The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [50]
“Thank you,” he says. He sits down, takes a few hungry bites, then turns to me. “I came to speak with you, Frankka.”
Obviously.
I can feel my cheeks redden.
The fiddler plays on.
What business does Barbaro have, showing up here and crashing my hospitality party? “Then speak,” I say, teeth clenched. They’ve sent him up here to find me because they know I’m a sucker for his dumb accent, his dumb trust in life. I count my betrayers on both hands under the table: All my fellow travelers. The old minister, surely. Isabel, maybe. Even Dorothy. Where did she have to go today? Who did she tell that I’d come? You are about to be manipulated, I tell myself. Send up the wall.
Barbaro clears his throat. “I would prefer to speak alone.”
I’m sure he would. I shake my head no, look him right in the eye, my invisible wall now firmly erected. “Talk to me here or just enjoy your dinner and forget it,” I snap. I feel like such a dolt, sitting here playing out some city girl soap opera script for all the friendly hoboes and mountain freaks. I can’t tell from their candlelit faces if they’re amused or annoyed. I don’t know which reaction I’d consider more embarrassing. All I wanted was for them to swoon over my fish and fried bread. All I wanted was for them to accept me like some long-lost member of their famiglia. All I wanted was to please Dorothy.
“It was neither Magdelena nor Pia who betrayed you,” Barbaro announces.
So they’ve sent him up here to feed me lies, to convince me of their innocence. I guess the fiddler likes the theater of it all, because he plays with long, melodramatic strokes now.
“How can you know that?” I ask Barbaro, stone-faced.
He looks down at his food, then back to me. “I know because I am the one who told everything.”
“Uh-oh,” Isabel hums.
My wall starts to crumble, like sand. Quick inhale. Keep it up. Reinforce.
Silence. Forks frozen midair.
“Well, well,” the woman with a thousand braids finally says. “Welcome, stranger.”
I manage a smile, excuse myself from the table. My humiliation tastes like buttermilk. Nowhere to go in a one-room cabin, so I step out onto the porch, make my way down the steps.
Standing alone under more stars than I ever knew existed, the drama queen in me would have Barbaro come rushing on my heels, begging forgiveness and professing his buried love. The little girl waiting for her parents wants Mama Dorothy to come flying, arms outstretched. The hostess who only wants a family waits for them all to file out after me, famiglia from scratch. But I just stumble alone in the dark toward the shore, the black lake spread out before me like a headache. I could jump into this cold and swim, refuse to come up for air until I saw the face of eternity. I could open my arms to the heavens, offer myself as a victim to God’s merciful love, wait for the fiery darts to pierce my heart. A coyote cries from a snowcapped mountain.
I can hear the fiddler inside, playing a quickening song.
The clink of glasses, conversation rising and falling.
What does Barbaro mean, he told? It doesn’t make any sense. He’s lying, but why? He’s covering for Magdelena. Or maybe I’m already dead.
“Frankka?” It’s Barbaro’s voice from the porch. “Frankka, you are out here?”
A dog howls from some separate shore.
“Frankka?”
“Stop yelling, Barbaro.”
He shuffles down the dirt trail, stands in the starlight blowing no flames. “Our fellow travelers feel so sad and broken,” he says. “I am myself a hollow man.” He wrings his hands. “I am honest when I tell you I believed Judy to be sincere in her curiosity. I explained to her the need for secrecy and security under these unusual circumstances. I believed she only wanted to know this road show as I do.”
I’m not buying a word of it. “So you broke into my room? You let her draw my blood? Or maybe you did it yourself. You guys screwed me over. And that’s one thing, but now there are a bunch of other people out there who think we’re either saviors or Satans—they either think I’m some mystical healer or they want to burn me at the stake. We’re screwed. Magdelena