Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

It was a good plan but it went to shit when the van’s ignition caught and then died. The gas tank was empty.

In darkness and cold, the two boys ran the four miles back to the main road, and then another three into town. But it was past midnight, and store after store was closed, some with dim interior lights cruelly illuminating phones that were just out of reach. It was another twenty minutes before the boys got to the all-night McDonald’s, where they persuaded the manager to make the call.

And it was almost two in the morning by the time we arrived on the scene.

To this day, I can close my eyes and feel the heartbreak that flooded their faces-the boys who’d run seven miles for help, and the girls who sat by the mine shaft, long after their flashlights had died, in the cold, in the dark-when we told them in quiet, gentle voices that Lisa was dead. She had died instantly, breaking her neck when she hit the hard frozen ground of the old shaft.

Hours later, exhausted, I managed to make it to my yearly physical and drug screen, an appointment I had already pushed back twice. The doctor called me at home that night with the news that while my urine test had been negative for narcotics, it had been positive for hCG, a very specific hormone with a very specific purpose.

There is no way for me to drive by Scarecrow Road without remembering that day. A day that opened with the cold, unyielding, unforgiving truth that death comes for us all. A night that closed with the bright, shining truth that with each day comes new life.

I picked Finn Nowlin up at the station and continued downtown, past the coffee joint and the bookstore and the new flower place I’d yet to visit. A young man in cutoff jean shorts and an electric green T-shirt stood just outside the shop door, arranging pink rosebuds in silver buckets that lined the window ledge. He stopped two elderly women as they strolled by, their arms linked, their backs hunched, their hair pulled up in low, matching buns, and handed them each a rose with a dramatic bow. The curves of their backs kept their faces turned to the ground, but I liked to imagine the blush that flooded each cheek was the same shade of pink as the rosebuds they clenched in their gnarled, arthritic hands.

For once, Finn was quiet.

He sipped his coffee and stared out the window, his eyes shaded by dark aviator-style sunglasses. I’d told Finn I wanted to stop at the circus on our way to the library and chat with Tessa.

I didn’t tell him about the message on my mirror. Not for the first time, I cursed Chavez for sticking me with Finn. I wondered if Sam Birdshead was making any progress on the old police files that detailed Nicky’s fall at Bride’s Veil.

We pulled up to the circus grounds a little before ten o’clock and searched vainly for a parking spot in the main lot. Finn finally told me to get out, that he’d park the car up the road. As he pulled away, he muttered in a low voice something about women drivers.

I waited for him at the front gates and watched as ticket after ticket was purchased. It was a warm day, getting hotter and more crowded by the minute. Closing the circus for a few days only seemed to whet the town’s appetite; that, or it was morbid curiosity to see the fairgrounds where a murder occurred just a few days before.

Finn joined me and we flashed our badges to the ticket taker and bypassed a line that snaked around the corner of the tent and continued into the parking lot. I knew what our first stop would be and I paused at one of the game booths to get directions. A hand-painted wooden sign read “Toss the Coin in the Bottle-You Pick Your Price.”

For a moment, I was confused, and then I realized “price” was meant to read “prize.”

Behind the counter, a young man in battered jeans and a black leather biker vest and dirty T-shirt leaned against a metal stool that must have once been a shiny red but was now a peeling dull rust the color of a dried scab.

I asked the man where we could find the trapeze artists.

“Ah, lady, you don’t want to watch no trapie show. You want to play the bottles, I can tell these things. Get your boyfriend here to ante up and give us a dollar. You’ll get ten throws with a dollar,” he said.

The man peeled himself off the rusty stool and ambled toward me. His face was marked by an unfortunate eruption of acne, and as he rubbed at his chin, a blister broke open. He drew his hand away and looked down at it with all the introspection of a man watching the traffic roll by, then he slowly wiped it on the back of his jeans and stared at me with eyes that were tiny, birdlike and bloodshot.

Finn pulled his badge. Neither of us was in uniform, and the young man did a double take at the brass. He rubbed his chin again and said, “So this isn’t your woman, huh?” and Finn shook his head.

If he’d shaken it any harder, he’d have gotten whiplash.

The young man grinned at me and I winced at the tobacco-stained Chiclet-like teeth that crowded his mouth. “Well, now, I’m going to be getting off in a few hours, how’s about you and I grab a beer tonight?”

“Listen, that’s tempting but as you can see,” I said, and turning sideways, pointed at my belly with both thumbs, “I’m already taken. Now, my partner has identified us as police officers. If you don’t tell me, with the next words out of your mouth, where I can find the trapeze artists, the only coins you’ll be collecting will be the quarters you’ll need to use the pay phone. At the jail.”

The man sighed. “Ah, I was just having a little bit of sport with you. No harm intended, right? My daddy was a policeman. They’re all up in that tent, up that way… that big blue one, see? They’ll be rehearsing right about now.”

We cut across the grounds toward a blue-and-white-striped tent, dodging strollers and shrieking kids with sticky fingers and tall clowns with bunches of balloons floating like tethered clouds above their wigged and hatted heads.

Next to a hot dog stand, one of the clowns jumped in front of me and I reared back as he stuck his face into mine.

“Wanna buy a balloon?” he whispered. Black paint as thick as axle grease covered his entire face and a large floppy hat was pulled down low over his ears. I said no and moved to go around the clown but he leaned to the side, blocking me.

“Wanna buy a balloon?”

I shook my head and went to the other side and the clown mimed my movement, blocking me again. Ahead, I saw the back of Finn’s head moving farther away as he continued toward the tent. All around me, kids swarmed; their heads brushing against my hips and thighs, their cries and shrieks of laughter piercing my ears like the call of a thousand tiny birds.

They closed in on me, surrounding me, filling the air with their small bodies. So many small bodies! I couldn’t catch my breath.

The clown lowered his bunch of balloons over both of us, blocking my last point of reference, the sky.

I panicked.

My heart hammered and I couldn’t draw enough air into my lungs. I wheezed and the clown seemed to loom closer and then farther away, up and then down and then up and I saw the ground rushing up to meet me and then an arm gripped my elbow.

“Gemma, c’mon. You can get a hot dog later,” Finn hissed in my ear, and pulled me toward the blue tent. I drew in a big breath of air and yanked free of his grip.

I turned around in a circle, scanning the crowd, but the clown, and his balloons, was gone.

I was really starting to dislike clowns.

The blue-and-white-striped tent was deceptive; small from the outside, it was enormous on the inside, easily the size of a large theater space. I suddenly understood why they were called big tops. Bleacher-style seats ringed the inside edge of the tent, and in the middle, a large dirt space had been circled off. Above the dirt, a green net stretched between four pillars, and above the net, five trapeze bars swayed gently in the air at varying heights.