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A tiny timber caravan, blue like the tent, the paint flaking and cracking. There were remnants of old words above the door: Fortune, Future, Stars. Corinna knocked, then took Joe’s hand, stepped inside, closed the door again. Pale light from the single small window. Tiny gaslights flickering on the walls. The smells of candles, gas, urine, cats. A narrow low-roofed place. Threadbare red carpets covering the floor and walls. “Corinna.” A low cracked whisper. “You brought him, my Corinna.” Small and scrawny, she sat in a narrow bed. Red hair with silver roots, a threadbare cardigan across her shoulders. Her cheeks were shrunken, almost corpselike, but her eyes gleamed in the shadow as she turned her face and smiled upon Corinna. . . . “I smell him,” said Nanty. “Bring him nearer.” “His name is Joe Maloney,” replied Corinna. “A timid deer kind of thing. Let us touch him.” Joe recoiled, but Corinna only smiled and took his hand and held it to the woman, who touched it with her twisted fingertips like claws. “Her name is Nanty Solo,” said Corinna. . . . Joe chewed his lips. There was a pale membrane stretched across her eyes, clouding her iris and pupil, but it was as if she saw through this thing and right into his heart. She squeezed his hand and grinned. . . . She took his elbow and rested her ear against his chest. Joe felt his heart quickening, thumping. “Aye,” she whispered. “The heart is beating in you as it should, then far beyond it is the secret one, like some creature panting in a deep dark cave.”
COPYRIGHT Prepared by Pat Scales, Director of Library Services, the South Carolina Governor’s School for Arts and Humanities, Greenville, SC For
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