Our next stop is Portsmouth.<\/p>\n
Portsmouth is on the ocean, which means it will smell different. Otherwise, it will be the same as the last stop, with gray-brick commercial buildings and a gray-brick City Hall and gray-brick. Portsmouth will be the same as every last stop.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t like the old days, where every city had its own feeling, its own flavor layered in with the asphalt and concrete. These days, every place even smells the same: like an empty cardboard box.<\/p>\n
Except for the ocean cities.<\/p>\n
Our train car squeals and lurches. Next to me, Morph sleeps through it all. Only at rusted-out breaks in the rails, which totter the cars and shake valuables off shelves, does he shift, pulling me into the cave of his hips with a whisper. It\u2019s not permanent with Morph; it\u2019s not allowed to be. But it\u2019s comfortable, and it\u2019s what we have.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t sleep. I\u2019m supposed to because I\u2019m the Truth Teller and the last teller of truths told me you can\u2019t tell truth without dreams. But most of my dreams don\u2019t deliver the kind of truths that people who come to the circus want to hear, and I\u2019ve found I can do my job as well, or better, if I just open my eyes and keep the dream talk to a minimum.<\/p>\n
And so I stay awake, tucked inside Morph\u2019s elbows and hard knees, and I listen for birds. The truth is, I don\u2019t hear very well, and it\u2019s hard to hear anything anyway over the clacks and grunts of the train. But once in a while something comes in, a screech (hawks or eagles, meaning we\u2019re out west) or a hoot (a hooty-hoot is a great horned owl, and if it\u2019s in the late fall it means we\u2019re probably in the Northeast). Our route never varies, but our stops are unpredictable. Cities are forever closing or reopening their gates to us, so we never know where we\u2019ll be or when. This is why I listen for the birds.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Maybe because they still have their trees and nests between our gray walls, birds still have their own regions and patterns. They don\u2019t seem to realize that everything is supposed to be the same everywhere, that bird calls aren\u2019t supposed to act like beacons.<\/p>\n
But they do, and I strain my train-deafened ears to find them in the night.<\/p>\n
A high \u201cwhit whit whit\u201d like a stuttering wolf whistle seeps in from somewhere in the dark. A cardinal, male or female, just passing the time.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t hear another bird call until night breaks. My attention has wandered. I\u2019m thinking about Morph and about the guy who came before him, Slate. Slate was a Wire Dancer who got transferred to a different company a year ago and who liked to chew on my hair in his sleep.<\/p>\n
Then\u2014slicing through the gray dawn light, a whining \u201cwheek wheek\u201d catches my ear. I turn to the window, even though the plexiglass pane is blacked-out and I can\u2019t see anything through it. Still, I know the call: gulls. We are nearing the ocean.<\/p>\n
I lean my head back, into Morph\u2019s neck. \u201cHey.\u201d I\u2019m whispering. \u201cWe\u2019re getting close.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nods. His nose rubs into my hair, but he doesn\u2019t otherwise move. As headliner, Morph enjoys a luxury the rest of us don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I feel the train slowing and soon I hear it, too, the whoosh of the wheels coasting and the shrieks and groans of all eight hundred sixty-four brake shoes clamping. Morph sighs. He loves his sleep and he hates pulling into town. A new town means a new set-up. It means new administrators and new ordinances and new ways for the whole troupe to fall on its face. For the rest of us, it also means a new meet-and-greet, one that will begin, inevitably, as soon as the train hisses to a full stop.<\/p>\n
I dig out my iridescent black veil from under our sweaters on the wicker chair in the corner and rap on the veneer wall that divides our room from our neighbors\u2019. On the other side, Celly the Screamer or Harriet the Chemist or one of their nighttime friends raps back: they\u2019re ready. We look out for one another because missing the meet-and-greet can get you reinstituted.<\/p>\n
Reinstitution is the Fed\u2019s rule, not Morph\u2019s. However hard he can be on us, Morph would never reinstitute anyone. Because we remember. It\u2019s the one thing that makes us different from the instituted, from the grays.<\/p>\n
I take my place past our cot at the sliding steel door and wait as the train slows and slows and hisses and slows. Right before the floor stops moving beneath me, I glance back at Morph. He\u2019s pretending to sleep, but I can tell he\u2019s looking at me through his heavy eyelashes. I give him a nod and whirl the veil around my head. I raise my arms to let the silk fan out. This is for the crowd.<\/p>\n
The train halts and settles backwards. I\u2019m used to the jerks and heaves of our home in perpetual motion and I\u2019ve braced myself for the stop. Even so, I\u2019m still wavering when the steel door slides open and the gray dawn light floods my eyes.<\/p>\n
I anticipated it, but the ocean air smacks me like a hard memory. It\u2019s salty and it\u2019s strong and it presses against me, its wind like whispers whipping at my lips, my ears.<\/p>\n
In our doorway, separated from me by three millimeters of wall, Celly and Harriet and, I see without moving, Maxer the Crocheter stand posed. They\u2019re a little cramped, all three of them crowding in the narrow space, and Maxer is crouched down low, hunched against Celly\u2019s legs, as if she\u2019s in mid-scramble.<\/p>\n
I hear them all breathing: standing placid is no easy task, especially in the ionic atmosphere of a meet-and-greet.<\/p>\n
A crowd of grays stands back on the platform. Locals always come to see us arrive. They don\u2019t clap or cheer. They just watch. Somewhere among them is their Mayor or Council Chair, their Fed-authorized figurehead who will approve or disapprove our entry into the city. If approved, our train will trundle forward and set up in a clearing off the tracks a mile or so further down. If disapproved, we will move on, and Morph will have to answer for it.<\/p>\n
The circus is a grand experiment. It started as a rebellion, but the Feds overtook us, and now they\u2019re testing: can we work together? Exhibit human vitality without corrupting the locals? The Feds have their hypothesis, and we have ours. And in the space between, we perform.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the grays get antsy for us, for something other than the thousands of Fed-supplied entertainment stations, so the Feds tolerate us. And most cities don\u2019t rush to disapprove us. Still, there\u2019s always a chance.<\/p>\n
I browse the faces in the crowd, looking for an opening, a toehold of interest. But all the faces are round and flat and none of the eyes are warm.<\/p>\n
Racz the Biped\u2019s piccolo will start in less than a moment, and then our dance will begin: slow, weightless, quiet. We will be mesmerizing in color, contrast, collarbones. We will be mythic and sculptural.<\/p>\n
I strain to hold my eyes wide open, taking this one stolen beat of stillness to look at the world beyond the crowd.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s gray and it\u2019s square and it\u2019s exactly the same as the last city. Only the smell is different. This one smells like sour brine.<\/p>\n
But: graffiti. That, too, is different, in that there is some. On a top corner of a two-story gray building is one painted white spiral.<\/p>\n
I squint at it and almost miss my cue.<\/p>\n
But Celly whistles, soft as a breath, and I snap to. Then, in one mournfully high note\u2014don\u2019t ask me which; I have no ear for music\u2014Racz\u2019s piccolo bisects the salty sea air. Our murmuration begins.<\/p>\n
We step onto the platform as one. We are slow, careful, soft. But soon enough we burgeon, expansive, and then we erupt. We are just under wild, vibrating and pullulating, our bodies moving through the salted air. The dance is choreographed and not. The most important element, Morph says, is the tension between emergence and stillness, although sometimes he says it\u2019s between surprise and forgetfulness. Either way, our job is to invite the crowd into our world without involving them, and that\u2019s not something you can fully plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re choosing to live,\u201d Morph once said. \u201cSo live.\u201d He was talking to our whole company and we all nodded, our eyes wet and serious. When it\u2019s just Morph and me alone, he worries over whether any of us is actually living, whether aberrance is just an abstraction, and I like that side of him better. But when it\u2019s time to dance, I have to think of him in the other way, as our director of ceremonies directing us to live.<\/em><\/p>\n I slip between gray bodies, careful to not make contact. The rows of people are the same as all the earlier others, with their soft, gray clothes and soft, gray faces. No one smiles anymore, not even when the circus pulls into town. They\u2019re not in line waiting to delight at our boxcars and our colors and our mind tricks. They\u2019re in line because we are different and because they can\u2019t wait to let that terrify and reassure them.<\/p>\n We spin until the piccolo cuts out. Racz likes jarring moments: it\u2019s part of the surprise. I try to still and try to meet the eyes of anyone in the crowd around me. But they all look north of my eyes, just to the left of connection.<\/p>\n Except one. A few paces away stands a man, tall and poised with wild hair. He is a little less gray than the others. His eyes irradiate and when they meet mine they pull on me with a force that\u2019s tighter than any muscle, tauter than any rope.<\/p>\n I wonder if I knew him once. Part of the Complacency is that we don\u2019t remember where we were once we leave. Even in the circus, it takes months for the effects to wear off, and by then nobody remembers where they\u2019re from. The only one who would know is Marl the Singularity, and he\u2019ll never tell. He says it\u2019s cleaner that way\u2014or, at least, less complicated, and less likely to cause us to shatter in our hometown and get the whole company martialled. In any event, Morph agrees and so none of us knows our origin.<\/p>\n Not that it matters; all the cities are the same.<\/p>\n The piccolo keens again and again we whirl; we whirl and whirl and skim. But I lose pace for a second as I try to locate the tall man, to seek the spark of his eyes as beacons among the gray cloud of onlookers. I don\u2019t see him. The music grows louder and sharper, faster and I hear a hiccough, a hiss\u2014a gray to my right, a woman, sucks in air and another one, a child of seven or maybe eight who\u2019s alone (all children are alone) shrieks with his mouth closed, and I\u2019m whirling and I see Maxer and Marl in a non-touching tangle but still I\u2019m looking for the tall man, the man with the wild hair, and I stumble, just a tiny bit, just a wobble, but my arm grazes a gray and I overcorrect and step on\u2014a crack? a shoe cord? a finger?\u2014and still I can\u2019t see the tall man and if I fall I could get us all reinstituted\u2014<\/p>\n A nondescript woman in nondescript gray steps forward. She raises one hand.<\/p>\n We hush. I am on the verge of toppling, but I strain and remain upright.<\/p>\n The woman nods.<\/p>\n I am facing the crowd but I hear through the air behind me: Morph appearing on the roof of the train.<\/p>\n I know where he is without looking, without having ever seen it before. Because I was trained in Truth Telling and I know how to watch with my ears and nose and with the hairs on my skin. I know that Morph is resplendent. I know that he is captivating. When he moves, conjuring his glass spheres, freeing them to dance as iridescent bubbles on the air, he is more than a mesmerizer: he is a medium, giving the crowd glimpses into the colors of their own memories. I know that this is why he is here, born and on this train: the grays think Morph is here to amaze them, to thrill their senses in the ways that can only happen in person. But it\u2019s not. It\u2019s to activate them.<\/p>\n This is what Morph knows and the Feds do not: that we are not entertainment. We are a reminder of something nobody remembers.<\/p>\n The crowd looking back at us is weeping.<\/p>\n Not vocally, not expressively; some of them don\u2019t even have tears. But they all shine with the sharp edges of loss. The silent, shrieking child lowers his lip. A deep keening emerges from his insides.<\/p>\n At that moment, Morph shatters his glass spheres and smoke enfolds us of the circus. The meet-and-greet has ended. We disappear, silent as serpents, onto the train.<\/p>\n Our vanishing looks like magic, but it\u2019s not. Most of us are near the train when Morph appears and we know how to leap aboard silently. It\u2019s the first skill you learn when joining the circus, when you\u2019re running away and racing to board the train just as it departs: do it silently, because anyone who doesn\u2019t gets forced off by Marl.<\/p>\n Except this time I falter. In a crack in the smoke\u2014though Morph\u2019s smoke never cracks\u2014I see the tall man. The light in his still, brown eyes. I exhale once, and in the space of that breath the smoke clears in front of me.<\/p>\n I stand alone on the platform.<\/p>\n The tall man fades into the crowd. None of the faces around me are anything other than gray. In their eyes, I find nothing but aversion.<\/p>\n My misstep could get us all martialled. I have to make this look planned.<\/p>\n I say to the grays, none of whom are weeping now, \u201cI know you all.\u201d I say it like it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n Then I spin and my silk surrounds me and I disappear into the car as the door slides closed.<\/p>\n Outside the thin wall, the crowd does not cheer. Cheering is not why they are here. They are here to witness and to feel satisfied that they chose accord over discord, that they chose the life of the rational, of the comfortable, and not the preternatural life of the incongruent.<\/p>\n But on the inside they entreat us, and they promise themselves they will remember us, and then they go home and they pretend not to count the seconds until opening night.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The tent has gone up and it is magnificent. A swirl of color, it rises in the forest clearing like an imaginary, patchwork castle. At an hour before dusk, the only remaining set-up is getting the crown on the tent. The crown is the tent\u2019s top tier, and it\u2019s a breathtaking one. It is a gilded dollop of frosting, an anachronistic onion dome that soars to tree heights in defiance of the gray-box architecture filling the cities.<\/p>\n On the inside, of course, the crown is practical: part crow\u2019s nest, part invisible perch for Morph, part origination point of all the ropes and unfurlings and pyrotechnics that turn our performances into the stuff of myth. Dozens of pinholes in the crown allow in moonlight, which will reflect off mirrors inside to spotlight performers. If there\u2019s a brain center to our performance, it\u2019s the interior of the crown. Yet, if there\u2019s a symbol of our company, an image that the performers and crowds alike hold onto, it\u2019s the crown glowing gold in the sunset. When the crown settles in place on top of the primary tent, as performers we all feel it in our bones: we have begun.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been with the company for a year and a half, and I\u2019ve never missed a crowning. Most performers don\u2019t miss it, even though it\u2019s not mandatory and personal time is tough enough to scrounge. But set-up is a cacophonic flurry, and all performances are public. The crowning is just for us.<\/p>\n I join Celly, who\u2019s standing with Marl and others. Morph worries nearby, yelling for more people to man the ropes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a fish on a line,\u201d Marl tells us, not for the first time. \u201cI fished as a boy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot me.\u201d Maxer is nearby. Her eyes are distant. \u201cI played with lambs.\u201d<\/p>\n They don\u2019t know for sure. We all make the best guess at who we were, at the events that formed us.<\/p>\n The crown lifts higher, and the workers grunt and yell until it is at height. It is a golden raindrop, embroidered in millions of strands of metallic thread and set with hundreds of thousands of tiny crystal beads. It reflects and refracts and today, in the orange-purple light of the setting sun, it dazzles.<\/p>\n When the ropes drop, we celebrate. Some performers hoot, some holler, some say a prayer; we all keep our own superstitions, but it feels good to keep them in company.<\/p>\n I reach out and squeeze Celly\u2019s hand; she squeezes back. She never speaks between performances, and I know next to nothing about her. All the same, I love her like she\u2019s a part of me. Someday, I\u2019d like to know her story.<\/p>\n As soon as the crown is secured, we break. Morph, though, remains. He\u2019s looking at the tent, his expression distant and tired. He\u2019s avoiding me.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t reach for him; I can\u2019t. Outside of our train car, he\u2019s Headliner Morph, Morph my boss, Morph the man with the thousand crushing concerns. While the rest of us were setting up, Morph spent the afternoon with the City Planners and Council. Touching him right now would be like a river trying to flow back up the mountain: it just wouldn\u2019t work, and it would make things muddy. But I can wait.<\/p>\n He finally looks over at me. His face is lined, thin; as threadworn as the walls of our train cars.\u00a0 Marl crosses past the tent and Morph waves him down. But as Morph passes me, he says in a tight, bitter voice, \u201cNo more surprises tonight, Keller. Tight as a tick.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n Morph\u2019s responsibility over us weighs on him like an anchor. But, if I\u2019m not in any trouble with the local council, then he doesn\u2019t need to lecture me. I already know I screwed up.<\/p>\n Finally Morph steps towards me. \u201cBetter get ready: you\u2019ve made yourself headliner tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n I cough over my surprise. \u201cBut truth telling\u2014it\u2019s not performative, you know that.\u201d<\/p>\n He grimaces. \u201cThat\u2019s what Marl said. He thinks you should stay on the train tonight. But this was the only way I could convince Council that your little stumble was part of the show. Congratulations.\u201d Then he\u2019s moving off, updating Marl and the other team leaders on the city\u2019s requirements, on their rules and asks and unique bans.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t wait for the update. Marl will let me know if anything else pertains to me. For now, I have to change: it\u2019s ten minutes to first curtain and I\u2019m still in my ragged downtime sweater. I already hear the crowds, the push of locals wordlessly making their way to the forest.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Tonight\u2019s crowd is restless. They fill the large tent with their whispers and rustles. Though every city feels the same, audiences each have their own flavor. Some are noisy, some overwhelmed. This one is on edge: during our opening act, they startle easily, they laugh too loud, they cough against their gasps. Likely, they\u2019ve never seen anything like us before.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not surprising; before I saw us, before the night I ran away to join, I\u2019d probably never seen anything like us before, either.<\/p>\n Still, it\u2019s aggravating. A crowd that overreacts can rub off on the performers. In the second act, our people start making missteps. Arabelly misses her second twist off the ribbons, Gorg lifts Lalla instead of Cardo. By the end of the first half, most of the acrobats and strongpeople have stumbled or stepped out of line. The crowd can\u2019t tell, but they can probably read the performers\u2019 mounting frustration. Tonight the heat within the tent feels like a convection oven.<\/p>\n And then the lights go black.<\/p>\n The audience stirs and moves, wary. But a glimmer high above, in the hips of the crown, makes everyone look up.<\/p>\n Lulo our Wire Dancer, the one who was traded for Slate, stands shimmering in mid-air. A piercing high note from Racz\u2019s piccolo plays\u2014a striking recall to the meet-and-greet\u2014and Lulo starts moving, floating. For all I know, she\u2019s flying. I see the wire dancing every performance, six or seven nights a week, and, still, it hypnotizes me.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know how the wire dancing works. I should, because I need to know the truth. But I haven\u2019t fully come into it yet, into interpreting and connecting. For me, truth is layers of haziness. I can sense the layers, at least, which is why the old Truth Teller chose me. But I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll ever remember what the layers mean.<\/p>\n And, anyway, according to Slate, wire dancing isn\u2019t a matter of truth; as with all our talents, it\u2019s a matter of faith.<\/p>\n Just above Lulo, a dark figure emerges: Morph. Swathed in black velvet fatigues, he\u2019s almost invisible to the eye. But the crystal spheres he revolves in his hands glint, twinkling and sparking above Lulo.<\/p>\n The crowd, at last, goes silent. No one even shifts. The only sound under the tent is the whorling and clinking of Morph\u2019s crystals as they against one another in his palms.<\/p>\n Suddenly, the sound changes. A heavy clunk: one crystal sphere has collided with another. Then one sphere gleams. It catches a slim beam of moonlight and it shimmers, chasing gravity in its long fall to the ground.<\/p>\n A crash.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never seen Morph drop a crystal before; I\u2019ve never seen him drop anything.<\/p>\n The crowd is silent, breathless. I can tell no one knows if the drop was intentional, and even the performers wait to see what will happen next. But Racz is a professional and he keeps his piccolo going.<\/p>\n In a shaking, shrieking note, Marl\u2019s alto flute joins in. This is my cue.\u00a0 Marl and I blocked out tonight\u2019s timing and I tremble from my toes as I try to retain it. I step into the arena, just as plumes of fog belly in and our floor lights begin to glow. Like other discreets, I typically don\u2019t have a role in the main performance after the opening, and usually by now I would be squeezing in a last moment of watching Morph before hurrying to set up my booth. But tonight I\u2019m headlining.<\/p>\n I waddle into the center of the arena. My costume is wide-skirted and black-plumed with a giant headdress that spills down my back. Alza the Dreamer says I\u2019m made to look like a pigeon, but I\u2019ve never seen an iridescent black pigeon before.<\/p>\n I trundle forward and raise my arms\u2014<\/p>\n But no one is in their place. Lulo and Morph haven\u2019t descended yet, and Gorg and Cardo and the other strongpeople aren\u2019t behind me. Racz\u2019s piccolo cuts off first, then Marl\u2019s flute dies back. Under my boots, crystal shards crunch into the rocky dirt floor.<\/p>\n The crowd has risen to its feet. No one speaks. A light blinks on in front of my eyes.<\/p>\n A man\u2019s voice crackles, splitting the space between us like a spear of lightning: \u201cTell me a truth.\u201d<\/p>\n The man approaches and when he steps out of the light and becomes more than a silhouette, I see he is tall and wild-haired and tracing his hand over his heart.<\/p>\n He is the man from the meet-and-greet.<\/p>\n \u201cStop!\u201d<\/p>\n A woman, the small woman, the woman who was gray and nondescript at the meet-and-greet, the one who approved us, stands on her seat and her voice is a shriek, a command. It rings in our ears then dies in the heavy ocean air<\/p>\n The man, however, does not listen. He steps towards me.<\/p>\n \u201cA truth,\u201d he repeats.<\/p>\n Morph drops gracelessly next to me and lets go of the rope that rappelled him down. At my side, he hisses. His head twitches, a shake: No. Don\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cWho was your father?\u201d the man asks.<\/p>\n He shouldn\u2019t know the word \u201cfather.\u201d Even I take a moment to register the word, to remember its definition. These days\u2014the only days I\u2019ve ever known\u2014families don\u2019t exist. Adults live alone. Children are raised by a revolving mass of instructional media operators.<\/p>\n \u201cEnough.\u201d This time, when the Mayor speaks, her voice is sharper. Yet it trembles. Like jelly. And no one\u2014no other council members or grays\u2014stands to support her.<\/p>\n Still, I know better than to speak.<\/p>\n But if this man is remembering, if he\u2019s grown immune to the Complacency, why is he calling attention to it? He should be sneaking off in the middle of the night like we all did, rushing and treading and slipping away to moor himself on the caboose of our train, not announcing himself to the whole city.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t see him well in the dark, but I feel him waiting. Sending pleas through the air. He is desperate. His fear is bigger than one man\u2019s, more far-reaching than one life.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father was nobody.\u201d The words fall from my mouth like rain.<\/p>\n \u201cKeller!\u201d Morph\u2019s hiss is a claw, shredding me to stop.<\/p>\n The man\u2019s body softens. His shoulders slump. His hand moves over his heart, tracing an invisible spiral there.<\/p>\n \u201cSee?\u201d<\/p>\n I can\u2019t tell who the Mayor is speaking to, but she sounds both loud and strangled, triumphant and afraid. \u201cThe Complacency is intact.\u201d She motions to the tall man. \u201cYou,\u201d she says, \u201ccome with me.\u201d<\/p>\n No one seizes the tall men\u2014there are no police in the cities\u2014but he moves toward her anyway, his body a sagging suit.<\/p>\n The haze around his darkness prickles the corners of my eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father\u2014\u201d The words tumble out and I can\u2019t stop them, because there aren\u2019t any police in the cities but there are executioners and if I can help this man\u2014or give him some peace\u2014then I must do it. \u201cHe was a postman.\u201d The haze is flexing and I can\u2019t tell if I\u2019m remembering it or hearing it in the whispers of the air, but I can see his history, our history, written all around. It\u2019s my purpose to speak truth and resisting it now would go against my every neuron, would fight against the very currents of my blood. \u201cBack when there were postmen. His father loved dogs and growing tiny potatoes and when he said he was watching football he was playing music with his best friend Elijah.\u201d<\/p>\n The tall man stops moving. A fleet of audience members stands. Even in the dark, I see the three letters on their shoulders: they are Feds.<\/p>\n The tall man is realizing his mistake, we both are; but I can\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n \u201cComplacency remains!\u201d The Mayor is screaming, shrieking again, her voice sharp and etched with ravines of despair.<\/p>\n In another life, she could have been one of our Keeners.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an isolated problem! No one else is showing signs\u2014\u201d The Mayor\u2019s words cease when one of the Feds pushes past her to enter the performance ring.<\/p>\n I turn to Morph. He\u2019s so much older than I ever realized. We all are. He\u2019s borne this burden of us, of memory, for so long. \u201cYour mother had her pilot\u2019s license. She used to take you flying, in secret, before the walls\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKeller,\u201d he whispers. It\u2019s the last word he\u2019ll ever say; I see that, too, and the memories floating in his eyes. He never forgot. But that doesn\u2019t mean it doesn\u2019t hurt.<\/em><\/p>\n I reach for his hand. For once, in view of others, he reaches back.<\/p>\n A teenager in the front row has stood. She is afraid but facing me anyway. I call to her, \u201cYour grandmother was a pediatrician and she was a poet her whole life. She used to dance on the yellow tiles in her mother\u2019s kitchen. And yours\u2014\u201d I face the next person, a middle aged man, and I\u2019m yelling myself hoarse, \u201cyour father was a house painter who brushed your name into every wall he ever painted. And\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n A Fed seizes my shoulders.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d The Fed speaks through a thick throat, through years of forgetting. His eyes are hard but they are full. \u201cBut no one wants your stories, liar.\u201d<\/p>\n He squeezes my arms to my chest, and then a woman from the Fed crowd joins in and squeezes at me, too.<\/p>\n I try to breathe because I need air to speak, to tell the truths that are demanding to be told. But the man and the woman and now the rest of the crowd don\u2019t want to hear them.<\/p>\n Morph looks at the Mayor in the crowd. His eyes are watering, and he regrets what he\u2019s about to say. Still, he says it. \u201cWe accept your fate.\u201d<\/p>\n Behind me, a streak of orange flame erupts into the air.<\/p>\n Somewhere in the tent, Celly screams like an unleashed wolverine.<\/p>\n Fingers at my neck dig like rodents, like snakes trying to burrow in. I can\u2019t breathe and I doubt I ever will again. The man and the woman are squeezing me, squeezing the truths back in. But it doesn\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n I meet their eyes and I see that they know: that they will kill us, that this circus will end, but that they will still see. At night, in their beds, after they have turned off their entertainments and media, they will lay under their covers and see under their eyelids a man pulling his potatoes and a woman as a girl dancing in a kitchen. They will all see, and they will remember.<\/p>\n The tall man I can\u2019t see; he\u2019s vanished again, or fallen, and I hope that he\u2019s escaped. That his spiral will grow.<\/p>\n Above and around us, the tent burns in whorls and it undulates, a corona of flame. I find the Fed\u2019s eyes over mine and hold onto them. He\u2019s waiting for me to succumb.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t know, does he? About death and truth and what can never be killed?<\/p>\n Despite the heat and the smoke and the desperate, savage hunger in my body for air, I dare myself not to blink. Let him see.<\/em> It\u2019s my last and best thought, and I realize how wrong I was not to dream when I had the chance. Let him see everything.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our next stop is Portsmouth. Portsmouth is on the ocean, which means it will smell different. Otherwise, it will be the same as the last stop, with gray-brick commercial buildings and a gray-brick City Hall and gray-brick. Portsmouth will be the same as every last stop. This isn\u2019t like the old days, where every city […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[86],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-57B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19692,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19691\/revisions\/19692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}LAUREN HRUSKA<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"