Rhea has been sitting in the high-backed Victorian chair for twenty minutes now. The Pachabel has numbed her nearly to sleep. She hears her father nervously cajoling people to buy a ticket. “Covered head to toe with real feathers!” he’s barking. “A beautiful quirk of human evolution! A metaphysical marvel!” She also hears Joon’s timid plea: “Ice Noggies! Gitch-yer eggnog-flavored snow cones right here!”
Then the head of a man peeks around the canvases. The head has a bright blue Ted’s Plumbing & Heating cap pulled tightly over a fringe of curly gray hair. The head smiles sheepishly. It doesn’t advance. Nor does it retreat. It just floats there. Rhea now hears the voice of a woman. “Let’s just leave, Ronnie. I really don’t want—”
The floating head says, “Come on, Louise. We already paid our dollars.”
“You’re a sucker for every trick that comes along,” says Louise.
“She looks real enough. Come on!”
And so Ronnie and Louise slide around the canvases and grin their way towards the stage. “Hi, young lady,” Ronnie says. Louise says nothing.
“Hi!” Rhea says. She stands up.
“So you’re really covered with feathers?” asks Ronnie. “Like other people are covered with skin?”
“I’ve got skin, too. Under the feathers.”
“The man outside said you started growing them when you was five.”
“Just a few at first.”
Louise gets up the nerve to ask a question: “Did you want to grow them, or did they just grow?”
“They just grew.”
“Well, you’re a real pretty girl,” Louise says.
Ronnie and Louise gawk for another minute without saying a word, then smile and say good-bye. “Do you think they’re really real?” Rhea hears Louise asks from the other side of the canvases.
Hears Ronnie answer, “They’re real feathers, but whether they’re really hers, who knows.”
Hears Louise say, “Then why’d we waste two dollars?”
All in all, Rhea decides, it went pretty well.
Next inside the canvases is a tall, stringy man with black shoulder-length hair and a blue-suede cowboy hat decorated with turkey feathers. His black tee shirt reads: No, I DIDN’T FART—I SMELL LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME! He needs a shave and a tube of Clearasil. His girlfriend needs a bra. Her stomach fat is puffed over her Indian-bead belt like the top crust of a dinner roll.
The first thing the stringy man says is, “Bummer! I thought she’d be naked!”
The girlfriend slaps his butt. “Be nice.”
The stringy man presses himself against the stage. “Can you lay eggs?”
Rhea forces a laugh. “No, I don’t lay eggs.”
“Been plucked yet?” he asks.
It’s Rhea’s turn to say, “Be nice.”
“Can I have a feather?” he asks, reaching.
The girlfriend takes him by the back of his belt and drags him toward the exit. “Come on, let’s go see the rabbits.”
As they retreat, the stringy man clucks, “Pluck-pluck-pluck!” and thrusts his bony hips toward Rhea. “Pluck-pluck-pluck!”
Rhea can feel the tears trickling through the feathers on her cheeks. This one did not go so well.
The day goes on. They take a break for lunch. Hot dogs, and fries, watery Cokes. The afternoon lasts forever. They go to the trailer for Cassowary-style tomato soup and that promised can of fruit cocktail. Rhea tries to nap, but cannot. They hurry back to the exhibit. The midway is crowded with people, a goodly portion of them happy to plunk down their dollars to see Rhea the Feather Girl, or to try an Ice Noggie.
Later in the trailer Rhea’s father lights the propane stove to make popcorn. On one side of the tiny table Joon counts his snow cone dollars. On the other Rhea counts the dollars she made. When the popping and counting are finished they finally relax, sharing their respective horror stories. They’d been only a few yards from each other all day, but they’d all been so busy. They marvel over how much money they took in.
“Better than I expected for our first day,” her father says, his yawns deforming his words into the howl of a hound dog. “Once I get my spiel down, we’ll do better yet.”
After Joon goes off to sleep in his Gremlin, Rhea and her father change into their pajamas and get into their beds. They leave on the light above the little sink. Both bags of dollars, the snow cone dollars and the Feather Girl dollars, go under Calvin’s pillow. So does a loaded .22. First thing in the morning he’ll take it to the most honest-looking bank in Burgoo City.
While they were eating popcorn at the table, there had been a lot of laughter as Rhea described the people coming in to gawk. But some of it hadn’t been so funny, and Calvin, resting his head on his folded elbows, sends his fatherly voice across the dark trailer, from his bed in the back, to her bed in the front. “Wasn’t too tough, was it, pumpkin seed?”
Twenty-four
“Isn’t she just darling,” says the jowly woman with fox-red hair to her companions. The woman shouldn’t be wearing shorts, but she is.
“Thank you,” answers Rhea the Feather Girl. It is only a few minutes after ten and these three middle-aged women are the first of the new day to plunk down their dollars. She stands up and takes two steps to the edge of the stage, refreshed and ready for a long day of being gawked at, being asked the same questions over and over.
“Are those feathers really real?” asks the woman with the huge rat’s nest of Crayola-yellow hair. She shouldn’t be wearing a sleeveless blouse, but she is.
“They’re mine,” answers Rhea.
The woman with the fox-red hair squints suspiciously. “This hair’s mine too, honey, but only ’cause I paid for it.”
Her friends laugh. So does Rhea.
“I didn’t pay for these,” Rhea says.
“Don’t they itch?” the third woman wonders. She is wearing both shorts and a sleeveless blouse. Her legs and arms are no bigger around than No. 2 pencils.
“Not really,” answers Rhea.
“Or stink?” asks the woman with the fox-red hair.
Rhea struggles to maintain her smile. “Of course not.”
Suddenly the Crayola-yellow woman is on the stage, clutching her by the wrist, sniffing along her arm.
“Please,” says Rhea, trying to brush away the women’s grip.
Now the pencil-limbed woman is on the stage, wiggling her index finger up under the feathers on Rhea’s knee. “Leotard. Like I thought.”
Rhea tries to move back but the big Victorian chair is blocking her retreat. “Please. That’s my real skin.”
Suddenly bee-sting pain shoots up Rhea’s leg. The pencil-limbed woman is pulling one of her feathers. “Whaddya know about that,” she says, twirling the plucked feather in front of her face, “they are real.”
“Oh, I want one, too,” says the fox-red woman. Her fingers wriggle toward Rhea’s neck. The Crayola-yellow woman’s fingers are wriggling toward her forehead. Rhea yells “Daddy!” She flings her chair at the women and jumps off the back of the stage.
Her father hurries the indignant women out. When he demands the feather back, the fox-red woman demands her dollar back. The exchange is made. “I just wanted a souvenir,” the woman says.
“Then buy a tee shirt,” he says.
And so the second day begins. By the time the midway lights go out for the night, several others have tried to pluck a feather. Each time Rhea yelled for her father, and in every instance except that first one, he talked them into buying tee shirts instead.
Early in the morning her father drives into town, finds the hardware store, and buys a roll of chicken wire. When Rhea goes to the midway, she finds a single, two-foot band of the fencing tacked across the front of the stage. She had cried all the way to the midway. Seeing the chicken-wire makes her cry again.
Late in the afternoon it starts to rain and the midway clears. Joon makes use of the lull to mix a fresh batch of nog. Rhea’s father trots to the Kiwanis Club tent to buy t
hem some supper. Rhea puts on her cape and pulls the cowl over her head, anxious to explore the exotic entertainments of the midway for herself. “There’s that Feather Girl,” she hears a girl working in a corn-dog stand whisper to a girl selling saltwater taffy.
Rhea is drawn to the enormous umbrella where the tiny, old dark-skinned woman sells useless carnival junk. Maybe she’ll get Joon something. Something goofy.
“Halloo sweetie girl,” the woman says from the shadow of her umbrella.
“Hello,” answers Rhea. She looks at the rack of personalized key chains, knowing there won’t be one that says JOON, or even JUNIOR.
“I fear this rain’ll last all night,” the umbrella woman says.
“Think so?”
“Know so. I been midwayin’ all my life. This rain ain’t going away. You watch, sweetie, they’ll close the fair early tonight.”
Rhea starts fishing through the sunglasses.
The umbrella woman cackles. “With that big floppy hood what you need sunglasses for?”
“I was thinking of getting them for my—for the guy in the Ice Noggie wagon.”
“Oh, I had one of them yesterday. Pretty damn good.”
Rhea is drawn to a pair of black wraparounds. “I’m Rhea.”
“Sure. You’re Rhea the Feather Girl. You’re making some good money over there.”
“Better than we expected.” Rhea decides against the sunglasses and looks at the plastic rings.
“You’re new at this game, are you?” the umbrella woman asks.
“It’s our first fair.”
The umbrella woman shakes her head sadly. “I’ve worked a billion of them.”
Rhea sees her father coming with a stack of cardboard food trays. “I better go.”
“Sure. If they do shut things down early—which they will—why don’t you and the eggnog boy come by? We’re just down the row from your trailer. Old blue camper on an even older red truck. Me and Robert Charles see you coming and going every day.”
“Maybe we will,” Rhea says.
The rain lets up just before six and the midway gets busy. Two boys, their faces just starting to be pimpled by puberty, come in with big cups of vinegar-soaked French fries. They do nothing but giggle. Then the tallest of the two lunges over the chicken wire and yanks a feather from the tender back of Rhea’s hand. They run. Her father puts up another layer of chicken wire. Now the fence is nearly as tall as she is.
Just after seven it starts to rain again. And lightning. People run for their cars. The rides shut down, their operators fearing electrocutions and lawsuits. At nine, words spreads down the midway that the fair is shutting down for the night. The umbrella woman knew what she was talking about.
“I feel like I’m inside a bongo drum,” Joon says, as the rain pounds the trailer’s thin metal shell. He’s counting the snow cone money. Rhea’s father is counting the Feather Girl money. Neither are happy with the take.
Rhea pulls the curtain across the back of the trailer and changes into a sweat shirt and a pair of her overalls. She slides the curtain open, announcing, “Me and Joon are going to visit the lady who sells the carnival junk.”
Asks Joon, “We are?”
Says her father, sipping from a can of ginger ale, “It’s raining.”
Rhea is ready for him. “Her camper’s right next door almost.”
Says her father, “I still don’t want you going out at night.”
“Right next door, daddy.”
Her father tries honesty this time. “I don’t think it’s a good idea associating with these people.”
Says Rhea, “Daddy, we’re these people, too. I’m Rhea the Feather Girl and Joon sells Ice Noggies! You’re one of those sleazy midway guys.” She imitates him: “‘Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Just inside, Rhea the Feather Girl! The Almighty’s most amazing gift to mankind! Covered head to toe with real feathers! A beautiful quirk of human evolution! Put down a dollar! Put a memory in your heart!”
Her father is laughing ginger ale from his nostrils. “Okay. You can go for one hour.”
Rhea and Joon dash through the rain to the blue camper on the back of the red pickup truck. Two knocks and the door opens. The dark and tiny umbrella woman puts a hand over her puckered lips and shakes her head, then realizing her visitors are getting soaked, steps back so they can climb in. “I told Robert Charles you’d more than likely be coming by.”
The camper’s low, noisy ceiling is just an inch above Rhea’s head. Joon has to bend his head sideways to fit. The umbrella woman fits just fine. She is well under five feet, much shorter than Rhea expected. Most startling is the woman’s head. It is oblong, and not much larger than a turnip. Her nose curls like the beak of a parrot. Her forehead slopes sharply. Her hair, thin and white, is pulled back and tied into a donut.
The umbrella woman introduces her brother, who is sitting on the edge of the bunk bed that extends over the cab of the truck. His head and shoulders are slumped, his legs are dangling. He is even smaller than his sister. His head is smaller, too. He has the same parrot-beak nose and the same sloping forehead. He’s as bald as an egg. “This is Robert Charles. He don’t walk or think too well. But he’s a sweetie. Ain’t you Robert Charles?”
“I’m a sweetie,” says Robert Charles.
“And I’m Eleanor,” she then says, “though everybody including myself has called me Jelly Bean since I was knee-high to a wiener dog.”
“I call her Mrs. Roosevelt,” says Robert Charles, “’cause Eleanor was Mrs. Roosevelt’s name.”
Jelly Bean puts her hands on her wide hips and studies her guests. “Now I know you’re Rhea the Feather Girl. But this boy I don’t know except that he sells those fine snow cones.”
“Joon,” says Joon. “James Faldstool Jr.”
Jelly Bean has them sit at the little table next to the little stove. She goes to the little refrigerator and takes out four cans of root beer. From one of the little cupboards she pulls a jumbo bag of potato chips and rips it open with her teeth. She squeezes in next to Rhea. “So, those feathers are for real, are they?”
Rhea explains how she started growing them when she was five. That nobody knows why. That her father has 810,000 Leghorns. That he once had a million. That they’re doing the county fair circuit to save the farm.
“And you don’t mind showing yourself off?” Jelly Bean wonders, nibbling on a chip like she’s a squirrel.
Rhea takes a while to answer. “It’s tougher than I thought.”
“Too many assholes,” Joon says.
Jelly Bean claps her hands joyfully. “Assholes with money.”
Says Robert Charles, “You got that right, Mrs. Roosevelt!”
Jelly Bean leans back and folds her arms and studies Joon. “Now tell me about those ears. In my day, we’d put you in the freak show as Junior the Elephant Boy. I bet you spin like a top when it’s windy.”
Rhea knows she’s just kidding, trying to make them feel comfortable in front of two tiny people with heads the size of turnips. “What about you and Robert Charles? You’ve been working the fairs for a long time, I guess.”
Jelly Bean’s eyes widen white. “Seventy-five years. Fairs and carnivals now, but for a long time we worked the circuses and amusement parks. ’Til the freak shows got closed down by do-gooders. Now instead of selling our little heads, we sell trinkets. Long as I can drive and make change we’re fine and dandy.”
“Fine and dandy!” says Robert Charles.
Jelly Bean tells them their story: “Starting at five years of age we was put in the freak shows as Jelly Bean and Roo Roo, Lost Children of the Aztecs. As you can see, me and Robert Charles are what they call pinheads. Pinheads was very popular in the freak shows. They dressed us up like Indians, with feathers and zigzaggy costumes. Even gave Robert Charles a rubber spear. Shaved our heads to make them look even pointier. Oh we worked all the big shows. Jelly Bean and Roo Roo, Lost Children of the Aztecs. But we ain’t no Aztecs. We’re just two tiny little
Negroes from Cincinnati. Black you’d call us today, I guess.”
Says Robert Charles, “Black is beautiful.”
“What we really are,” Jelly Bean continues, “is what they call microcephalics. We was born with tiny bodies and even smaller heads, to healthy normal-sized parents, Archibald and Lucille Peele. For some reason Robert Charles was born dumber than a post and me only half-smart. State of Ohio won’t give me a driver’s license, but I’ve been driving this and other rust-buckets around the country for forty years, with stolen plates, and I’ve never once been stopped for anything. The trick is to drive exactly five miles over the speed limit, no matter what the speed limit is. Cops figure anybody driving five over the limit must have a license in their pocket, or they wouldn’t be driving five over. And no cop’s going to stop you for just five.
“So, for years and years we worked as human curiosities. As atavistic specimens. Throwbacks to an extinct race. Making money hand over fist until they closed down the freak shows. I’m surprised the fair board let you rent space on the midway. I suppose they figured you was a fake, just like I did. Makin’ money as a fake is fine today. Being real ain’t allowed.
“Oh yes, we made all kinds of money as Aztec pinheads, when all the time we was Cincinnati Negroes. Now we’re selling junk toys and dirty tee shirts—the shirts is clean but the sayings is dirty.”
“But we still making some fine money,” Robert Charles chimes in.
Jelly Bean chuckles. “Just enough for food and gas and midway space at the next fair. Summers in the North. Winters in the South. Driving and driving. Praying we don’t blow a tire.”
Says Robert Charles, “Pedal to the metal.”
Jelly Bean squirrel-nibbles another chip. “So you don’t mind being on display, sweetie girl?”
“A few try to pluck a feather. But it’s—”
“Lots of folks used to rap us on the head with their knuckles,” Jelly Bean interrupts, “to see if we’d ploonk like a coconut.”
Fresh Eggs Page 16
