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Charlie stood by the side of the road, stared down the highway unspooling and empty for as far as he could see. All of six years old, he hoped that with every step he was headed in the right direction. All he knew was to keep heading north and get his bearings by the position of the sun. Last night he’d laid down just off the highway in the tall grass, and now the wet of the morning dew covered him. He felt chilled in spite of the rising sun.
“It’ll be all right,” he whispered, like he was talking to one of the other small boys after a beat-up instead of himself. “Somehow, it’ll be all right.”
He shook himself, brushed off the nettles that clung to his pants leg. Some were stubborn and would have to be dealt with later, but now it was time to try to simply put more miles between him and the Monroe County Home for Boys. He picked up his sack and started walking down the highway. His stride was purposeful, but being small for his age, his legs had to do double the duty. The sun climbed higher, and other than the flight of small birds and a large, noisy woodpecker, Charlie was the only thing that could be seen moving across the land. A speck of a boy making his way to what he hoped was better ground. Miles passed and hours with them, and the only thing Charlie knew was to press forward.
“Wasted time in looking back is what I say.”
He spoke to himself this way, like a man and not a boy, to try to build up his courage. He imagined he was headed to some grand reunion where he would find someone who knew him, knew of him, knew his parents. Even a tiny thread that would explain to him how he’d ended up where he’d been. He didn’t know how this might come about, but he hoped there was some magic in the world that would make it possible. He longed to belong somewhere, or more correctly, to someone. No one belonged in the orphan home. He was smart enough to know the difference between someone having to take care of you and someone wanting to. The home had to. Miss Nettie wanted to. And leaving her was the only sorrow he carried with him.
#
In the distance he heard a motor. He stopped and turned and waited. Directly, the car grew closer and he could see that two people were riding in the front. As they got closer still, he could see that it was a man and woman and that the woman was holding a baby. He held his hand up towards the car and the man behind the wheel slowed down and came to a stop beside him. He leaned on the steering wheel and looked at Charlie past his wife.
“What in the world is the likes of you doin’ out here?”
“Just makin’ my way. I could use a ride, sir.”
The woman smiled at him, and he thought appealing to her might be his best chance.
“I’m trying to get to Columbus. To the mill. My uncle’s expecting me there.”
It was a lie, he knew. But it was a white lie, a small one meant for good, so he allowed it.
“Then seems to me he would’ve sent you a bus ticket.” The man looked at the woods, out across a field that was taken up with little sacrifice trees and scrub. “This ain’t no thing a boy your age should be out here doing.”
“Wasn’t money, sir, for a ticket. Besides, I’m all of seven come next month.”
“You don’t look a day over five. Same size as my brother’s boy.”
“Well, that’s my affliction.”
“Say what?” The man held his hand to his ear and tilted his head further out the window.
“I said,” Charlie raised his voice, “they tell me it’s my affliction. Being small and such.”
At this, the man turned to his wife. “What you think, Ma?” he asked her.
“I say we carry him with us ‘til our paths have to part.”
The man turned back to him, calculating responsibility. Another mouth to feed. A trouble brought along unwanted.
“What’s your name?”
“Charlie Green.” Charlie raised himself up to his fullest, stretched high. “I can come in handy sometimes.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s what they tell me.”
The man softened, relented.
“I’m Harry Winston, and this here is my wife.” He pointed his thumb toward the woman. Then he pointed to the baby on the woman’s lap. “And that there is Jacob.”
Charlie looked into the car window, raised himself up on his toes to get a better look at the baby.
“A name like that orta carry him through the fires of trouble.”
The man studied him with a curious look. “Reckon you got some preach in you.”
“It’s just something Miss Nettie says.”
Then he worried that he’d said the cook’s name and maybe given away that he was on the runaway list. Thankfully, the woman piped in before the man could ask him who Miss Nettie was.
She placed a hand on her husband’s arm. “We’ll carry you at least as far as Henson’s crossroads.”
Charlie got in the car, leaned his head back on the seat, and closed his eyes. For a long time, the man and woman up front didn’t say anything, so there was just the relief of the quiet. Then they were speaking so low he couldn’t hear them over the sound of the tires on the road. He fought sleep coming on in case he needed to keep his wits about him, but the hum of the tires, the low lull and lilt of their voices, and the slight swaying of the car all rolled into one long thing and Charlie fell fast asleep.
The woman woke him with a soft hand on his knee. She shook him gently. “We’re here. This is where we have to leave you.”
When he opened his eyes, she was smiling at him in a way that made his heart snap. That smile made him think of Miss Nettie, and, for a second, he thought of just going back the way he’d come. A man was pumping gas just outside the window, and he eyed Charlie through the glass with a curiosity that worried Charlie right off. Mr. Winston was talking to the man in a low voice. He saw Mr. Winston point down the highway in the direction they’d come. Then a storm cloud burst open, and Mr. Winston paid the man who had just put the pump up.
When he got back in the car, rain dripped from his hair and the tip of his nose. He rubbed his nose on his sleeve, ran his hand through his hair, patted it down.
“Well, this is it. Keep headin’ north and you’ll reach Columbus, but it might take you a few days with them legs of yours.” He chuckled when he said it, but the serious look on Charlie’s face silenced him. “Good luck, kid,” he said as Charlie opened the door and climbed out. Then he motioned for him to come to the window and reached his long arm out and held a nickel out to Charlie. He winked at him and said again, “Good luck, kid,” and the woman waved before she turned her attention back to the baby, and then they were gone.
Charlie watched as the taillights pulled out on the highway and turned right at the crossroads. He hadn’t eaten any real food since a few bites at breakfast yesterday. It pained him to think of the way he’d snuck out on Nettie. But he’d left the note, so there was that. Then he looked at the nickel in his hand and knew exactly how he would spend it.
#
The old man stared down at Charlie as he placed the Coca-Cola on the counter between them. That stare, which at first had made Charlie nervous, now made him feel trapped. He could tell by his expression the man suspected what the real story was. There was no escaping the truth. It was odd for him to be off on his own out here where there wasn’t much of anything. He looked out of place. The man looked like he was deciding if he needed to pick up that telephone and tell the operator to call the local sheriff.
Charlie left his nickel on the counter. Rested his hands around the straps of his overalls and waited. The man slowly placed a long finger on the nickel and pulled it toward him. He reached behind him for a church key and opened the cola and passed it down to Charlie.
“That’ll do it?”
“I reckon,” Charlie said. He took the drink and held it in his hand, the outside of the bottle wet with condensation and cool to his palm.
The man studied him for a bit, then opened the jar on the counter that was filled with pickled eggs. He talked to Charlie as he grasped one with the tongs and lifted it out. “I hear tell you’re headed to Columbus.” He wrapped the egg in brown paper, leaned over the counter so his face was closer to Charlie’s, and passed the egg to him. “That might put a little strength in you. You got quite a long way to go to get there.”
Charlie felt his mouth water as he took the egg and said, “Thank you, mister.” He took a large bite and downed half the egg at once.
The man watched him swallow, made a grumbling noise, and said, “Oh, what the hell.” He opened the jar and picked out another egg, repeated the process with the brown paper, and handed it to him. This time Charlie said nothing. He simply grinned that grin that lit up his face and charmed other folks most every time.
“If they catch you, they’ll put you on the orphan train,” the man said. “Best advice I can give you is stay just off the road. You got lucky with that man and woman, but a boy like you out on the road can get in all kinds of trouble you aren’t asking for. Do you understand me?”
Charlie swallowed another bite and nodded his head, yes. He knew trouble lurked and that there were bad people in this world and that you needed to be able to tell the good ones from the bad. And the in-between ones, too. He knew to run from those who made him wary. But he didn’t know about any orphan train, and it sounded like another way to keep him from getting where he was going.
“Orphan train?”
The man waved a hand in the air in exasperation. “Oh, it’s something they took to doing.” His tone sounded like he didn’t approve. “So many people dying of consumption that they leave a passel of children behind who’ve got nobody. They round ‘em up and put ‘em on a train and they send them out west.”
Charlie finished the second egg and took a sip of his coke. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What happens to them then?”
The man thought about it a moment, then said, “Heck if I know.” He slid the glasses down on the bridge of his nose and looked down at Charlie over the rims. “All I know is none of them kids are ever seen again. Poof!” He demonstrated with his hands. “They’re just gone. Like they disappeared into thin air. Like they were never here at all.”
#
“Hey, you plan on drinking that by yourself?”
The voice came from a straw-haired boy who sat on the ground with his back against the general store where he’d tried to get out of the rain by staying under the eave. His bony knees jutted up at sharp angles.
Charlie looked backwards at the store, but he couldn’t see the man behind the counter through the glass. He hoped he hadn’t had a change of heart, that he wasn’t at this moment calling the law. He turned his attention back to the boy, who had stood up and was brushing at the dirt on his pants, but it was only a half-hearted gesture. He couldn’t clean those pants no matter how long he tried, and he knew it. The pants hung loose on him and were too long. He’d rolled them up at the leg, but they were already unrolling again. He had on a man’s work shirt that looked two sizes too big, and when he talked, he used his arms as much as his words, swinging them high and low. That swinging, along with his thinness in the big clothes and his sandy hair, made him look like a scarecrow whipped about in the wind.
“He won’t let me in the store no more,” the boy said, pointing toward the door as if Charlie had asked him a question.
He waited for a response, but Charlie just took a sip of his coke and looked from the boy to the store window and back at the boy again.
“It’s on account I steal something every chance I can.” The boy grinned when he said it like it was just the funniest thing.
“Well.” Charlie took a long sip. He cocked his head and looked up at the boy, trying to get a read on him the way he did anytime a new boy showed up at the orphanage. Would he be a mean one? Would he be likely to steal something and then lie and say Charlie did it? He’d had trouble with those kinds of boys. But he had never met a boy that looked feral like this one, and he’d never known a boy who admitted outright to stealing. He took another sip of the Coke, something he’d only had twice before in his life, and watched the boy’s eyes follow the bottle as he tilted it up. He took a few steps toward the boy, and when he reached him, he passed him the bottle.
The boy started to drink, then looked back at Charlie. “You mean it?”
Charlie shrugged. “I ain’t much used to the taste of it anyway,” he said, and then he looked away because he didn’t want to watch the boy drain the last drop.
“They call me Mott.”
“I’m Charlie.”
The rain had let up some, become a drizzle, and in a few more minutes, the sun burst out from behind the clouds. The water pooled in the dirt of the parking lot and caught the sun, its surface sparkling. The tall grasses beside the road swayed in the breeze, every blade shiny from the rain.
“Would you look at that?” The boy cupped his hand over his eyes and looked up like he’d never seen a blue sky. Then he sat down quickly, like the shock of the sunshine had made him faint.
“Well, I’ll be getting on down the road,” Charlie said, looking back over his shoulder again. He was still expecting a call, a sheriff’s car, and long ride back to the orphan home. The beating he’d have to take. The dismay of ending up right back where he started. He didn’t intend for that to happen.
“Where you off to?”
“Columbus.”
“The big city? What you got there?”
Charlie suddenly felt as tired as an old man. As if he’d been battling the hand he’d been dealt for fifty years and then some. A weary, war-torn soul. He didn’t feel like talking much or offering up explanations. But the boy waited with such patient expectation that he felt obliged to say something.
“I hear tell they take on scavengers. At the mill, I mean.”
“I don’t know what a scavenger is, but it sounds like a terrible thing to be.” The boy turned the empty bottle up again, held it on his tongue to no avail, brought it down and twisted it back and forth between his palms. “Well, I’ll tell you something. Me, I’m gonna join the traveling circus and see the world.” He grinned when he said this. “And not just any circus. I’m gonna join the Greatest Show On Earth.”
“What’s that?”
“What’s that?!” The boy leaned back, eyes wide, incredulous. “You don’t know about the greatest circus that ever was?”
Charlie looked back at the store. “Look, I got to be getting on down the road. Like I said.”
The boy rubbed his chin as if he were stroking a beard, contemplating the serious child before him. “Well, looks like we are headed the same way.” He stood again, rocking up on the balls of his feet. “I might as well keep you company.”
He reached out quickly, grabbed Charlie’s shoulder, and spun him around to face the store.
“See that old man Harris in there? That’s my granddaddy’s second cousin on my mother’s side. I figure me taking something here and there is just all in the family, but he doesn’t see it that way.”
“How does your Mama see it?”
“Mama is six feet in the dirt. She don’t see nothin’no more.”
“Maybe she’s looking down from heaven.”
The boy ignored this and carried on.
“Sharing is what a family does, wouldn’t you think? Like you, sharing that Coke. Now, that’s what family is all about.” He dropped his hand, and his voice picked up a wistful sound. “Or at least, that’s what it seems like it should be.”
Charlie had been an orphan all his life. Disappointment about family was etched in his bones but not worth talking about. And he had business to take care of.
“Well, good luck to you,” Charlie picked up his sack and this time started walking toward the highway in earnest. It didn’t take long for Mott to follow along and come up beside him.
“No, sir, no kind of family is that. I’m better off with the circus.”
They walked north along the highway. Occasionally, Charlie looked behind him, but mile after mile, his new friend regaled him with stories of the circus. Mott had seen a traveling circus twice but had yet to see the one he desired the most.
“I tell you, they got a hundred train cars full of all the magic you ever wanted and animals like you ain’t never seen. They got lions and elephants and wonders. I even heard they have women dressed in red flying high above your head in the big top. And Charlie, it all happens at the same time.”
Charlie imagined women with wings. “Did you see those women flying?”
“Nah.” Mott laughed. “It wasn’t the greatest show. It was just the only show around, so there were no flying women, but I did see a woman with a beard.”
“Really?”
“Swear.” He held up his hand to illustrate. “Had a full beard but also had…” He motioned to his chest with both hands, making a rounded motion, “She sure was full in other places, too.” He shook his head in amazement at the memory.
“Wonders,” Charlie said.
“Just imagine traveling on those rails with a hundred cars full of every manner of incredible thing.”
He clapped Charlie on the back so hard he stumbled two steps forward. Mott reached out a hand to his shoulder to help him regain his balance, then the two of them marched in time, side by side.
They passed the miles in the company of all the strange wonders and magnificent sights that Mott rolled out, and in their minds, elephants walked through the cotton fields and women with iridescent wings flew high above their heads and the ringmaster cried out in a voice that stopped time: Come one and come all to the greatest show on earth.
River Jordan is an author, speaker, teacher and radio host. As a southerner with a global perspective she is a passionate advocate for the power of story. River’s writing career began as a playwright and she spent over ten years writing and directing. She is the author of four novels and three spiritual memoirs. Her work has been most frequently cast in the company of such writers as Flannery O’Conner, William Faulkner, and Harper Lee. Ms. Jordan has been a regular contributor to Psychology Today and a host of the radio program, Clearstory, which aired from Nashville for over fifteen years where she interviewed award-winning and best-selling authors of all genres. She is currently launching a new podcast, God on the Rocks, which features soulful conversations with authors, artists, musicians and other cool humans about their favorite things. Jordan currently lives on the North Carolina Coast where she walks the beach, contemplates string theory beneath the stars and all things Divine.