Circus Solace

Circus Solace

by

Chris Castle

Published in 2014

Copyright © FreedomFiction.com and Chris Castle

www.freedomfiction.com

ISBN: 978-1-304-79575-5

First Edition

The publisher and its author assert their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher and/or author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Cover Image by Eleanor Bennett

www.eleanorleonnebennett.com

“Time’s a little of a mystery when it comes to Moon-Dip history” ~ Marcus

"Circus Solace is a story about growing up, loss and being a child, in some ways, forever. It is a story about father and sons, friends and enemies, families lost and families re-forged in curious circumstances. It is fantastical and down to earth and explains why zombies need to juggle, if only for an hour a day."

~ FreedomFiction.com

"A diner owner, a chameleon and a zombie are not surprising. What is surprising is that this story has already happened to so many of us. Metaphors. Meaning. Mazel-tov."

~ Raymond Hamilton

Review from Raymond Hamilton:

"Circus Solace is a glimpse of genius. As always Chris Castle weaves family, emotions, loss and friendships into one story and makes an epic heart-wrenching tale of relationships and the human condition. His grasp of human nature surpasses the best of qualified psychiatrists. Chris Castle has not written a children's story as an adult. He has written a story for all adults using the perspective of innocent, all-loving, curious children. Therein lies the proof that we will hear Chris Castle's name echo in literary
circles soon enough."

Foreword

Circus Solace is a parable of the 20th century. A fable that narrates the decline of the modern man. Using the simple devices of a teenage story, Chris Castle paints a portrait of visible decadence in humanity. Our generation, as with the generation before us, have cared for now and worried not about tomorrow or the ones from yesterday. Circus Solace weaves a network of characters and incidents and instances where you say, "I can relate to that!"

If there ever was a man who has gauged humanity, who has understood every emotion, who has insight into the very everyday actions of modern citizens - it is the author Chris Castle. A teacher by profession, Chris Castle proves that he is in a noble profession and our children have a bright future in the nourishing hands of such educators.

As you read this novella, if you feel a tear-drop, let it drop. If you feel a sad smile, let it break upon your face. If you feel joy for a simple accomplishment, go ahead and cheer. The story is alive. The people in it are alive. You can name them. Re-name them as per the people in your own life. This book hits that close to home. Don't worry about possibilities, or consequences, or absurdities. Look at it objectively and you can't help but feel subjectively as to your own past experiences. Let the story consume you. As it devours you, page by page, it will invoke a spark. A little flame inside your heart asking you to be noble, be kind, be considerate. We are all in this together. We are floating and crashing across the galaxies in the same ship called planet Earth. Why be a stranger? Be a friend to have a friend. You own this ship. So does your neighbour. So does the dung beetle and the salmon swimming upstream. Take this epic tale of search, longing, discovery, passion and providence as a milestone after which you become the change you want in others.

~ Ujjwal Dey

Managing Editor, FreedomFiction.com

Nobody said anything.

For the first few days after Matt’s m
a had gone, the silence was what he remembered most of all. His ma had been a light and a firecracker. She made Matt giggle and Pa smile and filled the house with letters and laughter from the walls to the rafters. Words came to her like rain, one after the other, falling, falling and never stopping. It was as if she wanted to frame the family through speeches.

And then she was gone.

Matt knew he was in shock and too young to understand everything he was feeling, so instead he looked to Pa. Each morning he walked up to his father and the big man put a hand on Matt’s shoulder and patted it, as if he could shake off the pain like crumbs of dirt and dust. In the afternoon they would sit around the table and eat, the walls almost growing tight with the quiet that hummed and bloated between them. The dinner table that had once been so cluttered with spreads, jams and mis-placed needlework, was now bare and somehow smaller. It was dark magic at work, he thought, to make the walls shift and the loving places suffocate and shrink.

In the evening he would watch
Pa move from his chair in one room to the edge of the bed in another. It was as if he could not allow himself to be comfortable now that she was gone. Pa sat perched as if waiting for her to return, while Matt wandered the house, no longer recognising it as their home.

How long did this go on for? Matt was not sure.
It was a time of rainy spells and harsh winds, to be sure. It was a season of grey skies and black clouds and roads full of rushing, roaring cars. It was a succession of half-formed words and bitter weather and a time when all that came on the radio was the news and never a song. By the time the letter flip-flapped through the letterbox and onto the floor, Matt almost jumped out loud and yelped at the shock of the noise. He ran from the living room to the door, scooping up the envelope in both hands. Matt nearly fainted when he saw his ma’s handwriting looking back at him.    

As he
walked back to the living room, his hands were shaking around the envelope, making his ma’s letters look as if they were alive. He got as far as the arm of the chair before Pa even noticed him. Rather than speak, Matt held up the letter and watched as Pa studied it, as if it were alive and some rare species. He held it to the light, both of them staring at the letter inside, almost glowing like treasure. For a long while, Pa studied the handwriting on the envelope, running his fingertips over each letter and then gently tore at the top of it, careful not to damage a single word. The noise of the paper ripping was almost unbearable to Matt’s ears; such was the silence that now commanded the house.

Matt watched as
Pa’s eyes danced over the words. Matt saw the traces and outlines of each page as it slipped behind the next. The first gave way to a second and a jumble of words gave way to a map. The final piece was little more than two lines and the rest a trail of ‘x’ kisses that made Matt’s throat tighten and almost choke. He made himself look away from the paper and up to Pa’s face and saw the strangest thing. He was crying but each drop of water did not make his eyes blur but turn clearer. Each fresh pebble of water made the green seem brighter and the flecks of blue appeared more striking. By the time the last tear had rolled down his cheek, all the tiredness and sorrow had slipped back, to be replaced with light.

“Son,” he said, his voice, his
real
voice, almost booming and ricocheting across the walls. “Go find that battered old suitcase that’s upstairs someplace, would you?”

“Yes sir,” Matt replied, seeing the stranger that had sat in that chair for however long it had been disappear.
In an instant, a part of him wanted to read the letter but somehow a bigger part of him knew that it wasn’t the right time, not yet. Instead, Matt peeled away from the chair and ran out of the room. In a moment it had all disappeared: the heaviness in the legs, the lead in the heart, the sluggish fear in the body and bones, all vanished. He reached the bedroom, found the suitcase and Matt felt, for the first time in a long time, as if he could fly all over again.

             
                            *

They climbed in the car and drove for what seemed like a
good part of forever. On that first day, they drove through the grey and into the night and parked under the stars to sleep. Their alarm clock was the first signs of dawn, along with the birds that squawked and screeched overhead. As they followed the map, the country seemed to disappear. In amongst the zigzag’s, the X’s pointed out motels to stop and rest. The further they drove away from the cities, the more the motels started looking as if they’d been built out of dreams. First there was The Giant Bell, painted with red and white stripes which offered bed and board and a free tour of the Miniature Mouse Museum. Then there was The Boot, where they took a room whose balcony ran along the buckle, all gold railings and views of the forest. Others: The Lazy Bear, with it’s grizzly chandeliers; The Glass Bottomed Barn, with its Glass Bee exhibition; The Novel Nod, whose bed sheets were weaved out of discarded books sleeves.

Every time they checked in, Matt wondered how it was that his ma
had known about all these tricky, sly places. Once he summoned up the courage to ask Pa, who would reach for the letter and scan the lines and read out loud what she had written. She had stayed for a weekend of trick-or-treating with her sister; another time she had spent New Year’s Eve alone, fashioning strangers into friends. Matt could see Pa’s surprise at each brief explanation that was not really explanations at all. The answers had great, wide holes in their centres, leaving them both to guess what could have gone on. Sometimes they tried to guess; Pa thought maybe she’d worked in some of these places, while Matt imagined she was somehow on the run from some great, historical drama.

Ma’s life on the road
became a ritual between them. In the evening, they would order dinner, make their assumptions, weave their stories and end up satisfied, confused or in as much of a muddle as they had been when they’d started. It didn’t matter, not really and they would laugh at what they’d come up with. Pa would shake his head, defeated and Matt’s eyes would widen at the possibility that the truth may have been even greater than the stories they concocted. Each night he would look out to the stars and marvel at how his ma was still there, somehow; her voice still in the spaces between them, coming from Pa’s lips or his own, but still full of her own words.

How long were they on the road for?

It was hard to say. Pa had forsaken newspapers and bad news and the only way they could be contacted now was if someone sent a carrier pigeon. The deeper they went into the countryside, the more unpredictable the weather. It could be blazing at dawn and a tempest storm by breakfast, with a forecast of snow for lunch. No-one in the motels seemed to mention it and Pa answered each blob of snow or streak of lightning with a shrug. It made Matt smile when he did this; it was something his ma did when there was no answer, or maybe there was an answer but she didn’t want to go looking too deeply for it. She told him once that her family blood ran deep in Greece, so she was born with the ability to pick and choose what she cared about. It made her fierce, she told him with a wink-another ma trademark- but only about the things that mattered. ‘
The Greeks invented democracy
,’ she’d say, looking briefly to Pa and then back to Matt. ‘
That’s why we never lose an argument
.’

So: shrugs and driving and crazy motels in all weathers. A time when Matt felt everything and knew
Pa felt the same. Sadness for his ma, streaks of happiness when they talked over the dinner table and a bundle of tiredness and excitement for every mile they travelled. The map seemed to spin, loop and double back with little logic save for the fact it was in her handwriting and they believed in it. By the time they checked out of the last motel, The Cross-Eyed Moose, the map seemed to lead in one long straight line all the way to the final destination. Matt did not know what it was and neither did Pa but it was there they would go, all the same. As they drove down the road, a shower broke and fought with the sun and a rainbow appeared briefly, looping down towards the spot where the map ran out. Pa looked over and smiled, both of them tense and excited.

“Here we go,” he said quietly a
s the car pushed forward, almost being swallowed up in the faint beams of colour overhead.

             
                            *    

The
town of Moon-Dip Falls was like nothing Matt had ever seen before. As they drove by the town limits something washed over him, a tremble of joy but weighed under something heavier, like sorrow. It felt like a town that had once been happy but long, long ago. As they drove down the streets there were flickers of what had once been; a beautiful house, an antique street lamp but everything was tinged with darkness. The house looked shaded and tired looking, the glass of the street lamp, Matt noted, was cracked. He looked over and saw Pa frown, which was a sure give-away that he, too, thought that all was not quite right with Moon-Dip Falls.

As they navigated the side streets and slip roads, Matt began to look more closely at what was going on in the town. First of all, he noticed how every street sign had been altered slightly-a letter here and there-to change the name of the road.
‘Harfield Road’ had been changed to ‘Garfield Road,’ after the cartoon cat but something seemed off. It was that strange feeling of hearing a joke that wasn’t really funny. He had seen it before and knew it went one of two ways. Either folks laughed out of pity or out of fear. This felt like the latter and imagined how horrible it must be, to be forced to laugh.

Luckily, the map inside the map-a folded square
, cello-taped to the main page, showed an intricate web of lines leading to their destination and the altered road names didn’t matter. However, Matt noticed other things that left him on edge. The sidewalks seemed too wide and the roads too small. The shop windows-the ones that were open at least-had signs that seemed too bright, garish enough to hurt Matt’s eyes and again that feeling of being forced came into his mind. As they veered off the main drag, Matt realised there was one more scratch in his mind that wouldn’t go away and that was the people. Every one in Moon-Dip Falls looked as if they were walking on egg shells. Matt watched a man almost tip-toe down the street, even though there was nobody and nothing near him to make him act so carefully. As he looked around, he saw a woman behaving in a similar way and further down a teenager girl, too. The car turned a corner and the strip disappeared. As it did, Matt couldn’t help thinking what is was they were doing in such a sad, sorry and strange place as Moon-Dip Falls. He glanced over and saw Pa’s frown had not moved an inch either way.

The last road was as much rocks as it was cement and the car jiggled and jostled all the way to the gate.
Pa climbed out and wandered up to the padlocked chain. It slipped away easily, like a rusty snake and soon the two of them were pushing the gates open. Matt glanced down the driveway and saw the house inside the smog. It looked a little like a rain cloud fallen to earth and Matt couldn’t prise his eyes away from it. It was only Pa’s voice that finally managed to make him look away.

The house was on a slant and looked as if it was sunken into the ground. As they walked up to it, Matt couldn’t help but tilt his shoulders to the right to see i
t straight and noticed Pa was doing the same thing. It felt as if a wind had shoved the house one night and it had never recovered. Matt followed Pa up the steps, each one sitting up, like jagged, uneven teeth, until they reached the door. Pa looked over once to Matt and then shrugged which somehow, even in the midst of all this tom-foolery, made Matt smile. The key turned and a great lurching, looming, booming, belching sound came from within. In the next moment, the door opened up and they stepped inside.

For the rest of the day, Matt and
Pa went about exploring, investigating, dusting and wiping, until the house was at least fully visible. Matt had never seen so much dust; it seemed to be in place of wallpaper and paint. It sat on top of the plastic sheets that covered the furniture, under the sheets, in the walls, above their heads, below the floorboards and even inside the air. At one point, Matt even wondered if the house would stay upright-such as it was-once they’d shaken and sprayed and shushed out all the dust from the beams and rafters. He glanced over and saw Pa anxiously looking at the ceilings and could tell he was thinking the same thing. It didn’t stop them though and by the end of the day, the place was bare, in a good way. It resembled something more like a house than a mausoleum, at least.

             
                            *

By the time the stars had come out,
they had made their way into town and found the local diner. It was a glum thing, to be sure, but Matt thought there were hints that it had once been a pretty little place. As he set foot inside, Matt looked around and saw only one other customer, a man whose face was buried in a book and the waitress at the till, looking shocked. Pa guided them to a booth and they sat down facing each other, the seats below them squeaking from the shock of being used.

Matt took a menu and looked through the list. It was a funny thing; it looked as if a fresh menu had been written over the top of an older, more interesting one. The writing above explained in precise, frank and boring detail what each dish contained. Yet below it, ever so faintly, Matt could see the faint traces of something called a ‘Star-
Ship Pie’ and a milkshake called a ‘Three-licks, treble twister.’ Just as he was about to point this out, the waitress appeared, casting a long shadow for such a thin lady and looked up nervously from her pad.