Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

I watched as four people began climbing two sets of ladders at either end of the tent. They wore Zorro-like masks and black costumes that obscured their faces and bodies. Their feet were bare and they climbed quickly, confidently, like monkeys. A sense of déjà vu came over me, and I remembered something that I had forgotten, from a long time ago. I would have been about three, and my father was home for the weekend, a rare occurrence. He was a pilot for Southwest Airlines and he flew the Denver-Las Vegas route, Thursdays to Sundays.

He must have been sick, or maybe it was a holiday, I don’t remember. But he was home, and I was thrilled when he packed me in the station wagon and took me to the summer fair. It was here, on these same fairgrounds, and we saw acrobats perform in a similar tent. I remember how small my hand seemed in his, and how his long mustache would tickle my ear when he kissed my cheek.

The memory made me sad; my father would have enjoyed being a grandpa.

“Gem, check it out,” Finn said. He pointed up to the top of each ladder, where a long plank, similar to a diving platform, was set with handrails made of thick twine, and rope strung waist-high. The ladders were at least fifty feet in the air and I gulped. Heights have never been my thing.

“Scary, isn’t it?” a voice said behind us.

I turned around and shook Joe Fatone’s hand. I introduced him to Finn.

“Wonderful to be back in business. We carnies go real crazy, sitting around like a bunch of goobers,” Fatone said.

Finn asked, “Has anyone ever fallen?”

Fatone shook his head. “Not on my watch. Couple of close calls, of course, but no real fatalities.”

Except in the clown department, I almost said, but instead asked, “Is Tessa around?”

“Oh, she’s around. She’ll be down in a few minutes,” Fatone said with a laugh, and jerked a thumb at the ladders. I looked closely and noticed one of the masked figures had a petite build and cropped pixie-like hair.

“You gotta see this,” Fatone said. We followed him to the benches and took a seat. High above us, the group paired off so that two figures were on each of the platforms. They stretched their arms and legs and backs, leaning into and against the wooden planks and the rope rails and each other.

Fatone whispered, “That’s Tessa there, the little one… and Doug Gray, the one on her right. That’s Twosie McDonald on the other platform, with Onesie, her sister.”

“Twosie and Onesie?”

“Yeah. Onesie, because she’s only got the one eye. Twosie… well, hell, I’m not sure why they call her Twosie, maybe since she’s got the two eyes,” Fatone said. He belched, a low burp that wafted toward me and smelled of peanuts and beer. “Pardon.”

I asked, “She has one eye and she can still do the trapeze?”

The sisters mirrored Tessa and Doug’s actions on the opposite platform. Then they pretended to sword fight, pushing one another to the edge of the plank, feigning fear, and then pushing back toward the ladder, their arms the swords.

Fatone nodded and let out another burp. “Excuse me, damn heartburn is going to kill me. The trapeze is never about sight, Deputy. It’s about touch, and timing, and illusion. The best trapeze artists in the world can do their routines blindfolded. Damn it, I can’t explain it, but it’s like they’ve got a sixth sense.”

We watched, spellbound, as Tessa skipped to the end of her plank and then without so much as a pause swan-dived into the air and grabbed the trapeze bar closest to her. She swung up and hooked her legs over the middle bar and then swung down and looped over the third. As she hung, upside down, one of the sisters on the opposite platform did a swan dive of her own and landed on the middle trapeze bar. Then, the remaining two jumped in and soon all four were swinging up and over one another, sometimes holding on to one another, sometimes holding on to the bar, sometimes appearing to float in midair before grabbing a leg or an arm.

“They make it look so easy,” I breathed.

Fatone nodded. “It takes years of practice to get that good. Up there, it’s like a secret world.”

I felt his eyes on me.

“Speaking of secrets, seems like Reed had some of his own, didn’t he?” Fatone asked. He pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth, but didn’t light it. “Or should I call him Nicky?”

“Don’t most of your people have secrets?” Finn asked. He watched the trapeze artists, as mesmerized as I’d been. “I mean, isn’t that why they run off and join the circus?”

Fatone smirked around his cigar. “Everyone has secrets. I’m just saying Reed seems to have had more than his fair share.”

Fatone pointed up as the acrobats did a particularly spectacular maneuver that involved Tessa standing on one of the trapeze bars, very still for twenty or thirty seconds, and then she swooped down toward the other three acrobats and they bounced up, like startled birds.

“You know, every single one of these moves has a name,” Fatone said.

“Really?”

He nodded. “That one they just did? That’s called Scaring the Crow.”

I laughed uneasily, thinking about Scarecrow Road.

“Uh-huh,” he continued. “She stands still, you see, almost frozen, and then tumbles down like a falling scarecrow and the artists are the crows, surprised into flight. It’s the moment the decoy-the scarecrow-comes to life.”

“Like the other circus acts, sort of an illusion?” I asked.

“Magic, illusion, call it whatever you want. You see something, and you think you know what’s going on and all of a sudden the universe shifts and reveals it to be something completely different,” Fatone said. “And that, my friends, is the story of life, isn’t it? You think you know.”

He stuck the unlit cigar back in his shirt pocket and gazed up at the artists as they hooted and hollered and fell, one by one, into the big green net.

They bounced up and down a few times, laughing, then rolled to the edges of the net and jumped down to the floor. All but Tessa headed to a table in the corner, where a watercooler and paper cups waited. Instead, she looked at us and then walked over, removing her eye mask.

“Hiya! Like the show?” she asked. She leaned back, stretching with her hands on her hips, and I saw Finn give her the once-over. He seemed to have gotten over his anger at her departure from the sheriff’s station yesterday.

The black costume was a basic long-sleeved, long-panted leotard that hugged every curve and muscle on her compact frame. Finn was practically drooling.

I said, “That was amazing, Tessa. Really magical.”

She smiled and looked at Fatone. “Papa Joe?”

“You did good, kid, real good,” he said.

She high-fived Fatone and then turned to Finn. “Hey, it’s Mr. Nowlin, right? Sorry for how I acted yesterday. I was really upset.”

“These things happen. No big deal,” Finn said with a slight shrug. He smiled at Tessa. “And call me Finn, everyone does.”

Fatone stood and excused himself. I waited until he was out of hearing distance and then turned to Tessa.

“Tessa, last night… did you come back? To my house, I mean?”

I watched her carefully but her expression didn’t waver. “Huh? What do you mean, come back? I left, don’t you remember?”

Finn was watching me with narrow eyes but he stayed quiet. I’d have to catch him up on Tessa’s visit later.

I nodded. “Yes, but later, you didn’t… never mind.”

“No, what is it?” she said.

She looked at me with genuine concern and I began to think I’d been mistaken in suspecting her. Why would Tessa have left that message scrawled on my bathroom mirror? She had no ties to Cedar Valley, no connection with Nicky Bellington other than knowing him, and dating him, as Reed Tolliver, not Nicky.