‘Gerald, that’s not legal,’ I cried softly.
‘Legal,’ he whispered, swallowed hard. ‘Make legal, headlines, news!’
‘My God!’
‘Yes, God!’
‘But why?’
‘Doesn’t,’ said Gerald, ‘care. Fame! Figures the more he wants to marry me, more fame and the more I will give him.’
‘But again, why, Gerald?’
‘He wants to own me, completely. Just,’ said Gerald, ‘in,’ he said, ‘his,’ he gasped, ‘nature.’
‘Lord!’ I said. ‘I know marriages where a man owns the woman, or the woman completely owns the man.’
‘Yes,’ said Gerald. ‘He wants that! He loves, but this is madness.’
Gerald stiffened, eyes shut, and then in a frail voice which rose and faded: ‘Wants to own my mind.’
‘He can’t!’
‘Will try, will try. Wants to be world’s greatest philosopher.’
‘Lunatic!’
‘Yes! Wants to write, travel, lecture, wants to be me. If owns me, thinks he can take my place.’
A noise. We both sucked breath.
‘Madness,’ I whispered. ‘Christ!’
‘Christ,’ Gerald snorted, ‘has nothing…to do with it.’ Vesalius blew a surprise of mirth.
‘But still!’
‘Shhh,’ Gerald Vesalius cautioned.
‘Was he like this when he first started to work for you?’
‘I suppose. Not this bad.’
‘It was okay then?’
‘o’—a pause—‘kay.’
‘But—’
‘As years passed he was more gree–gree–greedy.’
‘For your cash?’
‘No.’ A derisive smile. ‘My mind.’
‘He’d steal that?’
Gerald sucked in, blew out. ‘Imagine!’
‘You’re one of a kind!’
‘Tell–tell–tell him that.’
‘Son of a bitch!’
‘No, jealous, envious, covetous, admiring, part monster, now monster full-time.’ Gerald cried this in a few clear instants.
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Why are we talking?’
‘What else?’ whispered Vesalius. ‘Help.’ He smiled.
‘How will I get you out of here?’
Vesalius laughed. ‘Let me count the ways.’
‘No time for jokes, damn it!’
Gerald Vesalius swallowed. ‘Have strange…sense’–he paused–‘humor. List!’
We both froze. A door creaked. Footsteps.
‘Should I call the cops?’
‘No.’ A pause. Gerald’s face writhed. ‘Action, drama, wins!’
‘Action?’
‘Do as I say or all’s lost.’
I bent close, he whispered frantically.
Whisper, whisper, whisper.
‘Got that? Try?’
‘Try!’ I said. ‘Oh, damn, damn, damn!’
Footsteps in the hall. I thought I heard someone yell.
I grabbed the phone. I dialed.
I ran out the French doors, around the house, to the front walk.
A siren screamed, then a second and a third.
Three trucks of paramedic firemen booted up the walk with nothing else to do so late at night. Nine different paramedic firemen ran, eager not to be bored.
‘Blair,’ I yelled. ‘That’s me! Damn, I’ve locked myself out! Around the side! Man dying. Follow me.’
I ran. The black-suited paramedics blundered after.
We flung wide the French doors. I pointed at Vesalius.
‘Out!’ I cried. ‘Brotman Hospital. Fast!’
They laid Gerald on a gurney and plunged out the French doors.
Behind us I heard Blair yelling hysterically.
Gerald Vesalius heard and waved gaily, calling out ‘Tata, toodle-o, farewell, solong, good-bye!’ as we rushed toward the waiting ambulance.
Gerald whooped with laughter.
‘Young man?’
‘Gerald?’
‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes, Gerald.’
‘But don’t want to own me?’
‘No, Gerald.’
‘Not my mind?’
‘No.’
‘Not my body?’
‘No, Gerald.’
‘Till death do us part?’
‘Till death do us part.’
‘Good.’
Run, run, hustle, hustle, across the lawn, down the walk, toward the waiting ambulance.
‘Young man.’
‘Yes?’
‘Vedanta Temple?’
‘Yes.’
‘Last year?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lecture on Great All Accepting Laughter?’
‘I was there.’
‘Well, now’s the time!’
‘Oh, yes, yes.’
‘To hoot and holler?’
‘Hoot and holler.’
‘Zest and gusto, eh?’
‘Gusto, zest, oh my God!’
Here a bomb burst in Gerald’s chest and erupted from his throat. I’d never heard such jovial explosions in my life, and snort-laughed as I ran alongside Gerald as his gurney was hustled and hurried.
We howled, we shrieked, we yelled, we gasped, we insucked-outblew firecracker bomb-blasts of hilarity like boys on a forgotten summer day, collapsed on the sidewalk, writhing with comic seizures of wild upchuck heart attacks, throats choked, eyes clenched with brays of ha-hee and hee-ha and God, stop, I can’t breathe, Gerald, hee-ha, ha-hee, and God, ha and hee, and once more ha-hee and whistle-rustle whisper haw.
‘Young man?’
‘What?’
‘King Tut’s mummy.’
‘Yes?’
‘Found in tomb.’ ‘Yes.’
‘His mouth smiling.’ ‘Why?’
‘In his front teeth—’ ‘Yes?’
‘A single black hair.’ ‘What?’
‘Dying man ate a hearty meal. Ha-ho!’ Hee-ha, oh my God, ha-hee, rush run, run rush. ‘And now, one last thing.’ ‘What?’
‘Will you run away with me?’ ‘Where?’
‘Run off and be pirates!’ ‘What?’
‘Run away with me to be pirates.’ We were at the ambulance, the doors were flung wide, Gerald was shoved in. ‘Pirates!’ he cried again. ‘Oh God, yes, Gerald, I’ll run off with you!’ Door slam, siren sound, motor gunned. ‘Pirates!’ I cried.
Pietà Summer
‘Gosh, I can hardly wait!’ I said.
‘Why don’t you shut up?’ my brother replied.
‘I can’t sleep,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe what’s happening tomorrow. Two circuses in just one day! Ringling Brothers coming in on that big train at five in the morning, and Downey Brothers coming by truck a couple hours later. I can’t stand it.’
‘Tell you what,’ my brother said. ‘Go to sleep. We gotta get up at four-thirty.’
I rolled over but I just couldn’t sleep because I could hear those circuses coming over the edge of the world, rising with the sun.
Before we knew it, it was 4:30 A.M. and my brother and I were up in the cold darkness, getting dressed, grabbing an apple for breakfast, and then running out in the street and heading down the hill toward the train yards.
As the sun began to rise the big Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey train of ninety-nine cars loaded with elephants, zebras, horses, lions, tigers, and acrobats arrived; the huge engines steaming in the dawn, puffing out great clouds of black smoke, and the freight cars sliding open to let the horses hoof out into the darkness, and the elephants stepping down, very carefully, and the zebras, in huge striped flocks, gathering in the dawn, and my brother and I standing there, shivering, waiting for the parade to start, for there was going to be a parade of all the animals up through the dark morning town toward the distant acres where the tents would whisper upward toward the stars.
Sure enough my brother and I walked with the parade up the hill and through the town that didn’t know we were there. But there we were, walking with ninety-nine elephants and one hundred zebras and two hundred horses, and the big bandwagon, soundless, out to the meadow that was nothing at all, but suddenly began to flower with the big tents sliding up.
Our excitement increased by the minute because where just hours ago there had been nothing at all, now there was everything in the world.
By seven-thirty Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey had pretty well got its tents up and it was time for me and my brother to race back to where the motorcars were unloading the tiny Downey Brothers circus; a miniature version of the large miracle, it poured out of trucks instead of trains, with only ten elephants instead of nearly one hundred, and just a few zebras, and the lions, drowsing in their separate cages, looked old and mangy and exhausted. That applied to the tigers, too, and the camels that looked as if they’d been walking a hundred years, their pelts beginning to drop off.
My brother and I worked through the morning carrying cases of Coca-Cola, in real glass bottles, instead of plastic, so that lugging one of those cases meant carrying fifty pounds. By nine o’clock in the morning I was exhausted because I had had to move forty or more cases, taking care to avoid being trampled by one of the monster elephants.
At noon we raced home for a sandwich and then back to the small circus for two hours of explosions, acrobats, trapeze performers, mangy lions, clowns, and Wild West horse riding.
With the first circus done, we raced home and tried to rest, had another sandwich, then walked back to the big circus with our father at eight o’clock.
Another two hours of brass thunder followed, avalanches of sound and racing horses, expert marksmen, and a cage full of truly irritable and brand-new dangerous lions. At some point my brother ran off, laughing, with some friends, but I stayed fast by my father’s side.
By ten o’clock the avalanches and explosions came to a stunned halt. The parade I had witnessed at dawn was now reversed, and the tents were sighing down to lie like great pelts on the grass. We stood at the edge of the circus as it exhaled, collapsed its tents, and began to move away in the night, the darkness filled with a procession of elephants huffing their way back to the train yard. My father and I stood there, quiet, watching.
I put my right foot forward to start the long walk home when, suddenly, a strange thing happened: I went to sleep on my feet. I didn’t collapse, I felt no terror, but quite suddenly I simply could not move. My eyes clamped shut and I began to fall, when suddenly I felt strong arms catch me and I was lifted into the air. I could smell the warm nicotine breath of my father as he cradled me in his arms, turned, and began the long shuffling walk home.
Incredible, the whole thing, for we were more than a mile from our house and it was truly late and the circus had almost vanished and all its strange people were gone.
On that empty sidewalk my father marched, cradling me in his arms for that great distance, impossible, for after all I was a thirteen-year-old boy weighing ninety-two pounds.
I could feel his difficult gasps as he gripped me, yet I could not fully wake. I struggled to blink my eyes and move my arms, but soon I was fast asleep and for the next half hour I had no way of knowing that I was being toted, a strange burden, through a town that was dousing its lights.
From far off I vaguely heard voices and someone
