The first thing I saw, approaching the edge of the fair, was the tall, illuminated clock at the center of the grounds, surrounded by booths offering everything from piglet racing to candy apples to Shoot the Can. Organ music drifted out on the air. I made my way past a billboard painting of a man aiming a cannon upward. Experience the Wonder of the Rainmaker! it exclaimed. TNT will squeeze RAIN out of the Sky!
Though it was close to midnight, the crowds were still lively. I gaped at one thing after the next, brushing past people devouring the food, chatting and laughing, trying their luck at games of chance. Many were trickling toward the back of the grounds and gathering near a tattered red tent.
I faded into the noisy group as it pressed itself around the tent. A small, simple sign out front announced that this was what I’d come for. This was the Electric. All around me, people turned their faces to the clock at the center of the grounds.
As the minute hand approached twelve, everyone went quiet. And then, exactly at the stroke of midnight, the flaps of the tent parted and a man—middle-aged, trustworthy looking—emerged, stepping up to a small wooden podium. He was not flashy, not handsome. He had no top hat or blinding white smile. He was bald, in a threadbare suit, stooped and tired looking, like so many of the men in the crowd. He cleared his throat and looked around at all of us with kind gravity.
“It is a time of upheaval and uncertainty,” he began. “The world is changing beneath our feet. Death is around every corner. Fear and despair lurk in every house.” People around me murmured agreement. I crossed my arms to stave off a chill. “But it is possible to outrun it,” he went on, thrusting one finger slowly up in the air, “to outstrip it, to outsmart it.”
He lifted something from behind the podium, covered in a velvet blanket. He sighed as if exhausted. “I have before you something rare in these lean, rational, and industrial times. A magical object. One that combines the best of both worlds . . . the old and the new. Developed by researchers in New York City, it is the perfect union of the Earth’s ancient power and man’s genius.”
“Now let’s see.” He lifted the blanket as if scared of burning himself, and he revealed a glass ball pulsing with light. The crowd around me gasped; I felt as if my own breath had been sucked out of me. It looked as if he’d captured lightning and put it in a fish bowl.
“Electricity. It’s the substance at the heart of the universe. It’s the origin of the heartbeat. We, you see, are electrical creatures. Even the world’s most cool-headed scientists would tell you as much.” He squinted thoughtfully and licked his lips in concentration. His eyebrows drooped as if he were carrying the weight of the world.
“Now you may ask, why have I gathered you at this late hour to see it? At midnight? Because midnight is the permeable hour. Yes.” He nodded, as if to himself. “Time matters. Time matters. In nature’s calendar, midnight is the breath between day and night. It’s only at this hour that neither the sun’s rays nor the moon’s great pull can interfere with the electrical currents.”
He looked up at all of us, wiped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, and then laid the ball of light down on a special stand beside the podium.
“Touch this—Earth’s most powerful substance—but tempered by glass so it won’t kill you—for five seconds and it’ll cure your ailments. If you have a sore back, a trick knee that aches when it rains . . . you’ll feel better instantly. If you touch it for ten seconds, it will rejuvenate your organs. Lay your hands on it for a full minute, and it is entirely possible you could live for much longer than is thought to be humanly possible. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe this device just might help you live forever.”
He paused, gazed around at us, looking exhausted. “I’ve made it my life’s work to deliver this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to everyone I can. I’m traveling the world in hopes of lighting up every dark corner with hope by dispelling the tyranny of death. And I’m here today to do that for you.
“For the next four weeks this fair is in your town, I’m offering you a chance at immortality. And all I ask is a small donation to cover travel costs and food for me and my assistants, so we can afford to reach people everywhere. The question is, are you willing to donate ten dollars in exchange for the most priceless thing imaginable?”
There on the spot, people began to line up. It seemed the professor would go on, but, looking down at them, he cut himself short and stepped down the stairs. He slid through a flap into the tent.
A murmur went through the crowd. Some who weren’t in line already walked away, others stayed and milled around. The man next to me muttered that it was all nonsense and stalked off.
But I wanted to be inside the tent so badly I could taste it.
Have to go. Someone’s coming up the drive.
LATER, SAME DAY
I’ve moved out to the mud pond. Beezie’s just come to sit beside me, and she’s playing in the dirt, coughing into a handkerchief so every once in a while I put my pen down and slap her on the back as hard as I can to help her get it out. I didn’t know it was possible to hate anything as much as I hate the mud coming out of her lungs. (She’s a mud pie all over. Dirt in her hair and on her bare arms and legs that we can never wipe off because there’s always more settling on us.)
The doctor from the Red Cross says that yes, it’s the dust, and to regum the windows.
Our visitor was a complete surprise. It was Lyla, who’s never come out to the farm.
“I’ve been wanting to check on you all,” she said, grinning brightly as I walked down the drive to meet her. “See how you’re getting along out here.”
“Thanks.” I was flattered, then I began to notice she was looking over my shoulder more than into my eyes, and then it sank in and I felt like a fool.
“Would you like to see Ellis?” I asked.
Her face lit up even more if that’s possible. I wondered to myself how Lyla does not seem to sweat.
“I’ll get him,” I offered, still liking her despite seeing through her. But as we turned I saw Ellis was already on his way out of the bunkhouse, rubbing the hay and dust out of his hair.
He didn’t meet my eyes as we three stood there talking, mostly about meaningless things, and some things that are hard to write. I left them as soon as I could without being rude.
And now here I am with Galapagos again, and Beezie is beside me marching her only doll—ugly and eyeless—through the dust.
“She’s trying to steal him away from you,” she whispered to me a few minutes ago.
“Beeziegirl,” I whispered back, “he’s not mine to steal.”
I’ve been sitting here looking out over the landscape, trying to convince myself that I love our land more than I love Ellis anyway.
Anyway, the news from town occupies my mind.
Lyla said that this week she saw two people shake hands and knock each other over from the static electricity that passed between them.
The other thing she told us is something I can barely stomach to think about: a man who goes to our church was found under the dirt two days ago, dead. He’d gotten caught up in a duster while driving to Wichita and tried to run to safety from his car. He got buried alive.