It is Sunday morning. Violet lugs bucket after bucket of water from the hose. She dumps them, sloshing the water into my trough. She does not speak. The Giant always had words, sometimes song. It was as if his spirits rose with the sun.
I am not thirsty. I am not hungry. I do not want the carrot she offers. I do not like the taste of Violet’s hand in my water. I long for Bill. Where is Bill? Where do people go when they leave their bodies?
Violet looks up at me. She meets my eyes with hers.
“I miss him, too, you know,” she says. Her voice is a whisper.
The daughter, Trullia, rambles outside of the trailer. She walks with the man Mike, who smells of secrets and sneakiness. They go to the car, and they drive away.
The fire-eating man, Charlie, comes out of his trailer. He settles into his rocking chair, staring at me and smoking his smelly cigar. His wife, Mary the Bearded Lady, comes outside, too. She strokes her beard; he smokes.
“Such a shame,” she says. “I always liked Bill.”
Charlie takes his cigar from his mouth, points it at me.
“It was the elephant,” he says. “That darn elephant probably killed him. I always told Bill that elephant would be the death of him yet.”
“Oh,” says Mary, “Queenie Grace wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
Charlie just stares at me, his eyes mean and hard under his cowboy hat. Charlie has a beard, bushy and black like his wife’s. Charlie makes my skin quiver.
“We need to get that critter out of Gibtown,” he says, “before it hurts somebody else.”
I hang my head. I agree with Mary: I would not harm a flea.
I stand sad and scared in this place, in the spot where I last saw my friend. The ground flattened hopelessly where he fell. I will not move. I refuse food. I will not drink.
I sway, shift my weight, weave, rock. Tears fall, and the salt of them drops into my water.
Maybe I can die, too.