Read Online Tell My Sorrows to the Stones by Christopher Golden - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Christopher Golden
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to go.
Put on a happy face
, his mother would have said. Remembering did make him smile, but it faded quickly.
The wind picked up as he walked the grounds, which were rutted and pitted with tire tracks from decades of vehicles moving through the fields in all weather, turning up muddy ridges, which had then dried and hardened. Loud voices came from the trailers where the workers had made their own small camp, and he could smell sausages cooking on a grill. When he passed a tent, he saw them, standing in a semi-circle, drinking beer, a small radio picking up a static-laced broadcast of tonight’s Red Sox-Yankees game. Summer in New England. These guys looked like their entire life was a tailgate party. They worked hard and were content with the cycle of labour and paycheque, beer and cookouts and Red Sox games. In a way, Benny envied them.
The stencil on the side of the converted school bus read ROSE’S MOBILE BOOK FAIR. In a side window there hung a cardboard sign, “New, Used, and Antiquarian—Something For Everyone,” written in thick black magic marker. Benny had seen the bus several times this season, in Vermont and New Hampshire and upstate New York. It might’ve been there when they’d played Bangor back in May, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d never been inside—he’d never been much for books, unless they were about clowns or vaudeville or something useful.
Tonight, he just wanted a distraction.
The accordion bus door was open and a sign indicated that the mobile book fair was as well, so he went up the couple of steps, ducking his head though he’d never be tall enough to bang it. Oddly enough, he didn’t notice the woman right away. At first, all he could see were the books, and he wondered how she managed to keep them all from falling off the shelves while she drove the old beast of a school bus around the northeastern United States. The metal shelving units had been secured to the walls and lined both sides of the bus. Each shelf had an ingenious device, a bar that went across the spines of the books to hold them in place and could be locked into different notches to accommodate racks of books of different sizes.
“Looking for something to read?” the woman asked, and he blinked and stared at her.
She’d been there all along, of course, but it felt almost as if he’d dreamed her into being. Slender and fit, perhaps forty, she wore black pants and shoes and a tight pink tank with a bright red rose silhouette stretched across her breasts. Rose—for how could she have been anyone else?—had an olive complexion and a proud Roman nose, and she wore a kindly expression, her gaze alert and attentive. Though the interior of the mobile book fair was lit mainly with strings of old white Christmas lights, he could see that her eyes were icy blue. It both pleased and unnerved him to have someone study him with such intensity—such intimacy. People looked at him all the time when he had his clown makeup on, but he couldn’t remember how long it had been since anyone had really
seen
him when he didn’t have it on.
“I doubt you’d have anything for me,” he said. “I’m not a big reader.”
“Didn’t you see the sign,” she said, amused. “Something for everyone. What do you do here?”
He almost lied, but she would’ve taken one look at his little pot belly and stiff shoulders and known he wasn’t an acrobat.
“I’m a clown.”
Her eyes lit up. “I’ve got a small section back here. Not a whole shelf, but a handful of interesting antiquarian books I picked up from an old guy in Cheektowaga, when his carnival went belly up.”
Most of the books were things he’d seen before. Way back in high school, he’d researched Grimaldi and Tovolo and Ricketts, studied the Fratellinis, and watched the films of the great movie directors who had started their careers as circus clowns, like Fellini and Jodorowsky. Charlie Chaplin had become his god, and he mastered the rolling walk of the
Put on a happy face
, his mother would have said. Remembering did make him smile, but it faded quickly.
The wind picked up as he walked the grounds, which were rutted and pitted with tire tracks from decades of vehicles moving through the fields in all weather, turning up muddy ridges, which had then dried and hardened. Loud voices came from the trailers where the workers had made their own small camp, and he could smell sausages cooking on a grill. When he passed a tent, he saw them, standing in a semi-circle, drinking beer, a small radio picking up a static-laced broadcast of tonight’s Red Sox-Yankees game. Summer in New England. These guys looked like their entire life was a tailgate party. They worked hard and were content with the cycle of labour and paycheque, beer and cookouts and Red Sox games. In a way, Benny envied them.
The stencil on the side of the converted school bus read ROSE’S MOBILE BOOK FAIR. In a side window there hung a cardboard sign, “New, Used, and Antiquarian—Something For Everyone,” written in thick black magic marker. Benny had seen the bus several times this season, in Vermont and New Hampshire and upstate New York. It might’ve been there when they’d played Bangor back in May, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d never been inside—he’d never been much for books, unless they were about clowns or vaudeville or something useful.
Tonight, he just wanted a distraction.
The accordion bus door was open and a sign indicated that the mobile book fair was as well, so he went up the couple of steps, ducking his head though he’d never be tall enough to bang it. Oddly enough, he didn’t notice the woman right away. At first, all he could see were the books, and he wondered how she managed to keep them all from falling off the shelves while she drove the old beast of a school bus around the northeastern United States. The metal shelving units had been secured to the walls and lined both sides of the bus. Each shelf had an ingenious device, a bar that went across the spines of the books to hold them in place and could be locked into different notches to accommodate racks of books of different sizes.
“Looking for something to read?” the woman asked, and he blinked and stared at her.
She’d been there all along, of course, but it felt almost as if he’d dreamed her into being. Slender and fit, perhaps forty, she wore black pants and shoes and a tight pink tank with a bright red rose silhouette stretched across her breasts. Rose—for how could she have been anyone else?—had an olive complexion and a proud Roman nose, and she wore a kindly expression, her gaze alert and attentive. Though the interior of the mobile book fair was lit mainly with strings of old white Christmas lights, he could see that her eyes were icy blue. It both pleased and unnerved him to have someone study him with such intensity—such intimacy. People looked at him all the time when he had his clown makeup on, but he couldn’t remember how long it had been since anyone had really
seen
him when he didn’t have it on.
“I doubt you’d have anything for me,” he said. “I’m not a big reader.”
“Didn’t you see the sign,” she said, amused. “Something for everyone. What do you do here?”
He almost lied, but she would’ve taken one look at his little pot belly and stiff shoulders and known he wasn’t an acrobat.
“I’m a clown.”
Her eyes lit up. “I’ve got a small section back here. Not a whole shelf, but a handful of interesting antiquarian books I picked up from an old guy in Cheektowaga, when his carnival went belly up.”
Most of the books were things he’d seen before. Way back in high school, he’d researched Grimaldi and Tovolo and Ricketts, studied the Fratellinis, and watched the films of the great movie directors who had started their careers as circus clowns, like Fellini and Jodorowsky. Charlie Chaplin had become his god, and he mastered the rolling walk of the
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