The Fall of the Year (12 page)

Another murmur rose from the crowd, a concerted suspiration, as Molly started shinnying up the pole supporting Blackhawk. The entire weathervane wobbled as she set one foot on the extended back leg of the famous pacer, and shifted her weight onto the horse. She reached up and eased the monkey onto her back, where it remained, its teeth chattering, as she descended to the lookout, vanished inside, and reappeared at the window, this time with a length of stout rope, apparently left there decades earlier by the steeplejack who'd erected Blackhawk. The monkey still on her back, she lowered herself, with the assistance of the rope, to the clock and down its face to the bittersweet vine. Motioning for the Young Count to precede her, she continued down the vine with the monkey.

Their descent took perhaps ten minutes. Each time the Young Count reached up to give Molly a hand to step on, she waved him away; when they reached the ridge of the slate roof, she motioned for the firemen, still jockeying around the steps below, to take the safety hoop around to the side of the courthouse, down which she proceeded on the ancient vine. Some twenty feet above the ground, she let go and dropped triumphantly into the middle of the red circle, still carrying the monkey.

As Molly landed, a great roar went up from the crowd.

“Upstaged,” said Slade. But he was unable to keep a trace of admiration from creeping into his features as he turned to Bumper Stevens and me and said, “Well, boys, if I could contrive to lug a courthouse with a hundred-foot tower around with me from town to town, I might actually have a place for her.”

 

“You were right,” I said to Father George. “I should have kept better track of her.”

“You bet you should have,” he said bluntly. “However, all's well that ends well. Did you get her on the 6:04 all right?”

I nodded. “She's back at the convent by now—if she hasn't commandeered the locomotive and headed to Montreal or Vancouver, which I'm inclined to doubt. She seemed pretty well satisfied with her day's work and willing to go back to the convent by the time she left.”

Father George and I were on good terms again now, laughing about the events of the day over steak sandwiches and beers in the hotel dining room before the circus's evening performance.

“She certainly knows exactly what she wants to do with her life,” I said. “I'll give her that.”

“She does,” Father George said. “I've no doubt that in another year, after she graduates, she will, too. If she survives that long, of course.”

He looked out the window at the Big Top and rides and concessions on the green, their brightly colored lights glowing in the settling dusk like Christmas lights. “How about you, son? Do you still know exactly what you want to do with your life?”

“Sure. The same thing you have.”

Father George smiled. “You mean spending every minute of your spare time hunting and fishing? Writing stories?” He gestured out the window toward the common. “Playing baseball?”

“You know what I mean—being a priest. But sure, I want to do those other things, too. You always have.”

“I have,” Father George said. “And I've been damn lucky to be able to. But I'll tell you something, Frank. The days when a priest could play ball, fish, and hunt are drawing to a close. Even up here in the Kingdom. If I were just starting out in orders now instead of forty years ago, I'd have to live my life differently!”

“So what should I do? I've had my ups and downs this summer, with Foster Boy and even today with Molly. I could have gladly wrung her neck when she started up that damn tower. But I like working with the people of the parish better than anything I've ever done.”

“Your experience with Foster Boy didn't shake your faith?”

“Not really. You always told me that the best way to express faith in God is to help other people. I believe that as much or more than ever. But when Louvia and I went to Little Quebec that afternoon—”

“What about when you went to Little Quebec?” Father George said, smiling again.

“I met a girl,” I said. “A girl I've thought about a lot lately.”

“Good,” my adoptive father said, to my surprise. “Good for you, son. Keep thinking about her. And as far as this fall is concerned, nothing's cut in stone yet. Remember that.”

Relieved that I'd been able to talk about this matter, I ordered another beer, and then we drank coffee and talked about baseball. I had little interest in seeing the circus performance again, but around nine o'clock Father George went home to work on his “Short History” and I ambled over to the green for a final look at the Last Railway Extravaganza and Greatest Little Show on Earth.

I arrived at the Big Top entrance just as it started to rain. The tent gave off a translucent blue glow, and its pennants snapped in the breeze that had brought the rain. Like a huge beating heart, the whole Big Top seemed to contract and expand to the calliope's strains of “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.” Nearby, in the slanting raindrops, the roustabouts had already begun to dismantle the midway rides and booths. The mythological carousel rolled by on its wagon, the sphinx and basilisk and Cyclops appearing to grin at me in the rain.

“Where's little carrot-top sis?”

It was my friend the Slade brother, who'd stepped outside the Big Top for a breath of fresh air during the aerial finale.

“She's gone back to school,” I said. “I think she figured the evening show would be an anticlimax after her performance at the courthouse this afternoon.”

“No doubt,” Slade said. “Well, next time you see her, you tell her for me, when she turns eighteen, supposing we don't go totally under in the meantime, I might be willing to start her out on a popcorn concession.”

The rain drove harder. I looked around at the wagons heading back through the rain toward the flatbeds in the railyard. The dismantling of the circus had none of the glamour and romance of setting up; the roustabouts were racing the downpour, the train schedule, the next afternoon's performance deadline. I wandered into the tent out of the rain, past the empty ballyhoo stand, and emerged into the blaring music and lights just as Slade was bowing the performers into the ring for their encore. Two of the riggers were dismantling the Zempenskis' safety net and rolling it up. Others were yanking up the stakes pinning down the side panels of the tent. Rain gusted in on the spectators crowded onto the bleachers. The whole town seemed packed into the Big Top tonight, standing to applaud the performers.

As the calliope swung into “Daisy, Daisy,” the Zempenskis ran hand in hand into the ring. At the same moment, one of the Four Horses of the Apocalypse came prancing out into the spotlight. Clinging to its back, flopping from side to side like a cloth doll, was the circus drunk, dressed tonight like a railroad tramp, an old-fashioned bindlestiff in a long seersucker suit jacket, baggy trousers held up by a rope, a red bandanna around his neck, and a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes. It was an odd moment, coming as it did after the Zempenskis' finale. Some in the audience were already leaving.

The flopping tramp rose unsteadily to his feet on the back of the Appaloosa and circled the ring once, scattering performers in all directions. He leaped onto the rope ladder leading to the trapeze rigging, still swaying in the top of the tent. As he ascended, casting off jacket and trousers and bandanna, I realized that Count Zempenski was still standing with his wife and son near Slade. The climbing figure pulled off his slouch hat and sailed it out over the crowd—revealing a cascade of bright red hair! A moment later Molly Murphy was standing high above the ring on the tiny platform attached to the center tent pole.

As the Count started fast up the rope ladder after her, Molly reached out and caught the swinging trapeze. The calliope faded out. And far below, standing near the circus performers who, like the townspeople, were all gazing upward, the 150-year-old drummer boy and Parsee smiled a wholly evil smile and started his rolling accompaniment to the aerial show.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Molly shouted, “in a death-defying encore, using no safety net, the Magnificent Molly Murphy will attempt the never-before-accomplished feat of executing four complete midair revolutions off the flying trapeze, into the hands of Count Zempenski the Younger. Count, ascend to your trapeze.”

Her announcement actually halted the old Count midway up his ladder. After the briefest pause, his son raced up the rope ladder across the ring to the trapeze opposite and below Molly, who now shouted in a triumphant voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. I give you—Flying Molly Murphy!”

With the rolled-up safety net lying limp in the sawdust and the eyes of all Kingdom Common upon her, Molly grasped the trapeze ropes, swung up into a sitting position on the wooden bar and launched herself out into the spotlight. The drumroll intensified. Molly dropped down to hang from the bar by her hands. The trapeze swung in a wider arc. The vibrating drumroll reached a deafening crescendo, then stopped altogether as Molly released her grip and spun over like a hooked trout, her bare feet brushing the blue roof of the tent.

“One,” she cried out.

“Two!” This time, as Molly twirled in the air, a few members of the crowd counted with her.

“Three!” Molly was plummeting like flaming Icarus, her red hair streaming behind her.

“FOUR!” roared the circusgoers of Kingdom Common, as Molly completed the unprecedented quadruple somersault.

The Young Count, flying toward her upside down on his trapeze, reached for her hands. He missed, just grazing her outstretched fingertips. But as she shot past him toward the netless void, he caught, in his iron grasp, one slender ankle, as if they had done the act together a thousand times.

The Young Count and Molly descended the rope ladder, clasped hands, and raised their arms over their heads in the sawdust under the Big Top, turning and bowing to the thundering ovation like clockwork figures. The waves of applause continued as, hand in hand, they ran out of the ring, out of the lights, out of the tent, and shortly afterward, out of Kingdom Common. For weeks I felt almost as desolated as if the Young Count, soon to be Molly's husband, had missed my best friend after all, though in fact he never would.

5

Outsiders—French Canadian farmers and mill workers, Irish railroadmen, even teachers and clergymen from Away—have often found Kingdom Common, at least at first, to be a hostile place.

—Father George, “A Short History”

 

R
IDING THE RATTLER
south through the midsummer night, I read the postcard once more. “Hello Frank Bennett. Send box from Chinese Bank behind bin right of door in Land of Free to 8247 Liberty St. Staten Island New York. I fine. How you? Yr. friend Dr. Sam E. Rong.”

The message was printed in small red letters precise as typescript. On the reverse was a glossy photograph of the Statue of Liberty at night, torch aglow, the multicolored skyline of Manhattan in the background.

As the eight-car Rattler crossed the height of land south of Kingdom Common and began to pick up a head of steam on the long downgrade toward St. Johnsbury, I wondered again why Sam wanted the rectangular lacquered teakwood box, somewhat larger than a shoebox, full of envelopes with postmarks from Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Singapore, and a score of other North American and Asian cities. Why, if it was important to him, would he have left the box behind in the first place? Two days before, right after the card arrived, I'd gotten the key to the padlocked front door of the Land of the Free Emporium from Bumper Stevens and dug the box out from behind the bin by the door. When I'd opened it, it had given off a sharp herbal aroma that I recognized immediately. And at exactly that moment I decided to make the trip from northern Vermont to Staten Island to see my old friend Sam Rong in person.

 

It had been eight years, but I still remembered the evening vividly. I was just thirteen at the time, and a gang of us town kids were playing a pickup ball game on the common. I happened to glance over at Bumper Stevens, sitting on his threelegged milking stool behind the backstop and calling balls and strikes, and noticed a slender, dark-haired stranger standing nearby in white pants and a white jacket, his arms folded, frowning out at the diamond. He was the first Chinese person I'd ever seen in the Common, but what surprised me even more was my absolute certainty that a moment earlier the man hadn't been there. It was as though the frowning newcomer dressed in white had simply fallen out of the sky onto the village green. Or perhaps materialized, like a genie from a fairy tale, out of the faint blue haze of Bumper's cigar smoke.

“Yes, sir,” Bumper said by way of greeting.

“What game?” the Chinese man said abruptly in a disapproving voice.

“That would be baseball,” the auctioneer said. “Basey-bally. The great American pastime.”

“It figures,” the man in white said.

Bumper looked at him sharply. But the stranger's face was as expressionless as the pale moon just coming up behind the courthouse tower across the street.

“You no pray basey-bally in Chiny?” Bumper said, not unamicably.

The man in the white pants and jacket gave him a pitying look. “That's the silliest game Dr. Sam E. Rong's ever seen,” he said. “Smack ball with stick, run like hell to get back where starting. What jobs you got this burg?”

That made Bumper laugh out loud, so on the spot he asked Dr. Sam E. Rong to dinner at the hotel. The next time I saw the Chinese man was the following Tuesday evening at Bumper's weekly cattle auction, where he seemed to be very capably doing several jobs at once: parking farm trucks, selling coffee and hot dogs, brandishing a blue cow cane, and herding doomed Jerseys, Holsteins, and Guernseys from failed local dairy farms into the makeshift wooden ring inside the commission-sales barn, all the while bantering with the auctioneer a mile a minute, giving back everything he got, with interest.