Sam Weller - Shadow Show

“Sonofabitch,” he said quietly.

“Leave it, Jackie,” I said. “Jackie, leave it.” It was like I was nobody, like nobody was there. The lock stuck firm. Pushing his fedora back on his head, Jackie used the knife to pick his teeth for a moment. Then, with his long pale fingers, he made a series of turns and twists and the lock popped open.

“What,” I squeaked, “the hell you say.”

Jesus, I wanted him to stop. I felt like bawling.

“The equinox,” he said, “it’s a big deal to them. Oh six, two turns to the left, then twenty-one and then… that was the combination. I thought of it then, after I saw them ribbons.”

“Let it alone. I don’t want to know. Shut it.”

But now Jackie was picking at another lock, the Yale lock that was deep in the cherry door. Every kid who grew up there knew that the Gypsy king and queen, them dead about fifteen years from a car wreck, was buried in glass boxes with the air sucked out, like saints. The old people said she was dressed in lace and velvet and him in silk, though it was her was royalty. Romany is another breed, with their own church and so forth. I never knew but one; and he was a good man, with nine sons. They keep to themselves.

In the end, Jackie pried the lock right out of the cherry door.

“I’m walking home,” I said to Jackie. “I swear to shit.”

“Woman,” Jackie said evenly, and I saw him glance down at my leg not like he didn’t think of it but on purpose.

I hated him then.

I hated the person on Earth who I never felt anything but as if he was my own reflection.

“Open it,” I said, lighting a smoke so my hands wouldn’t shake so. “Go on. I don’t care. It’s on you.”

He did, and he went up the little marble step. I had to follow him. It wasn’t like there was a big overhead lamp inside. You could barely see.

There were shelves like the benches in a sauna bath, and caskets laid along them, a few of them white and tiny, little mirrors glued on in a circle around the widest part and a painted angel with red wings at the end, where I would imagine the head was. Infants. There were wooden boxes carved with leaves and faces. Older adults.

There was a sound then, of loud bells. Jackie and I grabbed each other. Cold sweat rolled like melted ice down my chest. But it was only those plates and tambors and stuff they had stuck on the outside of the roof, fretting in the wind. Both of us had to laugh.

We walked the few steps to the back.

Her tomb was there just like they said. The queen’s. Glass. We didn’t even look at him, the king.

She was beautiful, her blond braids carefully plaited around her head, her skin as white and soft-looking as soap, the pores the size of the littlest holes in a sponge, but not ugly. The car wreck must have smashed her inside, not her face. She was like a statue. Her eyes were open, with a milky cover, and even if she had been living, they would have looked blind. Around her neck was a rope of pearls in decks. It was like an Egypt collar, with a ruby in the middle the size of one of Nana’s mushrooms. On every finger was another ring, all the stones in them big, square rubies, too.

“Glass,” I said. “They’re glass. You wouldn’t bury a ruby.”

“They’re rubies,” Jackie said. “Glass would be really red.” He took out the knife and started to tap on the glass. “Get a rock,” he said to me

“Nothing doing,” I told him. “A rock’ll sound like a cannon shot in here.”

“I need a diamond,” Jackie said.

“You and me both,” I told him.

“You got a diamond in that graduation ring.”

“It’s just a chip, Jack.”

“But it’ll do. It’s got an edge. Look there. A point shaped like a pyramid.” He took my hand like I was a girl and pulled off the ring, then he cut a fat circle in the glass where the queen’s face was, over and over until the smell of her being dead started to seep through, and then he pushed it in and the sour air rushed out. She didn’t fall to dust or shrivel before our eyes, like you would think. But I couldn’t breathe right in there. It wasn’t putrid, but it wasn’t good. What it was, was like something stewed, set out and forgotten on the back porch, gone bad.

Jackie reached in and took her hand like he was taking her out to the dance floor and removed the rings. I walked out because of the smell, and I heard the rings fall into his pocket, one by one, that chunk sound as unmistakable as the sound of cars hitting each other—a sound you never forget once you hear it and it sickens your gut. And then I heard another sound. It was them pearls, pinking the floor like hail. Jackie had cut the necklace with that knife. To get the pearls off her neck of course. He couldn’t have uncurled it. My mind went chasing after the picture of Jackie pulling her forward so the pearls wouldn’t fall down by her feet, maybe trying to wrestle that heavy rope over her crown, the head lolling back and forth, maybe her mouth coming open. I turned around and run the best I could. I didn’t give a goddamn. I limped until my leg was on fire, but I kept on limping and hopping until I was at the pharmacy on Halsted Street. I ordered a vanilla Coke and drank it all in one slug, standing up. Then I didn’t know where the hell to go. I just stood there. When Jackie picked me up there later, he didn’t speak of it. I didn’t either.

We never did.

A week later, Auntie Maggie was wearing one of those short coats with a fox collar. Unkie had a double-breasted suit. He got embarrassed when I saw him wearing it, when I was out delivering flowers for Buffo’s. Jackie bought all kinds of flowers and a golden crucifix for Patricia Finnian, and one night I saw him with her in the Studebaker, her long white arm around him, Jackie just looking straight ahead, although Patricia was easy three years older. He gave new card tables to the sick home, where the simple kids lived. He spent the money fast. I don’t know who he sold the stuff to. Not Jaworsky’s or anybody who knew our family, or we would have heard.

The “desecration” of the tomb was on page one of the Chicago American . The queen was named Magda, like my aunt. By then, Jackie was already gone, to basic.

He came home after Christmas.

I took good care of the car. Jackie said I could use it anytime, but I only ever used it on Sundays to drive Nora Finnian around for an hour. And I backed it out into the driveway to wash and wax it. The others came over to look. Pat and Tommy Carney and Louie and Herman Kozyk, even though Herman was already married. It was that good a car. I almost felt like it was mine.

My dad had up and decided I was going to go to college. So I was working at a bank, as a teller, a job he got for me from Mr. Cohacki, who built the apartments where the old Wonderland Ballroom and Hotel stood. I had to wear the same two outfits all week, so Jackie’s sister Karin hid some scraps from her sewing class in high school and made me a red shirt and a blue collar to vary things. She give it to me the week before Jackie come home from Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Unkie and Auntie were going to have a party before he was sent out (to the eastern front because he could speak German, Hungarian, and a little Russian and Polish, he was that smart). So I had myself barbered up, a real good shave and a three-dollar haircut.

When I walked in, my mom was having coffee with Auntie Magda.

She dropped her cup and screamed, and my mother looked like she was going to slap me.

Auntie ran upstairs.

“What the hell?” I said, forgetting I just cursed in front of my own mother.

“Are you a fool I raised?” she screamed at me. “You get your hair cut before your cousin is sent to war?” She spat on the ground three times like Nana did if anyone sat at the corner of the table or a bird crashed into the window. “Don’t you know this is a worse omen than you could make up if you tried a million times?” She told me to go back to the barber and get the clippings and burn them, and I said I would, but Jesus Christ, who would do that? I sat on the stoop until I saw Jackie come around the corner of Sheffield Avenue carrying his duffle. Man, he looked a foot taller. He looked like a grown man, instead of only seventeen. I felt like I was his baby brother.