“About a mile from camp I came to a downed tree at the base of a ridge. Its trunk was so wide you could hide a house behind it. I leaned my back against the trunk to catch my breath. The forest was coming alive all around me. Birds began to chirp, trees groaned in a fresh wind… and then my ears piqued to an unmistakable sound—something was moving through the undergrowth.”
Again, Frank Ledger looked away from the window. This time his eyes stayed with Paul.
“If I thought I was cold before,” Paul said, “I was freezing now. In a moment like that your heart pounds so hard it loosens your nerves. Shivering like mad, I looked around the side of the trunk. Up on the ridge I saw a flash of black fur moving between the trees, a white tail twitching back and forth. I’ll put my hand to God when I say that the legendary beast was mocking me.
“I stayed still for a moment, just breathing and letting the truth sink in. Stygian was not a myth. The black stag was real. All the stories were true. All the horseshit was porridge.
“And all those hunters, for all those years, were simpletons. Stygian was mine. I would be the greatest hunter Louisiana had ever known!”
Ledger allowed a small, upward curl at one edge of his mouth. Sandy’s smile had grown full and wide.
“My rifle held just one shot,” Paul said, “but something inside me knew one was all that would be necessary. My aim would be true and the stag would fall. It was my destiny.
“With all the energy I could muster, I launched from behind the trunk, slashing through the undergrowth. I ran up the ridge like a soldier to the gods, bouncing through the forest on winged feet. Moving up and up, I passed from our mortal world into the divine.
“Once I reached the top I splashed down into prone position, rifle aimed. Through the iron sights I scanned the ravine before me. At the bottom there was a small brook. Steam rose from the water, boulders riddled the ground, skeletal trees reached up. Birds flitted in and out of vision.
“But there was no Stygian.
“I brought my eyes away from the rifle sights and scanned the ravine a second time. Again the brook, the steam, the boulders, the trees, and nothing.
“How could this be?
“And then I knew. It was like all the tales I’d been told. The fleeting glimpses of the black stag, the perfect shots that impossibly missed their mark. I would be no different than the rest. My story would be just one more disappointing tale tossed on top of the pile.”
Ledger’s head tilted with curiosity.
Sandy said, “Come on.”
“But then,” Paul said, “from the corner of my eye I saw a flicker of bold white. Stygian’s tail. It winked from behind a boulder not ten feet from my position. The tail sprouted from a mound of black fur and it was close to the ground, so I knew Stygian had bedded down. At this I cursed my luck, for the mass of his body was hidden from view by that damn boulder, leaving me no shot to take. The only thing was to attack, straight on. Of course, I could have tried to wait him out, but it’s known that a smart stag might stay in one place all day. And this was not just a smart stag, but the king of all stags, and a fire-breathing demon to boot. Waiting him out would mean waiting out the devil.
“I came to my knees slowly and quietly, surprising even myself with the deftness of my skill. Up from my knees and to my feet I moved with the control and patience of a monk, eyes always locked on Stygian’s tail, never leaving it. The tail continued to flicker and wink at me, to mock me. I drew a deep breath to steady my nerves. My hands did not shiver, my pounding heart was tame; my destiny awaited me, just on the other side of that rock.
“It was in that moment I saw my grandpap’s face, bright with fire glow and filled with astonishment at the story I would tell. I saw scores of hunters and old men in inns, all riveted by my gripping tale. Mine. The tale of the man who took down the legendary Stygian.”
A second small curl came to the other side of Frank Ledger’s mouth. Paul could almost say he was smiling.
“In two giant strides,” Paul said, mimicking the steps though stuck in the booth, “I crossed the ten feet of space between myself and destiny. I spun around that rock, rifle drawn. My eyes saw through the rifle’s sights while my mind saw the glory of the gods. It was just a matter of squeezing the trigger and I would be at one with them.”
Paul paused. He let a beat pass. He smiled. “But leveled in my sights,” he said, “was no legendary black stag. There was no king. No fire-breathing devil. No Stygian. In fact, there was no stag at all… but a skunk.”
Sandy pulled an intake of breath.
Frank Ledger’s eyes widened. His would-be smile reached up toward his ears and made red knobs on his cheeks. His teeth were exposed to the world.
“And his tail wasn’t mocking me,” Paul said. “It was aiming at me.” He lifted the final whiskey glass and toasted it first toward Ledger, then toward Sandy. He shot the drink and slammed the glass down on the table. He swallowed down the harsh liquid and said, “And I got sprayed in full.”
Frank Ledger’s hands came down so hard the empty shot glasses bounced around and Sandy’s milk spilled. Ledger laughed, and he laughed well. Sandy laughed. Paul laughed, too. He couldn’t help it. The delight in Frank Ledger’s eyes was the unbridled delight of a child. Paul wondered if the man had ever laughed before.
And then, just like that, Ledger stopped laughing. A seizure took hold. His eyes focused on nothing and his hands curled into fists. White scars stood out against the redness of his skin. His mouth began to ratchet open, stretching to the locking point. He fell sideways in the booth and began to shake. His arms and legs trembled like he was being electrocuted. He spilled out of the seat and on to the inn floor.
Paul gripped Sandy’s hand and got out of the booth. He lifted her into his arms and backed away.
“What’s wrong with him?” the bartender said.
“He needs help,” Paul said, moving backwards toward the door.
The serving woman came out of the kitchen holding a wet, wooden spoon. She lumbered over to Frank Ledger’s side and knelt down. Ledger’s mouth was opening and closing like a fish. She put the spoon between his teeth and he bit down on it. The wood crunched, but it held. The woman scooped Ledger up into her arms. Even though he shook wildly, she was big enough to control him. “There’s a military hospital on Rush Street,” she said. “Follow me.”
Still carrying Sandy, Paul backed out of the door and held it open while the woman carried Ledger through. She ran down the street through the pounding rain, presumably toward the hospital.
Paul ran the other way.
37
Roy came to the back of the tent in time to see Jesse go in. She would watch the show from backstage, just as McLean had. Roy stopped and listened. From inside he heard murmurs from the audience.
“This better be good,” a voice said.
“Damn right,” said another.
Boot heels clacked the stage’s floorboards in a slow procession. Cecil making his way across, Roy thought. The audience fell to a hush.
“Ladies and Gentleman,” Cecil said. Roy envisioned the movements to accompany the voice—the removal of a hat, a bend at the waist, a broad smile. “All of you have braved the elements to be here with us tonight. You’re wet, you’re tired, and it sure is dark outside.”
The murmurs rose and fell. There was a pause. Cecil holding a beat. Roy imagined the inside talker thrusting up a finger as he said, “You shall not regret your persistence.”
A voice called out, “We better not!”
Others shouted their agreement.
Roy looked past the tent, out into the forest. A hundred yards away was their camp. It was set up in a small clearing amongst the hardwoods. He could only see pieces of wagons and faded paint through the trees, but there was enough for him to recognize his old home.
He went to it.
The camp was set up in a circle. It wasn’t just convenience to set it this way, but an act of defense. Small towns inevitably containe
d easily instigated mobs. If one or two rubes felt the show wasn’t worth their coin, or that one performer or another was in mock of their religious beliefs, the sideshow could find itself set upon. In such a case it was best to centralize and pack together. McLean had become an expert at diffusing such situations—particularly with Samson at his side—but on occasion it was necessary to appear as a unified force, to literally circle the wagons.
Roy moved past the still oxen and fidgety horses into the camp’s center. He spun to look at all the wagons he recognized—Cecil’s, Girda’s, Camilla’s, Jukey’s, Samson’s, Randy and Miriam’s, and his own. All were empty, and almost all were the same as when he’d last seen them.
His wagon was the lone exception. It was molded and dirty. The falling rain gave it a filthy sheen. If the outside was so poorly looked after, he could only imagine the inside. He moved closer. A foul odor came from the wagon. It was as if they’d let it to a pig or a donkey. He twisted the latch and found it unlocked. He opened the door. The stench hit him like a thumper. Inside he found the wagon more spartan than when he’d been the owner. His bed and small dresser were gone. There was almost nothing inside. The floor was covered in straw and shit. On a ledge there was an unlit candle and an old cigar box. Tucked against the near wall was a water bucket. That was the whole of it.
Roy blinked and the wagon became his cell at Redmine. The floor turned from straw to clay, the shit turned into moldy bread crusts. The bucket grew a rope that headed toward the ceiling. Roy reeled away from the wagon with one arm covering his eyes. He backed into the camp’s center, breathing hard and stumbling. He uncovered his eyes to find himself again in the prison yard. The encircling wagons had become the great wooden wall. The ground was riddled with solitary confinement cells.
He fell to his knees. His body shuddered. He pounded the earth with a fist, making dents in the forest floor.
The forest floor. It wasn’t hardpan, but leaves and pine needles. He looked up. The camp was back as it should be. He smiled like a fool, threw back his head and laughed. The mirage had been uncomfortably real. He didn’t believe himself mad, but to a degree he wished he was. There would be peace in such a thing, to be constantly lost and unaware, to be constantly confused. The pinheads were happy creatures, were they not?
He stood and went to Jack McLean’s wagon. It was bigger and more well decorated than the others. McLean had once told Roy that he actually preferred a smaller, humbler space, but his position of leadership required things to be a certain way. “You can’t have an outside talker living in similar quarters to pinheads.”
Roy tried the latch but found it locked. He reached under the steps to see if the old man’s hidden key was still in place. Sure enough. He slid the key into the lock and opened the door.
The scent here was different than he remembered. McLean’s wagon had always smelled of wood and wool. Now there were the scents of spices and talc, and the room had a woman’s touch. There were drapes where there had once been shutters. The bed coverings were a lighter color. The dresser, which once stood bare, was covered in trinkets. Porcelain and glass. Birds and turtles. Jesse had made this place her own, just as she’d made the sideshow her own. But what of Samson? In here there was no sign of a husband, no shaving kits, no men’s clothing. If Jesse stayed here, she stayed here alone.
Roy shut the door behind him. Rain pounded the roof and made it sound like he was inside a drum. He sat down in a leather chair against the far wall. At least the chair was the same. It’d been McLean’s favorite spot. A place to think and smoke a pipe. A place to read. Roy gripped his silver spoon, rubbed a thumb in the bowl. He closed his eyes and thought of his childhood home in the Bayou Rouge. He saw his mother’s smile when he read to her, the dimples that came out on her cheeks. He saw his father’s final wave as he left for the war. He saw his mother’s face turn to horror when the gator took her. He saw the gator’s smug expression just before he ended its life. He recalled floating on the river and being scooped up by Paul’s father, opening his eyes to a young Paul Constantine. The boy that had watched while his parent’s splinted Roy’s ankles and salved his skin. The boy that had accepted him without hesitation. The boy that told him stories and kept him laughing while he healed.
His best good friend.
Roy’s eyes threw water. For the first time in his life he knew weeping. His mother had wept, but until now he’d never understood why. Her tears weren’t born of function, she had told him when he asked, but of feeling. A feeling, Roy imagined, not unlike what he felt now. Love. Love and loss. This was not what he had felt for Jesse. The candle he’d burned for her had been too easily snuffed. This candle’s light had survived decades. No fierce wind had touched it. No downpour had doused it. No calloused hand had pinched out the light. This flame had burned on as Roy traveled the country exposing himself. He’d taken it from Paul’s boyhood home and kept it in that unmarked place, that hollow in his chest where it had remained hidden. Now the feeling was all over him. It wracked his body and bent him forward. His eyes burned and boiled over with tears. He wept into his hands with no restraint. He hadn’t come home, after all. The sideshow had become what he knew as family, but it was dysfunctional at best. His father displayed him on a stage and his brother’s cheered the act. He’d lusted for his sister and committed incest with her. They were freaks reveling in freakish things. Not a family, but a gang of outsiders banded together against the mob of society. They’d leaned on each other because they had to, but would any of them stay if they were suddenly made normal? If Camilla’s legs were put right, would she continue life with her adopted geek family or go find a husband and give birth to a mess of children? If Randy and Miriam could think straight, would they lose money playing cards on the back of an ox cart amongst foul animals and deformed beings, or would they go become bankers?
Roy wiped his eyes. He leaned back into the chair. If he had a family at all, if he had love, right now it was at the Fisherman’s Inn. Paul was trapped there with a madman, and Roy had done nothing to help. He’d made assumptions based on what he saw, just as the schoolteacher had done, just as the prison guards had done, just as each and every man, woman, and child that had ever laid eyes upon him had done.
Roy gripped the chair’s arms to stand, but he stopped when the wagon door opened.
38
Paul ran up Pine Street with Sandy in his arms. She clutched herself to his neck, her legs around his back. Cold raindrops stabbed at his cheeks and eyes. He could hardly see the road before him. His lungs burned hotter with each new breath. His legs flared and his feet ached. But there was something good in the running. The abandon of it. It was a purging, a molting. Behind him was old skin, in front of him something raw and unknown. He ran harder. He ran like a boy.
He came to the edge of the fairgrounds and stopped. He let Sandy down. He bent forward, hands on knees, and sucked air. His muscles were jelly.
“Oh my,” the girl said.
Paul looked up. Colorful tents crowded the landscape, but the circus was deserted. A few workers milled about, checking tent ropes and kicking at things, seeming in a hurry to be under a roof, dry and warm.
Paul couldn’t blame them. There was once a time when he’d wish to be dry and warm, as well, but right now he was one with the dampness and cold. He was making a pact with pain, and secretly he wished he were bleeding.
Sandy gripped her own arms against the weather. Paul removed his duster and put it over her small shoulders. Though it was miles too big, she threw up the hood, pulled up the sleeves, and managed. She grabbed his hand and drew him forward.
Paul regained his breath as they walked the deserted midway toward the sideshow tents. They passed a tent advertising a snake charmer and one advertising a six-legged cow. Another advertised a Cyclops, and still another offered conjoined twins. Near the end of the line there was a small tent proposing an Anatomical Wonder, but there was no picture to give any idea of the act, only a question marked cloaked in darkness.
Paul wondered what it could be, and then he smirked, realizing the vagueness was a trick to lure him in.
No outside talkers were at their podiums. No one tried to convince them to come in, out of the rain, and bare witness to something awful and amazing.
They heard a crowd’s muffled applause. It came from the last tent on the midway. They walked toward the tent slowly. It was striped red and white, which made Paul think of blood and bones. Above it hung a painted banner, Jack McLean’s Congress of Curiosities. Numerous smaller banners stood out front on wooden stands. The falling rain made them hard to read. They moved closer. Paul eyed one banner amongst many. It depicted a being with a reptile’s body and a human head. Scales, the Amazing Lizard. The image looked nothing like Roy, and no right-minded person would believe they’d see something like this beast once inside the tent. But Paul supposed, again, that this was the trick—you had to come in and find out.
Inside the tent, a crowd gasped and clapped. It seemed one of the shows was ending. A voice towered above the din. “Another round of applause, please, for Henry, the Ossified Man!”
The crowd renewed their applause. Someone whistled.
The inside talker continued. “And now, ladies and gentleman, I’ll ask you to hold on to your seats, grab a neighbor’s arm, or at least plant your feet to the earth. In a moment our beloved Girda will cross this stage, and her massive steps will shake the very ground!”
Paul and Sandy moved around the side of the tent. As they neared the corner he heard the squelch of wet footsteps above the sound of rain. He backed Sandy up against the tent until they were both in shadow. A woman walked past them, didn’t see them. She wore a black top hat and a red jacket. A riding crop was tucked under one arm. She was exquisite. Her stride, even in the mud, was elegant. In her presence, Paul felt curiously less evolved, like she was from some future world and he was the equivalent of a caveman. She entered the nearby woods and walked toward an encampment.
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