The Grand Tour

by E. Catherine Tobler

  “Fáilte.”

  He startles when she speaks, his laughter broken and loud in the gloom of morning. He tilts his book and she can see the image there, a church bell tower emerging from the morning’s fog. She glances past the statuary to see the church herself.

  “I didn’t think anyone came out here,” he says. He stands, setting his book on the statue’s base, watching her with reserve. She is intruding into his private space, the space he has shared with no other.

  “You came out here,” she says. She picks her way past him, leaving footprints in the mud. She crouches beside a statue to Saint Peter and rolls her jar on the ground. It makes a faint tinkling noise, as if something other than mist is caught inside.

  Later, he will think he dreamed her and Beth almost wishes she had kept it to that, but she can’t. She knows she will follow him. Nothing sparks her interest the way he does; nothing will haunt her the way he will.

  She sits with him all afternoon, silent while he draws. He doesn’t ask anything of her, shares the orange he has brought, and when she rises to leave, makes to follow. She doesn’t stop him, knowing that as she begins to pull caboose walls back around her, he will pause on the muddy track, studying the line of footprints that are once there and then gone, as though the strange girl became the mist itself.

  Mist falls from her shoulders as she comes back to the train. Deliberately, she lets the jar slip from her frozen fingers; it hits the floor with a solid thud and does not shatter. Beth watches it roll away from her and then back, resting against her muddy toes. It is the second jar she cannot break.

  The first jar is the bell jar.

  Her younger sister offers it to her in the depth of a night so dark Beth thinks that Mother Night has returned for good. The jar is strangely warm, like a living thing though it is made of glass. Beth cannot immediately see what it contains and for that she is grateful; when she can—when dawn’s first sun breaks through the glass and illuminates the wheel and tree inside—her breath sticks in her throat. She knows that this eternal autumn will be her undoing (salvation, that distant voice whispers), but not precisely how.

  She keeps the jar with her, throughout all the years she can count. It sits at her side, upon a shelf, or buried in a chest; it is never more than a dozen steps away. In one house, she can see it from anywhere she may be, like a bright pinprick of light that has its own heartbeat.

  She has tried to break the bell jar three times.

  The first time is an accident. While sweeping autumn leaves from her front room, the broom handle collides with the curved glass, sending it from the table to the floor. Beth’s heart seems to pause as she watches the jar drop; she expects it to shatter into a thousand pieces and mourns its loss even before it is gone. Though the glass makes a familiar sound against the floor, it stays intact. The wheel inside doesn’t even come loose from its moorings. A small blizzard of orange and flame leaves rise within the dome and from that moment, though unbroken, the tree continues to shed its bounty.

  She expects the leaves to build up and eventually fill the jar, though they do not. She watches the bell jar, once for an entire afternoon, and she can see what happens. She can see the leaves slowly rot and if that is a skeleton barely visible beneath the tree’s roots, she does not want to know. Let the leaves cover it. Better yet, let the thing break and become trash.

  The second time, she throws the bell jar to the ground in an effort to make it just that. She is living alone in a lonesome place; the floors are stone yet worn smooth from the continued passage of her bare feet. Back and forth and back once more and she can no longer stand the tree with its damnable leaves. She hurls the jar into the stone and it simply rolls; rolls until it hits the wall. It remains whole.

  Years pass. She does not count how many, but when the third attempt rolls around, she is running for her life. When people suspect what she can do—that she knows too much about their lives, that she can seemingly control some part of them—they allow fear to guide their actions. Driven from her home by women too enraged at the idea of what Beth knows of their husbands, Beth flees toward the low murmuring sound that has approached all day. Across this field and that, putting more distance between herself and those women, Beth finds herself at the edge of a railroad track.

  She draws up before she stubs a toe against the ties, against the tracks, and only stands there, breathing, praying, listening. Don’t, don’t, don’t. The longer she stands, the more she realizes she can no longer hear the women. Perhaps they have gone.

  And then the train, blazing out of the night with its headlamp, rushing past her so fast that her skirts fly up. The rush of wind through her tight brown curls is like laughter or fingers or some combination of both. Beth finds herself laughing and as the train passes her, she flings the bell jar at the caboose. The glass lands on the back porch and is carried off, deep into the night. Beth falls to her knees and presses her hands to the hot rail.

  The little man finds her in the morning. She wakes, aware of a hand on her cheek and then her shoulder, and she opens her eyes to find a curious sight: the man can be no more than two feet tall, his face beautiful with gold dust and kohl, his lips turned into a bright red flower with green leaves that spread across his cheeks. On his shoulder perches a small monkey wearing an even smaller top-hat, and their eyes are the very same color, a color that Beth longs to drown in.

  “You will need to collect your things,” he tells her.

  She can’t go back there, can’t risk those women, and the little man seems to know this without her saying a word. He takes her by the hand and tugs her up from the ground, walking with her along the railroad tracks. By noon, they reach the train.

  The bell jar sits on the back porch of the caboose, looking none the worse for its adventure. The wheel is still upright and leaves continue to fall from the tree. Beth bursts into tears at the sight of it, watching the little man as he and an assortment of people from the train head off, toward town. Later, they return with her trunks.

  The first time she watches them raise the great wheel, Beth feels like she will be sick. It is a long process for the workers, to dig the holes for the supports, to set the foundation and precisely place each panel that will hold a car. This, Eamonn tells her, is why they don’t always raise the wheel. Only certain cities get the wheel and it’s because they’ve paid extra for the time and risk.

  Beth notes each little, worn red car that slots into place when the panels finally ring the axel like petals. She knows there will be twelve cars and that on windy days they will squeak, for so does the wheel within her jar. Eamonn sits beside her on the caboose’s back step and they watch the process in silence, until Beth can watch no more. Still, she has nothing else to occupy her. Within this traveling circus she has no talent that might be put to use, not until Eamonn presses an orange into her palm and gives her the idea.

  Her hands close around the orange, fingers seeking the rough skin as the wheel takes its first test spin. The wheel makes a horrific noise, all that metal and wood being forced to move, until it finds its rhythm and rolls easily within its frame.

  “Sweet,” Eamonn murmurs and leans into Beth’s side.

  She glances down at him and then to the orange. He may be talking about the wheel, but she’s focused on the purpose he has placed within her hands. Sweet was not without bits of sour to counter it; Mother Night said everything has its beginning and so, too, its end.

  Her first efforts are terrible, more tart than sweet, though the monkey Ichabod eats it without complaint. She sits on the back stoop to contemplate where she has gone wrong—with only the marmalade, for any truly complete list would run far into the future. She hears the wheel groan as it lifts another bunch of people into the night sky; she hears the fall of each leaf within the dome of the bell jar.

  The idea of the jar draws her to her trunks, which have stayed locked all this time. She opens one, to look upon the jars that line its interior. They gleam as the light from the carnival h
its them. All these things she has preserved: time and cities and small words that people have otherwise forgotten. Salvation. Hope. Mercy.

  She is adding the laughter of a three-year-old child to a batch of orange marmalade when Jackson enters the caboose unannounced. Beth pauses mid-pour to stare at him, thinking he will tell her to get out, that he will smash every jar she's strewn about the caboose. But he instead shambles forward and nudges the jar up, preventing her from adding too much. Beth caps the jar while Jackson dips a long wooden spoon into the pot upon the stove. He tastes and then is smiling and laughing much as that three-year old had a hundred years before.

  Beth closes her eyes and sees the thread of Jackson’s life stretching far into the distance. When she looks closer, she can see the knots and deviations, the other threads he is tied to. Looking even closer, she can tell that she and he have skipped forward and back, with and without the train, and she sees the thing he cherishes most, the hand holding the cross which rests within his beloved locomotive, and she knows then—believes that if she can infuse such a memory into her marmalades, that though all things must end, she can make the in between bearable.

  Beth does not know how long she has been with the circus train, nor does she care. Her days are spent helping people as she can. Rather than severing lines, she fuses them together for a little longer. But every fuse has its consequences, she knows. Everyone cannot go on forever and sometimes she must open jars she would rather not.

  She kneels now before a jar wreathed in cobwebs, its label peeling and yellowed. The name that was once writ upon it is long gone, but it whispers in the back of Beth’s mind. Her own name. The cork has been sealed with a thick coat of wax and she digs her nails into it, until she can pull the cork free. The air that filters out is stale but she breathes it in, accepting all she has denied herself.

  The great wheel is not far from the caboose; though it is night, crowds still revel amid the tents and booths. Children squeal and the scent of popcorn saturates the land. Beth’s course is steady, a jar cradled within her hands. Her bare feet make no sound until fallen leaves begin to crunch underfoot.

  There, near the base of the wheel, stands a tree. A few leaves yet cling to its thick branches and though they fly off under the cooling night air, they never seem to run out. At the base of the tree stands the young man, looking the way he did those many years ago when she startled him in a church graveyard. He’s dressed in the colors of the circus, though, for he works here, operating the great wheel. She knows he does not remember her, for she took that from him. (And yet, whispers that voice, he does, for look, he is here and you are here.)

  A sob escapes Beth when she realizes what she has done—what she hasn’t done—and she feels the weight of every second spent in this place pressing down upon her. She feels so heavy, she wonders how she will ever reach his side, but when she does, she’s laughing, because he’s looking at her as though he wants to say—

  “No one comes here,” he says, though the people around him contest those very words. The wheel slows behind him, and the people holler for him to fix it—make it go! His brow wrinkles.

  Beth’s laugh deepens and she offers the jar of pear butter she carries.

  “You came here,” she says, and when his hands close around the jar and he opens it, dipping two fingers in to taste the sweetness, the salvation, the wheel above them glides once more into smooth motion.

  Every Season

  2001, the foothills of the Rocky Mountains

  Every season, the circus comes.

  Every season, Sam buys one jar of marmalade, always lemon, and leaves it on the kitchen table with its red checkerboard tablecloth. The sun slants through the jar, turning the marmalade to stained glass, a saffron puddle spreading to the edge of the table, dribbling over its edge. It never hits the floor, though Sam sometimes wishes it would, the same way he wishes for all things unspoken.

  Every season, Harper sets the jar in the cupboard, unopened, where the shadows close over it and its brethren. Seven jars of lemon marmalade occupy the cupboard now, and Harper stares at them, unable to close the cupboard door, ink-stained fingers trembling on the handle. Harper didn’t realize there were so many, and now they’re an odd number, the rows no longer even and he can’t stand it. He draws the seventh jar back out. He cradles it against his chest, small jar eclipsed by long fingers.

  Harper puts the marmalade into his pack and leaves the house just as he always does, through the back door and toward the path cut through the field where, in the summer, the bees turn the air to vibrating confetti. Now, in late autumn, it is still but for the leaves that drip from the white-trunked birch, this a quieter celebration. It’s all the same as it was, but for the weight of the marmalade in his pack, the way the bag makes a gentle thump thump thump against his back as he steps off the path and into the tall grasses that have begun to spin themselves into gold with the shortening of the days.

  At the crest of the hill, he can see into the valley, the town nested between mountain and river, and today right where there had once been only an empty field, now a small eruption of tents and booths, the erection of a spinning wheel against the pumpkin sky. The breath Harper drags into his lungs is filled with the scents he knows and those he longs for. It would be so easy to walk down the hill and lose himself in the tents. Easy, but not simple, because there ...

  He cannot let himself even think what might happen. He has chosen his path and it is not through the tents, but come evening, Sam presses.

  “I think,” Sam says, and Harper moves in his chair just enough that his foot hits the pack he dropped on the floor when he came in, his marmalade-laden pack, “I would like to go to the circus.”

  Sam brings dinner to the table and fills Harper’s plate, but Harper hasn’t moved, because that word, circus, feels lodged in his throat. Harper reaches for the glass of cold milk near his plate and takes a long drink; after a day spent working in a haze of smoke and profanity, it tastes like something of a miracle. “You’re free to go.”

  Of course, Harper knows Sam has already been to the circus, because he bought the jar of marmalade. The travelling circus is the only place that has those jars, those flavors. Harper moves his foot so it’s no longer touching his pack, and tries not to think about the six jars in the cupboard behind him.

  Sam sinks into the chair closest to Harper’s. The kitchen table is a square, but they’ve never sat at head and foot, always choosing to be diagonal to each other, as close as they can be. Harper covers Sam’s hand with his own, long fingers closing gently around. It’s like the first time Harper touched him all over again; in that smoky club, the gentle thump of music in the retreating distance as the world became them and only them.

  “You have already been and you are free to go back,” Harper says.

  The protest dies between Sam’s parted lips; Harper can’t stop watching him, the way he opens his mouth to try again, tongue wetting his lips. Sam’s cheeks are rough with stubble, cheekbones high, lashes still impossibly thick and dark, framing eyes that are bluer than blue tonight.

  “I would like to go to the circus with you,” Sam amends. “I think ...”

  Harper knows what he thinks—what Sam knows. It is one thing to choose a path, but choosing one does not mean longing for another ceases. For Harper, choosing one path meant giving up all others, because the others were too—destructive is the word he decides on.

  “I know you would.” Harper leans in and his kiss for Sam lingers; he wants to say many things, but cannot, and even by the time they’ve done dishes, and put the kitchen back to rights, by the time they’ve curled into bed and turned out the lights, Harper still hasn’t said any of them.

  He waits for Sam’s breathing to even out, for him to turn away in his sleep as he always does. Then, Harper slips from their bed, ties his robe around his body, and goes barefoot downstairs. His pack is where he left it, leaning against the kitchen table leg, and he grabs the straps, unlocking the back door
a beat later. Barefoot through the moonlit autumn grass, he moves toward the old barn. There used to be horses and they’ve talked about getting others, but for now the stalls stand empty. Harper climbs to the loft where the memory of hay lingers and he sits on the splintered floor.

  In the moonlight that cuts through the loft window, the marmalade jar gleams like gold in Harper’s hands. It is a pleasant, cool weight, and he imagines himself opening it, breathing in the scent of the lemons. Not only lemons, he knows. His hands begin to tremble and he finds he cannot do it. Cannot break the seal and commit himself to the marmalade. Neither can he open it and leave it to rot, so he does not open it at all. He buries the jar in his pack and buries the pack in the shadows that clutter the loft corner.

  Outside again, he does not linger under the moonlight. He comes back to bed, and if Sam notices the strands of hay upon the floor come morning, he does not say.

  Harper’s arms are loaded with groceries and he regrets not getting a handcart, especially when Maisie Walters bumps into him. The pickle jar slips from the crook of his arm and smashes into the tile flooring, glass and liquid and pickles everywhere. Maisie stares at the mess, astonishment transforming her ninety-year-old face.

  “No worries, no worries.”

  It’s Aidan’s store and he’s around the corner in a shot, calling for Silvia to grab the dustpan and mop as he holds Maisie away from the mess, knowing she means to kneel and get to cleaning. Aidan shoots a grin at Harper.

  “No worries,” he repeats.

  There are forty-six places in the world named Paradise and this is one of them. Harper doesn’t know if it actually is Paradise, but it is awfully close. The people are unfailingly kind and helpful, but he fears that would change if they understood his truest self. The idea of it all falling apart upsets him, but he can see the tops of the circus tents from the store windows; can see the tents from everywhere, it seems. If anyone knew—