"Beg pardon?" The young lady blinked.
"Innocence, continue in thy innocence," said Grand pa, and fell asleep.
The train pulled into Cranamockett at six o"clock. Only then was John allowed back from his exile in the head of that robin on a fence miles behind.
There were absolutely no relatives in Cranamockett willing to take in the cousins. At the end of three days, Grandfather rode the train back to Illinois, the cousins still in him, like peach stones. And there they stayed, each in a different territory of Grandpa"s sun-or-moonlit attic keep.
Tom took residence in a remembrance of 1840 in Vienna with a crazed actress, William lived in Lake County with a flaxen-haired Swede of some indefinite years, while John shuttled from fleshpot to fleshpot, "Frisco, Berlin, Paris, appearing, on occasion, as a wicked glitter in Grandpa"s eyes. Philip, on the other hand, locked himself deep in a potato-bin cellar, where he read all the books Grandpa ever read.
But on some nights Grandpa edges over under the covers toward Grandma.
"You!" she cries. "At your age! Git!" she screams.
And she beats and beats and beats him until, laughing in five voices, Grandpa gives up, fells back, and pretends to sleep, alert with five kinds of alertness, for another try.
The Last Circus
Red Tongue Jurgis (we called him that because he ate candy red-hots all the time) stood under my window one cold October morning and yelled at the metal weatherc.o.c.k on top of our house. I put my head out the window and blew steam. "Hi, Red Tongue!"
"Jiggers!" he said. "Come on! The circus!"
Three minutes later I ran out of the house polishing two apples on my knee. Red tongue was dancing to keep warm. We agreed that the last one to reach the train yard was a d.a.m.nfool old man.
Eating apples, we ran through the silent town.
We stood by the rails in the dark train yard and listened to them humming. Far away in the cold dark morning country, we knew, the circus was coming. The sound of it was in the rails, trembling. I put my ear down to hear it traveling. "Gosh," I said.
And then, there was the locomotive charging on us with fire and tight and a sound like a black storm, clouds following it. Out of boxcars red and green lanterns swung and in the boxcars were snorts and screams and yells. Elephants stepped down and cages rolled and everything mixed around until, in the first tight, the animals and men were marching, Red Tongue and I with them, through the town, out to tine meadowlands where every gra.s.s blade was a white crystal and every bush rained if you touched it.
"Just think, RX," I said. "One minute there"s nothing there but land. And now look at it."
We looked. The big tent bloomed out like one of those j.a.panese flowers in cold water. Lights flashed on. In half an hour there were pancakes frying somewhere and people laughing.
We stood looking at everything. I put my hand on my chest and felt my heart thumping my fingers like those trick shop palpitators you buy for two bits. All I wanted to do was look and smell.
"Home for breakfast!" cried RT and knocked me down so he got a head start running. "Tuck your tongue in and wash your face," said Mom, looking up from her kitchen stove.
"Pancakes!" I said, amazed at her intuition.
"How was the circus?" Father lowered his newspaper and looked over it at me.
"Swell," I said. "Boy!"
I washed my face in cold tap water and sc.r.a.ped my chair out just as Mom set the pancakes down. She handed me the syrup jug. "Float them," she said.
While I was chewing, Father adjusted the paper in his hands and sighed. "I don"t know what it"s coming to."
"You shouldn"t read the paper in the morning," Mom said. "It ruins your digestion."
"Look at this," cried Father, flicking the paper with his finger. "Germ warfare, atom bomb, hydrogen bomb. That"s all you read!"
"Personally," said Mother, "I"ve a big washing this week."
Father frowned. "That"s what"s wrong with the world; people on a powder keg doing their wash." He sat up and leaned forward. "Why it says here this morning, they"ve got a new atom bomb that would wipe Chicago clean off the map. And as for our town-nothing left but a smudge. The thing I keep thinking is it"s a darn shame."
"What?" I asked.
"Here we"ve taken a million years to get where we are. We build towns and build cities out of nothing. Why, a hundred years ago, this town wasn"t nowhere to be seen.
Took a lot of time and sweat and trouble, and now we"ve got it all one brick on another and what happens? BANG BANG!"
"It won"t happen to us, I bet," I said.
"No?" Father snorted. "Why not?"
"It just couldn"t" I said.
"You two leave oft" Mom nodded at me. "You"re too young to understand." She nodded at Pop. "You"re old enough to know better." We ate in silence. Then I said to Pop, "What was it like before this town was here?"
"Nothing at all. Just the lake and the hills is all."
"Indians?"
"Not many around here. Just empty woods and hills is all."
"Pa.s.s the syrup," said Mom.
"Whambo!" cried RT "I"m an atom bomb! Boom!"
We were waiting in line at the Elite theater. It was the biggest day of the year. We had lugged pop all morning at the circus to earn show tickets. Now, in the afternoon, we were seeing cowboys and Indians on the movie screen, and, this evening, the circus itself! We felt rich and we laughed all the time. RT kept squinting through his atomic ring, yelling, "Whoom! You"re dis integrated!"
Cowboys chased Indians across the screen. Half an hour later the Indians chased the cowboys back the other way. After everybody was tired of stomping, the cartoon came on, and then a newsreel.
"Look, the atom bomb!" RT settled down for the first time. The big gray cloud lifted on the screen, blew apart, battleships and cruisers burst open and rain fell.
RT held my arm tight, staring up at the burning whiteness. "Ain"t that something, Doug, ain"t it?" He jabbed my ribs.
"It"s a whooperdoo, all right," I said, jabbing him back, giggling. "Wish I had an atom bomb! Blooie, there goes the school!"
"Bam! Goodbye Clara Holmquist!"
"Bang! There goes Officer O"Rourkel"
For supper there were Swedish meatb.a.l.l.s* hot buns, Boston beans and green salad. Father looked very serious and strange and tried to bring up some important scientific facts he had read in a magazine, but Mom shook her head.
I watched Fop. "You feeling okay, Pop?"
"I"m going to cancel our paper subscription," said Mom. "You"re worrying yourself right into ulcers. You hear me, Dad?"
"Boy," I said, "did I see film film! The atom bomb blew up a whole battleship down at the Elite."
Father dropped his fork and stared at me. "Sometimes, Douglas, you have the uncanny ability to say just the wrong thing at the wrong time."
I saw Mother squinting at me to catch my eye. "It"s late," she said. "You"d better run on to the circus."
As I was getting my hat and coat I heard Father say in a low and thoughtful voice, "How would it be to sell the business? You know, we"ve always wanted to travel; go to Mexico maybe. A small town. Settle down."
"You"re talking like a child," whispered Mother. "I won"t hear you carry on this way."
"I know it"s foolish. Don"t mind me. But you"re right; better cancel the paper."
A wind was blowing the trees half over and the stars were all out and the circus lay in the country hills, in the meadow, like a big toadstool. Red Tongue and I had popcorn in one hand, taffy in the other, and cotton candy on our chins. "Lookit my beard!" Red Tongue shouted. Everybody was talking and pushing under the bright light bulbs and a man smacked a canvas with a bamboo cane and shouted about The Skeleton, The Blubber Lady, The Ill.u.s.trated Man, The Seal Boy, while RT and I jostled through to the lady who tore our tickets in half.
We balanced our way up to sit on the slat seats just when the ba.s.s drums exploded and the jeweled elephants lumbered out, and from then on there were hot searchlights, men shooting from fiery howitzers, ladies hung by their white teeth imitating b.u.t.terflies high up in the clouds of cigarette smoke while trapeze men rode back and forth among the ropes and poles, and lions trotted softly around the sawdust-floored cage while the trainer in white pants shot smoke and flame at them from a silver pistol. "Look!" RT and I cried, blinking here, gaping there, chuckling, oohing oohing, aahing aahing, amazed, incredulous, surprised, and entertained, out of breath, eyes wide, mouths open. Chariots roared around the track, clowns jumped from burning hotels, grew hair, changed from giants to midgets in a steam box. The band crashed and tooted and hooted and everywhere was color and warmth and sequins shining and the crowd thundering.
But along about the end of the show I looked up. And there, behind me, was a little hole in the canvas. And through that hole I could see the old meadowland, the wind blowing over it and the stars shining alone out there. The cold wind tugged at the tent very gently. And all of a sudden, turning back to the warm riot all around me, I was cold too. I heard Red Tongue laughing beside me and I half-saw some men riding a silver bike on a high, far-away, thin thread, the snare drum going tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat, everyone quiet. And when that was over, there were two hundred clowns whacking each other"s heads with bats and Red Tongue almost fell from his seat, screaming with it. I sat there and didn"t move and at last Red Tongue turned and looked at me and said, "Hey, what"s wrong, Doug?"
"Nothing," I said. I shook myself. I looked up at the red circus poles and the rope lines and the flaring lights. I looked at the zinc-oxide clowns and made myself laugh. "Lookit there, RT, that fat one over there!"
The band played "The Old Gray Mare She Ain"t What She Used to Be."
"It"s all over," said Red Tongue, breathlessly.
We sat while the thousands of stunned people walked away mumbling and laughing and pressing at each other. The tent was thick with cigar smoke and the musical instruments lay curled up and abandoned for a moment on the wooden dock where the band had shocked us with wave after wave of bra.s.s.
We didn"t move because neither of us wanted it to be over.
"Guess we better go/" said RT, not stirring.
"Let"s wait," I said, tonelessly, not looking at anything. I felt the wood slat aching under my bottom after the long strange hours of music and color. Men were moving and slapping the collapsing chairs down into themselves to be toted away. The canvas strippings were being unhooked. Everywhere was the jingle and the snap and clatter of the circus felling apart The tent was empty.
We stood on the midway, the wind blowing dust in our eyes, leaves whipping off the trees. And the wind carried away all the dead leaves and all the restless people. The sideshow bulbs blinked off. We walked to the top of a nearby hill and stood there in the windy dark, our teeth chattering, watching the blue lights drift in the blackness, the white shapes of elephants floating, the sounds of men cursing and stakes being pried up. And then, like an immense sighing bellows, the main tent settling to earth.
An hour later the gravel road was amove with cars and trucks and golden cages. The pale meadow lay empty. The moon was rising and rime formed over every wet thing. RT and I walked slowly down across the meadow, smelling the sawdust "That"s all that"s left," said Red Tongue. "Sawdust."
"Here"s a stake hole," I said. I pointed. "There"s another."
"You"d never know they were ever here," said RT. "It"s Wee making it up in your mind." The wind blew across the empty meadow and we stood watching the black trees shake. There was not a light or a sound; even all of the circus smell had finally blown away.
"Welp," said RT, scuffing his shoes. "Well get the tar beat out of us if we ain"t home an hour ago an hour ago!" He smiled.
We walked back together down the lonely country road, the wind at our backs, our hands deep in our pockets, our heads down. We walked past the deep silent ravine and then we walked through the little streets of the town, past sleeping houses, where here and there a radio quietly played, and there was the sound of a last cricket, and our heels thumping on the rough bricks in the middle of the long street, under the swaying, dim arc lamps at each corner.
I looked at all the houses and all the picket fences and all the slanting roofs and lighted windows and I looked at every tree and at all the bricks under my feet. I looked at my shoes and I looked over at RT trudging beside me, his teeth chattering. And I saw the courthouse clock a mile away, lifting up its moist white face in the moonlight, all the munic.i.p.al buildings black and big. "G"night, Doug." I didn"t answer as RT walked slowly on down the street between the houses at midnight and turned a far corner.
I crept upstairs and was in bed in a minute, looking out through my window at the town.
My brother Skip must have heard me crying for a long time before he put his hand over to feel my arm. "What"s wrong, Doug?" he asked.
"Nothing," I sobbed quietly, eyes closed. "Just the circus." Skip waited. The wind blew around the house. "What about it?" he asked.
"Nothing-except it won"t come again."
"Sure it will," he said.
"No, it"s gone. And it won"t come back again. It"s all gone where it was, nothing of it left."
"Try to get some sleep." Skip turned over. I stopped crying. Somewhere, across town, a few windows were still glowing. Down at the rail station, an engine hooted and started and went rushing off between the hills.
I waited in the dark room, holding my breath, while one by silent one, the small, far-away windows of the little houses went dark.
The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair
He called her Stanley, she called him Ollie.
That was the beginning, that was the end, of what we will call the Laurel and Hardy love affair.
She was twenty-five, he was thirty-two when they met at one of those dumb c.o.c.ktail parties where everyone wonders what they are doing there. But no one goes home, so everyone drinks too much and lies about how grand a late afternoon it all was.
They did not, as often happens, see each other across a crowded room, and if there was romantic music to background their collision, it couldn"t be heard. For everyone was talking at one person and staring at someone else.
They were, in feet, ricocheting through a forest of people, but finding no shade trees. He was on his way for a needed drink, she was eluding a love-sick stranger, when they locked paths in the exact center of the fruitless mob. They dodged left and right a few times, then laughed and he, on impulse, seized his tie and twiddled it at her, wiggling his fingers. Instantly, smiling, she lifted her hand to pull the top of her hair into a frouzy ta.s.sel, blinking and looking as if she had been struck on the head.