Carter Beats the Devil

by Glen David Gold

  How to swap secrets? Mysterioso was clearly a louse, but some member of his company might like to know variants on cup-and-balls that Carter had discovered. When he approached that night to invite someone out for whiskey, a juggler stopped him. Mysterioso had a special rider on his contract: neither he nor his company was to be “molested” by other acts. This meant any form of conversation whatsoever.

  Carter didn’t much care for Mysterioso’s attitude. Still, he wanted to know exactly how the Lion’s Bride effects were achieved; more importantly, the young woman who was rescued every night was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her name was Miss Sarah O’Leary.

  CHAPTER 8

  In the next two weeks the tour stopped in Auburn, Reno, and Carson City. With times tough all over, the threat of being shut and sent home was even worse than last season. The Elko Palladium had a sign backstage that read: “Performers: Do Not Send Out Your Laundry Until the Manager Has Seen Your Act.”

  Carter was in no danger. Western towns loved magic. Really, the only troupe on the program that had to worry was the most pathetic act Carter had ever seen: Karl and Evelyn Kowaleski.

  The Kowaleskis were Polish immigrants who traveled with a piano, a guitar, a cow, a rooster, a sheep, and two pigs. They called their act The Funny Farm. Programs described it as “musical moos, boisterous baaas and oinks to tickle your funny bone.” While Karl played folk tunes on the guitar, Evelyn milked the cow in time with the music. Then Evelyn played chords on the piano—she had never learned melodies—while her husband shook the different animals to get them to make funny noises.

  Carter watched their every performance before silent audiences, feeling queasy when he saw the sincere effort the Kowaleskis put into their miserable act. He frequently arrived early, just in case he had to wish them good-bye. In Salt Lake, as The Funny Farm performed, Carter stood in the wings next to Minnie Palmer, who stage-managed Fun in Hi Skule, which starred several of her sons. Carter didn’t need to ask why Minnie was there; her fingers were crossed, and she seemed to hold her breath until the curtain closed on Karl and Evelyn. Then she let out a sigh, and patted Carter on the shoulder. The Funny Farm had made it through another performance.

  After he had performed each night and locked his act away, he talked to Chase the monologist and fed Karl and Evelyn’s animals, and then took a short walk through town to buy postcards or a newspaper, returning just in time for the entrance of Mysterioso’s company. Sarah always walked with the men, but never any one man in particular. She wore the same silk scarf, turbanlike, and wool coat, until they hit Denver, when she switched to a rabbit wrap.

  If it was nice enough weather, and if the theatre had a large back patio, the company warmed up outside. The men did standing somersaults and cartwheels and, to make each other laugh, struck fitness poses like they were lifting weights with Eugene Sandow. Sarah danced.

  By Mysterioso’s rules, Carter was not allowed to talk to her. So, he talked to himself. He told himself he didn’t know her. He said there were many Sarahs in the world. He asked what kind of rube is smitten by a woman just because of a fortune-teller’s—several fortune-tellers’—guesses? But Sarah O’Leary was beautiful; Carter wanted very much to know her.

  Vaudeville, for a young man with a scruple or two, was a lonely business. It had taken Carter all these tours to realize his most fragile prop was his heart. No wonder so many men found sweethearts whose lockets they wore, and whose photos they studied late at night. Carter, a veteran now of cold showers and mental exercises to curb his desire, had always held out the slim hope he could find a sweet companion, but so far it had been impossible. Good girls in the towns they visited were prohibited from talking to actors. And there were few types of women to choose from in the show: stocky matrons, highly religious girls, suffering wives chained to alcoholic men, and the adventurous sort whose touch required a liberal dose of salvarsan. But in a heartbeat, Carter could tell that Sarah was none of these.

  It was in Denver, with dusk falling, that Carter sat on a dusty carousel horse in the storage area backstage, on the second floor of the Metro-pole, and knew he was just seconds away from falling in love. Though it had been a dry summer, the theatre had watered their back lawn well, so the troupe had a nice green field for their warm-up. Carter positioned himself by a tiny window smudged with years of grime. He cleaned it using his handkerchief, and saw the lawn, the sycamore trees, and then the show-offs: the men in warpaint, one standing on another’s shoulders, two more helping each other stretch, another tumbling backward across the lawn.

  Sarah danced alone. Her white antebellum dress was hanging from a tree. She wore a black leotard, black toe shoes, a tiny silver cross. Her blond hair was pulled back to show off delicate features. Going en pointe, in the grass no less, she was obviously trained in ballet.

  He wanted to tell her she was pretty. But she had never disobeyed the dictum that she couldn’t communicate with other acts. He had never even heard her voice. Ultimately, leaning on the carousel horse, Carter felt a sickening hopelessness—that she hadn’t found anything good enough in him to break the rules. And so he watched as she danced in and out of his field of vision.

  By the next night, his room in the boardinghouse seemed awfully small and quiet. He didn’t feel like reading. He didn’t feel like practicing card tricks or creating new illusions.

  He looked for his fellow performers, knocking gently on the pasteboard doors of the rooming house, but none of them were in. He supposed they were at bars or brothels. Mysterioso’s crew were staying in a real hotel—Carter wasn’t sure where.

  The cast of Fun in Hi Skule played a rowdy game of poker in the parlor. They were all around Carter’s age, and generally friendly enough. Carter said hello to them, but received in response only tepid greetings. Magicians were never asked to play poker. Hat in hand, Carter hovered as their game started again. It was played with both laughter and insults.

  Leonard won a hand; his brother Adolph whooped “Back to the kitty with it!” and good-naturedly tried to wrestle the pot out of his arms, and Carter wondered what James was doing right now. James was terrific at poker. Perhaps he was making friends at Yale. The longer Carter thought about that, the more he wanted to find Sarah.

  Minnie Palmer might know the name of her hotel. Carter spied her through the lace curtains, on the porch, under the lights. He opened the door and walked outside. Minnie was holding hands with Evelyn Kowaleski, who openly sobbed. Not wanting to interrupt, he turned on his heel to duck back into the house, but Minnie saw him.

  “Mr. Carter,” she said. She had a heavy German accent. When she was lecturing her sons, she sometimes slipped into Plattdeutsch or Yiddish. “Can we have a word with you?”

  “Surely,” he said, cautious because even the nicest people in vaudeville could try to run scams. Minnie was in her fifties, wearing a red wig and a corset to pass for thirty in her sons’ act in case one of the girls was sick. Evelyn was fleshy and red-cheeked, especially in the light of the kerosene porchlamp.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Kowaleski are having career problems,” Minnie began. Then she exploded, “Oh, he’s being completely unfair.”

  “What exactly is the problem?” Carter asked.

  Between sobs, Evelyn explained: the manager had seen their act, and told them that they were shut. Evelyn had begged for a second chance. “I told him. I told him that tomorrow we could make it good. He said okay, but . . .” and here she broke down completely while Minnie patted her shoulder.

  “I think your act is very nice,” Minnie said. “I think that manager is just insensitive.” She looked at Carter.

  “Yes,” Carter said. “Your act is very sweet.”

  “All it needs is some oomph,” Minnie said. “A little razzle-dazzle.”

  Carter knew nothing could make the act better. He said, “I’m sure you can think of something.”

  “I wish Karl was like his brother. His brother was a sailor. He looked so handsome.” Evelyn, her face pr
essed into Minnie’s shoulder, wept. “I don’t know why it’s so bad here. We did so good in Krakow. There was royalty there sometimes. We played in castles, private shows.”

  “Maybe learning more songs,” Carter said.

  Like it was the most natural thing in the world, Minnie added, “Or a little hocus-pocus.”

  Carter unthinkingly agreed, “Hocus-pocus,” then glared at Minnie.

  “What do you mean ‘hocus-pocus’?” Evelyn sniffed. She looked at Minnie, then at Carter, who could not for the life of him think of a reason to go along with this idea.

  “Boy,” Minnie exclaimed. “No one would expect card tricks in The Funny Farm, would they? That would be something.”

  No matter how bad he felt for them, he wouldn’t teach anyone the tricks his paycheck counted on. “Mrs. Palmer, I’m taking a brief constitutional. Do you know the name of the hotel where Mysterioso’s company is staying?”

  “I do, it’s . . . it’s where that lovely girl Sarah is staying, isn’t it?”

  “I think so—perhaps.”

  When she smiled in response, Carter understood how this little woman in the red wig had done so well for her sons on the circuit. She said, “I have it written down somewhere. Why don’t you and I see what you can do to help out the Kowaleskis and then we’ll go look for it?”

  . . .

  As Carter accompanied Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Kowaleski to the barn, the women spoke excitedly about how things might be looking up, maybe this was just the ticket. Carter, who had brought a small bag of supplies, was mentally running through the possibilities. There were card tricks. Coin tricks. But those were what he performed. Cup-and-balls was, literally, the oldest trick in the book, but to be good at it involved weeks of training, and they had only a day. A two-person team could perform a black bag disappearance quite easily. Perhaps an animal could be pulled out of a hat.

  But these thoughts seemed naive once Carter saw Karl. He was lying in the hay under a pile of horse blankets, humming to himself, a whiskey bottle upside-down next to him. His plump face was even redder than usual, and there was barley in his hair.

  Carter picked up the bottle, which had been stuffed with straw. He looked around the barn: there was the cow, haltered to a post, the sheep and two pigs in a pen, and the rooster in a wooden crate. After a moment of rooting through the hay with his shoe, he found a wet box of matches.

  While the women tried to rouse Karl, Carter scratched one of the pigs under her chin, whispering, “Puisque toutes les créatures sont au fond des frères, il faut traiter vos bêtes comme vous traitez vos amis.”

  Minnie said, “That’s French. Should Karl learn that?”

  “No. That’s from the first magic book I ever read. ‘Since all animals are brothers under the skin, we must treat our beasts like we do our friends.’ Mrs. Kowaleski, you will have to learn the trick.”

  “What? I don’t know how. Karl is the one.”

  “Karl is soused. There’s no time to sober him up.”

  Carter brought out two black bags and a length of rope and there, in the chill air under the lanterns in the barn, explained an old and simple trick. As an adolescent, he had learned it in five minutes, adding his own flourishes within the hour.

  The trick was basic: a person climbed into a bag, which the magician knotted shut with a rope, as witnessed by two volunteers who held on to each end of the rope, pulling it taut to keep the bag from opening. A screen was put up to hide the bag and on the count of three, the volunteers pulled with all their might, and the bag—now empty!—flew over the screen.

  Because the illusion involved minor participation by Karl, Carter asked Minnie to bring coffee. She brought with her a folded piece of paper on which she’d written “The King Edward Hotel.” Carter folded it, put it in his pocket, and saw by his watch that it was already very late.

  Karl and Minnie acted as the volunteers while Carter made Evelyn vanish, using a saddle blanket to cover the necessary manipulations. This worked perfectly the first time, but never again. When Karl sobered up a little, he was promoted from volunteer to assistant, and this was a disaster. He just wanted to sing sea shanties.

  “She likes sailors better than me. It’s okay, it’s okay.” And then, with great happiness, he started singing again.

  No matter how many times Carter explained the simple motions he had to make, Karl botched them, and ended up at the count of three still under the saddle blanket, with a bashful smile on his face that enraged Evelyn beyond all comforting.

  Finally, they performed it once, adequately. There was nothing to do but wish them good luck.

  It was long after midnight when Carter, ragged and a little dirty under the fingernails, finally ran to the King Edward. It was far too late to inquire at the desk about a lady, and, after several hours in the barn (the Kowaleskis’ pig had taken an almost amatory shine to him), no amount of grooming could entirely mask Carter’s smell. So he had thought ahead, wrapping a half dozen of his landlady’s white roses in tissue paper, taking off his celluloid collar and wearing his rattiest hat.

  As he approached the hotel’s front desk, the night manager dozed on his stool, thumbs hooked in his pin-striped vest, until Carter cleared his throat.

  “Mmm? Yes, what?”

  “Maybe it’s a wild goose chase,” Carter sighed. “Is there a bunch of actors staying here?”

  The manager blinked. “Does this look like the type of establishment that would allow actors?”

  “That’s just what I said when my boss told me the King Edward. There’s supposed to be a guy named Mysterioso?”

  “Mysterioso, who is staying here, is not an actor. He is a magician, like Houdini.”

  “Okay. Is there a Sarah O’Leary here?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause these actors keep strange—” He squinted. “Pardon?”

  “She’s no longer here.”

  “What hotel is she staying in, then?”

  He chortled. “You’ll have to work hard for your tip, boy. Mr. Mysterioso put her on a train back home.”

  “What? Why?”

  “How should I know?” He settled back on his stool.

  “But where . . . when . . .” Carter couldn’t think of a whole question to ask. The manager closed his eyes, leaning against the wall and rehooking his thumbs in his vest pockets.

  Carter took his flowers and card and crossed the lobby. He thought of asking if some mistake had been made, but knew in his heart that there hadn’t. He had been an idiot for believing that he should woo Sarah. He walked most of the mile back to the boardinghouse before he realized he still had the flowers.

  So he simply arranged them nicely and left them leaning against the Kowaleskis’ door.

  . . .

  The next morning, while shaving, Carter had a thought: no matter what town Sarah had returned to, he would eventually tour through it. In fact, the difficulty and distance would only make their eventual reunion sweeter. He was almost humming to himself by the time he got to the theatre.

  Carter sat in one of the many empty seats, listening to a woozy-looking Karl playing “Three Blind Mice” on guitar while Evelyn milked the cow. He could just barely hear them over the shouts and screams of the children of miners, who fought gangs of ranchers’ kids in the aisles. There was a large group backstage watching The Funny Farm’s performance. Word had gotten out that Carter had tried to help the Kowaleskis and therefore almost anything might happen.

  When the musical section of the program was over, Evelyn stood up and said, grimly, “This is a special part of our program. It is a little hocus-pocus.”

  Carter watched their attempt at the illusion with his fingertips pressed to his forehead, ready to cover his eyes if necessary. Evelyn called for two volunteers to come onstage, and, as she hadn’t specified that it would be a magic trick (Carter, who knew she was saying “hocus-pocus,” still had trouble understanding her through the glottal stops of her accent), two farmhands, in overalls and work boots
, came up, probably assuming the Kowaleskis needed some help with the animals.

  “Oh,” said Evelyn, “no, it’s a magic trick. Not a farm trick. Maybe there’s someone else.” Carter furrowed his brow: farmhands were fine volunteers—why wasn’t Evelyn using them? She shaded her eyes and looked into the audience. Carter followed her gaze and saw, to his horror, two sailors sitting in the second row. Why were sailors in Denver? He prayed that Evelyn wouldn’t choose them. Onstage, she gestured toward them. “I see two patriotic boys. You come up onstage.”

  Carter raised his hands, trying to signal Evelyn, trying to stop this from happening. He hadn’t mentioned a cardinal rule behind this trick because the possibility had seemed so absurd, but here it was unfolding before his very eyes: when you’re an escape artist, never choose sailors to tie your knots.

  It was too late. The swabs had joined Evelyn as Karl, squinting evilly, went into the black bag. Evelyn held the bag shut while the sailors tied their knots.

  In the audience, Carter murmured, “No, Evelyn, you were supposed to tie the knots while they watched you.”

  The two young men were having a good time. Even from the sixth row, Carter recognized a goose neck knot topped by a Spanish bowline, with a sloppy but impressive-looking manharness knot finishing off the slack in the rope. Evelyn, too ignorant to be worried, handed an end of the rope to each of the men, and told them to pull taut. She put up a screen she’d borrowed from the Chinese dance number, hiding the bag Karl was in. The sailors stood on either end of the stage, and began pulling.

  “One! Two! Three!” Evelyn clapped her hands. The sheep bleated. Nothing else happened. “Four?” The audience, who had been paying little attention, perceived something unusual was happening, and the children in the aisles slowed down and focused onstage. The sailors redoubled their tugging efforts.

  “Five? Karl?”