Verna’s water broke. She would later say the sound of the gator’s clapping jaw was what did it. She staggered backwards, dropped to her behind, and gave birth to her only son on a crooked, rotting dock above the Mississippi River.
Roy emerged from his mother’s womb with rough scales all over his body. The diamond pattern covered his face, his hands, his feet, and his bald head. His father would say he wished he’d never given that gator a mark, because the goddamn thing returned the favor in folds upon his son.
Roy’s boyhood home was a wooden shack built into a hillside rising away from the riverbank. There were two bleached-out boulders on the hill above the roof. Young Roy saw the boulders as two eyes, fantasizing that a landslide had come down and tried to swallow his house but choked, died, and grew grass. The house’s front and side walls were cypress planks weathered white from the constant burn of the sun. The roof was a puzzle of cedar shake shingles, pieced together in a let’s-try-some-of-this kind of way. When the river rose the house would flood, so everything important was kept in old crawdad nets hung from pegs. Roy had one net dedicated strictly to his dime novels and newspapers. He hung the net high and tight to ensure their safety.
The house had one window that looked out over the marsh fields and muddy water. At night Roy would kneel on a stool under the window, watching his father hunt gators by moonlight. For work, Thomas was a coal passer on a bayou steamboat. He spent weeks and months traveling up and down the river system, shoveling coal into an inferno. On his off evenings, as on this evening, he hunted the river on their small skiff, his body hidden by the Spanish moss that dangled from the mighty Cypress trees and Live Oaks.
Young Roy watched from the window, eyes just above the sill as if a gator himself. Thomas had strapped his favorite knife to the end of a cypress pole and anchored the skiff on the far bank where there was generally more gator activity. He crouched and had been waiting for what seemed like hours. He didn’t even twitch when mosquitoes sucked blood from his back. He’d just let them feed and go on their happy way, their fat bellies like rubies flying off into the twilight. He remained so still in the dusk that twice Roy lost sight of him and panicked. His little hands gripped the windowsill with force, his teeth left bite marks. But just before young Roy ran outside to save the day, his father’s silhouette materialized against the trees, still alive and still motionless.
Thomas Pellerin was a legend in his son’s eyes—strong, smart, and impervious. When Roy read stories of Davy Crockett, Indian fighter and war hero, he saw his father’s face under Davy’s coonskin cap. Davy Crockett didn’t die at the Alamo. No sir, he changed his surname to Pellerin and was now here with his new family, hunting gators instead of Indians and Mexican army men.
And when Davy stabbed at a gator he never missed.
Now Roy’s excitement grew as his father arced his spear upward in a silent motion. Roy could not see what his father saw in the black depths below, but there could be no doubt it was a gator. Thomas held his spear still for a chilling moment before violently driving it down. The knife cut deep into the gator’s back, just behind the head, severing the spine, and Thomas twisted the pole hard before pulling the blade back out, leaving a wide and fatal wound.
In life the gator was feared and respected. In death it was revered. Willingly or not, the animal had given its life for the survival of others, and this point was not lost on Thomas Pellerin. Once the gator stopped thrashing, Roy’s father knelt on the skiff and came down to its level. He lifted its great head into his arms and held it like a beloved child. He thanked the beast for its sacrifice before raising his eyes to God and thanking him, too. It was the alligator that provided the Pellerins with meat for eating and leather for shoes, belts, and laces. Selling the tanned leather also brought extra money into the home for milk, salt, books, and candles.
The crawdad, too, gave its life to the Pellerins. Young Roy was brought up on the sweet meat the crustacean provided, and in truth he enjoyed watching his father net crawdads more than watching him hunt gators. Netting was a dance. Against the backdrop of droning cicadas, Thomas casted and snapped his fingers for good luck as the net splashed down and sank into the muddy water. After a moment’s pause, he jerked the net closed and slowly dragged it back toward the skiff. His muscles were mechanical and fibrous, like the working arms of a locomotive. His bumpy veins and bronze skin were drizzled in sweat. Roy would later be reminded of his father’s netting dance when he first saw the Fero Brothers juggling act in New York. The motions were nearly the same, only his father possessed no flaming pins.
The Pellerins led a hidden life. For his first eight years Roy saw no other children. He never understood that he was different from other kids. The family’s closest neighbor was either two miles downriver or a full mile up, and since Roy’s father did most of the running it was rare that Roy or his mother had need to venture out. So isolated, Roy might have come out a monkey for all anyone in the Bayou Rouge knew. But this was before the schoolhouse.
There was tension in the house the day before Roy’s first day of school. His father paced and his mother sat and stared through the window. They were saying nothing, which Roy knew meant they’d soon be saying everything. He decided it was best to be outside.
He crouched and dive-rolled through the marsh, shooting at cattails with his thumb-finger pistols. The cattails were Indians on the attack, and he was Davy Crockett’s son, protecting his father’s new identity and home. The adventure took him up to the hill above the house. He imagined he was on a saloon roof where he could better survey the town and make pick-off shots. He took a shooter’s stance, surveying the land. His parents’ voices came from beneath his feet.
“They won’t understand,” Thomas said.
“I don’t care,” Verna said. “No son of mine will go through life an uneducated fool.”
“You can keep teaching him at home,” Thomas said. “He’s doing fine so far.”
There was a pause. Roy imagined his mother steeling her spine and sticking out her chin. When her mind became stubborn about something, so did her body. “He’s already passed most of what I can teach him, Tom. We can’t keep him hidden his whole life.”
Roy’s father sighed.
“Facing adversity is good for a boy,” she said. “It’ll build him up. Look at yourself. My father hated you and was plain about it, but that didn’t stop you.”
Roy took aim at a tall cattail, seeing an Indian warrior, longbow drawn. His thumb went down, pow.
Thomas said, “Your father was just one man. Our son will be up against the entire world.”
The next day, as Roy and his mother walked back from the schoolhouse, he noticed water crawling down her cheeks. In his eight years he’d never seen her throw water. He wondered if she was too hot.
“Want to find some shade, mama?”
“No,” Verna said, “I’m fine.”
They walked for several more minutes before Roy stopped again. His mother stopped just ahead of him and looked back.
“What is it, boy?”
“Do you wish I was more like the kids in the schoolhouse?”
Verna wiped a tear from her cheek.
Roy said, “More like milk and less like scabs?”
Verna picked her son up. She set him on her hip. He knew he was too heavy to carry for long, but it felt good to be there. She started walking again. Farther down the road she opened her mouth to speak, but in the end she said nothing.
7
Paul opened his eyes to darkness.
He blinked, but still the darkness.
A coffin?
Oh God.
He reached up but couldn’t find the wooden top. His hands flailed in the dark space. Suddenly gravel ripped at his back as he was dragged into the light. One of the Boyle twins stood over him. The man’s face was smashed and spattered with dry blood. Paul put a hand to his own throbbing jaw. Roy must have hit him. His mind had gone fuzzy at the sight of Roy coming alive. He recalled walking
over, reaching for his gun, and seeing Roy step forward. Darkness followed. What had he intended to do, shoot him?
He sat up to see the other Boyle twin sitting at the roadside. He stared at his ruined knee like it was a dead pet. His face was just as destroyed as his brother’s.
“What now?” the standing twin said.
Was it John or Aaron? Paul couldn’t presently tell the difference. He looked at the horizon and then back at the cart. The horse was gone.
“He stole it,” the standing twin said. “Probably miles away by now.”
Paul looked between the speaking man and his brother. He decided Aaron had only a smashed face while John had both a smashed face and the reversible knee.
“Yeah, what’re we gonna do?” John said. His eyes never moved from his leg.
Paul stood up. He searched the back of the cart and found a canvas tarpaulin to tie around his naked waist. He turned to see Aaron smirking beneath his crushed nose. By the depth of the man’s sunburn Paul guessed a few hours had passed. He patted his hip in the spot where his holster had been. His father’s gun was no longer there. Roy had it. He knew that. He also knew their jobs were lost unless he brought Roy back. That meant tracking him.
Paul imagined Roy running across the countryside wearing his clothes, his father’s revolver in his scaly hand, a world of adventure spinning around him. He imagined himself chasing. The vision started a smile on his face, but it was quelled by a new thought—could he afford to leave his son alone with his wife, even for one day? Her drinking was well beyond control. Her blackout spells grew longer by the week. Dammit, he should have slapped that first bottle away from her. He should have knocked the depression clean out of her. He should have-
The image of his stillborn daughter appeared in Paul’s mind, quieting his anger, as it often did. She had been a porcelain doll—eyes closed, fists clenched, not breathing. Never breathing. Her mother had held her close and rocked her. She had cried and pleaded with the midwife. She had blamed and screamed, had been full of fight, but when they took the dead child away Gloria went limp. She lay still, as beautiful and lifeless as the daughter she would never feed, never scold, and whose laughter they would never hear.
Soon after came the whiskey.
Paul, himself, had poured her first shot.
“Well?” Aaron said.
“You boys make your way back to Redmine,” Paul said. “Let the warden know what happened.”
John looked from his knee to his brother. They exchanged a fearful glance. “We don’t have to tell him,” Aaron said. “We can lie and say we buried him, just like the rest.”
“Look at your faces and his knee,” Paul said. “And that horse is worth more than a year of your pay.”
They just stared.
Paul turned and headed down the road, away from the prison, barefoot and working his jaw up and down.
“What about you?” Aaron said.
“I’m going after him.”
8
Cedar trees.
They smelled sweet and damp and reminded Roy of home. The limbs hung low, sweeping back and forth with the wind, their green leaves like little hands turning over and back, over and back. He could lie down and just breathe in and out for days, but he continued the pace he’d been on for hours. The gunshot had stopped ringing his ears. It was replaced by forest sounds. Everything was loud and vivid.
The clouds of mosquitoes and gnats had grown thick, which meant water nearby. Roy quickened his stride. His nostrils flared to detect moisture in the air. He came over a ridge to find a pond covered in algae. Holes in the slime dotted the water’s surface and allowed the sun to sparkle against it. Tree trunks at the pond’s edge were stripped of their bark. The pale wood was ringed in brown by the water’s rising and falling. There were the split tracks of deer in the muck on the banks, along with turkey tracks, coon, and more. Roy’s boot-heels squashed and erased the animal footprints as he approached the water’s edge.
He finished what remained in his waterskin before carefully refilling it so as not to let in any green. He corked and threw back the full waterskin, undressed, and plunged into the pond without checking the depth.
The water was warm and thick. He tore off of a square of the dry-rotted burlap and used it to scour his skin. Dead scales came off him like cedar shavings. He scrubbed every inch of his body, watching the scabs float away and sink. His raw skin would dry out and scale over again in less than two hours, but for now he seemed merely a man with a splotchy sunburn.
After a final rinse he crawled from the muck as raw and exposed as a newborn child. The wind against his wet body made him shiver. Cold as a statue. He spread his arms and turned up his head. The canopy above rippled and shimmered like a green ocean. Blue pockets of sky winked down at him. His dirty clothes felt new as he slid them over his back. His black hat was a crown. He cinched the rope, burlap, and waterskin over his shoulders and buckled the gun-belt to his waist.
The undergrowth rustled. Roy’s fresh skin tingled. Could they have tracked him down so quickly? He imagined the prison guards upon him, dragging him away. His mind went to Jesse, sitting in a room by herself, watching a door he would never come through. It was a room in the house he dreamed for them, on the farm they owned, in a place where they could be away from prison, away from the sideshow, away from the whole of society.
He waited for a voice telling him to ease the revolver from its holster and drop it. When the voice didn’t come, Roy spun and pulled Paul’s gun, drawing down the iron sights on a deer.
The deer stiffened, but stayed.
Roy lowered the gun. He released a breath and slowly moved to a tree where he sat down against the trunk. The deer’s oily eyes tracked him along the way. Once Roy was still, the deer moved to the pond’s edge to drink. It was either unafraid of Roy or too thirsty to care. After a quick drink it scampered off, showing its white tail.
Roy hefted the revolver. He turned it over in his hand. He spun the chamber and enjoyed the clicking sound. He aimed the gun at trees, rocks, and ferns. He clicked back the hammer, clicked it forward, and flipped the gun around his finger in an experienced fashion.
Jesse returned to his mind. She was no longer waiting in a farmhouse room, but a damsel in distress. In the fantasy she was tied to a wooden stake with villains all around, snickering and threatening. Roy busted in, revolver blazing. After the bandits were dispatched she kissed him deeply and wrapped herself around him, just like their first and only night together.
He closed his eyes to the divine memory.
He’d been drinking a little, her a lot. In small towns the sideshow would stay for a night or two and be gone, but in the cities they might stay for a week. It was in the cities that McLean’s performers could find the kinds of back-alley saloons that would accept their money. They’d spend their nights laughing and clacking mugs just like regular society, and they’d wake up with regular society’s same aching heads and swirling guts.
Roy and Jesse’s special night had been in Raleigh at the Corktown Inn. The sideshow had passed through Raleigh many times over the years, and long-time performers knew the inn owner well. At the Corktown they were safe. It was a place where they could be loose and loud, and that night had been no exception. Their revelry went well past closing time. By then most of the others had gone back to the caravan, but a few stayed on. Jesse’s job seemed to be picking up full shot glasses and putting them down empty. Roy’s job was holding her upright. Such work he was more than pleased to do.
Jesse, no longer the shy new girl, no longer the outsider, was now The Illustrated Woman. She was equal parts exotic and untouchable, for she was Samson’s girl, and the strong man ensured—with a stern look and the flexing of a variety of muscles—that all the male performers understood that painful results trailed their lingering eyes. A healthy fear of Samson had quelled Roy’s advances, so he never figured he’d be close enough to breathe in her scent. He never dared believe he’d be touching her, or her him.
And yet here he was.
Samson had taken his leave earlier that evening, citing a meeting with McLean, and since then Jesse had moved closer and closer as the others turned in and the group got smaller. Soon it was down to Jesse, Roy, and Jukey. The Armless Marvel watched Jesse and Roy with bemused interest. There was one shot left on the table before him. Rum. The happy drink, he called it. Whiskey was for sadness.
“What?” Roy said, meeting Jukey’s eyes, mimicking his bemused smirk.
“Nothing,” Jukey said, shrugging his shoulders. “Just, you know, I like what I see.”
“You’re barking at a knot,” Roy said.
“Am I?”
“Hold on,” Jesse said, her words hampered by a drunken slur. She turned to Jukey. “What do you think you see?”
Jukey’s smirk expanded into a wide smile. He leaned forward and down toward the table, placing his chin on the shot glass to hold up his head. “I see the future,” he said, doing his best Madame Zora, fortune-teller impression. His eyes sparked over the sound of her false ethnic accent. “And it is go-od.”
Jesse snorted. “You see what you choose.”
Jukey released his chin from the shot glass. A drop of rum dangled from his skin. He tilted his head forward and picked up the glass between his lips. He lifted it off the table, threw back his head, and swallowed the liquid down. He spit the glass out and it bounced across the wooden tabletop, spinning like a coin. Roy caught it as it danced over the edge.
“I see all!” Jukey said, throwing up the stumps at the ends of his shoulders in proclamation. He suddenly stood and towered over them, wobbly.
“You’re drunk,” Roy said.
“Damn right,” Jukey said. “I’m drunk and I’m in love. We should all be so lucky.”
“That we should,” Jesse said.
“Then luck is on our side,” Jukey said. He bowed slowly but didn’t come back up. He stayed bent at the waist for a long moment, his forehead hovering just above the tabletop.
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