Circle View (25 page)

A police sergeant stepped from the carriage behind Houdini, the brass buttons on his uniform tracing the curve of his stomach. He withdrew from the carriage a worn leather satchel, opened it, and lifted out with both hands a tangle of steel chains, handcuffs, leg irons, and padlocks. He shook them in the air, shouting to attest that he had inspected the manacles and found them to be unaltered in any way. The manacles clanked in his fist.

Anna touched her face where the lockpick lay hidden. The muscles of her cheeks and jaws quivered, and had numbed so that she could no longer feel the lockpick there. As she reached with her tongue to touch it, the pick slid atop her tongue. The taste of metal bloomed in her throat, gagging her. She nearly spat the wire out on the ground.

A committee of volunteers stepped forward to reinspect the shackles and to strip Houdini of his clothes. He removed his shoes and socks, his necktie and collar, his shirt and undervest. The men searched the spaces between his fingers, ran their hands through his hair, held matches near his ears and nostrils. They lifted his arms to search his armpits. One of the men put his fingers inside Houdini's mouth.

Anna used her tongue to push the wire back into the side of her cheek. For a moment she thought she had turned it, the point of it now directed at the back of her throat, but then she was unsure. She wanted to reach into her mouth to reposition it with her fingers, but of course she could not. Don't direct any attention to yourself, the Scotsman had told her.

The committee instructed Houdini to remove his trousers. Beneath them he wore only a tight breechcloth of thin white cotton. He stood hairless and pale, his muscles carving shadow in his skin. She saw through the thin fabric of the breechcloth his outline, distinct and full. She remembered the naked men in the emergency area after the paint factory explosion, remembered blushing as she moved among them, a girl of seventeen. She thought of the parents of the dead children, how they accepted their grief as if embarrassed by it, how they never touched. Throughout the crowd women turned away as Houdini stripped. The wire bit into the side of her mouth.

Several of the men held up a section of canvas as a screen, and a doctor was brought forth to complete the inspection. The men drew away the canvas and began to shackle Houdini. They locked his elbows with cuffs connected by a steel bar running across the middle of his back. Three sets of iron bands linked his wrists, joined by padlocks and chains to similar bands clamped around his ankles. Houdini raised his head as a heavy iron collar was hinged around his throat and padlocked at the back of his neck, the chains on the lock connected to those at his wrists. All of these were woven through with more chains, secured with padlocks.

They directed him to the crate, a man on either side of him. He walked with tiny steps, slightly bent like an old man, the chains dragging on the wood planks behind him. Anna shifted her weight and the wetness in her mouth ran to the back of her throat and she swallowed. For a minute she could not feel the wire and imagined she had swallowed it as well. Her mouth was numb. When she took a breath through her lips, the wire cooled at the back of her mouth. Houdini was lifted into the crate, the canvas bag pulled up to his neck and held there. The Scotsman poured brandy into a snifter and held it to Houdini's lips, shouting out words she only half heard.
The life of a man. The hand of God. The watery depths
. He had an actor's voice, loud and stagy. He would not look in her direction. She pushed the wire against the roof of her mouth to reposition it, and felt her heart beating in her temples, in her stomach. She wanted to let herself cry, to leave and forget all of this. The wire turned again and she pushed it forward, unable to remember where it had been when he had placed it in her mouth back at the hotel room.

“Some young lass,” the Scotsman shouted. He extended his arms to the crowd. “One kiss, for fortune's smile.” Her face burned and she stepped forward out of the crowd. The movement of the boats docked at the pier made her feel as if the world were in motion beneath her. Her legs quivered. Houdini stood with his gaze fixed out over the heads of the crowd. She knew that already he was at work, twisting his hands inside the canvas bag, positioning them. The Scotsman lightly held her fingers and brought her to the front of the crate as if leading her through a waltz.

The key was now only a coppery sourness in her mouth. Houdini looked at her, no flicker of recognition in his face. She leaned toward him, not knowing what to do with her hands. She wanted to touch him, to steady herself against him, to keep herself from falling. His face came up to hers and she smelled on him the sweetness of the brandy. Then his lips touched hers and she felt the sting of his whiskers, the dryness of her lips, the push of his jaw downward and her own pushed with it. His tongue ran between her lips, moving across her teeth. She parted her teeth slightly, then opened her mouth, and somewhere behind her the shouts of the crowd mixed with those of the Scotsman saying “maybe his last, maybe his last,” and with her eyes closed her hands moved in the empty air, reaching toward him, and her fingertips brushed the canvas bag, the muscles of his face worked against hers and then his tongue slid fully into her mouth. A shuddering passed through her. Already too much time had passed, must have passed. They would know, she thought, and she angled her face slightly upward, tilting her throat, and inside her mouth she felt his tongue thicken and flatten, his saliva warmer than hers at the back of her throat. The key floated somewhere between them, the taste of it rising into her sinuses. She opened her eyes briefly and saw his gray eyes open and stilled in concentration. She closed her eyes again, and then the wind blew cool at the edges of her mouth, Houdini was shouting to the crowd that he would be allowed only twenty minutes, that the oxygen inside the crate would be depleted in three.

The Scotsman drew her back to the edge of the crowd. She watched Houdini wave to the crowd and smile at her, but it was a smile for the crowd; it told her nothing. The canvas bag was lifted up over him and his face disappeared from sight, his outline shifting and bobbing under the canvas. She imagined him in the bag, reaching with his fingers to withdraw the key, working already at the locks as the men chained shut the bag and folded it—him—into the crate. The box lid fell down and then the hammers sounded in the moist air, six of them pounding a strange, short song, like a children's song. The chains drew up the crate, the mule strained, and the box lifted and spun in the air. The men pushed it over the side of the pier and the crowd pressed forward to watch. It hit the water and bobbed, tilting slightly before it began to sink. The Scotsman withdrew his watch and began to count in quarter minutes, shouting, holding his watch up to the crowd. The crate fell fully out of sight in the black water, tiny waves splitting white around the cable. Anna leaned out to see, the press of thousands at her back. Still in her mouth were the sweetness of the brandy, the sourness of the key. She closed her eyes to imagine his frantic work in the blackness, in the failing air, the crate buried in cold, the warmth at its center, his warmth, his beating heart. The Scotsman sounded the minutes. She swallowed, tasting him.
Don't die
, she whispered.

M. Moran

BRAD BARKLEY, a North Carolina native, earned his MFA degree at the University of Arkansas in 1994. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, he has received writing fellowships from the Maryland State Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. His stories have appeared in such publications as
Glimmer Train
, the
Virginia Quarterly Review
, the
Georgia Review
, the
Florida Review
, and the
Greensboro Review
. He now lives with his wife, Mary, and their two children in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he teaches at Cape Fear Community College. He can be reached by email at
[email protected]
.

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