“I don’t know where Ruth is,” says Shelton. “She left me.”
“I’m not looking for the bitch,” says Ed. “I’m looking for my child. Where is my child?”
Shelton runs to the bunk bed, feels under the pillow. But he fumbles, or he’s too slow, he turns around to face Ed with the knife but Ed swipes his stick down and now the knife is on the floor and Shelton is weeping in pain.
“You’re a father too,” says Ed, pleasantly. “You must know I was never going to give up on my own child. Tell me. Is it a boy or a girl?”
Shelton hears himself say it’s a boy.
“Ah!” And Ed grins, and for a moment looks charming. “A boy, of course he is! My son.” Shelton stares at Ed, he stares at Ed’s knuckles, and the star tattoo beneath them, he wonders how often that star tattoo came into contact with his daughter’s face — and then the knuckles pummel into his own. Shelton slumps to the floor. He reaches around blindly for the knife, but when he looks up he sees that Ed has got it.
“Where’s my son?”
“Ruth took him with her.”
“No,” says Ed. “She didn’t.” And at that Shelton’s blood runs a little colder.
Ed stoops, with almost tender care he puts the knife against Shelton’s neck. Shelton glares up at him, this slight silly boy, and he knows there was a time he could have beaten him with his bare fists, but that was long ago, before the grey hairs and the despair. “There’s no help coming, old man,” Ed says. “The circus has packed up and moved on. Didn’t you realise? The circus left town ages ago!” The blade is still so sharp, just the way Shelton kept it for the animals, he hardly notices that it’s cutting into his throat. “Tell me!” Ed roars suddenly. “Where have you hidden my son?”
And Shelton is about to answer. He’s going to make something up. Or he’s going to tell him the truth. Or he’s going to tell Ed to go to hell, and die, and that’s all right too. But he looks away from Ed’s face, he looks across the caravan floor. Ed hesitates, he frowns. Then he turns around too. And they both stare at the open trapdoor.
Ed makes Shelton climb down the ladder first. “Don’t try anything,” he says. “I’m right behind you!” But within a few steps that hardly seems to matter — they are plunged into darkness, up and down are just absurd concepts and just as frightening as the other, and Shelton can’t see Ed as he cries out in panic. Ed demands to know what’s going on. He pleads, he makes threats. “Are you still there?” Ed calls. “Please, say something!” But Shelton refuses to answer, he won’t give Ed that small scrap of comfort.
Further downward they go. It takes longer this time, Shelton thinks, longer than ever before. And that terrifies him, but it also gives him a strange warm buzz of nostalgia. Above he hears Ed whimper as he follows.
Then, suddenly, there’s the blue, and there’s the green! And even though Shelton was expecting them he’s dazzled all the same and has to shield his eyes for a moment. Too long — because when he opens them Ed is beside him, and Ed is raving now, and he jams a hand around Shelton’s throat.
“What is this place? Is this where you hid my son?”
And as he watches Shelton sees the fear fade from Ed’s eyes, and something calmer and madder takes its place.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ed whispers, quite confidentially. “I can kill you here just as easily.”
Even now Shelton thinks that the balloon animals might come and save him. If not as an act of friendship, then at least as payment for services rendered. He tries to twist his head around to see if they’re on their way, the legions of the old and the broken and the weak. But he can’t shake Ed’s grip for long, and he can see there’s no help, not in either direction — maybe that’s the joke of it, the Popping Fields are empty now and they’re all dead and he did his job too well. Ed grips tighter. The blue of the sky is getting darker now, a dark blue, turning to black. Shelton’s eyes roll at the black, with all the colour here it’s a shame that black will be the last thing he sees. And then — then, Ed lets go.
Ed is staring at his hand in horror. It’s now too big to fit around Shelton’s throat, and the distended fingers flop limp and large from the swollen mass of the palm. The other hand is swelling too; Ed drops the knife, either in shock or because he can no longer grip it.
“Please stop it!” he squawks. And it is a squawk too, his own throat has inflated now, the neck is stretching wider than the little head it’s designed to support. And there goes the stomach, it puffs up big and round as if it’s been pumped full of air, and Shelton thinks back to how Ruth looked when she was pregnant — but no, swelling further now, this stomach wouldn’t house merely a baby but an entire circus, one of those proper circuses, not just with clowns and tumblers but a whole menagerie of wild animals! The thin rubbery skin of the stomach ripples as if all the animals are trying to get out. The legs can’t keep Ed upright any longer, he lists over, he rolls. The head hasn’t grown at all. The head is a spot. The head is a nub. The head is a tiny stub of nipple sticking out from the engorged breast beneath.
“Help me,” Ed manages to say. “Help me.”
Joshua Shelton picks up the knife. He can imagine plunging it deep into that balloon body. He can imagine the loud bang it would make. How good it would make him feel. He imagines it all, and he enjoys it. And then he drops the knife to the grass.
“No,” he says, simply. And he walks away.
He doesn’t look around again for a long time, not until Ed’s cries for help can no longer be heard, not until he’s certain he’ll never see Ed again.
On he walks through the Popping Fields.
And in time he realises that he was wrong — that it isn’t just a single green or a single blue. It delights him. He likes looking for all the variations.
Sometimes he gets lonely, but he’s used to that.
When he’s hungry he can bend down and scoop up handfuls of green. It’s good and filling. If he needs a drink, he cups his hands into the air and the blue he brings down is refreshing and cool. He sleeps on a mattress of grass, and the sky is a warm blanket.
He is happy.
One day he finds a ladder. It reaches up into the sky, as far as he can see. He wonders where it would take him, to what new caravan, what new circus. He puts his hand against the rail, and it is cold to the touch. He steps onto the bottom rung. He doesn’t like the sound his foot makes against the hard metal.
“No,” he says. “That’s all right. I don’t need it.” He says it out loud, and it’s only for himself. But he thinks maybe the Popping Fields should hear him too, just in case.
And in time the green grass feels so soft underfoot, and he looks down, and he realises he’s not even touching it, he’s floating a few inches off the ground.
He sits down, hard. His bottom hits the grass, that clearly isn’t floating. He examines his feet. He runs his fingers over them. They feel thick and rubbery. He stretches them, he likes the way the tautness prickles against his fingers.
And then his feet swell. He watches as they do so, and it doesn’t alarm him at all. It’s rather a pleasant sensation, like someone’s breath so close to you as they lean in for a kiss. He laughs.
“No, no!” And he’s still laughing. “No, be careful now!” Because the feet are now so swollen they’re rising up into the air. He tries to push them back to the ground with his hands, but it’s no good, they’re floating ever upward. It tickles him. “No, you stop that, you two!” But he’s laughing, he doesn’t mean it. His feet are caught on a gust of breeze, and they’re pulling the rest of the body up after them — a body that feels in comparison so dull and flat, it’s the feet that are having all the fun.