by Tom Kealey
Why are they turned like that? he says.
The chairs?
Yes.
When I’m thinking about writing a letter I look out the window, she says. When I write it, I face the wall.
He nods at the freight scale. And that?
My father’s. He owned a vegetable store. Years ago, I guess. They’d sell by bulk.
It’s still accurate?
I suppose.
Johnson steps into the den, switches his flashlight on. The cat has followed them in, and it watches as Johnson steps up onto the scale. He shines the light at the reading.
How much you weigh? he says.
About eighty.
He checks the reading again. Subtracts the woman’s weight from what he reads. He shifts the woman a little higher in his arms, watches for any movement in the needle. Those carrots don’t seem to be helping. He frowns and exhales.
Laika stands under the bright yellow and blood–colored lights outside the reptile tent. She holds a coffee mug filled with potato soup, and she spoons it, blows the steam away, takes another taste. The circus has opened, and she watches a small group of children form an attentive semicircle around the jugglers. The jugglers’ torches are now lit, and the blindfolded pair toss the flames underhanded while black smoke curls in the air. The children turn their heads back and forth then back again, following the flames. On a stand near the center of the tent, the organist plays the same ridiculous tune, and behind him, a clown stands with a pail of water.
Laika walks through the crowd, tries to keep the soup from spilling. In the main ring, a woman with dark, curled hair balances atop one of the jogging elephants. The woman has always put Laika in mind of her mother. The crowd is seated in stands on three sides, and there are orange glow-sticks here and there, a pair of children holding sparklers. Around and around the ring the elephant goes, and the woman sets her hands against the creature’s thick back, handstands, points her long legs at the roof of the tent. The acrobat leans in to keep from falling. The crystals in her costume catch the spotlights, and around she goes again, glittering like a figure in water. The elephant trudges on, looking, unlike many of the animals, happy to be of service.
From somewhere Laika hears a barker. She imagines the man’s hand sweeping above the crowd. I Have a Number for You Sir. And I Believe It’s a Winner. In six hours, well after the circus closes, Laika will find the acrobats again, will unbraid the dark curled hair of the woman, will rub away the knots in her shoulders. When the woman needs a brief affection—she often seems to—Laika will hold her hand.
And of course Laika will think about her mother, who, years before—almost five now—had passed her between lines of barbed wire. A man and his wife were waiting in darkness on the other side. Laika, as a young child, had left the refugee camp that way. They were many miles outside Sarajevo. The floodlights were out then, and the soldiers were standing at the gates.
If the rain holds off this night, Laika and the woman will sit near the bonfire—the bonfire after most circus nights, and there might be a boy—the giant’s son—who Laika wouldn’t mind speaking with again. There is something that she finds delightful about the giant’s son that she can neither understand nor explain. The boy had taken her out to the tracks the morning before. He’d set his head against the rails, looked up at her. You can hear them coming, he’d said, but when she knelt next to him she’d heard nothing. The cold metal had sent a shiver through her ear that ran down her arms to her fingertips.
She checks her watch, finishes her potato soup. She slips down a space next to the reptile tent, watches for snakes in the straw. They often escape. Above her, she watches a monkey on the tightwire. It swings by its hands across the wire to a bell, which the creature rings with a thump of its fingertip. Then, back across. The floor is twenty feet down, and when the monkey returns to the stand, it is rewarded with a piece of fruit from its keeper.
Out through the back of the tent and up the hill past the trailers. Laika looks up at the leaden sky and thinks she can see some shapes in the clouds. A man with no arm in that one. The broken tip of a javelin in that one. A giant eye that can see everything but her. She is not without some skills: past the trailers she finds an open space, does her cartwheels and then a running tumble, lands on her feet, and then tumbles again. The hand walk is simple to her, even in the mud, and she sets herself on both arms, turns with a slight movement of the fingers, watches the upside down hooves of the horses in the animal tent.
She opens the flap with her feet, walks into the light, her palms and fingers pressed against the straw and the dung. Her shadow is clear in the lamp glow, an upside-down girl, but she can’t seem to see herself in it. She imagines it as maybe belonging to another girl from somewhere far off. Maybe someone with her face, but a different name. The wire gate to the camel pen looks, from her angle, to be open, so she closes her eyes and breathes in deep: it gives her a buzz with all that blood in her head.
Then, she falls over and gets up quickly. Another rush. She looks at the gate, and again it seems open. That couldn’t possibly be. She scans the pen for the white camel, the rare and expensive camel, the camel that she alone is responsible for and to. Laika runs into the pen and searches every corner, every possible hiding place. There is no hiding place here for a camel of that size. Here there is only straw.
Toomey slips in the mud and topples into a line of wire. It tangles his shirt, his jeans. He can’t get free of it. Baxx is out of the car and shouts back toward the building, and Eli pulls the wire free, pulls the younger boy up, gives him a shove toward the river. They desperately want to get to the other side of the fast-moving river. They watch Baxx try to cut off their angle to the water.
Toomey heads away from the chimney and toward the fence. The dark water of the river is twenty yards ahead of him, and he scrambles over what is left of a couch, takes the back end like a hurdle, hears Eli close behind, sees Baxx bearing down on them. At the river bank the boy jumps, feet first, and lands in water to his kneecaps. His spine runs a lightning chill, and he pushes out and dives.
He tastes gasoline. It sears the back of his throat, stings his eyes. The shock of the cold water pushes him on. He comes up for air, and he can feel the current pushing him quickly south. He turns, looks behind at two shadows, a man and a boy. The boy dives, and the man falls back into the bank, sinks to his knees. A screwdriver is stuck through the man’s palm. Behind him, two figures run in shadow toward the river. The water rises, and Toomey goes under.
He lets the swift current take him away from the men, out to where the water becomes sudden deep. His shoes kick against nothing. Surfacing, he catches a glimpse of the far bank—mud and shallows—and he makes for it. He kicks through the cold water. Under the surface he thinks of Eli, and above it he thinks of his own drowning. He chokes on the gas water. The fumes begin, it seems, to trick his vision. He’s almost to the far bank, but the water moves there in a strange way. He pushes down and his shoes find mud and shallow water.
The first of the rats. Claws and tails. Teeth. They hook to his arm and he shakes them free. Feels one at his neck, and then he’s in the thick of them. He sweeps them heavily aside, chokes on the gas again. He falls in the shallows, and they’re upon him. Toomey gets up, moves forward. He finds the bank and comes free of the water.
He steps on the rats, trips, falls in the mud and broken crates, feels a nail stick into his knee. It goes in deep, and when he raises the leg a board is stuck there. He can’t bend his leg. He takes hold of the board. A gunshot behind him. He pulls the board out, pulls it free, cries the pain out of himself. The knee goes numb. He hits the rats with the board, and then he’s up the muddy bank. He looks back for Eli. Looks for what the moonlight will offer. The men are climbing a fence on the other side of the river. The current has taken him far downstream. A boy surfaces in the shallows below, and Toomey stumbles down the bank. He takes the collar of the boy who kneels in the shallows, choking.
Over the
bank and into a ditch. No rats there, only broken pipes and some beer bottles, a box of diapers sunk into the mud. The boys spit poison from their mouths. Their lungs are like fire. They listen to the river, they try to stay alive. When he catches a clean breath, Toomey feels at his knee. There’s a sick-feeling hole there.
They lie in the ditch and look up at the sky. They don’t have the energy yet to move, though they can hear the shouts of the dealer and his men across the river. The stars are out, and Toomey sees them as bits of blue. He looks for the moon but can’t yet find it.
They coming? he says, and Eli raises his head. The boy picks up a length of pipe and crawls slowly up the ditch. Toomey can see his head poke up into the clearing.
They wait. One boy watches and the other boy listens. When Eli climbs down he looks at his friend. He has a smile on his face.
They can’t swim, he says.
Johnson drives the taxi slowly, passes the turn for the state highway. Next to him, the old woman holds her bad arm with the good hand, tries to keep it elevated. Johnson has a sister, Marley, a nurse. He thinks maybe she can help this woman out. He’ll skirt the city, near the old fair-grounds, and head up to her house. A farm on the other side of town. Above them the sky has cleared of clouds, and the moon shines through the tree line. It puts Johnson in mind of a girl he’d once known. She’d had a penchant for climbing things: trees and rooftops, a billboard for a hotel chain near where he’d grown up. He was afraid of heights himself, but he often, as a child, found himself waiting on her. He feels the crick in his neck now, from staring up all those years ago.
You didn’t put the meter on, says the woman. I like to pay for what I owe.
He thinks on that but doesn’t argue. He pulls the lever down. They listen to the ticks as they make their way down the road.
These carrots yours? says the woman.
Who else?
I’ll give you two dollars for them.
You can just have them, he says.
I need them for tomorrow. I have a donkey to feed. Will you take two dollars for them?
Johnson looks over at the carrots. I didn’t see a barn at your house.
My sister owns one. She lives in a nursing home just south of here.
Johnson reaches over, takes the woman’s arm. Holds it up. You can rest that awhile if you want.
A minute, says the woman.
Johnson nods. She’s got a donkey in a nursing home?
Not really. My sister’s a little far gone. She thinks she’s got this donkey named Nelson. They keep him in a shed out back.
You feed him?
Three times a week, the woman says.
What about the other days?
I don’t think she keeps track, and besides, she can’t get up and around very well, so whenever I visit I bring some vegetables for Nelson. He’s very particular. He eats mustard greens. You have any of those around here?
No, says Johnson.
You ever hear of a donkey eating something like that?
I haven’t heard much about donkeys at all.
He’ll eat alfalfa and carrots, says the woman. But he gets awfully irritable if I give him celery. He seems to like corn, though.
Johnson looks over at her. Sounds like you’re the one a little far gone.
Maybe, says the woman. You’d not be the first to make the claim. You want to hear something else?
All right.
There’s a red-handled brush. It’s soft. Nelson likes to be brushed with that. If you brush him with one of the others, he doesn’t like it.
They come to a four-way stop, and Johnson gives the woman her arm back. He slows the cab and looks for traffic. There’s nothing, though, just empty tobacco fields and an old tractor, set near a wire fence. The moonlight reflects off the tire hub, and they smell fertilizer and the dusty crops through the open windows. They hear the whistle of a train in the distance, though they can’t see it. Johnson pushes on through the intersection.
Sounds like this donkey’s particular, he offers.
That’s not the half of it, says the old woman. He likes to walk counterclockwise around the shed and the yard. If you walk him clockwise, he can’t sleep at night. And then you’ve got to keep him from the roosters. They’ll peck at his legs, and he’ll kick the hell out of them. Then you’ve got a dead rooster on your hands, and what’s that good for?
Johnson considers that. I can’t think of anything, he says.
And you’ve got to get his blanket on anytime it’s going to drop below forty degrees. He’ll catch a cold otherwise. You walk out past the water pump—a yellow one—but that hasn’t worked for years, and the shed is after that. The latch is tricky, though. You’ve got to push on the door, or else it won’t open. There’s a man who lives in the home with my sister, and he’s always asking me how to work that latch.
Johnson looks over at the woman. Johnson doesn’t consider himself a master of conversation. This sounds complicated, he says.
Well, all I really do is walk outside and stand on the porch for about a half hour. But sometimes it takes me a long time to think up a new story about Nelson. If I don’t have something new, my sister gets upset.
Johnson takes up her arm again, lets her rest the good one.
I’d guess that means a lot to her, he says.
Maybe. She’s pretty far gone. It’s kind of sad really. Feeding an imaginary donkey. They’ll likely be locking me up next. Do we have a deal for the carrots?
Sure, says Johnson. How’s the finger?
The woman looks there. She tries to wiggle it a little under the dishcloth.
It might be I’ll lose it.
Laika makes her way downhill through the strangleweed. Behind her, the lights and sounds of the circus begin to fade. The camel is down in a large meadow, not far from the tree line, and it looks like a strange little ghost at this distance. Beyond it, and beyond the trees, Laika can see a two-lane road. A few cars moving in either direction. She finds her footing in the rocks and the mud. At the bottom of the hill she smells the wet grass and sweetness of the yellow flowers that stretch across the field. Through the center, she can see the tracks that the camel stamped through the flowers. Bats circle the fields above her, and the sounds of the night bugs are loud in the valley, all along the hillsides.
She keeps low as she pushes through the flowers. The camel eyes her from the field. A thick rope hangs from below its jaw, and the twine stretches across the ground like a long water serpent. She imagines it in the reptile tent. And then she looks up at the stars and the moon, and they put her in mind of a march she’d made as a child. Days after she’d been passed through the barbed wire. She’d held onto an old man’s hand, and the man had guided her through a stretch of fields not unlike this one. As they reached the mountains, she’d become the guide to him. She’d pushed him forward and up during that night. All the night. Behind them, they could hear the mortar shells, and the hooves of horses along the road. Another woman—the old man’s wife—walked ahead of them, and every few minutes she’d turn and look down at them. She held the hands of two other children. You’ll make it, she’d said, although she’d not spoken any words. It was the expression in the woman’s face that seemed to say that for her.
Laika, now, can’t remember either of their names. But she sees their faces very clearly.
When she comes almost free of the flowers she slows, begins to whisper to the camel in tones meant to soothe. Her voice is not insincere. The camel points its ears forward, studies her, as if with a little effort it might make out the words. Its tail snaps at the few bugs that have found its coat. Laika is almost within spitting distance by then—the camel’s spitting distance, not hers—and she keeps her eyes on the rope. A few steps and a dive and she might have it. But the camel begins to move, backing up toward the tree line. Laika quickens her pace, and the creature turns—they are not without speed—and sets off in the direction of the road. Laika runs after it. She cuts through the flowers. The rope trai
ls behind, and Laika smells the must and fur of the creature. She dives then, reaches out for the twine, and catches it near the end. She clamps one hand over the other. But the camel pushes on. When the line snaps taut, it whips through the palm of her hand, tearing the skin. The knot slips through her fingers, and she watches it skip across the grass and mud.
She sits up. Examines the burn on her hand. No blood, but it’s hot to the touch. She spits into it, rubs it cool. What were their names? The man and his wife. She thinks of her mother’s name. Whispers it to the bats above her. She stands up, rubs what mud she can manage off her clothes. She was very angry a moment ago, but now that has passed and has passed for the night. She follows the creature—jogging, then running—out toward the road.
The boys smell of sewer and gasoline as they make their way along the ditch. They have a good start to the train yard, and they pause at the edge of the field to wash their hair and faces in mud water. Eli cleans out the puncture in Toomey’s knee, ties one of his socks around the wound. After, the younger boy leans heavily against him, and they take the quickest pace they can manage. Their eyes, still stung by gasoline, won’t stop dripping tears.
At the rail yard they find a hole in the fence and sit under an abandoned boxcar. They keep watch, down toward the tracks. Eli finds a wooden stake, keeps it between his fingers, digs down into the mud. They look behind often, waiting and worrying. They think they can see men with pipes and long chains in the shadows, and then they blink them away. The shadows take another form. In the rail yard, a pair of figures stands between a locomotive and a tanker car. The workmen check the connection.
After a time, the sky begins to drizzle. The boys listen to the rainwater. It trickles off the side of the boxcar.
I’m hungry for some pizza, says Toomey.
Eli frowns at that. What’re you telling me for?
No one else around.
Eli says nothing to that.
Toomey looks behind them. With some chicken and potatoes, and extra cheese.