Sideshow

by William Ollie

  Girls! Girls! Girls! said one.

  Try Your Luck! said another, while flying above the largest tent of all was a long, wide banner, whose big bold letters spelled out: See The Wonders!

  It was the Sideshow tent, one his mother would never have allowed him to enter, the one he snuck into every year.

  The lady sat a couple of paper cups on the counter. “Here ya go,” she said. “Four and a quarter a piece.”

  Reardon did a double-take when Justin dug into his pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. He laid it on the counter, and Reardon said, “I thought you didn’t have any money.”

  Justin looked down at his hand, which was still flat on the bill. He started to say ‘I didn’t’, but before he could, the lady handed him his corndogs and snatched up his money. He stood there, the corndogs in one hand, the Coke before him, watching Mickey pull out a twenty of his own. Justin didn’t have any money—He never had any. Yet he reached into his pocket as if he’d known all along it would be there. And there it was, and there was his change on the counter—he hadn’t even seen her place it there, but there it was, all right. He scooped it up and pocketed it, grabbed the plastic bottle of mustard and ran a thin line down the side of one of his corndogs, exchanged it for the ketchup and ran a line of it down the other side. He took a bite of his corndog, which, to his great satisfaction, was the best one he’d ever sunk his teeth into. He chewed and swallowed, picked up his Coke and took a nice long drink. Soon they were side by side, wolfing down their food.

  The wind swept past them, the moon shone bright in the sky, and those great smells floated on the breeze: pink cotton candy, corndogs and fresh hot fries, funnel cakes and grilled meat, the sizzle of grease pop-pop-popping off the griddle. It was a great place to be, a wonderful time to be young. They ate their food and drank their drinks, and when it was gone they were happy.

  They had stepped away from the food cart and started up the midway, when somebody called out, “Mickey Mozzarella!”

  They turned to see Cindi Stewart leading a pack of girls down the thoroughfare, Cindi (with an I), the prettiest girl in their eighth grade class. She was smirking; her friends were laughing.

  “Screw you,” Reardon said.

  “Not in this century, pizza-face!” Cindi called out, and her friends laughed even harder.

  “Like I would anyway,” Reardon said, as Cindi and her friends moved a little further down the line.

  “What,” Justin said. “You wouldn’t?”

  “Only if she let me,” Reardon said, drawing a snort of laughter from Justin, who said, “I heard that!”

  They crossed the wide stretch of midway, not stopping until they stood in front of a mirrored Funhouse. It was new this year, a wrinkle that had been absent from the previous carnival. But this wasn’t the old carnival, was it? This was a new and improved version, the best version Justin had ever laid eyes on. They ran up the Funhouse steps. No one was there to take their money and hand them tickets, so they scurried through the entranceway, down a long mirror-filled corridor of curves and sharp angles, a maze each boy knew they would have a blast finding their way out of. They stopped for a moment, each watching with glee as their thin frames stretched impossibly wide, filling the narrow pane of glass with comical-looking versions of themselves. They laughed, pointed their fingers and laughed some more, and then moved on down the line, around a corner, watching their shapes swirl and dramatically change as they went.

  They were squeezed, flattened into two-foot high and four-foot wide caricatures of themselves, only to watch their bodies grow impossibly long at the next stop. One minute they were short and squat, the next they were round as overblown beach balls. Their faces would stretch and bow outward, and then go suddenly gaunt. Their feet became clown-feet, their arms thin as strands of spaghetti. Laughter echoed behind them as they navigated the maze they found themselves in. A left-hand turn led them to a dead end pane of glass where their reflections suddenly disappeared.

  “Look at that!” Justin said. “We’re vampires!”

  They laughed as they started back, and kept laughing as they crisscrossed their way toward the end of the line, which came upon them in a most abrupt manner. One minute they were surrounded by mirrors. The next thing they knew, light was streaking through an opening that suddenly appeared before them. Justin took a step forward, and Reardon said, “Wow!”

  Justin turned to see Mickey staring into yet another mirror. One by one his pimples seemed to vanish from his face, replaced by fresh, supple skin, the kind one might find on somebody in a J C Penneys catalogue. Before he knew it, Mickey Reardon stood before the mirror completely unblemished. His arms began to grow, to thicken, as did his legs. Muscles suddenly sprouted, as did his hair. His jaw grew lean and firm, as his body began to morph like something out one of those computer games he was so fond of lingering in front of. His shoulders grew wide, his legs long. His face began to mature, until suddenly, standing before the mirror was the spitting image of Rick Reardon, the man his mother had fallen in love with all those years ago. The same, but not the same, different enough for Justin to know who he was looking at, what it was that appeared before him.

  “Justin,” Reardon said. “Look!”

  And Justin did. He stepped up behind his friend and saw the lantern jaw, the narrow eyes and the long muscular frame—his own long muscular frame, standing next to Mickey Reardon, who was no longer a thirteen-year-old kid, but a grown man. Their hair was longer, their bodies thicker, their arms the well-muscled arms of athletes. They could have been college men on the way to meet their dates, a couple of foundry workers, out for a night on the town. This was what they would grow into; this was what they would become when their young bodies had matured. It was a welcome look into the future, especially for Mickey Reardon, whose eyes were beginning to fill with tears.

  “This is too much,” Justin said. “Way too much.”

  He grabbed his friend and began tugging him toward the exit.

  “C’mon, man,” he said, and Reardon followed him out into the night.

  They stood in front of the Funhouse, looking out at the carnival. They had seen into the future—Justin was sure they had, as was Mickey Reardon, who said, “Can you believe it? I’m not going to be a pizza-faced geek for the rest of my life. I’m gonna be a cool dude, just like my dad.”

  Justin put a hand on Reardon’s shoulder, looked him dead in the eye, and said, “Mickey, you’re a cool dude now. You’ve always been a cool dude.”

  Mickey stood for a moment, looking at his friend. He seemed to be at a loss for words, as if struggling to find the right ones. Finally, he said, “You too, man. Both of us.”

  “Yep,” Justin said. “That’s us, all right—a couple of cool dudes, out on the town.”

  Reardon chuckled, and Justin said, “C’mon, man. Let’s hit the cups.”

  They hurried up the midway, past the Duck Shooting Gallery, past a stall where a couple of kids were tossing darts at a wall of multicolored balloons. Past the Sideshow tent they went, where a couple of teenagers were about to enter. Calliope music floated in the air around them, chuckled laughter and shouts of joy. Above them spun the Ferris wheel, while all around the midway people stalked Hannibal Cobb’s Kansas City Carnival with happy smiles on their faces.

  “Annnnnd we have another winnnnnner!” somebody called out, the pronouncement so exciting, it made Justin want to turn celebratory cartwheels all the way up the midway.

  There was one empty unit when they arrived at their destination, which, of course, was The Spinning Tea Cup ride, a ride Justin knew quite well, one he always looked forward to boarding. Justin’s favorite ride consisted of four cup-shaped enclosures, which sat on a round wooden platform. Like everything else at the carnival, the platform was decorated in multicolored swishes and swirls. The teacups themselves, all colors of the rainbow, could have come straight from the legendary party of Alice herself. Justin knew how the ride worked—he’d Googled it: four colored cups s
it on a circular floor, like four little teacups on the flat surface of an old turntable painted up to look like a plate. When the ride takes off, the spinning cups spin and the floor turns round and round. But that wasn’t the good part, as far as Justin (and anyone else who considered themselves to be carnival ride connesuirs) was concerned. The good part—the great part—was the centrally located wheel in the middle of the cup that spun each one individually, ratcheting the ride up to G-force intensity, if you had the balls to take it there, which was just what Justin and Mickey loved about the ride. One year, having been the first in line, they’d spun the wheel while waiting for the ride to fill, spun it and kept it spinning ‘til Justin thought they might pass out. When they slowed to a stop, they spilled out onto the grass to find the actual ride hadn’t even started yet, too dizzy to even think about trying to stand up.

  Tonight there was one empty cup, and Justin and Reardon stepped right into it. They were sitting opposite each other, hands already on the wheel, when somebody sang out, “Mickey Mickey Mozarrella has a dirty stinky belly! Mickey Mickey Mozzarrella’s face is made of runny jelly!”

  Justin turned to see Cindi (with an I) Stewart in the cup behind them. Surrounded by three of her friends, they kept up their incessant chanting while Mickey’s face turned several different shades of red.

  “Don’t listen to ‘em,” Justin said.

  “How the fuck can I not listen to ‘em?” Reardon said, the anger in voice rising like snapping snakes.

  “Ignore them,” Justin said. “Let ‘em sound like the stuck-up jerks they are.”

  “Yeah, that’ll work,” Reardon said, rolling his eyes as if it were the dumbest thing to ever pass by his ears.

  “Turn it!” Justin called out, and he and Reardon began turning the wheel, harder, turning it faster, until the world outside was nothing but a blur of lights and sounds and rushing wind. They were laughing and smiling, turning the wheel and holding on for dear life while the centrifugal force assaulted them. Lightheaded would have been a good word to describe them—dizzy, even better. Lightheaded and dizzy, heading for out and out unconsciousness.

  And the actual ride wasn’t even moving yet!

  And then it did.

  “Keep your seats and hold on tight!” somebody called out as the ride jerked to a start. “Stir, stir, stir with all your might!”

  The platform turned and the spinning cups spun, and two thirteen year old boys howled laughter like there was no tomorrow. There were sounds Justin couldn’t identify, sights he didn’t even try to identify. They could have been in an airplane, lifting off the runway, in a rocket ship soaring up to the moon. They laughed and screamed and turned the wheel, the high velocity spin pushing their cheeks flat as the cups whirled faster and faster. They laughed and screamed and the ride sped up; screamed and laughed and the laws of gravity went haywire, until suddenly it was too much—they’d gone too far. Justin, who had begun to grow faint, let go of the wheel and slumped over in his seat. They’d gone too far, and that fun-filled feeling of lightheaded dizziness quickly turned into a spine tingling sensation that rushed like a river of fear over him.

  His heart was in his throat, his stomach right behind it.

  And now a new set of words flashed through his mind: fear… dread…

  “Stop,” he said. He gripped the wheel, but Mickey kept turning

  Panic…

  “Stop,” he cried out, but Reardon didn’t stop.

  Terror…

  And now that blur of sound began to meld, to twist and turn, until that wall of noise became a deep-throated moan issued forth from a far off world Justin hoped he would never have to visit, but somehow thought he might already be there, a place of shadows and demons, and twisted creatures who whispered: We’ve been waiting!

  The ride began to slow, the spinning platform to falter. Mickey Reardon’s laughing face came into focus. Moments later, the spinning cup finally ground to a halt.

  “Step right up!” came the carnival Barker, as Reardon stepped out of the cup, and Justin staggered after him.

  “Keep your seats and hold on tight!” the voice cried out, as Justin stumbled sideways, and then fell to the ground and his head hit a rock, a shoe or a thick piece of wood. Whatever it was, jolted him to the bone, and he opened his eyes not to the wonderful, fun-filled carnival he and Reardon had entered earlier in the evening, but to an overgrown field populated by the same weary and weather-beaten tents they had spied from their hiding place deep within the tree line of Godby’s field this afternoon. Gone were the spinning cups, the mirror-filled funhouse, the painted ponies and half the stalls and booths, gone was Cindi (with an I) Stewart and her giggling friends, and all the happy-go-lucky people he’d seen wandering the midway. All of it gone, replaced by a few old tents and banged-up sheet metal booths and carts, and the tall man, who stood in the shadow of that ever-spinning Ferris wheel, beside not a grinning clown in pancake makeup and red and white striped pants, but an emaciated old Negro in blackface Al Jolson makeup and a pair of tattered bib coveralls. They stood beneath the Hannibal Cobb sign, staring out at the midway while that top hat-shaped piece of sky looked down upon Jack Everett’s sleek black Caddy. Cobb was smiling, his black eyes were flashing. The wind blew and the moon smiled down, and Justin felt his world slipping away.

  He started to get up, but his legs wouldn’t move.

  He closed his eyes and started to drift.

  Reardon shook him and everything was back. There was the funhouse and there were the spinning cups, the smiling clown and a parking lot full of cars and trucks, brand spanking new tents and pretty little Cindi Stewart, who smiled and said, “What are you, some kinda wuss?”

  “Fuck off,” Reardon growled, and Cindi said, “My, aren’t we touchy?”

  He offered his hand and Justin took it, pulled and Justin staggered up to his feet.

  “To the Sideshow!” Reardon called out, and then took off up the midway.

  Justin, still a bit woozy, stumbled sideways. He stood for a moment, taking a few deep breaths before starting after his friend.

  “Better hurry!” Cindi called out. “They’re waiting!”

  Justin stopped dead in his tracks. He turned but Cindi Stewart was already moving off in the opposite direction with her gaggle of young friends.

  Chapter Twenty

  Justin closed the distance between himself and Reardon pretty quickly—for some reason he didn’t want to let him out of his sight, so he hurried along the midway, running the last few yards toward the Sideshow tent. He felt better now, his head much clearer. He’d been knocked silly back there on the midway, knocked silly and blacked out for a moment or two, taken to a slippery world of nightmarish dreams, fantasies born of all the comic books and DVDs his mother so frowned upon. He felt better now, a little stronger as his mind kicked into gear. He was back with it now, back to reality.

  He felt better now, but still…

  He watched the wide banner flapping in the breeze as he approached the tent. See The Pickled Punk! it read. 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!

  Seven pictures were emblazoned on the wide surface of the tent, three on either side of the entrance and one above it; life-sized caricatures of the Sideshow performers, Justin figured. One depicted a huge, liquid-filled bottle. A child’s body rested in the murky fluid, his shriveled skull round as a honeydew melon. He floated there, eyes closed, arms drifting out below his distended stomach. Beside him on the tent was a gigantic woman in a long flowing dress. Her hair was brown, her eyes a darker shade of it. There was a sword swallower in a gold lamé outfit, a man with dark green scales instead of skin, a young boy in a sailor suit tossing balls into the air, and a beautiful woman in a bright red outfit that barely covered her at all. A bizarre-looking creature with no arms and no legs rounded out the group, and a chill went up Justin’s spine when he looked up at it.

 
He saw them all as he chased Reardon down the midway, finally catching him just as he was entering the tent.

  A group of people were midway through the exhibit, lined up in front of the juggler who was housed in a cage, his hands busy manipulating a series of multicolored balls—five of them, which he somehow managed to keep in the air. Sure-handed, he was, seemingly at ease with his surroundings. He was just a kid, probably no older than Justin himself. He wore a bored expression on his face, as if he were on a production line, watching a conveyor belt deliver another round of nuts and bolts. The sailor’s suit he wore had white bellbottom pants with thin blue piping up the legs, a starched dress-white top, and a spiffy white hat that could’ve come straight off Gilligan’s head. The crowd oohed when he used a bare foot to kick another ball into the air, ah-ing as he effortlessly incorporated it into the rainbow line of them rising and falling within the cage.

  Justin had seen that cage before, lined up on the back of a flatbed truck. Whoever had been in it earlier this afternoon didn’t look much like this guy. At least Justin didn’t think he had. That kid looked like some kind of prisoner, not a carnival worker bored to tears by his daily routine. Justin didn’t remember seeing this guy at all. Of course, he and Reardon had stopped looking once the corncob pipe came out, and that smoke ring hung frozen in the air in front of Fred Hagen’s face.

  Justin stood there, looking out at the cages, at what was housed within them, knowing he had never seen anything quite like it. Yes, he had seen Sideshow freaks before, in booths and stalls, center stage in the middle of a dimly-lit tent—never in cages, though, and he wondered why these people were locked inside them.

  “Look at him go,” Reardon said, as the juggler kicked yet another ball into the air—seven of them now spinning before a slight pair of hands moving fast as humming bird wings.