Heroes of the Frontier (7 page)

Now, as they stood on the deck stained in pink fish blood, an older man was suddenly too close and was talking to them.

“You kids like magic?” the man asked. He seemed to be leering. These lonely old men, Josie thought, with their wet lips and small eyes, their necks barely holding up their heavy heads full of their many mistakes and funerals of friends. Everything these men said sounded hideous and they didn't even know it.

Josie nudged Paul. “Answer the nice man.”

“I guess,” Paul said to the mountains beyond the man.

Now the old man was delighted. His face came alive, he dropped twenty years, forgot all the funerals. “Well, I happen to know that there's a magic show tonight on our ship.”

The man owned a ship? Josie asked for clarity.

“I'm just a passenger. I'm Charlie,” he said, and extended his hand, a pink and purple tangle of bones and veins. “Haven't you seen the
Princess
docked here? It's hard to miss.”

Josie came to realize that this stranger was inviting them, herself and her two kids, the three of them unknown to this man, onto the cruise ship docked at Seward, where, that evening, there would be an elaborate magic show featuring a half-dozen acts including, the old man was thrilled to convey, a magician from Luxembourg. “
Luxembourg,
” he said, “can you
imagine
?”

“I want to go!” Ana said. Josie didn't think it mattered much that Ana wanted to go—she had no intention of following this man onto a magic-show ship—but when Ana said those words, “I want to go!” Charlie's face took on a glow so powerful Josie thought he might ignite. Josie didn't want to disappoint this man and her daughter, who continued to talk about the show, what tricks a man from so far away might be capable of, but was she really about to follow this old man onto a cruise ship in Seward, Alaska, to see a Luxembourgian magic show? She couldn't deprive them, she knew. They had only one grandparent, Luisa, who was spectacular but who was too far away, so Josie frequently succumbed to these grandparent manqués, who bought her children balloons and gave them candy at inappropriate times.

“We're allowed to have guests, I think,” the man said as they walked the gangplank. The kids were astounded, stepping slowly, carefully, holding the ropes on either side. But now their host, this man in his seventies or eighties, was suddenly unsure he could have friends over. So Josie stopped and her kids peered down into the black water between the dock and the gleaming white ship. Josie watched as Charlie approached some man in a uniform. A few dozen elderly passengers went around them in their windbreakers, small bags of Seward souvenirs dangling from their arms.

“Let me talk to this man,” Charlie said, and motioned them to hang a few yards back from the door. Charlie and the man turned around a few times to inspect and gesture at Josie and her children, and finally Charlie swung around, telling them to come aboard.

The ship was garish and loud, and crowded, full of glass and screens—the décor was casino crossed with Red Lobster crossed with the court of Louis XVI. The kids were loving it. Ana was running everywhere, touching delicate things, bumping into people, making elderly women and men gasp and reach for walls.

“I think it starts in twenty minutes,” Charlie said, and then again looked lost. “Let me see if we need tickets.” He wandered off, and Josie knew she was a fool. Parenting was chiefly about keeping one's children away from unnecessary dangers, avoidable traumas and disappointments, and here she had dragged them to Alaska, and had driven them around unchosen parts of the state, and then to Seward, where no one had recommended they go, and now she had them following a lonely man onto a ship designed, it seemed, by the insane. All to see magic. Luxembourgian magic. Josie paged through the years of her life, trying to remember a decision she had made and was proud of, and she found nothing.

Finally Charlie returned, holding the tickets in his hand like a bouquet. “Are we ready?”

There was an escalator, an escalator inside a ship. Charlie was ahead of them, and rode upward while looking back at them, smiling but nervous, as if worried they might flee.

The auditorium seated at least five hundred and all within was burgundy—like being inside someone's liver. They sat in a half-moon booth near the back, Paul next to Charlie. A waitress in bright red hurried by and Charlie made no move to order anything. Josie asked for a lemonade for the kids and a glass of pinot noir for herself. The drinks arrived and the lights went down. Her glass was the size of a crystal ball, and was nearly full, and Josie felt kissed by the anonymous and irrational generosity of humankind. She relaxed, anticipating a few hours of not having to do anything but sit and watch in silence, getting harmlessly plowed.

Charlie had a different plan. The show started, and Josie realized that Charlie intended to talk throughout. And the words he wanted most to say were “See that?” For Ana, the answer was always “See
what
?,” so they made a beautiful pair. Charlie would notice something that every member of the audience had seen, and then would ask Josie and her kids if they'd seen it, too. Ana would say “See what?” and Charlie would then explain what he had seen, talking through the next five minutes of the show. It was wonderful.

The first magician, a pretty man in a tight silk shirt, had, it seemed, been told to make his act more of a personal story, so his monologue returned again and again to the theme of how he had always welcomed magic into his life. Opened the door to magic. Said hello to magic. Or how he had learned to appreciate magic in his life. Did he say he was married to magic? Maybe he did. It all made little sense and the audience seemed lost. “Life is full of magic if you look for it,” he noted, breathlessly, because he was moving around the stage in a thousand tiny steps, as a woman in a sparkly one-piece bathing suit vamped behind him with long strides.

The pretty magician produced some kind of flower from behind a curtain, and Josie struggled to see this as magical. She and Charlie clapped, but few members of the audience joined her. Her children didn't clap; they never clapped unless she told them to. Were they not taught clapping in school? The magician was not impressing this audience, though who could be easier to impress than five hundred elderly people in windbreakers? No, they were waiting for something better than carnations produced from screens.

Josie began to feel for this man. He'd been a magician in grade school, no doubt. He'd been pretty then, with lashes so long she could see them now, fifty rows back, and as an adolescent, apart from his peers but not concerned about this, he and his mother had driven forty miles to the nearest city, to get the right equipment for his shows, the right boxes—with wheels!—the velvet bags, the collapsing canes. He'd loved his mother then and had known how to say it, maybe with a flourish, and his unguarded love for her had made his apartness unimportant to him and her, and now she was so proud that he had made it, was a professional magician, traveling the world making magic, welcoming magic into his life. All that, Josie thought, and these elderly assholes wouldn't clap for him.

Josie downed half her pinot and gave the pretty magician a whoop. If no one else appreciated him, she would. Every time he asked for applause, which was often, she yelled and whooped and clapped. Her children looked at her, unsure if she was being funny. Charlie turned to her and smiled nervously.

Now the long-legged woman was helping the pretty magician into a big red box. Now she was turning it around and around. It was on wheels! Everything in the act had to be on wheels, so it could be turned around. It was a rule of magic onstage that everything must be turned around and around, to prove there were no strings, no one hiding just behind. But in its absence did the audience ever wonder about the turning around? Did they ever ask: Um, why hasn't someone turned the box around? Turn the box around! My god, turn it!

Now the sparkly assistant opened the box. The pretty man was not in the box! Josie whooped again, clapping over her head. Where had he gone? The suspense was fantastic.

And now he was next to them! Suddenly a spotlight was on their table, or near it, because the pretty man was next to them. “Holy shit,” Josie said, loud enough that the pretty man, whose hands were outstretched, again asking for applause, heard her. He smiled. Josie clapped louder, but again the rest of the audience didn't seem to care.
He was up there,
she wanted to yell to them.
Now he's here!

You fuckers.

Up close she saw the magician was wearing a tremendous amount of makeup. Eyeliner, blush, maybe even lipstick, all seemingly applied by a child. Then the spotlight went dark, and he stood for a moment, next to their table, hands up, while a second magician appeared onstage. Josie wanted to say something to the pretty man, a heaving silken silhouette a few feet away, but by the time she arrived at what she would say—“We loved you”—he was gone.

She turned to the stage. The new magician was less pretty.

“This is the one from Luxembourg,” Charlie whispered.

“Hello everyone!” the new magician roared, and explained he was from Michigan.

“Oh,” Charlie sighed.

The Michigan magician, red-haired in a white shirt and stretchy black pants, was soon in a straitjacket and was hanging upside down twenty feet above the stage. He explained, his breath labored and his arms crossed like a chrysalis, that if he did not escape from the straitjacket in some certain amount of time, something unfortunate would happen to him. Josie, trying to get the attention of the waitress, had not caught exactly what that consequence was. She ordered a second pinot, and soon some part of the contraption holding the magician was on fire. Was that intentional? It seemed intentional. Then he was struggling in an inelegant way, ramming his shoulders against the canvas jacket, and then, aha, he was free, and was standing on the ground. An explosion flowered above him, but he was safe and not on fire.

Josie thought this trick pretty good, and clapped heartily, but again the crowd was not impressed. What were they waiting for? she wondered. Fuckers! Then she knew: they were waiting for the magician from Luxembourg. They did not want domestic magic, they wanted magic from
abroad
.

The man from Michigan stood at the edge of the stage, bowing again and again, and instead of the applause growing, it dissipated until he was bowing in silence. Josie thought of his poor mother, and hoped she was not on this cruise. But she knew there was a very good chance the Michigan magician's mother was on this cruise. How could she not be on this cruise?

Now a new magician appeared. He had a high head of gleaming yellow hair and his pants were somehow tighter than the pants of his predecessors. Josie had not thought this possible.

“I hope this guy's from Luxembourg,” Charlie said, too loudly.

“Hallo,” the magician said, and Josie was fairly sure he was from somewhere else. Perhaps Luxembourg? The magician explained that he spoke six languages and had been everywhere. He asked if anyone in the audience had been to Luxembourg, and a smattering of applause surprised him. Josie decided to clap, too, and did so loudly. “Yes!” she yelled. “I've been there!” Her children were horrified. “Yes!” she yelled again. “And it was
great
!”

“Lots of visitors to Luxembourg, I am pleased,” the magician said, though he didn't seem to believe those who had applauded, least of all Josie. But by now, her spirit dancing in the glorious light of her second overpoured glass of pinot, Josie believed she
had
been to Luxembourg. In her youth she'd backpacked through Europe for three months, and wasn't Luxembourg right there in the middle of the continent? Surely she'd been there. Did that one train, the main train, go to Luxembourg? Of course it did. She pictured a beer garden. In a castle. On a hill. By the sea. What sea? Some sea. Puff the Magic Dragon.

The magician from Luxembourg did his tricks, which seemed more sophisticated than those of his predecessors. Maybe because they involved roses? Before him there had been only carnations. The roses, this was a step up. Women holding roses appeared in boxes,
boxes on wheels,
and the man from Luxembourg turned these boxes around and around. Then he opened the boxes, and the women would
not
be there; they were somewhere else. Behind screens! In the audience!

Josie clapped and hollered. He was wonderful. The wine was wonderful. What a good world this was, that there was magic like this on ships like this. What an impressive species they were, humans, who could build a ship like this, who could do magic like this, who could clap listlessly even for the magician from Luxembourg. These fucking assholes, Josie thought, trying to singlehandedly make up for their sickening lack of enthusiasm. Why come out to a magic show if you don't want to be entertained? Clap, you criminals!! She hated these people. Even Charlie wasn't clapping enough. She leaned over to him. “Not good enough for you?” she asked, but he didn't hear.

Now Luxembourg was gone and a man was making his way onto the stage. He was rumpled, his hair reaching upward seven different ways, and he was easily twenty years older than the others. Another man. Where were the women? Were women not capable of magic? Josie tried to conjure any female magician she'd ever seen or heard of and couldn't. My god, she thought! How can that be? Scandal! Injustice! What about Lady Magic? Lady Magic, yes! Why do we allow all these men, all these silken heavy-breathing men, and now this one, this rumpled one—he made no effort at all to be pretty like the others. He had no lovely assistant, and, it soon became clear, he didn't intend to do any magic. Goddamn you, Josie thought, guessing all the magic was over. And did she have money for another drink? She had about twenty-five dollars, she guessed. Maybe the drinks were cheaper onboard than on Alaskan soil. She had to count on it. She looked for the waitress. Where was the waitress?