Ivyland Read Online Free PDF Page B

pre-furrowed. He doesn’t have a unibrow so much as a diehard colony of hairs that populate the upper bridge of his nose. He’s releasing air through a puckered mouth in the controlled whhhhh that accompanies his thinking—but this is just further introduction, a way of signaling the extent of his confusion. A “pre-apology,” as Professor Fleer would have said of some timid philosopher with rotten ideas in his back pocket.
    Finally he releases and launches in. Again, we’re not sifting through phonemes of speech; we’re assigning Henri as their source, same as if he’d burped or farted.
    I say: “O.”
    I realize too late that this is rookie. “O” will suggest that I’m to some degree surprised and therefore invested. After the next patch of talk, I correct with an “uh-huh.” Bored, prepping for the brush-off.
    Following the next bit, he chuckles to himself in this way where I know he’s laughing at my expense. It’s the way one eye collapses in accidental winks, the crooked smile, the quiet snorts. I mutter the punch line of a long joke, Henri’s absolute favorite, and the fact that it’s his favorite is about all you need to know. It goes, in full, like this:
    Â 
    Henri’s Favorite Joke
    Â 
    Okay once there was this little kid, right? Normal, suburban little boy, nuclear family plus like the perfectly trained collie, the works. So his dad comes home one day and says, Son, Daughter (the boy’s got a sister, see), Wife, guess what I bought on the way home today. So the kids and mom are guessing and guessing, but Dad’s stumped them. The dad is all, I got us tickets to the circus this Saturday! The family is psyched and everything, but the little boy is Eck. Stat. Ick. It is un- friggin- believable how berserk this kid is about going to the circus—he’s never been. He’s just bonkers all week, off the wall in school because of the circus, won’t shut up at dinner about the circus. Can’t sleep at night, what with his circus-soaked delirium.
    Finally, yes, it’s the night before, and the kid can’t sleep, can’t even close his eyes. He’s drawing ever closer to the circus. In the morning, he puts on his favorite of many dinosaur T-shirts (it features a grinning velociraptor), rushes the family through breakfast, demands to know why they aren’t on the road already. Mom suggests he go run around the house a few times. Eventually, they get out the door, take a short car ride, and there they are— unbelievable, the boy whispers to himself—at the circus.
    Now he’s finally stepping inside. He’s actually in side the tent: this, this is where it’s going to happen. They move through the tent to amazing seats in the front row; he could cry he’s so happy about the gloriously unobstructed view they’ll have.
    The show begins, and instantly the boy is blown away. Elephants, acrobats, tightrope walkers, balancing acts, trained lions, fire-breathers, please—the goddamn ringmaster . Everything is pitch-perfect, lives up to this boy’s self-made hype, improbably enough, and tends the seed of his very young soul.
    Between acts, a clown comes out and starts doing bits. Hey, thinks the boy, this clown is pretty funny! He puts kernels of popcorn on bald people’s heads! His pants keep falling down! Soon enough the clown makes his way over to our boy’s section, breezes past, then seems to remember a crucial fact. He slowly backtracks until profiled directly in front of the boy. Carefully he rotates his head as a barn owl turns its gaze on a field mouse.
    â€œExcuse me, sir!”
    The boy is thunderstruck. Surely the clown couldn’t be talking to him?
    â€œExcuse me?”
    He is! Our boy hesitates.
    Then: “Yyyes?”
    â€œAre you the horse’s head?” asks the clown.
    Here was a problem. What did the clown mean? How could he possibly be the