pieces. “See that dent in his forehead? He’s got that there ’cause his daddy fucked his mama while she was pregnant with him, and his dick poked old Joey in the head and made him stupid.”
As he grew up, he moved more and more away from the world of people and deeper into the world of machines. His hands showed him the way, turning over the bits and pieces he found in garbage cans, tool boxes, and junk sales until he could tell just by holding a bit of iron in his hands exactly what it had once done and wanted to do again. He collected discarded motors and gears and took them to his secret place in the shed behind his daddy’s house, where he fashioned them into deceptively simple machines that spun and whirred and surrounded him with their joyful cacophony.
He could have fit in, had he wanted to. He could have used what he knew to help boys like Billy James unlock the secrets of the cars they tried to make their own. But he didn’t. Instead, he watched them try day after day to bend the engines to their will, to force themselves upon a world where they had no control. Sometimes he sat on the rise overlooking the school’s auto body shop and slowly ate an apple while he observed the boys congratulating one another on some minor success, while in his head he had already figured out exactly what it was the sputtering car was trying to say in its own voice. He himself walked to school.
It had all ended shortly after his sixteenth birthday, when his father, enraged over Joe’s refusal to be interested in football, hunting, or girls, followed him to the shed and spied on him as he sat among the machines he’d constructed. Bursting in, his father grabbed a can of gasoline, splashed it over the walls, and set the shed on fire. As the smoke rose up into the sky, and the voices of the machines turned to screams, Joe ran into the darkness.
When he stopped running, he found himself at the edge of a carnival. It had been in town for a week, but he had avoided it, knowing that Billy James would be there with his friends and the giggling, stupid girls whose tight sweaters and bright lipstick made Joe feel sorry for them. Now it was the last night, and the park was almost empty. Some of the rides were being taken down, and nobody noticed Joe as he walked among the towering machines.
When he came upon a group of men trying to disassemble the complicated gears of a carousel, he stopped to watch. Grunting and straining, they were attempting to pull it apart. The largest man was swearing and beating the nest of machinery as though it were a horse refusing to move. Joe, after listening for a few minutes, walked into the group of men, picked up a wrench, and effortlessly undid the knots of metal as the astonished workers looked on.
No one had ever asked his age, and when the carnival rolled out of town late that night, Joe had been asleep in the back of the truck housing the Ferris wheel, his thin body tucked into one of the gently swaying cars. He had been there ever since, the master mechanic who kept the rides spinning and the people laughing. Night after night, in town after town, he built his city up and tore it down again.
Now he walked through the maze of rides and attractions, surveying the work of his crew and hired hands. The skeleton of the Ferris wheel was nearly complete, its empty cars swaying as the men set another one into the circles of steel and tightened the bolts to hold it in place. Beyond it, the Whirly-Gig was being tested, its five cars spinning around as the men who worked it laughed and congratulated one another on having no leftover pieces. Joe nodded at them and walked on.
The carousel was still his favorite, and he saved it for last. Its interlocking wheels fascinated him as much as they had the first time he’d laid his hands on them. Each night after it was assembled, he stood in the center, watching the gears turn as an endless melody spilled from the music box hidden in the canopy decorated with roses and the faces of angels. The painted wooden horses, dogs, and mermaids circled around him, always laughing, always gay, rising up and slowly tumbling down again as tiny white and blue lights sparkled in the darkness. He knew the magic was created by cogs and pistons, electricity and grease, but it was magic nonetheless.
In a few hours the carousel would be filled with riders—children with hands and faces sticky from cotton candy, women in summer dresses and hats. There would be a few men, too, fathers holding on to little ones who balanced atop the horses, young men with arms flung protectively around skinny girls with shy eyes. They would pretend not to be enchanted by the magic, as if admitting to falling in love with the machine’s song were an act of weakness. But Joe saw in their faces that they heard, saw the looks of longing that appeared when they thought no one else was looking.
“Is she going to be ready in time?”
Joe turned. Behind him Harley stood, his thumbs, as always, hitched behind the straps of his overalls. A cigarette, unlit, perched in the corner of his mouth. His dark eyes looked out from a face weathered by a life spent in the sun and wind, giving him an expression of perpetual weariness. In all the time that Harley had been managing the carnival, which was almost as many years as Joe had been part of it, Joe didn’t think he’d ever washed those overalls or lit that cigarette.
“She’ll be ready,” Joe told him, nodding. “Has she ever not been ready?”
Harley paused a moment, then shook his head. “Not that I can recall,” he said.
“Tonight’s no different,” said Joe. “She’ll be ready for the good folks of whatever town this is.”
Harley laughed. “Denton,” he said. “Denton, Kansas.”
“Denton, Kansas,” Joe repeated. It didn’t matter; he’d forget the name within the hour anyway. He always did. Where he was didn’t matter to him. Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee—they were all the same. He’d set up his machines in hundreds of little towns all across the country, and he couldn’t recall the name of a single one of them.
“Come on,” Harley said, turning away. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Joe followed as Harley walked silently through the carnival. Although he seemed to be looking only at the ground, Joe knew the manager was registering every detail of the raising. If asked to, Harley could name every single person working to keep the show going, list every piece of equipment needed, and recite the take from every stop for the past seventeen seasons.
Harley opened the door to the trailer that served as his office, and stepped inside. Joe followed. As the power of the afternoon sun faded away and his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw that someone was seated at the lone chair in front of the desk where Harley kept the bits of paper that comprised the carnival’s accounting system. The occupant of the chair—a man—turned and regarded him.
“Hello.” Joe tipped his head in the stranger’s direction as Harley took a seat behind his desk.
“Good afternoon,” replied the man. “You must be the dependable Mr. Flanagan.”
“That’s right,” Joe said. “And you are…?”
“I am Mr. Star,” said the man, standing up and removing the battered top hat that covered his head. Tall and thin, he had dark hair that fell several inches over the collar of his white shirt, and a trim beard and mustache of a matching blue-black color. His clothes had once been elegant—a suit and morning coat of the sort worn by gentlemen twenty years earlier. Now they were worn and patched, their fineness marred by age and dust. Mr. Star held out his hand.
Joe shook it, and when his fingers slipped away, he found he was holding a small card. It was decorated with an image of a moon and stars that hung above a circus tent, its flags fluttering in an unseen wind. The words Tent of Wonders appeared in script below the picture, and beneath that, Mr. Star, Proprietor.
Joe looked at Mr. Star. The man was seated again. “Nice trick,” Joe remarked.
Mr. Star smiled and tipped his head slightly. “A simple sleight of hand,” he said.
“Mr. Star is interested in maybe joining up with us,” Harley told Joe. “Got a show of his own. Thought it might help us both to travel together.”
“What kind of show?” asked Joe.
“Curiosities,” answered Mr. Star.
“Freaks,” Harley said in response