Pause, pause, pause…
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” The Ring Master called through a bullhorn. “Little girls and boys!” The audience was filled with the sounds of shushing parents and tittering children. “Welcome to Drury Brother’s Circus on Wheels!” The audience erupted in applause. “I would like to draw your attention to the center ring.”
A spotlight shone from high above onto the sawdust in the center ring. “And welcome if you will, Dandy the dancing elephant!” Even Amelia felt a jolt of excitement go through her as music came blaring across the big top and a small elephant sashayed into the spotlight wearing a tutu.
Without any human instruction whatsoever Dandy followed the tempo of the music nodding her head. She turned first to her left and then to her right. She held up her right front foot and hopped on her left then alternated her feet differently with every beat.
A man emerged from the shadows and held out his hand. Dandy applied the tip of her trunk to his hand and waltzed with him to and fro, from side to side, then bowed to the audience in all four directions. The crowd applauded happily.
Another elephant entered the ring and put its feet up on a huge red ball. Pushing it aside with his trunk, he placed the top of his head in the sawdust and kicked up his heels until his body rose up and he attained a headstand that lasted very nearly 30 seconds before his feet came back to earth.
“Look!” Jojo pointed into the canopy of the big top. Amelia followed his finger as it dissolved into the air. High above Jojo rematerialized on a platform connected to a pole. He looked down. In his hand was a feather. Beside him on the platform was his trusty snail Dumbo who had grown to the height of Jojo’s knee.
“C'mon Jojo!” the snail cheered him on. “You can do it!”
Jojo looked out at the crowd far below. "You want me to jump?" Jojo yelled above the roar of the crowd, sights fixed on him.
“Not jump,” Dumbo corrected him, “fly!”
“But last time I flew was on your back!” Jojo yelled.
“It's your turn to fly,” the snail insisted. Jojo looked down. The clowns were circling under the towering platform and starting to make fun of him.
“Ohh Nooooo!” one cried and knocked his knees together. The crowd laughed. Another clown ran to the drum an elephant had been standing on just a moment before and cried out, “Heeeelllllp! Oh! Help me I might fall!” The words floated out of his mouth like words in a comic strip. In big balloons they floated up to Jojo and popped around him in midair releasing the jabs and jokes. Jojo became increasingly angry.
“I can't fly!” He looked at the snail.
“Yes you can. Just put your courage in the feather and raise it up.”
Jojo tried to do what the snail suggested. “I can't.” He hung his head dejectedly.
“Don't try Jojo. Do it. You haven't done it yet, but you can do it NOW!”
The boy looked at his own two feet on the edge of the platform. He had learned to look at his feet a lot. When adults were angry with him, as was often the case, there seemed to be no safe place to look, and no safe way to look. If he looked an adult in the eye, they wanted to know what he was looking at or would tell him to get that look off his face. Jojo didn't know what he looked like to them. But he knew what his feet looked like. Just one glimpse of his gym shoes made him feel small and small is what most adults seemed to want him to look like.
“You can do it, Jojo!” A new yet familiar voice called up from the stands. He looked down his left arm, past the edge of the platform and saw Amelia waving to him. Something shifted in Jojo's heart and he could sense the faith he had lost in himself. He smiled and the feeling grew. “Go Jojooooo!” Amelia was jumping up and down and cheering.
Jojo looked at the feather and imagined it was magic. Fill it up with your courage, Dumbo the snail thought to him. Jojo heard the words as if they were his own thoughts. It seemed as if the feather was growing strong, filling up. It seemed to shine in his hand.
Hold out your courage and follow it, Jojo, the snail thought into Jojo's mind. Jojo held out the feather and felt his feet begin to feel lighter. He focused on the feather and pushed off the platform into the air. Then without warning Jojo began to plummet. He felt the air begin to rush past him and heard the noise of the crowd come to an astonished halt. No one made a sound. As he fell Jojo remembered the little mouse that urged Dumbo to pull up and fly. There was no mouse in Jojo's hat. He didn't hear anyone urging him to fly anymore.
I knew you couldn't do it! Jojo heard inside his head, but this time he recognized the voice was not his own. He looked down and saw a mean looking clown who started to laugh as Jojo fell closer to the floor. Jojo clenched the feather in his hand and dove toward the clown in a rage.
“You're not funny!” he shouted.
“I don't need to be funny!” the clown shot back. “You're the big joke.”
Jojo came within inches of the evil looking clown then pulled up, flying back into the heights of the big top. The crowd cheered. Jojo looked around. He was hovering in midair like a hummingbird.
The clown pulled a sword from a sheath on his side and strode across the floor until he was under Jojo. “Bring your sorry butt down here.”
“No problem.” Jojo shrugged and dove toward the clown who raised his sword in a menacing gesture. Jojo zipped around behind the clown faster than he could react and putting both hands out knocked the clown to the ground. Jojo landed and his feather grew into an immense sword three times as big as the clown's.
The clown grabbed his sword on the ground and stood to turn. Jojo nonchalantly twirled his big sword with two fingers, seemingly without fear. The clown charged at Jojo who bopped him sideways with his large sword. The clown flew past Jojo and landed in the sawdust near the stands. His sword skittered deeply into the sawdust. Finding it, he raised it up overhead and turned to face Jojo.
“You still here?” Jojo asked.
“Yeah, but you're not going to be for long!”
The clown sliced his sword overhead and cut through a rope. Jojo looked up. A huge bag of sand was falling toward him. He dove to escape and heard the sand land behind him sounding like a door slamming shut. He turned his head to look and bumped it on something. His head dropped to the floor as he saw big shoes walking toward him through the space under his bed.
Pause, pause, pause…
“Come on outta' there now, boy.” The voice was the same as the clown’s.
“Darius!” Jojo whispered too loud.
“Damn right, and I'm done with this trash, now come out from under ‘dare or I'm gonna’ whoop you.” Darius kicked under the bed and Jojo scooted to the other side, his back against the baseboard.
One thing was certain; Darius would whoop him hard if he came out from under the bed. The chances were better for Jojo if he just maintained his position and forced Darius to work for his quarry.
“I didn't do anything,” Jojo protested.
“No, you never do anything. That’s the problem.” Darius kicked under the bed again. “Now where's my box?”
“I don't know!” Jojo felt Darius' foot poking under the other side of the bed and scooted the other way.
“Boy, don't mess with me. I know you got my box, now where is it?!”
“I didn't get it!” Jojo yelled.
“You didn't go where I told you to go?” The vibration of Darius’ voice grew louder and more stressed.
“I did!” Jojo insisted.
“Then where is the package?” Darius was down on his hands and feet next to the bed and Jojo felt his time was running out.
“There wasn't one. Nobody was there,” he explained knowing it was useless. It didn't matter that he had been where he was told to be. Nor did it matter that he hadn't been given the package Darius was expecting. All that was important right now was that Darius wanted to capture Jojo and Jojo needed to avoid that.
“Pssst!” Jojo heard from under the bed beside him. He looked and saw Dumbo eyeing him through the end of his
long tubules. “Get in here.” The snail pulled back his belly as if to make an opening for Jojo into the shell.
“I can't fit in there. I'm too big.” Jojo considered the dilemma that followed him wherever he went. Either he was too big or too small to get what he needed. He wanted to cry out for his momma but he knew she couldn't hear him. Jojo wished he could be small enough to fit in the snail shell and, as if by magic, he began to shrink smaller and smaller.
“Where'd you go?” He heard Darius' surprised last words as he crawled inside the shell with Dumbo and stayed very quiet.
Jojo felt the shell rock as Darius swung his arm past it through the socks and shoes that were under the bed. Then the room fell silent.
The inside of the snail shell was spacious. Jojo found himself walking on the back of the snail as if it were carpeting. Jojo felt the floor undulating and one tubular eye extended in through the opening of the shell.
“How's everything going on this end?” Dumbo inquired with a distinct British accent. The snail's eye was larger than Jojo's head and the kaleidoscopic details of it were mesmerizing.
“Wow, this is cool!” A pile of pillows appeared and Jojo fell onto them as Dumbo ducked out and the shell started to move. “Where are we going, Dumbo?” The shell jolted to a stop and the snail stuck his eye back inside the pearlescent interior.
“Don’t you think it’s time we left the Dumbo thing behind?” The snail’s entire head moved inside the shell with Jojo, and there was still plenty of room.
“Don’t you like being called Dumbo?” Jojo felt a little sadness come over him.
“Listen kid, I’m not a little elephant. I’m a snail. And a pretty magical one at that, if you don’t mind me saying so,” the snail replied. “I’m no Dumbo and neither are you.” Jojo’s chin dropped to his chest. “Now, stop that,” the snail continued. “Pouting won’t get you anywhere and you didn’t do anything wrong.” The snail nudged the boy with what might have been his nose, if snails did indeed possess noses. “Wouldn’t you like to know my real name?”
Jojo’s attitude brightened. “You had a name before I named you Dumbo?”
“Why sure I did.” If snails could smile, this one did.
“What is it?” Jojo was excited.
The snail thought for a moment. “Okay, so I lied just then. Snails don’t have names,” the snail admitted. “But I’d like to have one that showed off my true potential. You and me buddy, we’re in this together now. How ‘bout you help me come up with a proper name?”
Jojo thought about his own name. He had a proper name Joseph John Jenkins and his nickname Jojo. Sometimes when his teacher was mad at him she called him Joseph John. That’s when he knew she meant business. Other times, when they were having fun in class, she would call him Jojo and he felt like she liked him a lot. One time she had read a poem out of a small thin book about cats. In the poem it said that every cat had at least three different names. Jojo looked at the snail trying to ascertain what the rules for naming a snail might be. Dumbo was special. Jojo liked the name Dumbo.
The snail could see this was going to take awhile and he anticipated he might not like the new name Jojo might give him anymore than the old name. “I heard this one once,” the snail volunteered. “It’s from a poem about a knight who went on a quest a long, long time ago.”
“Quest?” Jojo asked
“A trip, a journey,” the snail clarified.
“Are we on a quest?”
“We will be as soon as I get my head out of this hole,” the snail nodded.
“What was the name?” Jojo asked.
“Sir Galahad.” The snail smiled, as much as snails do, at the way the words sounded when he said them.
“Sir Galahad,” Jojo repeated. “Was he a good guy?”
“Really good.”
“Too good to have fun?”
“No, good enough to have a lot of big adventures.” After he got out of the nunnery, the snail thought.
“Okay,” Jojo agreed to the name change.
“Great.” The snail started to pull his head back out of the shell.
“Sir Gala…Sir Gala…” Jojo tried to call the snail.
“Galahad,” the snail filled in, rolling his tubular eye back toward Jojo.
“Are we going to have an adventure now?” Jojo asked.
“When was the last time you traveled via the inside of a snail’s shell?” the snail replied.
“Sir Gala…”
“Galahad!” The snail sighed.
“I think you need a nickname. This one is too long.”
The snail frowned at the boy. He liked his name. “What would you suggest?”
Jojo smiled then shouted with enthusiasm, “DUMBO!”
“Why don’t you take a nap?” The snail slunk his head out of the shell and the rig began to move not unlike the howdah on top of Hrim’s back in the jungle.
Pause, pause, pause…
Amelia stood staring at the phone in the living room of the cottage on Main Street. It was nighttime and the room was dark. She looked down. The gold lamé shoes were missing which she now recognized as a sign that she was dreaming within her dream. She was wearing the flannel pajamas she had worn since she arrived in small town America. It seemed she had awakened in her dream when the phone started ringing. As it continued to ring she saw again the last scene she could remember from the circus. Jojo had fallen from the platform on the tower and disappeared into thin air. Amelia tried to calm down by reminding herself that it was only a dream. Nevertheless, her concern continued to grow as Jojo failed to rematerialize.
As Amelia listened to the phone ring she wondered if it could be some news about Jojo. Picking up the receiver she answered. “Hello?”
“We have a very important message for Amelia Bradford,” the voice on the other end of the line began.
Telemarketer, Amelia started to dismiss the call, and began hanging up.
“We have been trying to reach you and it is urgent that we speak to you right away.” Amelia brought the receiver back to her ear tightly. “Please call us at 888-341-SHOE. Your ID number is 5001. Please refer to this number when you call. Our hours are running out. Again, we have an urgent message for you. Please call us right away. Ask for Miss Northrup.” The message completed and the call disconnected. Amelia frantically tried to remember the number.
888. No, never mind that, you’ll remember toll-free. 341-SHOE!
Amelia depressed the buttons to disconnect the call and barely waited to hear the dial tone before she started dialing. She depressed the buttons again and listened closer this time. There was no dial tone.
“Hello?” she whispered into the phone. There was no answer. “Hello?” She felt a sense of urgency rising in her.
“If you’d like to make a call,” a pre-recorded phone-company voice stated, “please hang up and try again.” Amelia depressed the buttons again and again but no dial tone came through. Finally she shoved the receiver onto the cradle and stared at the phone.
If the dreamtime works according to my beliefs, then why I can’t make a simple phone call? Amelia noticed the negative affirmation in her thoughts. She turned away from the phone and looked out the window toward the street. Fireflies illuminated the bushes around the houses, while gaslights entertained moths. She felt herself longing for something. It was her own dream, her own life.
Pause, pause, pause…
6 Am I Dreaming?
The nineteenth floor of the Regency overlooked the grounds of Withrow High School providing a park-like view not so dissimilar to Central Park in New York. Sunlight streaming through the solarium windows illuminated the living room walls, which bounced light into the bedroom. Amelia stirred in her sleep rolling over to the song of her exotic bird from India, a Green Avadat.
“Good morning sweetie.” Amelia smiled in the sunshine taking a deep breath and rolled over onto her back. What was I dreaming? she wondered as Zeke crawled out from under the covers and began licking her face.
/>
“Okay, okay. Breakfast is coming.” Amelia swung her legs over the edge of the bed and let their weight carry her body to a sitting position. She looked at the clock. Five? I'm up ahead of the alarm. She imagined her early rising must have something to do with her excitement about the trip. Amelia pulled on her chenille robe and tied it around her waist then lifted Zeke onto the floor. She padded across the hardwood floor and slipped her feet into her favorite fuzzy blue slippers. A scene from the Wizard of Oz was playing in her mind.
“I had a dream last night,” she said aloud. “And you and you and,” she looked around the room ending with Zeke, “and you were in it!” she said dramatically.
Zeke yelped.
“Oh, you remember being there?” She smiled as she padded into the kitchen and poured a cup of food into Zeke's bowl. “There were a lot of characters there, though I can't quite remember them.” Oh, I shouldn't say that, Amelia thought. “I'll remember in time,” she corrected.
Amelia pushed the button on her state of the art coffee maker that sequentially ground the coffee beans, added water, and brewed. The grinding process sounded like a jet engine was about to take off in the kitchen.
Amelia opened the cabinet door over the coffee maker and began opening bottles of supplements dumping them out in one, two, and three pill combinations. She opened the refrigerator and pulled a loaf of low-carb, whole grain bread from the top shelf. Untwisting the plastic covered wire seal, she pulled one piece of bread out of the bag and lowered it into the toaster.
As part of her regular morning routine she went to the door and opened it to reveal the New York Times sitting on the welcome mat. Stooping to pick it up she glanced at the powder blue fuzzy slippers and couldn't help but feel as if something was strangely different.
Amelia laid the paper on the table in the solarium, circled back toward the kitchen, cruised by the toaster and landed the piece of crusty bread on her plate. Deftly, her hand moved to the coffee urn pouring it into the cup which had come out of the cabinet along with her vitamins. Reaching inside the refrigerator she grabbed a jar of marmalade and let the door fall closed as she completed her journey to a wicker chair in the solarium while balancing her breakfast collection in both hands.
Gold Lame' (That's le-mayy) (Gold Lame' Series) Page 11
