Blind Voices

  1.

  It was a time of pause, a time between planting and harvest when the air was heavy, humming with its own slow, warm music. Amber fields of ripe wheat, level as skating rinks, stretched to the flat horizon and waited for the combines that crawled like painted-metal insects from Texas to the Dakotas. Dusty roads lined with telephone poles made, with ruled precision, right-angle turns at section lines separating the wheat from green fields of young maize.

  Farmers stood at the edges of the fields, broke off fat heads of wheat and rolled the kernels between their fingers, squinting at the flat blue sky. The farmers’ wives, finished with the dinner dishes, paused before going back into the hot kitchens to begin a long afternoon of cooking, doing it all again for supper. They sat on the front porches in the shade, trying to catch a nonexistent movement of air. They spread apart the collars of their dresses and fanned their necks with cardboard fans printed with a color picture of the bleeding heart of Jesus on one side and an advertisement for the Redwine Funeral Home on the other.

  Then the farmers turned their attention from the sky to the road. Their wives stopped fanning and leaned forward in their chairs. Children paused in their chores and their play and shaded eyes with hands. They looked at each other and grinned, feeling excitement tightening in their chests like clock springs.

  In that long-ago summer afternoon in southern Kansas, when the warm air lay like a weight, unmoving and stifling, six horse-drawn circus wagons moved ponderously on the dusty road.

  A two-horse team pulled each wagon, their heads drooping slightly, their shod hoofs dragging a bit before lifting to take another plodding step. The six drivers dozed in the heavy dusty air, holding the reins lightly, letting the horses choose their own pace. The wagons creaked and groaned as they swayed; rattled and jolted when the wooden, iron-rimmed wheels bounced in chugholes.

  The wagons were a little shabby, their once-bright paint doubly-dimmed from sun and dust. The sides of the wagons promised miracles with gilt curlicues and wonders with gingerbread flourishes. Shaking and rattling and squeaking, the wagons were a gallery of marvels, a panorama of astonishments.

  The drivers reined in the horses and the line of caravans creaked to a halt when they met the black Model-T Ford arriving in a billow of dust from the opposite direction. The car pulled off the road into the shallow ditch filled with the red, yellow, orange, brown, black, and purple of Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susan, and Russian thistle.

  The man who stepped from the car was nattily dressed in a dark gray pin-striped double-breasted suit and a pearl-gray fedora. Louis Ortiz was thirty-two, handsome in a swarthy way, carefully cultivating his more imagined than real resemblance to Rudolph Valentino. A smile hovered over his full lips, ready to alight, but his eyes were as cold as steel balls.

  Louis looked into the glowing eyes painted on the lead wagon, and they looked back at him, fiercely, beneath a brow cleft almost in two by a widow’s peak spearing down from varnished black hair. The mouth was thin and stern and uncompromising. Louis shifted his eyes to the second wagon, to the portrait painted there—the portrait of a pale and beautiful young boy, a gilt corona painted around his white curls, his white-robed arms uplifted, his face beatific and rapturous.

  The smile almost alighted on his lips.

  He walked to the rear of the first wagon and propped his foot on the step, wiping the dust from his black patent leather shoe with a white handkerchief. The caravan door opened and a man stepped out. He was an older version of his portrait. His hair was not so sleek nor so black, his face not so smooth nor firm, but his lips were just as uncompromising. He wore a black satin robe and carpet slippers, like some Oriental alchemist. He waved his hand petulantly before his face to clear away the floating dust and looked inquiringly at Louis.

  Louis flipped the dust from his handkerchief and folded it into his breast pocket. “We’re all set,” he said with no trace of the Latin accent his appearance would suggest. “The posters are up with the merchants. I rented the vacant lot and got a permit from the sheriff.”

  He looked up at the older man, squinting in the sun, and the smile settled softly. “There’s only one thing that might be a problem.”

  The other man raised an eyebrow.

  “The movie house,” Louis continued, “will be showing their first talking picture tonight. It’s the main topic of conversation in town.”

  The older man grimaced. “There’s always one petty annoyance after another. It would be very pleasant if this movie palace were to burn to the ground.”

  “It needn’t be that drastic.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he sighed. “The unpleasant bumpkins might blame us. This trip has been extremely wearisome. We should head back east where the towns are closer together.”

  Louis’s mouth twitched slightly and the other man frowned. “I’m sure you will think of something, Louis. You’re a very clever man.”

  Louis grinned and made a slight bow with his head.

  “How much further to this prairie metropolis?”

  “Hawley,” Louis answered. “About ten miles. There’s a little place two miles ahead called Miller’s Corners. You can rest and water the horses there. Hawley’s eight miles beyond that.”

  The man shrugged with massive indifference. Louis returned to the car, still smiling slightly. The man stood in the doorway of the caravan watching the car turn around to chug and rattle back the way it came. He grimaced at the fresh cloud of dust and went back inside, closing the door. The wagons began to move.

  He opened a door in the partition dividing the wagon in half and stopped, leaning against the door frame. He looked for a moment at the pale, naked boy lying on the bunk, and then sat on the edge beside him. The boy looked much like his portrait, though he was older and perspiration wet his strained face. His white curls were matted and the pillow under them was damp. His eyes moved nervously behind his closed lids.

  The man put his hand on the boy’s stomach and leaned over him. “Angel,” he said softly. “My own beautiful angel.” His hand moved up the boy’s body until it lay lightly on his cheek. “Shall we begin again? There is still so much to do.”

  The boy’s ruby eyes opened, but they did not focus.

  2.

  Hawley, Kansas, dozed under the warm Friday sun. The clock in the high tower of the white rococo courthouse chimed twice, lazily scattering sparrows which immediately settled back again. Old men sat in the courthouse square, on benches under the shade of sycamore trees, telling half-remembered or half-invented stories of better times, whittling sticks away to nothing, pontificating on the government, President Hoover, the Communists, the Anarchists, the Catholics, the Jews, the stock market, and other topics about which they knew little or nothing. They nodded solemnly and spit dark brown globs of tobacco juice on the dry ground, predicting doom in every conceivable form.

  Cicadas screamed in the trees, shimmering the air with their voices, but it was a sound so normal, so much a part of summer, that it was scarcely noted. Lethargic dogs lay on the wooden sidewalk in pools of shadow, panting in their sleep. Hawley was suspended like a brown leaf floating on the still surface of a warm pond.

  A truck came around the bend in the road at the east end of town where the pavement ends. The old men nodding under the sycamore trees looked up. The truck went through town and stopped at the depot. A woman dressed in traveling clothes, dark and much too heavy for the heat, got out. She put on her hat and pinned it, then took a straw valise from the back of the truck. She said something to the driver and went into the depot. The truck turned around and went back the way it had come.

  Three girls came out of Mier’s Dry Goods and squinted in the brightness. They waved at the man in the truck. All three of the girls were eighteen ye
ars old. Rose and Evelyn had been born in Hawley; Francine hadn’t been but her father had, so it was practically the same thing. They had gone to school together, from the first grade to the last, had graduated together the month before, and knew practically every intimate detail about each other. They didn’t have a lot in common, except Hawley, but their differences were complementary and they had been friends most of their lives.

  “There goes Eula May to see her sister in Kansas City again,” Rose said, looking at the woman sitting placidly on the bench at the depot. “I swear. Her sister’s been at death’s door as long as I can remember. Mr. Gardner’s gonna go broke buying train tickets.”

  The other two girls didn’t comment. When they reached the drugstore and started in, Francine suddenly pointed and yelped, “Look!” Evelyn and Rose stopped and looked through the fly-specked glass of the drugstore window at the poster propped there that morning by Louis Ortiz. The poster duplicated in silk screen the painting on the lead circus wagon. At the bottom, hand-written, were the dates the show would be in Hawley.

  Evelyn Bradley shivered at the burning eyes which followed her everywhere she moved. Evelyn was slim and tanned; her Buster Brown haircut framed her oval face with auburn. Her eyes were hazel and smiling, but there was a seriousness to her face. Now, however, the goosebumps brought on by the poster were a curiously enjoyable sensation.

  “Wouldn’t you just know it!” Francine Latham snarled prettily. The braces on her teeth created a faint sibilance when she spoke. Dr. Latham was a widower and did not quite know how to cope with a grown daughter. Because her father liked it, Francine still wore her dark hair like a little girl, tied back with a bow and hanging almost to her waist.

  “Wouldn’t you just know it! A talking picture and a freak show, both at the same time. I don’t know how I’ll ever make up my mind which one to see,” she said fretfully.

  “Go see one tonight and the other tomorrow night,” Rose Willet said with maddening logic. Rose was plump, pink, and pretty. She wore her light hair short and rippled with finger waves, a style much too old for her. She twirled her parasol, making the lace stand up, and wished Evelyn and Francine took their social positions more seriously. As the daughters of the doctor and a well-to-do farmer, they were suitable associates for the judge’s youngest girl, but Francine was a mouse and Evelyn was likely to run into the street and start playing baseball with a bunch of little boys. And look at them, both of them as brown as field hands. Rose shifted the parasol to block a ray of sunlight striking her properly pale arm.

  “I can’t,” Francine whined. “I’ve only got a dollar.” She looked back at the poster, changing the subject quickly. “Haverstock’s Traveling Curiosus and Wonder Show. What is a ‘curiosus’ anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Rose snorted. “Look what they call old beady eyes, ‘Curator of the Lost Secrets of the Ancients.’ Brother, they really think we’re hicks,” she grumbled. “‘Angel the Magic Boy! Mermaids! Invisible Women!’ Brother!”

  “A dollar’s enough, Francine,” Evelyn said with a slight smile, knowing full well the cause of Francine’s dilemma. “The picture’s a quarter and the freak show’s fifty cents. That’s only seventy-five.”

  “Well…” Francine looked at her Mary Jane shoes and fiddled with the tie on her sailor blouse.

  “Don’t tell me Billy’s broke again,” Rose said with indignation, pursing her lips, trying to make them look bee-stung.

  Francine looked up defiantly. “Well, you always go dutch with Flarold.”

  “But I don’t have to pay his way,” Rose explained with a sigh.

  “I don’t always have to pay for Billy, either!”

  “Ha!” Rose snorted rudely and pushed into the drugstore.

  Bowen’s Drugs & Sundries dozed with the rest of the town that warm Friday afternoon. The ceiling fans rotated lazily, moving the air, stirring the sweet odors of chocolate and vanilla ice cream from the soda fountain with the pleasantly pungent odors of camphor and wormwood from the prescription counter. The girls sat at the soda fountain on stools covered in red leather. Phineas Bowen, Sr., waved and smiled at them from behind the prescription counter.

  Sonny Redwine, who had just graduated with the three girls, put down the magazine he’d been reading and wiped the already spotless marble counter. Sonny’s father and uncle owned the Redwine Funeral Home and he’d been offered a job there for the summer, but he’d decided without having to deliberate overly much that he preferred Mr. Bowen’s offer to jerk sodas until it was time to go away to college in the fall. He enjoyed his work and was proud of the gleaming fountain with the rows of syrup pumps and the two water nozzles, one for carbonated and one for plain, that rose in the center like the heads of graceful, long-necked birds. And he got to see his friends often—practically everyone came in at least once a week.

  He grinned at the girls. “Hello, ladies. What’ll it be?”

  “A cherry phosphate,” Rose said.

  Francine echoed her.

  “Make it three,” Evelyn smiled.

  Sonny made the drinks with a flourish, well aware of the girls’ eyes on him. He was getting very good, if he did say so himself. He hadn’t spilled anything in almost a week.

  Francine sat thoughtfully on the stool, twisting lazily from side to side. “I think we’ll go to the Majestic,” she said. “That way I’ll have money for popcorn. Besides, it’s Ronald Coleman.”

  Mr. Bowen went behind the soda fountain and mixed himself a Bromo Seltzer, pouring the sudsy liquid from one glass to another and back again. “Hello, Rose, Francine, Evie,” he greeted them. “What are you girls up to this afternoon? Did you see the poster in the window?”

  “Yes,” Evelyn laughed. “That poster’s what’s causing all the trouble.”

  “Oh?” Mr. Bowen raised his eyebrows.

  “We’re trying to help Francine make up her mind whether to go to the talkie or the carnival,” Rose said with a sly grin.

  Mr. Bowen smiled indulgently. “Yes, I can see where this will take careful consideration.” He drank the Bromo Seltzer quickly, made a face and shuddered.

  Sonny put the pink drinks before them and wiped the counter with more industry than necessary as Mr. Bowen returned to his prescriptions.

  “I’ve already made up my mind,” Francine said and lifted the top of the straw container. “I just told you I’d decided to go see the movie.”

  Sonny stopped wiping the counter directly in front of Evelyn. He cleared his throat twice, changed his expression four times, and said, “Evie…” His voice cracked. He cast a wary glance at Rose and Francine.

  “Yes, Sonny?”

  “Uh… will you go with me to the picture show tonight?” he blurted.

  Rose and Francine looked at each other and smothered giggles. Evelyn glanced at them with an annoyed frown and Sonny turned red.

  “Of course, Sonny. I’d be happy to,” Evelyn said and smiled at him.

  Sonny grinned in relief, nodded at her, and frantically wiped the counter. He looked up at Rose and Francine, who were still grinning. “And it won’t be Dutch,” he said airily. “It’s my treat.” He grinned at Rose and Evelyn and went to the other end of the counter. Evelyn bent over her cherry phosphate to hide her smile. Rose and Francine gaped at Sonny’s back.

  The drugstore door slammed open, hitting the wire rack of magazines, making it ring tinnily. Phineas Bowen, Jr., age twelve, charged in. Mr. Bowen looked up and frowned. Finney’s hair was sun bleached, his body brown as chocolate. He wore only a pair of old corduroy knickers, frayed and dusty. His bare feet slapped on the white tile floor. His eyes sparkled and danced with suppressed energy. One end of a yard-long piece of sewing thread was tied to his finger; the other end to the leg of a large metallic-green June bug. It droned loudly in a tight circle around Finney’s head. He stepped beneath the revolving ceiling fan and let the cool air rush over him. The moving air grounded the June bug on his hair.

  “Hi, Pop!” he sang as he began u
ntangling the insect. “Hi, Evie. Hi, Francine. Hi, Fatty.” He moved to the fountain and launched the June bug again.

  Rose twisted around on the stool and fixed him with a poisonous glare. The tired June bug landed on her arm. She shrieked and jumped. Finney quickly pulled the insect from danger. “Finney, you little cross-eyed ape,” she hissed.

  “Phineas,” Mr. Bowen said reproachfully. “That’s no way to talk—and you’re not any better, Rose.”

  “Aw, Pop.” Finney groaned. “My old June bug didn’t hurt her. I bet Evie wouldn’ta had a fit.”

  Rose grinned. “You know we’re only kidding, Mr. Bowen.” She hopped from the stool and grabbed Finney in a bear hug. He squirmed but couldn’t break her hold. “Deep down, we’re very fond of each other.” Unseen by Mr. Bowen, she gave Finney a hard pinch on his bare back. He yelped and broke away.

  “When you go to the Wonder Show, Rosie,” he said haughtily, “be sure and take a good long look at Medusa.”

  “Stop calling me Rosie,” she snapped and sat on the stool again. “And we’re not going to the freak show. We’re going to the talkie.”

  Finney was aghast. He stared at her and climbed on another stool—well out of her reach. “You crazy or somethin’? You’d rather see a dumb old picture show than the Invisible Woman?” He groaned. “Girls?”

  Rose grimaced at him in disgust. “If I remember correctly, you’ve been jabbering about seeing this dumb old picture show for the last solid month.”

  “But that was before!”

  “Besides, you can’t see an invisible woman,” Rose said with finality.

  “Oh, yes, you can,” Finney said, trying to convey to her the magic of everything. “You can see her if you know how to look. You don’t know how to look, Rose.”

  “Finney,” Mr. Bowen called, holding up a small paper bag. “Take this medicine over to old Miss Sullivan.”

  Finney slid off the stool. “And Electro, the Lightning Man. He pulls lightning from the sky just by waving his arms and he eats it and never singes a hair. And Medusa wasn’t really killed by that Greek guy. She’s been alive all this time still turning people to stone. And the Snake Goddess who’s been hiding for a million years under an old Egyptian pyramid.”