He could not tell her how he was.
Chapter 15
THE SUN rose yellow as a lemon.
The sky was round and blue.
The birds looped clear water songs in the air.
Will and Jim leaned from their windows.
Nothing had changed.
Except the look in Jim's eyes.
"Last night ..." said Will. "Did or didn't it happen?"
They both gazed toward the far meadows.
The air was sweet as syrup. They could find no shadows, anywhere, even under trees.
"Six minutes!" cried Jim.
"Five!"
Four minutes later, corn flakes lurching in their stomachs, they frisked the leaves to a fine red dust going out of town.
With a wild flutter of breath, they raised their eyes from the earth they had been treading.
And the carnival was there.
"Hey ..."
For the tents were lemon like the sun, brass like wheat fields a few weeks ago. Flags and banners bright as blue-birds snapped above lion-colored canvas. From booths painted cotton-candy colors, fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed.
"It's just a plain old carnival," said Will.
"Like heck," said Jim. "We weren't blind last night. Come on!"
They marched one hundred yards straight on and deep into the midway. And the deeper they went, the more obvious it became they would find no night men cat-treading balloon shadow while strange tents plumed like thunder clouds. Instead, close up, the carnival was mildewed rope, moth-eaten canvas, rain-worn, sun-bleached tinsel. The side show paintings, hung like sad albatrosses on their poles, flapped and let fall flakes of ancient paint, shivering and at the same time revealing the unwondrous wonders of a thin man, fat man, needle-head, tattooed man, hula dancer....
They prowled on but found no mysterious midnight spheres of evil gas tied by mysterious Oriental knots to daggers plunged in dark earth, no maniac ticket takers bent on terrible revenges. The calliope by the ticket booth neither screamed deaths nor hummed idiot songs to itself. The train? Pulled off on a spur in the warming grass, it was old, yes, and welded tight with rust, but it looked like a titanic magnet that had collected to itself, from locomotive boneyards across three continents, drive shafts, fly-wheels, smoke stacks, and hand-me-down second-rate nightmares. It did not cut a black and mortuary silhouette. It asked permission but to lie dead in autumn strewings, so much tired steam and iron gun-powder blowing away.
"Jim! Will!"
Here came Miss Foley, their seventh-grade schoolteacher, along the midway, all smiles.
"Boys," she said, "what's wrong? You look as if you lost something."
"Well," said Will, "last night, did you hear that calliope--"
"Calliope? No--"
"Then why're you out here so early, Miss Foley?" asked Jim.
"I love carnivals," said Miss Foley, a little woman lost somewhere in her gray fifties, beaming around. "I'll buy hot dogs and you eat while I look for my fool nephew. You seen him?"
"Nephew?"