Made in the U.S.A. (37 page)

A look of alarm crossed Juan’s face. “What is it? Your heart? Blood pressure? Papa, do you have a cancer?”

“No—hell, no! I’m not sick, I’m just old. Worn out. Arthritis, bad eyes, bad balance. Can’t even get a hard-on anymore. Old man’s ailments, that’s all. But it’s enough to let me know that the time’s come to get out of the business. Time to let go of the circus.”

“You can’t be doing that! Remember what you tell Lutie? I was hearing you. You talk to her about the parade of homecoming through town. The people coming out to watch elephants, horses, clowns. The performers in costumes, neighbors clap and waving because they happy to have back the circus.

“You tell to Lutie the circus all you ever been wanting to do, that you be hating to giving it up. You say, ‘A man can’t want more than to do work he loves.’ For you, Papa, that love, that work is circus.”

“What I meant, Juan, is—”

“Oh, I know what you mean ’cause you say to Lutie that ‘Juan the only son I got left.’ You tell to her that ‘the way Juan living ain’t no good, but guess he doing what he wanting to do.’ Bad choice, you thinking. Well, now I thinking bad choice, too.”

“So let me understand what it is you—”

“And you say, ‘Hell, boy, you have no ended up yet.’ So now I start figuring that you be having the right answer. I have no ended up yet. I want to be coming back to circus.”

Ray looked as though he’d just recovered from a knockout—eyes glazed, mouth agape, expression dazed. Finally, he said, “But you told me you couldn’t come back, couldn’t live at the bottom after you’d been at the top.”

“Right! That’s right! But I can train the next one to be making it to the top. Lutie. And I can running the circus for you if you teaching me.”

“Are you sure, son? Sure you’re going to stay with us now?”

“Yes, Papa. Because circus is more than business, more than giving fun to people buying tickets. Circus is family. Circus is tribe. And I am part of our tribe.”

Sometime after ten, the visitors had all cleared out. Mama Sim had gone to bed not long after Ray turned in; Lutie and Fate sat together on the porch swing, with Draco curled up between them, sleeping, her head resting on Lutie’s lap. Juan was stretched out on the porch steps, smoking his last cigarette of the night.

In her pajamas now and with her hair still wet from a long hot shower, Lutie kept the swing moving with her bare feet.

“I just can’t believe I didn’t know you two were spending that much time in the ring barn,” Fate said. “I mean, I’m down at the circus grounds every day.”

“But you and Johnny were having too much fun to be paying attention to us.”

“Well, it was amazing to see you up there on that wire, in the spotlight. I still don’t know how you did that, Lutie.”

“Because she’s the real deal,” Juan said. “Your big sister is an honest-to-
Dios caminante del aire
.”

“What does that mean,
caminante
something?” Fate asked.

“Wind walker.”

“That’s nice,” Lutie said as she rubbed Draco’s head. “Wind walker. Makes me sound like I have some kind of magic powers.”

“I thinking maybe you do,” Juan said.

“So are you saying she’s going to be in the circus, Juan?”

“Why don’t you asking her?” Juan said.

“As long as you’re here, Fate, and as long as Juan is going to stick around to coach me.”

“I’m here to stay,” Juan said.

Lutie said, “Then me, too.”

“That makes three of us,” Fate said.

“Okay, now that’s settled, I’m going to bed. You going with me, Draco?”

Draco opened her eyes to give him a look, then yawned and put her head back on Lutie’s lap.

“That’s some kind of loyal, huh? See you in the morning.”

Juan started for his tent, but when he was only steps away from the porch, Fate yelled, “Watch out!” saving him from stepping into dog droppings.

Juan waved.

“Night, Juan,” Lutie said.

“He’s some great guy,” Fate said as they watched Juan crawl into his tent. “Lutie, did you know that when a dog poops, it attracts a hundred forty-four flies?”

“Get outta here,” she said as she swatted at him. “What’d you do, dingbat? Count ’em?”

“And did you know that houseflies hum in the key of F?”

“Only if they have perfect pitch.”

“Don’t know about that.”

“Gotcha! Finally found something you can’t tell me.” Suddenly, Lutie pointed to the edge of the mowed yard and just beyond, where the weeds had partly taken over.

“What?”

“Fireflies.”

“We been here all this time and you just now noticed them?”

“Guess I wasn’t out here at the right time.”

“They love nights like this. Warm, moon and stars covered with clouds, no outdoor lights. The stage is all theirs.”

“Did you ever see a firefly in Vegas?”

“No decent firefly would ever spend a night in Vegas.”

“Do you remember once when we were living with Beverly? We had twin beds, but you were afraid of the dark, so as soon as she shut the door, you got in bed with me. Beverly wouldn’t let us leave a night-light on, said it ran up her electric bill. So we got out of bed one night, emptied safety pins she kept in a jar, then slipped out the window in our sleepers to catch lightning bugs.”

“You know, Lutie, there’s something familiar about that story.”

“Oh, we stayed out a long time. Caught a zillion of those little bugs.”

“And when we crawled back to bed, that jar of bugs lit up like a forty-watt bulb.”

“But the next morning, we found the jar filled with water. Beverly had come in and drowned all our bugs. She was such a bitch. The only reason she worried about her electric bill was because of the money she spent on gin.”

“Hey,” Fate said, “let’s get a jar—”

“Get two. With lids—”

“And see who can—”

“Catch the most—”

When Fate came trotting from Mama’s shed with two empty lidded jars, Lutie got serious. She made Fate take off his shoes and socks so he wouldn’t have an advantage. And their spoken but abbreviated challenge began. The dew made the grass slick, so now and then one of them would take a tumble, while the other called out, “Two.” Then Lutie stepped on a goathead sticker, which cost her precious moments to extract it.

“Five!” Fate yelled.

On her feet again, Lutie made a single, then a double catch. “Three!” She crawled under a barbed-wire fence, got three more low-flying critters. “Six,” to which Fate answered:

“Eight!”

Brother and sister, both barefoot, she in pajamas and wet hair, running, jumping, shouting, “Fourteen!” then skipping, crawling, laughing, yelling, “Nineteen!” darting, dancing, twirling, “Twenty-three!” dashing, skipping, soaring, “Forty-one!” until finally both fell on their backs into the dew-covered grass, breathless, light-headed, and giggling like the children they’d hardly ever had a chance to be.

As the jars sparkled yellow, lights on–lights off, they stared at the sky just as the clouds parted and a quarter-moon showed itself.

They were content to lie side by side, their backs soaking up the dew, their breathing returning to normal, their eyes heavenward. Silent. And smiling.

At last, Lutie said, “I’d better get to bed. Juan told me to be up by six for weight training.”

Fate rolled onto his side so he could see Lutie’s face. “What are we going to do with these lightning bugs?”

“Only one thing to do,” she said as she unscrewed her lid. “Let them go.”

“Yes. Let them all go free.”

The small creatures left the jars leisurely, seemingly unchanged by their brief confinement, then flew away . . . rising, gliding, glittering, as the boy and girl, still lying in the grass, watched the golden flashes rise in the stillness of the night.