for news of Maddy’s condition and the progress of her labor. In those days, fathers were seldom admitted to delivery rooms to witness the birth of their children.
“He will be the circus star of his time, Rudy Tock, and everyone who sees him perform will know Konrad Beezo is his father, patriarch of clowns.”
The ward nurses who should have regularly visited the lounge to speak with the waiting husbands were making themselves less visible than usual. No doubt they were uncomfortable in the presence of this angry bozo.
“On my father’s grave, I swear my Punchinello will never be an aerialist,” Beezo declared.
The blast of thunder punctuating his vow was the first of two so powerful that the windowpanes vibrated like drumheads, and the lights—almost extinguished—throbbed dimly.
“What do acrobatics have to do with the truth of the human condition?” Beezo demanded.
“Nothing,” Rudy said at once, for he was not an aggressive man. Indeed, he was gentle and humble, not yet a pastry chef like his father, merely a baker who, on the verge of fatherhood, wished to avoid being severely beaten by a large clown.
“Comedy and tragedy, the very tools of the clown’s art—that is the essence of life,” Beezo declared.
“Comedy, tragedy, and the need for good bread,” Rudy said, making a little joke, including his own trade in the essence-of-life professions.
This small frivolity earned him a fierce glare, a look that seemed capable not merely of stopping clocks but of freezing time.
“‘Comedy, tragedy, and the need for good bread,’” Beezo repeated, perhaps expecting Dad to admit his quip had been inane.
“Hey,” Dad said, “that sounds just like me,” for the clown had spoken in a voice that might have passed for my father’s.
“‘Hey, that sounds just like me,’” Beezo mocked in Dad’s voice. Then he continued in his own rough growl: “I told you I’m talented, Rudy Tock. In more ways than you can imagine.”
Rudy thought he could feel his chilled heart beating slower, winding down under the influence of that wintry gaze.
“My boy will never be an aerialist. The hateful snakes will hiss. Oh, how they’ll hiss and thrash, but Punchinello will never be an aerialist!”
Another tsunami of thunder broke against the walls of the hospital, and again the lights were more than half drowned.
In that gloom, Rudy swore that the tip of Beezo’s cigarette in his right hand glowed brighter, brighter, although he held it at his side, as if some phantom presence were drawing on it with eager lips.
Rudy thought, but could not swear, that Beezo’s eyes briefly glowed as bright and red as the cigarette. This could not have been an inner light, of course, but a reflection of … something.
When the echoes of the thunder rolled away, the brownout passed. As the lights rose, so did Rudy rise from his chair.
He had only recently returned here, and although he had received no news about his wife, he was ready to flee back to the grim scene in the intensive care unit rather than experience a third doomsday peal and another dimming of lights in the company of Konrad Beezo.
When he arrived at the ICU and found two nurses at his father’s bedside, Rudy feared the worst. He knew that Josef was dying, yet his throat tightened and tears welled when he thought the end loomed.
To his surprise, he discovered Josef half sitting up in bed, hands clutching the side rails, excitedly repeating the predictions that he had already made to one of the nurses. “Twenty inches … eight pounds ten ounces … ten-forty-six tonight … syndactyly …”
When he saw his son, Josef pulled himself all the way into a sitting position, and one of the nurses raised the upper half of the bed to support him better.
He had not only regained his speech but also appeared to have overcome the partial paralysis that had followed his stroke. When he seized Rudy’s right hand, his grip proved firm, even painful.
Astonished by this development, Rudy at first assumed that his father had experienced a miraculous recovery. Then, however, he recognized the desperation of a dying man with an important message to impart.
Josef’s face was drawn, seemed almost shrunken, as if Death, in a sneak-thief mood, had begun days ago to steal the substance of him, ounce by ounce. By contrast his eyes appeared to be enormous. Fear sharpened his gaze when his eyes fixed on his son.
“Five days,” said Josef, his hoarse voice raw with suffering, parched because he had been taking fluids only intravenously. “Five terrible days.”
“Easy, Dad. Don’t excite yourself,” Rudy cautioned, but he saw that on the cardiac monitor, the illuminated graph of his father’s heart activity revealed a fast yet regular pattern.
One of the nurses left to summon a doctor. The other stepped back from the bed, waiting to assist if the patient experienced a seizure.
First licking his cracked lips to wet the way for his whisper, he made his fifth prediction: “James. His name will be James, but no one will call him James … or Jim. Everyone will call him Jimmy.”
This startled Rudy. He and Maddy had chosen James if the baby was a boy, Jennifer if it was a girl, but they had not discussed their choices with anyone.
Josef could not have known. Yet he knew.
With increasing urgency, Josef declared, “Five days. You’ve got to warn him. Five terrible days.”
“Easy, Dad,” Rudy repeated. “You’ll be okay.”
His father, as pale as the cut face of a loaf of bread, grew paler, whiter than flour in a measuring cup. “Not okay. I’m dying.”
“You aren’t dying. Look at you. You’re speaking. There’s no paralysis. You’re—”
“Dying,” Josef insisted, his rough voice rising in volume. His pulse throbbed at his temples, and on the monitor it grew more rapid as he strained to break through his son’s reassurances and to seize his attention. “Five dates. Write them down. Write them now. NOW!”
Confused, afraid that Josef’s adamancy might trigger another stroke, Rudy mollified his father.
He borrowed a pen from the nurse. She didn’t have any paper, and she wouldn’t let him use the patient’s chart that hung on the foot of the bed.
From his wallet, Rudy withdrew the first thing he found that offered a clean writing surface: a free pass to the very circus in which Beezo performed.
Rudy had received the pass a week ago from Huey Foster, a Snow Village police officer. They had been friends since childhood.
Huey, like Rudy, had wanted to be a pastry chef. He didn’t have the talent for a career in baking. His muffins broke teeth. His lemon tarts offended the tongue.
When, by virtue of his law-enforcement job, Huey received freebies—passes to the circus, booklets of tickets for carnival
