Roy recalled Samson instructing Girda to sit on his legs while the other performers beat him about the head and upper body. They came with fists, pipes, chains, and finally his father’s own knife to carve their sinister word into his chest. Their eyes had overflowed with malice; their ears had been deafened by rage. They never heard his protests, hadn’t wanted to. After what he did they no longer saw him as one of their own, and they took the opportunity to give back some of the pain they’d endured throughout their lives.
Roy understood. He forgave them all.
All but Samson.
He turned his eyes toward the dead house. A man’s face hovered in the small window. Roy felt a prickle of familiarity. No doubt he knew the man, but from where?
The man pulled back into the shadows.
A second guard came in and swung a burlap body bag over Roy’s shoulders. It flitted down like a cape. If the fat guard was a bulldog, this one was an alley cat. His eyes were set far apart and there was a permanent squint to them. He kept a wispy mustache beneath his nose, and his lips always fidgeted like he was nibbling tiny things.
“Go do your thing, freak,” the cat-faced guard said. He kicked Roy in the small of the back, sending him stumbling forward.
Roy could have stopped, spun, and cracked a fist across the cat guard’s mouth, shattering his jaw before his squinty eyes had a chance to widen. He could twist the fat guard’s neck, snapping the inner workings like celery stalks. But he didn’t do those things. He shuffled toward the prison wall while scouring his memories, trying to place a name with the face he saw in the dead house window. How many faces had he seen in his life? Tens of thousands? How many farmers, blacksmiths, cobblers, whores, priests, and even prison guards? All walks of life had stared up or down at him with eyes as wide as boiled eggs. To single out one face among so many?
No dice.
The moon cast a white hue against the wall, exposing weathered wood divided by watchtower shadows. Roy ran his hand across the rough surface. One of the advantages to his skin was that no splinters could penetrate him. A cruel joke compared to the array of disadvantages. The top of the wall was laced with curled barbed-wire as thick as brambles. There were feathers caught up in the twisted metal, some still moving with the wind, appearing alive. He could smell the scents of men who’d spent their final days here, dripping sweat and tears. He envisioned a green field on the other side of the wall, an evening-red horizon. There was a farmhouse on the field, a barn, and a stable. He imagined himself walking in from a hard day’s work, exhausted and hungry. Jesse would be there, cooking a meal. She would smile at him as he entered their home.
He recalled her in the sideshow tent, on the stage. A drumbeat played as she danced beneath the flickering fires. Slowly she peeled back layers of clothing to reveal the depths of her illustrations. A devil, a cracked heart, and a dragon that coiled for days. All were revealed to an audience of slack jaws and riveted eyes. When her dance was done she stood before them nearly naked, leaving all to wonder why that devil was grinning, whether that cracked heart could be mended, where that dragon’s tail might finally end.
Like the stunned men in her audience, Roy had once dreamed answers to all three questions. Two answers still eluded him, but his chest swelled with the knowledge of where that dragon’s tail ended. His mind’s eye traced it down from her chest, around her back, and again around to her stomach. From there it-
Stop.
He inhaled deeply.
One.
Exhale.
Pause.
Inhale.
Two.
Exhale.
Pause.
After the third deep breath Roy came down to his knees and dropped his forehead against the wall. He relaxed his jaw, his neck, his shoulders, biceps, triceps, forearms, abdominals, thighs, calves, feet. He reached up, one hand on either side of his face, and ripped out some eyelashes. The pain clawed across his eyes, tunneled through his nose, and electrified his teeth.
He took a fourth long breath.
His blood flow slowed.
He took a fifth breath, maddeningly slow. The sound of his heartbeat fell to a hush. He thought of molasses in his veins, his heart struggling to pump it through.
He took a sixth long breath, watching that his chest and stomach did not move with the intake or out. There was no sound in his ears but a low hum. He thought of his brain as a rotten apple, useless to control his organs.
He took a seventh long breath. He recalled Jukey’s dead face and forced his own to take the same limp position, rolling his eyes into his head and letting his tongue fall back into his throat.
With the eighth breath he imagined himself standing before a gunfighter donned in all black—a villain straight from a dime novel. The man’s face was obscured by the brim of his black hat, but Roy sensed familiarity. The villain slowly lifted a revolver of blue-hued steel and took aim. He squeezed the trigger. A blaze of fire escaped the revolver’s barrel. Heat bloomed in Roy’s chest. He fell to the side, thumping down like a sack. His once fidgety eyelids were now iron caps. Each distant heartbeat was a stone touching down on the bottom of the ocean. His hands curled up and stiffened. His feet became ancient clay pots; kick them and they’d crack apart.
Paul waited in the dead house for Pops, his eight p.m. shift replacement. Pops had telegraphed he’d be late in arriving tonight, but Paul didn’t mind. It was the day of Roy’s mercy hour, and Paul had finally conceded to viewing the state of the murderer he’d first seen outside his schoolhouse so many years ago.
It was the first day of Paul’s third year of school. Robert E. Lee was now with the south, and neither Paul nor any of his classmates were happy to be crammed into their hardback seats with summer still clinging to Louisiana’s Bayou Rouge. The children sat listlessly, forward on their elbows, hands cupping chins, waiting for their teacher to finish a hushed conversation with a woman who’d interrupted attendance. The blackboard at the front of the room was still clean and dark, as it was yet to be touched by chalk or eraser this year, save for where Mr. Cairn had written his name in cursive script. The room smelled of ammonia and old wood. Paul sat along the far wall absently tracing where someone had carved Elmer Gill is a lunger, followed by the more recently added so’s your ma!, into the desktop.
A sound from outside made Paul turn to the window. His heart rate increased when a scabby skinned, bald headed boy flashed into the schoolyard, running and shooting at imaginary things with imaginary pistols. The boy cocked his thumb and extended his fingers as he went, making pow pow noises and blowing false smoke away from scaly barrels.
Paul alone saw the strange boy, which made the boy his secret, a story he could hone and craft in his special way, drawing out the tension and suspense for his mother and father when he got home. Watching the boy, Paul imagined his parents reacting to the story he would tell—smirks would grow into smiles, smiles into astonishment, astonishment into approval.
But Paul couldn’t hold the secret long. George Fickas, one of the older boys who was soon to graduate, stood and pointed. “Look!”
Everyone crowded the window. They gawked. Some laughed. Some said eww or gross. Jaws dropped open like wooden puppets.
The strange boy stopped and looked back at them.
Where most of the others were disgusted with the boy’s appearance, Paul had been fascinated. The diamond pattern of red scabs, the bald head, the near lack of a nose, pebble-sized ears, and the shooting and barrel-rolling. Above the green grass, the boy looked like something escaped from a dream.
Back in the dead house a shiver washed over Paul’s skin. If only he had gone straight home that day, Roy Pellerin might have been his only vivid memory from that first day of school. Now a different memory pounded against the door of Paul’s mind. His hands went icy. The back of his neck tightened and throbbed. He breathed deeply and steepled his fingers before his face. He raised his eyes to look out the window.
Roy emerged from the hole.
&nb
sp; The murderer was emaciated. He resembled nothing of the man they’d dragged through the gates over a year ago, and even less the boy Paul once knew. Still, it was unmistakably Roy. Despite his misgivings, Paul smiled as he watched Roy take in the night air and sky. His eyes filmed over and his chest ached.
His best good friend.
But when Roy looked toward him a coldness slivered into Paul’s guts. He pushed back and away from the window, into shadow. From there he watched as Cyrus Lee strolled across the prison yard with a burlap bag under his arm. Lee threw the bag over Roy’s shoulders, and then fell in line with the fat guard, Jeb Crittendon. There was a visual exchange between the two guards, and then Lee kicked Roy in the back.
Paul stood quickly, knocking over his chair. His hands became white-knuckled fists.
Roy stumbled across the yard, but did not fall. He straightened up and walked toward the wall.
The coldness in Paul’s guts spread up into his heart and settled there. It burned as ice burns. He forced his hands back open and rubbed them together for warmth, telling himself Crittendon and Lee had good reason, and that Roy Pellerin—the murderer—deserved the torture and pain he received. But such thoughts didn’t speak as loudly as Paul hoped they might. They couldn’t drown out the loudest thought in his mind.
Goddammit, they’re hurting my friend.
He stepped toward the dead house door.
3
Roy was concentrating on the Egyptian mummy he read about as a child. He imagined his own liver and lungs removed, just as the mummy’s, and placed inside canopic jars alongside his intestines and stomach. The mummy’s heart was left inside its chest to shrivel; it was the seat of the soul and should remain with its owner throughout the afterlife.
“Get up, beast,” the dog guard said.
The voice seemed faint, a thousand miles away.
“I said get up!” the guard said. He kicked Roy’s spine.
Roy felt the kick indifferently, the way a mountain feels a climber’s footstep.
“I’m not asking again, freak,” the guard said. “Get up now or you’ll get up lumpy.”
Roy heard a thumper slide from its holster. He pushed his mind into a well and swam it toward the unknown bottom.
The thumper cracked against the back of his head. It may have been a falling propeller seed.
The thumper connected again, this time across his ear and cheek. A cool touch of salve.
A boot-heel slammed into his ribcage. A butterfly.
Another boot to the spine. A raindrop.
The thumper crashed down across his lips, popping out teeth and sending them into the dirt. A kiss from his mother on the day he was born.
“Jesus,” the cat guard said.
“The beast is finally dead,” the dog guard said, breathing raggedly.
Lying beneath them, Roy searched for a vivid memory, something to keep his mind distanced from the pain in his body.
It came as no shock that he found Jesse.
She had come to Roy’s wagon on the day that would prove to be his last with the sideshow. It was just past noon and the performance schedule had had not yet begun, the crowds had not yet rushed the circus and sideshow streets like so much blood filling veins. The camp was a din of indistinct voices occasionally cut through by the roars or bleats of animals. The air smelled of meat and corn over fires. Roy was inside his wagon, relaxing, mentally preparing for the judgment delivered from the audience’s eyes when Jesse knocked softly on his door. Roy opened it to find her ready for her performance in an Indian headdress, moccasins, and a leather skirt and vest with hanging beads. Her smile became full as she climbed the steps to Roy’s wagon, passed the threshold, and stood near the edge of his bed. “It’s nice to see you.”
“You look beautiful,” Roy said.
Her eyes turned down. She scowled. “I asked you not to say that.”
“I’m sorry,” Roy said.
She glared at him. “I don’t want you to be sorry.”
“I’m so-” Roy said, catching himself. Then, “Why don’t you have a seat?” He gestured toward the lone chair in his wagon.
“This was a mistake,” Jesse said. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Roy searched desperately for something more to say, something that might stop her from leaving, but his words were dammed in his mouth. They just sat there stupidly, behind his teeth and riding his tongue.
Jesse moved back through his wagon door and pulled it nearly closed behind her, momentarily touching Roy’s hand, which was still on the frame. She looked back at him through the slim crack, just one eye, and said, “He knows.”
Roy’s unsaid words slid back from his tongue and melted into his body, promising they’d come back when he was with her again, and that they’d be stronger. Stronger than Samson, even.
Lying battered on the prison yard hardpan, it came to Roy that he missed her touch. The body needs to be touched. After a year without a hug, a caress, or even a handshake, he had found find himself begging for touch, even in the form of a beating. Anything to feel the warmth of another human’s skin against his own. Bruises and broken bones be damned.
Will she touch me again?
Roy pushed the question from his mind, just as Sisyphus pushes his stone back up the hill. There was nothing to be gained from a question without the possibility of an answer. It could wait until he found her. It could wait until he regained her love. It could wait until he put Samson in a grave of his own. Once he escaped he would move through society’s back-alleys and forgotten paths to track the sideshow down. He would remain unseen and unheard until he was close enough to hear Samson’s pumping heart, and then he would reach out and silence it.
Paul’s knees buckled when Jeb Crittendon’s thumper came down on Roy’s head. It was as if he, himself, had been hit. It dazed him, blurred his vision. He shook it off and took another step forward, but found he was punch drunk. The fight had left his body. Roy hadn’t reacted to the blow, which surely meant he was dead. His body may be taking the abuse, but Paul’s old friend was no longer there.
Relief came, and regret trailed. Paul could have at least said hello. Murderer or not, he could have at least let the man know he had an old friend nearby. He closed his eyes to the continued battering of Roy’s lifeless body. “I’m sorry.”
“What’s that?”
Paul turned to find Pops Gildon had come up on him. He was a broad-shouldered man who wore a beard so thick you wondered if he had cheeks. “Looks like that freak finally died.”
Paul said nothing.
“Always felt kinda sorry for him,” Pops said. “You did, too. It ain’t been hard to tell.”
Neither man spoke for a moment. They watched as Jeb Crittendon and Cyrus Lee fussed over how to get Roy into the burlap body bag.
“Couple of shitheels,” Pops said.
“They won’t touch his skin,” Paul said, “not even to bury him.”
“They won’t be burying him,” Pops said. He clapped Paul’s shoulder, gripped and squeezed. “You will. Think you can manage it?”
Along with standard guard duties, Paul was the dead house master at Redmine prison. The title meant two extra dollars a week, hours of hard labor in the blazing sun, and a measure of disdain from most of the other guards—as if he could buy and sell them with his extra change. Tomorrow he’d cart his old friend beyond the gate and bury him in a trench grave where hundreds of former prisoners already rested. Most had been lost to cholera or consumption, others had been murdered, and of course there were those who succumbed to the darkness and misery of solitary confinement.
“Of course,” Paul said.
“I know you can physically do it,” Pops said, “I mean to say, can you bury that man with a scrap of dignity?”
“I know what you mean to say,” Paul said. He turned and went to the employee doorway at the prison wall. The sentry opened the locks to let him outside.
Paul walked a southern road home. The bad memory once again pou
nded at his mind. He couldn’t help but let it in. Since Roy had returned to Paul’s life, his mind flicked at the memory the way a tongue flicks at a canker sore.
When school let out on that first day of his third year, young Paul bounded from the door and hustled across the schoolyard. First day, worst day, and many more to come, but that didn’t matter now; it was over and there was still plenty of daylight for fishing. That morning he’d hidden a cane fishing pole near his favorite river spot, and now he had a leftover strip of jerky for bait. He carried his good shoes and ran barefoot down the road, ignoring the rocks and sticks that stabbed at his feet.
He came to his fishing spot feeling high.
His pole was still there—line, cork bobber, and hook already tied on. He sat on a flat stump and wiped his palms against his good pants. His mother had instructed him home immediately after school, but there was time. His father would be out fishing, too, and he wouldn’t be back until after dark. As long as Paul made it home before dad, the punishment would be worth the crime. Besides, when he told his parents the story about the strange boy he’d seen, they might be too swept up to punish him at all.
If there was one thing young Paul Constantine understood, it was that a good story was better than a cry or a lie, anytime.
In this spot the river was wide and slow. There were deep pockets everywhere, holes where trout liked to hide and keep cool, holes only Paul knew about. He laid the jerky across his knee and tore off a bit, carefully setting aside the rest. He pushed the meat on to the small hook and smiled.
Just then a big trout broke the water. It wiggled in the air and splashed down with a plop. Paul’s body buzzed. He tossed out his line, aiming for the spot where the fish had landed. Direct hit. The cork bobber ducked under the ripples, popped back up, and wobbled to a stop as the water moved it along.
Paul’s rear end complained about the hard stump, having been crammed into that crummy school seat all day. He moved down to the ground and leaned back to relax. He stretched out his legs and crossed one over the other, just like his father did on days when he drank whiskey. The bobber drifted with the water flow, dragging the tasty morsel of hooked meat behind it.
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