The Grand Tour

by E. Catherine Tobler

  I managed, shaking all the while. The idea that he would come back, jump on me, and drag me into the bushes was foremost in my mind. I held a roll of paper in one hand and my flashlight in the other, dragged warm out of my bra where my heart still pounded like it was going to war. I would brain him. I would take him down before he could take me. Why was a man peeing in these woods, for the love of—

  “Lucy!”

  I couldn’t say how long I had been gone, but they were hollering for me. When I got back to camp, Rum poured water over my hands so I could wash, and I sat near the fire to rub them dry. Trudy offered me a cheese sandwich, but hesitated before actually giving it to me.

  “Looks like you saw a ghost,” she said, and I shook my head, but knew I had to tell them.

  The dog padded up to Rum’s side as I told them about the man peeing in the woods. From that moment on, some of the joy went out of the lunch, because we were all on our guard, watching the trees around us. Was he alone? Was he hunting with friends? Were they out roaming the woods looking for girls to abduct? The dog, seeming to pick up on our moods, whined and paced a circle around us and the fire.

  “Probably shouldn’t stay here too long,” Norma said. She shoved the rest of her sandwich indelicately into her mouth, chewing more than she comfortably could. Although I wanted to laugh, I didn’t, because her point was sound. Much like the dog in the woods the day before, we had no idea what or who else was out here.

  As we packed camp to go, our mood stayed low, quiet. Our eyes were never off the woods for long, and I felt suddenly foolish for taking part in this journey. I wondered if this was what growing up meant. Never knowing what was around the next corner but fearing it would be something I’d be incapable of dealing with or explaining to anyone other than my closest friends. No one would believe that body, or that man, or even this dog who still padded alongside us as we packed, smothered the fire, and left.

  Worry ensured that we made good time through these woods; soon enough, the dirt paths turned to paved roads and signs of civilization began to assure us that we were getting closer to our destination. When at last we could see the city rising against the gray sky in the distance, I think we all blew out a breath of relief.

  “It’s like that on all the outer planets of the system,” I said as we walked, our steps still quicker than normal and still that stupid dog at Rum’s side like it was trying to apologize for nearly taking her arm off. She looked better, but not so much better that I had stopped worrying.

  “Not so many people, right,” I continued, “so when you turn a corner and find another person, there’s that moment of shock, that instant when you don’t recognize them as a person at all but something hostile in your space, something that means to stop you from where you were actually going. Doesn’t matter that they might be just as shocked to see you—they probably are, might welcome a hello or a drink after the places they’ve been, but mostly, it’s that heart-hammering fear that they’re going to turn on you, or come back after they’ve run away, and do you some harm.”

  Everyone stayed quiet as I told the story—maybe it calmed them as much as it did me. Not the content of the story itself, just the sound of a voice that has something to share and knows where it’s going. Fiction was like that. Point A always led to point B. Real life wasn’t so much like that.

  “Jupiter’s the best,” I said, “because it’s the biggest and because of the clouds. Picture all that low-hanging fog, no other soul in sight for months. You’d just be a speck up there, like a grain of sugar tossed into coffee. So tiny. If you didn’t melt, you’d surely be all squashed and rounded on the edges, rolling through fog, all alone till— Hello, what’s this, another person? Edges all rounded off just like yours, but still strange because you’d weigh twice as much up there, maybe more. You both probably look like squash in the end and it’s not like you’d be able to run, weighing that much, so maybe you’d roll away in your surprise, and then—Well, Red Spot, right?” I smiled now, carried away with the idea. “Probably a hole, straight to the middle of the world—”

  “And what’s inside?” Rum asked.

  “Oh, more clouds. Always clouds.”

  “Like cotton candy,” she said. “Falling forever.”

  Neighborhoods made themselves known as we walked; clusters of houses and stone tenements that rose along the paved streets. Rain glossed the streets and made everything look like one long piece of licorice, stretched beyond all its means. The deeper into this neighborhood we wandered, the first thing that hit us was the smell—it was popped corn and burnt sugar, roasted nuts and rain-wet animals.

  But among the cars that lined the road through these gloomful tenements where only the occasional light glowed from a window, sat a car I knew, a car we all knew, the faded tomato-red Rambler, and though we walked past, my eyes fixed firmly to it. It was empty, windows rolled shut against the rain, but there was Audrey’s discarded cigarette on the dashboard, and the dent in the driver’s side door where I opened the door into a tree the first time Audrey let me drive, and the rounded corner of the small green sticker we’d never been able to get off the windshield glass.

  In the building behind the Rambler, a small light burned in one window, but the door was shut and it was no place I knew. A sign beside the doorbell directed people to the back entrance.

  The other girls didn’t pause—I don't think they looked at the car, because they were so intent on following their noses to the tents and booths that sprawled through a space that had once been an empty field. It was muddy now, meager grass stomped into the mud that had come with the rains. Undaunted, countless people frolicked within the temporary fence that ringed it all. The entrance gate was staffed by two figures, each so extraordinary they drove Audrey from my mind.

  The first was a woman who towered as tall as the entry gate itself. She was the largest person I had ever seen, and felt as though she possessed her own gravity; we were drawn in by her, to her massive figure which was given shape by a corset of burnished copper. Black layered skirts and a blouse frothed from either end and did little to disguise the ribbons of indigo ink that marked the giantess’s skin. She plucked money from those who entered and the dollars seemed small in her hands, hands that could have easily gathered all four of us into one palm.

  The creature by her side was something I had no words for. It was one being, two bodies that merged into one at the waist. They wore dark trousers to make this clear—there was but one set of legs—one torso clad in red, the other in white. Wings flared up behind both bodies, the straight fall of ginger-red hair interrupted by braids of black ribbons throughout. I could not say until I passed them by whether the wings they wore were real or part of their costuming, but after obtaining tickets, and stepping through the entry gate, the warmth of those feathers brushed my cheek, and I knew. If ever I lived on Jupiter, I would remember that brief touch.

  Inside the circus grounds, we all started to change. Looking back, I suppose it wasn’t a thing that happened gradually; it was swift. Probably we had started to change the minute Audrey kicked us out of the Rambler and made us walk, but only inside the circus did it become more evident.

  Trudy seemed to glow and Norma stood straighter than she ever had before, like her shoulders were no longer bowed by some awful weight. Rum kept her hand in mine at first, but I could tell she was more confident, too, her nose working overtime to take in everything she had never smelled before. She was also due a good gorging on cotton candy, I thought, but the more she ate through the day, she changed all over again.

  With everything she consumed—pickles, cotton candy, and bag after bag of popcorn—Rum seemed to get a little slower, a little more muddy around the edges. She tugged her hand out of mine to better hold her cup of soda, but I could see the way her fingers crumpled the paper cup, like she still couldn’t quite get a grip on it.

  When Norma and Trudy stepped up to the Ferris wheel to ride, Rum shook her head, said she couldn’t do it. I stayed w
ith her on a bench, watching the other girls wheel up into the cloudy sky.

  “Let me see your arm,” I said, even though the words stuck in my throat like dry toast.

  Rum refused and when I reached for her, curling a hand into her coat sleeve, she flinched, then flung her soda at me. The top popped off and I was doused in dark, sweet cola. I’m not sure who was more surprised, Rum or me, but Rum bolted from the bench without her bag, fleeing into the circus with a cry.

  “Rum!”

  She vanished into the crowds, probably an expert at doing so, given she’d run away from so much in her life. Didn’t have to be the Amish she had run from, but the girl knew how to cover ground. Lest I lose them, too, I waited for Trudy and Norma to come down and told them Rum had gone. Showed them her abandoned bag as if that was proof, when her just being gone was proof enough.

  We each had watches, so made sure they were synchronized before parting ways. We could cover more ground this way and meet back up at the Ferris wheel when the hour struck. If we hadn’t found Rum by then, we could do it again, and again. The circus wasn’t without its limits, I told myself as I stalked through the muddy grounds. Of course, she might leave those limits, might wander deeper into Philadelphia, a city I knew as little about as I did the Amish. She might get hit by a bus. She might encounter that stupid dog again.

  That stupid dog. I stopped in my tracks when I realized I had lost track of the dog. Had it come into the circus with us? I kept an eye out as I wandered, loitering by the steak on a stake booth for a long while, thinking the dog might try to get some meat. But there was no sign of it, and my hour to search was growing thin. I walked a slow circle around the outer layer of tents, the Ferris wheel in sight all the while, but there was no dog and no Rum.

  I turned back to the Ferris wheel as rain began to fall more earnestly. I wished I’d brought an umbrella—of all the things to forget—and was wondering if they had any for sale as I stepped into the shelter of a tent. The tent smelled like damp straw and wet dog and I turned, thinking to find that Saint Bernard, but it was the hairy man who’d been peeing in the bushes. He was dressed this time, in jeans and a shirt that was somehow too well-pressed, and walking toward me. My mouth gaped open and I made to move, but felt frozen.

  “Don’t run,” he said. “Please don’t run.”

  Once, I would have run. Now, I started telling myself a story in my head, because one didn't just encounter the same hairy man twice, not without him following or stalking or—

  “You bit Rum,” I said.

  At that, he stopped walking. His face seemed a mixture of dismay and guilt and he scrubbed a hairy hand across his mouth, as if he could wipe the expression away. He was still the color of the woods, browns and golds, and his eyes—they were the eyes of that dog, chocolate and desperate to explain. I clutched Rum’s bag a little closer.

  “Didn’t mean to,” he said and glanced at the crowds which passed us by. He took a step closer to me then, so close I could smell his wet ... fur? Hair? He smelled like he’d been rolling in the woods. “Sometimes ... I get so hungry, and Thurmond was dead and I was carrying all that grief, and there were animals—girls in the woods, and I just ...” He covered his mouth again, eyes closing. I didn’t know if he was going to cry or be sick. “I’m sorry about the bush. Couldn’t keep my form anymore, needed to breathe, needed to p—But where is she? Is she getting sick? I need to help her.”

  I didn’t know if I was going to cry or be sick, either. I just stared at him, trying to understand anything that was happening.

  * * *

  4. Night Like a River

  I launched into him and he let me pummel him. I hit him as hard as I could, confusion over everything pouring through my balled fists. Rum’s sickness and Audrey being close for no reason that could be good, and this man who thought he was a dog, and Norma’s parents and Trudy’s longing for her. Everything came out and by the time I finished, I was sobbing, inconsolable as he had me sit on top of a bale of straw. He shushed me and tried to wrap an arm around me before he thought better of it and simply patted my hands, never quite letting them go. The touch was both alien and comforting. He was so warm and the rain had chilled me.

  “Take me to Rum. I need to see her.”

  My head came up and I stared at him. I was still shaking, like my body didn’t know what to do with itself in the wake of the anger.

  “Take me to—”

  “You’re telling me that you’re a dog?” I spat the question at him. I threw his hands off of me, no matter their warmth and slid to the edge of the bale. I wanted to walk away, but there was no way my legs were carrying me. “How crazy do you think I have to be to believ—”

  “Stalked you in the woods,” he said. “Rum was the smallest, even with that coat on. I wanted to tell you—when you found me in the bushes, but ...” Color flooded his cheeks, no doubt hot. “Well. I couldn’t. I figured that here, here I could get her what she needed.”

  “And what does she need? Other than a proper doctor to tend her—”

  “Proper doctor won’t be any help.” He stood from the bale and a shudder ran through him, shaking every bit of hair that sprouted from his skin. “I don’t mean her harm. Any more harm. Blast it.”

  He walked away from me, pacing in slow circles. He kept trying to convince me, but he didn’t have to. If he was that dog—and why couldn’t he be that dog? It explained a lot of things—then it made sense, him knowing what needed doing for Rum. And I was being an idiot to delay things, because she wasn’t well.

  “I don’t know where she is,” I finally said when he paused in his pleading. He stared at me like I was the crazy one now. “She ran off when I asked to look at her arm—her arm which you bit and made her bleed and who does that, dog or not?” I came off the bale now, striding toward him. “How dare you stalk us in the woods?”

  His chin came up and he bristled. I’ve seen cats get fluffy but never dogs. Dog-people. His lip curled to reveal his teeth, but he didn’t move. Only nodded at me.

  “It was a thing that happened,” I said eventually. “Can’t change that. Can only change where we go from here. Is Rum ...” Oh, my writer’s mind was running now. “Is she going to change into a dog? Like you? Is her arm going to wither up and fall off? We need to find her, whatever you think is going to happen—and how do you mean to help her? You have medicine? A way to keep her from changing?”

  To keep her from growing up. To keep all of us from growing up and being Audrey sitting in that dark car, the cigarette dangling from her lips. He was supposed to be there ... Joel hadn't been there for Audrey, but this guy was here and he was stepping up. Doing what needed doing, even if I didn’t know what it was. I looked at my watch.

  “I’m late for rendezvous,” I said. “At the Ferris wheel. We split up to look for Rum.” My eyes narrowed and I lifted Rum’s bag toward the man who claimed he was a dog. He didn’t question me, only bent his head and took a long smell of it. His eyes never left mine; it felt like a challenge—prove it, I will so prove it.

  With Rum’s scent in his nose, he grabbed my arm and launched us back into the circus.

  The circus felt twice as big as it should have been, containing three times as many people as it did when we arrived. But me and the ... dog? ...cut a path through the crowds like they weren’t quite there. I noticed we had support from up above, too; there were two forms flying above us, one smaller than the other, both black against the darkening sky. How hard could it be to find a sick little girl, I wondered. But then Rum was experienced at both running and hiding and I felt like my heart would break if we never found her again.

  She would be missed at the children’s home—she probably already had been missed, not getting permission to run away for a weekend ever, and that idea was like a knife in my gut. I clung to the dog-man’s hand, terrified we wouldn’t find her, but outside a tent that claimed to contain the country’s only living mermaid, he stopped and took a deep breath.

  I di
dn’t have to breathe to know Rum was here. The small body that vanished into the tent was familiar by sight alone; the scrap of butter-yellow nightgown that peeked from the cuff of her coat was like a signal flare. I tugged the dog-man after me, after Rum.

  She was so intent on her destination, she didn’t hear us. We followed her into the tent, past the fabric wall that divided it into two spaces. Within the second space was a gloomy tank of water, illuminated by a bed of strange stones in its bottom. Rum reached for the water tank like she didn’t know what it was, and maybe she didn’t. Her hand trembled as she pressed it to the glass.

  A face swam out of the gloomy water, vicious and astounding in the same instant. If it was a mermaid, I couldn’t say; it was a woman, though, of flesh and scale and flowing green hair. Her webbed and clawed hand reached for Rum’s, pressing against the other side of the glass. They looked like strange reflections of each other, Rum growing wavery like she was also underwater. Her knees buckled and the dog-man released my hand to catch her before she could hit the ground.

  He carried Rum to the circus train, where it gleamed under the rain on the tracks that ran behind the field. He kicked the door to the caboose open and through the unexpected scents of oranges and yeast, I followed him, watching as he lay Rum on a padded bench. The space seemed like storage and a kitchen both, full of cupboards that bulged with strange things. I thought I saw a jar full of fractured rainbows and another packed with tiny, tiny red-brown hearts, and a thousand-thousand jars besides, but mostly my focus was on Rum and the way her breath rattled in her mouth.

  “Have to get Beth,” he whispered to me. “Stay here.”