Dad’s pipe was dead. He paused to tap it out and reload it.
‘No, sir,’ Will said.
‘Yes,’ said his father, ‘I’d be a fool not to know I’m a fool. My one wisdom is: you’re wise.’
‘Funny’ Will said, after a long pause. ‘You’ve told me more, tonight, than I’ve told you. I’ll think some more. Maybe I’ll tell you everything, at breakfast. Okay?’
‘I’ll be ready, if you are.’
‘Because. . .I want you to be happy, Dad.’
He hated the tears that sprang to his eyes.
‘I’ll be all right, Will.’
‘Anything I could say or do to make you happy, I would.’
‘Willy, William.’ Dad lit his pipe again and watched the smoke blow away in sweet dissolvings. ‘Just tell me I’ll live forever. That would do nicely.’
His voice, Will thought, I never noticed. It’s the same colour as his hair.
‘Pa,’ he said, ‘don’t sound so sad.’
‘Me? I’m the original sad man. I read a book and it makes me sad. See a film: sad. Plays? they really work me over.’
‘Is there anything,’ said Will, ‘doesn’t make you sad?’
‘One thing. Death.’
‘Boy!’ Will started. ‘I should think that would!’
‘No’ said the man with the voice to match his hair. ‘Death makes everything else sad. But death itself only scares. If there wasn’t death, all the other things wouldn’t get tainted.’
And, Will thought, here comes the carnival, Death like a rattle in one hand, Life like candy in the other; shake one to scare you, offer one to make your mouth water. Here comes the side-show, both hands full!
He jumped to his feet.
‘Dad oh, listen! You’ll live forever! Believe me, or you’re sunk! Sure, you were sick a few years ago – but that’s over. Sure, you’re fifty-four, but that’s young! And another thing – ‘
‘Yes, Willy?’
His father waited for him. He swayed. He bit his lips, then blurted out:
‘Don’t go near the carnival.’
‘Strange,’ his father said, ‘that’s what I was going to tell you.’
‘I wouldn’t go back to that place for a billion dollars!’
But, Will thought, that won’t stop the carnival searching through town to visit me.
‘Promise, Dad?’
‘Why don’t you want me to go there, Will?’
‘That’s one of the things I’ll tell tomorrow or next week or next year. You just got to trust me, Dad.’
‘I do, son.’ Dad took his hand. ‘It’s a promise.’
As if at a signal, both turned to the house. The time was up, the hour was late, enough had been said, they properly sensed they must go.
‘The way you came out,’ said Dad, ‘is the way you go in.’
Will walked silently to touch the iron rungs hidden under the rustling ivy.
‘Dad. You won’t pull these off. . .?’
Dad probed one with his fingers.
‘Some day, when you’re tired of them, you’ll take them off yourself.’
‘I’ll never be tired of them.’
‘Is that how it seems? Yes, to someone your age, you figure you’ll never get tired of anything. All right, son, up you go.’
He saw how his father looked up along the ivy and the hidden path.
‘You want to come up this way, too?’
‘No, no,’ his father said, quickly.
‘Because,’ said Will, ‘you’re welcome.’
‘That’s all right. Go on.’
But he still looked at the ivy stirring in the dark morning light.
Will sprang up, grabbed the first, the second, the third rungs and looked down.
From just this distance, Dad looked as if he were shrinking, there on the ground. Somehow he didn’t want to leave him behind there in the night, like someone ditched by someone else, one hand up to move, but not moving.
‘Dad!’ he whispered. ‘You ain’t got the stuff!’
Who says!? cried Dad’s mouth, silently.
And he jumped.
And laughing without sound, the boy, the man swung up the side of the house, unceasingly, hand over hand, foot after foot.
He heard Dad slip, scrabble, grab.
Hold tight! he thought.
‘Ah. . .!’
The man breathed hard.
Eyes tight, Will prayed: hold. . .there. . .now. . .!!
The old man gusted out, sucked in, swore in a fierce whisper, then climbed again.
Will opened his eyes and climbed and the rest was smooth, high, higher, fine, sweet, wondrous, done! They swung in and sat upon the sill, same size, same weight, coloured same by the stars, and sat embraced once more with grand fine exhaustion, gasping on huge ingulped laughs which swept their bones together, and for fear of waking God, country, wife, Mom, and hell, they snug-clapped hands to each other’s mouths, felt the vibrant warm hilarity fountained there and sat one instant longer, eyes bright with each other and wet with love.
Then, with a last strong clasp, Dad was gone, the bedroom door shut.
Drunk on the long night’s doings, lolled away from fear toward better, grander things found in Dad, Will slung off limp-falling clothes with tipsy arms and delightfully aching legs, and like a fall of timber chopped himself to bed. . . .
29
He slept for exactly one hour.
And then, as if remembering something he had only half seen, he woke, sat up, and peered out at Jim’s rooftop.
‘The lightning-rod!’ he yelled. ‘It’s gone!’
Which indeed it was.
Stolen? No. Jim take it down? Yes! Why? For the shucks of it. Smiling, he had climbed to scuttle the iron, dare any storm to strike his house! Afraid? No. Fear was a new electric-power suit Jim must try for size.
Jim! Will wanted to smash his confounded window. Go nail the rod back! Before morn, Jim, the blasted carnival’ll send someone to find where we live, don’t know how they’ll come or what they’ll look like, but, Lord, your roof’s so empty! the clouds are moving fast, that storm’s rushing at us and. . .
Will stopped.
What sort of noise does a balloon make, adrift?
None.
No, not quite. It noises itself, it soughs, like the wind billowing your curtains all white as breaths of foam. Or it makes a sound like the stars turning over in your sleep. Or it announces itself like moonrise and moonset. That last is best: like the moon sailing the universal deeps, so rides a balloon.
How do you hear it, how are you warned? The ear, does it hear? No. But the hairs on the back of your neck, and the peach-fuzz in your ears, they do, and the hair along your arms sings like grasshopper legs frictioned and trembling with strange music. So you know, you feel, you are sure, lying abed, that a balloon is submerging the ocean sky.
Will sensed a stir in Jim’s house; Jim, too, with his fine dark antennae, must have felt the waters part high over town to let a Leviathan pass.
Both boys felt a shadow bulk the drive between their houses, both flung up their windows, both poked their heads out, both dropped their jaws in surprise at this friendly, this always exquisite timing, this delightful pantomime of intuition, of apprehension, their tandem teamwork over the years. Then silver-faced, for the moon was rising, both glanced up.
As a balloon wafted over and vanished.
‘Holy cow, what’s a balloon doing here!?’ Jim asked, but wished no answer.
For, peering, they both knew the balloon was searching the best search ever; no car-motor racket, no tires whining asphalt, no footstepped street, just the wind clearing a great amazon through the clouds for a solemn voyage of wicker basket and storm sail riding over.
Neither Jim nor Will crashed his window or pulled his shade, they simply had to stay motionless waiting, for they heard the noise again like a murmur in someone else’s dream. . . .
The temperature dropped forty degrees.
Because now the storm-bleached balloon whisper-purled, plummet-sank softly down, its elephant shadow cooling gemmed lawns and sundials as they flaunted their swift gaze high through that shadow.
And what they saw was something akimbo and arustle in the down-hung wicker carriage. Was that head and shoulders? Yes, with the moon like a silver cloak thrown up behind. Mr Dark! thought Will. The Crusher! thought Jim. The Wart! thought Will. The Skeleton! The Lava Sipper! The Hanging Man! Monsieur Guillotine!
No.
The Dust Witch.
The Witch who might draw skulls and bones in the dust, then sneeze it away.
Jim looked to Will and Will to Jim; both read their lips: the Witch!
But why a wax crone flung out in a night balloon to search? thought Will, why none of the others, with their lizard-venom, wolf-fire, snake-pit eyes? Why send a crumbled statue with blind-newt lashes sewn tight with black-widow thread?
And then, looking up, they knew.
For the Witch, though peculiar wax, was peculiarly alive. Blind, yes, but she thrust down rust-splotched fingers which petted, stroked the sluices of air, which cut and splayed the wind, peeled layers of space, blinded stars, which hovered and danced, then fixed and pointed as did her nose.
And the boys knew even more.
They knew that she was blind, but special blind. She could dip down her hands to feel the bumps of the world, touch house roofs, probe attic bins, reap dust, examine draughts that blew through halls and souls that blew through people, draughts vented from bellows to thump-whist, to pound-temples., to pulse-throat, and back to bellows again. Just as they felt that balloon sift down like an autumn rain, so she could feel their souls disinhabit, reinhabit their tremulous nostrils. Each soul, a vast warm fingerprint, felt different, she could roll it in her hand like clay; smelled different, Will could hear her snuffing his life away; tasted different, she savoured them with her raw-gummed mouth, her puff-adder tongue; sounded different, she stuffed their souls in one ear, tissued them out the other!
Her hands played down the air, one for Will, one for Jim.
The balloon shadow washed them with panic, rinsed them with
