The Final Charge of Mr. Electrico Read online

  January 1, 2018 Volume 8 No 3

  The Final Charge of Mr. Electrico

  by Scott Edelman

  When he came to me, he touched me on the brow, and on the nose, and on the chin, and he said to me, in a whisper, “Live forever.” And I decided to.

  Ray Bradbury, Paris Review interview

  Mr. Electrico had once believed he was going to live forever.

  And as he sat on one corner of a spare bed at his grandson’s house—a bed which his pained lower back signaled was somehow far harder than the string of cots which to his far younger self had seemed so soft—he looked down at the sword in his trembling hands, and still, all these many years later, thought...why shouldn’t he have fooled himself into thinking that? He’d told so many kids so many times they’d never die that after awhile it had seemed only fair he should join them in the immortality he’d been extravagantly granting.

  Considering his decades on the carnival circuit, such wishful thinking was surely inevitable.

  Count how often those inviting tent flaps unfolded at the beginnings of his shows, multiply that by the thousands filing in tugging eager children who were then instructed to squat in the front rows, add the host of times he surrendered to the embrace of the electric chair and felt its power pass through him, letting his skin tingle and his hair stand on end, boost it all by the number of slashes he made with his sword while reaching forward to knight the closest kids with shouts of “Live forever!”...

  ...and a sensation had begun to expand within him which insisted—the words he’d uttered were no con game.

  And he’d deserved to taste their power, too.

  No one could go through those motions for so many performances, mouth those same two words that many times, without beginning to believe. He dared anyone else to try it. Not that anyone else ever would. They couldn’t. The days of carnivals were long over. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair for the charge to merely pass through him, and have none of it remain. Something had to stick, right? Some small part?

  Yet...why should he be so lucky? Those who’d toured with him, the only ones to whom he could have talked about this and have them understand, had already taken their leave.

  The Fat Lady had been the first to go, back when they were both still on the road. Her heart gave out in her sleep, the sad price demanded by her trade. At least she went peaceful. (He liked to think she did. Does anyone ever truly go peaceful?) The Skeleton Man, though, hadn’t been that lucky. He was carried away by cigarettes. Last time Mr. Electrico had seen him, when he visited to reminisce about the old days, the man could barely speak above a whisper. Not much reminiscing got done, except in their own heads. Those wheezy lungs had kept them both too focused on the future, short though it was, to enjoy wandering through the past.

  As for The Illustrated Man, Mr. Electrico was never quite sure exactly what had happened to him. No one would say. When he showed up for the memorial service, the relatives wouldn’t even look him in the eye. And those tattoos, they didn’t seem quite so pretty when viewed in the open coffin on which The Illustrated Man had insisted. Mr. Electrico remembered how once they’d been marvelous.

  How once they’d all been marvelous.

  The jugglers, the ticket takers, the drivers, all gone, gone, gone. There had been too many funerals over too many decades, and he’d gone to as many as he could, for his friends deserved to be shown a little respect, but then, after a time, there were no more funerals to attend. Now only he remained.

  So ... maybe the electricity had done something after all. He was still around, wasn’t he? The last man standing. OK, so the hand which had once held the sword shook, and during the night, he often had to get up half a dozen times to piss, and when he woke in the morning, sometimes—not always, but sometimes—he wasn’t sure where he was. But all that was better than the alternative, right?

  Sure would have been nice if one of the others—any one of the others, he wasn’t picky—had still been around, so they could have shared a place. Would have been nice, too, if his son was still speaking with him, so they could have shared a place. No fixing that, though. Mr. Electrico doubted forgiveness was even possible. It was sweet of his grandson to step up like this, even if the kid didn’t understand the carny life his grandpa used to lead. But maybe that was the only reason he was willing to step up.

  Josh.

  It was Josh, wasn’t it?

  That’s right.

  Josh.

  Mr. Electrico wished he could show the kid who he really was, and why, wished he could explain it all in the way he’d never been able to do for his son, whose empathy had been crushed by having to live through it. And once he could have. The photos would have helped. And the newspaper clippings, filled with awe and wonder. And if only he still owned the costume he’d once worn, red silk with yellow piping zigzagging down the sleeves to make it look as if lightning was about to come out of his fingertips. But those were all gone, all of it, every scrap of memorabilia, each battered souvenir, lost to rundown apartments he’d abandoned with rent unpaid, and evictions which had left his possessions dissolving in the rain, and small-town pawnshops he’d see the once but never again.

  And drink, oh, the drink. To that above all those physical manifestations of his memories had been sacrificed, sometimes willingly, sometimes not, as his path narrowed to whatever this life of his had turned out to be.

  Only the sword, remarkably, remained. Even he wasn’t entirely sure how.

  He held it out before him as he used to do at each show—more an extension of his arm than a piece of metal—and closed his eyes. He could almost see them—the faces in the front row filled with amazement, kid after kid shocked to see what coursed through him as he sat in that chair showered with sparks, faces which would soon themselves be literarily shocked as he tapped their brows and shouted in the tent then what he whispered in the small borrowed bedroom now—

  “Live forever!”

  And when he had, he truly thought they could.

  All these years later, he raised the sword high above his head, and there he was, in front of thousands of people blurred together by memory, forgettable faces with no names to go with them. But there was one face which stood out from all the rest. One face which had gained a name.

  Mr. Electrico saw it then, the face of the kid who’d come back, the face of the kid who’d brought him a magic trick, the face of a kid he’d welcomed into the tent and introduced to his friends, the face of a kid which was also in a former life the face of a friend, a friend who’d died in his arms in the Ardennes Forest in 1918, during the Great War.

  Or was that last but a lie he’d told, the kind of thing you cough up to a rube to keep them happy and empty their pockets? It had been so long since their last encounter one Labor Day weekend that he couldn’t be sure, couldn’t remember whether he’d been sincere, or was only planting the seeds for a long con which never had the chance to play out.

  No, that he couldn’t remember.

  But he remembered the day when the carnival stopped by Lake Michigan, near Waukegan, Illinois, and the kid to whom Mr. Electrico had seemed to matter so much.

  He remembered that kid, and wondered whether he was the one who’d prove his words more than just words. The one who truly would live forever.

  That kid named...Ray, wasn’t it?

  Yes. Ray.

  Ray hadn't been the first to come back—kids were always ditching their parents and returning to say the things they wouldn’t dare unless they were alone with him—but he was the first to come back who didn't also ask to join him. They were always asking to take off, believing that hitting the road with a carniva
l was the solution to whatever their problems happened to be. Splitting from an abusive household could be a good thing, sure, Mr. Electrico had done the same himself when he was a kid, but having done so, he’d learned the hard way—why bring the carny life into it? That was no answer. But then, it never was.

  He kept waiting for the kid to ask him, too, ask for help in running away, the way he himself had once asked for help from another who’d earlier carried his name. First when Ray pulled out that beginners magic trick he’d bought at the Five and Dime and begged him to explain how it worked, and then when he was brought into the tent and introduced to the others, where Mr. Electrico could see the kid’s eyes grow large as he took in the Bearded Lady and the Alligator Boy and all the rest of them, saw how they treated each other when they were by themselves without the rubes around, as if the fantastic were common, and the common fantastic, and finally out along the sand dunes, where they sat and talked of their lives, and Mr. Electrico was moved to say something he’d never said before, about how the two of them had known each other in past lifetimes.

  But Ray never asked that question Mr. Electrico had come to know too well. And it was only later that Mr. Electrico realized the thought had never even occurred to Ray at all.

  They talked for hours, about ferris wheels and movie stars, rocket ships and life on Mars, about comic strips which promised more than real life ever could, about things that might have been and things that never were...but then it was time for Mr. Electrico to head back for his evening shows—the final performances before he’d have to move on. There were tears in Ray’s eyes as they parted, which Mr. Electrico thought meant the kid would then ask the question, before the opportunity to do so was gone forever...but he did not.

  He often wondered what those tears had meant. He wished he could have tracked the kid down and asked him. He suspected if found that the kid would have understood what his grandson couldn’t and his son never even wanted to try. But he’d never learned anything more than his given name, and so a reunion was impossible.

  Mr. Electrico wished they had known each other before in the trenches, the way he’d told him, because that would have meant there was a chance they’d see each other again in the future. But he knew now, as he knew he’d known then, that there was no coming back in this life, that once a person was gone he was gone, one reason he fought so hard against his body’s signals that it was time to leave.

  He didn’t want to leave.

  Mr. Electrico snapped out of his reverie, suddenly aware of the streets down which he walked, realizing he had no idea where he was. What made it worse was that at the same time—he was also uncertain whether this confusion was because he’d wandered, while lost in thoughts of the past, to a neighborhood he’d never encountered before, or if, cruelly, he no longer recognized a place with which he should he familiar. He hoped it was the former, because the latter...well, that was happening more often now.

  Closing his eyes and concentrating hard, he remembered.

  He’d left his grandson’s home for a walk in the sun—Josh had insisted he go out, said it wasn't good for him to sit alone in that spare room all day. So Mr. Electrico had headed to the park, starting his rambling there as he always did, because he knew its openness would bring back his carnival days, and thoughts of that moment the caravan would arrive at a new location, and study an open field before beginning to set up. If he could position himself properly, and keep the benches and path lights and playground equipment at his back, he could almost pretend it was still the past. He’d stay there forever if he could.

  But eventually, his joints had told him he’d better get moving again, so he grabbed a hot dog that hadn't tasted as good as one he might have gotten on the midway, then headed on to look in store windows filled with things he no longer wanted nor needed, if he ever did, then studied the posters outside a theater advertising movies he would never bother seeing, his afternoon reminding him too much of things he would never do.

  But once he’d spent enough time wasting time, enough to keep Josh happy at least, and was ready to turn back...he no longer recalled how to get home. He stood on a street corner trying to remember, but not trying too hard, because the failure that was more often starting to accompany such trying would be too painful.

  So he meandered until he made his way back to the park—he could remember how to get there, at least—and once there, as he stared out across the grass on which one wasn’t supposed to walk, he again briefly tried to decide which way he should turn next to find his way back to his grandson. But he couldn’t choose, so instead, he sat on a bench and wished, as the darkness settled around him, that he could still spread wide his hands and light up the night.

  Which is where his grandson found him still sitting the following morning.

  Josh wasn’t alone as he walked up the path toward Mr. Electrico. There was a policeman by his side, which told Mr. Electrico that no, Josh truly didn’t understand.

  He did not like police officers. It was nothing personal. No one who’d worked a carnival ever did.

  “What are you doing here, Grandpa?” asked Josh, as he slid onto wooden slats still covered with dew.

  “Just resting,” said Mr. Electrico, unwilling to reveal the truth, especially not with a cop there to bear witness. “Thinking. Remembering.”

  “All night? Here?”

  “And why not? I can do those things on a park bench as easily as anywhere else.”

  Josh leaned in more closely to his grandfather, so only the two of them could hear what he was to say next.

  “You forgot again,” he whispered. “Didn’t you?”

  “I did not,” Mr. Electrico insisted, hoping he’d been able to imbue his words with confidence. He’d made so many believe so much, surely he could make one man believe that.

  “That’s not true, Grandpa,” said Josh. “We both know that. If we didn’t find you, who knows how long you’d have been out here alone.”

  “I was just taking my time, that’s all,” he said, his words less certain. The power to pretend, a power about which he’d once been so proud, had long ago diminished. But he still had to try. “I’d have gotten home eventually. I always do.”

  “Not always,” said Josh, his voice still a whisper. “This wasn’t the first time. Remember?”

  Mr. Electrico felt his grandson’s hand on his shoulder, and though the touch was gentle and though it was meant with love, it brought back memories of other park benches, and other touches, ones not so gentle, which had been meant to make him move along. He stayed silent, and tried not to let those feeling show.

  “So you’re saying the officer and I should just leave you here then? You’ll have no problem getting back on your own?”

  At first, Mr. Electrico said nothing. He looked off again toward the unbroken stretch of cool, green grass, and imagined a tent rising there. But tents would rise no more. He sighed.

  “I guess I’ve sat here long enough,” Mr. Electrico said finally. “We can go.”

  As he stood, he could hear his knees crack. He guessed he probably wasn’t the only one who’d heard them.

  “The officer said he’d drive us home,” said Josh, gesturing at the police car which had been left idling on the outskirts of the park.

  “I can walk,” said Mr. Electrico, even as he felt a pounding in his chest. “I’m not dead yet.”

  Besides, he thought, he’d been in the back of too many police cars. Sure, it had been decades since the last time. But still. He remembered that claustrophobic feeling, all those doors with no handles. No, sir. Not today. Not yet. He stretched, partially because he needed it after having been curled up on a park bench all night, and partially because he needed Josh to point him in the right direction so they could get started, and was delaying because he didn’t want to have to admit it.

  “Shall we?” he said, and tilted his head in a vague circle he hoped night accidentally approximate the correct direction.
>
  Josh hesitated for a moment, looking as if he was about to speak...then shrugged instead and began walking.

  Mr. Electrico followed, trying his best to memorize the streets—some of which seemed familiar to him, and some not, as if buildings had been shuffled overnight—between the park and his grandson’s house. They were silent all the way there, though Mr. Electrico could tell, from the grim expression on his grandson’s face, that a speech was building which he would not want to hear. Once they arrived, Josh waved at the couch in the living room.

  “We can’t go on this way,” he said. “I know you know that, grandpa.”

  “We?” said Mr. Electrico. “I’m tired. Can we do this later?”

  Josh nodded, and Mr. Electrico went up to his room—slowly, as all stairs were taken slowly these days—where he fell asleep immediately, a thing which he hadn’t allowed himself in the park. Oh, he’d been tired, and he’d desperately wanted to nod off, but a life spent on the road had taught him that was never to be done. He hadn’t even been able to bring himself to nap while there, only listen to the crickets and look at the stars, both those present that night and those which existed only in memory. So sleep came quick now, as did dreams of his old life, and an afternoon by Lake Michigan, and a boy named Ray.

  When he woke, he could remember little of the dreams, only that he had dreamt, which he did not like. It seemed forgetfulness, which was now so much a part of his life, was spreading to his dreams as well.

  How long before he forgot it all?

  Mr. Electrico managed to avoid “the talk” Josh kept insisting they have, making him think he still had some of the gift of gab which had served him so well during his carny days, but then, one morning, he woke and looked under his bed for the sword which would allow him to perform the ritual meant to remind him of who he’d once been, and he found nothing but dust bunnies, a sock he’d thought he’d lost, and a depression created in the carpeting by a long, rectangular box which had lain there since his grandson had taken him in.