“Minute…?” Will glanced down the street.
Which was the street of the Theatre.
Until this summer it had been an ordinary street where they stole peaches, plums and apricots, each in its day. But late in August, while they were monkey-climbing for the sourest apples, the “thing” happened which changed the houses, the taste of the fruit, and the very air within the gossiping trees.
“Will! it’s waiting. Maybe something’s happening!” hissed Jim.
Maybe something is. Will swallowed hard, and felt Jim’s hand pinch his arm.
For it was no longer the street of the apples or plums or apricots, it was the one house with a window at the side and this window, Jim said, was a stage, with a curtain—the shade, that is—up. And in that room, on that strange stage, were the actors, who spoke mysteries, mouthed wild things, laughed, sighed, murmured so much; so much of it was whispers Will did not understand.
“Just one last time, Will.”
“You know it won’t be last!”
Jim’s face was flushed, his cheeks blazing, his eyes green-glass fire. He thought of that night, them picking the apples, Jim suddenly crying softly, “Oh, there!”
And Will, hanging to the limbs of the tree, tight-pressed, terribly excited, staring in at the Theatre, that peculiar stage where people, all unknowing, flourished shirts above their heads, let fall clothes to the rug, stood raw and animal-crazy, naked, like shivering horses, hands out to touch each other.
What’re they doing! thought Will. Why are they laughing? What’s wrong with them, what’s wrong!?
He wished the light would go out.
But he hung tight to the suddenly slippery tree and watched the bright window Theatre, heard the laughing and numb at last let go, slid, fell, lay dazed, then stood in dark gazing up at Jim, who still clung to his high limb. Jim’s face, hearth-flushed, cheeks fire-fuzzed, lips parted, stared in. “Jim, Jim, come down!” But Jim did not hear. “Jim!” And when Jim looked down at last he saw Will as a stranger below with some silly request to give off living and come down to earth. So Will ran off, alone, thinking too much, knowing what to think.
“Will, please…”
Will looked at Jim now, with the library books in his hands.
“We been to the library. Ain’t that enough?”
Jim shook his head. “Carry these for me.”
He handed Will his books and trotted softly off under the hissing whispering trees. Three houses down he called back: “Will? Know what you are? A darn old dimwit Episcopal Baptist!”
Then Jim was gone.
Will seized the books tight to his chest. They were wet from the hands.
Don’t look back! he thought.
I won’t! I won’t!
And looking only toward home, he walked that way.
Quickly.
Chapter 7
Halfway home, Will felt a shadow breathing hard behind him.
“Theatre closed?” said Will, not looking back.
Jim walked in silence beside him for a long while and then said, “Nobody home.”
“Swell!”
Jim spat. “Darn Baptist preacher, you!”
And around the corner a tumbleweed slithered, a great cotton ball of pale paper which bounced, then clung shivering to Jim’s legs.
Will grabbed the paper, laughing, pulled it off, let it fly! He stopped laughing.
The boys, watching the pale throwaway rattle and flit through the trees, were suddenly cold.
“Wait a minute…” said Jim, slowly.
All of a sudden they were yelling, running, leaping. “Don’t tear it! Careful!”
The paper fluttered like a snare drum in their hands.
“COMING, OCTOBER TWENTY-FOURTH!”
Their lips moved, shadowing the words set in rococo type.
“Cooger and Dark’s…”
“Carnival!”
“October twenty-fourth! That’s tomorrow!”
“It can’t be,” said Will. “All carnivals stop after Labour Day—”
“Who cares? A thousand and one wonders! See! MEPHISTOPHELES, THE LAVA DRINKER! MR. ELECTRICO! THE MONSTER MONTGOLFIER?”
“Balloon,” said Will. “A Montgolfier is a balloon.”
“MADEMOISELLE TAROT!” read Jim. “THE DANGLING MAN. THE DEMON GUILLOTINE! THE ILLUSTRATED MAN! Hey!”
“That’s just an old guy with tattoos.”
“No.” Jim breathed warm on the paper. “He’s illustrated. Special. See! Covered with monsters! A menagerie!” Jim’s eyes jumped. “SEE! THE SKELETON! Ain’t that fine, Will? Not Thin Man, no, but SKELETON! SEE! THE DUST WITCH! What’s a Dust Witch, Will?”
“Dirty old Gypsy—”
“No.” Jim squinted off, seeing things. “A Gypsy that was born in the Dust, raised in the Dust, and some day winds up back in the Dust. Here’s more: EGYPTIAN MIRROR MAZE! SEE YOURSELF TEN THOUSAND TIMES! SAINT ANTHONY’S TEMPLE OF TEMPTATION!”
“THE MOST BEAUTIFUL—” read Will.
“—WOMAN IN THE WORLD,” finished JIM.
They looked at each other.
“Can a carnival have the Most Beautiful Woman on Earth in its side-show, Will?”
“You ever seen carnival ladies, Jim?”
“Grizzly bears. But how come this handbill claims—”
“Oh, shut up!”
“You mad at me, Will?”
“No, it’s just—get it!”
The wind had torn the paper from their hands.
The handbill blew over the trees and away in an idiot caper, gone.
“It’s not true, anyway,” Will gasped. “Carnivals don’t come this late in the year. Silly darn-sounding thing. Who’d go to it?”
“Me.” Jim stood quiet in the dark.
Me, thought Will, seeing the guillotine flash, the Egyptian mirrors unfold accordions of light, and the sulphur-skinned devil-man sipping lava, like gunpowder tea.
“That music…” Jim murmured. “Calliope. Must be coming tonight!”
“Carnivals come at sunrise.”
“Yeah, but what about the licorice and cotton candy we smelled, close?”
And Will thought of the smells and the sounds flowing on the river of wind from beyond the darkening houses, Mr. Tetley listening by his wooden Indian friend, Mr. Crosetti with the single tear shining down his cheek, and the barber’s pole sliding its red tongue up and around forever out of nowhere and away to eternity.
Will’s teeth chattered.
“Let’s go home.”
“We are home!” cried Jim, surprised.
For, not knowing it, they had reached their separate houses and now moved up separate walks.
On his porch, Jim leaned over and called softly.
“Will. You’re not mad?”
“Heck, no.”
“We won’t go by that street, that house, the Theatre, again for a month. A year! I swear.”
“Sure, Jim, sure.”
They stood with their hands on the doorknobs of their houses, and Will looked up at Jim’s room where the lightning-rod glittered against the cold stars.
The storm was coming. The storm wasn’t coming.
No matter which, he was glad Jim had that grand contraption up there.
“Night!”
“Night.”
Their separate doors slammed.
Chapter 8
Will opened the door and shut it again. Quietly, this time.
“That’s better,” said his mother’s voice.
Framed through the hall door Will saw the only theatre he cared for now, the familiar stage where sat his father (home already! he and Jim must have run the long way round!) holding a book but reading the empty spaces. In a chair by the fire mother knitted and hummed like a tea-kettle.
He wanted to be near and not near them, he saw them close, he saw them far. Suddenly they were awfully small in too large a room in too big a town and much too huge a world. In this unlocked place they seemed at the mercy of anything that might break in from the night.
Including me, Will thought. Including me.
Suddenly he loved them more for their smallness than he ever had when they seemed tall.