by Chad Dundas
“It wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “I’m all sucked up.”
Something in his voice must have given him away. “What did you eat?” she said.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just water since yesterday afternoon.”
He fumbled his tights back up. That morning the gals at the pie car had fixed him a meat loaf sandwich and a side of leftover slaw. He didn’t regret it, but four pounds? Definitely he hadn’t eaten four pounds.
“How far over?” she asked.
“Just a few.”
“You said a couple just a minute ago,” she said. “How far?”
He sighed. “One sixty one.”
The look on her face scared even him. “That’s crazy,” she said. “You can’t go on like that. You have to talk to Markham.”
“What’s he going to do,” he said, “besides get angry over nothing?”
She squinted at him, a probing look he didn’t care for. “How long do you think we can keep this up?” she said.
“What?” he said.
“Letting Boyd Markham drag us all over hell and back every summer,” she said. “You risking your life every night. We used to be on our own. We used to have fifteen rooms. Now we’re just counting down the days until they have to take you out on a stretcher for real.”
He was trying to put together a response to that when somewhere outside a crier yelled, “Doors!”
It was time for her to go.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll go see Boyd. I’ll throw myself at his feet and grovel for forgiveness.”
That seemed to satisfy her. Her face softened a bit and she kissed him hard on the mouth. “You want the gun?” she said.
He thought about the snub-nosed .38, still where he’d stashed it under a stack of blankets in their steamer trunk. “Nah,” he said. “If the fat bastard tries anything I’ll just strangle him.”
Outside the trailer it was almost full dark and he had to wait while a traction engine crawled by dragging a load of logs. New Vermillion wasn’t much more than a shotgun blast of rough weatherboard shacks lost in the hills fifty miles from anywhere. To the east, thick stands of fir and pine crowded up against the banks of a muddy, stagnant river. To the west somewhere was the ocean, though he couldn’t smell it on the evening breeze. All he could smell was tree sap, a tingle of sawdust, and the faint taste of motor oil greasy on his tongue. The mill sat on a rise at the edge of town, the saw house towering above everything else, dirty smoke drooling from a series of stacks. A run of smaller iron-roofed buildings trailed behind, and from them a spiderweb of narrow dirt roads bled out into uneven rows of houses and shops, all built from the same blonde wood they were cutting out of the hills.
The three dozen trucks and trailers of the Markham & Markham Overland Carnival had arrived after midnight the night before, coming up from Ashland in the rainy dark, running late because one of the trailers blew a tire. They set up the yard at the south end of the valley, circling up to give the towners a good look at the colorful trucks. Markham liked to brag he ran the fastest, most agile carnival in North America. While most of the other big operators like Ringling and Sells-Floto were still tied to the rails, he’d switched to gasoline years ago. Hence the word Overland and the slogan printed over the wheels of every truck in his fleet: World’s Largest Motorized Circus! The trucks allowed the carnival to go places the bigger shows couldn’t touch, places deep in the woods and swamps. Markham’s game was to target the small towns, mining camps, and timber ventures, where they drew crowds of rough men and women who came out looking for dice games, peep shows and the occasional fight.
As Pepper stood waiting, a shift whistle blew and a group of guys in wood-flecked overalls came down from the mill to join the crowd drifting into the evening performance, a bunch of them with their lunch buckets still swinging in their hands. The roustabouts had just opened the main gate and were doing their best to scout for weapons and liquor as the towners streamed under the twenty-foot banner blaring the Markham & Markham name in bright red letters. Smaller flags lined the path to the big tent, waving with the names of featured acts and promising Spectacular Performance! Games! Menagerie! Athletic & Side Show! One of them was his: The Immortal Pepper Van Dean! Master of the Hangman’s Drop! Meeting All Comers in Timed Challenge Bouts!
The townsmen were mostly hatless, dressed in what passed for evening wear in these hills: plaid and checkered shirts tucked into denim or old wool. The few that wore jackets and ties did a poor job matching them. Overcoats were old and shiny, and most everyone wore work boots or cracked brogans. A couple of big sawyers had pulled off their boots and now walked barefoot in the damp, their feet oozing from ugly blisters. The women were hard and bright as stones, their dresses home-stitched and fraying, their children running wild, whooping at the prospect of something to do. He saw a couple of toddlers rumbling along in the nude as the hot, stinking mass of them moved across the midway toward the tent.
None of them paid him any mind as he crossed the road behind them and knocked on the door of Boyd Markham’s double-sized trailer. Receiving only a low grunt in response, he clicked the latch and stepped inside, where the smell of man was thick in the air. Clothes were everywhere, thrown over chairs and piled high atop a matching pair of Saratoga trunks. The only light came from a small wall-mounted sconce, but in the gloom he saw that a Chinese girl stood in the middle of the room, naked except for a pair of black slippers. She had a solemn, pretty face and spared him only the quickest glance as he came in. The girl was balanced on top of Boyd Markham, who lay on his belly wearing a light-colored vest, matching pants, and thin brown socks. Pepper couldn’t see his face, only the pink roll of his neck beneath his razor-cropped mane of silver hair, but he could hear him fat-man breathing into the carpet. Putting her feet between his shoulder blades, the girl wiggled from side to side, doing a little dance. Markham groaned. She turned and toe-crawled back down to his waist, repeating the dance. Markham groaned again.
Pepper cleared his throat. He said, “If you want me to come back . . .”
The carnival barker sighed and lifted both his hands off the floor as if to say, You’re here now. The girl jumped down, slipping wordlessly into her robe. As she went past he caught a whiff of her, some flowery scent tickling his nose. When the trailer door banged shut behind her he waited while Markham hefted himself up off the floor, feeling a twinge of disgust at the sight of the enormous, soft ball of him.
“We are in the high grass now,” Markham said, peering briefly out a window. “It feels like a whiskey kind of night. I’d offer you one, but I know you’re trying to watch your figure.” He gave Pepper a squint-eyed grin, then seemed to notice something was wrong. “What is it, son?”
Markham poured himself a rye and sat heavily in one of the chairs. The other chair was full of laundry, so Pepper couldn’t join him.
“I got on the scale today,” he said.
“As I’m sure you do every day,” Markham said, like he already knew what was coming.
Pepper folded his arms. It had only been a few minutes since he’d weighed himself. Markham was as wily as any carnival man alive, with eyes and ears everywhere inside his own troupe, but not even he could have gotten word that Pepper was overweight. Not this fast.
“I’m one sixty-one,” he said.
Markham grinned at the amber slosh in his glass. “I know that can’t be true,” he said. “One hundred sixty-one pounds would put you a full six pounds over the limit for performing the hangman’s drop trick. You would be in violation of your contractual agreement with the Markham & Markham Overland Carnival. A contractual agreement that in no uncertain terms dictates that you, as the humble servant of your employer, and the dumb-as-dirt redneck grappler who signed it in the first damn place, shall perform the hangman’s drop trick while weighing no more than one hundred fifty-five pounds.”
Pepper’s ears felt very ho
t. This world never made sense to him—contracts, figures in a ledger. He couldn’t make the numbers talk to him the way Moira could. “I know what the contract says,” he said. “But I’m one sixty-one, so there we are.”
“And as I previously iterated,” Markham replied, “you must be mistaken. Being in violation of your performance contract would not be good for you, Mr. Van Dean. It would not be good for Moira. Such a sad state of affairs would entitle your employer to seek restitution in the form of garnished wages for any amount he felt such a violation would cost the reputation and overall well-being of the world’s largest motorized circus.”
Pepper worked his jaw back and forth. “You really going to play hardball with me on this?” he said.
“What other course of redress do I have?” Markham asked sadly. “If you have some bright idea you have yet to elucidate, by all means, please enlighten me.”
“It’s your call, boss,” he said. “If you want to scratch the hangman act for tonight, that’s all right.”
In a burst of speed surprising for a man of his size, Markham threw his whiskey glass against the sidewall of the trailer. It shattered and the shards flew back at them, forcing Pepper to shield his eyes as glass whipped over his skin like raindrops.
“I know whose call it is,” Markham shouted, “and it is not all right! It is not all right, you insipid little dwarf, for one of my most popular attractions to suddenly pull up lame like a goddamn show pony when I’ve got a packed house sitting out there, I’ve got two weeks of advance advertising on the books, I’ve got fliers nailed to every freestanding structure in this awful town. We marched a goddamn parade through the streets, for Christ’s sake, and now what? I’m supposed to go out there and tell them the master of the hangman’s drop is too fat to go on?”
Pepper held up his hands, but a fire was burning in his gut. “Wait a minute, Boyd.”
“What should I do about the people who want refunds?” Markham said. “I’ll have no choice but to take that out of your pay as well.”
Pepper took a step forward. “Listen,” he said, but stopped when Markham crossed his legs to show the knife he had strapped over one boot.
“Please,” the carnival barker said, cool as could be again. “I implore you to see things from my perspective. You remember where you were when I found you? When I discovered you?”
Pepper remembered.
“Given the circumstances,” Markham said, “you can’t blame me that I feel a certain pride of ownership over you, over your act.”
Pepper nodded, something alive and crawling around in his neck and shoulders. He fidgeted, scratching at the side of his head. “I suppose I might,” he said.
“Then hear me when I say this,” Markham said, his voice taking on its ringmaster boom, that bass tremolo that sounded so good when shouted into a microphone. “You are the most gifted goddamn showman I ever saw in my life and I swear on the lives of my children that I would never do anything to cross you up or put you in unnecessary danger. You understand what I’m saying? The lives of my children. Their very souls. But the simple fact is, we’ve got people out there who’ve paid to see a show.”
“I hear you,” Pepper said.
“People,” Markham repeated, “who paid to see a show.”
“I said I heard you.”
“With that in mind,” Markham said. “It occurs to me that perhaps I misunderstood you. Why, I’m sure your weight is just fine. I’m sure you’re in the kind of tip-top shape we at the Markham & Markham Overland Carnival have come to depend on from the former world’s lightweight champion. If nothing else, perhaps we both merely misinterpreted the parameters of our previous discussion. Yes?”
“Yes,” Pepper said, his tongue dry and stiff in his mouth. “I think we both may have misinterpreted the parameters of our discussion. If I was not clear right off, I apologize. I came here tonight only to confirm with you that my act goes on as scheduled and to release the Markham & Markham outfit of any liability in the unlikely event of a mishap.”
“A mishap,” Markham said, “like you break your fucking neck.”
“Like I break my fucking neck,” Pepper said.
Markham slapped his knees like he’d just wrapped up a tidy little piece of business. They shook on it, and Pepper had one hand on the latch of the door when Markham spoke again.
“I’m told our mutual acquaintance Fritz Mundt came to see you recently,” the carnival barker said.
Pepper turned. “That’s right.”
“What did that washed-up meat tosser think he was doing tampering with one of my top draws?” Markham said.
“Nothing,” Pepper said. “Not much. No tampering. He only came by to shoot the breeze.”
Markham looked at him with the eye of a stockman appraising a side of beef. “That’s good,” he said. “I’m sure you understand it would be a violation of your exclusive performance contract for you to be consorting with another promoter, in this industry or any other.”
“I do, Boyd,” Pepper said, trying to use his tone to let the carnival barker know exactly how much he hated him at that moment. “I do understand that.”
“Good,” Markham said, a grandfatherly grin spreading across his fat cheeks. “Now, skedaddle on out of here, son. I need to get myself equipped. I’d tell you break a leg, but I understand Mr. Mundt took care of that for you some years ago.”
They packed a good house. The grandstand under the big tent was filled to capacity by the time Markham stepped out from behind the curtain, a small grin playing on his lips. The townspeople were rolling drunk, clapping and catcalling as he strolled to the center of the performance ring and took a low bow. “Timber!” someone shouted from the back. It got a few laughs, but the noise died quickly as he approached the microphone, letting the moment stretch before he dabbed the sweat away from his face with a folded handkerchief and said: “Welcome.”
Moira had her eye pressed to the rear wall of the tent. She’d paid another girl a dime to cover her spot at the poker table so she could sneak away from the gaming pavilion to watch. If Pepper was going to go out and kill himself doing the hangman’s drop, she wasn’t about to sit idly by at the tables only to hear about it later from some roustabout. She was still fuming over Markham’s insistence that he go on with the show, imagining the feeling of getting her fingers around the ringmaster’s thick neck, but now she had to hand it to him. He might’ve been a snake and a tyrant, but he was the best she’d ever seen at working an audience. He could grind on a set patter, but was also quick with ad libs and improvisation, a master of reading a room and then taking a crowd wherever he wanted to go. As he started in on his standard opening for the show, he had the entire population of New Vermillion rapt.
“Skilled performers who have thrilled crowds as far away as New York City!” he said, the mention of New York eliciting some murmured boos. “Chicago!” he cried, and the boos picked up speed. “San Francisco!” The grandstand trembled as the people crowed, starting to feel they were in on some kind of joke. “Even,” he announced with a mischievous glint in his eye, “the lush green hills of Oregon!”
The place went crazy.
In the backyard area, a half dozen horn players loafed around with their instruments propped on their shoulders. They all wore maroon jackets with matching stovepipe hats, and one man in their group stood holding hands with a monkey. The monkey didn’t wear a jacket but had a hat to match the rest and waved a toy trombone in his free hand. Just as Markham was reaching the crescendo of his speech, the horn players suddenly struck up a warbling tune, stumbling through the curtain into the performance ring.
Their melody was scattered and messy at first, but came together as they neared the center, their clumsy walk turning into a kind of haphazard choreographed dance. Markham stepped back from the microphone and stared. The crowd was caught off guard, too, the music snapping them out of the spell he
’d been building. The lead musician waggled his hat in one hand and turned a little pirouette as they strutted across the ring. Markham stomped over, hands on his wide, womanly hips, and caught the bandleader by the collar. The two of them started a pantomimed argument while the other musicians stood shrugging, holding their hats and horns in their hands. Markham turned a deep shade of purple as he and the lead horn player got in each other’s faces. When their row reached its fever pitch, one of the roustabouts ducked his head into the tent and yelled: “Let them play!”
The crowd picked up on it. “Yeah, let ’em play!” someone called out.
Hearing that, Markham reared back and bumped the bandleader with his enormous belly, sending him tumbling into the sawdust. The townspeople, suddenly realizing this was all part of the show, erupted in laughter. Wood chips flew as the bandleader hopped up and gave chase, followed by the rest of the horn players all tooting an angry fugue. Markham ran a long circle around the ring, making sure every section of the grandstand got a front-row view of the pursuit. As he came back through the center of the tent he stopped and shouted into the microphone: “We’ve got a great show for you tonight! First up, the aerialist Star DeBelle and her team of lady acrobats! Give them a hand!” Then he sprinted for the exit with the horn players still on his tail. The crowd roared as he left the tent and the lady acrobats tumbled in, a few of them turning handsprings while the rest waved a rippling rainbow of five-foot flags.
Moira pulled her eye away from the sidewall and she saw Pepper ambling down from the trailer in his cape and tights, flanked by his escort of clowns. From the look on his face, you’d never guess there was anything the matter with him. He kept his eyes straight ahead, his shoulders back, his walk steady. He looked confused for a moment when their eyes met, not expecting to see her there, and then he smiled as if he understood. The smile was cocky and dangerous and filled her to the point of bursting with love for him. He had smiled at her just that way the first time they’d met, years ago now, before either of them had ever heard of Boyd Markham, his traveling carnival, or the hangman’s drop.
