The Secrets of a Fire King (22 page)

The Secrets of a Fire King

scription of my drinking cup. I glanced desperately backstage for Eli, who could have snuck me the real tin cup in a box of cotton batting, but even as I searched I understood he’d been the one to give away my secret.

“Gentlemen,” I called out several times, until the jeering subsided somewhat. “Gentlemen, you are disturbing the good men and women who have paid to see this show. Now, I am a man of honor, and I assure you that of course you may—no, you
will—

see this cup.” I placed it on the table in front of me with a clang.

“You have my promise. Here it sits, and you will examine it once the show has finished. In the meantime you may watch it with your own eyes, as I perform the greatest feat of this or any show.

Ladies and gentlemen! Today you will see a rare sight, a feat so dangerous that I do not do it every show, or even every fourth show or every tenth show. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I do this feat only once every three years.

“Today, I will do it for you.

“Today, I will become a human volcano, before your very eyes.” This hushed them, for a moment anyway. I pulled out the cotton batting and piled it on the table, careful that some of it ob-scured the tin cup from view. Then I started stuffing cotton in my mouth. The crowd laughed, and as I stuffed in more, then more, they became uproarious. Finally, when my mouth was full to bursting, I took a coal in my bare hand and lit it. Smoke strung my eyes and made the rows of faces melt and waver. The coal fl ared brightly, then turned to an ember, all while I held it steadily on the palm of my hand. I waved my free arm to show I was ready. Then I took a deep breath, put that live coal to the bale of cotton in my mouth, and exhaled a stream of fi re.

This is a wonderful trick, a splendid effect. It is dangerous, too, the trick that killed my mentor. Fire flows forth like a hori-zontal column, a fallen pillar, and a single inward breath proves fatal. I kept it going as long as I could, the flames dancing a full foot in front of my face. As I had hoped, they were so awestruck by this display that when I stepped offstage between my fi rst and second bows, they did not think to question my brief moment from their sight. They left, examining the real tin cup, nodding
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soberly, apologizing for their earlier suspicions. I stood aloof, relief flooding through me like the cool, clean air.

The afternoon was pretty, one of those blue midwestern days when the sky is so clear and so large that it nearly hurts to look at it. You feel your own insignificance, is what I mean. We had a few more hours before the final show, and I was mixing up a batch of Storaxine, the salve I used to keep from getting burned.

I’d rub it all over my mouth and hands before a show, gargle some vinegar to set it, and I was ready, impervious to fi re.

The formula was secret, naturally, but I did sell Storaxine on a limited basis for treating scalds and burns. After becoming a human volcano my sales were up, my supply just about depleted.

While I waited for the water to boil I carved up Ivory soap and tossed it in. Now and then I paused to skim some fallen leaves off the top of my preparation, which was starting to foam, the water going opaque as the soap dissolved. I tossed in sugar, cup by cup, aware all the time that there was someone standing in the foliage on the far side of the creek. I waited some, and finally I said, “Eli, you left me in the lurch yesterday, deserted a friend when he truly needed your help. Now what do you have to say for yourself about it?”

The bushes rustled, and after a minute he came out, walking carefully along the river’s edge, placing his bare feet just so on the rocks. I caught his eyes, their fading blue, and thought of Jubilee.

“Well?” I said once he stood beside me.

“I thought they were going to run you out of town.”

“Well, they might have, Eli, except that I was so quick thinking.” I poured the liquid storax into the pot and stirred.

Eli squatted down on a stump nearby. He picked up a sharp stick and started drawing patterns in the soft earth. He wouldn’t look at me.

“Do you love her, then?” he asked at last.

The question took me by surprise. Love. What could I say to this boy? That most of the time love boiled down to another word for loss, or for getting what you wanted? I wanted Jubilee to meet me in my dressing room, to shed her camisoles like
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leaves. I wanted to touch that tender skin of hers, watch her eyes go from innocence to knowing. I’d have done it, too, in the trees beside the mirror, if Eli hadn’t followed me, then gone running to the preacher. I thought of the angry crowd the day before, of my own fear, rising like a burn in the back of my throat.

“Eli,” I said. “You still interested in being an assistant of mine?”

“You mean it?” he asked, looking up at me at last.

“Well, if you’re good enough,” I said. “Then yes. We’ll start with Brimstone on the Palm,” I went on. “When you get good at that, you can graduate up to Brimstone on the Tongue. That’s the real crowd pleaser. Here’s how it’s done, Eli. You watch close.” I took three small round pieces of sulfur, looking an angry yellow against the white saucer, doused them with kerosene, and set them on fire. Then I tipped them into my right palm, which was slathered with Storaxine already. I held those burning bits of rock for nearly a minute, and all the time Eli watched me, wonder and apprehension mingled on his face.

“Okay,” I said, slipping the coals back into the saucer. “Your turn.”

He looked scared, but nonetheless he poured the burning brimstones into his hand.
Good,
I thought, seeing the pain hit his face,
learn a lesson.
I expected him to drop the coals right away, but though his hand shook and sweat ran down his cheeks, he cupped his fingers and held on to those bits of burning rock as if they were the most precious thing he owned.

“Drop them!” I said. “Eli! It’s a mistake!” But he did not. I finally had to grab his wrist and jar the brimstones out, thrusting his hand into the cold water of the river. His palm was raw and red, blisters already rising on his skin. I applied Storaxine and bound his burns with clean cloths from my bag, studying his hands as I worked. For all their callouses, their nicks and scratches, Eli’s hands were smaller than my own, not yet fi nished with their growing.

“I tried,” he said after a while, his voice still tight with pain. “I wasn’t good enough.”

“Eli,” I said. “You did just fine. The fault was mine. I tricked you.”

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He got quiet then, and I felt myself grow smaller, reduced from the Fire King to the mean mortal that I was. I saw that even angry, even disillusioned, Eli had believed in me till now.

“Why?” he asked.

“To teach you a lesson,” I said.

Now his eyes were a deep blue, steady on mine, like the edge of a flame. “Tell me how you did it, then.”

“I do not owe you anything,” I said. But his hand seemed small beneath the bandage, and his fingernails were dirty. A boy’s hand, this was. I thought of Jubilee, her stillness, her sudden kiss, and wondered what she’d be doing now, just how she’d feel, if Eli hadn’t chased her off. I thought of her soft skin, the way her hands had rested on my shoulders, and remorse twisted through my heart like a dark curl of smoke. I started talking. I lined up the in-gredients for Storaxine and explained the process. I demonstrated Brimstone on the Palm, and Brimstone on the Tongue. I gave away the cherished secrets of a Fire King.

“You’ll travel with me now,” I said, surprised at the relief I felt, unburdened of my secrets. “You’ll work for me, as long as you like.” But Eli didn’t thank me, or even speak. He just stood up and walked away, leaving me standing in the silence, in a shaft of light, the vat of Storaxine steaming at my back.

It’s easy to say, in retrospect, that I should have known. That Eli with his envy and desires was not a force to trust. But though I was shaken by the incident, though I lingered over the bottling of my Storaxine until just before the final show, I did not foresee the consequences. The night was much as usual, clear and windy, alive with lights and music, the bright chatter of hawkers, the murmurs of the crowd. Phillipa, luminous in her butterfl y costume, was coming from her dressing room just as I drew near.

When I stepped aside to let her pass, she raised her painted eyebrows high.

“Somebody,” she said, “thinks you really
are
the Fire King.” Then she reached into her bodice and handed me a folded note.

Wait for me,
it said.
Tonight. I am coming to your show. And after. I am coming. Jubilee.

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The handwriting was loopy, childish. I went into my dressing room and sat down, imagining her spelling the words out carefully, tearing away the strips of paper that held her small mistakes.

I imagined her getting dressed, the clean petticoats and camisoles and undergarments, soft cotton brushing every surface of her skin.

I had ruined such girls before and never cared. I had fi lled them full of fire and left them longing, I’d been gone before light fl ared on the horizon, and I had not looked back, not once. No reason, none at all, why Jubilee was different. A country girl with pretty eyes, who would fall all the harder because she thought she had been saved. I could take her anywhere and she would have me. In my dressing room, in the copse of trees, waist high in the river.

That preacher was nothing to her now. But instead of feeling satisfied, I heard young Eli asking,
Do you love her?
And I thought of her sweet smell, the softness of her skin, and wondered.

Outside, the opening theme song rose above the voices of the hawkers and the crowds, and I knew that Ogleby was in the center of the tent, the audience agape as the python and the boa constric-tor wound themselves around him. My own act would not start for another hour, and on an impulse I made my way inside the tent, slipping beneath the canvas near the back. I climbed high into the bleachers and stood on the uppermost seat, scanning the crowd for a glimpse of Jubilee.

I found her easily. She was sitting directly across the ring, on the second bleacher from the top, wearing the blue dress she’d been saved in and a matching hat, her feet resting on a small valise. Everything she owned was in that case, I knew. It made my heart constrict, thinking of her skin, so soft, so hidden, thinking of Eli’s burns, the way his eyes had changed when he learned that I had tricked him. Like the rest of the crowd, Jubilee was staring down at Ogleby, but unlike them, she wasn’t really watching. Her expression was serious, her thoughts turned inward, preoccupied with the magnitude of what she was about to do. I reached into my pocket, fingering her note.

Ogleby finished, took his bows, and I sat down. Next would be Phillipa and the other butterflies, the sequence of the acts so familiar that I paid no attention. My thoughts were on Jubilee, the scent
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of warm canvas reminding me of her sweet smell, of her wrists beneath my fingers as I helped her with the mirror.

Yet something was amiss. The music that began was not for the butterflies, after all, but for me. For the Fire King. I felt a surge of confusion, because these notes meant one thing and one thing only: that I should be standing ready in my cape, heart thrilling, curtain rising, about to make my entrance. I felt a nightmare panic as a fl aming hoop,
my
hoop, descended from the ceiling.

The curtain lifted then, slowly it seemed, and a new Fire King bounded over the sawdust and leaped through the fl aming hoop, my silk robes nearly catching fire, billowing and pooling at his ankles as he landed. He bowed, and the crowd laughed, thinking he was a parody. I knew better; I saw the determination on his face.

His hand was still bandaged, making him clumsy, but nonetheless Eli managed to light the coals, to pick up a fork and put the burning embers in his mouth. His hands were trembling and some of the coals slipped off into the ring. Sawdust flared, and Eli interrupted his act to stomp out the little flames. The audience laughed again. Except for Jubilee, who was leaning forward with a frown of concentration.

Normally, people do not laugh at a Fire King. They gasp, they hold their breath, they sigh in relief, but they do not laugh. Thus, as I pushed my way downward, each roar of those around me let me know things were progressing badly, even when I could not see him. I was furious at Eli, at his audacity, his mockery, but more than that, I was afraid. I had seen the bottles of kerosene lined up carelessly beneath the table. I knew better than anyone how quickly sawdust could ignite, how fast a tent like this could disappear in fl ames.

The crowd around me laughed again. People jostled, standing on their toes. And then softly at first, but then more forcefully, I felt a pressure, as if everyone around me had taken a deep breath at once. I was standing on the ground now and could not see the ring for the press of people, but I felt the panic rising, felt the pressure as people turned to flee. The music was still playing. I pushed hard and broke through into the center ring. The sawdust on the floor had all caught fire, was shimmering in the heat like a fi eld of
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grass. Eli was standing on the far side of the flames, trying to stamp them down with his feet, my silk cape discarded, already curling at the edges, the smell of burning silk pungent in the air.

Fire gone wild is like a seeking hand, grasping at the air in search of something dry. These flames moved quickly, pulling themselves up the canvas walls, crackling and hissing, catching on the dry kindling of the bleachers. Waves of heat rose off the fl ames, shimmering, and the thick black edges of the smoke drifted high, dissipating into hazy gray. I searched for Jubilee, but I could not see her. Within a few moments there was fire on every side, and the light grew eerie, flickering and bright, the air so hot my lungs went dry with every little panting breath I took. People swirled around me in the smoke, faces surfaced, disappeared, and the tent was fi lled with a determined silence as people pushed and struggled for an exit. I watched the flames climb high, leap and fl are, turning green-edged as they consumed the canvas, bluer as they fed on wood.