Goldenland Past Dark (8 page)

“Poor girl,” she said. “She was not bred for this kind of life.”

Webern shrugged. “She seems to like it okay.”

“Are you certain of that.” Brunhilde smiled. “The day will come, and soon, I think, when our little
eidesche
returns to her rightful place.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know.” Webern nudged the kettle toward the fire with a stick. Some coffee was still leftover from the night before, and once it started to bubble, he refilled his mug.

Brunhilde removed her pince-nez from one pocket of her dressing gown and pulled out a well-worn paperback from the other.
Die Deutsche Katastrophe
. It seemed appropriate to Webern that she spoke a language where they said “die” every other word. He sipped his coffee. Last night almost felt like a dream. Even his hangover was nearly gone, the headache just a dull echo of its former self. But somewhere inside him, the memory still glowed, warm and secret.

In a few minutes, most of the others had joined Webern and Brunhilde at the campfire. Explorer Hank cooked up sausages in a skillet, and Eng, a vegetarian, put his little pot of beans and rice on to boil. Eggs slid into sizzling fat as Vlad and Fydor bickered over who had slept worse, and Enrique mixed the powdered instant coffee with water before he put the kettle back near the flames. Explorer Hank handed Webern a plate of eggs and sausage. Webern hadn’t realized how hungry he was, or how tired. He’d have to get a nap that afternoon before the show. He hoped no one would send him trekking into town.

Webern was about to nod off when Dr. Show came out, wearing his undershirt and suspenders but looking immaculately frightful just the same. His black moustache, glossily waxed, curled at the corners, and his hair, newly slicked back, drew parallel black lines on his scalp. Enrique poured him a mug of coffee as he unfolded his director’s chair and exchanged good mornings with the other performers. Brunhilde gave him a nod, courteous but distant, as though glimpsing a half-forgotten acquaintance across a crowded room.

“You brought the kid back, boss.” Al, who’d just arrived, helped himself to a skillet full of eggs. He jerked his head at Webern. “Good job.”

Schoenberg smiled beatifically. “All in a day’s work.” He sipped his coffee and looked over at Webern. “Have you seen Nepenthe yet this morning, my boy? She was quite concerned, you know. You ought to tell her you’ve returned.”

Webern’s face grew hot. He felt like he should make an announcement, but what would he say? What had even happened last night anyway? Back at his high school, boys had “pinned” the girls they went steady with, but he couldn’t imagine pinning Nepenthe. If they got into a fight, she’d pin him.

“I think she knows,” he mumbled.

“Ah,” said Dr. Schoenberg. Reflexively, he touched the inside of his forearm. He changed the subject: “How are the tigers this morning, Hank?”

“Oh, fine, fine, they’re doing fine. I’m a little worried about that abscess in Freddy’s paw, but other than that—well, and his ear mites . . .”

Dr. Schoenberg gazed down the beach as Hank droned on about the cats. At first, his expression looked content, languid even, but then his dark eyes fixed on something in the distance and he sat up straighter in his chair.

“. . . and Ginger—well, this whole thing with the formula’s been a nightmare, but now that I’m getting her onto solid foods, her constipation . . .” Hank speared another sausage on his fork; he was eating them right out of the skillet.

“Who is that?” Dr. Show interrupted. He pointed down the beach. “Do you know that man?”

Hank looked over his shoulder, and most of the others stood up to look, too. Some distance down the beach, a low-built tank of a man was rolling in their direction.

“He’s back.” Enrique’s words were more like a punctuation mark.

Mars Boulder came into focus slowly, like a face forming in a dream: first his smashed-in nose, then his heavy brow, then the gargoyle grimace of his protruding lower jaw. Al ducked behind a tent—Enrique’s—near the fire, and Brunhilde remained reclining on her pillow, but the others stood frozen. No one tried to run away. Webern felt turned to stone by those oily, heavy-lidded eyes, gazing at him from down the beach.

Mars Boulder stopped a few yards from Dr. Schoenberg, just beyond the tent that Al crouched behind. A sword hung from a scabbard on his right hip. He wore thick leather gloves.

“Why are you here?” Dr. Schoenberg, stepped behind his director’s chair. He looked whiter than Webern had ever seen him—even his lips were pale. “What is your business with us?”

Mars Boulder said nothing.

“What do you want from me?” Dr. Schoenberg glanced around at the others, then added, “I paid for that sword.”

Mars Boulder still didn’t reply. He stepped closer.

“If you have no business here, I must demand you remove yourself from the premises,” Schoenberg cried. He grasped the back of his chair. His moustache trembled. “Will you go? Answer me!”

Mars Boulder didn’t budge. Above him, clouds moved soundlessly.

“I have asked you once.” Dr. Show’s voice, thunderous under the big top, sounded thinner with no walls to hold it. “I will not ask again.” He lifted the chair and shook it threateningly. “Back. Back, I tell you. Back from whence you came!”

Dr. Show hefted the director’s chair into the air and, with a roar, brought it crashing down on Mars Boulder’s head.

Except it never crashed. With an almost inaudible “
shing
!” Boulder drew the sword from his scabbard and sliced through the chair’s canvas seat. The wooden frame folded into jumbled sticks at his feet. Dr. Show leapt back. He glanced wildly at his performers.

“Traitors! Will none of you save me?”

Around the campfire, the circus players held their breath. Wood popped on the fire. Seagulls squabbled down the beach. Mars Boulder touched his blade’s edge with one gloved finger. He tested its weight in his hands. In one graceful move, Brunhilde grasped the handle of Hank’s sausage skillet and cracked it against Mars Boulder’s skull.

Boulder thudded to the ground. He lay there face first, motionless.

“Is he dead?”

“Check his pulse.”

“Should we call the cops?”

No one wanted to go anywhere near him. Brunhilde stood over Boulder and stared down. Finally, she knelt beside him and flipped him over on his back. A crumpled paper fell out of his pocket. For a long moment, they all listened with relief to the snuffled breaths the smashed-in nose made. Brunhilde mopped her brow with the cuff of her dressing gown. Then Hank reached down to pick up the piece of paper that lay beside the unconscious hulk. He held it up. It was their travelling schedule.

Nepenthe came out of her tent then, yawning, in a summer hat adorned with wooden cherries and a white veil. She still had on her butcher boy pyjamas, but she kept her hands hidden in the sleeves.

“What the hell’s happening out here?” she demanded. “I’m trying to get some sleep.”

Fortunately, the day before they’d already taken down the big top and lashed its orange canvas to the back of the jalopy; all that was left was the campsite, and the performers were getting used to tearing down their own tents in a hurry. Within a few clattering, scattershot moments, they were kicking out the fire and pulling the last of the poles from the yielding sand. It was like they’d never been there.

Al wanted to dig a pit and throw Mars Boulder into it before he came to—he figured leaving a knocked-out guy in the ruins of their campsite might draw suspicion. But getting away fast seemed more important to the others, especially Brunhilde.

“Leave him, leave him,” she kept repeating as she circled the prone figure. “We have done damage enough.”

In the end, they compromised: with fistfuls of sea-wet sand, the circus players built a mound over Boulder where he lay, then covered what still showed—his hands, his feet—with a striped beach blanket. When Webern stood over the body, though, something still looked wrong. With quivering fingers, he added a pair of sunglasses and swiped a streak of white greasepaint across the smashed-in nose in place of zinc oxide. It snuffled when he touched it. They left Mars Boulder there, a tourist asleep on the beach.

They also took his sword. Webern was never certain who peeled back those thick, leathery fingers from the jewelled hilt, but when they arrived at the next stop, it was lying in the trunk, alongside its shining twin. This sword was older-looking than the first, bevelled and opaque, its edge dulled by use. Schoenberg, out of bravado or fancy, took to hanging the two blades in his tent, crossed against each other like a coat of arms.

But that was all much later. That hot, sunny afternoon, the circus players sped down the Delaware highways, their bodies tense with acceleration. They didn’t know where they were going, and Dr. Schoenberg, grim and silent behind the wheel, did not seem inclined to tell them. They were off the schedule now, and the world seemed as mapless as the open sea.

Webern sat between Brunhilde and Dr. Show in the Cadillac’s front seat. He hadn’t slept in a day, but despite his exhaustion, or maybe because of it, his mind raced.
Traitors. Will none of you save me?
And Webern had just stood there. What a coward. Even his father had the guts to fight when he was called to. Webern let a bearded lady do his fighting for him. He had to be crazy to think any girl would put up with that, least of all Nepenthe. He thought of what he could do to toughen himself up—do pushups maybe, stub out cigarettes on his arms, take a job as a rodeo clown and wrestle bulls with his bare hands. He made a fist and stared at it there in his lap for a long time.

In the backseat, Vlad and Fydor played a chess match, using only a paper, a pencil, and coordinates they named in confident English—“Knight to b3,” “King to d7”—interspersed with grumbled Russian. They draped their arms around each other’s shoulders, twin icons of manly camaraderie that tapered to a single waist. Fydor was winning their game. Webern wondered what it would be like to face off with someone who was an extension of yourself, whose heart beat in your chest, whose blood quite literally flowed through your veins. He was glad he’d never have to find out. The only person he’d been so connected to was Wags, and he was long gone.

Eng meditated with his back to all of them; his hum filled the car along with the vibrations of the road. It had nearly lulled Webern to sleep when, at long last, Schoenberg finally cleared his throat and spoke.

“Brunhilde, my dear, I hope you know your sang-froid in this matter will not go unrewarded.” He lowered his voice. “I understand our accommodations, of late, have been somewhat modest. Of course, for most of the players they present a marked improvement, but for someone of your valour—and upbringing—”

“Schoenberg,” Brunhilde said stiffly, “I should not have needed to protect you from that man.”

“Of course not, my dear! Of course not. He was a most unsavoury character, and I pray we shan’t meet his like again. But when the danger presented itself—well! You rose to the occasion like the true Valkyrie you are.”

“No.” Brunhilde tugged on her gold locket. The chain pressed deep into the flesh of her neck. “Your quarrel with him is your own. I never should have intervened.”

“Nevertheless.” Dr. Show coughed. He plucked at his bow tie. “You must accept my gratitude.”

Brunhilde drummed her fingers on the lid of her suitcase. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded flat, almost as if she were reciting words learned by rote.

“You Americans. Your memories are so short. To you, he is buried forever in the sand. But the sand will blow away, and still he will remain. His kind does not forget what they are owed, Schoenberg. If you do not come to understand that, he will destroy you.”

Late that afternoon, they stopped at a diner, as usual. Nepenthe, still in pyjamas, grabbed Webern by the wrist before he’d even gotten out of the Cadillac door. Her hand felt hot, the scales crumbly. She’d been roasting in the red trailer.

“What happened, Bernie?” she whispered. “You look awful. I mean—are you okay?”

Webern shook his head. He was so tired his eyes felt like blisters. He stepped out onto the parking lot; Nepenthe caught him just as his knees started to buckle.