"Oh, shut up!"
"You mad at me, Will?"
"No, it's just--get it!"
The wind had torn 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 darn-sounding 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 sulphur-skinned devil-man 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 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 Theater, 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 roof where the lightning rod 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.
Chapter 8
WILL OPENED the door and shut it again. Quietly, this time.
"That's better," said his mother's voice.