“They’ll catch you,” I said.
Paul laughed, a sincere Santa Claus laugh. “You don’t understand. We don’t care if they catch us as long as we destroy all this, make people realize what a sham this is, this thing that kills families for entertainment.”
It was not the time to reason with him. I could have compared the circus to boxing, which I liked, or the war going on in all directions, which I didn’t like.
“Let’s …” I started, and he made a wild lunge toward me, prod out. It went past my neck, and I swung my right arm at Paul’s face. My fist was weak and backhanded, but I had forgotten the severed handcuff that was still on my wrist. It hit him in the face. The prod dropped from his hand, seared through the top of the tent, and plunged down into the sudden light. I looked down to watch it bounce off the side of the ring and send a prancing white horse leaping in fear. I could see crowd faces looking up in our direction.
Paul wasn’t ready to give up. It was clear to me that he planned never to give up. He dug his fingers into the canvas and came back at me. I kept one hand on the flag, which flapped in my face, and tried to ward him off with my manacled hand.
“You’ll kill both of us,” I said reasonably.
Paul was still not listening. He lumbered forward and clamped his arms around my waist. I pounded at his head with my handcuff. He squeezed and tried to pry me loose from my perch. His arms were powerful, and I could feel my head going light. It was no time to meet Koko, plunging into unconsciousness. I’d never come out of the inkwell this time. I pounded at Paul’s head and yellow face as if at a bent nail refusing to go into hard wood.
I was getting nowhere one-handed. It was time to do something. I let go of the flag and threw a left into Paul’s neck. He groaned and let go for an instant. When he did, I kicked him in the chest and he tumbled backward, clutching at canvas. I grabbed the flagpole again as I felt myself starting to slide away.
Paul’s right leg was through the hole he had burned in the top of the tent. He was dangling, grabbing for the tearing canvas. We locked wrists and hands, and I held on, feeling the tear in the tent widen with Paul’s weight against it.
“You hear?” he said, dangling and looking up at me with that split yellow face. “They’re enjoying it. They’re waiting for us to fall so they can tell their aunts and sisters how they paid a few cents to see someone die.”
“We’ll disappoint them,” I said, trying to pull Paul up but feeling his weight increase with each slight tear of canvas and the perspiration of both our hands.
“No, we won’t,” he said. “You’ll never be able to pull me up. But I’ll be able to pull you down. We’ll give them a show. We’ll land right in the center ring laughing at them, you and I, two clowns of hell.”
He was right. My grip on the flag was giving way, and he was holding me in a death grip.
“Swing up,” I said. “Swing up, damn you, you lunatic.”
“Join me,” he said, looking down at the stunned crowd below. He bounced up and down, laughing. The socket of my left arm went sore and numb, and I let go of the flag, but we didn’t plunge through the hole. We slid forward, and Paul, convinced that I was following him into the bright air of the big top, let go of my hand. My leg hooked onto the rope holding the flag, and my head and shoulders went through the hole. I watched Paul, dressed all in green, spin over and over and land with a thud in the silence. It was all upside down and slow, and I felt sleepy. I hung for a second or two and realized that there was still silence, a silence of people expecting me to come plunging through the hole. I disappointed them, eased my way back up to the outside with my good hand, and sat for a long time clinging to the flag. The trip down was slow. My arm was sore, my back was sore again, and the chance of slipping in the wind great, but no one was chasing me with an elephant prod. I waved at the moon, and maybe he waved back.
I made it to the point where I had leaped from the wagon to the tent but didn’t have it in me to make the leap back. I hung down by one good arm and dropped to the ground.
There was still a lot to do. No one had heard Paul confess. As far as Nelson was concerned, I was still a killer. He might have some trouble figuring out why Paul was dressed like that and what he was doing on top of the tent, but that wouldn’t stop him. No, I had to give him a wrapped killer if I was going to get out of this, and luckily, there was still a killer left. Paul hadn’t confirmed much, but he had confirmed something about the second killer. My only fear was that there might be three killers or four or five. How many members of Paul’s family had survived that plunge from the high wire? I was pretty sure of one, but it was getting to the point where I would have to gather the suspects.
I slunk around the tents, moving away from the big top and the noise, toward someplace where I could rest for a few minutes before putting things together.
I could hear people running toward me in the darkness, and I spotted a familiar tent. I plunged into it. It was dark and warm. I could feel the animals rustling in their cages.
“I think he went in there,” came a voice.
I ran behind the nearest cage, and the cat inside bellowed. In the entrance stood someone with a flashlight. The light beamed into corners, and I hovered behind the wheel of the wagon. The figure took a step into the tent and was stopped by the darkness and a loud animal snarl. The figure was small and looked to me like Nelson. The figure backed out.
“Not in there,” he said, and I knew it was Nelson.
There was time to catch my breath. I sat on the cool ground, telling myself that it had really happened, that Paul had really plunged through that hole. I knew I’d see him in my dreams.
Something rustled outside a cage in the darkness.
“Who is it?” I said, getting to my feet. No answer.
My eyes were getting used to the dark, and I could see the green-yellow eyes of animals following me as I crouched and moved toward the rustling sound.
“I’ve got a gun,” I lied. “Step out into the middle of the tent or I’ll shoot.”
No one stepped into the middle of the tent.
“Your gun is in the hands of the police,” came a voice from the dark.
I wasn’t sure where the voice came from, but I took a chance and leaped around the lion wagon, ready to throw a punch with my good remaining arm. There was no one there, but someone was suddenly behind me, someone who had moved quickly and hit me now with the weight of the world before my sore back would let me turn.
My skull is worn thin by nearly half a century of my using it to ward off attacks instead of as protection for my brain, which should have been thinking.
As the blue darkness with little stars skittered in my head like the beginning of life or time, a voice said, “For my brother.”
Koko, the clown of my dreams, reached out for me, and I tried to pull my hand away. I have a brother too, I wanted to say. But Koko wanted to play, and there was, as I now knew, no turning down a determined clown. I took his hand and went into the inkwell.
13
And that is how I came to be encaged with a snoring gorilla.
My choices were now clear. I could stand perfectly still when he woke up and pretend I wasn’t alive. I didn’t know how long I could keep that up or how much I could expect a gorilla to believe. I could also simply go about my business, pretend that I frequently found myself in cages with bad-tempered apes and act as if I were washing out my clown costume or cleaning my nails on my knee. A third choice was to start jumping up and down and making as much noise as I could in the hope that Gargantua would be too surprised to act. Even if it worked, which was as far from likely as Herbert Hoover making a comeback, I didn’t think I could keep it up.
Enter Henry. He came through the opening in the tent and looked directly at me. His finger went up and his mouth fell open. I tried to motion to the cage door, but Henry had other plans. He fell over on his face and lay there as if he had been laid out by Joe Louis.
He was either my killer’s victim number three, the object of a heart attack, or dead drunk. I was giving myself a lot of options for a lot of things. I guess that’s what you do when you lose control over a situation.
“Franklin D. Roosevelt,” came the words from Henry. He was drunk. The words were said without Henry
