Something Wicked This Way Comes

And, Will thought, here comes the carnival, Death like a rattle in one hand, Life like candy in the other; shake one to scare you, offer one to make your mouth water. Here comes the side-show, both hands full!

He jumped to his feet.

‘Dad oh, listen! You’ll live forever! Believe me, or you’re sunk! Sure, you were sick a few years ago—but that’s over. Sure, you’re fifty-four, but that’s young! And another thing—’

‘Yes, Willy?’

His father waited for him. He swayed. He bit his lips, then blurted out:

‘Don’t go near the carnival.’

‘Strange,’ his father said, ‘that’s what I was going to tell you.’

‘I wouldn’t go back to that place for a billion dollars!’

But, Will thought, that won’t stop the carnival searching through town to visit me.

‘Promise, Dad?’

‘Why don’t you want me to go there, Will?’

‘That’s one of the things I’ll tell tomorrow or next week or next year. You just got to trust me, Dad.’

‘I do, son.’ Dad took his hand. ‘It’s a promise.’

As if at a signal, both turned to the house. The time was up, the hour was late, enough had been said, they properly sensed they must go.

‘The way you came out,’ said Dad, ‘is the way you go in.’

Will walked silently to touch the iron rungs hidden under the rustling ivy.

‘Dad. You won’t pull these off. . .?’

Dad probed one with his fingers.

‘Some day, when you’re tired of them, you’ll take them off yourself.’

‘I’ll never be tired of them.’

‘Is that how it seems? Yes, to someone your age, you figure you’ll never get tired of anything. All right, son, up you go.’

He saw how his father looked up along the ivy and the hidden path.

‘You want to come up this way, too?’

‘No, no,’ his father said, quickly.

‘Because,’ said Will, ‘you’re welcome.’

‘That’s all right. Go on.’

But he still looked at the ivy stirring in the dark morning light.

Will sprang up, grabbed the first, the second, the third rungs and looked down.

From just this distance, Dad looked as if he were shrinking, there on the ground. Somehow he didn’t want to leave him behind there in the night, like someone ditched by someone else, one hand up to move, but not moving.

‘Dad!’ he whispered. ‘You ain’t got the stuff!’

Who says!? cried Dad’s mouth, silently.

And he jumped.

And laughing without sound, the boy, the man swung up the side of the house, unceasingly, hand over hand, foot after foot.

He heard Dad slip, scrabble, grab.

Hold tight! he thought.

‘Ah. . .!’

The man breathed hard.

Eyes tight, Will prayed: hold. . .there. . .now. . .!!

The old man gusted out, sucked in, swore in a fierce whisper, then climbed again.

Will opened his eyes and climbed and the rest was smooth, high, higher, fine, sweet, wondrous, done! They swung in and sat upon the sill, same size, same weight, coloured same by the stars, and sat embraced once more with grand fine exhaustion, gasping on huge ingulped laughs which swept their bones together, and for fear of waking God, country, wife, Mom, and hell, they snug-clapped hands to each other’s mouths, felt the vibrant warm hilarity fountained there and sat one instant longer, eyes bright with each other and wet with love.

Then, with a last strong clasp, Dad was gone, the bedroom door shut.

Drunk on the long night’s doings, lolled away from fear toward better, grander things found in Dad, Will slung off limp-falling clothes with tipsy arms and delightfully aching legs, and like a fall of timber chopped himself to bed. . . .

29

He slept for exactly one hour.

And then, as if remembering something he had only half seen, he woke, sat up, and peered out at Jim’s rooftop.

‘The lightning-rod!’ he yelled. ‘It’s gone!’

Which indeed it was.

Stolen? No. Jim take it down? Yes! Why? For the shucks of it. Smiling, he had climbed to scuttle the iron, dare any storm to strike his house! Afraid? No. Fear was a new electric-power suit Jim must try for size.

Jim! Will wanted to smash his confounded window. Go nail the rod back! Before morn, Jim, the blasted carnival’ll send someone to find where we live, don’t know how they’ll come or what they’ll look like, but, Lord, your roof’s so empty! the clouds are moving fast, that storm’s rushing at us and. . .

Will stopped.

What sort of noise does a balloon make, adrift?

None.

No, not quite. It noises itself, it soughs, like the wind billowing your curtains all white as breaths of foam. Or it makes a sound like the stars turning over in your sleep. Or it announces itself like moonrise and moonset. That last is best: like the moon sailing the universal deeps, so rides a balloon.

How do you hear it, how are you warned? The ear, does it hear? No. But the hairs on the back of your neck, and the peach-fuzz in your ears, they do, and the hair along your arms sings like grasshopper legs frictioned and trembling with strange music. So you know, you feel, you are sure, lying abed, that a balloon is submerging the ocean sky.

Will sensed a stir in Jim’s house; Jim, too, with his fine dark antennae, must have felt the waters part high over town to let a Leviathan pass.