“Hey, pumpkin.”
She did not answer immediately. Her eyes traveled over his face, his hands, his leg. She seemed uncertain which of the things she had seen were still true: the man in the cage who had moved with alarming speed, or the father who made bad jokes and burned pancakes.
“Did you hurt him?” she asked.
George could have said he had only defended himself. But Vincent had not struck him before the contest began; George had chosen to enter, and whatever else had happened, he had hurt another person badly.
“Yes,” he said. “I did. The medic’s looking after him.”
“Is he going to die?”
“I don’t think so. But I don’t know yet.”
Her mouth trembled. George knelt as far as his knee allowed and opened his arms. She stepped into them so quickly he almost lost his balance.
“I was scared,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I thought you were going to fall down.”
“So did I, for a minute.”
“You told me your leg was fine.”
He closed his eyes. He could still feel where the lie had left his mouth.
“I did,” he said. “And that wasn’t true. I’m sorry.”
Grace watched from behind the counter. She did not congratulate him. When George stood, she handed him a clean damp towel.
“For your hand,” she said. “And you might want to sit a while.”
His knuckles had opened where they had brushed Vincent’s glove. Nothing serious. The knee was another matter.
“Thank you for staying with her,” George said.
“You have a good girl.”
“I know.”
Grace gave Sadie a small paper napkin with a cartoon sun printed on it. Sadie folded it carefully and put it in her pocket, as though kindness needed to be saved for later.
George glanced back toward the cage. Vincent was conscious now, propped on one elbow, one gloved hand held against his face while the medic checked his pupils. Denny stood talking angrily to the referee. Around them the crowd had begun to recover its ordinary volume, transforming what had happened into something it could describe more easily than it could understand.
George had won a thousand dollars.
He had also frightened his daughter, damaged his knee, and reminded himself of a version of his life he had spent fifteen years learning how to leave behind.
He folded the jacket more securely around Sadie’s shoulders.
“We made a deal about ice cream,” he said.
She sniffed. “You still want some?”
“More than ever.”
She took his hand.
They walked away from the cage, one slow step at a time.
Chapter Seven: Two Vanilla Cones
The dairy-freeze stand should have been crowded. It was the last Saturday of the fair, the air was still warm, and every child in Oak Haven seemed to have decided that the evening ought to end with sugar. Yet when George and Sadie approached, the small knot of people in front of the window quietly opened.
A young couple stepped aside. A man with a toddler lifted his son out of the path. A teenager recognized George from the cage and whispered something to his friend, who looked up with a mixture of excitement and caution.
George hated it.
He had spent too many years being treated as either a heroic symbol or a broken one. The idea that a few violent seconds could turn him into a third kind of exhibit made him tired in a way no physical effort could.
“Two vanilla cones,” he told the cashier.
The boy wore a paper hat and had chocolate syrup along one forearm. His eyes dropped to George’s knuckles. “Four dollars.”
George pulled out the four singles from his original wallet instead of using the hundred-dollar bills. He could not explain to himself exactly why the distinction mattered, only that it did. The money from the fight was already assigned to rent. The ice cream was part of the evening he had promised his daughter before he knew about the cage.
The cashier handed over the cones. George placed one in Sadie’s hands. Her fingers were small and sticky, still stained faintly blue from the cotton candy.
“Do you want the first bite of mine?” she offered.
“I got my own.”
“Yours might be worse.”
“Then I’ll suffer.”
She tasted hers and declared it acceptable. George managed a smile.
They found an empty bench beyond the lighted food stalls. From there, they could see the Ferris wheel turning against a sky beginning to cloud over. George lowered himself onto the wood with a care that made Sadie look away. He leaned the cane beside his thigh and let his right leg stretch into the narrow strip of dirt between the bench and the walkway.
The pain sharpened as he sat. He could feel warmth gathering around the damaged joint and a deep grinding sensation whenever he moved his foot. He had known that the force of fighting might worsen his injury. Knowing did not make the consequences less severe.
