The Toynbee Convector

“Boy,” I said, “did I see film! The atom bomb blew up a whole battleship down at the Elite.”

Father dropped his fork and stared at me. “Sometimes, Douglas, you have the uncanny ability to say just the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

I saw Mother squinting at me to catch my eye. “It’s late,” she said. “You’d better run on to the circus.”

As I was getting my hat and coat I heard Father say in a low and thoughtful voice, “How would it be to sell the business? You know, we’ve always wanted to travel; go to Mexico maybe. A small town. Settle down.”

“You’re talking like a child,” whispered Mother. “I won’t hear you carry on this way.”

“I know it’s foolish. Don’t mind me. But you’re right; better cancel the paper.”

A wind was blowing the trees half over and the stars were all out and the circus lay in the country hills, in the meadow, like a big toadstool. Red Tongue and I had popcorn in one hand, taffy in the other, and cotton candy on our chins. “Lookit my beard!” Red Tongue shouted. Everybody was talking and pushing under the bright light bulbs and a man smacked a canvas with a bamboo cane and shouted about The Skeleton, The Blubber Lady, The Illustrated Man, The Seal Boy, while RT and I jostled through to the lady who tore our tickets in half.

We balanced our way up to sit on the slat seats just when the bass drums exploded and the jeweled elephants lumbered out, and from then on there were hot searchlights, men shooting from fiery howitzers, ladies hung by their white teeth imitating butterflies high up in the clouds of cigarette smoke while trapeze men rode back and forth among the ropes and poles, and lions trotted softly around the sawdust-floored cage while the trainer in white pants shot smoke and flame at them from a silver pistol. “Look!” RT and I cried, blinking here, gaping there, chuckling, oohing, aahing, amazed, incredulous, surprised, and entertained, out of breath, eyes wide, mouths open. Chariots roared around the track, clowns jumped from burning hotels, grew hair, changed from giants to midgets in a steam box. The band crashed and tooted and hooted and everywhere was color and warmth and sequins shining and the crowd thundering.

But along about the end of the show I looked up. And there, behind me, was a little hole in the canvas. And through that hole I could see the old meadowland, the wind blowing over it and the stars shining alone out there. The cold wind tugged at the tent very gently. And all of a sudden, turning back to the warm riot all around me, I was cold too. I heard Red Tongue laughing beside me and I half-saw some men riding a silver bike on a high, far-away, thin thread, the snare drum going tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat, everyone quiet. And when that was over, there were two hundred clowns whacking each other’s heads with bats and Red Tongue almost fell from his seat, screaming with it. I sat there and didn’t move and at last Red Tongue turned and looked at me and said, “Hey, what’s wrong, Doug?”

“Nothing,” I said. I shook myself. I looked up at the red circus poles and the rope lines and the flaring lights. I looked at the zinc-oxide clowns and made myself laugh. “Lookit there, RT, that fat one over there!”

The band played “The Old Gray Mare She Ain’t What She Used to Be.”

“It’s all over,” said Red Tongue, breathlessly.

We sat while the thousands of stunned people walked away mumbling and laughing and pressing at each other. The tent was thick with cigar smoke and the musical instruments lay curled up and abandoned for a moment on the wooden dock where the band had shocked us with wave after wave of brass.

We didn’t move because neither of us wanted it to be over.

“Guess we better go/’ said RT, not stirring.

“Let’s wait,” I said, tonelessly, not looking at anything. I felt the wood slat aching under my bottom after the long strange hours of music and color. Men were moving and slapping the collapsing chairs down into themselves to be toted away. The canvas strippings were being unhooked. Everywhere was the jingle and the snap and clatter of the circus felling apart

The tent was empty.

We stood on the midway, the wind blowing dust in our eyes, leaves whipping off the trees. And the wind carried away all the dead leaves and all the restless people. The sideshow bulbs blinked off. We walked to the top of a nearby hill and stood there in the windy dark, our teeth chattering, watching the blue lights drift in the blackness, the white shapes of elephants floating, the sounds of men cursing and stakes being pried up. And then, like an immense sighing bellows, the main tent settling to earth.

An hour later the gravel road was amove with cars and trucks and golden cages. The pale meadow lay empty. The moon was rising and rime formed over every wet thing. RT and I walked slowly down across the meadow, smelling the sawdust “That’s all that’s left,” said Red Tongue. “Sawdust.”

“Here’s a stake hole,” I said. I pointed. “There’s another.”

“You’d never know they were ever here,” said RT. “It’s Wee making it up in your mind.” The wind blew across the empty meadow and we stood watching the black trees shake. There was not a light or a sound; even all of the circus smell had finally blown away.

“Welp,” said RT, scuffing his shoes. “Well get the tar beat out of us if we ain’t home an hour ago!” He smiled.

We walked back together down the lonely country road, the wind at our backs, our hands deep in our pockets, our heads down. We walked past the deep silent ravine and then we walked through the little streets of the town, past sleeping houses, where here and there a radio quietly played, and there was the sound of a last cricket, and our heels thumping on the rough bricks in the middle of the long street, under the swaying, dim arc lamps at each corner.

I looked at all the houses and all the picket fences and all the slanting roofs and lighted windows and I looked at every tree and at all the bricks under my feet. I looked at my shoes and I looked over at RT trudging beside me, his teeth chattering. And I saw the courthouse clock a mile away, lifting up its moist white face in the moonlight, all the municipal buildings black and big. “G’night, Doug.” I didn’t answer as RT walked slowly on down the street between the houses at midnight and turned a far corner.

I crept upstairs and was in bed in a minute, looking out through my window at the town.

My brother Skip must have heard me crying for a long time before he put his hand over to feel my arm. “What’s wrong, Doug?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I sobbed quietly, eyes closed. “Just the circus.” Skip waited. The wind blew around the house. “What about it?” he asked.

“Nothing—except it won’t come again.”

“Sure it will,” he said.

“No, it’s gone. And it won’t come back again. It’s all gone where it was, nothing of it left.”