“Can I go, Dad?”
“You ain’t going nowhere near that place,” Mary said, and to Chester, “Neither are you.”
“My ass, I ain’t going,” Chester said, then, “Ohhh, the carnival. The carnival’s come to town, and it’s gonna be grand!”
“Grand. Since when do you talk like—”
“Momma, why can’t I—”
“You heard me!” Mary said, arching that right eyebrow of hers, signifying case closed, all business has been concluded and don’t you dare bring it up again.
And Danny damn sure knew he’d better not bring it up again. Not unless he wanted to be grounded for a solid week with no TV or computer time! But he also knew that he wanted to go, to see for himself what had gotten his dad so fired up.
His parents were going at it pretty good now, with the ‘no you won’ts and the by God, yes I wills’.
“Momma,” Danny said. “I’m going over to Justin’s for a while.”
“Don’t be late for supper, baby,” she said, and then fell right back into arguing with her husband.
Danny went down the hallway to his bedroom. He had a paper route, and he hardly ever spent any of his money, so he had a pretty good bit of it saved up under his mattress. Fifty-two dollars, to be exact. And when he got to his room, he fished two ten-dollar bills from his hiding spot. Then he was back down the hallway, out the front door and down the porch steps, where he snatched up his bike and straddled it.
He paused for a moment when he looked out at the horizon. There was something up there, something odd. It looked like a cloud, a dark cloud—black, even. A black cloud shaped like a magician’s top hat. But it couldn’t have been a cloud because it wasn’t drifting along like clouds usually do, and it had a gleam to it. This thing, whatever it was, looked as if it had been drawn across the sky, painted on it. An artist’s rendering of a perfectly drawn top hat that looked real enough to have been hanging in someone’s closet. Danny didn’t have time to work out what it was, what it might be. And whatever it was, he didn’t really care. So he pushed off and went peddling furiously down the driveway, out onto the old dirt road that would take him into town.
It was four o’clock, soon dusk would be settling in on the landscape. With forty minutes to get out to Godby’s field and another forty to get back, Danny figured he had a pretty good while to look around the carnival. A little more, really, if he showed up back home a little late. And since Danny was always a little late, he could pretty much take that extra bit of time. But he’d better not be too late, ‘cause there’d be hell to pay if his mother called over to the Henrys’ and found out her son hadn’t even been there.
He could look around, and if he liked what he saw he could sneak back tomorrow afternoon—maybe with Justin and good old pizza-faced Mickey Reardon, who was always good to have around to take some of the attention away from Danny and those ginormis ears of his.
On his way down the road, Danny wondered why his dad had been so fired up about the carnival. Heck, he hardly ever went to the thing, much less got excited about it. But he was excited about this one, all right. What did dear old dad know that had gotten him all worked up? What had he been told? Something, that was for sure. Something neat, from the look in his eye, and the way he was fighting tooth and nail with Danny’s mother over whether or not he was going out there tonight.
He was going, all right. No doubt about it. Danny knew it, and despite all her protestations, Danny’s mother probably knew it, too. So shocked by her husband’s apparent unbridled enthusiasm had she been, she had to feel something wasn’t quite right about it. That, and the location. There damn sure wasn’t anything right about that place. Danny had heard the stories passed down through the ages, some of them pretty wild, as far as Danny was concerned. Like old black Joe, the young farm hand who, after being caught naked with his master’s wife, had been castrated and made to eat his own sexual organs, and then lived out his days working the fields as a eunuch, until years later, having outlived his usefulness, he was taken out to Godby’s field and flayed alive by the son of the master he had so betrayed. His own half-breed offspring the master had allowed to survive for the express purpose of humiliating the woman he’d cast out of his fine house, to live out what was left of her days with the darkies she had kept so much company with, until one day her bloated body turned up hanging from a tree deep in the woods behind Godby’s field. The same half-breed the aged master shot dead-center between the eyes moments after old black Joe’s final screams echoed away into the night.
Then there was Moses, who fancied himself a modern day Moses of the Bible. Good old Mose, who tried to lead his people out of slavery to the promise land of the Underground Railroad, only to have the whole lot of them caught halfway across South Carolina, and then dragged kicking and screaming back to Godby’s field, where nearly every tree surrounding the clearing was utilized by a hangman’s rope, until over twelve groveling men, women and children once again found themselves kicking and screaming—this time at the end of a noose—while their would be savoir was drawn and quartered by four clansmen, who sat upon four white steeds in the middle of the clearing.
No grass would ever grow there again, nor would anything good ever come of the place. These were the rumors passed from father to son, from son to brother to friend, until every child in town knew better than to set foot in the place. But Danny had been out there, plenty of times, and had never seen anything to validate any of that. Grass grew at Godby’s field—sparsely, for sure, and there were dead patches all over the place, plenty of them. But grass did grow there. And now the carnival was settling in, which, as far as Danny Roebuck was concerned, was a very good thing.
Down the road and through the town he went, past the school yard and the courthouse, past the Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill, peddling faster, peddling harder, until he finally found himself approaching the outskirts of Pottsboro, South Carolina.
He could see it now, the tree line out near Godby’s field. And as he approached the trees, the sounds came to him: rides, the rattle of them as they rose and fell, whoops and hollers and joyful laughter, that good old carnival music, the kind that always set his blood to pumping a little quicker when it found him.
He could see it now, the Ferris wheel, spinning high above the tree tops. And the further he moved down that old dirt road the larger it grew, until he broke through the tree line and saw before him the largest Ferris wheel that had ever been constructed—impossibly large. He braked to a stop and placed his feet firmly on the ground, and then sat for a moment, staring out across the clearing, at the Ferris wheel and all that stood before it. There were tents and trailers, canvas-covered metal carts, and an assortment of booths. Large colorful banners hanging off the tents flapped in the cool breeze blowing across the clearing. There was writing on those banners, fine bold text heralding what might be found within the confines of those tents.
‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ said one.
‘See The Wonders!’ said another.
There were pictures woven into the fabric, one of a child’s body, with gnarled hands and an old man’s wrinkled face. Another showed a man with the hilt of a sword protruding from his wide-open mouth. There were others, too. A woman whose face stretched like rubber, impossibly long, while one of her arms coiled like a snake around her slim waist, looping it several times—like something out of a cartoon, or a comic book, Danny thought. There was a boy, young, not much older than Danny himself, who wore a sailor’s outfit, with a funny little hat, and white bellbottom pants with dark blue piping. He stared out from his banner, a smile on his face and six multicolored balls spinning in the air above him.
Danny wondered what it would feel like seeing himself on that banner.
Danny Roebuck, juggler extraordinaire!
He sat on his bike, looking up at the string of pennants surrounding the clearing, at the garishly painted sign hanging midway between two poles that served as the entrance point: ‘Hannibal Cobb’s Kansas City
Carnival!’ it read, and it drew Danny’s eyes to it as no sign ever had.
Danny looked around for the mirror-filled Fun House, but no Fun House was there. No painted horses or Merry Go Rounds, either; no Spinning Teacups or any other ride that Danny could see. Except for that perpetually spinning Ferris wheel, dwarfing the landscape before it. That was there, all right.
Most carnivals he had attended consisted of a line of tents, and multicolored stalls housing a variety of games, an assortment of rides, all arranged on opposite sides of a dusty thoroughfare in a wide sweeping circle.
But this midway was unlike any he had ever seen before. There was no wide sweeping circle, and other than that huge Ferris wheel, no rides. Nothing but some booths and a few lousy tents. Sure, there was a game or two: balloons pinned to a wall inside a stall, water pistols lined up on a counter at the edge of another. But nothing to get excited about. His dad had been fired up about the place, though—Danny had seen it in his eyes, heard it in the fervent pitch of his voice. Maybe he knew something Danny didn’t know, something about what was going on inside those tents. Because something was going on in there. He could hear the laughter all around him, joyful sounds of merriment carried to him on that gentle Carolina breeze.
He pushed off on his bike and peddled beneath the sign, and felt a magical, mystical world open up before him. His pulse quickened as he entered the clearing, his mouth became instantly dry. He rolled over to an old pickup truck, got off his bike and leaned it against the truck, and then walked off toward the line of tents stretched throughout the field. Off to his right, a man stood before a canvas-covered booth. He had a short piece of a chewed-up cigar in his hand, a straw hat upon his head. A red and white striped jacket draped him—ill-fitting, Danny thought as the man stepped forward, because at first glance the jacket seemed loose on him, the hat too tight. A second look told him the jacket was tight, not the hat. But as the man drew nearer, Danny could see that from his straw hat down to his gleaming black patent leather shoes, his clothes were a perfect fit.
“Ah,” the man said. “First customer of the day. And what a fine young man he is!”
He waved a hand at a wooden table off to his side, housed in the booth that stood by him. The table looked like an old-time version of a pinball machine, a precursor, maybe, to a modern-day craps table. A four-foot by four-foot panel slanted its front, a rectangular panel rose from its rear. The wood was old—petrified, Danny thought. A petrified table! Small, round grooves had been cut into the slanting panel, numbered, each number a different color. The number twenty-five was painted on that board, six times in bright green letters. Another six had the number thirty. Three, as bright and orange as the setting sun, were numbered with fifty. They were scattered throughout a bunch of tens and fifteens and fives and ones, all of which were painted a myriad of colors: yellow and purple, blues and golds and glossy blacks. Square in the middle of the board, one final groove stood out from the rest. Numbered one-hundred in blood-red lettering, it instantly drew Danny’s eye to it.
The man stepped back into his booth, directly beneath a small wooden sign that read: The Moment Of Truth! Suspended by twine, it swayed slowly back and forth in the cool, crisp autumn breeze.
“Yes. Yes, my fine feathered friend. Step right up. Five’ll get ya ten! Ten’ll get ya twenty! Step right up to The Moment Of Truth!”
“Gambling?” Danny said. “I’m just a kid.”
“A well-to-do kid, if ya lay your money down. What’dya say, kid, ya got it in ya? Ya got some stones in them britches, a couple a coins to rub together?”
“Well,” Danny said. He was reaching into his pocket, when from behind him came a voice. It belonged to a midget, a little guy dressed in a Jester’s outfit. He wore a purple vest, a dark red shirt and velvet pants. On his feet were sequined green and gold-trimmed slippers that came to a point, curling upward at the toe. Even though he stood eye to eye with the thirteen-year-old child, he looked to be much older than Danny’s father. When he spoke, Danny thought he sounded just like the mayor of Munchkin Land, and that he looked like him, too.
“Brunoooo?” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Fixing to turn this kid into a well-heeled man of means.” He pulled a huge wad of bills from his pocket. Fanning himself with them, he said, “If ya know what I mean.”
“Keep your money, kid,” the midget said, then, “C’mon, I’ll show you around.”
They started away from the gaming table, leaving Bruno scratching the back of his neck, thirteen-year-old Danny Roebuck, side by side with a grown man who barely came up to his chest. They were walking past one of the stalls, when the midget smiled.
“What do you think of our little Carny?” he said, gesturing toward the tents, the gaming tables and the Ferris wheel, which was still spinning.
“How come there ain’t no rides?” Danny asked him. “Where’s the Dodge Cars and The Fun House, and all the kid games?”
“Kid’s games? Who needs kid’s games when you’ve got this?” he said, waving a hand toward the Sideshow tent, at the painted banners on either side of it.
See The Pickled Punk!, they said. Pounds Of Patty! Watch The Hands Of Wonder! Talk To The Alligator Boy! Marvel At The Rubber Woman! See The Fabulous Half Man! Meet Sword Swallowing Sammy!
“C’mon, kid,” the midget told him. “Yer gonna love this.”
The tent wasn’t very large, nor was it all that wide. Danny didn’t see how they could fit so many attractions in the place, unless they brought them out one at a time and put them on a stage or something. They could do it, then, he guessed.
But once inside, the dimensions seemed to have changed, and Danny judged the length and width of the tent to be much longer, and much wider than it possibly could have been. Sawdust covered the ground. Darkened stalls lined one side of the tent; some held cages while others were enclosed in glass. Danny wondered what might be inside them, and how all this could have fit in the tent he’d just been standing in front of.
They had crossed the floor to the middle of the tent, when the midget said, “Wait here a minute.”
“What?” Danny said. “Where’re you going?”
“Be right back!” the midget called over his shoulder, already slipping out of sight at the rear of the tent.
It was dark inside the tent, but not so dark that Danny couldn’t see the vague shapes housed within those cages, and as he made his way across the floor of the tent, those shapes began to come into focus. There was a woman, slumped on her knees on the straw-covered floor, her raven hair hanging like a silk curtain to the middle of her back. Her head was down, her hands gripping the bars like some kind of a prisoner. Beside her, in a cage of his own, a young man sat in the corner on a pile of straw. He was leaning against the bars, eyes closed, head thrown back. Biding his time, Danny thought, like a condemned man waiting for the executioner to come slipping into his cell.
What’s going on here? Danny wondered. What are they? Prisoners?
He stepped up to the cage, touched one of those iron bars and the woman looked up. She was pretty—beautiful, Danny thought. But there was a weariness in her emerald eyes, a look of utter defeat. Exhausted, that was how he would have described her. Tired beyond belief. She had on a yellow blouse, and a skirt that might once have been beige. But now the blouse was ripped, the skirt nothing but a dingy piece of fabric, marred by a series of rust-colored stains. A sign attached to the uppermost part of her cage read: The Amazing Rubber Woman!
She touched his hand.
“Help me,” she said.
“What?”
“Help me. Get me out of here. Get us out of here. We can’t last much longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“The dark.”
“What?”
“It tears us apart.”
“What do you mean, the dark?”
“When it comes it tears us apart.”
Danny looked over into the neighboring cage, at the guy who had come sudde
nly to life. He was in the front section of his confines now, both hands clutching the bars.
“He’s got the key,” he said. “Him and his hound.”
Danny stared at him, a look of befuddlement etched upon his face. “Who?” he said.
“Cobb,” the guy told him. “Cobb and his lapdog.”
“Please,” the woman said, her voice an urgent whisper now. “There isn’t much time.”
“How can I—”
“Get the key,” she said. “The key, get the key!”
From somewhere to the left came a sound, a low moaning the likes of which Danny had never before heard. He knew he should be backing up, turning tail and running. But he couldn’t. He had to see what was making that noise. See for himself what it was. He took a tentative step to the left, then another. Soon he was standing in front of yet another cage, staring up at a brightly-colored block of wood with a clown’s laughing face emblazoned on its front, at the huge glass jar sitting atop it. Inside the jar, a child floated in a murky fluid, its stomach distended, the bald, raisin-like head much too big for its frail-looking body. Danny had never seen anything quite like it. He stood for a moment, mesmerized. Then he moved forward and put his face closer to the cage, reaching his hand up to the jar. The figure’s eyes snapped open and Danny jumped back. Then its mouth began to move; bubbles formed and drifted up to the surface, and as they broke the surface, Danny heard a voice, a small child’s voice giving rise to an indecipherable muttering he could not make out.
Something was very wrong here. A carnival with only one ride, an impossibly large Ferris wheel which, from the moment Danny had laid eyes on it, hadn’t stopped turning. And where were the laughing people Danny had heard, off in the distance when he’d been sitting on his bike; where were those joyful sounds of merriment that had come to him on the breeze? He’d heard them, all right, out in tree line. But they’d stopped… When? When had they stopped, when he’d pedaled his way into the clearing? When he rolled under that sign? He couldn’t remember when they had stopped, only that they had been there but no longer were.
Sideshow Page 7
