Cyber Circus

by Kim Lakin-Smith

  Liftng her hands towards the spot-lit heavens, Charm agitates the motes to rise. On a wave of pulsing drums and spellbound dust, Nim ascends ten metres above the ground. She pirouettes air-bound. Light spills out from the heart of her over the world of the circus.

  The others emerge then from behind the backstage curtain. A ladyboy flashing teeth and feminine wiles as he skips about the ring. The pig man who is yet awkward on the stage but grunts and squeals with bold enthusiasm. A savage black-eyed girl who bounds in on all four limbs, jaw snapping, gore matted in her mane. And the HawkEye, a man of flesh and metal who scans the crowd with his whirring eyepiece and stalks into the centre of the ring. He holds a hand up to Nim and she takes it.

  On a balcony above, the ringmaster hops from foot to foot, waving his extravagant feathered hat as the calliope pipes its last song of the night.

  “Goodnight ladies. Goodnight gentlemen. Goodnight Saints and goodnight sinners. Goodnight one and all from the sensational, lavational, electrisical, metaphysical Cyber Circus!”

  BLACK SUNDAY

  Friday April 12, 1935

  Wesley Sanders edged the drink onto the table.

  “There ya’rl, Miss Nightingale. Iced lemonade, or as Momma’s prone to call it, sunlight in a glass.”

  The eight year old grinned. His teeth were large and very white, as if slicked with whitewash like the exterior of the Grace Presbyterian Church. His cheeks were nut-brown apples.

  Carrie-Anne leant forward in her rocker and put her toes to the floor. She smiled back. “Thank you, Wesley. Tell your momma, she sure does know how to soothe the spirit.”

  Wesley bobbed his cap. He waltzed off down the porch, humming one of those slow sad negro church songs he was prone to. Even after he’d swung through the inner gauze and disappeared inside the house, Carrie-Anne could hear the tune. It seemed to nestle down inside the dry Oklahoma heat and stay there, whispering at her.

  She picked up the lemonade, rested the sole of a bare foot against the table and rocked. Julie Sander’s eldest, Abraham, had painted the porch a light grey colour before he’d abandoned Bromide for Oklahoma City last fall. That afternoon, the paint shade complimented the troubled sky where blue and lavender clouds roiled.

  A storm was coming. What kind, Carrie-Anne wasn’t sure. This time of year, it could be hail, could be lightning, could be a twister. But she welcomed it. The weather was unseasonably close. It licked at the nape of her neck where her shoulder-length hair clung, and at each underarm, leaving sweat stains on her new cotton dress. Everything induced slumber. Except the cold lemonade.

  Carrie-Anne put the glass to her lips and sipped. She wanted to stay mindful. The back gate needed fixing; she’d set the new yardman on it with instructions to go about replacing the struts. One of her stockings had a run that wouldn’t darn itself. Plus the whole house needed airing.

  She’d noticed as much that morning. Rising from her blankets at the tail end of night, she’d descended the stairs and glimpsed the place as with an outsider’s eye. Everything was layered with dust. She’d got a rag to it. But as she beat the motes, she’d felt a familiar, inexplicable crackling along her bare arms. Lips parted, she’d held up a hand to the window. In the first rays of dawn, the dust had appeared to dance near but never touch her skin, as if magnetically repelled...Seconds later, she’d heard footsteps on the stairs and Julie Sanders saying in her quiet way, “Sure is dusty, Miss Nightingale. I’ll light a flame under the coffee pot then get to helping ya.”

  Carrie-Anne braced her foot against the table and stayed tipped back on the rockers. Having filled the role of nursery nurse ever since Carrie-Anne first arrived at Boar House, aged eight and orphaned, Julie was like family, as were her boys. Which was how the woman knew to fill the house with the clarifying aroma of coffee and just join in shaking out the dust that morning. Also how she knew to dispatch Wesley with cool lemonade when the gate was still broken, the stocking still torn, the house still dust-riddled.

  All the same, Julie’s best efforts had failed. With the heat cooking in around her, Carrie-Anne found it impossible to rouse herself to any thought but one.

  Where the hell were they?

  * * *

  Even wearing ear mufflers, he couldn’t escape the terrible clanking as fragments of rock in the sand ricocheted off the drill. The cockpit shuddered with each impact. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth to stop them jarring. The four-point Sutton harness rubbed the same sore spots it did every run; Virgil imagined Carrie-Anne slavering the blisters with peppered grease. Lust alleviated his discomfort. The excavations were pivotal to his work, but, Christ, he missed that gal. Her baby scent when she soaped the sweat offa her. Those frank blue eyes and wide mouth. He liked her off-beat beauty.

  “Stop tugging your little john back there, Virgil, and crank the boiler. That last sheet of bedrock took the best of old Bessie’s heat.” Straining at the front harness, Josephine Splitz attempted to glare back over her shoulder.

  Virgil knew he’d just be a blur at her peripheral vision. He crossed his arms over his crotch all the same.

  “Sorry, Jos. Its hot’s all. Got me sweating like a hog ripe for slaughter.”

  Grabbing a battered iron scoop off a hook overhead, he drove it through the coke trough that ran alongside his chair and used the other hand to open the iron flap in the Burrower’s wall. A tremendous gush of heat spilt into the cabin. He shook the coke down the shoot and shut the hatch.

  “Another couple.”

  If the old coot’d had eyes in the back of her head, Virgil guessed they’d have been lit up and smiling. Twice more he drove the scoop into the coke and threw the fodder down the boiler’s throat.

  Reaching overhead, he took hold of a leather loop and tugged several times, feeling the papery air off the bellows feed the cabin and boiler simultaneously. Glancing past Josephine’s shoulder, Virgil saw the needles creep up in the rack of brass and glass gauges. The steering wheel juddered under the old girl’s hands, and he thought he heard her wince despite the wads of muslin she’d taped around the triangulated steel bar. Any other octogenarian shoehorned into the cramped quarters of the Burrower would’ve screamed for death’s release long ago. But Josephine was a wizen fruit, long past the point of any residual softness. She reminded Virgil of a small hunched Asian man in her navy-blue mandarin jacket, loose pants and soft cloth hat, except her fierce single-mindedness was peculiar to the matriarch.

  “Got your mind up top too soon, Virgil Roberts. Long as we’re still beneath, we’re just one mistake away from being buried alive.” Jos’s voice got that molasses quality it always did when she wanted to aggravate him for kicks. “Nothing certain in love or geological exploration, I promise you. By the time we break surface, chances are Carrie-Anne will’ve hooked up with Preacher Richards’ son. Great strapping lad, all thighs and neck and buttocks like quartz boulders. Or Jeffrey’s boy. Part store keeper, part donkey.”

  “In place of a lab rat that spends his time parked behind the arse of some old dame,” Virgil shot back. His mouth twisted. Jos sure liked to tease, but part of him guessed she might be right. Why was Carrie-Anne laying down with a freak like him? He’d spent so much time underground this past year. His eyes had a skim on them like spoilt milk. Likewise, his skin was colourless through lack of sunlight. Danger was, sooner or later, he’d fade right out.

  Even without seeing his face, Jos was astute enough to know what he was thinking. “You’re okay, Virgil Roberts. Wouldn’t choose you for my bedfellow but Carrie-Anne’s got the right to.”

  “It bother you if I said I wouldn’t choose you for a bedfellow either?”

  The old gal snorted. Any retort was cut short by a tremendous scraping noise. The steel undercarriage bucked beneath their feet, the motion immediately offset by the concertinaing of the Burrower’s riveted steel roof plates. It was a filthy, stinking, terrifying ride, thought Virgil, but Jos’s design was immaculate. The torpedo-shaped main carriage had a dual layer of modular
pneumatic tiles, or ‘scutes’ as Jos called them in homage to her greatest muse as a bioengineer, the horn-coated dermal bones of the Armadillo. As a geo-engineer, she’d applied similar tessellation logic to the rotating bit of the twelve foot Tungsten Carbide plated nose cone, likewise the corrugated neck frill that funnelled the spoil out behind as they pressed forward on sharpened steel tracks. The unstable nature of the terrace deposits was counteracted by gills in the outer walls that released a fine mist to solidify the sand. Hot, thin, rust-scented air was siphoned into the cabin from the tunnels. Water bladders were grouped at the backend of the machine like egg sacks.

  The turbulence abated.

  “Five minutes more. Just time enough to make yourself look pretty for my niece.” Jos adjusted in her seat. She handed a metal pot over her shoulder. “And to empty the piss pan.”

  * * *

  Carrie-Anne plunged forward in the rocking chair and stood up. She rested her hands against the corner strut of the porch then leant her whole body into it to better feel the vibrations. The keen of ruptured earth was just audible. Dust misted the field beyond the garden.

  “Wesley!”

  The boy was already at the swing door.

  “Momma knows, Miss Valentine. Says she’s drawing Miss Splitz’s bath and fixing Mister Robert’s Gin Sour.”

  “Good.” Carrie-Anne stared at the dry field, littered with entrance and exit wounds inflicted by the Burrower. “That’s good,” she repeated softly.

  The ground shook. There came a sudden explosion of brilliance in the centre of the field as sunlight touched the tip of the emerging nose cone. A geyser of dark sand erupted. The cacophonic whirring of the engine ripped through the air. The Burrower wormed up from below like a giant silver maggot castor.

  I shall not run to his side, not this time, thought Carrie-Anne. I will be the lady of the house, patiently waiting on the porch, lemonade glass in hand.

  Though it was hard to stand still as the terrific machine sledged up into the air, slammed back down and coasted forward, its twin steel tracks sending up two great tides of dust. The engine sound changed to a discordant chug. Steam spurted from the side valves.

  “Want me to run down to them, Miss Valentine?” Wesley stared up at her in round-eyed innocence.

  “No, Wesley.” She stuck out a hand as though to brace his chest. “You know better than to get near Miss Splitz’s excavating machine so soon after surfacing. It’s a big old unpredictable cottonmouth ‘til it cools some. Look!” She felt a rush of longing as jets of steam escaped the rivets of the roof hatch. “Even those inside take their time when exiting,” she murmured.

  The roof hatch cranked up. Aunt Josephine was first to emerge, un-crumpling herself as she went with all the decorum of a farm hand. She dropped heavily onto the ground, agitating the dust. For a brief moment, she applied her thumbs to her spine and arched backwards. Then she made for the front of the vehicle, kicking out stiff legs as she walked.

  Carrie-Anne’s gaze returned to the roof hatch. He was visible now as a coil of flesh that stretched out to become a tall, thin figure. Her heart got hot at the sight of him. He raised a hand to wave.

  There wasn’t chance to respond. Her aunt was shouting and gesticulating towards the huge steaming drill. Virgil answered her and threw an arm towards the house.

  He’s waving her away, thought Carrie-Anne admiringly.

  Sure enough, the old maid turned heel and began to stomp towards the house.

  Carrie-Anne watched Virgil slide down off the Burrower’s roof. With his shirt sleeves rolled and one suspender dangling loose from his waist, he strode up to the drill and dipped under it, one arm raised as a shield against the heat. Virgil’s in-depth mechanical knowledge made Carrie-Anne aware of her own internal workings; he seemed to grasp them too. And while she wanted to keep her eyes on him, her aunt was already at the garden gate.

  “...peach of a ride ‘til we hit that friggin’ boulder. Now the damn drill’s breached. Virgil best check the depth of those gorges good and proper else I’ll be roastin’ his sweet cherry ass on old Bessie.” Aunt Josephine plonked down on the porch steps, untied her boots and kicked them off. She didn’t falter in her monologue. “...not like we weren’t prepared. Hit wet sand and Virgil was gonna switch from steam to soot mix, gloop the walls to stop them caving in. But we didn’t find one patch of moisture. ‘Course it’s bone dry up here on the surface. Just the same, no water bodies, not even fifty foot below? It’s strange. Not strange, it’s unnatural.”

  The old woman stopped prattling suddenly. Her hooded gaze fell on Wesley.

  “Help your momma black the stove?”

  Wesley sucked his lip and nodded.

  “Kept the dirt from growin’ between them fat little toes?”

  The kid caught a foot up in a hand and used his fingers to scoop between the toes.

  “Am all clean, Miss Splitz.”

  The old woman gurned at him and he giggled.

  “Here.” She held out a fist.

  Wesley dropped his foot. He ran over, offering up cupped hands, and Aunt Josephine opened her fist over them.

  “Thank you, Miss Splitz.” The boy eyed his prize then pocketed it.

  Carrie-Anne smiled; she knew the ritual. The treasure was a mundane stone recovered from several miles below ground. Wesley would add it to his collection.

  Hand on the stair rail, Aunt Josephine levered herself up. Stalking over to the front door, she paused to cut her eye at Carrie-Anne.

  “Told lover boy you’d’ve shacked up with a new fella by now.” She slung her gaze over to the field where Virgil had shifted his attention to the cooling engine.

  Carrie-Anne felt panic worm between her eyes.

  Her aunt must’ve noticed.

  “He missed you,” she relented, and shouldered the flyscreen door and disappeared inside. Wesley followed after like a child bound to a witch by invisible silken thread.

  Carrie-Anne rested her forehead against the corner strut. Eyelids lulling, she watched the ghost of a man at work out in the field. Minutes passed. He became less and less solid. Late afternoon ebbed and swelled around her. A cicada soloed ahead of the insect symphony at sundown. Through the open bathroom window, she could hear Aunt Josephine’s prattle and the slow pour from a water jug as Julie endeavoured to clean up her mistress. Wood creaked; to Carrie-Anne, it was the sound of the house groaning under the weight of memories impregnating its walls. She listened past the familiar sounds of her environment, out to the dusting plateau of farmland and the drone of nothingness.

  Her flesh crackled. Her eyes shot wide.

  Virgil stood on the porch a couple of paces away.

  Carrie-Anne’s first reaction was indignation at his materialising like that when she expected to watch him approach from the distance of the field, to get used to him closing in. Her anger was blunted by the sight of him, hands and forearms etched in coke dust, shirt savaged at the neck. Lifting her eyes, she saw a death mask of skin so terribly white and dried to the bone. He went against what common decency said a man should look like. Yet his was a salt-preserved masculinity which made her drip away from herself.

  Carrie-Anne let go of the strut and wrapped her arms around her waist. Virgil kept on staring. She felt transparent.

  “Lose your tongue as well as your mind this trip, Virgil Roberts?”

  He smiled and the death aspect was replaced by tangible sensuality. Now she saw a slender man with well-worked shoulders, high cheekbones and generous lips in need of moisture. Only his eyes remained strange with their misted irises and pupils gone over from black to lead grey.

  “I was drinking you in, Carrie-Anne Valentine,” he said quietly.

  The gauze door yawned on its hinges and Wesley emerged from the house.

  “Yu Gin Sour, Mister Roberts.”

  The glass was offered up. Virgil gulped from it, his gaze on Carrie-Anne. She felt his stare graze her flesh like a steam burn.

  * * *

 
Bromide had been parched for months now, and in spite of its draw as a spa town not fifteen years past when the railroad carved through the district and millionaire, Robert Galbreath, found a hole into which to sink his oil money. Back then the town supported three general stores, two drugstores, a bank, a meat market, two hardware stores, two restaurants, a blacksmith’s and a dry goods. Four grand hotels wined, dined and bed-timed. A public bath house doused and rinsed. Meanwhile, Bromide’s unique geology gave rise to a cotton gin and yard, a rock crusher and quarry, a wagon maker, a sawmill, a gristmill, and even a bottler who shipped out the medicinal waters.

  But fame is nothing if not fickle. Come 1930, folk moved further afield. As quickly as it was raised, the town was brought to the ground. The excursion trains were cancelled, the bank closed, the hotels emptied. Five years more and Bromide looked set to simply blow away like a handful of dust.

  Knees in the dirt, Reg Wilhoit wondered which piece of his town’s history he worked up beneath his fingernails. Not much left to see of old Bromide now. Just slim pickings like the Baptist Church, a double-doored cattle barn of a place built of the usual dreary stone whose pews were regularly buffed, as if that would be enough to wipe the grime offa the place. There was the shack of the Post Office, which stank of old maid and kerosene given Mrs Johnson’s partiality to warm her knees by a stove. And there were another forty or so dwellings still bothered by human breath. Mostly though, ruins scattered a three mile radius, like markers to a ghost town.

  “Ya need a hand there, Mister Wilhoit?”

  The old man shone his eyes up. Preacher Richards’ boy blocked out the sun.

  Reg could guess how he looked to the kid. Seat of his pants patched. White cotton candy hair around a craggy face. Bent over like that. A marionette cut from its strings.