Jim did the final things himself. His eyes opened. He watched the dancing fools. He could not believe. He had been off on a journey of years. Now, returned, no one said “Hi!” All jigged Sambo-style. Tears might have jumped to his eyes. But before they could start, Jim’s mouth curved. He gave up a ghost of laughter. For, after all there indeed was silly Will and his silly old janitor dad racing like gorillas knuckle-dusting the meadows, their faces a puzzlement. They toppled above him, clapped bands, wiggled cars, bent to wash him all over with their now bright full-river flowing laughter that could not be stopped if the sky fell or the earth rent open, to blend their good mirth with his, to fuse-light and set him off in a detonation which could not stop exploding from ladyfingers to four-inchers to doomsday cannon crackers of delight!
And looking down, jolt-dancing his bones loose and delicious, Will thought: Jim don’t remember he was dead, so we won’t tell, not now—some day, sure, but not… Doo-dah! Doo-dah!
They didn’t even say “Hello, Jim’ or “Join in the dance,” they just put out hands as if he had fallen from their swung pandemonium commotion and needed a boost back into the swarm. They yanked Jim. Jim flew. Jim came down dancing.
And Will knew, hand in hand, hot palm to palm, they had truly yelled, sung, gladly shouted the live blood back. They had slung Jim like the newborn, knocked his lungs, slapped his back, shocked joyous breath to where it made room.
Then Dad bent and Will leaped over him and Will bent and Dad jumped him and they both waited crouched in a line, wheezing songs, deliciously tired, while Jim swallowed spit, and ran full tilt. He got half over Dad when they all fell, rolled in the grass, all hoot-owl and donkey, all brass and cymbal as it must have been the first year of Creation, and Joy not yet thrown from the Garden.
Until at last they drew up their feet, socked each other’s shoulders, embraced knees tight, rocking, and looking with swift bright happiness at each other, growing wine-drunkenly quiet.
And when they were done smiling at each other’s faces as at burning torches, they looked away across the field.
And the black tent poles lay in elephant boneyards with the dead tents blowing away like the petals of a great black rose.
The only three people in a sleeping world, a rare trio of tomcats, they basked in the moon.
“What happened?” asked Jim, at last.
“What didn’t!” cried Dad.
And they laughed again, when suddenly Will grabbed Jim, held him tight and wept.
“Hey,” Jim said, over and over, quietly. “Hey… hey…”
“Jim, Jim,” Will said. “We’ll be pals forever.”
“Sure, hey sure.” Jim was very quiet now.
“It’s all right,” said Dad. “Have a small cry. We’re out of the woods. Then we’ll laugh some more, going home.”
Will let Jim go.
They got to their feet and stood looking at each other. Will examined his father, with fierce pride.
“Oh, Dad, Dad, you did it, you did it!”
“No, we did it together.”
“But without you it’d all be over. Oh, Dad, I never knew you. I sure know you now.”
“Do you, Will?”
“Darn right!”
Each, to the other, shimmered in bright halos of wet light.
“Why then, hello. Reply, son, and curtsey.”
Dad held out his hand. Will shook it. Both laughed and wiped their eyes, then looked quickly at the foot prints scattered in the dew over the hills.
“Dad, will they ever come back?”
“No. And yes.” Dad tucked away his harmonica. “No, not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they’ll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they’ll show. They’re on the road.”
“Oh, no,” said Will.
“Oh, yes,” said Dad. “We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight’s just begun.”
They moved around the carousel slowly.
“What will they look like? How will we know them?”
“Why,” said Dad, quietly, “maybe they’re already here.”
Both boys looked around swiftly.
But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves.
Will looked at Jim, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad.
Dad nodded, once, gravely, and then nodded at the carousel, and stepped up on it, and touched a brass pole.
Will stepped up beside him. Jim stepped up beside Will.
Jim stroked a horse’s mane. Will patted a horse’s shoulders.
The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night.
Just three times around, ahead, thought Will. Hey.
Just four times around, ahead, thought Jim. Boy.
Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Halloway.
Lord.
Each read the thoughts in the other’s eyes.
How easy, thought Will.
Just this once, thought Jim.
But then, thought Charles Halloway, once you start, you’d always come back. One more ride and one more ride. And, after awhile, you’d offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally…
The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment.
…finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks… proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows…
Maybe, said their eyes, they’re already here.
Charles Halloway stepped back into the machinery of the merry-go-round, found a wrench, and knocked the flywheels and cogs to pieces. Then he took the boys out and he hit the control box one or two times until it broke and scattered fitful lightnings.
“Maybe this isn’t necessary,” said Charles Halloway. “Maybe it wouldn’t run anyway, without the freaks to give it power.” But he hit the box a last time and threw down the wrench.
“It’s late. Must be midnight straight up.”
Obediently, the City Hall clock, the Baptist church clock, the Methodist, the Episcopalian, the Catholic church, all the clocks, struck twelve. The wind was seeded with Time.
“Last one to the railroad semaphore at Green Crossing is an old lady!”
The boys fired themselves off like pistols.
The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we’ve done fine tonight. Even Death can’t spoil it. So, there went the boys and why not… follow?
He did just that.
And Lord! it was fine printing their life in the dew on the cool fields that new dark suddenly-like-Christmas morning. The boys ran as tandem ponies, knowing that someday one would touch base first, and the other second or not at all, but now this first minute of the new morning was not the minute or the day or morning of ultimate loss. Now was not the time to study faces to see if one was older and the other too much younger. Today was just another day in October in a year suddenly better than anyone supposed it could ever be just a short hour ago, with the moon and the stars moving in a grand rotation toward inevitable dawn, and them loping, and the last of this night’s weeping done, and Will laughing and singing and Jim giving answer line by line, as they breasted the waves of dry stubble toward a town where they might live another few years across from each other.
And behind them jogged a middle-aged man with his own now solemn, now amiable, thoughts.
Perhaps the boys slowed. They never knew. Perhaps Charles Halloway quickened his pace. He could not say.
But, running even with the boys, the middle-aged man reached out.
Will slapped, Jim slapped, Dad slapped the semaphore signal base at the same instant.
Exultant, they banged a trio of shouts down the wind.
Then, as the moon watched, the three of them together left the wilderness behind and walked into the town.