“What…” Evelyn said tentatively, “what happened? Why did you run away?”
He turned his head toward her, then put his fingers over his mouth and clinched his eyes painfully shut.
“I’m sorry,” Evelyn said and put her hand on his arm. “I don’t mean to ask you questions you can’t answer.” He touched her hand with a feathery touch. “I’m just worried about you and I don’t quite know what to do about it.”
He spread his hands and shook his head.
“Isn’t there anyone at the Wonder Show we can trust to help us? Are you running away from all of them?”
Angel nodded and held one hand about twelve inches above the other.
“Tiny Tim? We can trust Tiny Tim?”
He nodded and smiled.
“Anyone else?”
He nodded again.
“Henry?”
He nodded quickly.
“Anyone else?”
He shook his head violently. With two fingers he drew a widow’s peak on his forehead, then put his hands over his eyes.
“Especially not Haverstock?” she asked.
He nodded and let his head fall back on the car seat. His eyelids began to droop.
“We’ll be there in just a minute,” she said.
When Evelyn pulled up in front of Dr. Latham’s house, he was standing on the porch watching Francine’s unenthusiastic departure for Rose’s slumber party. She walked listlessly down the unpaved street, letting her small satchel bump against her leg. She didn’t notice Evelyn’s arrival.
Evelyn pulled the hand brake and hurried around to the other side of the car. Dr. Latham met her as she helped Angel out. Angel took a step and began to topple. Evelyn cried out, but the doctor caught him, picked him up like a small boy, and carried him into the house.
The calliope suddenly began to play at the Wonder Show, loud in the cooling air.
Dr. Latham put Angel on the examination table in his small clinic. Angel moved restlessly, not taking his eyes from Evelyn.
“What’s the matter, son?” the doctor asked, taking Angel’s pulse.
“He can’t talk,” Evelyn said.
“Oh?” Latham looked at her quizzically. “Who is he? I don’t recall ever seeing him before.”
“You didn’t go to the tent show last night?” Evelyn asked.
Dr. Latham shook his head. “No. Is he one of those people?”
“Yes. His name is Angel.”
His eyebrows rose. “Angel, huh? What did it say on the poster? The Magic Boy?”
“Yes.”
“Is he magic?”
Evelyn shrugged and smiled slightly. “He seems to be.”
“Well,” Dr. Latham said, grinning, “I’m sorry I missed it. What’s the matter with him?”
Evelyn shook her head. “I don’t know. He staggered into the road and I almost ran over him.”
“Did you hit him?”
“No.” She hesitated a moment and then committed herself. “Dr. Latham, he’s very frightened about something. He’s ran away from the tent show, and I promised him you wouldn’t say anything to anyone if he’d let me bring him here.”
The doctor looked at her with concern. “Are you sure you ought to get mixed up in this? You don’t know anything about these people.”
“It looks like I am mixed up in it,” she said, smiling wryly.
Latham looked from Evelyn to Angel, at the hope and childlike trust in their eyes. He shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “I won’t say anything.” He gave Evelyn a stern look. “But that promise goes out the window if I find out he’s done something against the law.”
She nodded once. “Okay, Dr. Latham. I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
Latham put his hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you wait in the parlor? I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything.”
Evelyn smiled at Angel and pressed his hand. He returned her smile, but his face was pale and worried. The doctor steered her from the room.
19.
When the calliope began to play its hollow metallic song, Francine was walking along the street, aimlessly kicking stones, uncaringly messing up the toes of her slippers. She looked up at the sound and paused. She could see the lights through the trees and, farther away, the shimmer of sheet lightning across the horizon. She stood bathed in the night silence, broken only by the ghostly music of the calliope and the chirp of crickets, as if one accompanied the other.
She wouldn’t have been able to explain why she turned and moved toward the music and the lights. She didn’t really want to see the show again; no more than she wanted to go to Rose’s party. But, somehow, the vague undefined dissatisfaction she felt seemed to decrease as the music got louder, just as it had increased as she neared the Willet house.
The street down which Francine walked was dark and empty. A few houses showed lights, but most were deserted. Those who lived in them had gone to the Wonder Show.
She felt no uneasiness. The street was as familiar in the dark as it was by day. She had walked down it nearly every day of her life, to school and to the courthouse square. If she felt anything at all, it was a slight dismay at her actions; the vague feeling that she was no longer in control of her body.
She didn’t know why she was on her way to the tent show, and she didn’t know why she stopped at the vacant lot where the Overstreet house had burned when she was a little girl. She turned and looked at it curiously. She had played there many times, but it held no distinction that she could recall. There was the old cistern, made of concrete and stones, boarded over to keep the careless from falling in. There had been no water in it for years, and there was occasional talk of filling it in before there was an accident, but no one had ever gone further than the talk. Stone steps led up to where the porch had been. Fireflies flickered their mating signals among the dense shrubbery and bushes that had grown back around the foundation after the fire, that had grown wild and created a secluded nook where children played.
And there was the Minotaur standing and watching her.
Francine clutched the satchel to her stomach and stared at him, feeling the blood tingling through her veins like acid. Something sucked the air from her lungs. The Minotaur did not move. He was almost naked, wearing only the loincloth he wore during his act in the tent show. Light, although there was no light, seemed to reflect from his satin skin and glisten from his horns like liquid silver.
Francine noticed she had taken a step toward him, but she couldn’t remember doing it. She could see his big soft eyes clearly, as if the darkness drew away from him, leaving him in a pool of moonlight, though the low moon was concealed by inky, rolling thunderheads. He smiled and she thought, how kind he looks. His arms extended toward her, beckoning and welcoming, snaking the muscles in his smooth shoulders.
She discovered she had somehow moved closer.
She relaxed her rigid arms and let the satchel slip unnoticed to the ground. She couldn’t hear the crickets anymore. The calliope sounded miles and miles away, somewhere out on the horizon with the lightning. She could no longer feel her feet touching the ground, could hardly feel her body. The Minotaur was before her, close enough to touch, close enough to feel the light and heat from his body.
Francine stood looking up at the Minotaur, like a worshiper before the bronze idol of an animal god. He smiled and put his arm gently around her shoulder, leading her through a gap in the shrubbery. They were in a moonlit bubble floating in darkness, insulated from sound. She could hear nothing but the blood running in her ears.
She reached out her hand hesitantly, tentatively touching his smooth, hard chest. His skin quivered slightly under her fingertips. She slid her hand over his breast and across his shoulder. It was a familiar sensation, like stroking a horse, the satin smoothness, the muscle tremors under her palm, the clean musky animal odor.