The Judge and the Gypsy (17 page)

“I’m sorry, Rasch,” Alfred said, shaking his head, “she refuses to see you.”

“But I love her. We have to talk.”

“I know, but I told you in the beginning that you couldn’t stay here if she didn’t want you. And she doesn’t—at least not now. You’ll have to go.”

Rasch stared at the old man with disbelief in his eyes. It couldn’t end this way. Savannah had been an unplanned intrusion in his life, an intrusion that had given him such joy that he was willing to give up not only the governorship, but his position on the bench as well.

She understood him. She even forgave him for what he’d done. But more than that, they’d shared their loneliness and their dreams. They were right together, dammit, but she wouldn’t let him come close anymore.

She thought that if she kept him away, he’d get his life back on track. That was why he loved her, because of her willingness to sacrifice herself for what she believed. He knew that Savannah cared for him. He’d held her, made love to her, shared in the incredible enchantment of their loving. She couldn’t conceal, or erase, that. But she was sending him away.

Because she loved him.

And he had to go, because that was what she wanted and because he loved her too.

Rasch left Alfred’s trailer and walked across the compound. He wandered over to the elephant area and petted Nell as she gave him wet kisses with her trunk. The cats were less responsive, but Rasch gained strength from their resigned acceptance of their fate. They didn’t know the dangers of being free. Here they were safe and cared for. Here they had Savannah and the circus to protect them.

He took one long last look around.

“You know that she loves you.”

Zeena stood at his side in a haze of moonlight, the crisp fall air tugging at her scarf.

“Yes, I know.”

“And do you also know the circus is to be sold?”

“No. Why?”

“Because the family has ended. There is no one to carry on, at least no one for a long time.”

He sighed. “And what should
I
do, Zeena? I don’t know which way to turn.”

“You go on with the course you have charted. If you are meant to be together, she will come to you in her own time, in her own way.”

He turned away, stopped, and asked, “Zeena, tell me the truth, did you do it? Was it a Gypsy spell that brought us together?”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“I’m not sure. There was a time when I thought I had all the right answers. I was such a pompous fool. No, I guess I don’t believe in superstition. I guess I just wanted to think that you might cast another
spell. But she’s gone. It’s over, and I don’t even have a glass slipper.”

“You don’t need a slipper, Crusader,” Zeena said under her breath as she watched him go. A smile crossed her face, and she fingered the gold heart she wore on a chain around her neck.

“You have something better.”

By spring all the circus animals had been sold. The trailers, booths of chance, and the food vendors were gone. Only the big top, patched and faded, remained.

Alfred and Zeena were making plans to take a trip to Europe. Savannah, who’d taken correspondence classes all her life, had enrolled in education classes at the local junior college and spent her free time working out with Niko on the wires.

Rasch had weathered the bad publicity generated by the
Party Time
article and was making good progress in his campaign for the governorship. He’d pulled ahead of his closest opponent for his party’s nomination. But the fire had gone out of his eyes, and his decisions in the courtroom were more carefully rendered.

More tired than ever, Rasch found his duties in court weighed heavier and heavier. There were no more midnight visions, no more whiffs of the tea olive blossom, no more burning sensations on his
body. The heat seemed to have gone out of his world. Through Niko he kept up with the circus, but Savannah still refused to see him. She had some misguided idea that she was protecting Rasch, and nothing would change her mind.

Rasch was worried. He drove out to Pretty Springs, the small town where the Vandergriffs lived. He needed to talk with Joker, the only other person who might understand the depth of his loss.

“I think I’ve got the nomination,” Rasch explained. “But ever since Savannah sent me away, I’ve questioned every move I’ve made. If I don’t figure out a way to get her out of my mind, I’m not even going to make a good dogcatcher, let alone do the kind of job I want to as governor. This is what I thought I wanted more than anything in the world, what I’ve worked for all my life. Now I don’t seem to care.”

“Let’s examine the situation logically,” Joker said. “If you do get Savannah back, your relationship might cost you the election. Do you think she could live with that?”

Rasch shrugged. “All I know is that she’s too important for me to let her go. I was driven before I met Savannah. But I’d closed myself off from dreams, and beauty, and love. Sooner or later I’d have burned out, and I never even knew what I was doing.”

Joker stood, pacing back and forth for a time before answering. “I think, my friend, that the problem will take care of itself, without our help. There is an aura around you, Rasch, when you and Savannah are together, an aura that dims with separation. I don’t pretend to understand or explain it, any more than I can explain the healing powers of my hands.
But I say, give yourselves time. I think you’ll find a way back to each other.”

Rasch went back to Atlanta. Waiting was something he’d learned to do. But until now he’d never realized how difficult it would be.

Alfred and Zeena left for Europe.

Savannah completed one quarter in college and started another. If she couldn’t perform for children, she’d find another way to reach them—as a teacher. She already had enough college credits, but she still needed the education courses required by the state.

Rasch was on her mind constantly.

She imagined him as a small boy, escaping to the library to study and learn, to avoid the bullies in his neighborhood, to resist the peer pressure on the street. The small traveling circuses were dying out; there were few circus children left, but there were still migrant workers, and the homeless, with no way to learn. Children reminiscent of Rasch and herself would be her charges. Rasch would be governor, and she would teach.

But she couldn’t close off the memories, and she couldn’t make new ones. She didn’t eat well, and sleep came only after hours of physical exertion on the wire.

It was four o’clock on a Friday afternoon when Judge Webber gave up waiting and called a press conference at his office in the courthouse. His reception room was crowded with reporters who genuinely liked the popular man of the people. They approved of his openness and honesty and supported his plans to
be governor. When he entered the room, the noise quieted instantly.

Camera lights lit up.

Tape recorders were switched on.

Pencils were poised in readiness to be used.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I’ve called you here to make an announcement. As you know. I have been actively campaigning for the governorship of the state of Georgia on a platform of honesty and reform. But I am considering withdrawing myself as a candidate, and I want to let you know why.”

After a roar of surprise and shouted questions, Rasch lifted his hand and asked for silence. “I’m certain that you remember the incident with
Party Time
where Ms. Savannah Ramey and I were accused of being sexually involved.”

“Yes!”

“We remember, are you suing?”

“No, I’m
wooing
. I want to marry Savannah Ramey, and I want you to be the first to know that I intend to do everything in my power to convince her to become my wife.”

“A circus performer as our first lady?” A reporter asked incredulously.

Rasch’s gaze found the reporter and silenced him with its intensity. “Why not? If I’m elected, you’ll have the son of a drug addict for a governor. I am what I am, and my background is what it is. I can’t change that. I wouldn’t want to. I wouldn’t want to change Savannah either.”

“But doesn’t she have a questionable background?”

“That’s what I want you to know. Her brother, Tifton Ramey, was arrested on a DUI accident charge.
He was tried and found guilty. I sentenced him to jail, where he got into a fight with another inmate and was killed.”

“That Ramey kid. Yeah, we remember,” one of the reporters said.

“Savannah’s mother died when she was a child. There is only her father left. The Ramey Circus, over my objections, has been sold, but if it hadn’t, and if Savannah wanted to continue to perform, I would be pleased to have her do so.”

This time there was a stunned silence in the room. Then, from the back corner, a journalist began to clap. Soon she was joined by a host of others. And as the clapping intensified, Rasch felt the vest of ice he’d worn around his heart for weeks begin to melt.

His pulse quickened. There was no guarantee that the public would agree, but the press seemed to understand and support his position. He felt a lightness sweep over him, and an ever so intense longing.

Savannah, he wanted Savannah, and he was going to her. He’d let himself be pushed away, let her protect him with her rejection, let her disappear from his life when he needed her beside him.

Success and prestige had been his goal, what he’d worked for all his life, but without someone to share it with, success was empty. Both his mother and Savannah’s mother had found their personal lives too painful to continue, but they’d left a legacy behind, their children.

He and Savannah belonged together. Rasch nodded to the reporters, expressed his thanks for their support, and backed into his office and out the back corridor to escape from their questions.

A clatter in the hallway behind him told him that
the media people had guessed his intentions and were following. He cut through an occupied courtroom and took the exit stairs to the basement.

Sliding behind the wheel of his truck, he drove away, singing loudly:

“Oh, Savannah, don’t you cry for me. I’m headed for the circus with my heart a-flying free.” And that’s what he was doing, just as fast as the speed limit would allow.

From the highway he could see the smoke. From the dirt road across the field he could see the flames. One corner of the big top was on fire.

Savannah! Her flaming batons.

He parked the car and broke into a run. The entire corner of the tent was engulfed. “Savannah! Niko!”

The flap of the tent was open, just as it was when Savannah was rehearsing. Clouds of smoke billowed from inside. Curls of flames danced across the sawdust. He could barely see. Ripping off his coat and tie, Rasch covered his face with his jacket and ran inside. Where was she? On the high wire. He began to climb the ladder.

He didn’t feel the beam when it toppled over. He never knew what hit him when he fell. There was only the heat of the fire, and his fear. “Savannah!”

Inside her trailer Savannah came suddenly awake. “Rasch!” Something was wrong. She felt the paralyzing fear of separation as if half of her had been cut away. He was hurt. He needed her. She sprang to her feet and looked out the window. Then she saw it—the fire, Rasch’s truck, and his tie on the ground between.

“Niko!” But Niko had gone into town. There was no one but her, and the man she loved was inside.

Savannah wet a towel, flung it over her shoulders, slid her feet into her shoes, and raced across the compound and into the tent. “Rasch, where are you?”

Everything seemed to be burning, even the sawdust curls on the floor. She could see nothing but smoke. Her eyes began to water, and she could hardly breathe. Then she saw him, in the net. One end of it had been hit by a falling support beam. The net and the beam were hanging at a crazy angle, slanting downhill to the floor. And beside the beam was Rasch. He wasn’t moving.

Little flames were licking the curls of sawdust below, and the supposedly fireproof tent was in flames everyplace it had been patched. Savannah looked for a way to reach the man she loved.

“Rasch!”

Savannah couldn’t get across the floor, but she leapt for the metal ladder. It didn’t quite reach the floor, and the portion of the tent over the ladder and platform was still intact. She began to climb. The air at the top was unbreatheable. Savannah covered her mouth and nose with the wet towel, took a deep, smoky breath, and held it. At the top she loosened one of the ropes once used by Tifton when he did his rope-spinning act. With a prayer that the rope was still intact, she lowered herself to the net.

“Rasch!” She let out the air she’d been holding and took in another breath, choking and gagging. “Please, you have to help me!” She made her way to his side and looped the rope beneath his arms, around his upper body. At that moment the frame for
the net began to creak. The extra weight on one end was pulling the other side in. They were four feet off the ground. Maybe—

Savannah put her arms around Rasch and held on tight. The frame collapsed, but they were swinging in the air. Savannah began to use the motion of her body to increase the distance of their swinging. The fire beneath their feet was beginning to die down. Thank goodness for poverty. If they’d been able to afford fresh shavings, both she and Rasch would have roasted toes by now.

She alternated the wet towel between them. But it was drying rapidly in the heat. Her feet finally hit one of the surviving support poles. She gave a big push. If they didn’t suffocate; if she could get the rope to swing out far enough. If the rope didn’t burn. If Niko would come.

Too late. The rope broke, dropping them to the smoldering floor just inside the doorway, away from the worst of the glowing coals but still inside the burning sawdust.

Quickly Savannah came to her feet. “Rasch! Rasch, please, you’ve got to get up.” Her pleas urged the groaning man to his feet. After a few anxious moments he stumbled after her.

Around the tent and onto the edge of the woods they struggled until Rasch collapsed. He didn’t appear to be burned anywhere. But he was very still. She wiped away the soot on his face and found an egg-size lump over his right eye. Laying her head against his chest, she heard his heart beating, though his breathing was shallow and uneven.