‘Oh, she’s lost,’ sobbed the little girl. ‘She ran off in that place and never come back. Will you find her, please, please. . .?’
Shivering, Will touched her cheek. ‘Hey now,’ he whispered. ‘You’ll be okay. I’ll find help,’ he said, gently. She opened her eyes. ‘This is Will Halloway, okay? Cross my heart, we’ll be back. Ten minutes. But you mustn’t go away.’ She shook her head. ‘You’ll wait here under the tree for us?’ She nodded, mutely. He stood up. This simple motion frightened her and she flinched. So he waited and looked at her and said, ‘I know who you are.’ He saw the great familiar eyes open grey in the small wounded face. He saw the long rainwashed black hair and the pale cheeks. ‘I know who you are. But I got to check.’
‘Who’ll believe?’ she wailed.
‘I believe,’ Will said.
And she lay back against the tree, her hands in her lap, trembling, very thin, very white, very lost, very small.
‘Can I go now?’ he said.
She nodded.
And he walked away.
At the edge of the lot, Jim stomped his feet in disbelief, almost hysterical with outrage and declamation.
“It can’t be!’
‘It is,’ said Will. ‘The eyes. That’s how you tell. Like it was with Mr Cooger and the evil boy – There’s one way to be sure. Come on!’
And he took Jim through the town and they stopped at last in front of Miss Foley’s house and looked at the unlit windows in the morning gloom and walked up the steps and rang the bell, once, twice, three times.
Silence.
Very slowly, the front door moved whining back on its hinges.
‘Miss Foley?’ Jim called, softly.
Somewhere off in the house, shadows of rain moved on far windowpanes.
‘Miss Foley. . .?’
They stood in the hall by the bead-rain in the entry door, listening to the great attic beams ashift and astir in the downpour.
‘Miss Foley!’ Louder.
But only the mice in the walls, warmly nested, made sgraffito sounds in answer.
‘She’s gone out to shop,’ said. Jim.
‘No.’ said Will. ‘We know where she is.’
‘Miss Foley, I know you’re here!’ shouted Jim suddenly, savagely, dashing upstairs. ‘Come on out, you!’
Will waited for him to search and drag slowly back down. As Jim reached the bottom of the steps, they both heard the music blowing through the front door with the smell of fresh rain and ancient grass.
The carousel calliope, among the hills, piping the ‘Funeral March’ backwards.
Jim opened the door wider and stood in the music, as one stands in the rain.
‘The merry-go-round. They fixed it!’
Will nodded. ‘She must’ve heard the music, gone out at sunrise. Something went wrong. Maybe the carousel wasn’t fixed right. Maybe accidents happen all the time. Like to the lightning-rod man, him inside-out and crazy. Maybe the carnival likes accidents, gets a kick out of them. Or maybe they did something to her on purpose. Maybe they wanted to know more about us, our names, where we live, or wanted her to help them hurt us. Who knows what? Maybe she got suspicious or scared. Then they just gave her more than she ever wanted or asked for.’
‘I don’t understand – ‘
But now, in the doorway, in the cold rain, there was time to think of Miss Foley afraid of mirror mazes, Miss Foley alone not so long ago at the carnival, and maybe screaming when they did what they finally did to her, around and around, around and around, too many years, more years than she had ever dreamed of shucked away, rubbing her raw, leaving her naked small, alone, and bewildered because unknown-even-to-herself, around and around, until all the years were gone and the carousel rocked to a halt like a roulette wheel, and nothing gained and all lost and nowhere for her to go, no way to tell the strangeness, and nothing to do but weep under a tree, alone, in the autumn rain. . . .
Will thought this. Jim thought it, and said:
‘Oh, the poor. . .the poor. . .’
‘We got to help her, Jim. Who else would believe? If she tells anyone, “I’m Miss Foley!” “Get away!” they’d say, “Miss Foley’s left town, disappeared!” “Go on, little girl!” Oh, Jim, I bet she’d pounded a dozen doors this morning wanting help, scared people with her screaming and yelling, then ran off, gave up, and hid under that tree. Police are probably looking for her now, but so what? it’s just a wild girl crying and they’ll lock her away and she’ll go crazy. That carnival, boy, do they know how to punish so you can’t hit back. They just shake you up and change you so no one ever knows you again and let you run free, it’s okay, go ahead, talk, ’cause folks are too scared of you to listen. Only we hear, Jim, only you and me, and right now I feel like I just ate a cold snail raw.’
They looked back a last time at the shadows of rain crying on the windows inside the parlour where a teacher had often served them cookies and hot chocolate and waved to them from the window and moved tall through the town. Then they stepped out and shut the door and ran back toward the empty lot.
‘We got to hide her, until we can help – ‘
‘Help?’ panted Jim. ‘We can’t help ourselves!
‘There’s got to be weapons, right in front of us, we’re just too blind – ‘
They stopped.
Beyond the thump of their own hearts, a greater heart thumped. Brass trumpets wailed. Trombones blared. A herd of tubas made an elephant charge, alarmed for unknown reasons.
‘The carnival!’ gasped Jim. ‘We never thought! It can come right into town. A Parade! Or that funeral I dreamt about, for the balloon?’
‘Not a funeral and only what looks like a parade but’s a search for us, Jim, for us, or Miss Foley, if they want her back! They can march down any old street, fine and dandy, and spy as they go, drum and bugle! Jim, we got to get her before they – ‘
And breaking off, they flung themselves down an alley, but stopped suddenly, and leaped to hide in some bushes.
At the far end of the alley, the carnival band, animal wagons, clowns, freaks and all, banged and crashed between them and the empty lot and the great oak tree.
It must have taken five minutes for the parade to pass. The rain seemed to move on away, the clouds moving with them. The rain ceased. The strut of drums faded. The boys loped down the alley, across the street, and stopped by the empty lot.
There was no little girl under the tree.
They circled it, looked up in it, not daring to call a name.
Then very much afraid, they ran to hide themselves somewhere in the town.
33
The phone rang.
Mr Halloway picked it up.
‘Dad, this is Willy, we can’t go to the police station, we may not be home today, tell Mom, tell Jim’s mom.’
‘Willy, where are you?’
‘We got to hide. They’re looking for us.’
‘Who, for God’s sake?’
‘I don’t want you in it, Dad. You got to believe, we’ll just hide one day, two, until they go away. If we came home they’d follow and hurt you or Ma or Jim’s mom. I got to go.’
‘Willy, don’t!’
‘Oh, Dad,’ said Will. ‘Wish me luck.’
Click.
Mr Halloway looked out at the trees, the houses, the streets, hearing faraway music.
‘Willy,’ he said to the dead phone. ‘Luck.’
And he put on his coat and hat and went out into the strange bright rainy sunshine that filled the cold air.
34
In front of the United Cigar Store on this before-noon Sunday with the bells of all churches ringing across here, colliding with each other there, showering sound from the sky now that the rain was spent, in front of the cigar store the Cherokee wooden Indian stood, his carved plumes pearled with water, oblivious to Catholic or Baptist bells, oblivious to the steadily approaching sun-bright cymbals, the thumping pagan heart of the carnival band.
The flourished drums, the old-womanish shriek of calliope, the shadow drift of creatures far stranger than he, did not witch the Indian’s yellow hawk-fierce gaze. Still, the drums did tilt churches and plummet forth mobs of boys curious and eager for any change mild or wild, so, as the church bells stopped up their silver and iron rain, pew-stiffened crowds became relaxed parade crowds as the carnival, a promotion of brass, a flush of velvet, all lion-pacing, mammoth-shuffling, flag-fluttered by.
The shadow of the Indian’s wooden tomahawk lay on an iron grille embedded in the sidewalk in front of the cigar store. Over this grille with faint metallic reverberations, year after year, people passed, dropping tonnages of mint-gum wrapper, gold cigar-band, matchstub, cigarette butt or copper penny which vanished below forever.
Now, with the parade, hundreds of feet rang and clustered on the grille as the carnival strode by on stilts, roared by in tiger and volcano sounds and colours.
Under the grille, two shapes trembled.
‘Above, like a great baroque peacock striding the bricks and asphalt, the freaks’ eyes opened out, to stare, to search office roofs, church spires, read dentists’ and opticians’ signs, check dime and dry goods stores as drums shocked plate glass windows and wax dummies quaked in facsimiles of fear. A multitude of hot and incredibly bright fierce eyes, the parade moved, desiring, but not quenching its desire.
For the things it most wanted were hidden in dark.
Jim and Will, under the cigar store sidewalk grille.
Crouch-pressed knee to knee, heads up, eyes alert, they sucked their breaths like iron Popsicles.
