A dagger of harsh sunlight pierced a hole in the big top’s canvas and caused William to blink and tilt his head. He struggled to keep his balance as his sons inched closer. He felt their fear tremble through the wood of the balance pole. He stopped. Closed his eyes. Regained his balance and sucked in the pain.
From the other side, Connie whispered, “
He gritted his teeth. Took another step. “Look at me, boys. Slow and steady. Slow and steady.”
His right foot pressed deeply onto a razor blade. The razor sliced into his heel, not stopping until it hit bone. He held in a scream. Blood dripped through the net to the sawdust below.
The circus clowns gathered. They looked up at him. Pointed. Sneered.
He’d never seen them without their makeup on. He never wanted to. They were short, brutish things. Coarse black hair sprouted from the thin line of exposed skin between their white gloves and tattered coat sleeves. They were kept away from the other performers in claustrophobic, thickly barred cages, and only let out at show time.
Five of them stomped below him now, jumping up and down, snarling, laughing.Did the audience see them lapping at his blood as it dripped into their mouths?
What had he seen when he’d been part of the crowd?
What had propelled him to her?
“How about a soda?” William asked his sons as they sat transfixed in their seats.
“But William — “ Connie placed her hand on his knee. Her eyes were large, moist moons, and she didn’t have to say another word to convey her worry over money. How could they afford anything else on this day? This month? This year?
“Don’t worry, Connie. I’ve got enough to cover it.” Just enough. He patted her hand. Winked. Ran his fingers over the back of her wrist. How could he have known it would be the last time he’d see her?
Really see her — as someone whole. Solid. Not merely the mist waiting on a platform high in the air whispering his name.
“
Halfway across, his sons heavy on the balance pole, his blood dripping; the clowns below catching it within the darkness of their painted-on smiles.
His sons inched closer as he took another excruciating step.
Soda.
He circled the perimeter of the performance area to the concession booth. Down here, the crowd sounded different, like hundreds of birds squawking in a deep canyon. Between the metal benches, in the empty spaces between seats and floorboards, a thousand luminous eyes surveyed the arena. The performers seemed to move behind a wall of murky water. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a clown pull off what looked like great hunks of taffy from its face. But his main focus was concentrated on the figure in the shadows.
He knew her name.
When she smiled, William’s mouth went dry. His tongue felt like a sponge wrung out and left to dry on hot concrete.
He’d dreamt of her for as long as he’d tilled his fields. Dreams that were warm and moist, dreams from which he awoke next to his wife, next to Connie, with a sense of guilt and longing.
How many nights had he slipped out of bed to stand trembling in the bathroom, the lights off, his reflection ashen and dim in the mirror? His hand stroking feverishly below…
Every time he finished, he felt as if his soul had been yanked up through his throat. He’d slip back into bed next to Connie and face away from her. Otherwise, he couldn’t fall back asleep.
He knew it was her the same way he knew when to plant the fields in spring, the same way he knew when to harvest in the fall. He felt it. Felt it inside him like a hornet trying to work its way through the valves of his heart.
She reached out and touched his forearm.
He barely nodded. A part of him was angry and wanted to ask, Can you pay off the bank? Can you save our farm? But instead he looked into the shadows of her cloak and knew she could help him in a more fundamental way.
William gasped “Yes.” He stepped forward and lost himself in something wet, deep and cold.
Suffocation. Numbing blackness.
How long can a man drown in oblivion without collapsing in on himself? His soul shrank and unraveled for an eternity until the woman from his dreams unfolded from him like shadows melting into daylight.
Then — so many years later…
His hands gripped the rough, flexible rungs of a rope ladder, and he found himself climbing up, up, up toward a canvas ceiling. A flock of silhouettes danced and cawed impatiently overhead.
William reached the platform.
Razor wire stretched out long and sharp and cold before him. He was no longer in Riverbend.
A calm settled over him like a morning fog.
William Farini was now part of the circus.
They traveled by train, by truck and bus, over endless valleys, plains, mountain passes. Images came to him like bits of remembered dream, images of meals shared with the other performers, sitting in somnambulistic circles, chanting in fevered monotones. But every time he became aware of himself — fully aware — he was on the platform high above the middle ring of the Big Top. The pain he felt as he stepped onto the razor wire was a balm to the guilt he felt for betraying his family.
The woman from his dreams had helped him, all right; helped him ignore reality and turn away from the pain that life brought. But to never face the hardships was to never live. So he welcomed the sharp pain of the wire, the razor blades, because that was something that reminded him of what it was to be alive.
Soon, he felt a new weight on the balance pole.
“John? Frank?” His tears blinded him. He struggled not to fall.
“Father?” his sons said in unison.
Months, years later, Connie waited on the opposite platform, a beckoning mist that solidified bit by agonizing bit with each performance.
Maybe this is the way, he thought, to get my family back.
Maybe this is my penance.
He had yet to fall.
Was it even possible to fall?
He looked down at the net.
Faces swirled hungrily in the sinewy threads, weaving and reweaving, an undulating sea. Connie waited on the far platform, standing the way she used to stand on their front porch.
And now, so many years later…
His sons inched closer, their weight on the balance pole intense on his palms. Razors sliced into his feet. Blood dripped through the net into the open mouths of the clowns below.
He was so close.
John and Frank crept toward him, their bodies shaking, eyes wide with fright.
“That’s it,” William said. “Steady now. Steady.”
The last of the sun blazed through the Big Top’s entrance like a fire dying in a bed of ash.
