We welcome Jaxon H., a new writer at Teen Scene, debuting with a four-part story. He will keep you in suspense through the summer!
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Part One
Luella.
Luella born of man.
Luella born of fire. Luella born of rain.
Luella born of sunshine and moonrise. Luella born of flowers, born of brandy, born of uncracked peanuts, born of the smell of petrol and perfume, and born of early morning chills. Luella, the pit in your stomach when you think to do the very thing you know you oughtn’t, the quickening in your pulse, the knot of naughty nervous joy that tells you to jump. Ah, Luella. What can I say of her? Too much maybe, all too much. Yet too little. She never had a home, or so they say. She was always a wanderer. And if you knew her, you knew nothing bound her. I won’t call her free, though I could. Free is such a broad term. Free from what? Free from whom? Luella had no past, Luella had no future. Luella simply was.
No one knew where she’d come from, no one knew where she’d go. She was a dream, if a dream could look like you and I, if a dream could walk, and talk and feel. Somehow, Luella was larger than herself. She welcomed life to overtake her like a tidal wave. She’d fly on the wind, wherever it roamed, and she would drink in the sea, and she’d be full,
she’d be alive. She’d be here. That would be enough.
How long she’d been following that current, how long she’d been a bird flying where the wind blew when she came upon Mr. Bradbury, I can’t say. Yet I do know that she did. And that is where our story begins.
* * *
Mr. Bradbury III was the master of a once wealthy family, decimated by war, and disgraced. One could call it retribution, one could call it forced atonement, Mr. Bradbury, Senior, called it the demise of American life, the poison that would cripple him for the rest of his days. His son cared less about the effects of war. That was in the past. And the new Mr. Bradbury, well, he didn’t have much care for the past. The future, now for that he cared a great deal. And a phenomenon was sweeping the country he wanted a hand in, entertainment. Sparkle and shimmer and shock! Fire and light and laughter… and fear. Mr. Bradbury, though he’d never experienced the family fortune himself, hungered to reclaim what he saw as his birthright, and at his core, he was a businessman. As a businessman, if there was one thing Mr. Bradbury knew he could do, it was deceive. And what better way to deceive than lights and flash, and everything extraordinary and oversized and imported and oddly dressed, and spinning and falling and flipping!
COME ONE, COME ALL, TO THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
My God, it would be beautiful.
Mr. Bradbury, you see, took what little he had and used it to start a circus.
As the account of that day later went, Mr. Bradbury found himself in the sweltering heat, out in a market somewhere, and it was there he saw a girl dancing in the street. She had bells on her feet, and flowers in her hair, and she sang. And while a small pail sat in front of her for coins, anyone watching could tell. She wasn’t dancing for the money. Mr. Bradbury saw the girl, and yet he didn’t see her. His eyes beheld a wild woman, a woman built for him. I remember Luella then you know. Others watched her dance, listened to her song, and wept. They wept for their hearts knew what cosmic beauty soared in the moment they witnessed. They wept for they saw what Mr. Bradbury never could, a dream. They saw God smile. Who couldn’t weep? But Mr. Bradbury didn’t care for dreams.
A small man, six foot four and broad-shouldered, yet small, and blind for that matter. Mr. Bradbury was a sickly, sickly man in perfect health. A man deaf to what didn’t scream and wail and cackle for his pleasure, a man blind to the workings of anything beyond the dirt he stood upon, the dirt that so convincingly assured him it was a world of rich wonders
waiting for man to pump dry of its ecstasy, and die. He didn’t wish beyond the toils of man and could lie in an early grave surrounded by silk and spices and gold-plated china, a smile on his cold lifeless lips, never having known happiness. He didn’t look to the heavens, for if he
had, Mr. Bradbury would have been stricken by the totality of all that is, maimed by his ignorance, and consumed by a universe grander than even a speck of his wildest aspirations. Upon meeting the eyes of eternity, Mr. Bradbury would join that dust he so worshiped.
Luella was anything but this sort. Luella saw what couldn’t be seen, she communed with the intangible forces that be. She had a fire that illuminated joy and amplified the rumble of all things. The song within her was that of a rhythm that reverberates through all things, the song of the earth and the stars and the sea. Though poor she was powerful,
though small she was all-encompassing, and filled every room she entered. She didn’t care for the dirt on which her feet trampled, her portion was far, far away, and yet near enough to whisper. She drowned in the fullness of the cosmos daily and was revived entirely, authentically
herself again for a new day.
Yet on this day, and never in his life before or later, did Mr. Bradbury understand anything beyond the dirt. When he saw Luella, he beheld a freak; a beautiful, vibrant, little freak. And who could be better for his freak show than an inane girl who dazzled in the afternoon sun. So, he offered her a job, and even a fairy woman, like Luella, needs to eat.
She could do anything she put her mind to, and while I am nearly certain she’d never been an acrobat when he asked, she flipped, flew, tumbled through the air, and stuck the landing.
“Welcome to Bradbury Carnival Company,” he said.
* * *
Months passed, city to city, big top up, big top down. Yet in all that time, there was one thing Mr. Bradbury knew about Luella: the fact that she was here today, didn’t mean she would be tomorrow. If Mr. Bradbury had awoken one morning and found her gone, he’d speak as if of storms in Caribbean seas, “Off to new waters,” and move on. Yet each morning, there she was, her pink negligee (bought courtesy of the company) silkily sweeping past his tent, in the broad daylight. She didn’t care for modesty, her buoyant raven black hair, caught in the corner of his eye, as tea steeped on a little stove. And he would smile.
The girl had been with the Bradbury Carnival Company for God knows how long, yet each day felt like the first. It always began with the flowing nightgown, weaving down the avenues of candy cane tents, and always ended with the troop’s crown jewel, Mr. Bradbury’s olive-skinned raven beauty flying through the air. And he would always say, “My my, what a woman,” as she performed the troop’s signature final act in which Luella would swing from the rafters onto the back of Betsy, an African lion with no business being in the midwestern United States, whom she would ride in circles around the room for a moment, before taking her back outside. It was an act in which much could go horribly wrong, yet as I said, she could do just about anything, and Betsy, while volatile toward most, loved Luella dearly.
And just like that, with the evening at a close, she would slip away into the night, just as the poor old Johns and Jims and other down-on-their-luck bums wiped off the last of the grease paint and lit the fire beside which they’d drink themselves to bed and sleep till Betsy needed tending. Yes, Luella would slip away, and Mr. Bradbury would hope and pray she wouldn’t blow away. Yet who can predict the weather?
. . . to be continued . . .
