Long moments passed and a lion’s roar could be heard in the distance. When St. Clare opened his eyes, there were tears. When he spoke, there was a tremor in his voice.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “you have witnessed this evening the beginnings of a miracle.”
A handful of burly gazonies ran from the sidelines, shovels in hand, and began to spade over the bloody earth next to the dead magician. The ground had been prepared and the work proceeded quickly.
“I ask,” said the ringmaster, “that you remember what you have seen here tonight at the start of our Jubilee.”
When a grave of sufficient length and depth had been fashioned, four of the gravediggers dropped their spades, approached the body, and went down on one knee.
“For the Bedlam Brothers,” said St. Clare, his voice increasing with volume and enthusiasm, “intend to astound you to your very core.”
The diggers rose. Each took a hand or a foot. They lifted the heap that had been Dr. Cole and carried the corpse to its tomb.
“Each and every one of you is invited back to this festival a week from tonight, as guests of the Bedlam Brothers family.”
The pallbearers dropped the body unceremoniously into the ground, retrieved their shovels, and began filling in the grave.
“For in seven short days,” the ringmaster shouted, reclaiming his brightest bally, “you will see a man rise from the dead. The Amazing Dr. Lazarus Cole will live once again.”
St. Clare raised his hat in the air and waved it around to show the earnestness of his declaration. The crowd responded, hesitantly at first, but then the band struck up the Bedlam anthem again, the house lights came up, and the full troupe parade came back for another pass, all of the performers as bouncy and gusto-filled as ever. Balloons were released into the air and the trained monkeys began to run up and down the grandstand aisles dispensing candy. The elephants blew trunks of water at the clowns. The jugglers lit torches and began throwing them skyward in tall, spinning arcs.
St. Clare began to sing along with the anthem and then, lifting his arms into the air, encouraged the crowd to join him. And join him they did. They sang loudly and with emotion. They clapped and swung heads from shoulder to shoulder, stamped their feet and hollered with the joys of the spectacle laid out before them.
“And now,” shouted St. Clare above all the noise, “on with the show.”
11
Sweeney knew next to nothing about the city. And he felt no great need to educate himself. It was another rust-belt mill town and he had no intention of finding a way into its gritty life. He’d make his home at the Clinic. Come into town when necessary, when he needed supplies or maybe to see a movie sometime.
He was about a mile from the Peck when he noticed the warning light on the gas gauge. The drive-away agency had guaranteed that the car would be delivered with a full tank. He drove a few blocks, trying to tamp down the anger, and then it was no good and he was yelling son of a bitch and pounding the dash.
He came to a red light and, thinking he heard the engine start to gasp, he took a sudden arcing swing at the windshield. His fist went numb for an instant as the center of the glass formed a web of thin cracks. He put his fist in his lap and the pain came alive across the knuckles. The light turned green. A car behind him honked. He looked across the intersection and saw an antique, two-pump gas station.
As an attendant filled his tank, he made his way to the men’s room and ran cold water over his hand. It did nothing to alleviate the pain. He turned off the water, held both hands next to each other. One was already swelling but both were shaking. He tried controlled breathing for what seemed a ridiculous amount of time. Then he exited the toilet, paid for his gas, and asked where he could find the nearest shopping center.
The attendant seemed a little confused by the question and gave it all his concentration. He pointed down the road.
“The Mart might still be open,” he said. “It’s closing any day, but it might still be open.”
A half mile east, Sweeney found a nearly deserted plaza, a relic from the pre-mall era. A dozen small stores — a pharmacy, a shoe repair, a barbershop — were anchored by a five-and-ten. The structure had a flat roof and sported a metal awning that ran the length of the sidewalk. All of the stores but the five-and-ten were empty and, from the looks, had been for some time. Some were shuttered, others had whitewashed front windows, but the barbershop was wide open, its door and window smashed in.
Sweeney parked and locked the car and decided he wouldn’t linger. The Mart had automatic doors, but they weren’t working and he had to struggle to open one manually. Inside, the lighting was dim and yellow, an effect he found at first unsettling and, somewhat later, almost charming. Most stores overdosed on the fluorescents.
He grabbed a red canvas handbasket and began to walk the aisles. There was no apparent order to anything. Nothing was grouped by department. He found spray paint next to beach pails. Cakes of soap next to goldfish bowls. It was like a trip back to his childhood and, had his hand not hurt so much, he might have managed to lose himself for a few minutes. There were a half-dozen items that he picked up and examined, not interested in purchasing any of them, but simply stunned that they were still manufactured.
He began to suspect that he was entirely alone in the store until he turned a corner and came upon the key-making booth. The old man inside, perched on a stool, dressed in full apron and a knobby cardigan, was smoking a cigarette. Sweeney tried to recall the last time he’d seen someone smoking inside a department store. The man looked bored and hot and Sweeney thought about handing over the car keys just to give the guy something to do.
Instead, he said, “I’m looking for boys’ pajamas.”
The old man blew out a lungful of smoke and said, “Try aisle seven.”
Sweeney thanked him and moved on. None of the aisles were marked, so he continued to browse. As he looked at eggbeaters and cheese graters, clothesline rope and a full bin of rubber galoshes, he realized there wasn’t much chance that he’d find what he was searching for. But then there they were, on a table that featured a red plastic flag that bore the last traces of the word Special, dozens of pairs of Limbo pajamas. Along with random piles of Limbo card games with their box flaps taped closed, a few issues of the comic books with the covers torn off, Limbo wall calendars from years past, and some tiny, green plastic freak figures that Sweeney had never seen before. About the size of toy soldiers. Some of them, he noticed, were missing their heads.
He picked through the pile, selected four summer-weight pajama sets in Danny’s size. He held them up and out from his chest, sized them the way Kerry used to, and made sure there were no tears. He studied the design, tried to pick out as many characters as he could. Chick and Kitty and Bruno were easy, of course. But he could never remember the name of the lobster girl or the pinhead or the human torso. Though he could have told anyone that the human torso had lost his bottom half in a bear attack.
It was significant how someone became a freak. Danny had assured him of that. Some people, his son had explained, are just born that way. But some become freaks due to an accident.
He threw the pajamas in the basket and hunted down coffee, a percolator, a bottle of aspirin, plastic hangers for his lab coats, and three sets of twin sheets. Then he began tossing items that he didn’t need into the basket. A box of magic markers. A jar of olives. A thermometer. A Big Chief writing tablet. A package of mothballs. As he stood paging through a 1972 atlas of the interstate highway system, he began to smell frying meat. It was still only midmorning but the aroma was wonderful and he tossed the atlas atop the mothballs and followed the scent to the rear of the store.