me here to deal with a different clan. I’ve discerned, during my back and forth with Salinger, that the colorful tents and the weird stalls arranged along the sand aren’t part of a circus after all. Not a true circus, anyway. It’s a fair. A Roma fair.
At the edge of the encampment, a group of children finally see me approaching and cease their game, scattering in seven different directions, crying out for their mothers. Salinger, breathless, pitches up beside me just as I beeline for the first adult I see—a short, squat, gnarled old man with a bulbous nose and veiny hands. Bluer than the morning sky, his eyes are quick and sharp. “Thought we had a deal,” he grumbles, scowling at Salinger.
“I know. He’s…he wouldn’t listen,” Salinger snaps.
So, he does have some fire in him after all. Interesting. This Roma clan are camping out on Tulalip turf, but there isn’t any love lost between the two families if this brief interaction is anything to go by.
“You’re spying on us,” the old man accuses. “We were assured that we’d have our privacy down here.”
“He’s not one of ours,” Salinger fires back. “People come onto our land all the time. It’s not our fault if—”
“If he ain’t one of yours, then who the fuck is he?” The old man graces me with his attention. He shrinks back a little when our eyes meet. Mimicking the slow, easy smile of one of the characters in the cop show Lacey likes to watch, I rock on the balls of my feet. I’ve never been good at putting other people at ease. Fact of the matter is, my efforts usually have the opposite effect, and today is no exception. Instead of being reassured by my wolfish smile, the old boy looks like he’s about to soil his pants.
“Ah. Oh. You. You’re…” He nods, waving a hand, as if brushing off the question of my identity altogether. He tells me his name instead. “I’m Rabbie. And I suppose you’re here about the…uh…the incident.”
“What incident?”
Rabbie glowers at Salinger. “You can go now, boy. Leave us to talk now, won’t you? This chap’s come to see Shelta.”
Well, thank the lord Rabbie knows why I’m here. Saves me from having to figure it out on my own. Charlie’s not the type to offer information or explanations freely. Half the time I suspect that he’s testing me to see if I’ll be able to work out what he wants from me. It’s never a good idea to ask for clarification on jobs like this; I’m his right-hand man. According to Charlie, I’m just supposed to know, like I’m some kind of fucking mind reader.
“I can’t leave an outsider—”
Rabbie hisses, exposing rotten, yellow stumps behind his dry and cracked lips. “Away, boy. Ill luck! Wearing red on my beach? Today? You’ll bring the sky down on us, for Christ’s sake. Go on, get!”
“I’m not a dog. And this isn’t your beach. You’re borrowing it for one day and one day only. Remember that,” Salinger warns. The bumbling, scattered version of the kid vanishes for two whole breaths, replaced by a coiled, tightly wound man openly wearing many years of anger on his features. For a second, I barely recognize him. Rabbie, still bunched up and pointing from telling him off just now, has to shrug himself out of his furious stance in order to take a step away from the boy.
“That’s as may be. It is your beach, surely. For three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year. But we have an agreement, and for one day out of the year, it’s ours. Today’s that day, and you gotta abide by the rules, Sal. That’s all there is to it. Come now. When have we ever brought trouble to your doorstep?”
“Every single year for the past ten years,” Salinger says tightly. “And plenty of it, too. Zeth, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to come with me.”
I look at the kid. Really look at him. He’s doesn’t pose a threat to me; I could dismantle the poor bastard in the same amount of time it takes most people to rip open an envelope. But I don’t know. He seems like a good kid, and I’m not in the habit of fucking people up just because they pose an inconvenience to me. Not today, anyway.
“Go back to the visitor’s center, Salinger. Show some tourists around. File some fucking papers or something. I won’t be here long. You have