Napoleon in Rags by Zachary Ash	Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion

“Tell me more.”

“A clown is the Lord of Misrule. A clown’s the cagey tramp who gulls hicks too dumb to know they’re already dead into laughing. A clown knocks logic on its ass.”

He wiped his face with a rag and squinted. In front of his hunched frame was a small mirror. Beside it a gooseneck lamp threw harsh light on a make-up kit sitting atop a cracked table. The table was part of a two-seat nook in a trailer. Monty fingered a jar and unscrewed it.

“A clown is a grafter in greasepaint.”

“Not much romance,” I said.

We were in Newport, summer home of old money, for a glitzy Fourth of July shindig; and the carnival was pitched beneath a stone-and-timber mansion on the endless lawn of an estate bigger than some towns we played. Tomorrow we’d be gone.

Outside a brass band noisily rehearsed. Trumpets and horns squawked.

“Romance? Romance is for rubes.” He turned his head this way and that, inspecting his pale features. Straight and sharp as a lumber saw. “Listen up. Try to learn something.” He pulled his bone-colored hair back and clamped it with a vise-like paper clip.

“Clowns are as old as time. Ever heard of Knossos? It was a palace in the kingdom of Crete a thousand years before Christ died on a tree. Maybe more. Well, kid, in this palace men and women — hell, maybe one like you — dressed their hair with flowers, inked their faces, and leaped, yes leaped, charging bulls. Clowns.”

Monty dipped two fingers into a jar and with easy strokes made his face silver. He took a brush, swirled it in black, and drew stars on his eyes. He spoke to the mirror.

“In Rome, in the Coliseum, masked revelers danced between matches in muck and brains. Clowns. In the days after the empire fell, so they say, minstrels and fools wandered on foot, small bands on what was left of roads in a wasteland, grinning for coins in plague-sick towns. Clowns.”

He closed his eyes. His breathing grew slow and rhythmic, his gestures fine as a sculptor working in glass. His voice took on a tone of rock splintering deep under the earth.

“In the days that followed, once the looting and throat-slashing ended, villages mad with God put on mystery plays. And on a stage of dry mud, devils danced and tumbled and leered. Clowns.”

He took a tube and blackened his lips. With a delicate brush, its tip scalpel-sharp, wet with paint, he slashed his face red. Three ugly scars. And he dusted his handiwork with glitter.

“Then in the age of reason — Christ, reason — a man named Ashgrove, his cavalry uniform spotted with French blood, came back to London and put on a show. Horsemen, acrobats, clowns. He called it a circus.”

Monty slid out of the booth and stood. He buttoned his vest, snaked a scarf around his throat, and slung himself into his gentleman’s coat-and-tails. Lastly he punched home his crumpled top hat. Then before he picked up his props and left the trailer, a demon in spats, ready for the evening show, he gave me a sour grin.

“That enough romance, kid?”

* * *

“I’ve come to see the dragon.”

He was glassy-eyed and gaunt, this man Blight pulled from the line and escorted to the turnstile. I took his ticket, recoiled from the stink, and let him pass. He shuffled across the platform. Inside the dim, echoing hull a line waited in front of the wooden planks to board the cars. The Dragon’s Lair was the best ride on the midway.

The man swayed. Unshaven and mud-spattered, he looked wrecked, he looked jubilant, I thought, as if he had walked days in the rain to reach this spot. What had called him here?

Blight nodded. I ushered the man to the last seat in the last car, one of three rusty boxes on wheels, hooked together and idling on the track, a seat by himself Blight had reserved. Then the other riders milled forward, handing their tickets to me, and climbed into the iron crates.

Blight stepped back. I pulled a lever; thick safety bars on each car fell into place and locked. I pulled another lever. The three-car train jerked once, rattled down the track, and sped into the twisting darkness.

Running the thrill-rides, a new one each night, was my job for the week. Last week I sold cotton candy. The week before I helped set up the ropes and nets in the grand pavilion for the sky tumblers. The week before that I crouched under a stage, my hand raised to the crowd inside a velvet moose, and traded quips with the midgets working beside me at the puppet show. And next week — the cages and the big cats and the elephants, hosing them down, sweeping away the muck. This was how you learned the ways of a carnival.

That was Blight’s thinking; and he should know. Longer than he could remember, Blight had been showing greenhorns the ropes, passing on the secrets of the trade — one recruit at a time — as his carnival rolled on, town to town, summer after summer. This year was my chance.

I gazed into the tunnel where the cars had gone and heard the riders’ gleeful screams. It was a five-minute run through an enchanted forest. Inside the track curved and rose and dipped, and in the dark — rushing fast — the riders saw a witch swinging on a broom, stitched together from black drapes, straw, and a rubbery, wart-faced mask; trolls leaping in confusion, tied to pistons, their papier-mâché skin crumbling; a wizard casting a spell, his voice on tape thin and crackly; a leprechaun flinging gold coins out of a cast-iron pot, stocky plaster legs dancing a jig, frozen and grotesque; goblins and tombstones and elves, cut from cardboard, perched here and there in the dry-ice mist. Everything the riders saw was slapped together, cheap, shoddy, an illusion of horror kept in place by shadows and quick turns. But not everything they heard.

Unseen, in the dark bowels of the ride, nested somewhere in the girders and ramps and boards, bellowed a dragon.

“Sarah, my darling,” said Mr. Blight, “you have the touch. Send the cars running with one swift pull, yes, roll them like dice. That’s carnival.”

“Thanks. I guess it’s the wrists.”

“No, lass. It’s the eyes.” He leaned close to share one of his secrets. “You’re learning to see.”

“See what?”

“The illusion.”

On the platform inside the pre-fab shell we talked and waited for the cars to come round the snaking loop. Near us a new line formed. It was a busy Friday, the third week in July, and outside a summer squall drenched the grounds. Rain pelted the tin roof. The hammering muffled the echo of shrieks, grinding wheels, and roars. It muffled the snarls. And as I listened, I caught in the air a whiff of burnt hair and burnt meat.

Blight caught the whiff too and smiled. He studied Sarah.

We heard a screech and saw the three-car train rumble out of the dark, from the opposite end, and race to the platform. I threw the brake.

The riders got out. Laughing and wobbly, they climbed out of the cars, tested their legs, and staggered to the exit. All except the last rider.

“He’s gone,” I said.

“Aye, lass. He’s gone.”

I watched the line press toward me. Alarm and bewilderment bit me. Clutching the turnstile, waving the new riders onto the platform, I turned to Blight. Words swam in my mind.

“Where is he?”

“Sarah, Sarah. That’s one question even I can’t answer.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why now, lass, he told you. Remember? He went to see the dragon.”

* * *

The boy in the cage had no arms. The Spider Queen had six. Something with horns and feathers and fur giggled. Old men mumbled, back to back, bound by a bridge of flesh. The mermaid touched slender cuts on her gills. The man with wings wrapped around him snored as he hung upside down. The pin folk pressed faces like dots against glass inside a bell jar. A snail big as a pony chanted. In a box reeking of meat, Lady Ann moaned and muttered and belched. A toad prayed.

One day in late July, Blight took me to see the freaks. He kept them in a special tent, each in its own curtain-drawn cell, like sick beds in a cancer ward. The smell was bad. The tent sat unmarked behind a make-shift wire fence looped with chains and padlocks. Blight said he’d been saving it for me as a treat; I’d done my share and more all summer. We took a tour.

“So many marvels,” he said. “The sideshow, I confess, is my favorite tent. Is it wrong to have favorites? A collector should be cool in his judgments. But look around, Sarah. Our carnival is the last that trades in such wonders. ’Tis a pity.”

I felt ill. Although the tent was not big, in the rancid darkness it seemed to go on and on, one curtain after another, down corridors and chambers too long, it seemed, to fit inside the green canvas. It made me reel.

“How many days it took me, traveling backwater roads and alleys, knocking on the door at madhouses and orphanages, tromping through swamps and highlands and slums, posting a reward on every crossroad, how many days, Sarah, it took me to build this collection, you can’t guess. Or can you?”

“It’s late,” I said. “Monty’s waiting. Juggling lesson.”

“A little further. Walk with me to the end. There are so many wonders. Sarah, Sarah. There’s more.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

“Another day, then. In a carnival there’s always more.”

* * *

“Polka dots and suspenders. A crazy wig?”

“The get-up’s not what counts,” said Monty, “or the act. To make it work, kid — to walk into the ring and an hour later walk out, all aces — you gotta think like a clown.”

His boots sank into the sand as he talked and his hands reached to the small fire. The pit was mostly ashes. The flames, once high, dwindled now in the cool night air. The air smelled of salt. Wisps of smoke drifted past stars.

“Think sideways.”

Monty and I sat on the beach on the red blocks that curve like a circus train to make a ring. We sat and looked in darkness to the sea. It was the last night of a three-day show on this spit of land on the far end of Cape Cod. Three days of acts in the open air on the beach. It was August.

“How about a double act? A two-clown romp.”

“Bad idea.”

He fell silent, scooping sand in his lace glove, letting it fall, and watched the dunes. His words, when he spoke again, were faraway. “I tried it once.”

“The suffragette?”

He spilled what was left of the sand. I felt him clench.

“Blight’s been talking to you. Tellin’ tales.”

“He’s got secrets too. Blight gave me a chance, Monty. I owe him. I think he can give me what I want.”

Monty came back from wherever he was. He trained his gaze on me, his expression hard as I’d ever seen it. I saw fear.

“Listen to me, kid. Listen.” He gathered himself. “Sarah, listen. Don’t trust that Irishman.”

There was silence.

“Monty. The double act, the suffragette. When was that?”

“Some time ago.”

“When?”

More silence.

“Blight’s carnival. How long have you worked for him?”

“I don’t work for Blight. I travel with him.”

“How long?”

“From the beginning.”

“How long?”

He was gone again. Monty looked out at the ocean we couldn’t see and up to the stars we couldn’t name. He seemed to know them.

“Years?”

“Years.”

“Decades?”

“Decades.”

More silence. But it had to end; we both knew I’d come too far. And besides, I had the answer long before I had the question.

“Centuries?”

“Yes, Sarah,” sad Monty. He smiled sadly. “Centuries.”

“How? Who are you?”

“Circus folk, nothing more.”

“What else?”

“What we are, Sarah — there’s no word. Not now. Once yes, but that was long ago. The word’s gone. The language too. Hell, I can’t even remember.”

Hesitantly, his hand reached for mine but fell away, and once more he turned to watch the sea.

“What are we? Wanderers.”

I turned too to find something in the horizon. In silence we looked.

“Listen, Sarah. You’ve had your lark. The season’s almost over.”

The fire was out now and we were alone in the darkness. There were only stars. And the wind.

“It’s time you thought about going home.”

“Monty,” I said, “I am home.”

* * *

The rube wanted his money back. He was a mousy guy; I bet he never made much of a fuss. That’s the danger of a carnival. It makes you brave.

“This show’s not much,” he said. “I seen better.”

Blight handled it. We had been crisscrossing the grounds on a slow drizzly Tuesday, inspecting a stalled merry-go-round, listening to jokes the midgets told in a puppet show. The rube found Blight.

“My deepest apologies. Our carnival is here to astonish.”

“I seen better.”

So Blight told the rube he had something special for him. A one-of-kind exhibit. Something sure to astonish. And the ticket was free.

“I promise, sir, you’ll never see better.”

Blight took the man to an empty shed. I waited. In two minutes Blight came out, alone, strolling to me, smiling. In his paw he rolled a couple of walnuts.

“Like one? They’re fresh.”

I took one.

Just then the shed door banged open, and onto the muddy lot, like the last drunk at 2 a.m., staggered the man, babbling, lurching, hooting. He was insane. Blight and I watched.

In his stumbling confusion he stopped for a second, and as if he’d heard a friend’s voice, turned to face us. I gasped. He stared at me with two black holes. There was no blood. And then he was gone.

* * *

“Take it.”

Pale and brittle, its edges curling, it lay on the table like a dead moth. The paper was old, old as parchment in a monk’s bestiary. Old and ugly. On it were marks I couldn’t read.

“It’s more than a reward,” he said, “it’s a birthright. Sarah, you’re home. Take the contract.”

I sat in Blight’s office, inside his trailer, cluttered and ornate, its stale air rich with the scent of cloves, baby powder and tar; I sat and listened. Blight’s pitch came without a smile. Behind him on a coat rack perched a bird — a falcon, I think — twitching, staring; it had no wings. In the dark a grandfather clock chimed.

“The terms, my sweet, are these. I promise you days and delights, endless, extravagant, beyond imagining. I promise you awe. I promise magic. And in return? I keep you. In my carnival, in my company. Forever. I keep you in my collection.”

Outside I heard rain. It was cold here in the woods, the September night already touched by Fall, two days away. This was our last stop. Barnabas. A village in the Berkshires, a dark place where locals still swap tales of what happened here once, centuries ago, the year children died and witches burned. Tomorrow was our last show.

“Come with me. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. It’s rapture. Sarah, Sarah. I know you. One of the lost ones. Tell me now, what have you got? Who do you have?”

Blight leaned back in his leather chair, his pudgy fingers dancing on the oak table top. In his dead eyes flared hunger. His voice was never more mellow, never more fine, luxuriant as peat wet with mist. Blight knew how to make a pitch. That much at least you have to give him; in his lilt sang a thousand years of Ireland.

On the last day of summer, what do you wear? For some people it’s white. For me it was polka dots. Polka dots and baggy pants and a bowler hat. And the big shoes. On the last day of summer I was a clown. It was the end of the tour; the carnival’s last show. My turn in the big top.

All week I had rehearsed with Monty a simple routine — a little juggling, a little slapstick — something meat-and-potatoes I could nail without choking on bile. Monty knew about my stage fright. But he didn’t know about my midnight chat with Blight. And honestly, there was no point; I had already decided that once the tour ended I’d be on my way home. I had what I wanted.

So in front of a threadbare crowd on a cold, rainy night we did our plain-Jane double act. At least I didn’t run. And then Monty surprised me with one last gift. As the last of the hicks drifted out of the tent, he called in the carnival’s band, a broken-down brass combo, who marched in, their instruments swinging high and low, blowing a ragged waltz. He took my hand. And then inside the sawdust ring, in the empty tent, Monty and I — like a freak prom’s king and queen — danced. Around and around in mad circles we kicked up dust devils of straw. We closed out the season in style.

“Last night, kid,” whispered Monty, “close your eyes.”

I did. We flew. How long we glided and spun, rose and soared high above the sawdust, like two hawks drifting in a spiral down a canyon, until dizziness melted my mind to champagne, I can’t say. But at last when we touched ground, we were alone. The band was gone. All that was left was shadows and silence.

“Hell of a lark, Monty.”

“It was aces.”

In the morning we rolled on.

Copyright © 2009 by Zachary Ash

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