The Pilo Family Circus

by Elliott, Will

Doopy pondered this carefully then cried, ‘Yeah! Yeah that’s a swell idea. Let’s do that, Gonko, let’s look in whoever done its tent and see who —’

  ‘We all know who it was,’ said Gonko. ‘They wear tights. They wished us a good show yesterday. JJ threw mud at them, God bless his little heart. And do not fear, there shall be comeuppance. But all of you listen and listen good. No revenge attacks yet. No lines to read between, I mean it. For now, we play nice as custard and pie.’ Gonko squinted around at each of them. ‘None of us is going to forget tonight any time soon. There is no hurry. For now we take it on the chin — and they fucked us pretty good, you gotta hand it to ’em. But we’ll fuck ’em back. This will be a steady campaign of fuckery, but we gotta do it just right. Coming up now is the foreplay. Nice and slow.’

  ‘Knock knock!’ came a voice from the door.

  ‘Ah, here we go,’ Gonko muttered.

  George Pilo marched in with someone at his heels, a fat man with eyes so close together it looked like they were sharing a socket — it appeared the matter manipulator had decorated his face. This, JJ guessed by the suit and tie, was the Pilo’s pet accountant, and orchestrator of the clown-versus- acrobat competition policy. Beside him, George looked absolutely gleeful. ‘Gonko!’ he cried. ‘Let’s have what you might call an open dialogue about tonight’s show. Do you feel you lived up to your own expectations, first off?’

  ‘A little rusty, to be honest, George,’ said Gonko serenely.

  ‘A little rusty!’ George echoed, beaming. ‘I like that. No wonder you’re in charge of this crew, you’re a funny guy. Roger and I were just doing some sums, what you might call a cost-benefit analysis of your show. Tonight, Gonko, your show cost us the lives of nine tricks. Nine whole unharvested tricks, dead in the stampede. Now, most crowds boo when they don’t like a show, so I suppose a suicidal stampede indicates “a little rusty” is dead on the money. What does nine tricks equal in powder, Roger?’

  Roger the accountant dropped his briefcase in the furious rush to pull a calculator from his pocket. He punched in some numbers and said, ‘Nine bags, Mr Pilo.’

  ‘Nine bags!’ cried George, grinning his head off. ‘Nine bags, Gonko. Roger, what were we going to pay the clowns for tonight’s performance?’

  The accountant punched in more numbers. ‘Nine bags,’ he said.

  ‘Right!’ said George. ‘And what is nine minus nine?’

  Roger did the maths. ‘It’s, ah, zero, Mr Pilo.’

  ‘Right you are! A nice round number. What do you think of that, Gonko?’

  Gonko opened his mouth to speak and shut it again as George slapped a piece of paper down on the table. He gave it a disinterested glance and said, ‘What might that be, George?’

  ‘Notice of suspension!’ George cried.

  Gonko sighed. ‘What if I were to tell you our act was sabotaged?’

  George feigned a judicious look and rocked back and forth on his heels. ‘If you were to tell me that, I would ask you to bring forth the mountain of evidence you presumably have on hand to prove beyond doubt your wild allegation.’ Gonko held up the smoke bomb. ‘Bear in mind that what constitutes doubt,’ said George, and Gonko threw the smoke bomb away. ‘I’d then remind you that each performer is solely responsible for their act, including upkeep of their performance facility and, or, if applicable, their stage. That’s what I’d say, hypothetically, if you were to, hypothetically, make such a claim. An appeal could of course be made to a manager, but said manager’s ruling would be final and binding. And said manager would be … me, Gonko.’

  ‘Thanks for clearing that up, George.’

  ‘Not at all. My pleasure! And thank you for respecting due process. That’s exactly what I told the fortune-teller when her crystal ball went missing. So, your act is suspended indefinitely. Don’t worry, though, I have other duties for you.’

  ‘I don’t like other duties,’ Doopy moaned. ‘I don’t like it!’

  ‘Quiet, Doops,’ said Gonko.

  ‘Report to my trailer next Friday night for outside jobs,’ said George. ‘You’ll be working directly for me. Aren’t we both lucky?’ George turned on his heel and marched off without another word. The accountant bustled out after him.

  Back at the table, Gonko flicked the notice to the floor, then stood and left. JJ turned to Winston. ‘What’s outside jobs supposed to mean?’

  ‘What does it sound like?’ said Winston. ‘Jobs off the showgrounds. Back where we came from. Before we ended up here.’

  In his bedroom JJ wondered how Jamie would react to the day’s events. It was a big day for the pair of them, many a narrow course threaded through the minefield, so to speak … Hell, JJ could have gotten them both killed a few times over.

  I’ll do the guy a favour, JJ thought. I’ll leave the paint on. Yeah, he’ll thank me for it.

  With that, JJ the clown lay down to sleep. But his considerate gesture was foiled by his pillow and sheet. Dreams are vivid in the circus, and with the tossing, turning and sweating, the face paint rubbed off after just a couple of hours.

  Chapter 14

  The Morning After

  JAMIE woke.

  His hands seemed to be acting on their own as, shaking, they reached for the little velvet bag. As he moved the pain set in and his first thought for the morning was that the pain would kill him.

  Slow, deliberate movements … Rushing might mean spilling the powder and starting all over again. Into the clay bowl it went, then he struck a match, managed somehow to keep his hand steady as he melted the grains into a silvery pool of liquid, croaked ‘Make this pain stop,’ drank it and sank back. It may have been the laying of blessed hands; he sighed and thanked God, savouring the feeling of being whole, in one piece, without every nerve set alight.

  As the minutes ticked by his mind emerged from its slumber. The thoughts being connected in there were unwelcome ones, dim memories of yesterday, when a stranger was in charge of his body. His mind went through a routine which would become very familiar upon waking: This can’t be happening, but it is. This is impossible, but here I am. I no longer have control of myself most of the time. A lunatic is at the helm, and I am completely in his hands. If he wanted to get me killed, I wouldn’t be able to stop him. I attacked the acrobats. I have stolen property which, if discovered in my possession, will probably get me killed. I have the resident psychopath — the psychopath who is now my leader — out for somebody’s blood, and it’s only a matter of time until he realises that somebody is me.

  Next he remembered the death of nine tricks, which to some meant human beings. With dull horror Jamie realised that he — JJ — hadn’t given that a moment’s reflection. Not a thought.

  ‘Oh man,’ Jamie whispered. Every time he donned the face paint and surrendered himself to that lunatic, he was going to wake to more mornings like this.

  What now, then? What could he do about all this? The answer seemed obvious: he had no idea at all. But there had to be something. There had to be a way out of here.

  Sure, and if he found it, they’d find him. Just like last time. They’d follow him to his job, appear in his bedroom late at night, stalk him wherever he went. They’d bring him back or kill him. He was stuck and had better get used to it. No one back in the real world could help him, or even believe him. All that rang so true he cried, burying his face in his pillow like an ostrich in the sand, until he heard someone enter the room. Winston.

  The old clown sighed as he sat down beside the bed. ‘Don’t worry about it, son,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll be okay.’

  Hearing a human voice offer such badly needed comfort evoked such a burst of gratitude that Jamie reached for the old man. Winston held him and patted his cheeks with a handkerchief. ‘Shh. You’ll be okay,’ he said.

  ‘Nasty business, being in the show,’ said Winston after Jamie had calmed down. ‘Nasty, nasty business. What we do here is worse than you’d believe, even if I told you.’

  ‘I’d probably give you a fair
hearing,’ said Jamie, wiping the dampness from his cheeks.

  ‘No doubt, yep. You’ll see in time. I’m in no rush to tell you. And don’t worry about Gonko’s pants. I didn’t do it to blackmail you. I’m covering myself from JJ, is all. I wouldn’t trust him runnin’ loose without a reason not to do harm. He ain’t exactly predictable. Seems to like watchin’ people suffer.’

  Jamie nodded and sighed. ‘Is this it, then? Am I trapped here until I die?’

  Winston took a while to answer. ‘Maybe. But … maybe not.’

  Jamie blinked, then seized on this, and found his hands clutching at Winston’s arm. ‘There’s a way out of here?’ he said. ‘How?’

  But Winston looked reluctant to say more. He scratched his head for a moment, then with a grimace leaned over and whispered: ‘Look. I’ll tell you one thing, one word. It won’t make any sense yet, but when the time comes, you’ll understand. That word is freedom. Don’t ask me any more about it, not now, when I don’t know what you’ll say or do when you put your face paint on.’

  ‘I won’t put it on again,’ said Jamie. ‘Never again.’

  ‘You’re going to have to,’ said Winston.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. You will have to. You don’t know the lay of the land nearly well enough to get by on your own. You can’t act like JJ when you’re Jamie. You couldn’t do it, they’d eat you up. They’d kill you by accident, in ways the paint would protect you from. And you’d crack up. I know damn well. Do you think you could look Kurt Pilo in the eye the way JJ could? JJ who’s too stupid to be afraid of anyone?’

  Jamie’s face paled when he thought of JJ’s introduction to Kurt, and he shivered. ‘No. I don’t think I could.’

  Winston nodded. ‘Just remember that word. Freedom. You’ll see what I’m driving at soon enough, I’m guessing. And when you’re JJ, you remember the pants, and what Gonko would like to do to you. Only when you’re JJ.’

  Winston left him.

  Winston had private business to attend to. It was private indeed, the type that could land him in the stew, cut to pieces and pureed by the Pilo brothers if they learned of it. He would be made an addition to the freak show if he was lucky. If he was unlucky the matter manipulator would be given complete licence, and would twist him into shapes unable to die, only to suffer. But the secret had been kept for a long time.

  It was early and the circus was still mostly asleep; things were usually subdued the day after show day. Winston strolled down the main street, past the fortune-teller’s hut and acrobat tent. A few carnies were up and about cleaning and restocking their stalls with trinkets. Most averted their gaze from him, wary of the clowns as always.

  Nine dead tricks. Quite a stir that would cause on the outside. Winston sighed with a sadness that reached his bones. He knew well enough how cheap human life was around here, but the show insisted on reminding him.

  He came to the freak show tent, confident he was unobserved by prying eyes, and confident no prying minds were wondering why he spent so much time here chatting with Fishboy. Neither of them gave much reason to wonder; they were careful. Inside, Fishboy was in conversation with the severed head, known as Nugget to his friends. Yeti had been allowed out back to eat grass by the fence — it helped soothe the hideous wounds in his gums after the glass-eating shows.

  ‘Winston!’ said Fishboy, hustling over to slap him jovially on the arm. The pair of them exchanged small talk about the weather, about yesterday’s show, chit chat just to deflect the interest of any prying ears. After a few minutes, Winston lowered his voice. ‘Our show last night …?’ and he finished the question with a raised eyebrow.

  Fishboy answered with his own eyes, thin slits set very far apart on his face. No, it wasn’t our doing, his eyes said.

  Winston nodded. ‘Didn’t think so. Just wanted to be sure. Got news for you, though.’

  Fishboy leaned close, an intimacy that would cause those unused to him to cringe away. Winston whispered, ‘I was right about Shalice’s ball. It’s in the new guy’s room, JJ’s room. Wrapped in a pillow case. And what’s more, George knows it’s missing!’

  Fishboy raised his eyebrows at this. Are you sure? he said with facial expressions Winston had learned to interpret.

  Winston nodded. ‘It’s safe,’ he said. ‘Used powder … keep it hidden from her.’ Fishboy nodded; his nod indicated he would use some of his own supply for the same purpose. Winston wasn’t fluent enough in body language to pick up on that, but he assumed it would be the case, and assumed many other interested parties would be taking similar precautions. Keep JJ’s secrets hidden was all they’d need to say, and with a dozen of them blocking the secret from the fortune-teller’s psychic probes, the crystal ball was as safe as JJ made it.

  They finished off with more small talk then Winston left. He was glad to have eyes which missed very little … Without them, he wouldn’t have spotted the round bulge at the foot of Jamie’s bed this morning, confirming the suspicions formed last night. ‘We’ll just look in the …’ Rufshod had said, and Winston hadn’t missed that either. His visit to Jamie, whilst humanitarian, had confirmed his suspicions. Rufshod’s raid on the fortune-teller could prove to be a bigger blow than Winston had first realised, though it was early days yet.

  Taking a casual detour through the showgrounds, paying visits here and there, Winston gave some other interested parties the news, which would then spread to all who needed to know. With the ball out of Shalice’s hands, the two keenest prying eyes were now blind. But prying eyes never close completely … That should never be forgotten.

  Jamie found Steve in the freak show tent, cheerfully pretending to to be busy cleaning empty cages while the freaks were out getting some exercise. Steve had taken to the circumstances with such ease that Jamie almost found himself admiring the guy.

  ‘Man, this is the life,’ said Steve as Jamie sat down with his back against a glass case. ‘You know those dwarfs? I’m going to dinner with one of the females. Her name’s Loretta. Met her when I was oiling some gears on the Ferris wheel.’

  Jamie looked up at him in disbelief. ‘Wait a minute — you’re not just coping, you’re happy here?’

  Steve looked at him like he was crazy. ‘Sure, why the hell not? You seen the kind of shit you can do with that powder? Tell you what, if Marshall was here, he’d be into that stuff around the clock.’ Steve beckoned him closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Like, imagine if you wished to hump, say, Pamela. For an hour or so, you’re actually in the room, doing it. When it ends you wake up like you had a dream. Trust me, I tried it.’

  Jamie shook his head. ‘But … our lives … Are you just going to accept our lives are over?’

  Steve laughed. ‘Bullshit they’re over! What’s over is where you have to do the nine to five, pay a mortgage and get old. You get that part? No rent, no bills to pay, and we get to see some crazy shit most people never dream of. You know how long these guys have been around, the acrobats and that? They’ve been here hundreds of years, Jamie. They don’t die! They look as young as they did when they joined.’

  Jamie didn’t have the heart to point out how broken and battered most carnies looked from the endless labours of the show — those who, like Steve, weren’t performers. ‘We’ll never see our families again,’ said Jamie, and there was a catch in his voice. ‘Never again. You don’t care about that?’

  ‘I haven’t got much family anyway,’ said Steve, shrugging. ‘Never knew Dad, Mum never wanted me around. Used to send me money each week to keep me away from her, I reckon. Who cares? Make a new family. Anyway, how do you know you won’t see ’em again? They might end up here one day, or maybe you’ll get a holiday out there. Just keep your head down and stay out of trouble … Some of these dudes hate each other. Seen the clowns and acrobats go at it? You would’ve, huh? You’re a clown, right? Damn, you got lucky. Hey — what’s Gonko like in private?’

  Jamie sighed. ‘He’s mean as hell. Don’t go near him.’

>   ‘He looks hardcore,’ said Steve with admiration. ‘They’re scared to death of Gonko, over in the Alley. They keep a watch for him, and if he comes through they scatter. Dwarfs want to kill him but none of ’em’s got the balls to actually try.’

  There was a silence as Steve polished the iron bars of a cage. After a while Jamie said, ‘Hey, about the clowns and acrobats. Do you know what that’s about? Why do they fight like that?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard a thing or two. You should talk to some of the old guys in Sideshow Alley … No, wait, they hate your guts. You shouldn’t’ve pissed in the plaster clown’s mouth, man.’ Jamie winced. ‘But yeah,’ Steve went on, ‘some of those old guys, they seen it all, watched it for years and years. All these fights started over nothing. You get a bunch of psychos like this in a closed space, one little thing sets ’em off.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like in Chopper Read’s book, how he says the big gang war started over a plate of sausages? The first clown and acrobat fight started over who got to use the stage first for a show. Over fucking nothing. Then it was on forever. Heaps of these psychos got killed. It comes and goes in waves, according to the old guys. No one forgets a thing either. Plus everyone’s bored.’

  ‘There’s got to be more to it than that,’ said Jamie.

  ‘Yeah. They’re freaks, plain and simple. Just mental cases. They don’t need a reason to go off. The bosses don’t help. Kurt likes to start fights. The carnies reckon he watches it like sport.’

  Jamie nodded, not in the least reassured by what he was hearing, but somehow glad to hear it all discussed so casually, accepted so readily. It lent an air of normality to the place and he didn’t want Steve to stop talking. ‘What do you make of the bosses?’ said Jamie. ‘The Pilo brothers?’

  Steve whistled. ‘Scary. Fishboy says to avoid ’em, do exactly what you’re told and to suck up if you come near ’em. Just like a normal boss. Fishboy’s pretty cool to work for. Hey — why were you such a prick yesterday?’