Shadows of Tockland

by Jeffrey Aaron Miller

  David tried to plant his feet firmly on the ground, but Cakey kept pushing him toward the curtain. The soles of his shoes squealed against the wood floor.

  “Come on,” Telly said, snapping his fingers at him. “This is your moment, kid. Get out there!”

  “I can’t,” David said again.

  “It’s showtime,” Cakey said and gave David an almighty shove.

  David flew forward, took a stumbling step to try to keep from falling and passed right through the curtain onto the stage. He landed on his hands and knees with a loud thud, and the audience laughed and clapped. He remained there for what felt like minutes, long and tortured minutes, as the applause died away, and an uncomfortable silence took over. He heard the clink of glasses and bottles, random crowd noises—a cough, a clearing of the throat, whispered voices. Finally, someone—Cakey or Telly—actually kicked through the curtain and hit him right on the tailbone. David yelped and hopped to his feet.

  He saw only a hint of faces behind the blinding mask of the spotlight, eyes and mouths like pits of shadow. The smell of people filled the room. He scanned the crowd and saw Officer Mayes sitting close to the stage, nursing a glass of ale. Off to one side, Councilman Peavey, he of the sagging jowls and bulbous nose, and Councilwoman Deems, she of the pinched face, sat together, her tiny hand clasped delicately between his pale, bloated fingers. Every eye was upon him.

  The fire inside. There was no fire inside. Only a cold terror all the way to the core of his being. David felt another poke through the curtains. In the end, the thing that finally got him going was the thought that if he didn’t get this over with, it might just go on forever, an eternity in that blinding spotlight, in the too-warm stink of people and booze, with cold water coursing through his veins. He wanted it to be over, and then he wanted to get off the stage and never do this again.

  “Hello,” he said to the crowd, and his voice sounded as fragile as a thread of glass. Nobody responded. Were they supposed to? The faces staring back at him didn’t even look human, as if Telly had filled all the chairs in the room with mannequins. Then Officer Mayes moved, raising her glass to her lips, and the illusion was broken.

  “Allow me to…” Allow me to what? He didn’t know how to finish the sentence, so he let it hang.

  He stepped to one corner of the stage. He had to give them something. All of the momentum Karl had built was gone. The energy had gone out of the crowd. David wasn’t sure what he could pull off in his current state, so he settled on a simple front handspring. He shook his arms to limber them up, then leapt into it. He went down on his hands, kicked his legs up over his head, then pushed off with his hands to complete the rotation. His right foot came down first, then the left, and he let the momentum carry him forward. He managed a second handspring and started into a third, but the wall was right in front of him. He stopped the third handspring at the halfway point, balanced on his hands, his feet sticking straight up. He walked on his hands back to center stage and completed the handspring from there.

  He stood there for a second, feeling good again, feeling right. And then he heard clapping. It caught him off guard. Was that for him? He turned to find the source, and there was Officer Mayes, and there was Councilman Peavey—but not Councilwoman Deems, notably—and a few others scattered here and there in the crowd clapping, clapping for him. They liked what he’d done. This awoke something in him. Not quite fire, but a hint of warmth somewhere in the guts where he so often felt only anxious poison.

  “Thank you,” he said, but too quietly to be heard.

  He followed the handsprings with a series of cartwheels, and the cartwheels with a backflip, a front flip and another handstand. Each time, he got applause, and even if the crowd response wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as what Karl had received, David fed on it. The warmth in him built. He felt confident in a way he had only ever felt when practicing alone. He stuck every landing, even managed to add little flourishes along the way. In the middle of a front handspring, he paused and scissored his legs before finishing.

  When he stopped for a moment to catch his breath, he found himself staring right into the face of Officer Mayes. Joyless eyes, a dull look on her face, but she was clapping and with considerable enthusiasm. For him. So many people looking at him, watching him do the one thing he really loved and approving of it. David couldn’t help but smile. And he figured he owed them something a little more impressive. He didn’t have enough room on stage, so he stepped offstage and began creating a path for himself right down the middle of the room. A little pile of debris from Bubbles’ shattered plates sat in front of the stage. He scooted it out of the way with the side of his shoe. Then he moved through the room, adjusting tables and chairs, apologizing profusely every time someone had to move.

  He walked back onstage and bowed. “The back handspring,” he announced. A little more description might have been in order, some build-up, the kind of thing Telly was good at, but David had no idea what else to say.

  He nodded, backed all the way to the curtain and checked to make sure his path was still clear. One person had slid his chair back in the way, a young guard with a close-cropped beard and a rifle over his shoulder. David had to politely wave him out of the way, and, fortunately, the guard complied.

  “The back handspring,” David said again.

  He took a deep breath, let it out slowly and went for it. Three strides took him off the stage. Then he went into the roundoff, twisting in mid-air, and then into the handsprings. One, two, three, the world spun around him in a blur of light and faces. He heard the slap of his hands against the cold floor, the snap of his shoes, felt the jolt of each contact in his arms and legs. It felt right, the best back handspring he had ever performed. Already people were clapping. He heard gasps and a throaty “Aha!”—and didn’t it sound a little bit like Councilman Peavey? He had them. He had them in the palm of his hand. All was right with the world.

  And then, in the fourth rotation, his feet came down on the edge of a table, upending it with a spectacular boom. Bottles and glasses went flying, he heard someone cry out in pain, and a chair—along with the body sitting in it—fell backward. A glass hit the floor nearby and broke, gushing beer all over David’s left arm, and a bottle sailed over his head, spinning wildly, to land somewhere behind him.

  There was an initial burst of laughter, and then a sudden blanket of silence fell over the room. David lay on his back, his heels pressed against the table, which had tipped onto its side. He heard someone moaning and looked to his right. A guard had fallen out of his seat—young man, close-cropped beard—and now sat on the floor, dazed, cupping his mouth in his hands. As David watched, a drop of blood seeped between his fingers and dripped onto his leg.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” David said, picking himself up and walking over to the injured man. “I didn’t mean to—”

  The guard waved him off. David turned. Everyone was staring at him with wide eyes and open mouths. Councilman Peavey was half out of his chair. Telly stood at the curtain, waving frantically at him and mouthing something. David had no idea what he was trying to say, and he didn’t care. He only wanted to hide from all of these eyes, these horrified eyes.

  He fled back to the stage, the heavy silence chasing him. When he got there, he flung the curtain out of his way. Telly reached for him, apparently meaning to stop him and possibly turn him back around. David leapt over Telly and sailed right into the arms of Cakey, who somehow caught him without losing his balance.

  “Lemme go,” David hissed. “Lemme go. They’re gonna riot and kill me! Lemme go.”

  “Kid, get your ass back out there,” Telly said. “You’ve gotta do damage control.”

  “No, no, they’ll kill me,” David said. He tried to squirm out of Cakey’s embrace, but Cakey had an iron grip.

  “Shove him back onstage,” Telly said.

  Instead Cakey turned and set David down on the step below him.

  “Nope, kid’s done enough,” he said. />
  “But—!”

  “I’ve got it covered,” Cakey said. “Kid, you’re done for tonight.”

  David didn’t need to be told twice. He hurried down the steps into the Green Room. His instinct was to keep right on going, across the room into the back hallway, maybe out the back door into the parking lot. He scarcely saw the others. Annabelle on the couch, slumped over, Karl standing somewhere off to the left, Gooty in the corner. But as he headed for the hallway, Gooty stepped in his way and put a hand out to stop him.

  “Whoa, where you going, amigo?” he said.

  “Let me past,” David said. “Please, let me past.”

  “You gotta stay in the Green Room,” Gooty said.

  David tried to slip past him, but Gooty took hold of his arm and turned him around.

  “I don’t know what happened out there, man,” he said, moving him toward the couch. “But you have to calm down. Everybody’s trying to run away tonight. First Belle, now you. No, no, man, you have to stay in here for the curtain call.”

  David fought for a bit, trying to get past Gooty, and then his panic broke and a terrible exhaustion overtook him. He collapsed onto the couch, scarcely hearing the crinkle of the plastic bags or the soft plop of the upholstery underneath bursting. Gooty shook his head and returned to his corner. David came to his senses and felt sudden, excruciating embarrassment. He expected to find the others staring at him, no doubt laughing at his outburst, but neither Annabelle nor Karl seemed to have noticed him. Belle’s head was tipped forward almost to her knees. And Karl, strangely, was picking at the tape that held the bathroom door in place.

  David heard a burst of applause from upstairs. The audience was not rioting, after all. Cakey had somehow turned things around. That only made David’s embarrassment worse. And yet, for a moment, right up until he’d ruined everything, hadn’t it felt good? The applause, the attention, the fire inside, hadn’t it felt right? If only it had ended in something other than catastrophe.

  David sighed, and this drew Annabelle’s attention. She looked up at him with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “It sucked,” she said.

  And David, assuming she was referring to his act, ducked his head and said, “Yeah, in the beginning and at the end, but I did okay in the middle part.”

  “No, no, I mean me,” Annabelle said. “I broke every single plate. They were embarrassed for me. That’s the worst, when the rubes are embarrassed for you. It just makes me want to punch someone in the face.” She curled one hand into a fist. “I ought to punch Telly. He’s the one that brought me the wrong props.”

  As she was talking, David became aware of just exactly what Karl was doing. He had a long strand of duct tape in one hand that he had ripped off the door, and now he was working on the other one.

  “What are you doing?” David said, his voice cracking. “Why are you doing that?”

  Karl didn’t seem to hear him and proceeded to rip the other long strand of tape off the bathroom door. Annabelle glanced at him but only for a second.

  “Ugh, I just want to get out of the makeup,” she said. “Have a beer or two and go to bed. Someone tell Cakey to hurry up.”

  David didn’t hear her. He watched with growing alarm as Karl pulled the bathroom door out of its frame.

  “Why are you doing that? Leave the door in place.”

  Karl spoke without looking at him. “Gotta take a pee, kid.”

  “Use a different bathroom,” David said. “Or pee outside.”

  “Curtain call could come at any second,” Karl said, setting the door aside. And then he walked right into the bathroom, his feet sloshing in foul water.

  David caught a glimpse of gray bones and rotted clothes. He quickly covered his eyes, but seeing even a glimpse of it made him all too aware, once again, of the profound stink of this room, the dampness of it, the cobwebs, the skeletal ceiling overhead. He heard the rubes clapping upstairs, and it was like a sound from a nightmare. He considered making another run for the back hallway, but Gooty was still guarding it.

  Neither Gooty nor Belle seemed bothered by the fact that Karl was about to pee right in front of them in a bathroom full of a dead man’s bones. David didn’t even want to hear the sound of it. He removed his hands from over his eyes and clamped them over his ears instead. When he did, he saw Karl standing in the doorway of the bathroom, facing them. He had an object in his hand, holding it aloft. Annabelle rose from the couch and lurched away, and David heard her even though his ears were covered.

  “What is wrong with you? Put that down.”

  David’s hands dropped from his ears into his lap. Karl stepped into the Green Room, still clutching the object. Gooty walked over to him and reached out to touch it. And, at last, David saw what he was holding, and he uttered a little cry of disgust. The skull, clutched in one oversized hand like some exotic piece of dishware.

  “What are you doing with that?” Gooty asked.

  Karl held the skull up to the light and turned it this way and that.

  “Well, son of a gun,” he said. “I think I just figured out how this old boy died.”

  “Sickness,” David said. “Sickness, right?”

  “No, definitely not sickness,” Karl said.

  He turned the skull and thrust it out for David to see. David recoiled, even though it was a safe distance away from him. It took a moment to understand what he was meant to see. The back of the skull, a rounded but irregular surface, dripping discolored water. Up high, near the crown of the head, was a small hole, roughly the size of a five cent coin.

  “Bullet,” Karl said. “Entry hole here. Exit hole here.”

  He turned the skull over. The jawbone was missing, and quite a few of the upper teeth. The hard palate behind the teeth was entirely gone.

  “In through the back of the head,” Karl said. “Out through the mouth. Poor guy.”

  “This is morbid,” Annabelle said. “Put it back.”

  Gooty reached over and took the skull from him, examining it.

  “Shot from a high angle,” he said. “I bet he was on his knees, gunman standing behind him. It was an execution, man.”

  “Yeah,” Karl said. “And who do you figure did the executing? The people with the guns, right?”

  “The people with the guns, claro,” Gooty said.

  “We know they don’t allow sick people here,” Karl said. “Maybe the ones that didn’t leave willingly got shot.”

  Annabelle groaned. “Oh, stop it. You have no idea what happened to him. Could’ve been a robbery. Could’ve been anything at all. Put the skull back down and forget about it.” She turned in the direction of the stairs. “Is Cakey done up there yet?”

  As if in reply, they heard the audience laugh and clap.

  “He’s dragging this out,” she said. “I just want to go to sleep.”

  Karl and Gooty ignored her. They were huddled over the skull, trading it back and forth, poking at it and turning it around.

  “So these people have a crimson flag flying over their Council House,” Karl said. “Are we positive that’s not a Tockland color?”

  “It’s not,” Gooty said. “I told you, Tockland is silver and black.”

  “And who’s crimson?”

  “Southwest Territories is red and white,” Gooty said. “Their symbol is a sunburst—a red circle with wavy lines coming out of it. But S.T. is all the way on the other side of Tockland, in the desert west of the Llano Escatado.”

  A red circle with wavy lines coming out of it. David could see it. He had seen it, and the image came to him now. A red and white tile mosaic on the floor. Where had that been?

  “The Council House,” he said, thinking out loud.

  “What’s that?” Karl asked.

  “The Council House,” David said again. “When they were leading Telly and me to the holding cell, I saw a red and white sunburst made out of tiles. It was on the floor in the lobby.”

  Gooty had the skull in his hand, but he lowered it and let
it slip from his grasp.

  “Oh, man, you should’ve told me about that earlier,” Gooty said.

  “I didn’t know it meant anything.”

  “And Telly saw it?”

  David nodded. “Of course. It covered most of the floor.”

  “Does any of this matter?” Annabelle said. “Seriously, who cares if these people are with Southwest Territories or not? What does it matter?”

  “But what would S.T. be doing here?” Karl said. “If they’re all the way out west in the desert, why come here and arm these people?”

  “Not sure,” Gooty said. “Unless…” He took a deep breath, slowly, through his nostrils and held it a moment.

  He started to say something else, but then Telly was tromping down the stairs, snapping his fingers.

  “Come on, you clowns,” he said. “Curtain call. Take a bow. Hurry up. Cakey saved the show. Can you hear it?”

  And, indeed, David did hear it. Applause, cheers, some of them pounding their fists on the tables. Karl gave Gooty a troubled look, gestured at the skull, and stepped past him, heading for the stairs. Annabelle rose from the couch, then reached down and snagged David’s wrist, pulling him to his feet.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  She led him to the stairs. David was reluctant to go, but he was too exhausted to fight. And the feel of Belle’s hand clamped around his wrist was pleasant. He wondered if she could feel his surging pulse or the sudden heat rushing into his extremities. Telly ushered them up the stairs and through the curtain. For David, it felt like returning to the scene of a crime, even though Cakey was standing center stage, clutching his knives and bowing as the people cheered. There sat the guard with the busted lip, pressing a blood-soaked rag to his mouth.

  The performers formed a line in front of the curtain: Telly, then Karl, Cakey, Annabelle and David. Annabelle loosed her grip on his wrist and took hold of his hand instead, and David felt the heat rise in his cheeks. The others were bowing repeatedly, and David followed suit, though they moved in unison, and he did not. Councilman Peavey was on his feet, clapping. His grey-haired companion did not join him, but she had a smile on her face. Mrs. Clenold, her bottles of beer all gone, stood behind the bar, arms crossed, beaming. Even Officer Mayes, arm curled around her glass of ale, looked mildly amused.