Geek Love

by Katherine Dunn

I hooked the leash on a back post of Arty’s chair and wheeled him toward a hard-packed grassless stretch behind the booths. The dog bounced along nosing everything, pissing ten times in two minutes.

  By the time we got to the clear spot the dog seemed to have calmed down a little. “You just stay close and be quiet,” Arty told me. I sat down to watch. Arty called the poodle to him and the silly dog put a paw up on Arty’s chair and cocked its ears at him, wagging the pompom on the end of its skinny tail.

  Arty hadn’t explained what he had in mind. I sneered, “Arty the wild-beast trainer,” to myself. On the other side of the booths the camp was just beginning to wake up. An occasional trailer door slammed. A voice or two sounded faintly. A mechanic turned over one of the ride engines and let it sputter to death.

  Arty looked the dog in the eye. The dog sat, obediently alert, directly in front of Arty, watching his face. Arty froze with his eyes open, focused on the dog, but his face sleep-smooth, expressionless. At first the dog was happy as an idiot—short confidential flips of tail against ground, a swiveling of sharp ears, tongue-dripping grin. Gradually the dog lost confidence, licking its chops and closing its mouth, tilting those ears questioningly forward at Arty. An anxious burst of tail rapping. Then Skeet shoved his nose forward, sniffing worriedly at Arty, letting a thin, high whine out through his nose, skootching his ass nervously against the dirt. Arty sat with his fins curled and still, his face thrust slightly forward and down. The poodle didn’t dare look away from Arty’s face but began to lick his own nose repeatedly, stand up, then sit down fast with his tail under him, letting his ears droop. Finally, whining, ears flattened, head down and wobbling moron eyes wincing at Arty, the dog slid to the side with a yelp as though he’d been kicked.

  Arty threw himself against the back of his chair, breathing deeply with his eyes closed. Skeet backed to the end of his leash and did his best to slink out of his collar. Arty sat back up and looked around for the dog.

  “Skeet! Come here!” he ordered. The dog bolted to the end of the leash, snapping himself into the air. He flopped onto his back and lay there, belly up, and began to yowl. Arty laughed a little to himself and said we could take him back. “I can practice my hate thoughts on the norms in the midway, too,” he said.

  Arty never bad-mouthed Chick openly. Anything that obvious would have shocked Papa and Mama into the blue zone. But I knew. I was the one who did the most for Arty. I spent a lot of time with him and a lot of time thinking about him. I loved him.

  Privately I thought that Mama and Papa loved him only because they didn’t know him. Iphy loved him because he wanted her to and she couldn’t help it. Elly knew him and didn’t love him at all. She was afraid of him and hated him because she could see what he was like. I was the only one who knew his dark, bitter meanness and his jagged, rippling jealousy, and his sour yearnings, and still loved him. I also knew how breakable he was. He didn’t care if I knew. He didn’t care if I loved him. He knew I’d serve him absolutely even if he hurt me. And I was not a rival to him. I didn’t have an act of my own. I drew the crowds to him rather than to myself.

  I was supposed to listen for Chick. He was asleep on Mama’s bed and I was supposed to stay inside and wait for his waking squeak. I would change his diaper and give him some apple juice and play with him until Mama was finished with the twins’ piano lesson.

  But the sky was blade-blue, the windows were open, and the redheads were spinning tales just outside. I could hear them laughing. They were lying on blankets in the sun, drinking soda and slathering themselves with oil. The whiff of coconut and lanolin came drifting in through the window.

  I was supposed to sit inside by myself and read but Peggy’s soft voice began a story, and the other redheads quieted to listen. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I went out through the screen door and around the van to flop on the grass beside the blankets. With the window open I thought I’d hear Chick as soon as he woke. I picked and chewed grass stems as Peggy talked.

  It was about a very young boy, fourteen or so, and Peggy claimed it was true. He died for love, she said. His family was poor. He was cut out for heavy work and bad pay, but he was a sweet kid, and he loved a cheerleader in his school. She wouldn’t even look at him, of course. Her life was different. But then she got sick and the doctors said it was her heart. She would die, they said, unless she could get a new one. The word went around the school that she was waiting for a donor. The boy was terribly sad for a while, but then he told his mother that he was going to die and give his heart to the girl. His mother thought this was just his sweetness talking. He was healthy. But a few days later he dropped dead. Instantly. A brain hemorrhage, they said. Surprisingly, the doctors found that his bits actually were compatible to the cheerleader’s, and they transplanted his fresh heart into her. It worked. Now she dances and cheers again with the poor boy’s heart.

  The redheads were impressed. Vicki said it would be weird to feel your life pumping through this heart that had loved you. Lisa wondered if the cheerleader would be haunted.

  “He was probably worth three of her,” said Mollie. “A heart like that.”

  Then from the bedroom of the van just behind me came a single loud slam like a twelve-pound hammer on sheet steel. In the fading echo Chick was screaming.

  I was halfway around to the screen door before the redheads even started telling me that my baby brother must have fallen out of bed. Peggy and Mollie were up, following me. By raw luck the screen door latched behind me as I whipped through.

  Chick was on the bed, purple-faced and howling. I jumped up beside him and pulled him into my arms. He was shaking and gasping between shrieks. He couldn’t make so much noise if there was anything stuck in his throat. I felt for his diaper pins. Were they sticking him? Then I saw Arty.

  He was crumpled face down on the floor in the narrow crack between the bed and the wall. He wasn’t moving.

  “Oly, is the baby all right?” Mollie was rattling the screen door. “Oly?”

  Chick subsided to unhappy burbles and hiccups, and I slid him back onto the blanket. “Arty?” I whispered. No answer. No movement. At the foot of the bed lay a big rumpled pillow with a grey spot of dampness in its creased middle. The pillow had been tidy at the head of the bed the last time I’d peeked in. Chick could have moved it, but Arty’s talk about Leona the Lizard Girl hit me again. I knew. Arty had tried to smother the Chick.

  I hung over the bedside, reaching to touch him. “Arty?” His head was heavy, his fins limp.

  Mama and Papa mustn’t find out. I jumped down, grabbed Arty by the rear fins, and pulled him back down the carpeted ravine to the bedroom door, and out into the living section of the van.

  “Oly? Are you O.K., honey?” Peggy was at the screen door. “Is the baby O.K.?” Mollie called.

  Chick was hiccuping in the bedroom. He sobbed occasionally. Arty was very still. I turned his head to the side so I could see his face. His eyes were closed. A big patch on his forehead was beginning to turn blue. I took a deep breath and ran to the door. The redheads stared in at me. “I think Chick’s O.K.… But Arty …” I lifted the latch and began to cry.

  I huddled on Mama’s bed with Chick during the uproar, and heard the grownups decide that Arty had climbed up on the kitchen counter and fallen off onto his head. He was still unconscious when Mama rushed him off to Papa’s infirmary trailer.

  Chick sat up beside me, his fuzzy hair frowzled, and patted my cheeks with his tiny hands. He ran his fingers into my nostrils and mouth until I smiled, painfully. Then he smiled too, with his few teeth all showing in his floppy grin.

  Above us on the painted metal wall was a shallow dent the size of a dinner plate.

  “Oh, Chick,” I said.

  The twins marched in and commandeered the baby. “If you’d been inside where you were supposed to be,” said Elly, “this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You could have helped Arty get what he was looking for,” said Iphy.

  I h
ugged my knees and stared numbly at them. The rat was awake in my belly.

  They took Chick out to the dining booth to play with him and I lay there on Mama’s big lavender bed and thought about Arty coming in through the screen door and finding nobody and humping his way back to the bedroom and seeing Chick asleep on the bed. I saw him push his way carefully up to the pillows and grapple one onto the baby’s sleeping face, Arty leaning on it with his whole weight. So Chick woke up and threw Arty just as he’d throw a toy or a chunk of banana. Without touching him.

  Mama stayed at the infirmary with Arty but Papa came back with the news.

  “The poor little apple batted awake and says, ‘Mama, Papa,’ first thing. I whooped and your mama stopped crying. He couldn’t remember a thing about it. He’s got a concussion and a dog hair of a skull fracture, but praise be, he’ll be right in no time.”

  Elly shrugged. Iphy clapped her hands. “I’m so glad.”

  I laced my fingers over my pointed chest and closed my eyes, breathing in gratitude that I hadn’t got him killed and that he’d been clearheaded enough to “forget” what had happened.

  We fed Chick from a bottle until Mama and Arty came home the next afternoon. He was good about it. But when Mama noticed the dent in the wall a few days later I told her that Chick had thrown his bottle at it once while she was gone. She tsked but didn’t scold him. It was too late, she said. “You have to ‘No’ him just when he’s done it. He wouldn’t know why I was fussing at him now.”

  Arty lay on his bunk in the middle of everything and we danced to his tune. The twins waited on him and I helped him to the toilet, and Mama spent all her time thinking of delicate things for him to eat. He was happy. He was polite. He smiled and laughed at the jokes we made to amuse him.

  He couldn’t read for a while. His eyes wobbled and trying to focus gave him headaches. I read to him in my slow, stumbling way and he corrected and scolded and made me go on for hours. By the time he could read for himself again, I could read almost anything, though my pronunciation was still shaky on words I didn’t know.

  Mama did her duty by Chick but fussed over Arty. For days Chick barely appeared outside the bedroom. Then Mama brought him out and tucked him in beside Arty “to watch while Mama makes supper for her beautiful boys,” as she put it. I felt my stomach claw its way into my throat, but Chick snuggled up to Arty happily and played with his fin. Arty blinked for a second and then went along with it.

  I secretly swore to make Arty the king of the universe so he wouldn’t be jealous of Chick.

  Arty’s big tent stayed folded on the trucks through a dozen moves. It cut into our take dramatically. Papa tried to keep Arty from knowing how much money we were losing with him out sick. When Papa sat late in the dining booth doing the books, Arty would ask, “How’s it going?” and Papa would sigh and say, “Fine, boychik. Don’t you worry your poor busted noggin about it.” This put Arty into a foul mood for several days. Finally one night, late, he called out from his bunk, “I guess the show doesn’t need me, Papa. You’d do fine with just the twins if I died.” Then Papa went and scooped him up and took him to the table and showed him how the gross had slipped. Arty was happy again and started going over the accounts with Papa.

  It was more than a month before he tried going back into the tank at all. His first test trip into the water was a shock. Papa and I leaned on the tank to watch as he flipped down in his usual straight-to-the-bottom flow. He burst through the surface seconds later, gasping. “It hurts!” he puffed. “And I can’t hold my breath.”

  Papa was grim and silent as he carried Arty back to our van. I knew he was wondering what would happen if Arty couldn’t dive anymore. That afternoon he got a set of weights and a bench from the storage truck, remnants of an old strongman act. He set up a gym on the stage behind Arty’s tank. Arty began working out and was back in the water within the week. Not long afterward, Arturo the Aqua Boy was back in lights and packing them in.

  8

  Educating the Chick

  A carnival in daylight is an unfinished beast, anyway. Rain makes it a ghost. The wheezing music from the empty, motionless rides in a soggy, rained-out afternoon midway always hit my chest with a sweet ache. The colored dance of the lights in the seeping air flashed the puddles in the sawdust with an oily glamour.

  I sat on the counter of the Marvelous Marv booth and kicked my feet slowly. No drips came through the green awning but the air was so full of water that it congealed on my face and clothes whenever I moved. I was watching the summer geek boy, a blond Jeff from some college in the far Northeast, as he leaned on the snack-wagon counter across the way and flirted with the red-haired girl running the popcorn machine.

  Behind me in the Marv booth, Papa Al and Horst sat facing each other on camp stools with the checkerboard between them. Marvelous Marv had the afternoon off and Horst’s cats were fussing and coughing at the damp. The cats’ voices roared around their big steel trailer but came echoing dimly through the rain.

  Al’s cigar butt arced out over the counter past my elbow, spitting red as it died in a puddle.

  “Long as you’re playing with your boots instead of your brains,” drawled Horst, “why don’t we make this next game for my new tiger cub that I’m going to pick up in New Orleans? I win, you buy me that cub for my birthday.”

  I could hear Papa’s match scraping the stool leg, then the hiss and a silence that produced a reek of green tobacco from his new cigar.

  “Hell, Horst. I’ve already gifted your birthdays for the next ninety years.”

  The click of the checkers being laid out for the new game sounded on top of the thin tinkle of the piano from the twins’ practice session in the stage tent. I tried to hear Lil’s voice counting shrilly over the treble but the rain didn’t carry it.

  “That baby’s birthday is coming up,” said Horst.

  “Almost three,” grunted Papa, “and I’m still boggled. Keep thinking of great things for him to do and then realizing we can’t have it. Begin to think maybe this little guy is too much for me to handle.”

  “Nice temper that child has,” Horst’s careful voice, not pushing. “Wished I had a cat as willing and sweet as that child. Wants to please.”

  “All my kids are sweet and willing! Show me a family of troopers anywhere to beat them!” Al wasn’t really angry, just doing his duty by his own. “But that’s not the problem,” he added. “No,” Horst agreed.

  The sound of a checker jumping twice, then a long silence. Jeff, the geek boy, gave up his wooing for the moment and slogged dejectedly away from the popcorn counter. The red-haired girl smiled after him and smiled as she stabbed pointed sticks into a row of apples for dipping in caramel. She began humming a song I didn’t recognize.

  I rolled through the crowd in the midway with my head at the general crotch level. Music and lights blaring, a thousand arms sweating around a thousand waists. Children, fussing and begging and bouncing, hung onto the tall norms. The legs scissored past me, slowing when they approached me. I was just walking through, from one end to the other, trying to feel the instant when the wallet in my blouse front was meddled with. If I felt anything I would stop and throw my hands in the air and Papa, sitting up there on the roof of the power truck with Chick in his lap, would see me and then I’d walk on.

  “Fuckin kee-rist! What happened to you?” asked a knock-kneed drunk tottering in front of me. I grinned at him and swerved around, with a little cramp in my lungs. Arty and the twins couldn’t come out in the crowd like this. Once the gates opened and the norms trickled through, my more gifted siblings hid. The crowd won’t pay for what they can see free. There were security reasons as well. They were “more obvious focal points for the Philistine manias of the evilly deranged.” That’s how Papa put it.

  A small child looked into my face and wanted to stop but his mother dragged him on. Sometimes when I felt the eyes crawling on me from all sides, I got scared thinking someone was looking who wasn’t just curious. I knew
it was my imagination and I got used to it, learned to shunt it away. But sometimes I held on to it quietly, that feeling that someone behind or beside me in the crowd—some guy leaning on the target booth with a rifle, or some cranky, sweating father spending too much on ride tickets to keep his kids away from him—anybody could be looking at me in the sidelong way that norms use to look at freaks, but thinking of me twitching and biting at the dirt while my guts spilled out of the big escape hatch he’d cut for them. That helpless rasp of death waiting as he hurt me … a feeling like that is special. Sometimes you hold on to it quietly for a while.

  I told Arty about it once. Arty narrowed his long eyelids and said I was flattering myself and there was nothing about me special enough to make anybody want to kill me. Arty was the master deflater, but his reaction convinced me only that he didn’t want to kill me. Funny how target potential became a status symbol among us.

  At the end of the midway in front of the Ghost Coaster the wallet was still sweating in my shirt. I climbed the entry ramp so I could see the top of the generator truck down at the other end. Papa, with his boots dangling over the roof edge, was dancing Chick on his knees. I waved. He didn’t see me. I waited, and waved again. There, he looked. His arm shot straight up signaling me to come back. Chick would probably try again while I was on the way. I jumped down and swam back through the crowd and the music.

  The wallet was still in my shirt when I got back to the power truck. Horst was leaning on the front bumper watching Papa count a wad of greenbacks. I took out the wallet and handed it to Papa. “Why couldn’t he do it?” I asked.

  Papa grinned and jiggled his eyebrows at me. “Ah, my froglet, you haven’t looked inside that wallet!”

  I watched as he unfolded it and spread the pocket. Empty. The sheaf of one-dollar bills he’d put there before I started was gone.

  “You didn’t feel anything?” asked Papa. I shook my head, watching Chick in his coveralls with no shirt and no shoes and his arms and legs wrapped around Grandpa’s shiny urn, absorbed in making breath fog on the mirror metal.