The Secrets of a Fire King Page 16

The crowd gathered close as the preacher began thumping on her back. Her face was pale and streaked with dirt, her thick hair wet and tangled. I watched from the hillside, feeling the blows on my own flesh. He’d pulled me from a different river, years before, under other circumstances, but then, like now, he’d pounded on my back until I’d coughed up enough muddy water to fill a cistern.

  “Praise God,” he said that day, sitting back on his heels. “Young man, you are a miracle incarnate, the answer to a prayer.”

  I opened my eyes, taking in the sudden brilliance of the sky, and laughed.

  “A lot you know,” I told him. I pushed myself up and wrapped my arms around my knees, for it was late spring and cold. I was just fourteen, run away from the mission home two weeks before. I’d had my fill of preachers there, and I hadn’t eaten in ten days. Nothing in my situation was funny, not my hunger, not my past, not the preacher sitting by my feet, making calculations, yet I kept on laughing, digging my fingers into my legs. After a while the preacher seemed to figure something out, for he gave up on praying and pulled two hard biscuits from his pack. I stopped laughing and sat up straight, my mouth already watering with desire.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  I nodded, but he merely turned the biscuits over in his hand.

  “You’ve got to earn it first,” he said.

  I hardly heard him as he talked, telling me about the farm down the road, with five fat chickens and only the farmwife home. He’d go to the front door and work to save the wife, while I went round back and brought a chicken to salvation. I’d get the biscuits for myself, and we’d split the chicken, fifty-fifty.

  “Well,” he said. “You willing?”

  I’d never stolen anything before, but I didn’t hesitate, and a few hours later the preacher watched me suck the meat off every bone, firelight gleaming on his bald head. He was like no preacher I had known before, and he took me on, offered me instruction in his craft. For almost three months I studied with him, learning plenty. How to get an old woman to sign over all her worldly goods. How to speak in tongues, raising people to a fever pitch, and how to slip their wallets from their pockets as they shouted praises. How to get the young girls so heated with the word that they would step into his tent without a second thought.

  Yet though I slept in his tent and sat through his services and kneeled dutifully beside him every night, I was a sullen disciple, an unwilling miracle, my attention wandering all the while. Of all the acts in that traveling show—the snake man, the acrobats, the sword swallower, the luminous dancers—the Fire King was the one who held me fast. In his flames I saw the beauty, the power mingled with the danger. He could pour molten lead into his mouth, then spit out solid metal nuggets. He ate burning coals with a fork, as if they were a pile of new potatoes. I had hung around to see if he was scarred in secret places, and I had pestered him so much, and so insistently, that when I showed up at his door one night with everything I owned, he simply waved a weary arm and took me on as an apprentice. He was a skilled old man, but he was a drunkard too, and although he never missed a show, there came a day when he inhaled accidently while chewing on a wad of burning cotton, and seared his lungs, and died.

  I had his secrets by then, his red silk robes, and on the day we buried him I took his place. I was awkward at first, suffering my share of burns and failures, but from the beginning I was a natural with the rural crowds. I knew their lives so well, the dust rising off their endless fields, the flat somber light that filled their homes and churches. I knew what they came seeking, and I spoke to them. I was the Fire King, and they were mesmerized by the colors I gave off, by the way I moved and flickered. I swallowed fire, I became fire, and they could not stay away.

  Very soon I was drawing crowds even larger than the preacher’s. Tangible flames were more compelling than any promise of salvation. The preacher had never forgiven my abrupt departure, which he saw as a betrayal, and gradually a war grew up between us, his miracles escalating in response to my success.

  Like this drowned girl, for instance. It would be too much to say that the preacher had deliberately made her fall. Yet surely he had seen her reticence, her desire to keep her distance. And just as surely he had reached out, causing her to start, to slip beneath the water. She was pale, one cheek on the muddy grass, her arms outflung, the preacher still pounding on her back. If he saved her he would pack his shows all week, get the county in a fever, and the girl would be so grateful she’d give him anything he wanted.

  And, not much to my surprise, he did. The girl coughed once, then several times, and a sigh went up from the crowd around her. The preacher waved them back, then helped the girl sit up. She looked a little stunned as he placed his hands firmly on her head, proclaimed her saved. I heard the murmur this aroused, and despite myself I was filled with a sharp admiration for the preacher’s cunning. He looked up then, catching my eye across the distance, and smiled. I smiled right back, accepting his implicit challenge. For he might woo the crowds his way with water, but I would lure them back again with fire.

  AFTER EVERY SHOW the young boys lingered, too poor to buy anything, too curious to leave. They pulled close together when they saw me coming, shy and skittish, looking anywhere that I was not, and that afternoon only one boy was brave enough to step forward as I passed. His pants were too short on him and his feet were bare, his young arms muscular with work. Everything was ordinary except his eyes, which were blue, like the color of the sky where it seeps toward the horizon and grows pale.

  “Mister,” he said straightaway. “Mister, we would like to know how you did that trick. We would like to look into your mouth and see if you are burnt.”

  “Is that so?” I said. There was something in his innocence, his persistence, that made me think of the life I’d had before my parents died, before I was sent to the mission home, before I ran away.

  “They believe you are burnt,” he went on, and now the other boys were braver, they were looking at me, too.

  “And you?” I asked.

  “I think it was magic,” he said, and I was struck all the harder by his innocence, by the way he hungered for the mystery and was not afraid to say so. He looked me in the eye and I felt uneasy, for his face was so familiar, like one I had known well in a dream.

  “Well,” I said. “Watch then. Watch closely, and you will see.”

  I reached into a pocket and procured a single coal.

  “Smell,” I insisted, waving it around. “It has been soaked in kerosene.” And indeed the odor cut sharply through this group of boys, making them wrinkle up their noses. “Observe,” I added, lighting a match and setting the coal on fire.

  They gasped, for the coal burned brightly on my bare hand, yet my flesh was clean, untouched by fire. I watched with satisfaction at the looks of fear and wonder on their faces. Not even the preacher on his best days could fill them with a mystery like this. Subdued, they stepped away. Awestruck, they drifted off. All except the bold one.

  “I told them,” he said, fierce and triumphant. “I knew it was magic.” He looked up at me and added, “I bet them also that I would get a job from you.”

  His request was a familiar one, and I braced myself to send him home, but before I could speak a voice called “Eli!” and the boy glanced back at a slender girl standing at the edge of the tent. Behind her the river glimmered through the trees. I remembered how she’d looked the day before, the way the current had caught and held her, the fabric of her dress clinging to her long legs as the preacher pulled her from the water.

  “Eli,” she repeated, low and clear. “You’re late.”

  “Who is that?” I asked, still staring.

  “Only Jubilee,” he answered. “My sister. Will you hire me?”

  She waited, looking straight at me just as her brother had, except that her gaze, while forthright and faintly curious, was edged not with wonder, but rather with contempt. Already the preacher had dazzled her to a state of righteous blindness. I had a sudden, desp
erate urge, a deep desire that was mixed with anger, to light another coal and press it in between her palm and mine, to sear her flesh while mine stayed cool, to burn through her resistance with my own.

  “Mister,” Eli said. “Will you hire me?”

  I did not answer right away, considering. “Come inside,” I said at last, gesturing to the row of smaller tents that functioned as our dressing rooms. “Bring your sister, too.”

  Behind me I heard their voices, arguing softly. Then Eli followed me inside. He paused in the dim light, blinking, captivated by his own image looking back at him from a full-length mirror set in a gilded, freestanding frame. Jubilee did not enter, but lingered in the doorway, arms folded. The air was hot, rich with the scent of warm canvas, and in the far distance I could hear the crescendo of organ music that closed each show.

  “Come in,” I invited, but she looked up coolly, then turned her eyes away. “Or stay out there,” I added, shrugging. “It’s all the same to me.”

  Eli was still staring at his image in the mirror.

  “So you want to work for me,” I began, speaking loudly enough for Jubilee to hear. “Young man, just what is it you can do? Can you swallow swords? Can you walk on coals? What talents would you bring along?”

  Eli turned reluctantly away from his reflection, shifting his weight, jarring the mirror, sending motes of light across the canvas. “I don’t have any talents,” he said. “But I work hard. I learn fast.”

  “A quick study, are you then?” I said. I heard a rustling just outside. “But every young man believes himself to be so. Tell me, what makes you sure it’s true of you?”

  From the corner of my eye I saw her stepping through the door flap, drawn in by the mirror, by the wandering motes of light.

  “What’s that?” she asked, watching herself inside the glass.

  “That? Why, it’s a mirror,” I told her.

  She shook her head. “It can’t be,” she whispered. “Mirrors are small things. You hold them in one hand.”

  I was standing just behind her now, my red cape a glowing backdrop to her cool gray dress, to the whiteness of her skin. She wore no perfume, and it was the first time I had been up close to smell her pure and salty smell. I reached out slowly and guided her hand to adjust the frame, the narrow bones of her wrist like supple hinges beneath my fingers. I felt the heat of her along my arm. She tilted her head, examining the smooth curve of her jaw, the blond wave of hair, her shell-like ear. She stared and stared into the looking glass, and in that moment I knew she was like any other girl. Each one held a secret wish, and once I understood it, they were mine.

  “You are beautiful,” I told her softly, my breath against her ear.

  But I’d gone too far, too fast, and she stepped away.

  “I saw you baptized,” I told her then, thinking of her legs beneath the cloth.

  “So you saw me saved,” she answered, primly.

  “I’ve seen that many times,” I said. “It never means too much.”

  We stared at one another. The air was hot and still, and full of her. The preacher had told her that she was chosen above others, chosen to be saved, and now I watched her struggle with the idea that I might not think her special after all. It gave me power over her, a hold the preacher could not match, but to my own astonishment I gave that power back.

  “I will find you a looking glass,” I said.

  “I do not want a looking glass,” she countered, flushing, yet glancing at the mirror with an expression full of longing. “Eli,” she went on, stepping through the tent flap even as she spoke. “Eli, let’s go now.”

  I had forgotten Eli until that moment. He was kneeling by my trunk, studying the cup I used to drink the boiling oil. It had a false bottom, a partition down the middle, so that oil poured in on one side would not come out the other. Eli was perplexed, but in the next instant I saw him understand, his face illuminated with a pleasure of discovery that just as quickly gave way to disappointment.

  “I thought it was magic,” he said, his voice soft. But he was a quick study after all, for he pushed aside his feelings and spoke up. “Now you’ll have to hire me,” he said, “so I won’t tell.”

  I might have laughed then, and sent him on his way. As cruel as it might have seemed to him, it would have been a kindness. But I did not think of Eli, his dreams and hopes. Instead, I thought of Jubilee, her clean sweet smell, her presence in my tent. I thought of the way she’d looked the day before, when the preacher pulled her from the water.

  “All right,” I said, pausing long enough to let him think he’d won. “A week of work. But only if you tell me where to find Jubilee tomorrow.”

  He wavered, weighing everything, his desires and mine, his sister’s honor. I waited, remembering the first chicken I had stolen, how it pecked my hands until they bled. My weakness had been hunger, whereas for Eli it was the darker mystery of fire. This was enough, however. In the end, he told me.

  I EAT FIRE and am not scarred, but Jubilee had seared through my indifference, had settled in my flesh like ash. Everywhere I went, I smelled that sweet saltiness of hers. Every time the wind stirred, I felt the heat of her arm pressing mine.

  I went to town and got a real looking glass, the biggest I could find. It was the size of me, six feet high exactly, thick, with beveled edges. “Vanity!” the preacher snorted when I carted it down the dirt path to my tent, and others in the show snickered too.

  The next day, early, I loaded the mirror into a cart I had borrowed and drove to the place Eli had described. It was a path through a copse of trees, and Jubilee would travel here on her way to meet the preacher. I set the mirror up, reflecting leaves and bark and flickering light, and then I settled myself into the bushes, where I waited, still as a watchful fox, for Jubilee to come.

  Half an hour later I heard her footsteps, and then she emerged, walking so quickly, so intently, that for a moment I feared that she would walk right past. However, some swift movement or flash of light caught her eye, and she stopped, staring at her image for a long moment before she turned and searched the bushes.

  “Hello?” she called, and then again, more loudly.

  I did not answer. Nothing but the distant sound of water, the rustling of leaves, filled her listening. She turned back to her reflection, placing both hands lightly to her cheeks. Then her hands fell, her fingers tracing lightly down her neck, lingering on her throat. I thought of the soft skin there and did not speak. And when those same fingers passed along the row of buttons, one by one, when they slid the sleeves off, revealing the narrow straps of her camisole, her bare and silky shoulders, I held my breath and watched her. She put her hands lightly on her hips and turned her head, studying her reflection. Slipping, she was slipping from the preacher now, even as she stood motionless beneath these trees.

  “Jubilee,” I whispered, standing up.

  She heard me and turned in my direction, but she did not leave. Her lips parted in surprise and her hands flew to her shoulders, but she stood still, paralyzed by surprise and fear, and also something stronger, which she could not name. I recognized it though, and I was motion to her stillness, catching her by the waist, slipping my fingers beneath the soft cotton of the camisole, pulling her with me into the swift, persistent, current of desire. She let me kiss her once, her lips soft, her expression when I pulled away as surprised and curious—as utterly newborn—as I’d ever seen anybody look. Her hands had fallen to her sides at first, but now she raised them to my shoulders, stood up on her toes with her eyes wide open, and kissed me back.

  What I thought of with her lips on mine was fire, the way flames hold the power to both horrify and compel. Any conflagration draws a crowd. People gather, captivated by the beauty of the flames, by their sheer destructive power. So it was with Jubilee. I could feel both her reticence and her yearning. In my triumph then I kissed her hard, knowing that danger, like a shadow, only makes the flames seem brighter.

  But I had not counted on Eli. She saw him
first and grew stiff in my embrace, pulled away, was gone an instant later. Facing the mirror I saw him too, the anger and envy on his face reflected in the glass. He threw a stone then, shattering his image, raining broken glass onto the earth, and ran.

  YOU MUST FIGHT fire with fire, and only fire. This is something I understood quite well, but with my thoughts on Jubilee I missed the signs, the small initial flares of trouble. The preacher’s sudden cordialness when I returned, his unusually large crowd, the conspicuous absence of Eli—I noted these events, yet paid them scant attention.

  That very afternoon, however, my audience had shrunk, and the people who did attend the show soon broke up my act with boos and hisses. Some of the men had procured a healing elixir from the miracle cure demonstration, and now they stumbled through the meager crowd, shouting insults, demanding to look inside my drinking cup. I soon gathered that the preacher had denounced me during the morning revival, giving a detailed description of my drinking cup. I glanced desperately backstage for Eli, who could have snuck me the real tin cup in a box of cotton batting, but even as I searched I understood he’d been the one to give away my secret.

  “Gentlemen,” I called out several times, until the jeering subsided somewhat. “Gentlemen, you are disturbing the good men and women who have paid to see this show. Now, I am a man of honor, and I assure you that of course you may—no, you will— see this cup.” I placed it on the table in front of me with a clang. “You have my promise. Here it sits, and you will examine it once the show has finished. In the meantime you may watch it with your own eyes, as I perform the greatest feat of this or any show. Ladies and gentlemen! Today you will see a rare sight, a feat so dangerous that I do not do it every show, or even every fourth show or every tenth show. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, I do this feat only once every three years.

  “Today, I will do it for you.

  “Today, I will become a human volcano, before your very eyes.”

  This hushed them, for a moment anyway. I pulled out the cotton batting and piled it on the table, careful that some of it obscured the tin cup from view. Then I started stuffing cotton in my mouth. The crowd laughed, and as I stuffed in more, then more, they became uproarious. Finally, when my mouth was full to bursting, I took a coal in my bare hand and lit it. Smoke strung my eyes and made the rows of faces melt and waver. The coal flared brightly, then turned to an ember, all while I held it steadily on the palm of my hand. I waved my free arm to show I was ready. Then I took a deep breath, put that live coal to the bale of cotton in my mouth, and exhaled a stream of fire.