to vomit, and to lash out. Every time Mr. Abbot shifted, the hot, sweaty length of him pressing into me, I wanted to scream, to punch him.
Or curl up under the bleachers and cry and hope that no one would ever find me and hope that someone would come.
Bob patted my knee again, and left his hand there. It was all I could do not to cry.
And then the lights went out, and the beam of a single spotlight cut through the big top.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Zeffirelli cried out from the center of the ring, “boys and girls, welcome to Zeffirelli’s world of wonders!”
The crowd roared as he tipped his hat, and I leaned back in my place.
He looked almost the same, but off, somehow. Different.
Was this the same man I had met in the dugout?
He was wearing the same clothes, but in the brightness of the spotlight I could see how tattered they were, the thin, shiny patches at his elbows and knees, the thready roughness of the lapels. The spotlight seemed to magnify him: it was like I was close enough to study the thin, patchiness of his goatee, the sag of his neck, the grey mostly hidden in his hair shining like a beacon.
Mostly, though, the difference was in his eyes, flat and dull and listless as he spoke, like he was reading from a script. There was little trace of the man I had met earlier, the man who had made a handkerchief appear out of thin air, a coin—
A coin that I had lost.
My heart fell. Maybe it was my fault – he had made the coin appear, and I, in my stupid clumsiness, had made it disappear.
“I must warn you,” he was saying, “please, no sudden moves or loud noises, these are wild animals, here direct from darkest Africa . . .” A ripple of excitement ran through the audience. “Please welcome Franco and the wild cats of the Serengeti!”
On cue, the spotlight snapped to darkness, and light filled the back of the ring where a doorway in the canvas wall gaped suddenly open, revealing the lions that—
But were these the same lions? They couldn’t be. These lions were slow and docile, stringy and thin, their fur matted in places, rubbed raw in others. The moved with a sloppy lope, heads low, eyes flat in the bright lights.
They looked . . . broken.
My eyes burned as I struggled to my feet.
Bob twisted to look at me, starting to rise, until I put the flat of my hand on my stomach, twisting my face in distress.
He nodded, frowning in commiseration, as I turned away, edging past Mr. and Mrs. Abbot and starting down the stairs toward the exit.
It was almost completely dark in the big top, so I was a bit surprised, and relieved, that it was still light outside as I slipped through the entrance.
/> Not full light, but light enough. At least, that was what I hoped as I stopped and took a look around. There were a few people in the distance, circus workers moving about in the sudden emptiness of the grounds, but none nearby. Nobody to notice what I was doing, or to ask any questions as I looked at the ground, crouching slightly.
I had to find the coin. And this was my only chance. If I had dropped it inside the tent, in the crush, in the dark, there was no chance.
But if I dropped it outside . . .
I bent lower to the ground, narrowed my focus.
The grass was a trampled mess of cigarette butts and crushed wrappers, pink and blue stained cones from cotton candy, fragments of paper and, here and there, chicken bones and broken plastic utensils. Every time something caught the light just right I would lurch forward, hand extended, but it was never anything: a penny, half-buried in the crunched brown grass, a drying gob of spit . . .
“Are you looking for something?”
I sprang to my feet at the sound of the voice, my face flushing.
Zeffirelli was perched a short distance away on what looked like the stool that had been beside the gate to the sideshow.
My breath caught in my throat when I saw what he was doing with his hands.
The coin appeared in his right, disappeared in his left.
The coin, glistening in the slanted evening light.
“Do you always take such poor care with gifts you’re given?” he asked, rising to his feet and stepping toward me.
I took an instinctive step back. “No,” I said quietly, the shame burning through me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Zeffirelli. I didn’t mean to—”
His smile broke through his goatee, his eyes filling with light. This was the Zeffirelli I recognized. This was the Zeffirelli I had met in the dugout.
“Please,” he said, as if waving away my sadness. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
The coin flashed between his hands.
“Sometimes things are lost.”
The coin vanished in his left hand, and I felt a pang of sadness, as if a light had gone out.
“There’s no one to blame, no apologies to be made.”
He shrugged. I waited for the coin to reappear.
“They just go. People. Places. Things. Everything disappears.”
He kissed the fingertips of his right hand and gestured into the air, like setting something free.
There was no sign of the coin.
I looked at Zeffirelli’s left hand, where the coin had last been. I looked to his right, as he lowered it to his side.
Nothing.
When I looked up, his eyes met mine.
“But sometimes,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, “when all seems lost, we find something else. Something unexpected. Something beyond our imaginings.” His voice was inviting.
Forgiving.
I felt the warmth of it wash through me.
“Would you care to go for a walk?” he asked, inclining his head slightly, as if anxious for my answer.
The question took me by surprise, and I glanced at the entrance to the tent. It didn’t occur to me to say no; of course I would go with him.
But—
“Don’t you have to be—” I didn’t even finish the question—he was the ringmaster. Didn’t he need to be inside the big top?
He smiled. “I have a little time,” he said. “Come. There’s some-thing I want to show you.”
Zeffirelli talked as we walked, pointing things out as we wended our way through the maze of trucks and trailers. “That’s Bert’s place,” he said, pointing at the trailer with the painting of the bearded lady. “She goes by Roberta, but her friends all call her Bert. And that’s . . .”
He was like a tour guide, and I was paying such close attention to what he was saying, what he was pointing out, that I quickly lost any sense of where I was, how I might find my way back out of the maze.
We walked for what seemed like hours, turning and turning, winding our way through the backstage world of the circus. Time seemed to lose all meaning. I thought of asking him, once or twice, if he should be getting back to the ring, but as quickly as the thought came to mind I dismissed it. It was his circus. He knew what he was doing.
And it wouldn’t be long now. . . .
It was almost dark by the time we reached our destination, a rusty trailer in the center of the lot, parked next to the rusty red truck I had seen that morning on the road.
Had it really only been that morning? It seemed so much longer ago. Weeks. Months. Not mere hours.
He had to tug on the door before it opened with a dull pop. “Be it ever so humble,” he said, stepping up and inside, flicking on a light. “Come in,” he beckoned.
I stopped at the threshold when the reality of the situation exploded inside my brain. I didn’t know him, at all. And he wanted me to come into his trailer? I didn’t even need to think of my mother, holding a crumpled newspaper in her hand, waving it, tears in her eyes, as she warned me about strangers, about what someone had done to the little boys they had taken, to know that this was a bad idea.
“Um,” I started, trying to figure out a way out of this. “Shouldn’t you—” I gestured in what I thought was the direction of the big top. “Don’t you need to be back?”
He smiled, wide and soft, as if he really did understand.
“You’re a bright boy,” he said. “Probably brighter than you’re given credit for, a lot of the time.”
It seemed like a question in his voice; I had no idea how to respond.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said, straightening to his full height. Something about the motion caused me to move back, and he stepped down from the doorway, back onto the grass, almost brushing my shoulder as he moved past me. “There’s something you should see, inside. But I’ll stay out here.” He lowered his head, looked at me as if expecting an answer. “How does that sound?”
I was already leaning toward the doorway, craning my neck to see more of the inside. It was like the decision had already been made for me.
I took a step forward to the edge of the doorway. I looked at Zeffirelli Nodded. “Okay.”
The next step took me up, and in.
I glanced back at Zeffirelli. He hadn’t moved.
It was hot inside. Not quite what you would expect, being inside a tin can that had been roasting in the sun all day, but uncomfortable. The dimness helped, but I still broke into a sweat.
Although it was small, the trailer seemed roomy on the inside, clean and almost spacious. There was no clutter: a neat bookshelf with all the spines lined up, an open closet, the clothes hung with care, dark shirts and long jackets like the one he was wearing now. A tiny kitchen, tidy, no dishes or pots on the counter, circus posters on the wall above the tiny sink. It didn’t look scary.
I glanced back toward him, then took a step deeper towards the back of the trailer.
There was a small table and a padded bench next to the kitchen area, a paperback book tented open next to a candle in the centre of the table. There were two doors toward the back of the trailer, both of them closed. I had been in a couple of trailers before; I knew that one of the doors led to a tiny bathroom, the other to a sleeping area, a bedroom that would probably be all mattress on a platform over a storage area. All the dressing and getting ready for the day would happen out here.
I let my gaze fall across Zeffirelli as I turned, trying not to look like I was checking on him. When he started to smile, I swung my gaze away, toward the front of the trailer, and froze, my breath sticking in my throat.
A boy my age was standing at the far end of the room.
I jumped back, made a small sound.
The boy jumped back, his lips moving.
“Are you all right?” Zeffirelli stepped toward the door. Stopped.
“I’
m okay.” I waved my hand toward him, as if to keep him out of his own trailer.
The boy moved his hand dismissively.
“It’s a mirror,” Zeffirelli said.
“I know.”
But it wasn’t, quite.
At least, not like any mirror I had ever seen. The mirror was huge, spanning the entire front wall of the trailer. There was no frame, nothing to clearly mark the dimensions of the glass. Standing in the living area, it was impossible to see both edges of the mirror at the same time; you had to turn your head slightly to orient yourself.
I took a step forward; the boy stepped forward toward me. I lifted my left hand. The boy lifted his right. I clenched my raised fist. The boy clenched his.
The boy was clearly me, but also not, in the way a reflection is always fleetingly confusing, never quite matching up to the image we carry in our heads. The boy in the mirror seemed taller somehow than I imagined myself, his face thinner, his eyes brighter.
But that was just the way mirrors worked.
Except . . .
My reflection was standing in a different room.
I took a full turn, looking around the trailer.
Nothing made sense.
The reflected room looked about the same size, the close corners and angles suggesting that it might also be a trailer, but everything else was completely different. There was no trace of the kitchen counter, or the fixed benches along the walls with their squared cushions.
Instead of the doorways to the bedroom and bathroom, the room ended in a beaded curtain, containing the space, creating a feeling of warmth, of safety, a feeling that the orange light of the flickering candles only added to. There was a rug on the floor, an ornate Persian pattern like something out of the Arabian Nights, scattered with large cushions, around a low table on which a lantern burned. The walls were hung with—
Behind my reflection, the beaded curtain parted and Zeferelli stepped into the room.
I whirled around, raising my hands defensively.
The trailer was empty. The light above the sink burned with a steady, sharp light.
“Mr. Zeffirelli?” I called out, tying to force my voice not to shake.
Seven Crow Stories Page 20