Part Three
Years passed, and Luella of passion and of light, clawed at her inner cell. She didn’t plead, she sang. She wished. She sang of dreams, and of a woman who looked like dreams, if a dream could look like you and I. But Mr. Bradbury would have none of that. After all, he didn’t care for dreams. Luella cared for him. So went the cycle. And the sighing, the wish, it only festered, only worsened. Her fingers clinched together; she couldn’t breathe in corsets. She longed for her life back. But by now, it felt too far gone, too long ago.
That was when Delia White waltzed into Mr. Bradbury’s life. She was young, impressionable, and to put it frankly, ignorant in nearly every possible way. A skinny brunette with a fashionable bob, and a hollow echo chamber behind her eyes. To Luella, it seemed that such a vital thing, for most of us, as a mind had eluded Delia long ago, and she’d done just fine without it. Her husband had seen Ms. White in a particularly promiscuous vaudeville production on a business trip and bought her way out of the rat-infested nickel theater to travel with his still-growing circus act, which surprisingly served, if anything, as an improvement to the girl’s situation.
It was a lovely spring day when it all came undone. The show that day happened to be up north, near where Mr. Bradbury and his wife Luella had been living, and she for the first time in a very long time, had the wild urge to visit the fairgrounds. She knew that he was already there, gone on business to the evening’s performance. So dressing her best, and taking the motorcar, she traveled out to the big top, and upon her arrival, all was silent. Where were the wild figures of her youth? Most likely causing some kind of ruckus or other in town. The thought made her laugh, remembering the days when she joined them, the sense of pride she felt to be looked at with disgust alongside them. If they were freaks, so was she, and she didn’t care.
Whatever creature those snarling and whispering things were, she never wanted to be a part. No, she would have much rather been snarled at, than a person like them. She was a freak. A freak was a different creature, a creature that knew the art of living better than any of the others she knew. Looking down at her hands, fingers adorned with jewels, they shook, and her puffy white sleeves, and the weight of her hat upon her head, all came upon her, suddenly heavy as a ton of bricks. She was playing dress-up.
At this thought she grieved, as she walked the empty grounds, the candy cane tents billowing in the spring breeze. Then, a different sound. A human sound. A voice she recognized, a voice that once greeted her in this very maze of tents, each morning, and each night. But there was another voice as well. At that moment, Luella didn’t recall the character of those billowing winds, didn’t recognize them as her current, as the powers that propelled a free raven through the skies all those years ago.
The winds had returned, and they blew with the thunder of coming change. They led Luella to a familiar tent, a tent that had once known many a cocktail on many an evening, a tent that now echoed with the hum of a dagger headed directly for Luella’s hard heart, a projectile arrow, whizzing through the air, with the high pickled tinkle of Delia White’s enflaming, enraging, giggle. Luella tore the partition open, and there, on a cot, lay her husband and Delia, in a pink negligee . . . .
The dagger made contact. The stone cracked and crumbled, and from the wreckage, wisps of the dream came flying back into her body. Pictures flashed before her vision. She once was larger than herself. She once was free, free from nothing, free from everything. And she danced, and God smiled. Sparkle and shimmer and shock! Fire and light, and laughter, and fear, in Mr. Bradbury’s eyes.
“Lu, baby.” He pleaded. Her teeth chattered, her face went crimson.
“Baby, I can explain!”
Mr. Bradbury. There he was. For the first time, she could really see him, brighter than the flashing bulbs.
“Lu . . . Lu, please.”
Delia was a mess of crocodile tears, but Luella, as he’d known her, as he’d formed her, the ghost he had smiling at dinner parties, and sipping mint juleps at horse races, she was gone. Luella as she’d been, was returning. Bit by bit, the stone was quickly crumbling away. But for what would happen next, she’d need the stone. She’d need the coldness before the warmth melted away her hard-earned callouses. Soon, she’d feel again. Today, she was numb.
Backing out of the tent, Luella was gone before Mr. Bradbury could even get his pants back on, so as he rushed out from behind the partition, she was nowhere to be found.
. . . to be continued . . .
