Eye Lake (9 page)

‘“So what next?'” asked the circus man.

‘“We're heading out to the blueberry patch,” Jake's dad said.

‘“What for?”

‘“For your bear.”

‘And so off they went – all of them except Clarence – towards the western shore where the best blueberry spots were.'

‘And why not Clarence as well?' Virgil asked.

‘With all due respect to you and your mother, Virgil, I think he had other things than bears on his mind,' Jim winked.

‘When the others got to the blueberry patch it didn't take them long to find a she-bear and her cub. Now you stay back here, they told the circus man and the wolf man, and if she comes at you, you hotfoot it up one of these trees. Then the men crept closer and hid behind some bushes while the two Indian boys tracked around in the opposite direction, until they were on the other side of the bear and her cub. At a signal, the men and the Indian boys stood up suddenly and started hollering and beating the bushes with sticks. The bear and her cub ran this way and that in panic and the men and boys circled them, hollering and beating the bushes, until at last the she-bear would make a run at them and they'd split up and scatter into the woods. Soon enough she and her cub were separated, and then the Indian boys started calling out in the voice of the cub and drawing her further and further away into the bush, crying and bellowing and roaring for what she thought was her baby. The men came back and moved in a circle around the cub. When they caught it they tied up its limbs and snout with rope.

‘It all went like clockwork,' Jim said. ‘Except when they came back to the spot where they'd left the other two they found the wolf man stuck high up a poplar tree, trembling like one of its leaves. He lost heart with his hunting after that,' Jim said. ‘The day after the picnic Mr. Gordon took pity on him and gave him two wolves he'd poisoned. They took a picture for him to take home, of him standing with his axe raised over one of the already dead wolves, and the day after that he was headed back to Minneapolis.

‘Back on the beach the firepits were ready and were heaped full of fish and game. And as they waited for it to cook, they sat down on the sand by the water and the children swam and the men drank from flasks of whiskey and smoked cigars and pipes and talked. The circus man was in full flow then,' Jim said, ‘stoked up with the whiskey and pleased with his bear – talking about his old country and the lost happy days of his and his sister's childhood.'

They lived on the banks of the Danube, he told them, in a castle made of stone that shone almost white in the sun. It had columns and arched doors and a high tower topped with brightly coloured pennants that flapped merrily in the breeze. The gardens sloped down to the river's bank, dotted with great oaks and elms and beds of flowers and marble fountains where carved mermaids lounged beneath cascading founts of crystal water. ‘Ah, those gardens,' the man sighed, ‘such a lush deep green they were, and so soft beneath my feet – like carpets.' In the evenings he'd sneak out and watch the moon rise above the river, and it was such a big moon you'd feel as though you could reach out and touch it. And the stars … they were stars like no others, like a thousand diamonds in the sky. And there were more diamonds in the castle too – on the nights when they had dances and balls in the main hall – shining from the tiaras and necklaces of the ladies as they waltzed beneath the lights of the chandeliers, the twirling satin of their dresses as sweet and soft as cotton candy. ‘What enchanted nights they'd
been,' the circus man said. What a time and world it had been then! Marked by a glamour and beauty he'd never seen since.

‘We all sat and listened,' Jim said. ‘It was a pretty story. And what with the smells of the fish and game cooking in the pits and the mellow warm air of the afternoon, it was a pleasant enough picture to doze off into. The circus man seemed to be enjoying it as much as anybody and once he'd got into his stride I reckon he might've even half-believed it himself. The tear in his eye when he got to the tragic circumstances that'd taken it all away was almost real. Except this time there was no comforting hand offered by the sister. She sat through the whole performance – wrapped in the sheet beneath the umbrella – without saying a word, not a single word. I reckon she'd heard it plenty of times already.

‘Clarence stood up then and, putting on his finest airs and graces, declared: “If I might be so bold as to interrupt the gentleman, as everyone here knows we have a dance of our own here in Crooked River tonight and though we can't offer quite the finery and luxury of those dances he remembers, I hope we can at least offer our warmest hospitality.” And saying that he offered the sister an invitation he'd written in his very best hand on a small white piece of paper.

‘Now the thing was,' said Jim, ‘we had those dances in Clarence's hotel every night after the picnics – and once a month through the whole summer too – but nobody had ever needed an invitation to go to them, let alone a written one. Everybody went. You just turned up and walked in the door. So you could see some of the wags from town smiling at this.

‘“Clarence,” one of them said. “If I might be so bold as to interrupt, I must declare that I don't seem to have received my invitation as yet.”

‘“Well, I'll be damned if I haven't lost mine,” said another.

‘“Do they admit two, Clarence, or just the one?”'

Jim never said exactly what was written on that invitation, but I didn't ever need him to. It said: ‘You are cordially invited to
the Crooked River Picnic Dance. I would be most honoured if you would attend. Yours, Clarence O'Callaghan. Proprietor.' I knew all this because it was right downstairs in the basement, in his trunk.

That night at the dance Clarence played his fiddle, the same as he always did. ‘Your father was the best in town,' Jim said, which Virgil nodded at: he'd always said himself that Clarence was the best fiddler he'd ever heard. ‘But that night he was real special,' Jim told him. He did the jigs and reels, beating time on the floorboards with his boots, and his fingers were a blur and he never missed a note. He had them dancing so quick their heads were spinning and they hardly knew where their feet were. And then he'd switch to the slow sad Irish ballads and there'd barely be a dry eye in the place. And then back again to the fast stuff before those tears even had time to fall down their cheeks. ‘He made that fiddle sing,' Jim said, looking as though if he listened hard enough then he might still be able to hear it, like it might jump out of Clarence's trunk and start playing again, ‘and every one of them songs was like the best you'd ever heard.'

‘I don't know how long that dance went on for,' Jim said, ‘but it was longer than any of us remembered the other ones going on for. And that circus man, well, he was twirling and jumping and spinning with the best of them and he sure didn't look like no lord or sir then, like he was pining for those waltzes on the banks of the Danube. As for the sister, well she stayed sitting until almost the end of the night. Clarence was watching her as he played, and I reckon he was trying to tempt her up onto her feet the whole time, trying to play so good her feet wouldn't have no choice but to start moving. Until finally, right at the end, when the light was almost coming into the sky outside, she got up and walked to the floor. I'm not sure what Clarence was playing then – it wasn't one of his regular tunes – but there was a swing and a sway to it, a lilting this way and that, and when she started to dance she was moving just
the same as it sounded. I'd never seen steps like that before; none of the women in Crooked River danced like that, and it was as if after a few moments you couldn't tell who was following who, whether she was following the notes or the notes were following her. There was a grace to it, a real grace, like a lily flower floating on a river's moving water; and watching her for a second you could almost believe in that castle and the moonbeams and the long green gardens going down to the banks of the Danube.

‘Yes, they were high old times, those times,' Jim said. ‘High times. I don't reckon hardly anyone in Crooked River was awake till noon the next day. I couldn't have slept more than an hour or two myself because I had to go check my snare lines and deliver the rabbits to the hotel kitchen. I remember walking through town with them – and when I say town I just mean O'Callaghan Street and the road that runs alongside the tracks, where the big roundhouse was where they'd park and fix the trains; there weren't any other roads in town then; there was hardly any town! – and it being so quiet you could hear the frogs chirruping down by the river and the horn of the eight o'clock train calling in the distance even though it was seven-thirty at most and it must still have been ten or fifteen miles off. And so I guess I was the only one who saw them leave – the circus man and his sister.

‘They were standing out front of the hotel. The man's suit wasn't looking half so sharp this time – it was crumpled and stained with whiskey and cigarette ash – and neither was he. His eyes were shot red and the oil in his hair had given up slicking it back and left it to fall over his forehead. Beside him was a wooden crate they'd put his bear cub in and you could hear it in there, whimpering and bellowing for its mother. But the man's sister, well, she looked just the same as when she'd arrived: in her smooth silk shirt and her hair done up in the back and shining like raven feathers and her lipstick making her lips redder than anyone else's in town. She was kind of hanging back from the man and the bear, as if she was waiting, and sure enough not five minutes had gone by when
Clarence came on out the door of the hotel. He'd managed to get himself scrubbed up some and was wearing his black church suit.

‘“Please,” he said. “If I can be of any assistance with your luggage?”

‘The eight o'clock train was getting louder now. It would've passed the narrows already.

‘“Well, I guess there's this here bear,” croaked the circus man.

‘“That's no problem,” Clarence said. And he must've spotted me then because he called out my name.

‘“Jim,” he said. “Put them rabbits down and give us a hand with this bear, would you?”

‘So it was Clarence and me who ended up lugging that cub over to the platform. By the time we got it there you could hear the rumble and shake of the approaching train and the tracks were beginning to hum.

‘“It's been a great pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Clarence, his voice raised against the noise.

‘“Yeah, yeah, and you,” replied the circus man, grimacing and clutching his forehead with one hand while he shook Clarence's with the other.

‘“If you're ever in these parts again you'd be most welcome. I can assure you I'd do everything in my power to make you happy here,” said Clarence, and he was looking sideways at her then.

‘“Why thank you,” she said. “That's very kind of you.”

‘When they went to shake hands you never would have seen it if you weren't looking close: a piece of paper showing white against the pink of her palm, that was in his palm then, and went straight into his pocket. It happened in less than a blink of an eye, but I was sure I recognized that piece of paper – it was the invitation he'd given her on the beach. And then the train had arrived and in all the steam and commotion I hardly noticed them climb up into the red caboose.

‘Clarence and me waited on the platform for the train to pull off again. It started slow and as it picked up speed, I kind of got the
idea he didn't want me there and I began to skulk back towards where I'd left the rabbits. I'd only gone fifty yards or so when the train rounded the curve in the tracks and snaked into the green of the bush. And as the red of the caboose disappeared I heard it, as plain as day: a sort of short, anguished bellow coming from Clarence's lips. He sounded just like the mother bear.'

That was how Jim told the story of the famous picnic, one night as he and Virgil sat on the porch and I lay there, listening. I think Virgil wanted him to stay: he'd sure poured him plenty of whiskey as he'd been talking. But then Nana came to the door into the porch and said I had to get my sleep and if they wanted to carry on jawing they'd have to take it over to the Red Rock Inn.

‘We'll have to finish this conversation another time, Jim,' Virgil said.

‘Sure thing,' said Jim.

And then Jim walked out into the dark humming night. He'd only taken a few steps before Virgil called out to him through the screen windows.

‘How soon after that did he start on his castle, Jim?'

‘Pretty soon. The next week or so, I reckon. But I couldn't be sure on that front, Virgil – he didn't announce it or nothing and we never even knew what he was up to properly for about a year.'

‘Thank you, Jim. We'll continue this another time. Soon.'

‘Any time,' said Jim, and there was just his voice coming from the darkness. ‘Any time you like, Virgil.'

After his footsteps had gone Virgil stayed on the porch a while, staring out into the night. Then he finished off his glass of whiskey and said goodnight and left me alone on the porch, listening to the chirruping of the frogs and the thrumming of the crickets, sounding like steel cables pulled too tight. For a while I couldn't close my eyes because every time I did I'd see Clarence there, going around and around and around on the looping river
until it made my head hurt – thinking of the forever of it. But then at last he was gone and I laid my head down on the couch and waited for the night trains to sing me loudly to sleep.