The Night is Long and Cold and Deep

by Terry M. West

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Johnny said. “I’ve talked about everything with you.”

  “I can see it in your eyes, Johnny. There so much you want to talk about, but you are afraid. You don’t have to be. I’m here to help you.”

  Johnny stared at his feet. He couldn’t dare. He just couldn’t.

  “Just mull it over. Remember, there are no reprisals in this room. Whatever it is you have to say, you can.”

  Johnny nodded silently, preferring not to look Dr. Schrader in the eye. Their time was up so Johnny excused himself and left.

  1.

  Johnny felt thunder pound in his veins as he walked toward the Americana Traveling Carnival. The lure of brightly-lit carousel rides and the faint, innocent melody of circus music had coaxed him out of his trailer.

  Johnny pulled his long, raven hair into a ponytail and inhaled the cool August wind. His sneakers gritted across the gravel path that splintered off of Highway 114, away from the quiet town of Pleasant Storm, Texas.

  He wore his last clean western shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans. There was magic to be found at this place tonight. Tucked in his sock, he had a week’s hay bailing salary and all of the time and freedom in the world, since his parents had left him.

  …and he would have gladly exchanged that freedom… he would have welcomed restrictions, curfews, boundaries… to have his parents back…

  There had been a horrible thunderstorm when his parents lost control of their car on Highway 114 (dubbed the Widow-Maker by local truckers).

  After a brief service, Johnny stood at the maws of earth that had swallowed his parents. People paid their respects. You were so lucky you weren’t with them, they told him. More often than not, he wished he had been.

  …he wouldn’t be alone now…

  Life lost meaning for a while. But he was trying to crawl out of the depression.

  Johnny’s excitement filled in him so much that he thought he would explode. The carnival seemed to stretch for acres, utilizing every inch of the Sioux County fairground. He was close to the entrance gate, where, gathered for admission, was a crowd from every blink-an-eye town in the neighboring four counties.

  As he stood in line, he spied beyond the iron gates and gazed at the Tilt-A-Whirl, roller coaster, funhouse and rows of refreshment stands and games of chance.

  Johnny narrowed his gaze down the expanse of people who moved forward, sluggishly. Two stern-looking, muscular roustabouts were at the front gate, accepting six bucks for admission and stamping hands.

  He sighed and looked up at the clear night sky. He shouldn’t be so impatient. He had just turned nineteen, for Christ’s sake. He was acting the same way he had when he was a little child and his parents used to take him to these places.

  …when his life was warm and hopeful… when gray autumns made him serene instead of melancholy… long before every breathing moment became an effort to keep the oppressive misery from crushing him…

  Was he honoring his parents by being so childish? He didn’t think so.

  So Johnny straightened up like a good man, as his father would have said to him, if he were alive and standing on the same line. As the line began to shrink, he hardly noticed, his mind going back to his parents’ death. They were all he had in the godforsaken little town of Pleasant Storm. And now he was all alone there, with no true friends.

  …just memories… horrid little memories that tortured him constantly with images of his parents and their love and devotion… and when the memories came especially hard… well…

  “I guess I went a little crazy,” Johnny whispered to himself.

  The first time, right after his parents’ funeral, he sat in his father’s chair, drinking tequila like lemonade. His father had frowned on alcohol.

  …liquor is a weakness… the measure of a man should never be how many drinks he can put away… remember that, Johnny…

  But Johnny had found an initial liberation through the alcohol. As the evening grew, however, his despondency over his parents was heightened by the tequila, and Johnny stumbled to the Wilshire Cemetery, his vision blurred and voice screaming into the night like a banshee. When he reached their side by side graves, he had the sudden urge to embrace them one more time. His hands dug into the fresh earth of his mother’s grave. He clawed at the dirt madly, mouth still screaming his pain to the gods above.

  When Sheriff Thornall arrived, Johnny was still consumed by the mania.

  “Damn buck’s gone shit crazy,” Thornall observed behind him.

  But Johnny had continued digging, oblivious to all except his grief. Thornall grabbed him, wrapping a huge forearm around Johnny’s throat and saying, “Stop it, boy! This is insane! Your parents are gone!”

  Johnny bit into the sheriff’s meaty forearm, drawing an alarming amount of blood into his mouth. He shut his eyes and snarled like a feral beast as the sheriff bled onto him. The frenzy stopped when the sheriff punched the boy at the base of the skull, sending Johnny into darkness.

  …and it was bliss… undisturbed oblivion… for the first since he had lost them… no cruel dreams of mother in a flowered apron and mitts pulling freshly baked cookies out of the stove… or father helping him with one of Johnny’s many time-consuming garage kits… no horrifying nightmares of his parents coming back as gore-dripping zombies to consume him... just bliss… until he awoke in a hospital bed … the pain in his head from Thornall’s blow had coupled with his hangover…

  The judge had been sympathetic; the damage Thornall suffered had been minor, though it had bled like a son of a bitch. So Johnny returned home the same day. His only punishment had been the mandatory therapy sessions, which he could live with. Everything had changed, though. Everyone knew how insane the grief had made him. Everyone avoided him. If it wasn’t for old man Foyt Reed, who didn’t give a shit about anything except the general upkeep of the farm he was getting too old to manage, Johnny wouldn’t have been able to feed himself.

  As it was, he would soon have to find more work. Foyt Reed was just not giving him enough to do. And as much as he wanted to leave this place…

  …Pleasant Storm, Texas… population eight hundred and twelve… home of the fighting, Double A champions, the Pleasant Storm Yellowjackets… a dry little town in a bible-belt grip… a fair amount of the senior girls of Pleasant Storm graduated last year with their bellies swollen and dreams of college crushed…

  …he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his parents behind, even in the grave. So he stayed, feeling the stares on him, as if he were naked in the light. He heard the whispers of adults and giggles of small children. He didn’t care, most of the time. He had diversions, nowadays. A room full of models to be built and carefully painted. And there was sometimes work around Foyt Reed’s farm, whether it was bailing hay in the season or other grunt work.

  …anger needs expression… as Dr. Schrader said…

  The carnival would be a reprieve from the alienation. The unbearable loneliness. There would be too many brightly-lit, aromatic and noisy distractions to his senses. His mind would be free of the misery, for one night.

  He knew he was beating himself up over the whole thing. He hardly ate, didn’t sleep well at all and had considered every type of suicide known to man. Cowardice was the only reason he was still around, he wagered.

  …too miserable to live… too terrified to die…

  Worse than the depression, however, was the rage; the terrible hatred that he thought would drive him to unspeakable acts at times. There had been a couple of incidents after his run-in with Thornall that had made him question his sanity.

  But he really couldn’t think of that. He was already racked with guilt about… about… no, no, no… this was his night. The only night of happiness he might ever know. He hammered the guilt back down. No pain tonight.

  “That’ll be six dollars” a harsh voice said, breaking Johnny’s thoughts.

  He was grateful.

  Johnny looked up into the gruff fa
ce of the ticket seller. His mind had been so preoccupied that he had not noticed he was in front of the line.

  “Let’s go,” barked the tattooed man, who was clad in a tank top and tattered jeans. “You’re holding up traffic!”

  “Sorry,” Johnny said, hearing angry sighs at his back. He paid the man and walked through the front gate. He passed a crowd of squealing children who surrounded a young man filling up balloons with a helium tank.

  The crowd of people was thick, creating a ball of heat under the bright lights of the attractions. Johnny paused at the weight-guesser’s booth. A thin, light-haired man in a red and white striped suit, with a microphone in hand, addressed the crowd.

  “Step right up! I’ll guess your weight or your age! Your choice! Weight within ten pounds or age within two years! Fool the guesser and win a prize! One dollar per customer!” the man belted.

  The guesser motioned to a giant scale positioned next to a small rack of prizes that consisted mostly of pencils, balloons and Chinese finger torture devices. Johnny wasn’t biting. A fat man, in clothes that were too tight, approached the guesser and gave him a buck.

  “Weight, sir?” the guesser asked.

  “Yep,” the man replied, grinning to the crowd with a candy apple smeared chin.

  “Well let’s see here,” the guesser mused, patting the man’s stomach and poking him in the sides. The guesser scratched his head, and then jerked the microphone back to his lips. ‘I’ll say three-forty, sir!” the guesser announced, motioning to the scale that glared down on the crowd like a shining symbol of truthfulness.

  The big man stepped onto the scale which reported, after the arrow stopped fluttering, three hundred and twenty pounds.

  “Well, slim, you got me!” the guesser confessed, shaking the man’s hand. “Slip on over there to the prize rack and grab yourself something!”

  The big man walked over and promptly retrieved the finger torture device.

  Johnny began to move further upstream, determining that he was in an area dominated by food stands and games of chance. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure it out; the overpowering smell of carnival food and the loud voices of carnies trying either to insult or compliment people into playing their games filled the air.

  “Step right up! Everyone’s a winner! No one leaves without a prize!”

  Maybe later, Johnny thought, breaking away and heading toward the back of the fair, where he could see the top of the rides.

  He was going to wait until later for food until a particular delicacy caught his eye: frito pie.

  Johnny walked up to the mini-trailer window of the grease pit offering his favorite carnival snack. He ordered a dose from the chubby, acne-riddled woman inside. She took a handful of corn chips, tossed them into a cardboard container and poured a ladle full of chili and melted cheddar cheese over the chips to complete the course.

  Johnny also ordered a medium cola to wash down the greasy mess. He paid the lady and then huddled in a corner next to a Test Your Strength pole. He devoured the steaming food. As Johnny ate, he watched a muscular cowboy take a go with the mallet. The cowboy rang the bell at the top of the pole. Johnny scraped the remnants of the food from the carton with a plastic fork and popped it into his mouth.

  He drained his cola in one gulp. If he had any weaknesses, one had to be carnival food. Johnny knew before the night was over that he would frequent three or four more food stands, never mind the ice cream cone and funnel cake he would buy as he was leaving. How he stayed at one hundred and sixty pounds, he would never know. His parents used to marvel at his appetite.

  …like a bottomless pit… his father used to tease him at the dinner table… why don’t you bulk up, son… try out for football…

  Johnny tossed the empty container and cup into a trash can and resumed his walk toward the rides. His father had been a tall, broad-shouldered man who had played high school and college football. Johnny had always been on the slight side. He didn’t carry enough meat on his bones. He had never really been interested in sports, or any other social activity, anyway. He had resigned himself to intellectual pursuits. He liked to read. He wrote poetry, but usually threw a full nights effort into the garbage can. He was his own worst critic. He was his only critic, for that matter.

  Of course, he had suffered for his lack of physical prowess. His classmates in high school had picked on him constantly. But that was okay, now. That was the past. It was hell, to be sure. Kids had to be the cruelest human beings around. But it was behind him.

  Johnny came upon the human oddities trailers. The freak exhibits. He was visually assaulted by colorful banners bearing: The World’s Largest Grizzly Bear, The World’s Smallest Woman, The Living Mermaid, The Wild Man, The Living Headless Woman.

  They all read like a menu of bad taste. He just couldn’t bring himself to view those things. They made him feel dirty. Viewing freaks was… tabloid. It was the only thing he could think of to sum up his feelings on the matter. He didn’t know or care if it made sense. It meant more money for him to piss away on the coin toss. Freaks freaked him out, even if the shows were faker than professional wrestling nowadays.

  The center of the carnival aisle was filled with crane machines. The machines were packed with small stuffed animals. The prizes could be accumulated and traded for bigger stuffed animals that the vendors displayed above the machines. The crowd there was enormous.

  At the end of this particular carnival section, with several smaller kiddy rides separating him from the Tilt-A-Whirl, something caught Johnny’s eye. The attraction was fronted by a huge billboard of a jungle scene. A fierce gorilla pounded his chest while a beautiful young woman clad in a skimpy, leopard print bikini lay on a patch of earth below the gorilla. The attraction was titled: Cleadosia, the Gorilla Girl!

  The man at the ticket booth glared at Johnny. “Show’s commenced,” he said, motioning to the part in the canvas tent that was guarded by a burly man. “Come back in fifteen minutes, kid,” the dark-haired man said.

  The man needed a shave and was not much older than Johnny, which didn’t warrant him calling Johnny kid. He had a sleazy look about him; the look of a man who would smile in your face while his hand was massaging your wallet out of your back pocket. Maybe it was prejudice against carnies, but most of the vendors looked that way to Johnny.

  The man motioned to a circular pen that was erected on a pedestal outside the tent. “When we bring her out, that’s when it’s time to buy your ticket,” the man continued.

  “Okay,” Johnny called back, making his way between spinning strawberries and a castle full of plastic balls. Cleadosia would have to wait.

  He had a date with a bumper car.

  2.

  The line for the Electric Boogie Machine was too long, so after riding the Metallic Octopus, Tilt-A-Whirl, Screaming Death roller coaster and the bumper cars, Johnny decided to forgo the other rides for the night.

  The Friday night crowd was too massive and he didn’t want to wait on another line for as long as he lived. Johnny saw the moon-lit Texas woods, punished by an Indian summer, just beyond the carnival parameters. He decided to work his way back toward the games of chance. Maybe hit the House of Mirrors and a corn dog stand on the way there. He passed back through the kiddy rides section, noticing a man dressed in a purple dinosaur costume that was posing for pictures with screaming, panic-stricken toddlers.

  Johnny stepped around the spinning strawberries and found himself near the crane machines. He glanced to his left and stopped cold in his tracks.

  He was back in front of the gorilla girl attraction. But now, Cleadosia was in the wire pen in front of the tent. The woman stood regal and defiant in her cage. It should have been a scene of degradation; a scantily-clad woman held prisoner in a funnel of chicken wire. Put on display like a white slave. But it didn’t strike Johnny that way. He could sense her fierceness.

  She had the tall build of a super model. Her beautiful face had just a hint of hardness to it. This wom
an had lived a tough life. He didn’t know how, but Johnny could tell just by looking at her. Her expression was cold and emotionless. Her icy gaze swept over the crowd, as if they were beneath her notice.

  Her head swayed to and fro, caught in the rhythm of a primal song that was denied to Johnny and the other spectators. Johnny stared at her hard. His eyes gorged themselves on her ample build, held barely in check by a leopard print swimsuit. The woman’s hair was dirty blonde and her skin was deeply tanned. She looks like a jungle woman, Johnny thought. An honest to Jesus jungle woman.

  A speaker, hidden behind the display pen, sparked to life:

  “Say hello to Cleadosia, a woman raised by apes in the far reaches of darkest Africa. She has a psychic connection to her ancestors that travels back, over a million years of evolution. Through modern technology, Cleadosia can transform into a gorilla. A combination of meditation and virtual reality can actually turn this beauty into a raging beast. Step inside, the show is about to start. Not for the faint of heart. Say hello to Cleadosia…”

  The message droned on, repeating itself. Jungle drums spiced the invitation.

  The sleazy front man who Johnny had encountered earlier stepped up to the pen and crushed out a cigarette on the clay ground. He then led Cleadosia down three rickety steps that were tacked to the wooden crate that she stood upon. He whisked Cleadosia through the flap of the tent, and then took his position behind the admission booth and motioned for the crowd to come forth.

  Johnny had never seen this attraction before, and had no idea what to expect. As he fell into line behind the throng that pushed their way forward, Johnny chalked it up to curiosity. Nothing more.

  …but he could still clearly see her… standing proudly in her pen… her eyes falling on no one… except Johnny… then her lips traced the barest curve of a smile… and her arms opened to him… and he surged forward to meet that embrace… he clawed hungrily at the chicken mesh as she did a slow, cruel striptease within the safe confines of her cage…