seven

 

 

WHEN I GOT out of Miss Patrick’s Packard, it was nearly dark. The camp, however, breathed with the warm glow of our huge communal fire. It seemed that the residents of the Wonder Show had decided to throw a beastly houley to chase away the night. I heard Slaney and Hoss playing their drums. Mars and Cubitt were singing off-key to the sounds of Cassie Clay’s squeeze box. And there at the center of it, Crash fiddled a gypsy reel.

The cacophony of voices and laughter and instruments gave voice to the wagging tongues of the flames. The shadows flickered across the tents, wagons and, I soon found, in the wide gaze of young Julius’s eyes. He gaped at the campground, mouth hanging open.

“Boy, you’ll catch flies that way,” I warned.

He closed his gob and dared to blink. When the camp didn’t disappear, he looked to me. “You live here?”

I gazed again at my home. ’Twasn’t hard to see why the boy was so enthralled. The revelers danced sinuously, limbs jutting out of the scrum to take a new partner and pull them close. The thick blanket of snow caught the firelight and glittered like a dragon’s heap of gold. The music, the savory smells of Mrs. Hudson’s cooking... in many ways the camp was a more intoxicating sight than the carnival itself, with all its banners, lights and carousel song. It could beckon to the most stalwart of souls.

“For the time being,” I said, unable to keep the smile from my face.

I dipped into my pocket and pulled out the money Miss Patrick had refused to take for my meal. “Julius, I thank you kindly for the lift and your auntie’s hospitality.”

“I can’t be acceptin’ that, sir.”

“Please,” I said. “As a favor. I don’t like charity, boy, and I hate the idea of getting something for nothing. Slip it into her coffers or buy yourself a sweet roll from the bakery in town. I don’t care what’s done with it, but I’d be offended if you didn’t take it.”

He stared at the bills, then back at the camp longingly. After pondering something that weighed heavily on his mind, Julius took the money and stashed it in the glovebox. “Sure thing, Mr. Walker.”

“That’s a good lad.”

I slid out of the car with about as much ease as an elephant. Before I could shut the door, Julius called out, “Mr. Walker!”

“Yes?”

“Could I... come and visit y’all sometime? When I’m not working, town gets a little...” His voice trailed off and his chin fell. He didn’t want to insult his aunt and her establishment, but for a young man, sometimes the small town just ain’t enough to keep his attention.

I nodded. “Sure thing, Julius. Come on out and if you don’t see me, tell ’em you’re a friend of Dandy’s.”

His face screwed up in confusion, and I didn’t bother explaining. I shut the door, turned my back on the Packard and hoofed toward the fire in my ungainly fashion.

“Dandy!” voices sang, welcoming me to the party.

The music kept on, but a few dancers stopped their spinning to clap me on the shoulder or wrap their arms around my neck in greeting. The Professor had even come out of his den to join in the festivities. He seemed to be doing delightfully well with one of the koochie girls. A flask flashed from his hip and I could smell the rotgut from five foot away. Next to him, ever his shadow, Maeve sat staring at the blazing bonfire. If not for the reflection of the flames, her eyes would’ve been dull as stone. Her young face fell in an expression far too sullen for one so young.

Crash, fiddle to his chin, fixed me with a sly grin. He bobbed in time with his tune, sketching a light bow in my direction before turning back around to continue the reel with his fellow musicians. A hand too small for a regular-sized adult took my wrist and jerked me to a bench near the fire. A tankard shoved its way into one hand while a plate landed in my lap. Before I could catch a breath, the shindig had engulfed me and accepted me as one of its own.

Much like Crash and the circus itself had done, a few months ago.

I’d not felt such a sense of community since my days fighting in the cold of France. Nor had I drawn on that soldier’s anger, or his unflinching ability to hurt another human with the same skill as he could fix one up. Not in nigh unto twenty years. However, that very day in Flapjack’s room, the past rushed back to me and Lance Corporal Walker reported for duty like the spry greenhorn I’d been when I first enlisted.

My hands began to shake something fierce and my drink dribbled down my coat. The firelight—which before had been so welcoming, warm and peaceful—flashed and pulsed like artillery fire. The drums boomed in my ears, the voices screamed... all of the noise pressing in on me, dredging up specters and goblins from the past life of a soldier. A Hellfighter.

I pressed my hands to my eyes, trying to blot out the night, but that only intensified the ghostly visions of battlefields and men bleeding their last drops on foreign soil.

Peru, Indiana, fell away from me—or rather I fell away from it, tumbling into a void. Gone was the cold winter night, replaced with the hot, damp skirmish outside Château-Thierry. Smells of black powder, sweat, coppery blood and the miasma of death shoved me, buffeted me on the gale of memory.

The boys were shouting. Some of them cryin’ out for their mamas, others screaming for medics who wouldn’t make it in time. Laying in mud stained crimson until someone could box them up in pine and send them back to weeping sweethearts.

“Hellfire’s behind me,” I murmured to myself. “Hellfire is behind me.”

“Jim.” A soft voice cut through, reaching into the mire of my memories and gently pulling me closer to home. “Jim, open your eyes.”

I jerked back into the present and Mrs. Hudson was waiting for me, her stare a pair of guiding stars. Her tiny hands burned on either side of my face. Though the party kept on—Crash’s violin climbing higher up his scale at a blistering pace—Mrs. Hudson and I seemed to rest in a pocket of peace just big enough to hold the two of us.

“Jim?”

Words bubbled up in my throat but choked me. There were too many. And how does a man explain the things he’s done for his country that would put him out of the esteem of his Lord and a lady? I sagged there on the bench and felt the old anguish sweeping over me.

My head fell, heavy and weary, and it was Mrs. Hudson’s shoulder that caught it.

“Come on,” she said soothingly.

I let her guide me to my feet, set my course and lead me to the warmth of my vardo. The party droned in another world outside the door of 221b; inside, a man would’ve wept himself to a thousand pieces if not for the woman holding his shoulders.