Around lunchtime the following day, Patrick headed to where he now knew Clint lived. He gave a quick rap on the trailer door and an elderly woman opened it. She looked at him skeptically but not without kindness.

"What can I do for you?"

Patrick noticed her Indian accent. He noticed everything; the faint, pleasant smell coming from inside the trailer, the faded ink deisgns on her hands and that she stood with all her weight on her left leg.

"Is Clint around?" he asked.

She shook her head.

Carnies always seemed to be lying about each others' whereabouts. They lied about a lot of things, but he could tell she wasn't.

"Well, if you see him will you tell him his friend Patrick stopped by?"

A little smile graced the old woman's lips.

"You are his friend?"

"Yeah." Patrick assured her and smiled too.

"That is good." She said. "I will tell him."

Patrick thanked her and left.

Squinting in the bright sunlight, he looked around feeling a bit disappointed. Clint seemed like he really had wanted to meet up. He stood there a moment longer, hands on his hips, deciding his next move. The old lady's reaction was interesting, not that Patrick was surprised Clint didn't have friends. Deafness probably didn't make it easy and the guy wasn't exactly warm and fuzzy. He wondered a moment how he had got so stand offish, but was quickly distracted by the smell of barbecue.

After mooching a delicious pulled pork sandwich for lunch, Patrick was careful to avoid running into his father while grabbing a book from their airstream. Once he had a book in hand he ran off to find a shadey spot to read away the afternoon.

Out beyond the field that functioned as a parking lot, he settled under an old silver maple that stood by itself. It was a sufficienly quiet spot, and best of all it was out of sight from anywhere his dad might be hanging around.

It had only been a few minutes since he had opened his novel when a leaf came fluttering down in front of his eyes. He thought nothing of it until one by one leaves continued falling. He looked up and there in the branches sat Clint. He was actually smiling as he plucked leaves and dropped them.

Patrick laughed and hopped to his feet to try and climb up there. The way up proved to be less than obvious so Clint came down on land with him. They sat down together and he produced the sign language book from seemingly nowhere.

He told Patrick he'd been up in the tree paging through the book. It turned out the sign language Clint did know was mostly stuff made up between him and his brother. He'd learned a little ASL here and there, but mostly he didn't know it. He'd learned to read lips pretty early on because he and Barney thought it was cool, like something James Bond would know. He got by pretty well with it and he'd only improved since coming to the carnival. Clint of course told Patrick a Barney-free version of this story.

The first thing Patrick tried to do was talk so Clint couldn't read his lips. That had both boys laughing pretty hard. Then Patrick tried his hand at lip reading and discovered it was much more difficult than he anticipated. Clint thought it was funny but genuinely tried to help him get it.

After that, they sat under the tree until dusk practicing sign language out of the book.

When it was too dim to see the pages anymore they got up and made their way across the parking field. By then it had filled up with cars and the carnival was in full force.

Patrick stopped and tapped Clint's shoulder so he'd look over.

"Who is the old woman?"

"Auntie. She looks out for me. Took me in when I got here."

Patrick noticed a little emphasis on the word 'me', but didn't think much of it.

"I can tell she really cares about you." He said as he leaned back against a parked car.

Clint didn't say anything, just nodded vaguely.

"Are you here by yourself?" He asked, changing the subject.

"I wish! " Patrick huffed.

Clint lifted his hand and he signed the word "who".

"Yeah ok!" Patrick exclaimed and thought for a second. Then he put his thumb to his forehead and made the sign for "father".

In the fading light he could see Clint smile. It was short lived though.

"My dad sucked too." he said.

Suddenly Patrick wasn't smiling anymore either. He found himself just nodding in agreement.

"Ok." Clint said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I'll see you."

Patrick watched him go. Then with a deep sigh he went home too.