Everyone, after all, was chasing that unattainable rabbit.
19 Uncle Palaver's Final Act
. I was tired and achy the next day. The bunk was cramped and uncomfortable for me because I had tossed and turned all night, apparently. I went through the same breakfast illusion with Uncle Palaver. He made the oatmeal and took it to Destiny in the bedroom. I drank more coffee and found I was too hungry to eat just my plain eggs. I ravished the Danish that was still there.
Just as before. Uncle Palaver seemed to have no hangover from his night of continuous drinking. He took out the Destiny doll in the afternoon, and he and I practiced with the transmitter until he was satisfied I could perform the tricks well enough for him to entrust it to me.
I had a chance to look at the life-size puppet more closely, and I was impressed with the detailed attention to her face, right down to a small birthmark right under her lower lip. Why would that have mattered? Who could possibly see such a thing from the audience? Uncle Palaver was able to have the doll in a standing position as well as sitting, and for the first time. I wondered if some of the publicity shots and posters pictures he had sent us weren't taken of him and the doll and not the real Destiny.
I avoided going to the theater and confronting Russell for as long as I could, but when it was time for the performance. I had to accompany Uncle Palaver. Russell was there backstage. He didn't say anything to me. He just smiled, wagged his finger, and walked off to give someone orders. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't going to say anything to Uncle Palaver.
He ran through the same performance, only at the end, with me now activating the doll, he made a far more dramatic exit. Heads turned in surprised when he charged up the aisle and out the front door, slamming it behind him. He glanced surreptitiously at me as he flew by, but everyone's attention was centered on him, and then, in confusion, they turned to the doll. He had made a point of my counting to at least sixty. The audience actually began to stir restlessly. I could see it in their faces. They were all wondering what was going on. How long were they supposed to sit there? When would he return?
Then I pressed the first button. and Destiny came to life. To me, the applause that followed seemed louder and more vigorous than the applause the night before. Uncle Palaver returned and walked down the aisle bowing. He smiled my way, and I knew I had done well.
Afterward, as we were packing up. Russell approached from behind me and whispered, "I saw what you two did. Sneaky." He laughed at my surprise. "Stay cool," he said. "Maybe when you return, if you return, you'll be more experienced."
In what? I thought. Destroying myself? No, thank you. Russell Blackman,
We got everything settled in the motor home. and Uncle Palaver decided he wanted to get under way as soon as possible.
"You did real good. April, real good," he told me. "I might start thinking of other ways to bring you into the show."
"Really? I'd love that." I told him, and decided I would get my weight down so I could fit into that silver-sequined suit soon.
He went to his cabinet and took out his bottle of bourbon. After a quick swig, he said he was going to drive most of the night. He saw my eyes go to the bottle of whiskey.
"Don't you worry about it. I don't drink much when I drive. Just one to get me calm is enough."
We had a number of performances on the schedule that would take us to Northern California, eventually reaching the Napa Valley area by late spring. The distances between venues were not great, but he said he liked to have time to relax before a show. I went to bed and let the movement of the motor home rock me to sleep. Sometime before morning, I woke and realized he had parked the motor home in another supermarket parking lot. I saw the light was still on in the living room and could just make out the bottle on the table and his legs on the sofa. The bottle looked nearly empty.
How long before I had arrived had he been drinking like this? I wondered. How long could he continue to drink so much every night? I was afraid to be critical of anything, but when I woke up again and saw him hovering over a cup of coffee, I wondered aloud if he were suffering from a hangover.
He laughed. "Naw, never do. I don't drink that much," he said. "Just enough to take the edge off. Don't worry yourself. I'm fine."
Nevertheless, before we left the area the next day, he made sure to buy himself six more bottles of bourbon and store them in the closet. During the days, he taught me some of his tricks, especially the simpler sleight-of-hand ones such as the self-tying
handkerchief, the cut and restored string, the coin through an elbow, and something he called the Houdini Rubber Band Escape, which made it look as if he caused a rubber band to jump magically from his forefinger and index finger to the last two on his hand, and then he showed me the vanishing knot trick using a handkerchief. Finally, he showed me how to do one he had performed often at our house, delighting even Daddy. It was called the Unbreakable Match. He would put a wooden match into a handkerchief, ask me or Daddy to break it, and after we had, he pronounced some gibberish, and, voila, the match was whole again. The secret to this was simply to have two wooden matches, one concealed in the hem of the handkerchief.
These weren't tricks he used onstage, but he explained that from time to time, he performed at conventions or was part of a group of entertainers hired for elaborate parties. The tricks, as old and as simple as they were, were still favorites, he said.
It took me a while to get them all, but they were just illusions and, eventually, easy for me to do. I had mixed emotions about it as he showed me the secrets or the techniques. When I was little. I loved believing in magic and in Uncle Palaver's powers. Now that he was revealing that it was all fake in one way or another. I felt disappointment slipping in under my sense of accomplishment.
In the end, there was no magic, no real wondrous events after all. Everything was simply an illusion. Uncle Palaver was falling off the pedestal on which I had placed him. One part of me clung to the idea that he was still exceptional. He had a talent for performing all the illusions well, and that was something of an accomplishment, but another part of me, perhaps the dreamer, the child in me, suddenly saw him as a phony, a liar, a deceiver. It was all false, untrue. I suppose the closest comparison I could make was when I, or any child, suddenly realized Santa Claus was a fiction.
"You'd better watch yourself. You'd better not shout," was no longer a viable warning. Gifts were just gifts. Wishes didn't really matter. Yet, ironically perhaps, when we became older and were parents, all of us would tell our own children the same stories, the same fantasies. Somehow, inside us, we knew that. for a while at least, it was precious and important to believe in fairy tales.
Watching Uncle Palaver drink himself to sleep every night, knowing the secret behind every illusion he performed on the stage, pushing the transmitter buttons, and fooling the audience myself into believing something wondrous had just occurred gradually hardened and saddened me I gazed into the faces of the various audiences we faced night after night on the road. Grown-ups and children alike were so desperate to believe, to escape from the world in which they were living. I could almost hear them thinking. Please, do something to help me believe there is more than this, so I can go home tonight dreaming and remembering my childhood faiths.
In a true sense. Uncle Palaver was able to do that for them. April, respect and admire him for that, I thought and urged my inner self. However, there was another voice, bitter, laughing, angry, warning me to open my eves and stop fooling myself. The journey you're on has an end, too, this voice said, and one day, you have to look. into the mirror and see who you really are and realize -what you're really doing with your life. This isn't the medicine -wheel, and it isn't the wheel of fortune, April. It's just a wheel. You're only going in circles and getting nowhere.
At one of our stops, I sent Brenda a letter with the address Uncle Palaver had given me for her to send whatever she was supposed to send me. Things were forwarded from there to our stops in advance. The second check that arrived had a letter with it. I had been on the road with Uncle Palaver for months now. I had lost some weight and had tried on the sequin suit. Celia had been right about one thing: my body was developing rapidly, almost as if it had just remembered it should. The suit fit. but I didn't like the way my thighs still bulged. so I decided to keep it in the closet for a while longer and wait before accompanying Uncle Palaver onstage to hand him tricks or crawl into that magic box.
The letter from Brenda was short but left me feeling sad for her. I went up into my bunk and just looked at her handwriting on the envelope. Finally. I had the nerve to open and read it.
.
Dear April,