“Dad? Is it going to be okay?”
“Absolutely. But you have to listen to me. You have to do exactly what you’re supposed to do. And then, when he comes up the rope – I want you to hide.” I take his hand, pull him around, show him the tiny niche behind the platform.
“What if I fall? Dad – I might fall.”
“You won’t fall. You have great balance. Remember the Jacob’s ladder? You were the only kid who did it.”
The Piper’s amplified voice rises up to us. “What do you see up there, boy?”
“Dad,” Kevin whispers, “the Jacob’s ladder – that was Sean.”
Stupid as it is – this stops me for a moment and I can’t think of what to say. It’s a cardinal sin for the parents of twins, mixing them up.
“Kev – you can do it. There’s plenty of room. You have to. Look, I’m going to give you my backpack. I need you to keep it safe.” I do give him the backpack, more to give him a task than anything else – although I take the Maglite first, and stick it in my waistband.
The Piper’s amplified voice again. “You asleep, boy?”
Kevin looks frozen.
“I said, what do you see up there, boy?”
I open my fist, unfurl the mike from the fleece, pin it to Kevin’s sash. “Tell him,” I whisper.
“Sky,” Kevin says, his voice trembling.
A laugh from below.
“What else?”
“Clouds.” He still sounds as if he’s about to cry.
Another laugh.
“I need you back down here now.” The voice is matter-of-fact.
“But I like it up here. I don’t feel like coming down.”
They go back and forth, The Piper growing more irritated as the boy grows more defiant.
I have to leave Kevin, climb up the rock.
“If you don’t get down here this minute,” The Piper says, his voice stern now, “I’m going to have to come up and get you.”
“Go ahead,” Kevin says. “Try it, old man. I bet you can’t even climb the rope.”
I’m now wedged into my old perch above the platform. Kevin looks up at me. I motion for him – time to hide.
The rope begins to twitch back and forth as The Piper ascends.
The audience cheers.
And then I see him, his brown glossy hair coming up through the mist. Like Kevin, he’s dressed as a fakir, and like Kevin, he’s intent on the climb. In his case, the climb is made more difficult by the fact that – pirate style – he holds a knife with a curved blade between his teeth.
Very slowly and cautiously, I begin to make my way down toward him.
Once he’s reached the sling and put an arm through it, he looks toward the platform. And frowns. I can read his mind: Where’s Kevin?
He pulls himself onto the platform, and removes the knife from his mouth. “Where are you, lad?” he calls out, still in character. “Come on now, I’ve had it with you. I’m serious!”
Laughter wells up from below.
The magician gets to his feet and begins to turn.
I’m not a fighter. It’s not that I run away from confrontation. Physical fights – it just never came up much. Where I grew up, nobody got into fights; we were all too busy with scheduled activities. It wasn’t hip, it wasn’t something you did. Once I decked a kid who took my legs out in a soccer match, but the fact that I actually hit him was a piece of luck. I got kicked out of the game, benched for the next two, and had to sit through a lot of crap about the importance of self-control.
I never took karate or boxing lessons.
In other words, nothing about my background has prepared me for what I’m about to do.
And yet I come down off that rock like a raptor.
Before the man even knows I’m there, before he can turn, I’ve hit him so hard with the Maglite that I can hear the bone splinter in the back of his head. Suddenly, there’s blood everywhere – on me, on the rocks, in the air, on him.
He’s staggered, but to my amazement, he doesn’t go down. He makes a wretched, wounded sound that’s picked up by the mike, and then he turns, eyes alight, sword in hand. I could swear he’s smiling. Then he slashes at me with a sidearm motion, that misses the first time, then catches me on the way back, laying open the sleeve of my jacket and the arm beneath.
A gasp flies from my mouth as Boudreaux takes a swipe at my throat. Incredibly, the world has gone silent – or almost silent. In the adrenalized slo-mo of what seems likely to be my murder, I can hear the surf crashing and the hushed expectancy – or maybe it’s the puzzlement – of our audience beneath the fog.
I take another swing with the flashlight, and miss, then block another swipe of the knife. The edge of the blade skitters along the Maglite’s shaft, slices into my fingers, and sends a spray of blood into my eyes.
Boudreaux takes a step backward, and gathers himself. For a moment, he stands there, panting and swaying, the knife hanging down at his side. It’s almost as if he’s about to collapse. Heartened, I take a step toward him, then stagger back, as he lunges toward me with a roar. Like an orchestra conductor gone amok, he slashes wildly at the air, snarling, feral and insane. The madness comes off him like heat from a furnace.
From behind me, I hear a gasp from Kevin, half-whimper, half-scream. The sound electrifies me. At once frantic and enraged, terrified and furious, I throw myself at the magician, and we go down on the platform in a tangle of blood, growls, and groans.
Incredibly, I’m on top, with my forearm across his throat, and my right hand pinning his wrist to the ground. He makes a feeble effort to hit me with his other hand, but he hasn’t any strength left. After a moment, his muscles relax, and his eyes soften.
“Now what?” he asks.
With my heart slamming against my chest, it takes more than a moment to get my breath. When I’m able to stand, I do and, reaching down, grab Boudreaux by the hair, and pull him to his feet.
He’s leering. “And how do you think you’re going to get me down?”
I speak in a low voice, almost a growl. “That’s the easy part, you wiggy fuck,” I tell him. And with that, I grab him by the scruff of the neck, spin him around, and, with a shove, send him off the edge of the spire, tumbling with a scream toward his fan club sixty feet below.
It’s chaos down in the amphitheater, everybody screaming and shouting. Kevin crawls out from the little niche toward me, terrified and sobbing. I’m cut, bleeding all over the platform. Still on my feet, I’m shaky and there’s a lot of blood, but I’m okay.
I know we have to act quickly. Right now, the people below may be thinking simply that Boudreaux’s fall was an accident. Then again, maybe not.
I don’t know what makes me think that the boys who were to be the centerpiece of the show have, for the moment, been forgotten. Sean himself might easily have wondered what was going on and emerged from his hiding place to find out. But I don’t think so. I think he’s in the basket, waiting for his cue.
“Kevin,” I say, “we have to get Sean.”
He doesn’t argue, although his eyes are huge. “Dad, you’re really bleeding.”
“It’s okay.”
Kevin’s a natural. Together, we scramble easily down the rock face. Halfway down, we come out of the mist and I tell him to stop for a moment. “We have to be careful now. Stay to the side near the ocean, so they don’t see us.”
“Okay.”
Kevin climbs down, surefooted and agile as a monkey. He actually has to wait for me from time to time. I’m the one having trouble. The arm that Boudreaux cut is weak. My hand is a mess. The blood is slippery.
Even so, we’re on the ground in less than five minutes.
I have to rest, lean against the rock. From the amphitheater come the sounds of disagreement. Not too many voices. Obviously, some of the guests have decided to leave. They’re quarreling about what to do.