FOR THE NEXT WEEK, the freaks and Bo looked after Orange and coddled her, taking turns between acts. Emily came sometimes and looked after her too. Helped Bo learn more sign language.
And then the Ex was over. The tents collapsed like lungs losing air. Bear had to be locked in her cage. Bo hated to see that, but they would be travelling, moving through the last circuit of small towns before the winter. The other freaks were heading south.
“Come visit,” Morgana said.
“Maybe,” Bo replied.
Bo had a wallet full of cash but not enough to live on forever. His plan was to tour the bear-wrestling circuit with Gerry until the local fairs dried up and make enough to carry himself and Orange through the winter.
“Where’re you going after the season ends, Gerry?”
“Back to my farm.” Gerry looked hard at him. “You’re always welcome.”
Bo thought about the bears circling stakes beside a farmhouse, pacing, pacing. That would be him, too, restless and running in circles. One thought persisted: if he managed to save up enough to look after Orange, what would he do then? Maybe he could ask Emily for help, or the church group; maybe someone would take them in.
Max wanted them to head south with him. “Even if she wobbles around the local fairs down there, she’ll draw folks,” he said.
“You never give up, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
Bo stood outside the deflated midway watching carnies moving poles and material all around him, and he stared down the carnival corridor; the three weeks they’d spent there had felt like a lifetime. The path on which so many thrill-seekers had trod, had laughed and argued and eaten, that path was strewn now with cigarette butts, and straws, the remnants of cotton candy cones. Mud intermingled with the mess too, where the sod had been so trodden it had given up for the season. The CNE caretakers would come in and rake the earth flat again for next year, re-sod. It wasn’t the concession’s responsibility to leave it as they had found it.
Bo needed to find Gerry and figure out when Bear would be loaded onto the trucks. The plan was that he would ride in Max’s trailer with Orange. They had two vehicles, ten-tons, and Gerry and he would drive ahead in his pickup. Gerry was king of the world now. He’d paid off his farm, Beverley had agreed to be his fiancée, there was a rumour she was expecting. “Half-child, half-bear” had been the joke, and Gerry didn’t seem to mind.
The breakdown action got louder, more frenzied, as Bo moved toward where he hoped to find Gerry. The hammers, yells, drills, and the clatter of aluminum sliding against aluminum, the canvas swish of awnings and tents, that pop of air when tents were folded, carnies shouting over one another. But under it all something thin was rising—a scream, a series of screams.
Where to look—no one could fathom this. The sound became dire, and then everyone seemed to be running in its direction. Cries of “Loralei” preceded the awful thing, so that by the time Bo pushed through the wall of carnies, some crying and some spitting “Fuck,” he knew, or half knew, what he might see. Flesh—but whose? Beverley was leaning against Gerry’s trailer with one hand covering her mouth, to hold in a shriek so deep it made no sound. And then it came. She screamed again and again.
Loralei stood on her back legs, clawing at some invisible wall that she would never again be allowed to breach. She kept batting her own nose to calm herself, her tongue pink with what she had done. Gerry was in pieces, strewn across the grassy knoll in front of the trailer. Gerry. Bo’s gaze landed on Loralei, and the sight of her made him cry.
“Gerry,” he whispered. Already there were flies. Already grief wrenched at his throat. He looked at Gerry’s body and thought of his mother leaning into the water. He thought of his dead father. He couldn’t breathe.
“Loralei,” Max was saying. “Why’d you have to do that?” A bluebottle settled on her jowl. “Heel, girl.” She did not budge. Max’s face streamed with tears. “Lora,” he said. “Oh, geez, Lora.”
Bo turned and pushed past Beverley, who was sobbing. He tried the trailer door and found it locked.
“Beverley,” he said, but she was too grief-stricken to help, so instead he ran out to the midway in the hope of finding someone willing to sell or give him a root beer. If they could lure her back into the cage, maybe there was some hope.
He stood at a pop machine, the can dropping in that second after he had shoved the coin in and pushed the button. The sound of gunshots sliced through him. The clunk reinforced the realization. Cold can wrapped in his palm, Bo walked back, weeping now for Loralei and Gerry. For the waste, and for himself.
He could barely stand to look at the heap of Loralei’s body. Bo sat down beside Max on the stoop of the trailer, and watched the cops milling, the carnies gawking.
“I wish people would stop staring,” he said, though he himself could not look away.
And Max said, “All the world’s a stage.” Then he turned to Bo, as if he were only then waking, and said, “Hey, kid, you know they won’t stop with Loralei.”
Bo ran. Let the sun set, he was thinking, let me go under cover of night, let me take my bear and go. He found Bear in a dream, her paws scurrying nowhere, fast.
BO LEASHED BEAR and they hustled south, the sun setting—a huge red ball spewing colour to the west. The bear lolloped alongside him, looking forward, scenting. The land sloped down in a subtle way, but she seemed to know they were heading to nature. It didn’t take them long to cross the Lake Shore, so few cars at dusk—though a truck driver craned to get a look at what he thought he couldn’t possibly be seeing—and with the sun a thin crease of light at the horizon, they made it to Lake Ontario. The beach.
Bo was so deeply in his head, knowing what he was walking away from—Orange, some duty he didn’t know exactly how to fulfill—that he did not sense the shuffling of Soldier Man behind him. But the vet was beside him when he stopped to scan the shore—a kind of magic. It wouldn’t be long before the news that Bo had run off with a bear would be widely known. He had to avoid people. Again.
“Kid.” His voice sputtering, liquid, weird.
“Hey.”
Bear glanced and then turned away. She would have known he was there all along. She sat politely at the end of the leash, snuffing and looking up at Bo, swinging her head around to the water. Bo crouched and looked her in the eye, leaned in to unclasp her leash.
“Go,” he said. He didn’t need to say it. She bounded sideways in crazy bear glee and was up to her flanks in lake before Bo had even stood up. She popped her head under the water, slammed the surface with her great paw, delighting in the splash, the arc of water droplets as they sprayed back at her. Bo pulled off his clothes, thinking hard about Gerry, that flayed body, and wanting some kind of cleansing. It was all he could think of, watching Bear cavort, the bear seeming to invite him in.
“Take it easy, kid.”
Bo was down to his underwear, cramming his clothing into a canvas satchel Morgana had handed him as he left. He waded in, the water cold but velvet-smooth against his skin. The bear was in deep by now, and swimming.
“Not too deep,” Soldier Man shouted from the shore.
“I can’t swim,” Bo shouted back. “I’m scared of water.” He plunked himself down, shivering, and sat chest-deep in the shallows. He sat so that he could watch the bear in one direction, Soldier Man in the other. Bear was coming back, fast, first swimming and then, when she bottomed out, running. Soon she would be on him. He started clucking, talking soft, trying to talk her down. Could she see who it was?
“It’s okay,” he said, putting his palms up in the water so that they created a visual wall around him. He was afraid she couldn’t see his body below the surface. “Easy,” he said.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” shouted Soldier Man. He looked like he was going to step into the lake to save him.
Bo could see Bear already shifting her energy. “It’s okay.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s okay. Look.” Bear came right up and head-butted him gently, and then she was turning and turning to find a seat. She circled five or six times, enjoying the water swirling around her. Every turn, Bo noted where she had fully scratched a patch of fur off her rump, right down to the skin. There were nasty scabs scattered through the baldness. “Sit, girl.” But she did better. She lounged flat, her body so huge she could lie down and still keep her head above the surface. She swayed her head and dipped it, playing at wave making, keeping him in the game whenever he looked away. There were no treacherous fish in fresh water, Bo told himself.
The night had fully fallen. There was only the merest sliver of moon, and Bo could barely see her now, and best when she was in motion, bear eye glinting. Bo pulled his hand out of the water and plowed the surface.
“Take that,” he said, real soft, and watched the splash hit her. She recoiled, assessing this. He did it again.
“Come out, now, kid,” Soldier Man called.
But Bo arced water at Bear faster and faster. She rolled away and sat watching him, and then, before he knew what she was doing, she threw her body up out of the water and slapped the surface so hard, he choked on the wave that hit him. She finished him off by swiping her huge paw sideways along the water, and he was briefly submerged, and then he was up, sputtering, and then retaliating, throwing as much water in the bear’s direction as he could.
“Bo!”
Soldier Man’s voice was plaintive. But in the night there was only Bo and Bear and water and laughing. Pure pleasure.
Finally Bo staggered toward shore, out of breath, saying, “I’m here, Soldier Man. I’m here.” The bear took a few more languid swipes at the water and ambled after him, chuffing, lips pulled back into an insane bear smile.
“She’s okay?” Soldier Man said.
“Yep.”
They discussed the dark then, Bo telling Soldier Man all that had happened, and Soldier Man reminding him how each night the moon would grow and with it visibility. They would have to keep moving, keep to green spaces, and waterways, to allow themselves and the bear cover, and hope of food and water.
“Down below Baby Point. It’s safe all along the Humber at night. There’s fish for the bear right now. The salmon run is on.”
“Okay,” Bo said.
They crept along the lake until they reached the mouth of the river and then followed it north for a time. The glint of curious animal eyes met them here and there, along the bank, and Bo had to regularly whistle Bear to heel, stopping her from chasing after every smell and rustle of bush. The undercover was lively with night sounds, and they caught whiffs of skunk, which they wanted to avoid.
The whole area smelled of dead fish too—a stench to Bo and Soldier Man, but to the bear, an enticement. She pulled Bo toward the bank and plunged into the water wherever she could, luxuriating in the salmon stink. They walked for an hour until Soldier Man insisted they hide for the rest of the night and catch some sleep. He knew a crevice in the hillside tucked below an overhanging rock. “It used to be an Indian place but now people live in mansions up there and sleep under silk sheets.”
“We have dirt,” said Bo.
“We have dirt.” The slit in the earth Soldier Man found opened up into a cavern. Soldier Man was asleep and snoring before the bear even made it into the cave. But she settled fast too, and left Bo wondering where they would go the next night, if they could hide and run forever. As he fell asleep he thought how Soldier Man had suggested he set Bear free. He wondered if this is what he was doing. He did not want to be free of Bear.
When he woke up again, it was dark, the bear was snoring deep and loud, and the soldier was gone. He wasn’t surprised. That man came and went. He couldn’t be relied upon.