Chapter 19: Heroics
"Nice try. You're just trying to get back at me for that time with Wolfgang. Would you like me to steer with my tail?"
"How do I know you're not cheating?" Amanda asked as Kurt swept a small pile of candies into the much larger one at his feet.
Kurt held up his hands so she could look down his sleeves. "I swear I'm not." He said.
Amanda looked skeptical. "What about your tail?" She said.
Kurt added his tail to the display of innocent limbs. "Maybe I'm just lucky." He said.
Amanda snorted. "You're not this lucky when we play with everyone else." She said.
Kurt grinned. "Then perhaps it's because the only one worse than me at bluffing, is you," he suggested, as innocently as possible. Amanda made a face and swatted him with a pillow from the floor. Kurt was about to retaliate when the van lurched and most of Kurt's winnings slid across the table into Amanda's lap.
"Never mind." Amanda said coyly. She let the pillow go and started tallying her newfound wealth.
"Hey!"
"I'm playing by your rules." Amanda said. "What do you think started your winning streak? It's not my fault the truck didn't lean in your direction this time."
Kurt picked up the deck of cards and shuffled them. "I'll have it all back in a few hands anyway," he said. "Then next time we play with the group, I'll actually be able to bet on more than one hand before going broke."
The van jumped again and Kurt had to wrap his tail around one of the table legs to keep from falling off.
"Sorry." Margali called into the back.
"That was close." Kurt said.
"Maybe you should sit in a chair instead of on top of the table." Amanda suggested.
Kurt shrugged in mock exasperation. "Yes, Amanda." He said. He was about to climb down when another lurch sent him tumbling off the table and against the opposite wall.
"Mom!" they shouted in unison.
"Sorry." Margali said again, "This road is really bad, and it's getting steeper. Why don't you both sit on the floor?"
Amanda got down on the floor, sitting with her knees up on one of the many cushions. Kurt untangled himself from where he'd fallen and dragged a cushion over to join her. They sat in silence, bracing themselves every few seconds as they were rocked from side to side by the bumpy road. It was a routine they were used to, something they'd done since they were children, whenever the road got dangerous Margali would have them sit on the floor so they didn't get hurt.
Kurt had missed driving with Wolfgang at first, but now that he was back in his old van, sitting on the floor with Amanda like they'd done through his entire childhood, he was glad to be back. He'd missed the long rides talking to Amanda, taking turns reading to each other from the revolving stock of books that were passed from performer to performer, and playing games. Since Stephani left for school it was just the two of them and he had relished those times spent with his sister and best friend. It was comfortable slipping back into the old routine. Even though he spent a lot of time hanging out with Lars and Wolfgang, he'd always felt closer to Amanda than anyone else in the circus.
They sat in silence listening to the familiar grinding of the van's gears, the throb of it's ancient motor. Kurt's hand strayed to the rosary in his pocket while he watched Margali steer the truck down the winding road.
Margali glanced at her children behind her before returning her gaze to the road. This van is getting too old, she thought. She pushed in the break as she rounded another turn and nothing happened. Surprised she pumped her foot up and down. The van didn't slow, in fact as she steered it seemed to be picking up speed. The van tilted sideways as it rounded the turn, throwing its passengers hard to the left.
"What's going on Mom?" Amanda said.
"Hold on to something." Margali said, forcing her voice to be calm.
"Why? What's wrong?" Kurt asked.
"We don't have brakes."
Kurt laughed. "Nice try. You're just trying to get back at me for that time with Wolfgang." He stood up. "Would you like me to steer with my tail?"
"No, Kurt. Sit…" But Margali was interrupted as she forced the rapidly accelerating van around another sharp turn. Kurt was knocked off his feet and slid up against the dashboard. He sat up and shook his head to clear it. He tasted blood and realized he'd bit his lip.
"You're serious?" He asked, turning around to look through the windshield. He caught a quick glimpse of a sign: "Dangerous Curves Ahead" in French.
Margali wrenched the steering wheel the opposite way. "Yes." She said through gritted teeth. She could hear Amanda on the radio, promising it wasn't a joke.
"Wolfgang said he can see smoke coming from under the truck." Amanda said.
"Kurt, get in the back." Margali said. "I'm going to stop this van before we go over the edge." The only seatbelt in the van was hers. "Hold on to something."
Kurt slid himself back to where Amanda was sitting and was surprised when she wrapped her arms around him. All the other trucks had moved away to let them pass.
"Get ready." Margali said.
Not sure of exactly what Margali was planning to do, Kurt held onto Amanda and wrapped his tail around the leg of their table, the only thing near that was anchored to the floor. Margali steered hard to the right and they hit the rock wall on their right with a crunch, the front of the van folding in against the wheels. Kurt and Amanda were thrown forward so hard that Kurt barely had time to release the table leg before it snapped his spine. Margali tried to brace herself against the wheel but the force was too much and she slammed against it chest first with a gasp.
The impact didn't even slow the truck; instead it skipped off the rocky outcropping Margali had tried to use to stop them and spun out of control away from the wall. Amanda screamed. Margali was still trying to catch her breath when she looked up. The van was skidding towards the edge where the roadside abruptly ended in a cliff. She felt the front wheels leave the pavement and was vaguely aware of Kurt grabbing onto her, still holding on to Amanda with his other arm. There was a deafening crack and then she was tumbling head over heels in a tangle of bodies, every limb battered and scraped by the concrete. They landed in a heap and the world went dark.
Wolfgang slammed on the breaks, his truck screeching to a halt, the trailer threatening to fishtail. He and James were thrown hard against their shoulder belts.
"What the…" James let his sentence trail off. There were people in the road but Margali's old delivery van, the most distinctive in the circus, was nowhere to be seen. Wolfgang pulled the parking brake and jumped out with James close behind.
"Oh my God." Wolfgang said, looking around. Pieces of the van were strewn across the road, a set of tire skids led to the road's edge.
"They were thrown out." James said in relief. He ran to the edge of the road and looked over. About fifty feet below them he could see the battered upturned form of Margali's van, flames licking upward from the engine compartment. The other trucks were stopping now, pulling as far off the road as they could. He walked back toward Wolfgang how was kneeling each in turn over the still forms of Margali, Amanda, and Kurt.
Amanda was the first to wake up, blinking her eyes and looking very pale. "Dizzy." She gasped.
"It's okay Amanda. It will go away." Wolfgang said. He turned to Kurt who was lying half buried beneath his foster mother and sister, his whole body shaking. James knelt down next to Margali who was coughing, her hand to her chest. Kurt slowly opened his eyes.
"Are they safe?" he asked weakly.
"They're fine. Did you take them both together?" Wolfgang said.
James helped Margali sit up. She stared at Wolfgang with a curious expression on her face. James wished he knew what they were talking about. Kurt nodded, closing his eyes and Wolfgang smiled, smoothing Kurt's hair back in a surprisingly tender gesture. "Sie machten gut. Nur Rest ja?"
"What are you talking about? What did Kurt just say? What's going on?" James asked, but Wolfgang shook his head. James swore under his breath. Things were bad enough without the language barrier, but there was something strange too. How had they been thrown from the van in a big pile like that? All three of them had cuts and bruises, but more than anything they'd looked sick. And Wolfgang's apparent unconcern was the strangest of all; it was almost like he had seen this happen before.
Sven and James helped Margali to her feet. "I can't believe it." She said looking around unsteadily. "I couldn't stop the lorry. I don't know how we got out. Amanda? Kurt?"
"I'm okay." Amanda said. "I just feel horrible." She had crawled a few feet away where she had spent the last few minutes retching.
"Kurt, what's wrong?" Margali asked. She knelt back down on the ground, James still holding on to her arm. He was surprised that Kurt was still lying on the concrete, his eyes closed. Wolfgang was still kneeling next to him.
"He's okay Margali." Wolfgang said. "Sven, take him back to my trailer. Let him rest. Keep him warm."
Sven looked confused, but scooped Kurt off the road without a word.
"What's going on?" Margali and James asked simultaneously in two different languages.
"It's nothing." Wolfgang said in English so he could answer them both. "He just looked really tired to me." He quickly changed the subject by making arrangements with the other drivers.
They couldn't stay parked where they were so Margali and Amanda found rides in the remaining trucks and they drove in a slow procession to the nearest place they could camp for the night. The Olsson women were kind enough to make space to Amanda and Margali in their trailer and Wolfgang slept on the floor having given his bunk to Kurt.
The next morning found Margali and her family sitting together on a picnic bench staring gloomily off into the distance. They looked like a trio of refugees, still dressed in the torn clothes they had worn the night before. Wolfgang pulled up in one of the smaller trucks with Ivan and Lars. They were each carrying a box.
"We got everything we could." Wolfgang said setting his down on the table so they could look inside. "I don't know whose stuff is whose, but it looks like everything in the front got completely charred. The things in the back of the van fared a little better."
"How could this happen?" Amanda asked, fresh tears welling up in her eyes.
"She was old." Margali said. "I should have replaced that old lorry years ago. I guess I got attached. It was our home."
Lars and Ivan set their boxes on the table and Margali, Amanda, and Kurt picked through the contents listlessly, seeing what of their few belongings they had left.
"Ugg." Amanda sniffed some of the clothes that she pulled out of the box. "We'll have to wash everything. It stinks."
Magali looked sadly at a few books, the edges of their pages charred. She brushed at the ashes and watched them crumple away into the wind. "Some of the Grimoires I kept were over a hundred years old." She said.
"I'm sorry." Wolfgang said.
Margali shook her head and smiled sadly. "It's ironic. When I was a little girl I was always taught not to value possessions. Some gypsy I am."
Wolfgang put a hand on her shoulder. He really liked Margali. She was in many ways, his boss. Franz Gehlhaar was of Rom descent too and had entrusted the business of running the circus to Margali because as a Rom herself, he trusted her. Margali handled the financial side of things and Wolfgang took care of the rest. She may have looked like a fortuneteller, but she was a shrewd bookkeeper and knew how to stretch even the tiniest budget further than anyone he knew.
"Are these all the books?" Kurt asked, looking into box on Margali's lap. "Did you see my bible? The one Father Dietrich gave me?"
"Oh, yeah." Wolfgang reached into the pocket of his jacket. "There were pages falling out and I wanted to make sure it all stayed together. It was actually the first thing we found."
Kurt accepted the slightly charred book and carefully turned the pages. "It was like that before the accident." He said. "It's just a little burned around the edges."
A few hours later Kurt and James were spread out on the floor of trailer he shared with Wolfgang, trying to piece together what was left of Margali's photo album.
"I can't believe how many books you guys had." Wolfgang said from his perch on his bunk.
"They are on the shelves to be packing really close." Kurt said. "Other would not to have staying on the shelves." He accepted a piece of cellophane tape from James and carefully taped a torn photo into place.
"That makes sense." Wolfgang said figuring it wasn't the right time to remind Kurt that only one verb per object was needed to get his point across. "The books on the outside were completely burnt but the ones inside were okay. They must have been protected from the fire."
"I guess." Kurt said distractedly. He was trying to manipulate to halves of the same photo to line them up but kept dropping the tiny bits of paper.
"Here, I let me help…" James started to reach out to help but Kurt moved away from his grasp.
"I can do it." Kurt snapped. James put the tape dispenser down. He'd never seen Kurt get angry before.
"Don't be so upset Kurt. You saved Margali and Amanda's lives." Wolfgang said to him in German. "I can't believe you teleported with both of them at once. That's amazing."
"It was really hard. I thought we were all going to end up back in the truck. But we had already gone over the edge. I had to try." Kurt said.
"I guess you were right about wanting to practice. That it would come in handy someday."
Kurt nodded his head, set the photo he had been working on aside, and picked up another. "It seems like such a strange sacrifice. Our lives are spared but we lose our home and now everyone's suspicious of me. Once again I wonder what is God up to?"
"Would you cut that out?" James shouted. "If you're going to have a conversation can you at least speak in a language I can understand?"
Kurt and Wolfgang stopped speaking German and looked at him guiltily. "Sorry." Wolfgang said.
"I'm sorry before I snapped to you James." Kurt said.
James shrugged. "It's been a crazy day." He said. "I guess I can see why we'd all be tense." To show there were no hard feelings he handed Kurt another piece of tape.
They worked in silence until Amanda pushed the door open. She dropped a drawstring bag on the floor with a heavy thump.
"I had to run each load through three times to get the smell out. When are you going to start doing your own laundry Kurt?" She said. Once again James was out of the conversation, but he didn't feel like asking for them to speak in English for the millionth time.
Without looking up from his work Kurt cried out in a falsetto voice, "Oh Lord, help us! It's a demon. A demon, doing his laundry! Save us! We're all going to hell in a launderette!"
James had no idea what Kurt had said, but it sounded pretty funny. Wolfgang tried to suppress a snort of laughter.
Kurt switched back to his own voice. "Not any time soon," he said.
"What's got you so cranky?" Amanda said putting one hand on her hip.
"Margali talked to Franz Gehlhaar while you were gone." Wolfgang said. Amanda made a face at the mention of the circus' owner's name. "He said that he will pay for a new van for you guys, but only after the end of the summer tour."
"So now we don't have anywhere to live." Kurt said.
Amanda opened her eyes wide in disbelief. "After?" She cried. "That's totally unfair. Where will we stay?"
Wolfgang sighed. "I told Kurt he could stay here. Margali's trying to make space for you and her. We'll work it out." He said.
Amanda rolled her eyes. "We always do." She said.
Dear Brin,
The phrase "never a dull moment" is de rigueur for Circus Gehlhaar. Wolfgang and I are getting an amazing amount done. Among his many titles is "lorry driver" and I've become his partner. Trucks are called "lorries" in Europe. I think the entire show has been written at over 80 Km per hour. (I think that's about 50 miles per hour but I'm not quite sure.)
Two nights ago while we were on our way to Lyon in France we passed through Val D'Isere (in the French Alps) and had this huge accident. There's one family, the Szardoses and they had the most amazing van. It was like an old tall, flat sided delivery van that they lived in but it was incredible inside. Margali, who is the mother, is a real gypsy. Did you know they have a nationality? Roma. I didn't know that.
Anyway, it looked like what you would imagine a real gypsy caravan would look like. The outside was painted with advertisements for the circus and the inside was this incredible little homey space. They were the only family without an electrical hook up so they lit it with gas lanterns and all the furniture inside was handmade and bolted down. It was really old though and Margali was always repairing it every time we stopped.
So while driving through the passes, Wolfgang gets a call on his radio from Margali's daughter that their brakes are out. Wolfgang thought it was a joke at first because before I came, Kurt was Wolfgang's driving partner and apparently they once played a similar prank and Kurt was in Margali's van. (Kurt is Margali's adopted son. I have no idea where she found him.) But it turned out it wasn't a prank and the van crashed into a rock wall and went over the side.
Here's where it gets weird. When we realized it wasn't a prank, Wolfgang freaked out and gunned the motor so we passed all the other trucks at like a zillion miles per hour. I thought we were going to die too. And then he nearly sent my organs out through my mouth by stopping short because Margali, Amanda (her daughter), and Kurt were lying in a big heap in the road in front of us. I looked over the edge and I could see the van burning at the bottom of the cliff. I figured the three of them jumped out, because they were pretty much fine except that Amanda was sick to her stomach and Kurt was completely out of it. The weird part is that Wolfgang didn't seem all that concerned – actually he seemed to know what to do, like it had happened before. Especially the thing with Kurt. I thought he'd hit his head, but Wolfgang was like "No big deal, he's just tired." Tired? From a car accident?
You'll have to let me know the next time we talk if that made any sense. Unfortunately everyone was speaking German so I have no idea what people were saying. I get the impression that Kurt did something that got them out of the van before it fell off the road and that only Wolfgang knows about it but maybe I'm imagining things.
Oh yeah, Kurt's my second roommate now. Wolfgang had to store most of his stuff in one of the equipment trucks so we could all fit. It's not like Kurt has much left – just his clothes and a bible. (He's really really Catholic. Isn't that odd?)
I'm rambling, but it really has been a weird few days. We've been camped a couple of nights but we start for Lyon again early tomorrow morning. I'll call you when I get there. Hopefully you'll have gotten this letter and you can tell me I'm nuts and to stop imagining things.
I miss you.
Love,
Jim
PS - I keep forgetting to tell you. Wolfgang said it's: Hallo, ich'm ein beschütztes Stadtkind von Amerika. (And Kurt said I should add this to make it more clear: Bitte so ausnutzen meiner guten Natur. Ich kann nicht den Unterschied zwischen einem deutschmark und meinem Mastdarm erzählen. )
I don't know what any of that means (they had to spell it for me so I could put it in this letter) but knowing them, I'm sure it's embarrassing.
