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“Yes. On the sixes,” Polly echoed.
“Suit yourself,” Doc Hamilton said, upending the flask.
At the table, Johnny finished counting the money. He smiled, his bright teeth shining out from all that fur. “One thousand dollars. Not bad.”
Everyone applauded. Some banged the table in celebration.
Johnny dropped the fat green stack into Zarilda’s open cigar box and she held it aloft for a moment, triumphant. “They said vaudeville would bury us. Then they said it was the picture shows. Now everybody and his dog’s got a radio—Ma and Pa and kiddies gathered around the old squawk box ever’ night. But they still come out to see us. When the circus rolls into town, folks line up and down the roadways, cheering and clapping. You know why?”
Zarilda took a moment to look around the table with a showman’s instinct for suspense.
“Because we are the dream makers!” she said, rippling her fingers through the air as if spreading fairy dust. “We show ’em wonders! No matter what troubles they carry from home, no matter what heartbreaks hide inside their rib cages, for a time under our tent, they can have wonder again. They can believe that all things are possible. We”—and here Zarilda paused again—“we make the impossible possible.”
The moon rose like the answer to a forgotten prayer. Stars glittered in a velvety sky. It had been a long day, and a good one. Everyone drifted toward bed and sleep and dreams. Theta tucked Isaiah into his berth on the train.
Isaiah worried the edge of his blanket. “Do you suppose Memphis misses me?”
Theta carefully lifted the blanket free of Isaiah’s fingers and pulled it up to his quivering chin. “I’m sure of it.”
“You think he’s all right, wherever he is?”
“I’m sure of that, too,” she lied. On impulse, she kissed Isaiah’s forehead. “Get some sleep, Ice Man.”
Isaiah turned on his side and shut his eyes. “Only Memphis calls me that.”
“Well, now I call you that, too. Just until he gets back.”
Theta stepped off the train and into the night. The fairgrounds clanged with the noise of the circus coming apart. Already the Big Top, the cook tent, and all of the seating had been disassembled and loaded onto the first line of railroad cars to make the trip to the next town ahead of the performers. They were a dreamlike city rolling through the dark of night past slumbering towns full of people with jobs and houses and ordinary lives. People who had no notion of the danger awaiting them. Was Memphis in one of those towns they passed by? Could he be lost in the throngs of happy, flag-waving spectators gathered along the sides of the roads as the circus paraded through? And where was Henry? Theta missed them both so much. Tonight, it weighed heavily on her.
How could so much change happen in such a short amount of time? It didn’t even feel like the same world. Now Henry was somewhere out there in this vast country, and maybe he was safe, but maybe he was facing somebody who’d figured him to be a boy who liked other boys and who didn’t like it one bit. Somebody who thought he had the right to teach Henry a lesson. Maybe that person would feel like he had to prove to himself or his friends that he wasn’t as small and powerless as he felt inside. Theta shuddered thinking about what harm could come to the two boys she loved the most. She wondered if she would be able to cultivate her own power in time to do whatever was required to stop catastrophe.
Theta wandered past the darkened sideshow wagons painted with the image of a snake-draped, scaly woman with a forked tongue. Near the animal cages, she bumped into Johnny the Wolf Boy. “Just making sure my friends are all right,” he said, nodding toward the tiger, lions, elephants, and horses.
“What’s the word? I thought we were getting out of here?” she asked.
“The flood’s really causing trouble. The railroad fellas are taking us on a different route, but it looks like we’re here till dawn at least. I don’t know if I can even sleep without the feel of the rails under
me,” Johnny said, grinning. “Good night to you, Miss Theta.”
“’Night, Johnny.”
Back in her compartment, Theta took out Miss Addie’s spell book, hoping it would be of help. There were long lists of plants and their uses, most of it folk medicine, which Theta found very interesting. There were instructions for calling the corners, with an underlined note to “know your intent. Search your heart.” And there were spells, of course.
But the book was also Miss Addie’s diary. Theta skimmed the first page, then turned to the very last entry, a quirk of hers that used to drive Henry crazy. “How can you read the last page of a book first?” he’d say in mock-outrage. “I hate suspense,” she’d answer. Miss Addie’s last entry had been dated July 1864: It is finished.
The door to the compartment blew open. Theta yelped.
“Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you,” Evie said, traipsing in.
“Were you with Sam?” Theta asked.
Evie smiled. “Mm-hmm.” Her hair was a mess and her lips were chapped.
Theta stroked her thumb across her own lips, wishing Memphis were there to bruise them with fevered kissing. She ached with missing him.
Evie slipped out of her dress, leaving it in a heap on the floor. She was such a slob. If Theta had ever left her things out of order, Mrs. Bowers or Roy would’ve hit her for it.
“You just gonna leave that there for the maid?” Theta said pointedly.
