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“I mean you ain’t in Harlem no more. You in the Jim Crow South. There are rules about where black folks can and can’t be—mostly where we can’t be.”
“I’m not bowing and scraping for anybody,” Memphis grunted.
“Not telling you to bow and scrape. Telling you how not to get yourself killed.”
“Lot of ghosts between here and there, too,” Henry said.
“I saw Gabe in a dream,” Memphis confessed. “At least, I think it was a dream. It was awfully hard to tell. Felt like I was really living it.”
“Dreams can be that way sometimes,” Henry said. He had been so exhausted he hadn’t dreamed at all. “There’s an awful lot of mess to work through while we sleep.”
“S’pose,” Memphis said. He bore a fair amount of guilt over Gabe’s death. They’d fought about Theta at Alma’s party. Memphis had left him there. And Gabe, drunk, had staggered off and been murdered by the Pentacle Killer. Gabe was stubborn like that. Still, what if? Memphis wondered. What if he’d looked out better for his friend?
And then there was Gabe’s troubling warning: How long will you be able to heal? How much power do you really have? It had gone right to the heart of it for Memphis. Ever since what had happened with his mother, Memphis had harbored the fear that this gift could be taken from him at any time. After all, so many things had been taken from him already.
Memphis wiped the sheen from his forehead. He felt very small under the pitiless sun. “Gabe said they were getting stronger.”
“Who?”
“The dead.”
“It was just a bad dream. We got bigger fish to fry, seeing as we’ve got to walk to Greenville, Mississippi,” Bill said. “We go back, we’ll be at the depot we just left. We should keep going forward, reckon. Come on. We don’t wanna be on these roads after dark,” Bill said and set out to follow the ribbon of tracks, wherever it led.
“You think there might be cemeteries along here? Some of the King of Crows’s ghosts?” Henry asked, falling in behind.
“There’s some things in this world that’s scarier’n ghosts. You just do what I do, understand?” Bill said without looking back. “And keep up. We still got a long way to go.”
Memphis waited until they came to the first mailbox. He opened it and left the poem from the Voice of Tomorrow inside.
CIRCUS
When Evie had first met Sam, he’d told her that he’d made his way from Chicago to New York as an acrobat. Evie was never quite certain when Sam was telling a tall tale, and she’d always figured the circus story to be just that. Now, as they rode in the back of a kind farmer’s truck toward Cooperstown, Sam regaled them with stories about the Great Zarilda herself—fortune-teller and experienced con artist who managed to mix both arts; her boyfriend, Arnold the Painted Man, who was covered in tattoos from forehead to the tips of his toes; sweet-natured Johnny the Wolf Boy; Bella the Strong Man, who could lift two grown men above his head; Polly the Bearded Lady; “Doc” Hamilton and his Traveling Medicine Show; and Mr. Sarkassian, the cheery ringmaster. He told them about the acrobats and roustabouts, about the clowns and lion tamers, about the animals themselves. It sounded like a fantastical traveling city.
“Do they have real lions?” Isaiah asked, excited.
“Real lions, and elephants, horses, dogs, a goat, and a tiger.”
Isaiah’s eyes widened. “A tiger?”
“Uh-huh. There’s a Russian fella who can put his whole head inside the tiger’s mouth. Unless the tiger’s eaten him already.”
“Can I pet the tiger?”
“Sure you can. I wouldn’t recommend it, though.”
The farmer let them off outside a gate bearing a painted sign that read, HOME OF THE GREAT ZARILDA’S WONDROUS TRAVELING CIRCUS EXTRAVAGANZA. MARVELS AND MIRACLES AWAIT WITHIN!
“This way,” Sam said, opening the gate.
A grass-striped gravel road led them past an algae-furred pond. A small city of beautifully painted wagons sat in the field. Simple cabins perched up on the hill across from one another like ladies and gentlemen waiting to start a dance. About one hundred yards behind the houses, in a dirt clearing, were a corral and a paddock where men with pitchforks speared hay, which the elephants lifted with their trunks and stuffed into their mouths. A couple of sleek white horses galloped behind a fence. A lioness relaxed on the floor of a cage while her mate paced, letting out a lazy roar that showed off an impressive mouthful of teeth, nonetheless.
“Can we send that lion to the Shadow Men?” Evie joked.
“I’d hate to give the fella indigestion,” Sam shot back.
“Sam? Sam Lloyd! Is that really you?”
A big, bold woman marched down the hill, her arms swinging forward and back in time with the flow of her gold satin dress and leopard-print shawl-collar coat. A red, permanent-waved bob puffed out from under a brown cowboy hat. On her feet were a pair of cowboy boots, and in her mouth was a long cigarette holder clenched between very white teeth ringed by crimson lips. Just behind her walked a lanky man with more facial hair than Evie had ever seen. The sleeves of his white shirt had been rolled to the elbows. His forearms and the backs of his hands were covered in soft brown fur.
