Clarence turned the sound up again. The big trick always ended the show. First, the small demonstrations. Cards that reordered themselves. Balls that multiplied. Flowers that changed colors. Handkerchiefs that metamorphed into birds. All the while Professor Gilded lectured on magic, on the magic he was doing and the magic in the world, as he built to the finale, something so impressive that his audience clapped and clapped and clapped until the sound faded and the show ended. But he’d never worked with a horse! He couldn’t possibly make a horse vanish from a small studio in front of an attentive audience. Not even Houdini could accomplish such a feat. For a moment, Clarence didn’t think about his legs.
“A beautiful animal, the horse. Much more intelligent than humanity imagines. Please, people, run your hands along the horse’s side. Don’t be shy. Feel his beating heart. Ahh, a true horse fancier, are you? Yes, check his hooves. This is a hale and healthy representative of his breed. Assure yourselves of his reality, for, I promise you, in a moment you will doubt your memories and senses, and, perhaps, you will wonder what other illusions you harbor about the world.”
Outside Clarence’s window, a trolley car rattled by. Every fifteen minutes the trolley clattered, reminding him that his parents had moved from the farm so they were close to Broadway and Denver General Hospital. “We can’t risk him, Thomas,” Mom said. “The doctors warned about the disease migrating into his lungs. We might need Dr. Drinker’s respirator until Clarence becomes strong again.” Father had only nodded, and soon he completed negotiations with their neighbor to lease the land. Within weeks, both parents had found part-time work, which was remarkable. Jobs were hard to come by. Mom cleaned houses while Dad sorted mail. Clarence envisioned the virus like a horrible mold. Its name sounded like a mold, poliomyelitis. The doctors put his legs in casts. Itching during the day was intolerable, but Clarence could force a pencil, or a ruler, or a straightened coat hanger only so far under the plaster. Maybe the virus really reassembled a mold, growing out of sight in the cast’s moist darkness. If the casts came off now, would his legs look human anymore? And that wasn’t the worst. In his blood, he pictured the virus marching toward his lungs, filling them with cauliflower-like lumps of gray and green mold until he couldn’t inhale. Mom called the machine they would put him in “Dr. Drinker’s respirator,” an iron lung, and Porter’s hospital only had one. Iron lung. Iron lung. Nothing sounded more frightening. It made him think of iron crosses and invasions, a German army charging up his arteries’ roads, a blitzkrieg to the heart. But that wasn’t the worst. Close as they lived now, the iron lung would do no good if someone else filled the machine. Clarence was not the only sick child in Denver. An eleven-year-old from Broomfield lay in the machine now. The Post put his picture in the paper yesterday. The caption read, “Young Sean Garrison, completely paralyzed from the neck down, battles for his life against all odds.” But he didn’t look like he was battling in the picture. He looked like he’d lost, and all the weight of that loss, and all the grief, were written in his face.
Professor Gilded said, “Could you hold the edge of the blanket, Sonia? There, stand on the stool so you may reach high enough. Ah, it is a good horse, longing for its stable perhaps, for a fresh pile of hay and a rub down for the evening.”
The announcer’s lowered voice barely leaked from the speakers. “I and the audience cannot see the roan, but we see the blanket’s ends. There is no place to lead the horse. I can hardly describe the tension as we wait for Professor Gilded’s wonder. I’m afraid he has set himself too daunting a task tonight.”
A drum rumbled in the background.
Professor Gilded asked, “Do you believe the horse is still behind the blanket? If I have planted doubt thoroughly enough, then the horse may both be there and not be there. You have no way of telling, unless, of course, you walk around my blanket.” He paused. The drum rolled louder. “Or, I can pull the blanket away.”
A clatter, a scream, then voices in tumult. Another scream.
“I cannot believe what I am witnessing,” gasped the announcer. “Too much. Too much.” A hard click, as if the microphone hit something. “Oh, be glad you cannot see.”
Someone sobbed.
“Professor Gilded holds his blanket over his arm, like a cape. Sonia stands beside him. The horse, the beautiful roan that walked into the studio is gone, but… the bones… a pile of bones sits on the floor. Horse bones, dry and clean, piled as if flesh and fur disappeared. No muscle. Oh, please, can we have a commercial now?” Another click.
Professor Gilded’s soothing voice said, “An illusion, I assure you. A trick of light and distraction, as all the best magic is.”
“Sonia takes the blanket,” said the announcer’s shaky voice. “He picks up the skull.”
“Alas, Horatio, I knew him well.” Professor Gilded laughed, a long satisfying chuckle. “The magic show is theater in the best tradition. Shakespeare wove illusions too. The bard said, ‘I’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, speak to me, if there be any good thing to be done.’ As you leave the studio you will find the lovely roan on the street, awaiting your inspection.”
The show’s closing musical notes played. Clarence realized he had pressed himself off the floor with his hands so his head was closer to the speaker. His arms trembled with the effort.
The announcer appeared to have recovered composure. “Tonight’s show was brought to you by the kind attention of our sponsors. Be sure to shop for products that support the continued broadcast of Professor Gilded’s Glorious Magical Extravaganza.” The music rose, but Clarence heard the announcer say to someone in the background, so muffled that Clarence wondered if he heard it at all, “What the hell was that?”
Clarence’s bedroom door opened. He twisted to his side to see his mother holding a basin, several towels, and a filled bucket heavy enough to make her lean.
“Show over, son?” She put the towels, bucket and basin next to him on the rug.
“Yes, it was a good one.” He shivered with the thought of bones. Professor Gilded said the horse was outside the studio and that the show was a trick, but how could he fool that many people who stood so close? A horse is not a coin to be hidden in a sleeve or to be gripped by the back of the hand while the audience sees an empty palm. Clarence knew coin tricks and the names of tricks: the gangster spin, the backspin bounce, the knuckle roll, the horizontal waterfall. He could flick a coin into a hidden pocket, make a coin between two cards vanish, pull a coin out of someone’s hair, but they were practiced techniques, not magic. Making a coin disappear just involved making the audience’s eye go to the wrong place. When he did the tricks for his friends, he watched their eyes, and when they looked away from the coin, he had them.
Clarence turned his hand over. Where was his quarter eagle? A red circle showed where he’d held it so tight for so long, but where was it?
“I’m going to need you on your back, Clarence. Help me here.”
She knelt beside him and lifted his right leg over his left as he rolled. Still, despite her care, his casted foot thumped when it hit the floor. “I’m tired of waiting this disease out,” she said. She sat back on her heels. “Are you tired of just waiting?”
Clarence nodded. On his back, he looked for the coin. Perhaps it rolled under the radio. She’d tied her hair into a bun behind her ears, but strays escaped from all sides, touching her cheeks with black threads and sticking to the sweat of her forehead. He rested on his elbows so he could see the casts, smudged now with weeks of dragging around. “What are you thinking?”