Carnival of Shadows (30 page)

He did not know these people, and he had no desire to know them.

But the past was all that it was, and it could not be changed. The past belonged to his mother, his father, to Esther and everyone else he had left behind.

The past was a different country, and he could no longer speak their language.

Michael Travis took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

He rose from the bench and left the marquee. He crossed the field to his car and got inside. He started the engine and pulled away toward the road.

He wanted to get away from here. That was all he knew. Everything else had vanished—every certainty, every thought, every feeling.

Perhaps for the first time in his life, he just wished to be completely and utterly alone.

24

He dreams of Japanese lanterns.

They are strung together from the back porch of the Flatwater house, and they travel as far as the eye can see. It is dusk, and it must be summertime because he can hear the cicadas and they breathe their own strange and unearthly susurrus.

Michael is watching snaps of heat thunder unfold along the horizon, like exclamation marks jumping down from the belly of the clouds, almost too fast for the eye to see.

He can see the shadows in the fields, and they seem to reflect the shadow within himself, the shadow that was always there, will always be there, and within that shadow lies the certain knowledge that not only will there forever be things that he does not understand, but that he himself will never be understood.

His mother calls his name.

He does not want to go back there because he knows she is dead.

His father calls his name also.

And he does not want to see his father, because he will stand there with a knife in his eye and he will tell Michael things that he does not want to hear.

But—for some reason—he knows these things are not true.

You are not your father’s son, Michael Travis.

He prays for it, even though he does not believe in prayer.

What you most fear does not run in the blood, my friend.

For you cannot believe in something that you cannot see.

That is a myth.

But how can that be true, when he sees his mother—even now—walking toward him, walking out to the back of the house, coming to get him for dinner?

And then she is standing there, and the smile on her face is calm and kind and gentle, and there are no signs of death about her, and her hair is not shorn and blackened, and her eyes have not burst with the fifty thousand volts of electricity they drove through her, and her arms do not hang limply by her side, unable now to reach, to touch, to feel…

You are free to be yourself.

Michael takes one last look at the darkening horizon, and then he turns and follows her into the house.

As he moves, his shadow drifts unnoticed across the cracked and arid field, and from somewhere close at hand, he hears the sound of a crow.

And then he is elsewhere. He does not recognize this place, and then he begins to understand that this is perhaps the place into which he has retreated. Here is the place he has hidden from the world. It is quiet. Nothing moves, and the only sound seems to be that of his own heart, perhaps the blood in his veins, the air in his lungs.

He is not afraid. He moves slowly, and he can see the edges between sleeping and waking, the way in which daylight has begun to invade his senses, the sounds around him now, the noises above and beneath.

And then he wakes.

Michael Travis lies there in his narrow bed in the McCaffrey Hotel and knows that something within himself has changed.

He does not know what, and he does not wish to look, but he knows that he will have to.

It is inevitable.

25

“Mr. Travis?”

Travis looked up suddenly.

Danny McCaffrey was beside the table, coffeepot in hand.

“You all right, Mr. Travis?”

“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

“We were just in the middle of a conversation, and you disappeared.”

“I’m sorry, Danny. I think I had a short night’s sleep.”

“The bed isn’t good?”

“The bed is fine, Danny. The room is just fine. I have a lot on my mind.”

“Yes, of course.”

“So, what were we talking about?”

“Oh, nothing important. Just that my sister said that you were a very decent man, very polite an’ all.”

“And your sister is very pretty and charming, Danny.”

“How the hell she is still single, I do not know. I tell her that she’s got to get herself settled down. She says she’s not found the right man yet. Anyway, she said that you’re letting the carnival open up again tonight. Is that right?”

“Where did she hear that, Danny?”

“No idea, Mr. Travis, but she’s busy asking her friends and all manner of people to come on over and see it.”

“She must have been very impressed by it when she saw it last week.”

“Oh, that’s just Laura. She’s into all that hocus-pocus stuff, you know? That fortune-tellin’ and palm-reading and tarot and whatnot. I seen and heard a great deal of that stuff, but I gotta tell you that there’s a guy down there does some stuff that I can’t even begin to understand.”

“Which guy?”

“The little guy. The dwarf.”

Travis recalled the final moments of his meeting with Chester Greene.

“And then there’s the guy with seven fingers. Now
he
is a magician, making stuff disappear and whatever. But I’ll tell you now, that little guy is some kind of mind reader.”

“Well, it’s evidently a trick, Danny, because it’s not possible for one person to read another’s mind.”

“You go tell that to Larry Youngman.”

“Who?”

“Larry Youngman. Owns the tavern down there. You can’t miss it because it’s called the Tavern. Two bars in Seneca, Larry’s place and the Travelers’ Rest, which is owned by Hank Dietz’s widow. Larry’ll be down there now, cleaning up before things get crazy. Folks’ll have put out the word that the carnival’s on tonight, and Seneca Falls will be as busy as New York City by five o’clock, I guarantee it.”

“So what happened with Mr. Youngman?”

Danny gave a wry smile. “Oh, you go ask him, Mr. Travis. He’ll tell it a great deal better than I ever could.”

“I’ll do that, Danny.”

“Oh, and one other thing, Mr. Travis.”

“Yes, Danny.”

“Be obliged if you wouldn’t be flirting any more with my sister, okay?”

Travis was stunned. “I can assure you, Danny, that I was not—”

Danny McCaffrey suddenly burst out laughing. “Oh my, you shoulda seen your face, Mr. Travis! I am sorry. I just had to do that. Laura said you were such a polite man and so well mannered, a real gentleman, she said. She said to play a joke on you. It was her idea, I swear.”

Travis got up from the table, and for a brief moment he was genuinely amused. “Yes, well, very funny, Danny. Tell her that it was much appreciated.”

“She said to tell you to lighten up some. I told her I should never say such a thing to a man from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that more ’an likely I’d get myself arrested. Anyway, she put me up to it. No offense intended, Mr. Travis.”

“And none taken, Danny.”

“Well, she just won a buck off of me, that’s for sure.”

“How so?”

“She bet me you would smile, and I said you wouldn’t, and I seen you smile, Mr. Travis, no denyin’ it!”

“Well, I am sure she will find a good use for that dollar tonight, eh?”

“Oh, I’m sure she will.”

“I’ll be away to see Mr. Youngman, then,” Travis said.

“Tell him ‘Hi’ from me, would you?”

“I will, Danny.”

Travis left the dining room and crossed through reception to the front door. He paused for a moment, wondered whether he should head back to his room for his overcoat. He looked out. The day was bright and fresh. The sky was cloudless. Looked like it would be fine weather for the carnival.

He shook his head. He’d not given his permission, at least not directly. An assumption had been made by Doyle that Travis would have no disagreement, and Doyle had been right. He himself wanted to see what all this fuss was about.

But there was something else as well. He could not explain it, and he did not wish to explain it, but what Chester Greene had said to him—how he was not his father’s son, that what he feared most was
not
in his blood—had… had what? All Travis knew was that since Greene had uttered those words, he’d felt somehow different. It was subtle, completely intangible, and yet it had eased him. He felt somehow less afraid. Of what, he did not know, and for some reason it did not matter.

Travis did not look inward. He did not seek out the edges of the shadows. He did not prod the sleeping wolf with a pointed stick. He let it be.

Travis did not return for his overcoat. He left to see if Larry Youngman could help him better understand what he had found in Seneca Falls.

The Tavern was as it sounded, all wood and worn-out leather and an open fire that Larry Youngman was cleaning even as Travis arrived.

“Not open, son,” Youngman said. “Not for another hour or two… and I have to tell you that if you’d be lookin’ for a drink at this time o’ the mornin’ then you don’t need me, you need a doctor.”

Travis smiled. “My name is Michael Travis. I am from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Youngman got up off his knees and set down the brush he’d been using to clean out the ash trap beneath the fire. Travis figured him for late fifties, early sixties, and he was a big man, a good head taller than Travis.

“Ah, our own Melvin Purvis,” Youngman said. “Word was around last night that you were handy with the old sidearm there. You done shot some gangsters an’ all.”

“A couple, yes. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“I should think not. Closest we got to a gangster in Seneca Falls was Hank Dietz, charging five cents more than me for a glass of beer. He’s dead now anyway, and his wife is runnin’ the place into nothing.”

“I came to talk to you about what happened at the carnival last Friday night.”

Youngman smiled and then shook his head. His back was bowed, his hands filthy with soot, a streak of gray on his cheek, and the way he stood there, hands hanging by his sides, his brow furrowed, his eyes peering out at Travis from within heavy shadows, he seemed like something out of history, some shambling woodsman emerging from a medieval forest.

“Who’s been talking?”

“I was speaking with Danny McCaffrey down at the hotel. He said that something happened on Friday night, the night before the body was found.”

“Not easy for folks, is it?”

“What isn’t?”

“Leaving things alone. Everyone’s got to be up in everyone else’s business.” Youngman shook his head resignedly. “Ah well, I suppose that’s the downside of livin’ in a place such as this. Everyone knows your business, and they’re always very keen to be discussin’ it with one another.”

“What happened, Mr. Youngman?”

Youngman walked to the bar and eased himself up onto a stool. He indicated for Travis to take the next stool, and then he turned and faced the bar itself. Travis just sat silent and waited for Youngman to start talking.

“You ever lose someone, Mr. Travis?”

“Yes, Mr. Youngman, I have.”

“Someone close?”

“Yes.”

“You ever feel afterward, you know… after they were gone, that you would have wished for one minute, thirty seconds even, just a few moments more to say what you always should have said when they were alive?”

“Yes, Mr. Youngman, I have. I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t felt that at some point in their life.”

“ ’Cept those lucky ones who never lost someone important. That does happen, you know? Some folks go all their lives and it never really hits them. Even when folks lose their parents, they somehow take it in their stride and deal with it. Maybe that’s because you’ve always somehow managed to anticipate that. That never comes as a shock, does it? Rare is it that a child dies before the parent, right?”

“Yes, for sure.”

Youngman shook his head. “Not so rare here.”

“You lost a child, Mr. Youngman?”

“Sure did, clumsy that I was.” He smiled ironically and then sighed.

“What happened?”

“It’s somewhat of a long story, but I can give you the short version. Had a wife. Not the current one, but the one before. Been married three times, Mr. Travis. First wife left me because of the drink, second wife because of the gambling, and the third wife rescued me from an early grave. Second wife and I had a boy. Her name was Marilyn, the boy’s name was David. Hell of a kid, even if I say so myself. Lord knows where he got his looks from, because they sure as hell didn’t come from me. Anyway, off he went to school one day, eleven years old, wintertime, never a second thought about it. Never came home. Got a visit from the then-sheriff, Dan Warner, to say that David had been hit by a car or a truck or something. They’d found his body at the side of the road no more than half a mile from home. Looked like someone had just plowed right into him, broke him apart, and then drove off. Left him there at the side of the road in the snow.”

“That is truly terrible, Mr. Youngman. I cannot even begin to understand how you must feel.”

“You get over it, Mr. Travis. That was all of twenty years ago. He’d have been a grown man by now, probably more trouble than he was worth, never calling, never visiting ’cept when he needed me to bail him out of some hole he’d dug for himself. Don’t matter how old they get; they’re always gonna be your kids, and they’re always gonna be in trouble.”

“Did they ever find out who the driver was?”

“Nope, never did, and never really will.”

“There’s always a chance—”

“The man who killed my son is dead, Mr. Travis.”

“But I thought you said—”

“I don’t know who it was, ’cept he was from Colorado and he done killed himself a year later.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Youngman.”

“What I said was one thing, Mr. Travis. What that little feller told me Friday night was quite another.”

“Chester Greene?”

“That’d be his name, yes. He told me what happened.”

“But how?”

“Don’t know, sir, and—to be honest—I don’t want to know. All I know is that the man who killed my son was so burdened with guilt, he done killed hisself too. He put a pistol in his mouth and he blowed his own darn fool head off.”

“But I don’t understand why you would believe such a thing.”

“Well, I do know it, sir. I know that’s the truth just like that little feller knew my son’s name, knew what date he died, knew my second wife’s name and that she left me.”

“He told you these things?”

“Yes, he did. Clear as daylight, he told me those things.”

“Well, there must be an explanation for it, Mr. Youngman. There has to be. He must have found out about you before you went to the carnival.”

“Well, maybe he did, sir, but if he did, then he’s even cleverer than I thought. I was living in Brandenburg, Kentucky, at the time, Mr. Travis, and I came here more than ten years ago and have never spoken of that to a living soul. My second wife is dead too, so she never spoke to no carnival dwarf neither. There’s no way in the world that that little feller could have known about what happened unless he has some kind of a gift.”

“Well, okay, it would be easy enough to find out if a man committed suicide a year after this happened—”

“I ain’t gonna go lookin’, Mr. Travis. I’m fine just knowing as much as I know right now, and I don’t want to know any more. That whole thing has been put to rest for me now, and if nothing else, I am grateful to that little guy for telling me what happened. Tell you the truth, I was haunted by that. Haunted by some sort of idea that I would never find out the truth. That might not sound very likely, seein’ as how twenty years have passed and I ain’t done nothin’ about it, but a man can still be haunted by an idea, Mr. Travis, even if he don’t raise a finger to do anything about it. Truth is, I feel different. I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. It weren’t never right nor fair that my boy got killed, but at least I know that the man who did it didn’t escape justice. Far as I know, he’s roastin’ his heels in hellfire even as we speak.”

“Do you not want to know what really happened, Mr. Youngman? Don’t you want to prove it?”

Youngman smiled. “I’m not from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Travis. I ain’t preparin’ anything for a trial here. That little feller put my mind at rest. He told me what happened, and he told me that my boy is safe and well, and that he done moved on and he’s someone else’s son now and he’s bein’ looked after just fine an’ dandy. He says that my son don’t feel no bitterness toward me, nor his ma, and he didn’t lay the blame on anyone but hisself and that darn fool driver for not lookin’ where he was going.”

“And you believe this, Mr. Youngman?”

“Sure I do.”

“And if it’s not true?”

“Hell, Mr. Travis, if it ain’t true, then so be it. I
feel
it’s true. Gotta say that I
know
it’s true, and that’s good enough for me.”

“And how much did this information cost you?”

“Cost me? Cost me all of ten cents to step inside that tent, Mr. Travis.”

Travis shook his head in disbelief.

“Crazy stuff, eh?” Youngman said.

“Sounds crazy, absolutely.”

“Well, maybe there isn’t an answer for everything in this world, Mr. Travis. All I know is that I don’t feel like my boy is waiting for me anymore, you know? I feel better. I feel lighter. I feel like I can move on, and after twenty years, that sure as hell comes as a relief to me, I have to say.”

Youngman glanced at his watch. “You want a drink with me, Mr. Travis?”

Travis smiled. “I will, Mr. Youngman. Just a small one, please.”

“A small one?” Youngman frowned and shook his head. “I wouldn’t know what that was even if I seen it, Mr. Travis.”