Doopy glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t overheard. ‘Well, Goshy … He’s got a problem. With his girlfriend. With his girlfriend, Gonko.’
‘I’m listening,’ said Gonko.
‘He …’ Doopy glanced over his shoulder again. ‘He pooped the question, Gonko.’
‘Popped?’
‘Yeah, that’s what he done. Goshy done went and pooped the question.’
‘Right. And?’
‘And he’s blue, ’cause she didn’t give him no answer. She didn’t say nothin’, Gonko! Nothin’ at all. She gone all quiet. She just sat there, Gonko, you shoulda seen it.’
Gonko took his cards. ‘Doops,’ he said, ‘she’s a fucking plant. How’s she supposed to answer?’
Jamie sat forward. ‘She’s a what?’
‘She’s a fern,’ said Gonko. ‘Goshy’s in love with a fern. He’s probably in his room with it right now, whispering sweet nothings. God knows.’
Jamie remembered the first night he’d seen the clowns, the sickening thud Goshy made as he slammed headfirst into the pavement outside the … Yes, the gardening supply store. He gave a startled laugh in spite of himself. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, but …’ Gonko made a hush-hush gesture. ‘That’s the problem, huh?’ he said to Doopy. ‘He’s ruining our act because the goddamn fern didn’t say yes?’
‘Yeah, Gonko!’ Doopy cried. ‘I’m mad at her, y’know. She coulda oughta said somethin’. She shoulda oughta said yes, is what she shoulda said.’
‘Well,’ said Gonko, leaning back in his chair, ‘we’ll have to get him an answer, somehow.’
‘The MM,’ Rufshod said, tossing down two cards and picking up two from the deck. ‘We could make him, you know, change the plant. So it can talk.’
‘No,’ said Gonko, slamming his fist on the tabletop. ‘That creepy shit ain’t coming in here.’ He turned to Jamie. ‘You see the freak show today?’
Jamie nodded.
‘The MM is the matter manipulator,’ said Gonko. ‘Flesh sculptor. Old forgotten art form practised by certain sick fucks in the Middle Ages, only back then they usually used dead bodies. The MM made the freaks what they are. Nasty shit. Small guy, shifty eyes, wears a hat. Lives in the funhouse, which between you and me ain’t no fun house, and hardly ever comes out, except when someone’s been actin’ up and the boss wants to scare ’em straight. Got a nasty dog he takes with him everywhere to protect him. Few gypsies have lost relatives, you see, though if they attacked him they’d be next in his studio. Don’t go near him, I don’t care how righteously mad you might be. Been known to grab stray carnies for practice.’
‘I’ll kill that dog of his,’ Rufshod said. ‘Look at the bite he gave me.’ He lifted his calf onto the table and pulled back his pants. A long thick purple scar ran from ankle to knee.
‘That’s a burn mark,’ said Gonko. ‘You did that, not the dog.’
‘I had to, you know, burn the bite. So it wouldn’t get infected.’
‘That looks ouch, Ruf,’ said Doopy. ‘It looks ouch! Hey, Ruf, remember when I told you it looks ouch? Remember when —’
‘Ruf doesn’t mind a little pain,’ Gonko said to Jamie. ‘Do you Ruf?’
Rufshod’s eyes gleamed. ‘I don’t mind it,’ he agreed. ‘Here.’ He held his hand flat on the table and produced a knife from somewhere. He handed it to Jamie. ‘Cut me,’ he said.
Jamie stared at the knife. ‘I don’t think …’
‘Come on,’ said Rufshod. ‘Cut me. Do it.’
‘Why don’t you cut yourself?’ said Jamie.
‘Not the same if I do it. Stab me. Cut me. Do something.’
‘One thing you’re going to have to become accustomed to,’ said Gonko, pulling a steel hatchet from one of his seemingly bottomless pockets, ‘is a little violence, here and there. It’s good for you. Bracing, like cold showers.’ He span the hatchet on his hand as he had the knife, earlier. ‘You’ll get used to a little violence,’ he said. ‘Or, like Rufshod, you’ll get a little too used to it. But different strokes, right, Ruf?’
In one smooth motion Gonko held the hatchet up, closed his fingers around the handle and smashed the blunt end down on Rufshod’s knobbly battle-scarred hand. There was a loud fleshy sound of bones being crunched to powder. Rufshod screamed, clutched his wrist, and fell from his seat, the bells on his hat tinkling. He rolled around under the table, kicking it as he wailed.
‘There, genuine slapstick,’ said Gonko, putting the hatchet away. ‘That’ll keep him happy for weeks. STOP BUMPING THE FUCKING TABLE! Now, where was I? The MM. Stay away from him. He can change people. Could take your arm and add something to it. Feathers, say. Could give you wings if he wanted to. You seen Fishboy?’
Jamie nodded.
‘Fishboy looks like that thanks to the MM,’ said Gonko. ‘Disgusting, ain’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ Jamie said. ‘He seemed … friendly, though.’
‘Fishboy’s a good feller. Nicest sonofabitch in the whole show.’
Jamie sat upright in his seat and sucked in a sharp breath. Gonko eyed him. ‘What’s up?’ he said.
‘Steve, ’said Jamie. ‘I left him there, at the freak show … Oh no …’
He got up and ran out of the tent, down the battered path, hoping he was going the right way. Up ahead the funhouse was an orange glow in the darkness — now he remembered, the freak show was nearby. He sprinted off, ignoring the dwarfs crowding in the alleys and the eyes peering from parting curtains.
Behind him, Gonko followed at a brisk walk, hands in his pockets. As Jamie paused to catch his breath, Gonko tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Easy feller,’ he said.
‘I’ve got to find my roommate,’ Jamie said. ‘He was at the freak show.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ said Gonko. ‘We’ll take a look, but we’ll be quick about it. Follow.’ Gonko led him off the main path and threaded his way between shanties and some closed-down stalls. They stopped a few metres from the freak show tent and Gonko held a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh.’
Through the tent’s door they could see nothing but the dim yellow light of incubators. The sound of pained moaning came from within — Jamie couldn’t tell from this distance whether or not the voice was Steve’s. A shadowy figure passed through the doorway, heading towards the funhouse. Walking ahead of him was a large black dog on a leash. The dog turned its head towards Jamie and Gonko and growled, but its owner didn’t look their way.
‘That’s him,’ Gonko whispered. ‘Don’t get no closer to him than this.’ Soon the matter manipulator disappeared from view. Gonko said, ‘If he’s been in the neighbourhood, your friend probably ain’t having a good day. I recall the boss saying we needed more freaks. Hope you weren’t too attached to your chum. Hold onto your guts. Here we go.’
The moaning got louder as they neared the door. The freak show exhibits seemed to be asleep. A severed head in a fish bowl stared straight ahead without blinking.
Then Jamie spotted him — Steve was alive and seemingly unharmed. The moaning came from Yeti, who lay on his back, his giant furry body flecked with blood that was rushing from his gums. Steve was wiping his fur with a wet rag which he squeezed out into a plastic bucket. Fishboy crouched beside him, stroking Yeti’s head like a nurse.
‘Good Yeti,’said Fishboy in his helium-voice, ‘goodYeti. The pains will fade; I’ll prepare some powder for you.’ Fishboy turned to Steve. ‘He’ll recover fast, always does. Some days he can get away without eating the glass, but today Mr Pilo was watching. Oh, and Tallow’s cage will need to be mopped every two hours on show days when we have the heat on. I imagine they’ll have you helping carnies in Sideshow Alley, but try to do that work in the morning — I’ll need you here in the afternoons …’ Fishboy trailed off and glanced through the doors to where Jamie and Gonko waited, watching.
Gonko pulled at Jamie’s sleeve. He followed the clown leader away. ‘That feller lucked out,’ said Gonko with a chuckle. ‘So far, at least. Being errand boy
for carnies he’ll never pack any clout around here. But by hell it could’ve been worse.’
Jamie swallowed and nodded his head, surprised at the relief he felt that Steve, of all people, was okay.
Back at their tent, Gonko announced that Rufshod was to quit his bitching and show Jamie around his new home. The clowns’ tent was bigger than it appeared from the outside; past the parlour, through a draped canvas doorway, a hall skirted around in a wide semicircle, branching off into several rooms. Jamie had been allocated the apprentice’s room, a cramped space not much bigger than a closet. There was a decaying wooden cupboard, and what looked like a medic’s stretcher as his new bed. All floor space was taken up by boxes and crates of clown uniforms and broken practical joke parts. He saw a palm-buzzer, a squirting flower, a rotating bow-tie, and some less innocent — knives, spent cartridges, dildos, syringes. There were dozens of broken plastic noses and a couple of plaster casts with dried blood hardened into rust-coloured shells.
The apprentice himself lay asleep on the medic’s stretcher. He’d smoothed a thick layer of greasy white face paint over the fractured mess of his face.
At the sight of him, Rufshod ran off and returned with Gonko, who squinted at the sleeping apprentice and bared his teeth. He crouched down next to the stretcher, took a box of matches from his pocket and struck one. ‘JJ,’ he said, ‘don’t think this is how we treat all new recruits.’ He set the match to the apprentice’s pants. A lick of flame crawled over the flower-printed fabric, sending up thin ribbons of black smoke. Gonko stood in the doorway and watched with a smile. The apprentice stirred and rolled around as the fire spread to his shirt, then his eyes flickered and shot open. He let out a wheezing strangulated croak before bolting up and out into the night. Gonko stuck out a boot and tripped him as he passed. The apprentice got to his feet and staggered away, the fire blazing across his shoulders. His screams soon faded in the distance.
‘All yours, JJ,’ said Gonko, wiping his hands, and he stalked off with Rufshod following.
Jamie lay down on the stretcher, glad to be left alone to speculate on how much trouble he was in. If the fortune- teller’s words were true — You are not strictly in the world anymore — escaping might not be a matter of jumping the fence and running.
It did occur to him that getting on Gonko’s bad side was always an option if he wanted a real ticket out of the circus.
Next morning the hammering of tent pegs and the distant babble of coarse voices woke him, and Jamie sat up, surprised to find he’d slept. The stretcher was surprisingly comfortable, and his dreams had been vivid and hallucinogenic.
He rubbed his eyes and gave a startled cry — someone was in the room with him.
‘Shh,’ the stranger said. ‘Keep it down.’ It was an old clown, one Jamie hadn’t seen before, his face impressively aged with stress lines and crow’s-feet and sagging bags under the eyes. His body had clearly once been of bullish strength, and was still quite solid beneath his clown uniform of bow-tie, striped shirt, oversized shoes and pants. Thin strings of white hair hung from his head; he wore no face paint. His wet red eyes regarded Jamie sadly. ‘So, they got another one,’ he said, sighing. ‘Another one joins the show.’
Jamie glanced around for a weapon; his eyes fell on a rusty knife within arm’s reach in the mess. ‘Who are you?’ he said, edging away from the stranger and making the stretcher creak.
‘Name’s Winston,’ said the clown in a slow mournful voice. ‘And you must be JJ. JJ the clown.’
‘Jamie, actually. And yes, I guess I am.’
‘Didn’t mean to startle you,’said Winston, fiddling with the bowler hat in his hands, ‘but I didn’t want to wake you either. You looked pretty peaceful just now … Suppose I figured you’d need what peace you can find from here on.’ Winston scratched his neck absently, setting in motion many flaps of wrinkled skin. ‘Don’t recall when they got me,’ he said, sighing. ‘Was a while back. Was minding my own damn business is all I know for sure.’
Jamie wondered what the purpose of this visit was, though he could think of no polite way to ask. The old clown seemed to follow his train of thought. ‘I s’pose,’ he said, ‘I’m here to offer my condolences. You went and landed yourself in the stew this time, son. One mighty pot of bother. I did too, for what it’s worth.’
There was a silence as Winston gazed off into space. Jamie looked past him to the door, wondering if he could possibly lock it in future. ‘I didn’t see you perform yesterday,’ he said to break the silence.
‘Eh? Oh, Gonko let me have the night off,’ said Winston. ‘Told ’im my back was playing up. Sounds like the boys were in fine form again — ruined every show for the last month. But never mind that. I should probably give you what lowdown I can. Maybe help you get a feel of the carnival, prevent you getting yourself killed or worse.’
‘Worse, huh?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Winston, looking him in the eye, and he said it so solemnly that a shiver went down Jamie’s spine.
‘Well, how about the lowdown on this,’ Jamie said after a brief silence. ‘What am I supposed to do here? I’m not a clown. I don’t know why they recruited me. How am I supposed to behave?’
‘That’ll come,’ said Winston. ‘There’s ways to bring out the clown in you.’
‘Wonderful.’ Jamie ran a hand through his hair and muttered, ‘What the hell have I gotten myself into?’
‘Oh, damn it, I’m sorry, son,’ said Winston, his voice suddenly breaking and tears appearing in his eyes. Jamie was taken aback. Hey, it’s not your fault, he wanted to say.
Winston ran a palm over his face and got himself under control. Then he leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper: ‘All right, I’ll tell you this much. At night, take off your face paint. Put it on when you have to, but for God’s sake take it off sometimes. You’ll want to remember who you were before you came here. If you forget that, you lose everything, and you won’t ever know it happened.’ Winston had grabbed Jamie’s arm during this outpouring and his grip became tight.
‘What’s the face paint got to do with anything?’ said Jamie.
‘You’ll see. You’re going to be walking a tightrope over the coming days … Just take it off whenever you can, understand?’
‘No,’ Jamie said, pulling his arm free. ‘I don’t. But fine, I’ll take it off.’
‘Good lad. What else should I tell you?’ Winston mused, scratching his head. ‘Damn it, my head’s scrambled these days.’
Jamie shrugged. ‘Maybe you could tell me about the other clowns. How come you’re so … normal, compared to them?’
‘I’m not normal, son,’ Winston said with a mirthless laugh. ‘Not normal. Closer to it than the rest of ’em, that’s all. That’s why I told you to take the paint off sometimes. You don’t want to end up like them, forget what you used to be. Far as anyone knows, they always been what they are now. Goshy and Doopy, you seen ’em. Look at ’em, for God’s sake! Lost it for good, the pair of ’em.’
‘Goshy,’ Jamie said, and shuddered. ‘He acts so fucking creepy.’
‘It’s no act. Goshy don’t even know what’s going on in Goshy’s head anymore. Steer clear of him, Jamie, at least until he gets to know you. Doopy’s not so bad, as a rule, but he can flip his lid too.’
Jamie nodded, the scene from yesterday echoing in his ears: Hey hey hey HEY HEYYYY! Smack, crack, thud. He said, ‘What about Rufshod? He seems okay.’
Winston nodded. ‘Usually all right. But he gets himself, and us, into trouble. Plays pranks all over the showgrounds. He’s the one put the powder in Goshy’s pants then set him loose outside. If he ever says, Come with me I got an idea, don’t go.’
‘And Gonko?’
Winston glanced over his shoulder. ‘You seen enough of Gonko,’ he whispered. ‘He’s fine, if you’re a clown. Hard to know what makes him tick sometimes. If you don’t give him real reason to blow up at you, he won’t. There’s that much to be said for him. There’s worse here than
him, believe me.’
From outside Jamie’s little room came the sound of voices. ‘Keep it down now,’ Winston said. ‘The boys are awake.’
‘But … what is this place anyway?’ Jamie said. ‘What’s the powder for? Where do those people come from, the crowds I saw yesterday?’
‘Tricks. That’s what we call ’em. Tricks are just regular folk who never find out they took a wrong turn. They don’t remember us, they never come back. The powder, the tricks, what we’re really doing … I can’t tell you all that yet. Too much too soon, when most of it you have to see to believe anyway. I’ll just tell you how to survive, this early on. Too much too soon might …’ He trailed off.
Suddenly the door burst open and Rufshod’s crazed bugeyed head popped into view. ‘Conspiracy!’ he screamed, and Jamie’s heart leapt to his throat. Winston turned around and lashed out, clipping Rufshod’s ear. ‘Get out, you fuggin’ upstart,’ he snarled.
Rufshod cackled and vanished. Jamie let out a long slow breath.
‘Don’t sweat it,’ Winston said, standing to leave. ‘They don’t suspect me of nothin’.’ He winced as though he’d let something slip, and added hastily, ‘O’ course, I never done nothin’. Best head off now. Remember what I said about the face paint.’
Winston the clown ambled away. Jamie sat, pondering what little he’d been told. He wondered if he could trust the old guy, then wondered what he had to lose by gambling that he could.
Out in the parlour the clowns were all gathered at the card table, hunched over in murmuring conversation, and Jamie was hit by a sudden paranoid certainty that he and Winston had broken some rule, that his face was about to become a pulped broken mess like the apprentice’s.
Gonko glanced up at Jamie and barked an order at Rufshod to fetch a uniform.
Why do I get that feeling about the conversation? Jamie wondered. The old guy hates the circus … Hates it. The others don’t.
The Pilo Family Circus Page 9
