Read Online A Bird's Eye by Cary Fagan - Free Book Online Page B

a path covered in overhanging tree branches. We passed cottages with glowing windows. Somebody was stacking a woodpile. Faces under a lantern were eating dinner. Somebody was playing “Happy Days Are Here Again” on a ukulele. We passed the last cottage and passed through another thicket of trees, and then we got to the shore and, again, the dark lake.
    I ignored Corinne nagging me to go back. She had always been the brave one, but it was as if she had lost her nerve suddenly. We came to a stand of birches on a crest above the beach. The trees shimmered with flashes of strange light. As we got closer, I saw little fans of tinfoil, made from the liners of cigarette packages, hanging from the branches. A shelter came into view, a patchwork of wooden boards and old doors and crate lids nailed together. The slanted tarpaper roof had a stovepipe sticking up.
    â€œI can’t find which door is real,” I said.
    â€œMaybe there isn’t one.”
    â€œHere, this must be it.”
    I knocked hard, waited, heard something inside, waited some more. At last the door opened — it was slanted and opened at a peculiar angle — and a man stepped out. I had been worried he might be crazy, but he didn’t look it. He was tall and frail and neatly dressed in a suit shiny from wear. White hair neatly trimmed and a thin moustache. He looked at us with drooping eyes.
    â€œAnd whom do I have the pleasure of finding at my door?”
    â€œMr. Murenski? The Great Murenski?”
    â€œNot so great anymore.”
    Corinne pointed at me. “He’s a magician too.”
    I blurted out, “I always use the Murenski finish on the rope and ring illusion.”
    â€œI’m flattered. I only wish that I still could.”
    I saw the tremble in his hands. “Did you really know Keller?” I asked.
    â€œSo first it’s Murenski and now it’s Keller?”
    â€œI didn’t mean it that way.”
    â€œI’m joking. And yes, I knew Keller. He came to spy on my act. Of course, I’d already spied on his.”
    Corinne said, “He wants you to teach him. He’s got money.”
    â€œNot a lot of money,” I said.
    â€œI don’t take money from children. It’s getting chilly, isn’t it? Would you two mind snitching some wood from the last woodpile you saw? We can get a fire started and make some tea.”
    It was the beginning of many visits and even more hard work. But he was the real thing, an artist of the conjuring arts. And having a young disciple gave him a new energy for a while, a chance to relive his glory years and see, in my own face, the pleasure and excitement and ambition that he had once had.

My father did not like having to pay the streetcar fare for work. And too often there were delays — a delivery truck turned over, a horse dead in the street. So he bought a bicycle at a used-furniture dealer on Gerrard Street. It was a black Dawes model that must have been thirty years old. He strapped on his briefcase and began to cycle about the city, knees pointing out awkwardly.
    This new job suited my father’s temperament. A door would open and in that moment’s view — children scrabbling at the table, or a man asleep on the sofa with a hat over his face, or piles of ancient newspapers everywhere — he would get a glimpse of other lives. It stimulated his imagination and at the same time it was as much information as he wanted.
    He had cycled over the Bloor Street viaduct, the green valley and trickling Don River below, and was now working the streets off Pape Avenue. Wroxeter. Frizzell. Dingwall. In an apartment house on Bain, a door was slammed in his face; the man of the house didn’t like his wife talking to people. But he had already got what he needed and, standing in the hallway that smelled of boiled eggs, he wrote up the entry on his clipboard. Morgan, Howard, unemployed. Morgan, Mrs. Frances, attendant, House of