1

When the carnival came to town . . .

It was Isolde's idea to come here to begin with. Ewen, lost in the trap of people, looked around bewildered. He surveyed the glittering scape of fantastic oddities, but couldn't discover one fantastic thing among them. He thought: I would rather be home watching the Forty-Niners take on the Giants. Ewen closed his eyes and could almost feel the couch's soft contours fitting his rotund frame to perfection.

Isolde held tightly to Ewen's hand and led him through the wondrous scene. Clowns on stilts sauntered past like space mutants. The sky overhead was glazed purple and the moon was starting to peek through it. A Ferris wheel, pinned against that sky, moved and stopped, moved and stopped, the chairs with legs dangling bobbing up and down as if in invisible waters. "Come on," she told Ewen, clenching his hand ever tighter.

Ewen, who had a sinister fear of heights, wasn't quite sure how he wished to approach the situation. It would at least get him out of the sea of people.

"I bet you can see for . . ."

"Ticket please." The man behind the counter wore his sad, carnie face respectfully. Flecks of grease swirled colorfully with the sweat on his face. His cheeks were ruddy, sun burnt and his eyes were as lusterless as a couple of raisins.

Ewen spoke up: "But we haven't . . ."

"Than two dollars," said the man.

Ewen turned to Isolde. "But I'm not sure if I want to . . ."

"Two dollars," said the man.

"Come on. It'll be all right."

Ewen handed the man the money.

* * *

"You can see the whole countryside from up here," Isolde said excitedly.

Ewen grunted his disdain and squinted his eyes just barely.

"Come on," said Isolde. "You gotta look. It's beautiful." She thought the town looked like a jewel, sparkling. Isolde didn't think she had ever seen so many lights on at once.

"The heights," Ewen grimaced. He had his Yankees cap pulled down over his eyes, his lantern jaw protruding woodenly.

Then the ride stopped them at the top and Isolde could see EVERYTHING. They had passed this way several times before, the jewel dropping before their eyes like fireworks, but now the display was stopped and it was breathtaking.

Isolde leaned forward to get a better look and the chair rocked.

"Jesus Christ Isolde!" Ewen moaned. "Don't do that!"

Ewen's body was so tense the chair began to shake.

"You mean you don't like it when I do thhhiiiiissssss." Isolde rocked the chair even harder.

"It's not funny! I feel sick!"

"Shut up Ewen."

"I told you! I DON'T LIKE HEIGHTS!"

* * *

Ewen stepped quickly off the seat and grunted past the carnie who'd taken his money. "I wanna go home," he said. "If we leave now I can still catch that game."

"But we just got here."

"I've never been one for carnivals."

"You've never been one for fun."

"Waddaya mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean."

"I'm not sure I do."

"You never want to do anything aside from watch sports, drink beer and . . ."

"And what?"

"Have sex I guess."

"Waddaya mean?"

Isolde brushed a lank of red hair from her eyes and felt the world pulse around her. A midget wearing a pin stripe suit and green clown hair scurried past, a momentous smile smeared across his baby face and beside him, holding his midget hand, was a woman who was as tall as he was short, hair sleek black and a body that looked like it could have been carved out of a larger piece of bone.

"Freaks," Ewen said under his breath.

Your friends are the freaks, thought Isolde. Your beer swilling, nazi-jock, pig fucking, asshole friends. "Why don't you go home? I'll catch up."

"'Cause I wanna go home with you baby."

"But I want to stay. Can't you see that?"

"Why?"

"Because it's what I want to do."

2

Half the town loved a carnival. The other half didn't give a rats ass.

Billy Lumpkin swiveled on his stool in order to get a better look at the television. Luckily, Barney had the thing turned up loud enough for him to be able to hear the game. Not only was Billy's hearing shaky from logging half his life, but the place was damn near full.

"What team?" Someone asked him.

Billy craned his head to side to see who would ask such a stupid question.

Standing beside Billy was an oily faced boy with yellow shocks of hair flaming around his skull.

"Do I know you?" Billy picked his bottle of Budweiser off the counter and eased it to his chapped lips.

"No," said the young man. "I don't believe you do. I'm not from around here."

There was a chorus of cheer throughout Barney's and Billy was certain that the Niners had score again. "This ain't a game," he grunted. "This is a fuckin' slaughter."

"San Francisco than," said the young man.

"Why you so interested?"

The boy shrugged before taking Billy in with his large, somber eyes.
Billy turned back to the television. He strained his hearing so he could hear the announcer, but it was harder than before. The place just kept filling up; and now the strange kid standing behind him, staring into him . . . Billy didn't need to look back to know that the kid was still there.

Barney came over to Billy and asked him if their was anything he could get him.

"You could turn the game up for one thing."

"That's as loud as she goes."

"For fucks sake. I might as well go home."

"Nothing I can do," explained the bartender. "Carnivals in town. Means a lot of folks out and about."

"Carnival." Billy hissed.

And before Billy knew it the kid behind him had these smooth, lean fingers snaking over his right shoulder.

"What the . . .?!"

And Billy's hearing returned just like that. Twenty years of logging and - just like that . . . Billy could hear the announcer like he was inside of his head.

"Sorry to bother you," the kid said, his voice booming.

Billy turned to face the kid for the last time. The eyes . . .

And than he was letting go of Billy's shoulder and disappearing, through the crowd and toward the door.

3

"Come in and glimpse Heaven!" The little man had his stick arms out to his sides as if he were prepared to take flight. "Just through those flaps . . . look into the eyes of one of God's most perfect creations!" And he wiped his mouth with one greasy hand. "He is part light, part flesh! Part human, part angel! He is Silver . . . sleek and brimming with God's first notion! Come one, come all! Only five dollars!" The top hat he wore, which was awkwardly tilted to a side, threatened to slide from the oily lanks of hair that tumbled from underneath it like old, blackened lettuce. "Come one!" His voice croaked. "Come all."

Isolde thought the man looked a little sad with his crooked hat and determined speech and she wondered how they got into this life, yet she was intrigued by it just the same. The whole place was like a queer hallucination, or the kind of dreams that drop in on you when you have the flu, everybody, everything, seeming displaced and out of context with the world, yet perfectly right with it at the same time.

"He's come down for a visit, people . . . for a look see . . . come down to show you what lies behind the veil . . . come down to show you what is more than suffering, what is more than loneliness, what is more than pain . . . come down to show you what is more than life . . . come down to . . ."

People filed in; through tattered blue tent flaps and into darkness - paid the man their money, thus vanishing into heaven, out of suffering . . . But would it be everything that he'd promised?

Of course not, thought Isolde. Nobody was that stupid.

But the strangeness pulled her in. Why? Because she was human, and humanity needed to know that there was something beyond itself even if it was pure carnival drivel.

Isolde placed the five dollar bill in the man sinewy fingers. "Welcome to bliss," he told her with a rubber smile.

"I . . ." And she drifted into the slumbering warmth-darkness of . . .

Isolde's heartbeat slowed as her head became somnolent. The walls of heat in front of her opened in layers and the deeper she went the hotter it became. And there was very little light in here; a single reddish-brownish bulb glowed in the back like amber. Isolde moved toward it and it felt like she was floating; like she was in space or a synthetic version thereof, perhaps an incubator for whatever was contained within. And than a sound, like water trickling or people talking quietly among themselves; after all, several people had entered the tent before her. Still, she could not see them, nor even fathom that anyone else existed in the world other than herself. Yes, a lonely feeling came over her, but it wasn't the kind of reactionary loneliness that came from knowing that you could not connect with anything because, contrarily, Isolde felt like she was connecting with everything.

And then her heart stopped completely and Isolde felt like she was about to die; and she could see . . .

* * *

He huddled in the back of a glass cage, oil sheen skin flickering in the darkness like a burning tapestry. It wasn't exactly silver, yet what else could you call it . . . Impure light? Birth defect? And his head, completely bald, rested on his pulpy shoulders like the head of pin. Silver . . . cradling himself like an infant; lost, frightened, suffering - everybody was, but he was doing it for everybody. And his eyes, so large and beautiful, brimming with ancient secrets and tears; he was like a tome waiting to be opened, yet a child needing to feel love. It was exhausting to look on him, yet necessary . . . How does one deal with no space, no time? Only dreams and reason to believe that God exists. But he lived their all the time and even a laymen among sympathizers could see that his burden was too great.

Beautiful, thought Isolde; but she couldn't say it because she knew that it was meaningless. The thing in there, the angel, Silver, whatever it was, transcended beauty. All roads converged here, she realized; all feelings, human or otherwise. There was no way to look back, nor any way to look ahead. There was only this one moment outside the vacuum of human existence.

Isolde pressed her hands against the glass and began to weep. She fell to her knees and wept some more. And beneath the fiber of her spirit there came an unraveling. It was painful, no doubt; not unlike being turned inside out . . . but underneath all that fragility there was a communicative device that had been there since the beginning of everything. It opened up inside of her like a swirling ocean-mouth brimming with universal truths.

And the angel/human's eyes fell on her and there, from his wretched corner on the floor, smiled. It was every smile she'd ever received unconditionally and she knew right away that he understood everything in the way that it was meant to be understood . . .

With love.

4

"A bunch of mad, fuckin' crazies is what you are!"

Willard Williams' had the kid in a head lock. Blood gushed from the kid's nose in snotty ropes.

"Get any on my shoes and I'll bust it for good!"
There was a young girl too, her purple dreads lashing the air. "Let 'em go mother fucker!"

"Not until you apologize to my friend here!"

"Apologize for what?!"

"The kid here . . . he made my friend sick! Made him puke up all over!"

"Your friend looks pretty drunk to me dumb asshole!"

"What you gotta say to that Smitty?"

"Kid touched me and . . ." Smitty's eyes watered like he was preparing to lose it again.

Several people stood outside of Barney's now. It wasn't like anything new going on, but they got a kick out of it just the same. Willard Williams' was a force to be reckoned with and they didn't mind watching the gale and fury of his temper break loose. If anything, those carnival freaks were getting just what they deserved.

Purple dreads looked at the crowd. She knew she was much wiser than any of them and had seen things they couldn't fathom with their beady minds, but that didn't mean this didn't hurt a whole helluva lot. She had spent nights anguishing over things like this and although she knew there was nothing she could do to change it, she would anguish even more. They all did; they couldn't help it. It was partially because of him, Silver, but it was mostly because they all came from backgrounds of elusory climes; lives that sought affection in anything that might love them back . . . most times one just ended up getting hurt, sometimes badly.

The crowd on the street represented a fierce weakness in the face of the unknown. They might claim to understand, to know, but they didn't know anything at all and for that nothing knew them. They were stranded and, unconsciously, they knew it; and for that they felt the need to maim anything at all that was beyond their understanding.

"Just let him go!" Throat ragged, lungs winded, purple dreads continued to pray that they let the boy go.

And then the boy did the only thing he could. He touched the jutting elbows of the man who held him and . . .

The jolt of pain that coursed through the Willard's body was so great that he was forced to let the boy go. Immediately, slumping to his knees, his body jerked and spasmed.

"What choo done to 'em boy?!" A faceless member of the crowd.

"Run!" Purple dreads grabbed the boy by the back of the shirt and dragged away from the approaching crowd.

"Get 'im!" Willard William screamed to the crowd.

And then Billy Lumpkin spoke up because he knew something about the kid the rest of them didn't. "Let 'em go," he pleaded. "Just let 'em go. Come on back inside for the second half."

"But . . ." Willard's voice raked against the back of his throat.

"Just . . . come on."

5

The ceiling swirled in the dusky half-light of the bedroom.
Ewen, smelling of beer and sweat, snored repetitiously beside Isolde. She looked at the silhouette of his broad forehead and protruding, Roman nose and she knew that she couldn't stay here much longer. For one thing she hadn't slept all night; not to mention her mind feeling riddled by demons and human dramas beyond her comprehension. Something happened at the carnival that she couldn't explain. She couldn't even explain how she'd gotten home. She'd come out of the tent feeling in a heavy daze and then . . . and then there was Ewen on the couch with Louis and Bob watching the game.

But she needed to remember. She needed to remember this more than anything else because her life depended on it.

Isolde had never taken religion all that seriously. Her parents, a pair of black sheep as far as the town was concerned, never bothered with church every Sunday. Both parents, having lived through the sixties and the advent of free-love and psychedelic meanderings, believed that every man was God in his own way. 'We're all creative,' Isolde's mother used to stay. 'Creating our own worlds and sometimes remaining there.' They couldn't even fathom the idea that people went crazy. Instead, they simply crossed over. 'Reality just isn't that simple,' her father would tell her.

And he was right. Reality wasn't that simple. In fact, reality could be a fucking mess.

Isolde, rolling over in bed, tried her best to recall the things that had moved through her thoughts, her spirit, at such a break neck speed. In a way she felt violated, but mostly she knew she needed to get back to wherever it was the shimmering thing, the angel, Silver, whatever, had taken her; and it had taken her somewhere . . . somewhere inside herself perhaps, but somewhere just the same.
Ewen would never understand. Her parents, although their brains were considerably fried from too many drugs in the sixties, might. Still, Isolde was alone now, and although that frightened her considerably, it allowed her the freedom to think more clearly. She might not be able to explain it clearly, but at least she could take comfort in the idea that their was something to explain.

Isolde always knew that dreams meant something; and visions; and feelings. Her parents had let her in on these things too. The world was not meant to be seen through a single pair of eyes, yet so many people fought for that stance . . . many people in this town; and Ewen.

No, she couldn't stay here. Starting tomorrow, starting right now, things would change. She was not like anyone she knew and that both startled and excited her.

And Isolde slipped through her darkness toward something; and she was positive that Silver would be waiting for her there.

6

They gathered around him and closed their eyes; and waited - plaintive faces flickering in the dark like dour candles - a candelabra of hopes and fears.

They believed in him; they always have . . . but the world was no better of a state then when he came among them and in many ways it was worse. He tried to show them that deep within the darkness, the chaos and themselves their was something worth the trip, but their optimism was not as polished as his own; after all, he was celestial . . . or at least as close to pure being as any human had ever been.

Silver's mother had been all angel; one-hundred percent, certified. He mentioned her from time to time. She was pure light, pure energy and someday he would like to get back to her; back to them all. But he was seeking something first; an answer to a question that plagued the human side of his thoughts.

His mother had come here, to earth, seeking information. She had disguised herself as one of them in order to walk among them. She never mentioned to him exactly what it was she had been seeking; there were a number of things angels sought among humans. Perhaps she'd been recruiting; or maybe she'd come down to salvage what was left of all the holy relics; grail, ark, etc . . . Or maybe she simply wanted to observe humans, which was a fairly common desire; humanity, being far from perfect, taught the angels about chaos.

And she loved perfectly because that was the gift of the angels; a gift so easily taken advantage of.

* * *

Silver's mother never mentioned to him the details of how the human went about raping her, but she never really needed to; the pure light of her form had dimmed considerably. It was impossible for her to hate humanity, but she swore that she would never return to their side which was worse by far.

Silver was born shortly after; a being of both flesh and light who understood both love and hate.

And now he lied on his side among them, the light seeping from his hollow bones, draining his celestial energy.

"Anything?"

They opened there eyes at once, together.

"It's getting harder for us," said the little man with top hat. "Pure insanity."

"How pure?"

The little man shrugged.

Purple dreads spoke up: "We could have killed one tonight."

"But we didn't," interrupted the boy. His tone was nervous. He knew what the consequences for killing one of them was; exile . . . even if it was in self-defense.

Silver whispered. "Listen . . ."

Fifty or more bodies crammed into a blue tent on the edge of chaos, yet they leaned into listen; to hear. They might of looked spectral in the aqueous angel-light, but they all knew their place among the lost. Many of them carried sadness and pain in their eyes from seeing and knowing too much, but to hear him speak, one who knew pain beyond any one of them, was worth it. It's not that they were elite; far from it . . . if they were elite then they certainly wouldn't be here. If anything, they were alone, isolated, alienated; islands in a vast, perpetual darkness. And it wasn't a matter of being misunderstood; it was a matter of being non-existent.

"The show must go on," he said.

Silver hated his father for what he did, a hate that came from deep within . . . his father's hate, one constantly at war with his mother's love. But he knew how important it was to find him; to ask him the one question . . . Why? Still, all he had was his mother's vague memory to guide him; and these lost, these few, to aid him. It was like finding a dark seed in a darker garden,

"We'll find him," said the little man. And they all agreed.

On the outside, where the carnival lights were dimmest, there was a jungle of men preparing to discover nothing at all.

"But we need to be careful," said Silver, looking at the boy; looking through him and into his dreams.

They boy nodded and thought: Why must there be so much sadness?

"Because it's the human way," said the angel. "Which is the most important reason why the show must go on."

"How many of them are capable of love?" Asked the boy, his eyes brimming with wetness.

They all knew the answer, but they liked to hear him say it anyway. It gave them hope. After all, that was the carnival's purpose.

"All of them," he said. "But for now I need rest."

Gradually, he was alone; and always.

7

At first there were only a few of them; lonesome stragglers huddled on a vast, empty field. But is wasn't long before more came and then more after that. Soon, and many bodies, many groups, covered the field.

Isolde could feel something stirring here; they all could . . . but it was too late. The carnival had left town and where it had been was now ragged and barren. Still, the stirring. It began at the core of all of their spirits and by degrees worked loose the prejudices that had imprisoned them their whole lives.

"I don't remember what it looked like," said one man, his sensitive gaze taking in the field.

"Light," said another. "With deep holes for eyes."

"I've heard of these kinds of experiences, but . . ."

And than everyone was talking at once:

"He was so lovely."

"His body was like water."

"I don't ever want to go home."

"Is he God?"

"No. I don't think so. Just a part of God."

"Love?"

"Yes. Definitely."

"I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of what comes next."

"What comes next?"

"I don't know."