Oz Reimagined Part 20

When she reached the other side of the pen, we all broke into applause.

So the wire-walking at least was true. I told my wife Amelia about it and she insisted on coming over to watch the next time Dorothy did it, which was every Sat.u.r.day after that. Amelia watched Dorothy on the wire with an intensity she'd never shown for anything else. Then she turned to me and said it was a homey piece of magic and she wanted to learn it. I put my foot down. Something I rarely ever do. I didn't fancy her falling in the mud. It would have been me having to clean her up. Somehow, at our ages, I didn't like the sound of that.

About three months after that, I was coming back for lunch where I'd been fixing fencesa"the prairie wind just devils the wires. I was heading to the cabbage field to give the cabbages a good soaking. Suddenly I noticed a figure standing at the farmhouse door just fixing to knock. I could only see her from the back, but she looked to be a blond-haired, shapely woman. In fact her hair wasn't just blond but an ashy white-blond, a color you don't see on a grown woman unless she spends a lot of time at the hairdresser's.

"Pardon me, miss," I called, wondering who it might be, guessing she was there to visit Dorothy.

She turned and I got the shock of my life, because she was sporting a beard. Not just a few face hairs like some women get in later lifea"my mother-in-law has them sprouting from her chin and from a mole on her cheek. But a full beard, kind of reddish color, the bottom half of which was tied off with a pink bow.

A bearded lady, by golly, I thought. Freak show standard. I'd always figured they were just regular women in makeup. Or a womanish man dressed in female clothes. This one had the bluest eyes I'd ever seena"an eerie color really.

"Are you looking for Dorothy?" I asked, to cover my embarra.s.sment.

"Dottie, yes, is she here? It's where I dropped her off some months ago," the bearded lady said. "She hasn't written since."

"She does that," I said nodding. "We didn't hear from her for seven years."

"Well, it took her all that time to remember," she told me.

I thought that made for a convenient memory but said nothing.

She held out her hand. "Ozmandia," she said.

"Circus name? Last name?"

She smiled, her teeth pearly above the beard. "Actually, Shirley Osmond, so you're kind of right either way."

The door opened and Em looked out. It took her a moment to put it all together. Then her hand went to her heart. "My word."

"I'm a friend of Dottie's," Ozmandia said, but even as she said it, Dorothy pushed past Em and threw herself into the bearded lady's arms.

"Ozzy!" she cried. "I've missed you so."

"Little bird," the bearded lady said and kissed Dorothy full on the lips, the way a man might do. Then she drew back and looked at Dorothy critically. "You've gained some weight. It might make you too heavy for the wire, but it suits you."

"I've been practicing."

"She has," said Em. "And performing."

"Then no potatoes," Ozmandia said. "No bread. No starch."

"What's starch?" Em asked. The only starch she knew was what she ironed with.

"I'll make a list," Ozmandia told her.

She turned to Dorothy. "We're starting again next month. Barnum and Bailey have bought the old man out."

"No more Mr. Wizard?" Dorothy said. "But it's his circus."

"He's retiring to Florida," said Ozmandia. "For what they paid him, he can afford it. Him and that elephant."

"Will you stay awhile?" Dorothy said, speaking to her circus friend as if the rest of us hardly mattered. And indeed, probably we didn't.

"Just tonight, Baby Bird," Ozmandia said. "I'm getting around to everyone."

"But I'm special," Dorothy said.

"You always were, falling out of the sky that way." She turned to Em. "I a.s.sume, madam, that it is all right for me to stay the one night? I can sleep in Dottie's bed with her. It's an old circus custom."

I bet it is, I thought, but didn't say it aloud.

She stayed two nights, and no one spoke about it until long after. That first evening, being a Sat.u.r.day, Dorothy did her wire walk over the pigsty. Ozmandia played a flute as Dorothy performed, and though you probably won't believe it, the sow and piglets got up on their hind trotters and danced.

Amelia was there as usual, of course, and she and Ozmandia became instant pals, both of them enthusing over Dorothy's talents.

When we walked home, I tried to hold Amelia's hand, feeling a sudden tenderness toward her I hadn't felt in years, but she pulled her hand away.

"I can't," she said. "I just can't any more."

Amelia's mother died that very night, with such a peaceful smile on her face she hardly looked like the same woman. Only Henry and Em, Stan and Rand, and Dorothy came to the funeral.

Ozmandia sent a message the next month, and Dorothy packed up her carpetbag, ready to leave the next morning. Stan was driving her by cart into the citya"she was taking a steam engine train from there.

Em watched her go dry-eyed, but Henry was sobbing enough for the two of them. Stan and Rand were openmouthed, breathing hard.

I was there as well, watching Amelia go with her.

"Tom," she'd told me last night, "I have never done anything for myself before. First there was Mother, and then there was you. I've taken the housekeeping money. I've been saving some for months. Sell Mother's house for me, and you keep half. Start that woodworking business for real this time. It's the only thing you've ever really loved. I'll write and tell you where to send my portion when I know."

"Are you going to be a wire walker?" I asked.

"I'll take tickets, sell popcorn, clean out the lion's cage. I'll do anything they need, wear many hats, many heads. After all," she said, "I'm well practiced in that sort of thing."

And maybe she was, after all.

"Perhaps eventually they'll let me try the wire." She smiled. "Even though I'm probably too old."

"Never too old," I said, remembering her on our wedding day.

"Tom, you never could tell a lie," she said. "Don't start now."

The cart pulled away and rolled down the dusty road, making it look for a minute like little imps were running behind. If you start thinking that way about the world once, it seems to go on and on.

I watched till the cart with my wife in it was out of sight. When I turned back, Henry was still standing there, the little dog on wheels cradled in his arms. I guess Dorothy didn't need it anymore.

I guess Henry did.

CITY SO BRIGHT.

BY DALE BAILEY.

So Joe fell the other day.

One minute he's hanging on the wall, maybe twenty feet away from me, and we're shouting back and forth, razzing each other the way you doa"polish polish polish, till your arms feel so numb they could fall off and you wouldn't even notice and just razzing each other: your wife is so heinous you get a mouthful of fur when you give her a hickey, and your mom is so fat she gets mistaken for a dirigible. The kind of thing you do, and n.o.body's feelings get hurt. My wife says guys do this because they're so emotionally stunted that they can't express their real feelings. But I know this to be bulls.h.i.t of the most preposterous variety, because when Joe fell I cried like a baby, and that's not emotionally stunted if you know what I mean.

But I've always been a little bit on the sensitive side, even for a Munchkin.

So here's what happens. We're on the wall, maybe seventy feet up, razzing each other, when two of Joe's lines snap. Not one but two, is what I'm saying. His bucket goes clattering down the side of the wall, spraying polish everywherea"it smells like an ammonia bomb has explodeda"and his platform swings down on one side, hanging vertically. His safety harness engages, and he's suddenly dangling below the platform, still holding on to his rag. He's just kind of swinging there, this panicky expression on his face, and I say in this very calming voice, the kind of voice you use with your kids when they sc.r.a.pe a knee or something, I say, "Everything's cool, hang tight," you know what I mean, only not thinking till later that hang tight is not the best thing I could have said under these particular circ.u.mstances. But still, the safety harness is engaged, and the guys up top are going to winch him upa"that's the way it always happensa"and we'll all go out for a cold one somewhere after our shift. We'll clap Joe on the back and say things like You looked pretty scared up there, pal and Did you s.h.i.t your britches or what? I can f.u.c.king smell you, man, and we'll have a few laughs, and then we'll go home to do it all over again, another day on the wall, polish polish polish. That's the way it always goes down, no pun intended. I wouldn't disrespect Joe's memory that way, not for all the world with a cherry on top.

Not even for the Wizard's head on a spike, which is something I shouldn't have written, but h.e.l.l, sometimes you have to tell the truth or you can't look at yourself in the mirror the next morning.

Then this next thing happens, which is Joe's safety harness snaps, and down he goes like the bucket, bouncing off the wall, which has this gentle slope to it. Thump thump thumpity-thump crunch kersplata"this meaty sound like a squadron of monkeys has just dropped a side of beef from a hundred feet up just to see what will happen. f.u.c.king monkeys. Anyway, that's what I remember most is that sound, crunch kersplat, blood and bones, you know, blood and f.u.c.king bones. Looking down, it's like a kid has dropped a jar of strawberry jelly. Joe's just exploded like a meat bag full of blood, and what I'm thinking is, some poor son of a b.i.t.c.h is going to have to sc.r.a.pe him off the pavement, and some other poor son of a b.i.t.c.h is going to have to wipe down the wall and polish polish polish till it's like it never happened. I'm hoping it's not me, too, which makes me feel kind of guilty, because even though he's a Winkie, Joe's my best friend, you know.

That's what got us thinkinga"me, Dizzy, and Hops. We go out for a cold one, this little hole-in-the-wall in the tunnels, Frankie's, where we go sometimes after a shift. There are two overlapping shifts, fourteen hours each, six and a half days a week with half a day Sunday, which you're supposed to spend with your wife and kids tossing the old Frisbee around and grilling burgers, but you can't ever do that because you're just so f.u.c.king tireda"you know what I mean. You're just so tired. Calixta always complains about it, prodding me with her foot and saying Get up lazy bones. Don't you wanna see your kids? And I do, but I'm just so tired. My arms feel like they're not connected to the rest of me, my hands are clenched into these hooks or claws. It takes me all afternoon and evening to work them back into hands again, and I'm supposed to throw a Frisbee? Besides, where we gonna throw it? You can't do it in the tunnels, with all these sad little holes-in-the-walls that we rent as "apartments," if you know what I'm saying, these one-room little dens with a couple of stinking straw pallets, all infested with lice and bedbugs, one for Calixta and me and one for the kids. We usually end up s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Sunday night once my hands uncramp, but there's no real pleasure in it. All the time I'm worried about my snot-nosed little apesa"are they awake or are they asleep, and what kind of psychological damage is it doing to them to watch their parents humping away on that stinking mess of straw.

But I appreciate it, because Calixta is bone-tired, too. She works in the Wizard's kitchens, buried deep underground like these f.u.c.king sewer tunnels where we live, and her hands are always blistered and burned from taking bread out of the ovens or stirring the stew, with the chef riding her a.s.s all day long like she's his own personal horse and he's in a hurry. But there she goes riding me or hunkering over on all fours so I can take her from behind, because she knows a man's got needs, and she's a good wife. I couldn't have done better, even if she's running to fat these days, and her hair is always limp and draggled and kind of greasy from the hairnet she wears all day at the office. Get that? That's a joke. Office, like a sweltering kitchen where you raise blisters on your hands four or five times a day is a f.u.c.king office. The only advantage to the office is that she can pinch the leftovers now and then, so we eat better than your average Munchkin.

But I guess I've got sidetracked. Calixta does that to me. What I was trying to say is that me, Dizzy, and Hops stop in at Frankie's the day Joe goes tumbling down the wall, and we get to talking. And here's the thing: people do not fall off the wall. Oh, they injure their backs, and the work makes you old so quick that n.o.body lasts, and you have to go find easier work, which there is none, so you take to begginga"but never on the streets, not unless you want to be arrested by the City guard, in their red-breasted uniforms, and beaten or pummeled with fire hoses for your trouble. A lot of guys, they get arrested, and you never see them again. And their wives take to the streets, if you get what I'm sayinga"but never up topa"and their children take to stealing so bad that you practically have to nail down the little bit of stuff you've managed to pull together or it's like to just up and disappear. What I'm saying is there are two cities, one right on top of the other: the Emerald City above, all shining and clean and green with its immaculate polished walls and not a speck of litter on the gra.s.s, where everything is fresh and aromatic, and the city below, which I've pretty much described to you, where the smell of sewage hangs in the air so thick that it's almost a pleasure to go to work, and the flies swarm so bad sometimes you can't even see.

But there I go getting distracted again. Writing is not my thing, if you understand, and the only reason I can do it at all is that my mother was a schoolteacher in the days before the Wizard came, and she worked hard to learn me my letters even after he did. I remember working late hours into the night on my lettersa"this after my mom put in fourteen-hour shifts as a seamstress in the Wizard's sweatshops, sewing up this rich apparel for state dinners and whatever. Anyway, what I was saying is that me and Dizzy and Hops went to Frankie's after work that day. Dizzy is called Dizzy because he used to be a Winged Monkey until they chopped his wings off and sent him below for s.h.i.tting on the sidewalk upstairs, which he couldn't help because he had dysentery, or that's what he says. But when they cut off his wings they threw off his balance, and he's been dizzy ever since. Most folks won't serve his kind, but Frankie's liberal on the issue, unless the joint is hopping. Which brings me to Hops. Hops is called Hops because that's what his mother named hima"he's a Munchkin like mea"but he lives up to it because he can put down prodigious quant.i.ties of the cold stuff without ever acting drunk or getting hungover in the morning.

And Dizzya"you can see these awful red stumps where his wings used to be, but otherwise he just looks like a Monkeya"Dizzy leans close and whispers about two rounds in, "Funny thing about old Joe today."

So we all toast the memory of Joe, and we talk about how his widow is doing, and his three kids, but that's all just make-talk, I've already told you what's going to happen to them.

Then Hopsa"who's so dim we ought to call him Dima"says right out loud, "What's so funny about Joe?" Because he don't see anything funny about it at all.

"Not funny, ha-ha," Dizzy says. "Funny strange."

And it was funny strange. The supervisors don't give a s.h.i.t, I'll grant you that, but the winch men are working stiffs like usa"Winkies and Munchkins mainly, but mainly Winkiesa"and they do care because we're all in this together. So every morning before you go over the wall, the winch men, they check over your equipment real good, and then, because it's your life on the line, you double-check it twice as good. Are the boards of your platform level and solid? Are they secured tightly to your ropes, and are your ropes unfrayed? Are your pulleys secure, solid, and untangled? Is your safety harness tight, safe, and in good condition? And let me be clear: your safety harness is always in good condition or you don't go over the wall to polish the emerald. Period. So your equipment is checked and double-checked before you ever go over the wall.

"What do you mean?" Hops says, again too loud, and right now I'm wishing I'd gone straight home to Calixta. But what's a man to do when he loses his best friend, right? You want a drink and you want to commiserate with mena"or Munchkins and Monkeys, more accuratelya"who know the job the way you do, with all its attendant dangers. What you don't want to do is get into some unsavory details that might send you plunging over the wall, and sooner rather than later.

But Hops is too dim ever to unpack all that luggage. So he says it again, even louder this time, "What's funny about old Joe? It was just an accident, wasn't it?"

Dizzy shushes him, and once again, whispering even lower, "Funny strange, is all I'm saying."

And Hops, in a stage whisper you can hear all over the bar, "Funny strange, how?"

And me, I'm wishing the old Witches were still alive. Don't believe any of that s.h.i.t about them being wicked, that's just propagandaa"only Glinda had any drawbacks, and even she was all right before she became the Wizard's main squeeze. But I was saying: right then I'm wishing the old Witches were still alive and one of them would conjure me right out of Frankie's and into my pile of straw with Calixta warm beside me.

I drop some change on the table and stand. "Well, that's all for me, boys. Have a good night."

But Dizzy's hand closes around my forearm and yanks me back into my seat. "Sit down," he says, and I do, slowly, trying not to make a scene. Monkeysa"even crippled monkeysa"are strong as s.h.i.t.

"Look here," he whispers. "Joe didn't die in no accident, and you know it."

"Accident," Hops says. "'Course it was an accident."

And this time, Dizzy hauls off and lays him one right across the smacker.

Hops collapses back into his seat, his eyes stinging with tears. You can already see the bruise coming up on his cheek. "What was that for?"

"For not shutting the f.u.c.k up and listening. Okay?" And then, leveling one hairy finger at me, he says, "It wasn't no accident, and you know it."

"Me?"

"You. For instance, you got four lines on a platform, right?"

"Yeah," I said all innocent, but I knew where he was going all right.

"So you ever see two lines fail at once?"

"Wella"

"Hey, what are you saying?" Hops says. He was slow on the uptake, but he wasn't that slow.

"What I'm saying is that Joe's accident wasn't no accident," the Monkey says. "You follow?"

"And then the safety harness failed, too." I'd already worked all this out in my head, of course, but Dizzy had drawn me in. And looking back on it, I think he was dizzy, dizzy-stupid for bringing it up, double dizzy-stupid for bringing it up in front of Hops, who had reached the conclusion in his dim, fumbling way that maybe he ought to be a little quieter, too. And the whole thing would have consequences for all of us, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

"But why?" Hops whispered.

"He was talking about organizing," Dizzy said. "He talked to you, didn't he?"

I sat there unmoving, like one of those statues of the Wizard he's put up of himself all over the City. I could have been made of marble. I wish I had been. Maybe things would have turned out different then. But probably not. Probably they'd had their eye on Joe from the start. He was too smart for his own good, and I'd bet they already had a pretty good idea of who he'd been talking too, as well: the monkey, and me, and Hops among them, Hops being an example of Joe being too smart for his own good, if you take my meaning. Who in the h.e.l.l would confide something like that to Hops in the first place, even if he is muscled like a Monkey and might be useful come crunch time? And I was a little surprised that Dizzya"who was smarter even than Joe, even if he was just a Monkeya"had brought it up in front of him, too. But Dizzy wasn't done yet, and it turns out I hadn't sussed out where he was going after all. But now he got there. "Well?" he says.

"He might have mentioned something," I allowed. "But that was just Joe. He was always a bulls.h.i.tter, old Joe."

And just saying the words, just saying his name like that, I got all teary-eyed, and I had to swipe at them with the back of one hand. "Stinks in here," I said, and it dida"it reeked of cheap beer and cheaper gin and the even cheaper tapers Frankie used to light the place. I swear the things smoked more than the coal mines up north, where most of the Munchkins had been shipped. We're little folk, you know, and I'd been luckier than somea"Hops and I botha"in getting a.s.signed to polish the walls instead. Something had to fuel what the Wizard had taken to calling the Industrial Revolution, after all, and somebody had to mine the coal. So I'm swiping at my eyes like I'm about to burst into tears, and n.o.body's fooled.

Even Hops looks away, embarra.s.sed.

"He say something to you?" Dizzy asked Hops. He's still clutching my forearm so hard that I'll have the bruises for days. I'm not going anywhere.

And Hops gets this sly look in his stupid little eyes, and I wonder why I ever made friends with him in the first place. Probably just glad to see another Munchkin among all the Winkies, but still, a man has to draw the line somewhere, and I could see now that I'd drawn it in the wrong place.

"Organizing is sedition," Hops says, and I find myself wondering if he even knows what the words mean. But one thing is sure, he's heard the phrase a thousand timesa"there are dozens of them, and we've all heard them a thousand times, these memorable little nuggets that are designed to keep all the people in Oza"who had once been freea"thoroughly in line. Though I guess we're still free, technically. There's nothing to keep us from walking away from our jobs. It's just there's nowhere else to go. But I'm getting sidetracked again.

What happens is that sly look comes into Hops' squinchy little eyes, and he says, "Organization is sedition."