Something Wicked This Way Comes (3 page)

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD

    And yet this vast chunk of wintry glass held nothing but frozen river water.

    No. Not quite empty.

    Halloway felt his heart pound one special time.

    Within the huge winter gem was there not a special vacuum? a voluptuous hollow, a prolonged emptiness which undulated from tip to toe of the ice? and wasn't this vacuum, this emptiness waiting to be filled with summer flesh, was it not shaped somewhat like a. . .woman?

    Yes.

    The ice. And the lovely hollows, the horizontal flow of emptiness within the ice. The lovely nothingness. The exquisite flow of an invisible mermaid daring the ice to capture it.

    The ice was cold.

    The emptiness within the ice was warm.

    He wanted to go away from here.

    But Charles Halloway stood in the strange night for a long time looking in at the empty shop and the two sawhorses and the cold waiting arctic coffin set there like a vast Star of India in the dark. . . .

6

Jim Nightshade stopped at the comer of Hickory and Main, breathing easily, his eyes fixed tenderly on the leafy darkness of Hickory Street.

    'Will. . .?'

    'No!' Will stopped, surprised at his own violence.

    'It is just there. The fifth house. Just one minute, Will,' Jim pleaded, softly.

    '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 monkeyclimbing 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 greenglass 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, tightpressed, 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 animalcrazy, naked, like shivering horses, hands out to touch each other.

    'What're they doing I 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, hearthflushed, cheeks firefuzzed, 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. Tlree 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.

7

Halfway home, Will felt a shadow breathing hard behind him.

    'Theatre dosed?' said Will, not looking back.

    Jim walked in silence beside him for a long while and then said, 'Nobody home.'

    'Swell!'

    Jim spat. 'Dam 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 TWENTYFOURTH!'

    Their lips moved, shadowing the words set in rococo type.

    'Cooger and Dark's. . .'

    'Carnival!'

    'October twentyfourth! 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?'

    '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 0F 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 sideshow, 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 tom 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 darnsounding 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 sulphurskinned devilman 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 lightningrod 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.

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 teakettle.

    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.

    His mothers fingers twitched, her mouth counted, the happiest woman he had ever seen. He remembered a greenhouse on a winter day, pushing aside thick jungle leaves to find a creamy pink hothouse rose poised alone in the wilderness. That was mother, smelling like fresh milk, happy, to herself, in this room.

    Happy? But how and why? Here, a few feet off, was the janitor, the library man, the stranger, his uniform gone, but his face still the face of a man happier at night alone in the deep marble vaults, whispering his broom in the draughty corridors.

    Will watched, wondering why this woman was so happy and this man so sad.

    His father stared deep in the fire, one hand relaxed. Halfcupped in that hand lay a crumpled paper ball.

    Will blinked.

    He remembered the wind blowing the pale handbill skittering in the trees. Now the same colour paper lay crushed, its rococo type hidden, in his father's fingers.

    'Hey!'

    Will stepped into the parlour.

  
 Immediately Mom opened a smile that was like lighting a second fire.

    Dad stricken, looked dismayed, as if caught in a criminal act.

    Will wanted to say, 'Hey, what'd you think of the handbill. . .?

    But Dad was crammmg the handbill deep in the chair upholstery.

    And mother was leafing the library books.

    'Oh, these are fine, Willy!'

    So Will just stood with Cooger and Dark on his tongue and said:

    'Boy, the wind really flew us home. Streets full of paper blowing.'

    Dad did not flinch at this.

    'Anything new, Dad?'

    Dad's hand still lay tucked in the side of the chair. He lifted a grey, slightly worried, very tired gaze to his son:

    'Stone lion blew off the library steps. Prowling the town now looking for Christians. Won't find any. Got the only one no in captivity here, and she's a good cook.'

    'Bosh,' said Mom.

    Walking upstairs, Will heard what he half expected to hear.

    A soft fluming sigh as something fresh was tossed on the fire. In his mind, he saw Dad standing at the hearth looking down as the paper crinkled to ash:

    '. . .COOGER . . . DARK . . . CARNIVAL . . . WITCH . . . WONDERS. . .'

    He wanted to go back down and stand with Dad hands out, to be warmed by the fire.

    Instead he went slowly up to shut the door of his room.

    Some nights, abed, Will put his ear to the wall to listen, and if his folks talked things that were right, he stayed, and if not right he turned away. If it was about time and passing years or himself or town or just the general inconclusive way God ran the world, he listened warmly, comfortably, secretly, for it was usually Dad talking. He could not often speak with Dad anywhere in the world, inside or out, but this was different. There was a thing in Dad's voice, up, over, down, easy as a hand winging soft in the air like a white bird describing flight pattern, made the ear want to follow and the mind's eye to see.

    And the odd thing in Dad's voice was the sound truth makes being said. The sound of truth, in a wild roving land of city or plain country lies, will spell any boy. Many nights Will drowsed this way, his senses like stopped clocks long before that halfsinging voice was still. Dad's voice was a midnight school, teaching deep fathom hours, and the subject was life.

    So it was this night, Will's eyes shut, head leaned to the cool plaster. At first Dad's voice, a Congo drum, boomed softly, horizons away. Mother's voice, she used her waterbright soprano in the Baptist choir, did not sing, yet sang back replies. Will imagined Dad sprawled talking to the empty ceiling:

    '. . .Will. . .makes me feel so old. . .a man should play baseball with his son. . .'

    'Not necessary,' said the woman's voice, kindly. 'You're a good man.'

    ' - in a bad season. Hell, I was forty when he was born! And you! Who's your daughter? people say. God, when you lie down your thoughts turn to mush. Hell!'

    Will heard the shift of weight as Dad sat up in the dark. A match was being struck, a pipe was being smoked. The wind rattled the windows.

    '. . .man with poster under his arm. . .'

    '. . .carnival. . . ' said his mother's voice, '. . .this late in the year?'

    Will wanted to turn away, but couldn't.

    '. . .most beautiful. . .woman. . .in the world,' Dad's voice murmured.

    Mother laughed softly. 'You know I'm not.'

    No! thought Will, that's from the handbill! Why doesn't Dad tell!!?

    Because, Will answered himself. Something's going on. Oh, something is going on!

    Will saw that paper frolicked in the trees, its words THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, and fever prickled his cheeks. He thought: Jim, the street of the Theatre, the naked people in the stage of that Theatre window, crazy as Chinese opera, darn odd crazy as old Chinese opera, judo, jujitsu, Indian puzzles, and now his father's voice, dreaming off, sad, sadder, saddest, much too much to understand. And suddenly he was scared because Dad wouldn't talk about the handbill he had secretly burned. Will gazed out the window. There! Like a milkweed plume! White paper danced in the air.