To Make Death Love Us (21 page)

Pepino came
along.

There was a girl
with blond hair named Susy in Charles­ton, West Virginia. Why such thoughts of such a girl—one
casual companion among so many—should come so star-tlingly clear to his mind, Will wondered. The
film of his memory rolled on without control, as if the projectionist was dead and the ushers
asleep. But the memory was there, sharp and vivid, whether Will liked it or not. He knew he had
not remembered her name ten minutes after she'd left the sorry room he'd rented for the length of
that vaudeville engagement so long ago? Did it mean she had been someone of great importance to
him and he never knew it at the time, until now, on the dark side of a mountain with destiny
shouting at him?

In the rerun of
that time back when, Will grumblingly put his bare feet on the worn carpet and toddled to the
door to see who the hell was bothering his afternoon mati­nee. He opened the door a crack and the
little man came barreling through. The girl Susy screamed in the bed. Oh yes, he had forgotten
her name in the sudden intention that came to him of signing up the midget as part of his great
Carnival.

That was the reason
for remembering that girl named Susy, for she was the means of bringing Colonel John to his
troupe. He was young and whole then, was Will Carney. Two hands useful to him, hands that boasted
certain skills and the hope of a great future shining in his greedy eyes. And, too, he had the
gift of a silver tongue, the means to charge other people with his own dreams.

Hadn't he talked a
deaf strong man into joining him?

Hadn't he charmed a
blind girl into coming along?

Yes, he had done
that and more, but they had come to him and shared the dream after the dream was faded and all
but gone. They'd come too late to enjoy the happy Will Carney, with the foxy eyes and tricky
fingers. Five of those fingers were maimed and the final bitterness of Will's life had set
in.

Pepino and the
Colonel stood poised, with the heavy car­ton held between them, for a long, long moment. Then,
suddenly whispering to one another so as not to further alarm the others, they lowered the box to
the floor of the van.

Only then did the
Colonel give way to his fear and his anger.

"What the hell have
you done with the light, Will Car­ney? What the hell have you done to kill us all?"

There was no
answer, for Will was even then reliving the short reels of his life.

The Midget made his
way to the partition between van and cab, moving his feet slowly across the floor.

"Tell me, Serena,
if the truck shifts or slides or even threatens to," he reminded her.

She breathed some
response but whether it was a por­tion of her strange dreams or a sigh, could not be
deter­mined.

The Colonel reached
those boxes he'd piled up once before when last he'd tried to find a way out through the cab. He
climbed them carefully. As carefully as a turtle sticking out his head sensing danger, the
Colonel ex­tended the top half of himself into the cab.

At that moment,
stagey, showy, and frightening in its way, the clouds parted and the bright, full moon shone down
upon the mountain.

The Colonel saw
Will sitting there with his lips moving as though reading the captions upon a screen, following
the little bouncing ball of a Saturday-night sing-along. The Colonel touched his shoulder and
Will started as though touched by the hand of a living nightmare.

He uttered a short
scream, staring pop-eyed at the body of the Strong Man. In the light of the moon, Marco's mouth
seemed caught in a horrible smile of welcome.

"You've taken away
our light, you damn fool," the Colo­nel told Will.

Will shook his head
in refutation to what, in response to what, only he, God, and the Juggler knew.

The Colonel dimly
saw the tangle of the lamp's exten­sion cord upon the floor. He pointed at it past Will's
shoul­der.

"We need that
light. Pick it up but go easy at it."

Will continued to
shake his head. He smiled as though trying to match the smile upon Marco's face and thereby
placate and please the corpse.

The Colonel slapped
Will awkwardly upon the cheek. "Move, you fool. Move!"

Will smiled and
nodded his head and otherwise re­mained immobile.

"What's the matter
with Will?" Pepino's voice asked. It was close by. When the Colonel skewed his head around he saw
the Rubber Man standing in the van just behind him.

"He's in shock or
something or other."

"Is Marco truly
dead?"

There was a slight
quaver in John's voice. "Yes. There seems no doubt of it."

The Colonel
returned his glance to Will, who continued to nod his head like one of those queerly disturbing
me­chanical dolls with fatuous grins that, once set in motion by the touch of a finger, seemed to
converse with some unseen presence.

"Will?" he ventured
again, in a soft voice, and then gave it up altogether. Once again he turned his head round and
peered back into the body of the truck. The moonlight seemed to flow down through the circular
hole left by the removed ventilator.

The shaft of limpid
light bathed Serena's white hair and gave it the milky cast of moonstone. Her face was turned up
to it. Her shapely hands were still lifted so that they rested against the boxes.

Serena seemed in
some strange state of communication with a moon goddess that was her mother. Her eyes,
start-ingly, seemed sighted and she smiled a secret, soft smile.

"Is there enough
light to see by, do you think?" the Colonel asked Pepino.

"For the moment,
but what if the clouds should cover the moon again?"

"As it will most
likely do when we're least prepared for it," the Colonel agreed. "Well, there's nothing else for
it,"
he said with resignation. "Let's
hope the truck has dug itself in a bit more."

He boosted himself
with his short arms. He shoved his shoulders against the surrounding chicken wire and shat­tered
glass. He thrust his way through and felt the sharp wire ends and glass edges claw at
him.

When he was at last
through, he poised like an organ grinder's monkey on the back of the cab seat. He took a
shuddering gasp through his open mouth and became aware that he'd been holding his breath for a
long while.

He felt no
trembling, no movement of the precariously balanced structure. No whispered command to stop
mov­ing had come from the alert, although exhausted Moon Child.

Colonel John
slipped down between Will and the body of Marco.

"Take care. Take
care," Serena crooned, as though call­ing to a lover.

The Colonel shifted
his position away from Will. In that direction overbalance and disaster lay. He grasped the
shoulders of the corpse and gently eased himself down Marco's body to the floor as though
descending a moun­tain. The flesh, where he touched it, seemed warm, yet cold beneath. It was
soft yet rigid with approaching rigor mortis.

The Midget was much
afraid. The body shifted and the hair on his head rose in atavistic terror. One of Marco's arms
shifted as though to embrace him and it was all the Colonel could manage to keep from leaping
away in mindless escape.

Will had stopped
the ceaseless nodding and was looking sideways at the midget and at the corpse. Had he seen
Marco's movements? And having seen them, would new terror cause him to panic and kill them
all?

"It's all right,
Will. It's only me. It's all right," the Colo­nel said.

Will smiled. There
was no grace or charm to it. It gave no trace of kindliness to his face. The Colonel wondered why
they, all of them, had ever allowed this creature to be the master of their lives.

If he could hear
the truth spoken—that love was the cement that held them all—Colonel John would not have believed
it.

It would seem that
Will Carney was not far off the mark when he laughed at Pepino's refusal to return to him for
more contempt and ill-usage. He recognized in the Rom­any soul of Pepino the need for martyrdom.
The punish­ment Pepino sought was not for any sins of his own, but, Christ-like, for the sins of
the world. Had there been some ritual manner in which the Rubber Man might have been tied to a
cross at Eastertime, he would have accepted the role of the Messiah. But not, however, if the
rite must include the reality of spikes driven into hands and feet or the spear driven into his
side. In casting about for a suit­able penance to pay for the transgressions of mankind, he had
Will Carney, who was evil enough in the least painful of ways.

Upon the arrival of
the others—the Fat Girl, the Midget, the deaf-mute Strong Man—Pepino began to gain a sense of
that family which he'd once felt mad to escape from.

Paulette loved
because it was in her nature to do so as it had been in her mother's. She loved everyone and
would have been willing to prove it to all in any way that was asked of her. In the presence of
her mother, she was bothered by the resentful feeling that she had been allowed, indeed urged, to
grow monstrous so that she would be little competition to the woman who bore her. Or perhaps,
more terribly, Paulette's mother had decided to make of her the living expiation of her own
carnal sins. Sexuality lived in the huge bulk of her daughter but there was little expectation
that it would ever be actively called upon. Had her own mother created a nun wedded to the
chastity of flesh?

Was it possible,
then, that Paulette had seen in the brash, grinning carnival man—the errant juggler with the
flashing eyes—a certain promise that excited her own dreams of unattained love? Did a part of her
still hold to a dream—lingering in her breast—in which some impossi­ble diet was so severe it
would make her desirable to Will?

Whatever, in her
dreams she hoped for and desired Will. Once, when Will was drunk, he had even asked her to take
her clothes off in front of him. As she had some­what shyly started to comply, Will at first
laughed at the fun of it, but then choked in disgust at what he was about. He made her stop and
said evil things to her that made her cry even as her heart stilled from the passion that might
have awoken in her.

Afterwards, there
followed a long period when Will sometimes looked at her out of the corner of his eyes as though
wondering whether or not she would demand something of him for some ill-considered promise, given
when he was confused and unaware.

Paulette, too,
accepted the traveling sideshow as her family. She sublimated her desires, blushed, pleased
be­yond measure by the fond and outrageous compliments paid her by the Colonel, the soft, kind
regard of the Rub­ber Man, and the hands—so often holding hers comfort­ingly—those of her special
love, Serena, the magical woman-child, who lived as one, giant heart for them all.

Serena, herself,
loved Will Carney for the imperfection of him. She had from the first—as she had revealed to the
good doctor and guardian so many years ago—read the pettiness and small evils in Will's face with
her all-seeing fingers.

Had she hoped to
save the man's soul and, in some way, prove her own reason for living? She did not quite
know.

Her gentleness and
patience had done nothing to alter Will's selfish and painful need to ridicule and belittle them
all. She understood that, in her saintly way—different than the saint-search of Pepino—and she
also accepted his apparent disregard of her. Deep inside herself, where dreams unlocked their
secrets, she had the feeling, both power-giving and uncomfortable, that Will was drawn to her.
She sensed a great fascination in him for her and, with it, an even greater and darker terror.
Something atavistic in his bones and blood cried back, sensing witch­craft and rites performed in
dark woodlands when the moon was full and night creatures stalked the nightland.

Will was afraid of
her, and, to prove that he was not, he often treated her cruelly.

If not love that
held them in thrall to the flawed, all-too-human, and sometimes magicless Merlin that was the
Jug­gler, what else could it be. If not for love, why else would they have accepted his
abuse?

"Without me you are
nothing but a passel of freaks, a stupid collection of old bones and crippled bodies worth not a
penny for your wage. I make you something. Gath­ering you up and putting you all together makes
you something. I make you something! I did that!"

Perhaps he was
right.

In the final
accounting, whatever brought them to­gether on the side of the mountain—pride, shame, re­morse,
greed, desire, hope, or love—they were, in the special circumstance and for this one moment in
all their
lives, uniquely suited, in
their physical differences, to be their own heroes and saviours. And they had a dream to follow
in which they saw themselves, strong in each of their special ways.

All but one of them
who was already dead.