Amos agreed. Vanishing was the only part of the act that was tolerable. When he let his body listen to the breath of the world and fade away, in those precious moments the ache left him; it returned in the dark, when he held Evangeline tightly and remembered Benno’s words.
After Amos was pelted with rotted fruit in Wellston, Peabody spoke to him while still in the cage. Amos drew a shirt over his head to cover his nakedness. Things that had once been delightful — the cold iron bars, the straw against his skin — were now irksome; he missed the intimate work of a seer, and the privacy. He missed the language he used with his teacher, and being looked at without fear. Peabody sat beside him, an air of sorrow about him, unmindful of the sawdust and dirt that clung to his clothing. “I miss her as well. I find there is an emptiness.” He tapped his chest near his heart. “Madame Ryzhkova had an excellent presence about her. But,” he punctuated, pointing to the cage ceiling, “move on, we must.”
Amos grimaced, but nodded. Everything about Peabody always seemed ready to burst, whereas his own insides seemed to be forever shrinking. He touched his cheek to Peabody’s shoulder, then removed himself from the wagon, through the trapdoor, as he had when he’d been a child.
That night he buried his face in Evangeline’s hair and she held him, knowing she had driven Ryzhkova off as surely as she’d murdered her grandmother.
* * *
Evangeline’s stomach began to round. They did not speak of it until it could not be ignored.
* * *
“You must teach me,” she said to Amos as they traveled south. She rested her head against his shirtsleeve. In one hand he held the reins of the horse pulling their wagon; with the other he traced Evangeline’s neck. At her question his eyes strayed from the road.
“To read the tarot,” she said. “We would make a handsome pair.”
A wheel sent a stone spinning off into the brush. Roads were never easy except in more worn places outside of New York and Philadelphia, but Amos noted every pit and root now that each bump jostled the swell of Evangeline’s belly. He shook his head. Ryzhkova lived in the cards, the last touches of her that he could not bring himself to clear away. Each time he held them he felt a bit of her old humor, the brush of her crooked thumb on his hand. They were too private to work with, too dear.
“Watching you play savage is unbearable.” Evangeline shifted and began to search through the deck nestled between them on the seat board. “It isn’t you. Perhaps when you were a boy, but not now. It’s watching you dying,” she said, showing him a card with an impaled man. “It kills me, too.”
He looked back to the road, thinking of the things he’d meant to tell her: that he’d dreamt of leaving with her; that he wished to build them a house — have chickens, perhaps a dog, as he’d always liked them. He feared, too, that just as she had come in the night she would one day leave him. Perhaps it would be best if, like Peabody, they continued to move. He’d thought many times over Benno’s words, but did not tell her of it. He could not ask her of her past, not when he knew nothing of his own.
Evangeline tapped the cards together and smacked them against Amos’s leg, demanding an answer.
He pulled back on the braided leather, causing the horse to trip to a halt, and skated his fingers through the deck. Ahead, the yellow door of Benno’s wagon disappeared into the trees. For a moment he thought to pair the card with another, but a tingling in his spine told him the one would be enough. He pressed Strength into Evangeline’s palm.
She contemplated before saying, “I cannot swim much longer. Few will want to see the Atlantis Mermaid and her enormous stomach.”
He squeezed her hand, pressing the card between them, heating it.
“Peabody has said as much. I must find other work during my confinement else my employ will end.”
Amos swallowed. Peabody could not afford to lose two incomes in a season, and there would be another mouth to feed. He snapped the reins. The horse protested but began to move.
“It would be good to work with something that does not pain you,” she said softly. “I think you wouldn’t miss the shrieking and the stares, or the insects and the rain.” She brushed an angry mosquito welt on Amos’s wrist, and his flesh leaned into the scratching. “You looked well before. A fine man who I would like to see again.”
He heard the longing in her voice and remembered how women sighed during card readings; Ryzhkova had said it was the sound of a spirit breaking.
“I believe I would take to it. I confess that I sometimes grow tired of water. It wears at me, like a river does its banks.”
He nodded, but his face grew grim. Their language had been one of double meanings, a weakness of the cards. In giving her Strength, he’d hoped she might see it as comfort, that he would protect her. Abide and all will be well; he would learn to be happier, to take care of her. But she was breaking, and in so had sought an older meaning, one unique to them, from when he had knelt and placed his head in her hands, lion acquiescing to lady.
The wheels bounced and Evangeline tumbled toward the edge of the seat board. Amos caught her and pulled her to his side. Evangeline snuggled into the crook of his arm. After a time, her eyelids drifted closed, light blue veins showing through her skin. He would teach her tarot, if only to keep her with him. On a not-too-distant night they would come to the lesson that had brought him to Evangeline but had cost him Ryzhkova. A knot formed under his ribs. He dreaded the day when, sitting in Ryzhkova’s wagon, he would teach her how to lie.
21 JULY 21ST — JULY 22ND
“Have you come up with anything on Frank McAvoy’s family?”
“Simon, is that you? Where are you? It sounds like a war zone.”
“A carnival parking lot.”
“Oh,” he says.
“Did you get a chance to look into him at all? I’ve been trying to track down another name, the card reader, Ryzhkova. I think there’s a chance that Frank might be a relation. The portraits in the book, the ones Frank has, I’m fairly certain they were hers. I did some digging on genealogy sites. Ryzhkova had a daughter, Katerina, who married one of the circus performers, Benno Koenig. I’ve hit a snag finding their children, but if you’ve started from the present and I’m working from the past, I think we’ll meet up.”
A group of boys shouts as they spill out of the carnival and into the lot. I cover my ear. Though some of the ride noise still filters through, it blocks enough sound that I can hear Churchwarry’s breath hitch.
“I’m afraid I haven’t gotten much done at all. A client took up a great deal of my time. I had to track down a title for his mother’s birthday. Green Jade for Laughter. The closest copy is in Washington State in a library that wasn’t keen to let it go.”
“We’re protective of our archives; they justify funding.”
A dog barks in the background. Churchwarry shouts, “Down, Sheila!” followed by a scuffling noise. “Yes, well, they’re certainly funded now. It was all terribly time-consuming.”
A man passes by with a waddling little boy, sticky and screaming. I duck into my car hoping for more quiet. Inside isn’t much better, but with the windows rolled up I can hear, though it’s boiling inside and the phone slips on my cheek sweat. “I’m running out of time.”
“Do you think perhaps you’re too close to things?” he asks.
“It’s my sister.”
He clears his throat. “I’ve noticed the hours and frequency you’ve called and I can’t help but wonder — I’m sorry there’s no better way to ask, but are you still employed?” When I say nothing he continues. “I mean no offense, but I’ve known slow periods myself, long hours and financial strain do funny things to one’s perspective.”