Dark Carnival (7 page)

    Gramps looked up at the jar, cleared his throat and said,

    'Why, I never noticed so definite before. It's got
blue
eyes.'

    'It always had blue eyes,' said Granny Carnation.

    'No,' whined Gramps. 'No, it didn't. They was brown last time we was here.' He blinked upwards. 'And another thing — it's got brown hair. Didn't have brown hair
before!
'

    'Yes, yes, it did,' sighed Mrs. Tridden.

    'No, it didn't!'

    'Yes, it did!'

    Tom Carmody, shivering in the summer night, staring in at the jar. Charlie, glancing up at it, rolling a cigarette, casually, at peace and calm, very certain of his life and thoughts. Tom Carmody, alone, seeing things about the jar he never saw before.
Everybody
seeing what they wanted to see; all thoughts running in a fall of quick rain:

    'My baby! My little baby!' screamed the thought of Mrs. Tridden.

    'A brain!' thought Gramps.

    The coloured man jigged his fingers. 'Middibamboo Mama!'

    A fisherman pursed his lips. 'Jellyfish!'

    'Kitten! Here kittie, kittie, kittie!' the thoughts drowned clawing in Juke's skull. 'Kitten!'

    'Everything and anything!' shrilled Granny's weazened thought. 'The night, the swamp, the death, the pallid moist things of the sea!'

    Silence, and then Gramps said, 'I wonder. Wonder if it's a he — or a she — or just a plain old
it
?'

    Charlie danced up, satisfied, tamping his cigarette, shaping it to his mouth. Then he looked at Tom Carmody, who would never smile again, in the door. 'I reckon we'll never know. Yeah, I reckon we won't.' Charlie smiled.

    It was just one of those things they kept in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you. . .

THEY cut the sky down to my size and threw it over the Michigan Lake, put some kids yelling on yellow sand with bouncing balls, a gull or two, a criticizing parent, and me breaking out of a wet wave, finding this world very bleary and moist.

    I ran up on the beach.

    Mamma swabbed me with a furry towel. 'Stand there and dry,' she said.

    I stood there, watching the sun take away the water beads on my arms. I replaced them with goose-pimples.

    'My, there's a wind,' said Mamma. 'Put on your sweater.'

    'Wait'll I watch my goose-bumps,' I said.

    'Harold,' said Mamma.

    I put the sweater on and watched the waves come up and fall down on the beach. But not clumsily. On purpose, with a green sort of elegance. Even a drunken man could not collapse with such elegance as those waves.

    It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason. The beach was so long and lonely with only about six people on it. The kids quit bouncing the ball because somehow the wind made them sad, too, whistling the way it did, and the kids sat down and felt autumn come along the endless shore.

    All of the hot-dog stands were boarded up with strips of golden planking, sealing in all the mustard, onion, meat odours of the long, joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins. One by one the places slammed their covers down, padlocked their doors, and the wind came and touched the sand, blowing away all of the million footprints of July and August. It got so that now, in September, there was nothing but the mark of my rubber tennis shoes and Donald and Delaus Schabold's feet, down by the water curve.

    Sand blew up in curtains on the sidewalks, and the merry-go-round was hidden with canvas, all of the horses frozen in mid-air on their brass poles, showing teeth, galloping on. With only the wind for music, slipping through canvas.

    I stood there. Everyone else was in school. I was not. Tomorrow I would be on my way west across the United States on a train. Mom and I had come to the beach for one last brief moment.

    There was something about the loneliness that made me want to get away by myself. 'Mamma, I want to run up the beach aways,' I said.

    'All right, but hurry back, and don't go near the water.'

    I ran. Sand spun under me and the wind lifted me. You know how it is, running, arms out so you feel veils from your fingers, caused by wind. Like wings.

    Mamma withdrew into the distance, sitting. Soon she was only a brown speck and I was all alone.

    Being alone is a newness to a twelve-year-old child. He is so used to people about. The only way he can be alone is in his mind. There are so many real people around, telling children what and how to do, that a boy has to run off down a beach, even if it's only in his head, to get by himself in his own world, with his own miniature values.

    So now I was really alone.

    I went down to the water and let it cool up to my stomach. Always before, with the crowd, I hadn't dared to look, to come to this spot and search around in the water and call a certain name. But now —  

    Water is like a magician. Sawing you in half. It feels as if you were cut half in two, part of you, the lower part, sugar, melting, dissolving away. Cool water, and once in a while a very elegantly stumbling wave that fell with a flourish of lace.

    I called her name. A dozen times I called it.

    'Tally! Tally! Oh, Tally!'

    Funny, but you really expect answers to your calling when you are young. You feel that whatever you may think can be real. And sometimes maybe that is not so wrong.

    I thought of Tally, swimming out into the water last May, with her pigtails trailing, blonde. She went laughing, and the sun was on her small twelve-year-old shoulders. I thought of the water settling quiet, of the life-guard leaping into it, of Tally's mother screaming, and of how Tally never came out. . .

    The life-guard tried to persuade her to come out, but she did not. He came back with only bits of waterweed in his big-knuckled fingers, and Tally was gone. She would not sit across from me at school any longer, or chase indoor balls on the brick streets on summer nights. She had gone too far out, and the lake would not let her return.

    And now in the lonely autumn when the sky was huge and the water was huge and the beach was so very long, I had come down for the last time, alone.

    I called her name over and over. Tally, oh, Tally!

    The wind blew so very softly over my ears, the way wind blows over the mouths of sea-shells to set them whispering. The water rose, embraced my chest, then my knees, up and down, one way and another, sucking under my heels.

    'Tally! Come back, Tally!'

    I was only twelve. But I know how much I loved her. It was that love that comes before all significance of body and morals. It was that love that is no more bad than wind and sea and sand lying side by side forever. It was made of all the warm long days together at the beach, and the humming quiet days of droning education at the school. All the long autumn days of the years past when I had carried her books home from school.

    Tally!

    I called her name for the last time. I shivered. I felt water on my face and did not know how it got there. The waves had not splashed that high.

    Turning, I retreated to the sand and stood there for half an hour, hoping for one glimpse, one sign, one little bit of Tally to remember. Then, I knelt and built a sandcastle, shaping it fine, building it as Tally and I had often built so many of them. But this time, I only built half of it. Then I got up.

    'Tally, if you hear me, come in and build the rest.'

    I walked off towards that far away speck that was Mamma. The water came in, blended the sandcastle circle by circle, mashing it down little by little into the original smoothness.

    Silently, I walked along the shore.

    Far away, a merry-go-round jangled faintly, but it was only the wind.

    The next day, I went away on the train.

    A train has a poor memory; it soon puts all behind it. It forgets the cornlands of Illinois, the rivers of childhood, the bridges, the lakes, the valleys, the cottages, the hurts and the joys. It spreads them out behind and they drop behind a horizon.

    I lengthened my bones, put flesh on them, changed my young mind for an older one, threw away clothes as they no longer fitted, shifted from grammar to high-school, to college books, to law books. And then there was a young woman in Sacramento. I knew her for a time, and we were married.

    I continued my law study. By the time I was twenty-two, I had almost forgotten what the East was like.

    Margaret suggested that our delayed honeymoon be taken back in that direction.

    Like a memory, a train works both ways. A train can bring rushing back all those things you left behind so many years before.

    Lake Bluff, population 10,000, came up over the sky. Margaret looked so handsome in her fine new clothes. She watched me as I felt my old world gather me back into its living. She held my arm as the train slid into Bluff Station and our baggage was escorted out.

    So many years, and the things they do to people's faces and bodies. When we walked through the town together I saw no one I recognized. There were faces with echoes in them. Echoes of hikes on ravine trails. Faces with small laughter in them from closed grammar schools and swinging on metal-linked swings and going up and down on teeter-totters. But I didn't speak. I walked and looked and filled up inside with all those memories, like leaves stacked for autumn burning.

    We stayed on two weeks in all, revisiting all the places together. The days were happy. I thought I loved Margaret well. At least I thought I did.

    It was on one of the last days that we walked down by the shore. It was not quite as late in the year as that day so many years before, but the first evidences of desertion were coming upon the beach. People were thinning out, several of the hot-dog stands had been shuttered and nailed, and the wind, as always, waited there to sing for us.

    I almost saw Mamma sitting on the sand as she used to sit. I had that feeling again of wanting to be alone. But I could not force myself to speak of this to Margaret. I only held on to her and waited.

    It got late in the day. Most of the children had gone home and only a few men and women remained basking in the windy sun.

    The life-guard boat pulled up on the shore. The life-guard stepped out of it, slowly, with something in his arms.

    I froze there. I held my breath and I felt small, only twelve years old, very little, very infinitesimal and afraid. The wind howled. I could not see Margaret. I could see only the beach, the life-guard slowly emerging from the boat with a grey sack in his hands, not very heavy, and his face almost as grey and lined.

    'Stay here, Margaret,' I said. I don't know why I said it.

    'But, why?'

    'Just stay here, that's all — '

    I walked slowly down the sand to where the life-guard stood. He looked at me.

    'What is it?' I asked.

    The life-guard kept looking at me for a long time and he couldn't speak. He put the grey sack down on the sand, and water whispered wet up around it and went back.

    'What is it?' I insisted.

    'She's dead,' said the life-guard, quietly.

    I waited.

    'Funny,' he said, softly. 'Funniest thing I ever saw. She's been dead. A long time.'

    I repeated his words.

    He nodded. 'Ten years, I'd say. There haven't been any children drowned here
this
year. There were twelve children drowned here since 1933, but we recovered all of them before a few hours had passed. All except one, I remember. This body here, why it must be ten years in the water. It's not — pleasant.'

    I stared at the grey sack in his arms. 'Open it,' I said. I don't know why I said it. The wind was louder.

    He fumbled with the sack. 'The way I know it's a little girl, is because she's still wearing a locket. There's nothing much else to tell by — '

    'Hurry, man,
open it!
' I cried.

    'I better not do that,' he said. Then perhaps he saw the way my face must have looked. 'She was such a
little
girl — '

    He opened it only part way. That was enough.

    The beach was deserted. There was only the sky and the wind and the water and the autumn coming on lonely. I looked down at her there.

    I said something over and over. A name. The life-guard looked at me. 'Where did you find her?' I asked.

    'Down the beach, that way, in the shallow water. It's a long long time for her, ain't it?'

    I shook my head.

    'Yes, it is. Oh God, yes it is.'

    I thought: people grow. I have grown. But she has not changed. She is still small. She is still young. Death does not permit growth or change. She still has golden hair. She will be forever young and I will love her forever, oh God, I will love her forever.

    The life-guard tied up the sack again.

    Down the beach, a few moments later, I walked by myself. I stopped, and looked down at something. This is where the lifeguard found her, I said to myself.

    There, at the water's edge, lay a sandcastle, only half-built. Just like Tally and I used to build them. She half and I half.

    I looked at it, I knelt beside the sandcastle and saw the little prints of feet coming in from the lake and going back out to the lake again and not ever returning.

    Then — I knew.

    'I'll help you to finish it,' I said.

    I did. I built the rest of it up very slowly, then I arose and turned away and walked off, so as not to watch it crumble in the waves, as all things crumble.

    I walked back up the beach to where a strange woman named Margaret was waiting for me, smiling. . .

 WELL, first of all there was the long trip, and the dust poking up inside her thin nostrils, and Walter, her Oklahoma husband, swaying his lean carcass in their model-T Ford, so sure of himself it made her want to spit; then they got into this big brick town that was strange as old sin, and hunted up a landlord. The landlord took them to a small room and unlocked the door.

    There in the middle of the simple room sat the tombstone.

    Leota's eyes got a wise look, and immediately she pretended to gasp, and thoughts skipped through her mind in devilish quickness. Her superstitions were something Walter had never been able to touch or take away from her. She gasped, drew back, and Walter stared at her with his droopy eyelids hanging over his shiny grey eyes.

    'No, no,' cried Leota, definitely. 'I'm not moving in any room with any dead man!'

    'Leota!' said her husband.

    'What do you mean?' wondered the landlord. 'Madam, you don't — '

    Leota smiled inwardly. Of course she didn't really believe, but this was her only weapon against her Oklahoma man, so — 'I mean that I won't sleep in no room with no corpse. Get him out of here!'

    Walter gazed at the sagging bed wearily, and this gave Leota pleasure, to be able to frustrate him. Yes, indeed, superstitions were handy things. She heard the landlord saying, 'This tombstone is the very finest grey marble. It belongs to Mr. Whetmore.'

    'The name carved on the stone is WHITE,' observed Leota coldly.

    'Certainly. That's the man's name for whom the stone was carved.'

    'And is he dead?' asked Leota, waiting.

    The landlord nodded.

    'There, you
see!
' cried Leota. Walter groaned a groan which meant he was not stirring another inch looking for a room. 'It smells like a cemetery in here,' said Leota, watching Walter's eyes get hot and flinty. The landlord explained:

    'Mr. Whetmore, the former tenant of this room, was an apprentice marble-cutter, this was his first job, he used to tap on it with a chisel every night from seven until ten.'

    'Well — ' Leota glanced swiftly around to find Mr. Whetmore. 'Where is he? Did he die, too?' She enjoyed this game.

    'No, he discouraged himself and quit cutting this stone to work in an envelope factory.'

    'Why?'

    'He made a mistake.' The landlord tapped the marble lettering. 'WHITE is the name here. Spelled wrong. Should be WHYTE, with a Y instead of an I. Poor Mr. Whetmore. Inferiority complex. Gave up at the least little mistake and scuttled off.'

    'I'll be damned,' said Walter, shuffling into the room and unpacking the rusty-brown suitcases, his back to Leota. The landlord liked to tell the rest of the story:

    'Yes, Mr. Whetmore gave up easily. To show you how touchy he was, he'd percolate coffee mornings, and if he spilled a tea-spoonful it was a catastrophe — he'd throw it all away and not drink coffee for days! Think of that! He got very sad when he made errors. If he put his left shoe on first, instead of his right, he'd quit trying and walk barefooted for ten or twelve hours, on cold mornings, even. Or if someone spelled his name wrong on his letters, he'd replace them in the mail-box marked NO SUCH PERSON LIVING HERE. Oh, he was a great one, was Mr. Whetmore!'

    'That don't paddle us no further up-crick,' pursued Leota grimly. 'Walter, what're you commencing?'

    'Hanging your silk dress in this closet; the red one.'

    'Stop hanging, we're not staying.'

    The landlord blew out his breath, not understanding how a woman could grow so dumb. 'I'll explain once more. Mr. Whetmore did his homework here; he hired a truck which carried this tombstone here one day while I was out shopping for a turkey at the grocery, and when I walked back — tap-tap-tap — I heard it all the way downstairs — Mr. Whetmore had started chipping the marble. And he was so proud I didn't dare complain. But he was so awful proud he made a spelling mistake and now he ran off without a word, his rent is paid all the way till Tuesday, but he didn't want a refund, and now I've got some truckers with a hoist who'll come up first thing in the morning. You won't mind sleeping here one night with it, now will you? Of course not.'

    The husband nodded. 'You understand, Leota? Ain't no dead man under that rug.' He sounded so superior, she wanted to kick him.

    She didn't believe him, and she stiffened. She poked a finger at the landlord. '
You
want your money. And you, Walter, you want a bed to drop your bones on. Both of you are lying from the word ‘go'!'

    The Oklahoma man paid the landlord his money tiredly, with Leota tonguing him. The landlord ignored her as if she were invisible, said good night and she cried 'Liar!' after him as he shut the door and left them alone. Her husband undressed and got into bed and said, 'Don't stand there staring at the tombstone, turn out the light. We been travelling four days and I'm bushed.'

    Her tight criss-crossed arms began to quiver over her thin breasts. 'None of the three of us,' she said, nodding at the stone, 'will get any sleep.'

    Twenty minutes later, disturbed by the various sounds and movements, the Oklahoma man unveiled his vulture's face from the bed-sheets, blinking stupidly. 'Leota, you still up? I said, a long time ago, for you to switch off the light and come sleep! What are you doing there?'

    It was quite evident what she was about. Crawling on rough hands and knees, she placed a jar of fresh-cut red, white and pink geraniums beside the headstone, and another tin-can of new-cut roses at the foot of the imagined grave. A pair of shears lay on the floor, dewy with having snipped flowers in the night outside a moment before.

    Now she briskly whisked the colourful linoleum and the worn rug with a midget whisk broom, praying so her husband couldn't hear the words, but just the murmur. When she rose up, she stepped across the grave carefully so as not to defile the buried one, and in crossing the room she skirted far around the spot, saying 'There, that's done,' as she darkened the room and laid herself out on the whining springs which sang in tune with her husband who now asked, 'What in the Lord's name!' and she replied, looking at the dark around her, 'No man's going to rest easy with strangers sleeping right atop him. I made amends with him, flowered his bed so he won't stand around rubbing his bones together late tonight.'

    Her husband looked at the place she occupied in the dark, and couldn't think of anything good enough to say, so he just swore, groaned, and sank down into sleeping.

    Not half an hour later, she grabbed his elbow and turned him so she could whisper swiftly, fearfully into one of his ears, like a person calling into a cave: 'Walter!' she cried. 'Wake up, wake up!' She intended doing this all night, if need be, to spoil his superior kind of slumber.

    He struggled with her. 'What's wrong?'

    'Mr. White! Mr. White! He's starting to haunt us!'

    'Oh, go to sleep!'

    'I'm not fibbing! Listen to him!'

    The Oklahoma man listened. From under the linoleum, sounding about six feet or so down, muffled, came a man's sorrowful talking. Not a word came through clearly, just a sort of sad mourning.

    The Oklahama man sat up in bed. Feeling his movement, Leota hissed, 'You heard, you heard?' excitedly. The Oklahoma man put his feet on the cold linoleum. The voice below changed into a falsetto. Leota began to sob. 'Shut up, so I can hear,' demanded her husband, angrily. Then, in the heart-beating quiet, he bent his ear to the floor and Leota cried, 'Don't tip over the flowers!' and he cried, 'Shut up!' and again listened, tensed. Then he spat out an oath and rolled back under the covers. 'It's only the man downstairs,' he muttered.

    'That's what I mean. Mr. White!'

    'No, not Mr. White. We're on the second floor of an apartment house, and we got neighbours down under. Listen.' The falsetto downstairs talked. 'That's the man's wife. She's probably telling him not to look at another man's wife! Both of them probably drunk.'

    'You're lying!' insisted Leota. 'Acting brave when you're really trembling fit to shake the bed down. It's a haunt, I tell you, and he's talking in voices, like Gran'ma Hanlon used to do, rising up in her church pew and making queer tongues all mixed like a black man, an Irishman, two women and tree frogs, caught in her craw! That dead man, Mr. White, hates us for moving in with him tonight, I tell you! Listen!'

    As if to back her up, the voices downstairs talked louder. The Oklahoma man lay on his elbows, shaking his head hopelessly, wanting to laugh, but too tired.

    Something crashed.

    'He's stirring in his coffin!' shrieked Leota. 'He's mad! We got to move outa here, Walter, or we'll be found dead tomorrow!'

    More crashes, more bangs, more voices. Then, silence. Followed by a movement of feet in the air over their heads.

    Leota whimpered. 'He's free of his tomb! Forced his way out and he's tromping the air over our heads!'

    By this time, the Oklahoma man had his clothing on. Beside the bed, he put on his boots. 'This building's three floors high,' he said, tucking in his shirt. 'We got neighbours overhead who just come home.' To Leota's weeping he had this to say, 'Come on. I'm taking you upstairs to meet them people. That'll prove who they are. Then we'll walk downstairs to the first floor and talk to that drunkard and his wife. Get up, Leota.'

    Someone knocked on the door.

    Leota squealed and rolled over and over making a quilted mummy of herself. 'He's in his tomb again, rapping to get out!'

    The Oklahoma man switched on the lights and unlocked the door. A very jubilant little man in a dark suit, with wild blue eyes, wrinkles, grey hair and thick glasses danced in.

    'Sorry, sorry,' declared the little man. 'I'm Mr. Whetmore. I went away. Now I'm back. I've had the most astonishing stroke of luck. Yes, I have. Is my tombstone still here?' He looked at the stone a moment before he saw it. 'Ah, yes, yes, it is! Oh, hello.' He saw Leota peering from many layers of blanket. 'I've some men with a roller-truck, and, if you don't mind, we'll move the tombstone out of here, this very moment. It'll only take a minute.'

    The husband laughed with gratitude. 'Glad to get rid of the damned thing. Wheel her out!'

    Mr. Whetmore directed two brawny workmen into the room. He was almost breathless with anticipation. 'The most amazing thing. This morning I was lost, beaten, dejected — but a miracle happened.' The tombstone was loaded on to a small coaster truck. 'Just an hour ago, I heard, by chance, of a Mr. White who had just died of pneumonia. A Mr. White, mind you, who spells his name with an I instead of a Y. I have just contacted his wife, and she is delighted that the stone is all prepared. And Mr. White not cold more than sixty minutes, and spelling his name with an I, just think of it. Oh, I'm so happy!'

    The tombstone, on its truck, rolled from the room, while Mr. Whetmore and the Oklahoma man laughed, shook hands, and Leota watched with suspicion as the commotion came to an end. 'Well, that's now all over,' grinned her husband as he closed the door on Mr. Whetmore, and began throwing the canned flowers into the sink and dropping the tin cans into a waste-basket. In the dark, he climbed into bed again, oblivious to her deep and solemn silence. She said not a word for a long while, but just lay there, alone-feeling. She felt him adjust the blankets with a sigh. 'Now we can sleep. The damn old thing's took away. It's only ten-thirty. Plenty of time for sleep.' How he enjoyed spoiling her fun.

    Leota was about to speak when a rapping came from down below again. 'There! There!' she cried, triumphantly, holding her husband. 'There it is again, the noises, like I said. Hear them!'

    Her husband knotted his fists and clenched his teeth. 'How many times must I explain. Do I have to kick you in the head to make you understand, woman! Let me alone. There's nothing — '

    'Listen, listen, oh, listen,' she begged in a whisper.

    They listened in the square darkness.

    A rapping on a door came from downstairs.

    A door opened. Muffled and distant and faint, a woman's voice said, sadly, 'Oh, it's you, Mr. Whetmore.'

    And deep down in the darkness underneath the suddenly shivering bed of Leota and her Oklahoma husband, Mr. Whetmore's voice replied: 'Good evening again, Mrs. White. Here. I brought the stone.'