By a Charm and a Curse(23)
Within two hours of our arrival, a little city has sprung up. The moment the Airstream is parked and Mom goes off to find the cook shack, I gather up my tools and head for the edge of the yard, where the small wooden wagon meant for the person in the box is usually set up.
The old wagon has always been on my maintenance list. Mom never had much to say about it, so I took that as my cue to do whatever I wanted. A few years ago I gave it an overhaul; the body of the wagon is painted a flaming scarlet and trimmed in an orange that is cheery and happy. Copper nails as bright as new pennies run along the slats over the rounded roof and gleam in the sunlight. The door is a cerulean circle, with a little window of dark glass set in the middle.
Sidney has lived in the wagon for as long as I can remember, but the wagon belongs to the person in the box. Before we broke camp, I saw Sidney, a weak cardboard box crammed full of his things in his arms, talking to Mrs. Potter. After a moment Sidney climbed the rickety steps leading to her trailer, and he didn’t come back out.
When I try to open the wagon door, it swings outward with a creak. A narrow bed runs along one side of the wagon, buried beneath a heap of pillows in a myriad of colors. Patchwork quilts lie in a tangled heap on the floor, and the big leather trunk by the door skews toward the middle of the small space. There wasn’t much to the place to begin with, but what there was, Sidney trashed.
I stack up the pillows and fold the blankets. The trunk goes back along the wall where it belongs. I sweep the cobwebs out of the skylight set into the ceiling and oil the hinges on the door and the little window sitting over the bed. A small glass lantern hangs near the entrance, and I pull it down to give it a quick polish. It’s not much, but the place looks better now than it did when I walked in. I hope she likes it.
As I’m headed back toward the Airstream, I hear Leslie one row of trailers over. I stop and watch as they walk toward the little wagon.
The girl walks beside Leslie, her shoulders rolled in, her chin tucked to her chest. As though she can’t bear the thought of anyone looking at her. There is a nearly overwhelming urge to rush over to where they stand and wrap my arms around her, as if I could be a shield for her. They stop a few feet away from the wagon, and if I hold my breath, I can hear what Leslie is saying.
Leslie smiles at the girl with a mixture of pride and tentative hope. “It took us a few days to get Sidney set up somewhere else, and I’m sorry about that. But this wagon belongs to the occupant of the box.” Leslie strokes the side of the ladder that leads to the door. “What you’re going through is terrible, we know it is, though we can never truly understand. It’s a small comfort, but we want you to have a place that’s just your own, a place that you can use to escape.”
A weak, wobbly smile lifts the corners of the girl’s mouth as her gaze roves over the outside of the wagon, a shadow of the smile I saw the other night, when she was with her friend. I wonder what it would take to get her to smile for real.
“What about Sidney?”
“Sidney can make do.” Leslie’s smile broadens into a grin. “Have you seen the way he’s been eating? I wouldn’t be surprised to see him waddle out of the cook shack one of these mornings like Templeton the Rat.” She dangles a small copper key from the end of a length of faded red ribbon. “It’s like I said—the carnival owes the person in the box. This is the least we can do for you in return.”
The girl’s hand shakes as she reaches for the key, and she wraps her slender fingers around it tightly, as though she’s afraid of dropping it. I lose sight of her as she steps inside, and all I can do now is hope she likes the wagon.
I turn to head home and feel the sickening lurch as my foot lands in a slick patch of mud and whips out from beneath me. I throw out my arm. A flash of white-hot pain flares through my hand, but I manage to keep my footing. I step out of the mud that had nearly sent me sprawling on my ass, unsure as to how I even missed it in the first place. Then my hand begins to throb.
A gash runs diagonally across my palm. Blood wells from the wound, filling my cupped hand. The pain sets in, a deep pulsing starting in my palm and radiating up my arm. I glance over at the trailer and see a splash of red smeared along a sharp flap of metal. I must have sliced my hand on that as I tried to grab onto something to keep from slipping.
Falling on carnival grounds doesn’t happen; the charm sees to that. But my bloodied hand begs to differ.
Chapter Nine
Benjamin
I spend the morning sanding away all the peeling paint on the haunted house and sketch in new bats and skeletons and spiders. I talk to Mrs. Potter, spending a good forty-five minutes with her as she gestures wildly and periodically shushes her little white terrier while she tells me what she’d like her new mural to look like. I make a few quick line drawings of the dog—I can never remember if his name is Toffrey or Joffrey or what—for reference and promise her I’ll be back.
After lunch, I find Lars and give him a demo of the new remote control I’ve built for the Ferris wheel. Originally, he’d asked me to fix the control panel; the wood covering had become so weathered that rainwater had seeped inside, shorting out the wiring. Once I had a good look at the electrical system, I figured it would be pretty easy to build a remote, so he wouldn’t be stuck hovering over the control panel all night.
“It’s pretty easy,” I say, my gaze locked on the smoothly spinning wheel. “The green button sets the cars spinning; the red stops them.” To illustrate my point, I depress the red button, and the wheel slows to a stop. I’m not as good as Lars is, and the car doesn’t line up with the platform, but I manage to get it close enough.