Other small tents, caped figures in the meadow, fell down at the wind's command.
Then at last, the Freak Tent, the great melancholy mothering reptile bird, after a moment of indecision, sucked in a Niagara of blizzard air, broke loose three hundred hempen snakes, crack-rattled its black side-poles so they fell like teeth from a cyclopean jaw, slammed the air with acres of moldered wing as if trying to kite away but, earth-tethered, must succumb to plain and most simple gravity, must be crushed by its own locked bulk.
Now this greatest tent staled out hot raw breaths of earth, confetti that was ancient when the canals of Venice were not yet staked, and wafts of pink cotton candy like tired feather boas. In rushing downfalls, the tent shed skin; grieved, soughed as flesh fell away until at last the tall museum timbers at the spine of the discarded monster dropped with three cannon roars.
The calliope simmered, moronic with wind.
The train stood, an abandoned toy, in a field.
The freak oil paintings clapped hands high on the last standing pennant poles, then plummeted to earth.
The Skeleton, the only strange one left, bent to pick up the body of the porcelain boy-who-was-Mr.-Dark. He moved away into the fields.
Will, in a swift moment, saw the thin man and his burden go over a hill among all the footprints of the vanished carnival race.
Will's face shadowed this way, then that, pulled by the swift concussions, the tumults, the deaths, the fleeing away of souls. Cooger, Dark, Skeleton, Dwarf-who-was-Lightning-Rod-Salesman, don't run, come back! Miss Foley, where are you? Mr. Crosetti! it's over! Be still! Quiet! It's all right. Come back, come back!
But the wind was blowing their footprints out of the grass and they might run forever now trying to outflee themselves.
So Will turned back astride Jim and pushed the chest and let go, pushed and let go, then, trembling, touched his dear friend's cheek.
"Jim ...?"
But Jim was cold as spaded earth.
Chapter 54
BENEATH THE cold was a fugitive warmness, in the white skin lay some small color, but when Will felt Jim's wrist there was nothing and when he put his ear to the chest there was nothing.
"He's dead!"
Charles Halloway came to his son and his son's friend and knelt down to touch the quiet throat, the unstirred rib cage.
"No." Puzzled. "Not quite ..."
"Dead!"
The tears burst from Will's eyes. But then, as swiftly, he felt himself knocked, struck, shaken.
"Stop that!" cried his father. "You want to save him?!"
"It's too late, oh, Dad!"
"Shut up! Listen!"
But Will wept.
And again his father hauled off and hit him. Once on the left cheek. Once on the right cheek, hard.
All the tears in him were knocked flying; there were no more.
"Will!" His father savagely jabbed a finger at him and at Jim. "Damn it, Willy, all this, all these, Mr. Dark and his sort, they like crying, my God, they love tears! Jesus God, the more you bawl, the more they drink the salt off your chin. Wail and they suck your breath like cats. Get up! Get off your knees, damn it! Jump around! Whoop and holler! You hear! Shout, Will, sing, but most of all laugh, you got that, laugh!"
"I can't!"
"You must! It's all we got. I know! In the library! The Witch ran, my God, how she ran! I shot her dead with it. A single smile, Willy, the night people can't stand it. The sun's there. They hate the sun. We can't take them seriously, Will!"
"But--"