CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

The Old Man, still holding his map, climbed down from the tank. His granddaughter was already dancing around, doing cartwheels along the overpass.

“What’s that big animal, Poppa?”

“An elephant.”

“An elephant!” she screamed.

A delegation of Stockaders seasoned with circus performers climbed the dusty embankment toward the tank. The Old Man checked the Boy who stood atop the turret.

“Be ready.”

The Boy nodded softly.

It’s good he came with us.

A paunchy Stockader came forward, his face bright red and burning beneath a bushy mustache. His fat lips were punch stained, his eyes glossy from drink.

“What a day of miracles! First the circus and now this! I’m Reynolds.” He held out a beefy hand and the Old Man shook it, feeling thick viscous sweat on it.

“We’re just passing by,” mumbled the Old Man.

“Oh come now, ya gotta see this thing!” bellowed Reynolds too loudly.

“Oh, Poppa, the ele—the elemant … the … what’s its name, Poppa?”

“Elephant.”

“The elephant!” she cried.

Everyone cheered.

And the Fool was there.

He beamed at the Old Man.

“We need fuel,” said the Old Man. “The people at the Dam said you might have some. Then we really must go.”

The Old Man felt his hand suddenly taken between the Fool’s long claws.

“But we’ve come all this way and we have so much to give you!” begged the Fool. “Oh please, come see the elephant!”

“The elephant!” shrieked his granddaughter again.

Everyone cheered and even the elephant bellowed distantly.

“You’re going to love this, Nuncle,” assured the Fool as he dragged the Old Man forward, down the off-ramp and into the circus. “Things that were lost are coming back. Amazing things. Free things. The whole world will be ours again!”

His granddaughter raced forward toward the throng surrounding the elephant. The Old Man turned his head back to look over the heads of the pushers who pushed him forward into the circus outside the gates. The Boy stood atop the tank, his strong right arm dangling just above the haft of his tomahawk.

A tin cup is pressed into the Old Man’s hand and he drinks knowing he should be careful, but all eyes and even the eyes of the Fool, are watching him.

Pleading.

Begging.

“Huzzah!” shout all the Players when the Old Man takes a thirsty drink.

His granddaughter is hoisted by three Strong Men aboard the elephant who immediately stands on its hind legs, raises its trunk, and bellows again.

The Old Man breaks out into a cold sweat sensing the sudden uncomfortable fear and helplessness one feels as he watches his granddaughter atop this gigantic and wild beast.

Reynolds, close and breathy, whispers hotly, “Ain’t it a trick?”

Conklin!

“Conklin says hello.”

For a whisker Reynolds seems bewildered. Then he slaps his head, spilling punch across his vest and bushy mustache.

“There’s a fellow!” roars Reynolds. “Knew’d him ever since the first days after. How is McKenna?”

“I don’t know McKenna. But Conklin told me to ask you for fuel if you still have any.”

His granddaughter screamed with delight, her face merely an open mouth, her head thrown back as her hair sprang wildly out into the blue sky.

This is wrong. What if something horrible happens to her? What if the giant beast throws her and then tramples her? What if anything goes wrong?

The Old Man feels cold sweat beginning to run down his back as he imagines the worst.

“Fuel? Got all the fuel you can take on,” says Reynolds. “We’ll see about it tomorrow, all right?”

The Old Man starts to protest but Reynolds is off through the crowd roaring and backslapping, calling for more of the circus-brewed punch.

The day is hot.

Too hot.

When the Old Man looks down, his tin cup is drained and his mouth feels sugary.

“Where’d ya get that machine, Nuncle?”

The Fool stares smilingly up at the Old Man, his thin body posed into a slant, as though leaning backward over a cliff.

The Old Man doesn’t answer, wants to answer, but cannot.

I am tired and I feel my body relaxing into all this.

Let go and enjoy it. The only one ruining it is you and your fears.

And I feel so good.

Like …?

Like?

Like the motel, my friend?

Oh …!

“You look like you’ve just swallowed a rotten bug, Nuncle.” The Fool is ladling more punch into the Old Man’s tin cup.

I feel rooted to the earth.

I can hear my granddaughter. High above and far away.

You never should have brought her with you.

Then I would’ve had to come all this way alone.

And die alone.

“Great things are coming again, Nuncle,” simpered the Fool. “Medicine and well-being. Food for all. Oh, Nuncle, here is the best part. There’ll be a work. A work to rebuild it all just as it once was but better and completely new. Even different. Isn’t that amazing, Nuncle?”

The Fool seems confused. The Old Man stares at him as though he is looking at a picture on a wall.

He is merely a drawing.

A photograph even.

Pictures were once so common you deleted them if they weren’t exactly what you wanted.

“Nuncle, you must stop swallowing these bugs. Perhaps you’d like to lie down. I’ll sing you a song or recite a poem.” The Fool threw his head back and put one long claw-like hand across his chest. “The Twenty-Dollar Burger for just a Quarter! At FattyBurger you’ll think your stomach’s been hit by a mortar. FattyBurger, All Meat, No Veggies, All Night.”

The Fool beamed and threw his claws wide and open, accepting applause.

“I bet you remember that one from Before, Nuncle. I bet you remember when it was shown on the telly-screen? Those times were grand, those times were fun, those times are coming back I tell you all and one. What we lost is coming back the same and different. And the difference is better. Difference is always better. Change is always good. Right, Nuncle?”

His granddaughter is at his side. She is clutching him and showing him a streamer on a stick someone has given her.

“Poppa! Look!” She waves it across his vision and it seems a dragon crossing the desert sky full of flame and smoke.

We must …

“We must go,” he mumbles.

All around the Old Man the cries and shrieks of the crowd mixed with some awkward and distorted off-tone music have been playing and growing in his ears. But beneath that, the Old Man hears the guttural growl of a small but vicious animal.

He looks deep into his granddaughter’s eyes.

We are surrounded and there is no way out.

The world begins to tilt. First one way, and then another.

The Fool is growling.

“It’s your turn to drive,” says the Old Man.

“Okay, Poppa!” she explodes.

“You can have mine,” he mumbles to himself as she grabs him by the hand.

She is dragging him back to the tank, pulling him forward in fact.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Poppa!”

He feels claws pulling at his other arm and he shakes it stiffly as though controlling it from very far away. The Fool cartwheels in the dirt and an instant later is up in a wide-legged stance. His too-long arms hang down and low, the claws opening and closing.

He is growling.

The Old Man closes his eyes at the foot of the embankment as his granddaughter scrambles up and away toward the tank at the top.

The tank she gets to drive again.

“C’mon, Poppa!” She beckons, leaving him behind.

“What about yer fuel, mister?” Reynolds’s face looms comically into the Old Man’s narrow field of red dirt and rock and sudden blue sky.

The Old Man is grabbed heavily from behind.

The Boy is dragging him, one-armed, up the hill with little effort and much force.

The Fool at the foot of the hill seems no longer friendly. In fact, he seems given completely over to a purple anger none of the other revelers notice. The Fool stares hatefully upward at the retreating Old Man and the Boy.

Teeth gritted.

Jaw clenched.

A fire burns in the darkness behind his too-large puppet face and coal-black eyes.

The tank’s engine whispers into its roar.

The Old Man is dragged upward across the hot armor and rests, catching his breath and holding on to the turret, while the Boy pours water over his burning old head.

Thank you, he thinks he says aloud but is not sure if he has.

The circus before the Stockade races away behind them and even though the Old Man can only see the colors and pennants in the distance, he can feel those hateful eyes of the Fool still on him.

Watching them.

Following them.

Chasing after them.