But, thought Will, it's broke, out of order!
He flicked a glance at Jim, who pointed wildly down.
The merry-go-round was running, yes, but ...
It was running backward.
The small calliope inside the carousel machinery rattle-snapped its nervous-stallion shivering drums, clashed its harvest-moon cymbals, toothed its castanets, and throatily choked and sobbed its reeds, whistles, and baroque flutes.
The music, Will thought, it's backwards, too!
Mr. Dark jerked about, glanced up, as if he had heard Will's thought. A wind shook the trees in black tumults. Mr. Dark shrugged and looked away.
The carousel wheeled faster, shrieking, plunging, going roundabout-back!
Now Mr. Cooger, with his flaming red hair and fire-blue eyes, was pacing the midway, making a last check. He stood under their tree. Will could have let spit down on him. Then the calliope gave a particularly violent cry of foul murder which made dogs howl in far countries, and Mr. Cooger, spinning, ran and leaped on the back-whirling universe of animals who, tail first, head last, pursued an endless circling night toward unfound and never to be discovered destinations. Hand-slapping brass poles, he flung himself into a seat where with his bristly red hair, pink face, and incredible sharp blue eyes he sat silent, going back around, back around, the music squealing swift back with him like insucked breath.
The music, thought Will, what is it? And how do I know it's backside first? He hugged the limb, tried to catch the tune, then hum it forward in his head. But the brass bells, the drums, hammered his chest, revved his heart so he felt his pulse reverse, his blood turn back in perverse thrusts through all his flesh, so he was nearly shaken free to fall, so all he did was clutch, hang pale, and drink the sight of the backward-turning machine and Mr. Dark, alert at the controls, on the sidelines.
It was Jim who first noticed the new thing happening, for he kicked Will, once, Will looked over, and Jim nodded frantically at the man in the machine as he came around the next time.
Mr. Cooger's face was melting like pink wax.
His hands were becoming doll's hands.
His bones sank away beneath his clothes; his clothes then shrank down to fit his dwindling frame.
His face flickered going, and each time around he melted more.
Will saw Jim's head shift, circling.
The carousel wheeled, a great back-drifting lunar dream, the horses thrusting, the music in-gasped after, while Mr. Cooger, as simple as shadows, as simple as light, as simple as time, got younger. And younger. And younger.
Each time he wheeled to view he sat alone with his bones, which shaped like warm candles burning away to tender years. He gazed serenely at the fiery constellations, the children-inhabited trees, which went away from him as he removed himself from them and his nose diminished and his sweet wax ears reshaped themselves to small pink roses.
Now no longer forty where he had begun his back-spiraled journey, Mr. Cooger was nineteen.
Around went the reverse parade of horse, pole, music, man become young man, young man fast rendered down to boy....
Mr. Cooger was seventeen, sixteen....
Another and another time around under the sky and trees and Will whispering, Jim counting the times around, around, while the night air warmed to summer heat by friction of sun-metal brass, the passionate backturned flight of beasts, wore the wax doll down and down and washed him clean with still stranger musics until all ceased, all died away to stillness, the calliope shut up its brassworks, the ironmongery machines hissed off, and with a last faint whine like desert sands blown back up Arabian hourglasses, the carousel rocked on seaweed waters and stood still.
The figure seated in the carved white wooden sleigh chair was very small.
Mr. Cooger was twelve years old.
No. Will's mouth shaped the word. No. Jim's did the same.
The small shape stepped down from the silent world, its face in shadow, but its hands, newborn wrinkled pink, held out in raw carnival lamplight.
The strange man-boy shot his gaze up, down, smelling fright somewhere, terror and awe in the vicinity. Will balled himself tight and shut his eyes. He felt the terrible gaze shoot through the leaves like blown needle-darts, pass on. Then, rabbit-running, the small shape lit off down the empty midway.
Jim was first to stir the leaves aside.
Mr. Dark was gone, too, in the evening hush.
It seemed to take Jim forever to fall down to earth. Will fell after and they both stood, clamorous with alarms, shaken by concussions of silent pantomime, blasted by events all the more numbing because they ran off into night and unknown. And it was Jim who spoke from their mutual confusion and trembling as each held to the other's arm, seeing the small shadow rush, luring them across the meadow.
"Oh, Will, I wish we could go home, I wish we could eat. But it's too late, we saw! We got to see more! Don't we?"
"Lord," said Will, miserably. "I guess we do."
And they ran together, following they didn't know what on out and away to who could possibly guess where.
Chapter 19
OUT ON the highway the last faint water colors of the sun were gone beyond the hills and whatever they were chasing was so far ahead as to be only a swift fleck now shown in lamplight now set free, running, into dark.
"Twenty-eight!" gasped Jim. "Twenty-eight times!"
"The merry-go-round, sure!" Will jerked his head. "Twenty-eight times I counted, it went around back!"
Up ahead, the small shape stopped and looked back.
Jim and Will ducked in by a tree and let it move on.
"It," thought Will. Why do I think "it"? He's a boy, he's a man ... no ... it is something that has changed, that's what it is.
They reached and passed the city limits, and swiftly jogging, Will said, "Jim, there must've been two people on that ride, Mr. Cooger and this boy and--"
"No. I never took my eyes off him!"
They ran by the barber shop. Will saw but did not see a sign in the window. He read but did not read. He remembered, he forgot. He plunged on.
"Hey! He's turned on Culpepper Street! Quick!"
They rounded a corner.
"He's gone!"
The street lay long and empty in the lamplight.
Leaves blew on the hopscotch-chalked sidewalks.
"Will, Miss Foley lives on this street."
"Sure, fourth house, but--"
Jim strolled, casually whistling, hands in pockets, Will with him. At Miss Foley's house, they glanced up.
In one of the softly lit front windows, someone stood looking out.
A boy, no more and no less than twelve years old.
"Will!" cried Jim, softly. "That boy--"
"Her nephew ...?"
"Nephew, heck! Keep your head away. Maybe he can read lips. Walk slow. To the corner and back. You see his face? The eyes, Will! That's one part of people don't change, young, old, six or sixty! Boy's face, sure, but the eyes were the eyes of Mr. Cooger!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
They both stopped to enjoy the swift pound of each other's heart.
"Keep moving." They moved. Jim held Will's arm tight, leading him. "You did see Mr. Cooger's eyes, huh? When he held us up fit to crack our heads together? You did see the boy, just off the ride? He looked right up near me, hid in the tree, and boy! it was like opening the door of a furnace! I'll never forget those eyes! And there they are now, in the window. Turn around. Now, let's walk back easy and nice and slow.... We got to warn Miss Foley what's hiding in her house, don't we?"
"Jim, look, you don't give a darn about Miss Foley or what's in her house!"
Jim said nothing. Walking arm in arm with Will he just looked over at his friend and blinked once, let the lids come down over his shiny green eyes and go up.
And again Will had the feeling about Jim that he had always had about an old almost forgotten dog. Some time every year that dog, good for many months, just ran on out into the
world and didn't come back for days and finally did limp back all burred and scrawny and odorous of swamps and dumps; he had rolled in the dirty mangers and foul dropping places of the world, simply to turn home with a funny little smile pinned to his muzzle. Dad had named the dog Plato, the wilderness philosopher, for you saw by his eyes there was nothing he didn't know. Returned, the dog would live in innocence again, tread patterns of grace, for months, then vanish, and the whole thing start over. Now, walking here he thought he heard Jim whimper under his breath. He could feel the bristles stiffen all over Jim. He felt Jim's ears flatten, saw him sniff the new dark. Jim smelled smells that no one knew, heard ticks from clocks that told another time. Even his tongue was strange now, moving along his lower, and now his upper lip as they stopped in front of Miss Foley's house again.
The front window was empty.
"Going to walk up and ring the bell," said Jim.
"What, meet him face to face?!"
"My aunt's eyebrows, Will. We got to check, don't we? Shake his paw, stare him in his good eye or some such, and if it is him--"
"We don't warn Miss Foley right in front of him, do we?"
"We'll phone her, later, dumb. Up we go!"
Will sighed and let himself be walked up the steps wanting but not wanting to know if the boy in this house had Mr. Cooger hid but showing like a firefly between his eyelashes.
Jim rang the bell.
"What if he answers?" Will demanded. "Boy, I'm so scared I could sprinkle dust. Jim, why aren't you scared, why?"
Jim examined both of his untrembled hands. "I'll be darned," he gasped. "You're right! I'm not!"
The door swung wide.
Miss Foley beamed out at them.
"Jim! Will! How nice."
"Miss Foley," blurted Will. "You okay?"
Jim glared at him. Miss Foley laughed.
"Why shouldn't I be?"
Will flushed. "All those darn carnival mirrors--"
"Nonsense, I've forgotten all about it. Well, boys, are you coming in?"
She held the door wide.
Will shuffled a foot and stopped.
Beyond Miss Foley, a beaded curtain hung like a dark blue thunder shower across the parlor entry.
Where the colored rain touched the floor, a pair of dusty small shoes poked out. Just beyond the downpour the evil boy loitered.
Evil? Will blinked. Why evil? Because. "Because" was reason enough. A boy, yes, and evil.
"Robert?" Miss Foley turned, calling through the dark blue always-falling beads of rain. She took Will's hand and gently pulled him inside. "Come meet two of my students."
The rain poured aside. A fresh candy-pink hand broke through, all by itself, as if testing the weather in the hall.
Good grief, thought Will, he'll look me in the eye! see the merry-go-round and himself on it moving back, back. I know it's printed on my eyeball like I been struck by lightning!
"Miss Foley!" said Will.
Now a pink face stuck out through the dim frozen necklaces of storm.
"We got to tell you a terrible thing."
Jim struck Will's elbow, hard, to shut him.
Now the body came out through the dark watery flow of beads. The rain shushed behind the small boy.
Miss Foley leaned toward him, expectant. Jim gripped his elbow, fiercely. He stammered, flushed, then spat it out:
"Mr. Crosetti!"
Quite suddenly, clearly, he saw the sign in the barber's window. The sign seen but not seen as they ran by:
CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS.
"Mr. Crosetti!" he repeated, and added, swiftly, "He's ... dead!"
"What ... the barber?"
"The barber?" echoed Jim.
"See this haircut?" Will turned, trembling, his hand to his head. "He did it. And we just walked by there and the sign was up and people told us--"
"What a shame." Miss Foley was reaching out to fetch the strange boy forward. "I'm so sorry. Boys, this is Robert, my nephew from Wisconsin."
Jim stuck out his hand. Robert the Nephew examined it, curiously. "What are you looking at?" he asked.
"You look familiar," said Jim.
Jim! Will yelled to himself.
"Like an uncle of mine," said Jim, all sweet and calm.
The nephew flicked his eyes to Will, who looked only at the floor, afraid the boy would see his eyeballs whirl with the remembered carousel. Crazily, he wanted to hum the backward music.
Now, he thought, face him!
He looked up straight at the boy.
And it was wild and crazy and the floor sank away beneath for there was the pink shiny Halloween mask of a small pretty boy's face, but almost as if holes were cut where the eyes of Mr. Cooger shone out, old, old, eyes as bright as sharp blue stars and the light from those stars taking a million years to get here. And through the little nostrils cut in the shiny wax mask, Mr. Cooger's breath went in steam came out ice. And the Valentine candy tongue moved small behind those trim white candy-kernel teeth.
Mr. Cooger, somewhere behind the eye slits, went blink-click with his insect-Kodak pupils. The lenses exploded like suns, then burnt chilly and serene again.
He swiveled his glance to Jim. Blink-click. He had Jim flexed, focussed, shot, developed, dried, filed away in dark. Blink-click.
Yet this was only a boy standing in a hall with two other boys and a woman....
And all the while Jim gazed steadily back, feathers unruffled, taking his own pictures of Robert.
"Have you boys had supper?" asked Miss Foley. "We're just sitting down--"
"We got to go!"
Everyone looked at Will as if amazed he didn't want to stick here forever.
"Jim--" he stammered. "Your mom's home alone--"
"Oh, sure," Jim said, reluctantly.
"I know what." The nephew paused for their attention. When their faces turned, Mr. Cooger inside the nephew went silently blink-click, blink-click, listening through the toy ears, watching through the toy-charm eyes, whetting the doll's mouth with a Pekingese tongue. "Join us later for dessert, huh?"
"Dessert?"
"I'm taking Aunt Willa to the carnival." The boy stroked Miss Foley's arm until she laughed nervously.
"Carnival?" cried Will, and lowered his voice. "Miss Foley, you said--"
"I said I was foolish and scared myself," said Miss Foley. "It's Saturday night, the best night for tent shows and showing my nephew the sights."
"Join us?" asked Robert, holding Miss Foley's hand. "Later?"
"Great!" said Jim.
"Jim," said Will. "We been out all day. Your mom's sick."
"I forgot." Jim flashed him a look filled with purest snake poison.
Flick. The nephew made an X-ray of both, showing them, no doubt, as cold bones trembling in warm flesh. He stuck out his hand.
"Tomorrow, then. Meet you by the side shows."
"Swell!" Jim grabbed the small hand.
"So long!" Will jumped out the door, then turned with a last agonized appeal to the teacher.
"Miss Foley ...?"
"Yes, Will?"
Don't go with that boy, he thought. Don't go near the shows. Stay home, oh, please! But then he said:
"Mr. Crosetti's dead."
She nodded, touched, waiting for his tears. And while she waited, he dragged Jim outside and the door swung shut on Miss Foley and the pink small face with the lenses in it going blink-click, snapshotting two incoherent boys, and them fumbling down the steps in October dark, while the merry-go-round started again in Will's head, rushing while the leaves in the trees above cracked and fried with wind. Aside, Will spluttered, "Jim, you shook hands with him! Mr. Cooger! You're not going to meet him!?"
"It's Mr. Cooger, all right. Boy, those eyes. If I met him tonight, we'd solve the whole shooting match. What's eating you, Will?"
"Eating me!" At the bottom of the steps now, they tussled in fierce and frantic whispers, glancing up at the empty windows where, now and again, a shadow passed. Will stopped. The mus
ic turned in his head. Stunned, he squinched his eyes. "Jim, the music that the calliope played when Mr. Cooger got younger--"
"Yeah?"
"It was the 'Funeral March'! Played backwards!"
"Which 'Funeral March'?"
"Which! Jim, Chopin only wrote one tune! The 'Funeral March'!"
"But why played backward?"
"Mr. Cooger was marching away from the grave, not toward it, wasn't he, getting younger, smaller, instead of older and dropping dead?"
"Willy, you're terrific!"
"Sure, but--" Will stiffened. "He's there. The window, again. Wave at him. So long! Now, walk and whistle something. Not Chopin, for gosh sakes--"
Jim waved. Will waved. Both whistled, "Oh, Susanna."
The shadow gestured small in the high window.
The boys hurried off down the street.
Chapter 20
TWO SUPPERS were waiting in two houses.
One parent yelled at Jim, two parents yelled at Will.
Both were sent hungry upstairs.
It started at seven o'clock. It was done by seven-three.
Doors slammed. Locks clacked.
Clocks ticked.
Will stood by the door. The telephone was locked away outside. And even if he called, Miss Foley wouldn't answer. By now she'd be gone beyond town ... good grief! Anyway, what could he say? Miss Foley, that nephew's no nephew? That boy's no boy? Wouldn't she laugh? She would. For the nephew was a nephew, the boy was a boy, or seemed such.
He turned to the window. Jim, across the way, stood facing the same dilemma, in his room. Both struggled. It was too early to raise the windows and stage-whisper to each other. Parents below were busy growing crystal-radio peach fuzz in their ears, alert.
The boys threw themselves on their separate beds in their separate houses, probed mattresses for chocolate chunks put away against the lean years, and ate moodily.
Clocks ticked.
Nine. Nine-thirty. Ten.
The knob rattled, softly, as Dad unlocked the door.
Dad! thought Will. Come in! We got to talk!
But Dad chewed his breath in the hall. Only his confusion, his always puzzled, half-bewildered face could be felt beyond the door.
He won't come in, thought Will. Walk around, talk around, back off from a thing, yes. But come sit, listen? When had he, when would he, ever?
"Will ...?"
Will quickened.
"Will ..." said Dad, "... be careful."
"Careful?" cried mother, coming along the hall. "Is that all you're going to say?"