Will paused in his desperate push and relaxation, push and relaxation, trying to shape Jim back to life, unafraid of the watchers in the dark, no time for that! Even if there were time, these freaks, he sensed, were breathing the night as if they had not been fed on such rare fine air in years!
And as Charles Halloway watched, and the fox-fire, lobster-moist, phlegm-trapped eyes watched from distances, the boy-who-had-been-Mr.-Dark grew yet colder, as death cut the timbers of nightmares, and the calligraphies, the smoky lightnings of sketch that coiled and crouched and soared like terrible banners of a lost war, began to vanish one by one from the strewn small body.
A score of freaks glanced fearfully round as if the moon had suddenly filled itself full and they could see; they chafed their wrists as if chains had fallen from them, chafed their necks as if weights had crumbled from their bowed shoulders. Stumbled forth after long entombments, they blinked swiftly, disbelieving the packet of their misery sprawled near the spent carousel.
If they dared they might have bent to tremble their hands over that suddenly death-sweet mouth, the marbling brow. As it was they watched, benumbed, as their portrait pictures, the vital stuffs of their mortal greed, rancor, and poisonous guilt, the emerald abstracts of their self-blinded eyes, self-wounded mouths, self-trapped bodies melted one by one from this insignificant mound of snow. There melted the Skeleton! there the sidewise-scuttling crayfish Dwarf! Now the Lava Sipper took leave of autumn flesh, followed by the black Executioner from London Dock, there soared off and gone went the Human Montgolfier, the Balloon Man, Avoirdupois the Magnificent! deflated to purest air, there! there fled mobs and bands, as death washed the drawing board clean!
Now there lay just a plain dead boy, unbruised by pictures, staring up at the stars with Mr. Dark’s empty eyes.
“Ahhhh . . .”
In a chorus of release, the strange people in the shadows sighed.
Perhaps the calliope gave a last ringmaster’s bark. Perhaps thunder turned, sleeping, in the clouds. Suddenly all wheeled about. The freaks stampeded. North, south, east, west, free of tent, master, dark law, free above all of each other, they ran like albino pigs, tuskless boars, and stricken sloths before storms.
It must have been, it seemed, each yanked a rope, loosed a tent-peg, running.
For now the sky was shaken with a fatal respiration, the breathing down, the insunk rattle and pule of collapsing darkness as the tents gave way.
With hiss of viper, swirl of cobra, the ropes insanely raveled, slithered, snapped, cut grass with frictioned whips.
The networks of the vast Main Freak Tent convulsed, parted bones, small from medium, and medium from brontosaur magnificent. All swayed with impending fall.
The menagerie tent shut up like a dark Spanish fan.
Other small tents, caped figures in the meadow, fell down at the wind’s command.
Then at last, the Freak Tent, the great melancholy mothering reptile bird, after a moment of indecision, sucked in a Niagara of blizzard air, broke loose three hundred hempen snakes, crack-rattled its black sidepoles so they fell like teeth from a cyclopean jaw, slammed the air with acres of moldered wing as if trying to kite away but, earth-tethered, must succumb to plain and most simple gravity, must be crushed by its own locked bulk.
Now this greatest tent stated out hot raw breaths of earth, confetti that was ancient when the canals of Venice were not yet staked, and wafts of pink cotton candy like tired feather boas. In rushing downfalls, the tent shed skin; grieved, soughed as flesh fell away until at last the tall museum timbers at the spine of the discarded monster dropped with three cannon roars.
The calliope simmered, moronic with wind.
The train stood, an abandoned toy, in a field.
The freak oil paintings clapped hands high on the last standing pennant poles, then plummeted to earth.
The Skeleton, the only strange one left, bent to pick up the body of the porcelain boy-who-was-Mr. Dark. He moved away into the fields.
Will, in a swift moment, saw the thin man and his burden go over a hill among all the footprints of the vanished carnival race.
Will’s face shadowed this way, then that, pulled by the swift concussions, the tumults, the deaths, the fleeing away of souls. Cooger, Dark, Skeleton, Dwarf-who-was-Lightning-Rod-Salesman, don’t run, come back! Miss Foley, where are you? Mr. Crosetti! it’s over! Be still! Quiet! It’s all right. Come back, come back!
But the wind was blowing their footprints out of the grass and they might run forever now trying to outflee themselves.
So Will turned back astride Jim and pushed the chest and let go, pushed and let go, then, trembling, touched his dear friend’s cheek.
“Jim . . . ?”
But Jim was cold as spaded earth.
54
Beneath the cold was a fugitive warmness, in the white skin lay some small color, but when Will felt Jim’s wrist there was nothing and when he put his ear to the chest there was nothing.
“He’s dead!”
Charles Halloway came to his son and his son’s friend and knelt down to touch the quiet throat, the unstirred rib cage.
“No.” Puzzled. “Not quite . . .”
“Dead!”
The tears burst from Wills eyes. But then, as swiftly, be felt himself knocked, struck, shaken.
“Stop that!” cried his father. “You want to save him?!”
“It’s too late, oh, Dad!”
“Shut up! Listen!”
But Will wept.
And again his father hauled off and hit him. Once on the left cheek. Once on the right cheek, hard.
All the tears in him were knocked flying; there were no more.
“Will!” His father savagely jabbed a finger at him and at Jim. “Damn it, Willy, all this, all these, Mr. Dark and his sort, they like crying, my God, they love tears! Jesus God, the more you bawl, the more they drink the salt off your chin. Wail and they suck your breath like cats. Get up! Get off your knees, damn it! Jump around! Whoop and holler! You hear! Shout, Will, sing, but most of all laugh, you got that, laugh!”
“I can’t!”
“You must! It’s all we got. I know! In the library! The Witch ran, my God, how she ran! I shot her dead with it. A single smile, Willy, the night people can’t stand it. The sun’s there. They hate the sun. We can’t take them seriously, Will!”
“But-“
“But hell! You saw the mirrors! And the mirrors shoved me half in, half out the grave. Showed me all wrinkles and rot! Blackmailed me! Blackmailed Miss Foley so she joined the grand march Nowhere, joined the fools who wanted everything! Idiot thing to want: everything! Poor damned fools.
So wound up with nothing like, the dumb dog who dropped his bone to go after the reflection of the bone in the pond. Will, you saw: every mirror fell. Like ice in a thaw. With no rock or rifle, no knife, just my teeth, tongue and lungs, I gunshot those mirrors with pure contempt! Knocked down ten million scared fools and let the real man get to his feet! Now, on your feet, Will!”
“But Jim-” Will faltered.
“Half in, half out. Jim’s been that, always. Sore-tempted. Now he went too far and maybe he’s lost. But he fought to save himself, right? Put his hand out to you, to fall free of the machine? So we finish that fight for him. Move!”
Will sailed up, giddily, yanked.
“Run!”
Will sniffed again. Dad slapped his face. Tears flew like meteors.
“Hop! Jump! Yell!”
He banged Will ahead, shuffled with him, shoved his hand in his pockets, tearing them inside out until he pulled forth a bright object.
The harmonica.
Dad blew a chord.
Will stopped, staring down at Jim.
Dad clouted him on the car.
“Run! Don’t look!”
Will ran a step.
Dad blew another chord, yanked Will’s elbow, flung each of his arms.
“Sing!”
“What?”
“God, boy, anything!”
The harmonica tried a bad “Swanee River.”
“Dad.” Will shuffled, shaking his head, immensely tired. “Silly . . . !”
“Sure! We want that! Silly damn fool man! Silly harmonica! Bad off-key tune!”
Dad whooped. He circled like a dancing crane. He was not in the silliness yet. He wanted to crack through. He had to break the moment!
“Will: louder, funnier, as the man said! Oh, hell, don’t let them drink your tears and want more! Will! Don’t let them take your crying, turn it upside down and use it for their own smile! I’ll be damned if death wears my sadness for glad rags. Don’t feed them one damn thing, Willy, loosen your bones! Breathe! Blow!”
He seized Will’s hair, shook him.
“Nothing . . . funny. . .”
“Sure there is! Me! You! Jim! All of us! The whole shooting works! Look!”
And Charles Halloway pulled faces, popped his eyes, mashed his nose, winked, cavorted like chimpanzee-ape, waltzed with the wind, tap-danced the dust, threw back his head to bay at the moon, dragging Will with him.
“Death’s funny, God damn it! Bend, two, three, Will. Soft-shoe. Way down upon the Swanee River-what’s next, Will? . . . Far far away! Will, your God-awful voice! Damn girl soprano. Sparrow in a tin can. Jump, boy!”
WM went up, came down, cheeks hotter, a wincing like lemons in his throat. He felt balloons grow in his chest.
Dad sucked the silver harmonica.
“That’s where the old folks-” Will spoke.
“Stay!” bellowed his father.
Shuffle, tap, bounce, jog.
Where was Jim! Jim was forgotten.
Dad jabbed his ribs, tickling.
“De Camptown ladies sing this song!”
“Doo-dah!” yelled Will. “Doo-dah!” he sang it now, with a tune. The balloon grew. His throat tickled.
“Camptown race track, five miles long!”
“Oh, doo-dah day!”
Man and boy did a minuet.
And in midstep it happened.
Will felt the balloon grow huge within him.
He smiled.
“‘What?” Dad was surprised by those teeth.
Will snorted. Will
