"Since always."
"Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he's covering up. He's had his fun and he's guilty. And men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells. Times come when troughs, not tables, suit our appetites. Hear a man too loudly praising others, and look to wonder if he didn't just get up from the sty. On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt and sin, why, often that's your good man with a capital G, Will. For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two. I've known a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog. I suppose it's thinking about trying to be good makes the crack run up the wall one night. A man with high standards, too, the least hair falls on him sometimes wilts his spine. He can't let himself alone, won't lift himself off the hook if he falls just a breath from grace.
"Oh, it would be lovely if you could just be fine, act fine, not think of it all the time. But it's hard, right? with the last piece of lemon cake waiting in the icebox, middle of the night, not yours, but you lie awake in a hot sweat for it, eh? do I need tell you? Or, a hot spring day, noon, and there you are chained to your school desk and away off there goes the river, cool and fresh over the rock-fall. Boys can hear clear water like that miles away. So, minute by minute, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops, you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that's what the clock ticks, that's what it says in the ticks. Run swim, or stay hot, run eat or lie hungry. So you stay, but once stayed, Will, you know the secret, don't you? don't mink of the river again. Or the cake. Because if you do, you'll go crazy. Add up all the rivers never swum in, cakes never eaten, and by the time you get my age, Will, it's a lot missed out on. But then you console yourself, thinking, the more times in, the more times possibly drowned, or choked on lemon frosting. But then, through plain dumb cowardice, I guess, maybe you hold off from too much, wait, play it safe.
"Look at me: married at thirty-nine, Will, thirty-nine! But I was so busy wrestling myself two falls out of three, I figured I couldn't marry until I had licked myself good and forever. Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else. So at last I looked up from my great self-wrestling match one night when your mother came to the library for a book, and got me, instead. And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That's you, Will, for my money. And the strange thing is, son, and sad, too, though you're always racing out there on the rim of the lawn, and me on the roof using books for shingles, comparing life to libraries, I soon saw you were wiser, sooner and better, than I will ever be...."
Dad's pipe was dead. He paused to tap it out and reload it.
"No, sir," Will said.
"Yes," said his father, "I'd be a fool not to know I'm a fool. My one wisdom is: you're wise."
"Funny," Will said, after a long pause. "You've told me more, tonight, than I've told you. I'll think some more. Maybe I'll tell you everything, at breakfast. Okay?"
"I'll be ready, if you are."
"Because ... I want you to be happy, Dad."
He hated the tears that sprang to his eyes.
"I'll be all right, Will."
"Anything I could say or do to make you happy, I would."
"Willy, William." Dad lit his pipe again and watched the smoke blow away in sweet dissolvings. "Just tell me I'll live forever. That would do nicely."
His voice, Will thought, I never noticed. It's the same color as his hair.
"Pa," he said, "don't sound so sad."
"Me? I'm the original sad man. I read a book and it makes me sad. See a film: sad. Plays? they really work me over."
"Is there anything," said Will, "doesn't make you sad?"
"One thing. Death."
"Boy!" Will started. "I should think that would!"
"No," said the man with the voice to match his hair. "Death makes everything else sad. But death itself only scares. If there wasn't death, all the other things wouldn't get tainted."
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 still he 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, colored 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....
Chapter 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 yelped. "It's goner!"
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 Aw 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.
Both boys felt a shadow bulk the drive between houses, both flung up their windows, both poked their heads out, both dropped their jaws in surprise at this friendly, this always exquisite timing, this delightful pantomime of intuition, of apprehension, their tandem teamwork over the years. Then, silver-faced, for the moon was rising, both glanced up.
As a balloon wafted over and vanished.
"Holy cow, what's a balloon doing here!?" Jim asked, but wished no answer.
For, peering, they both knew the balloon was searching the best search ever; no car-motor racket, no tires whining asphalt, no footstepped street, just the wind clearing a great amazon through the clouds for a solemn voyage of wicker basket and storm sail riding over.
Neither Jim nor Will crashed his window or pulled his shade, they simply had to stay motionless waiting, for they heard the noise again like a murmur in someone else's dream....
The temperature dropped forty degrees.
Because now the storm-bleached balloon whisper-purled, plummet-sank softly down, its elephant shadow cooling gemmed lawns and sundials as they flaunted their swift gaze high through that shadow.
And what they saw was something akimbo and arustle in the down-hung wicker carriage. Was that head and shoulders? Yes, with the moon like a silver cloak thrown up behind. Mr. Dark! thought Will. The Crusher! thought Jim. The Wart! thought Will. The Skeleton! The Lava Sipper! The Hanging Man! Monsieur Guillotine!
No.
The Dust Witch.
The Witch who might draw skulls and bones in the dust, then sneeze it away.
Jim looked to Will and Will to Jim; both read their lips: the Witch!
But why a wax crone flung out in a night balloon to search? thought Will, why none of the others, with their lizard-venom, wolf-fire, snake-spit eyes? Why send a crumbled statue with blind-newt lashes sewn tight with black-widow thread?
And then, looking up, they knew.
For the Witch, though peculiar wax, was peculiarly alive. Blind, yes, but she thrust down rust-splotched fingers which petted, stroked the sluices of air, which cut and splayed the wind, peeled layers of space, blinded stars, which hovered and danced, then fixed and pointed as did her nose.
And the boys knew even more.
They knew that she was blind, but special blind. She could dip down her hands to feel the bumps of the world, touch house roofs, probe attic bins, reap dust, examine draughts that blew through halls and souls that blew through people, draughts vented from bellows to thump-wrist, to pound-temples, to pulse-throat, and back to bellows again. Just as they felt that balloon sift down like an autumn rain, so she could feel their souls disinhabit, reinhabit their tremulous nostrils. Each soul, a vast warm fingerprint, felt different, she could roil it in her hand like clay; smelled different, Will could hear her snuffing his life away; tasted different, she savored them with her raw-gummed mouth, her puff-adder tongue; sounded different, she stuffed their souls in one ear, tissued them out the other!
Her hands played down the air, one for Will, one for Jim.
The balloon shadow washed them with panic, rinsed them with terror.
The Witch exhaled.
The balloon, freed of this small sour ballast, up-rose. The shadow passed.
"Oh God!" said Jim. "Now they know where we live!"
Both gasped. Some monstrous baggage brushed and dragged across the shingles of Jim's house.
"Will! She's got me!"
"No! I think--"
The drag, brush, rustle scurried from bottom to top of Jim's roof. Then Will saw the balloon whirl up, fly off toward the hills.
"She's gone, there she goes! Jim, she did something to your roof. Shove the monkey pole over!"
Jim slid the long slender clothesline pole over, Will fixed it on his sill, then swung out, hand over hand, swung until Jim pulled him through his window and they bare-footed it into Jim's clothes closet and boosted and hoisted each other up inside the attic that smelled like lumber mills, old, dark, and too silent. Perched out on the high roof, shivering, Will cried: "Jim, there it is."
And there it was, in the moonlight.
It was a track like a snail paints on a sidewalk. It glistered. It was silver-slick. But this was a path left by a gigantic snail that, if it existed at all, weighed a hundred pounds. The silver ribbon was a yard across. Starting down at the leaf-filled rain trough, the silver track shimmered to the rooftop, then tremored down the other side.
"Why?" gasped Jim. "Why?"
"Easier than looking for house numbers or street names. She marked your roof so you can see it for miles around, night or day!"
"Ohmigosh." Jim bent to touch the track. A faint evil-smelling glue covered his finger. "Will, what'll we do?"
"I got a hunch," the other whispered, "they won't be back till morning. They can't just start a rumpus. They got some plan. Right now--there's what we do!"
Coiled across the lawn below like a vast boa constrictor, waiting for them, was the garden hose.
Will was gone, down, fast, and didn't knock anything over or wake anyone up. Jim, on the roof, was surprised, in no time at all, when Will came scuttling up all panting teeth, the water-fizzing hose in his fist.
"Will, you're a genius!"
"Sure! Quick!"
They dragged the hose to drench the shingles, to wash the silver, flood the evil mercury paint away.
Working, Will glanced off at the pure color of night turning toward morn and saw the balloon trying to make decisions on the wind. Did it sense, would it come back? Would she mark the roof again, and they have to wash it off, and she mark it, and they wash it, until dawn? Yes, if need be.
If only, thought Will, I could stop the Witch for good. They don't know our names or where we live, Mr. Cooger's too near dead to remember or tell. The Dwarf--if he is the lightning-rod man--is mad--and, God willing, won't recollect! And they won't dare bother Miss Foley until morning. So, grinding their teeth way out in the meadows, they've sent the Dust Witch to search....
"I'm a fool," grieved Jim, quietly, rinsing the roof where the lightning rod had been. "Why didn't I leave it up?"
"Lightning hasn't struck yet," Will said. "And if we jump lively, it won't. Now--over here!"
They showered the roof.
&
nbsp; Below, someone put down a window.
"Mom." Jim laughed, bleakly. "She thinks it's raining."
Chapter 30
THE RAIN ceased.
The roof was clean.
They let the hose snake away to thump on the night grass a thousand miles below.
Beyond town, the balloon still paused between un-promising midnight and promised and hoped-for sun.
"Why's she waiting?"
"Maybe she smells what we're up to."
They went back down through the attic and soon were in separate rooms and beds after many fevers and chills of talk and now lay quietly separate listening to hearts and clocks beat too quickly toward dawn.
Whatever they do, thought Will, we must do it first. He wished the balloon might fly back, the Witch might guess they had washed her mark off and soar down to trace the roof again. Why?
Because.
He found himself staring at his Boy Scout archery set, the big beautiful bow and quiver of arrows arranged on the east wall of his room.
Sorry, Dad, he thought, and sat up, smiling. This time it's me out, alone. I don't want her going back to report on us for hours, maybe days.
He grabbed the bow and quiver from the wall, hesitated, thinking, then stealthily ran the window up and leaned out. No need to holler loud and long, no. But just think real hard. They can't read thoughts, I know, that's sure, or they wouldn't send her, and she can't read thoughts, but she can feel body heat and special temperatures and special smells and excitements, and if I jump up and down and let her know just by my feeling good about having tricked her maybe, maybe ...
Four o'clock in the morning, said a drowsy clock chime, off in another land.
Witch, he thought, come back.
Witch, he thought louder and let his blood pound, the roof's clean, hear!? We made our own rain! You got to come back and re-mark it! Witch ...?
And the Witch moved.
He felt the earth turn under the balloon.
Okay, Witch, come on, there's just me, the no-name boy, you can't read my mind, but here's me spitting on you! and here's me yelling we tricked you, and the general idea gets through, so come on, come on! dare! double-dare you!
Miles away, there was a gasp of assent rising, coming near.
Holy cow, he thought suddenly, I don't want her back to this house! Come on! He thrashed into his clothes.