Sideshow

by William Ollie

  Cobb snapped his fingers and the clown disappeared. Snapped them again and he was back.

  “How’d you do that?” Chester said.

  “You like that, do you?” said Hannibal Cobb.

  “I’ll say.”

  “That’s quite a necklace you have there, son,” Cobb said.

  “One of a kind,” said Chester.

  “Yes,” Cobb said, chuckling. “I can certainly see that.”

  Cobb swept a long arm back toward the tents and booths populating his midway.

  “Come on in,” he said. “Come one and all. Step up to my Kansas City Carnival and have yourselves a ball!”

  Chester saw not banged-up sheet metal trailers, dilapidated booths and weather-beaten tents strewn about Godby’s field as he followed Jack Everett and old man Kreigle through the entrance, but a bright and shiny carnival chock full of wonderful things. To his left were gleaming metal food wagons, whose sizzling griddles offered up all the delightful carnival foods he had craved back when he was a kid: hot dogs and corndogs, hamburgers and sausage and fried green onions; cotton candy and candied apples. The smell of it wafting through the air set his mouth to watering.

  Fine white canvas tents populated the midway, along with an assortment of the old time carnival games so common to enterprises of this nature. He had played those games as a young boy growing up in and around Pottsboro, South Carolina, and the young sons and daughters of this town played them still.

  To the right of him was a stall which held a display of multicolored balloons at its rear, placed strategically in front of a cutout of a woman who looked—remarkably, Chester thought—like an honest to God, real flesh and blood woman. Swirling strands of wavy brown hair rose elegantly from her head, a full-bodied fluff of a nest befitting a dark-skinned Greek goddess. Her regal, high cheekbones, those of a cover girl model, were framed by perfectly formed ears that would never need to be hidden behind a swatch of her hair. A wash of smoky grey color shadowed her deep-set emerald eyes, which seemed to be inviting Chester Roebuck to step forward and try his luck, to hurl a dart and see where it might take him.

  Her face was perfection personified, her makeup impeccably applied.

  Her full red lips parted when Chester threw down a five-dollar bill and picked up a set of darts, revealing a movie star’s wide bright smile. There were three darts in a set, three steel-tipped darts with slim wooden shafts, and fine, feathered wings to help speed the projectile to its target, which in this case turned out to be not a bulls-eye on a circular corkboard, but a series of multicolored balloons covering what? The nude form of a beautiful woman? Surely she was nude, wasn’t she? The balloons covered her from her bare shoulders down to just above her knees, revealing the creamy white skin of her shapely legs—no nylons, no stockings, no socks or shoes. Nothing but luscious white skin and gleaming red toenails to go along with those heavily glossed lips of hers.

  Chester selected a dart and stepped closer to the counter.

  All those balloons, he thought. And three little darts.

  He reared back his arm and snapped his hand forward, sending the dart whistling the entire length of the stall, piercing the balloon with a resounding pop, and then hanging dead center in the chest of this beautiful woman, whose eyes grew wide when the dart was launched, and seemed to sparkle when it stabbed into its target.

  Another dart was launched and another balloon popped, this time leaving a steel-tipped dart hanging high off the side of what may have been the most magnificently formed breast Chester Roebuck had ever seen.

  Chester, excited now because he knew she damn well was naked under all those balloons, reared back his arm and hurled his last remaining projectile, drawing first a disgusted smirk from the woman, then a leering smile when the dart hit not a balloon, but swiftly impaled her bare nipple, leaving a thin red line trickling down her breast.

  She smiled.

  Her lip curled up into a sneering snarl.

  Then her lips pursed, and she said, “More.”

  Chester stood at the counter, dumbfounded. He’d never seen anything quite like this, but there it was, all right, a naked woman asking Chester Roebuck to use her for his own personal flesh and blood dart board. She wanted it, all right. Chester could see it in her eyes, the curling snarl of her upper lip when she said, “More... C’mon, baby. Gimme more!”

  “Yeah, mister,” somebody said. “C’mon.”

  Chester looked down to see that it was a child who had said this, a fair-haired boy who couldn’t have been any older than his own thirteen-year-old son.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Chester told the kid, who cocked his head sideways up at Chester, and said, “Neither should you.”

  Those words startled Chester. Spoken by an innocent little child, they made him wonder what exactly he was doing here. He looked at the carnival Barker, who oddly enough had not uttered a single word since Chester had first stepped up to the counter, just stood there with an all-too-knowing smile and a handful of darts, waiting for Chester to snatch them up.

  Chester looked at the kid, and then back at the Barker.

  He wanted those darts, wanted to pop those balloons, every last one of them so he could see what would happen when all the balloons were gone, and the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on stood there with a multitude of steel-tipped darts hanging off every conceivable inch of her body.

  She wanted it. He could tell she wanted it—he could feel it, just as he could feel the kid’s eyes staring up at him. He wanted to bust those balloons and run to her, lick the blood from those magnificent breasts and shuck off his clothes, and then commence to rutting around in the dirt like a crazed boar.

  He wanted it. He wanted all of it, but he couldn’t do anything with that kid staring up at him with eyes as wide and innocent as his own son’s.

  “You should go,” he told him.

  “So should you,” the kid replied.

  “No, seriously,” he said to the kid, who smiled at him and said, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you… leave now, before it’s too late.”

  “More, baby!” the woman cried out. “C’mon!”

  Chester slammed a five-dollar bill down on the counter.

  “Fine,” he said as he picked up the darts. “Stay then.”

  He hurled a dart.

  The dart missed and the woman laughed. “What’s the matter,” she said. “Don’t you want me?”

  He threw another and missed again.

  “Don’t even have a dick, do you?” she said.

  He fired his last remaining dart, which sailed wide-right, and now everybody was laughing: the woman and the Barker, a great crowd of people who’d gathered around while he was arguing back and forth with the kid.

  Everyone pointing.

  Everyone laughing.

  Except the kid, who was looking more and more like Danny with each passing second.

  Once again he looked up at Chester.

  “Go,” he said, while the crowd laughed and the Barker sneered, the woman shouted her jeering insults, and Chester Roebuck turned and forced his way through men and women and children alike, beating a path through them, back to the midway, which by now he realized he should never have left in the first place.

  It was just a woman, a stupid old woman and a stupid old kid, and a crowd of stupid old people. What did he care what they thought, buncha morons.

  He could still hear them laughing as he stomped his way down the midway, past the Sideshow tent, to the attraction he was the most interested in. The main attraction.

  The only attraction, as far as Chester was concerned.

  He could see it looming off in the distance, its high, gleaming rails reaching up and tickling the very moon itself. Hannibal Cobb’s Screaming Rails Of Death, the sign said, and Chester Roebuck could hardly wait to ride it to the stars.

  “Step right up,” a man called out. Dressed in a blue and white striped t-shirt, he had a gold hoop in one ear and one in his nose. He stood b
eside a peg-legged woman, whose dark red hair spilled over her shoulders in ringlets and curls. She had on a white blouse and khaki pants, and she was short, a pretty little thing who couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. She was smiling, smiling and beckoning Chester forward.

  “This way, friend,” she said, as Chester approached her. “That’s it, that’s right. Step right on up.”

  The ride pulled up in front of Chester like the civil war era steam locomotive it so resembled, like a passenger train pulling up to a railway station. Passengers departed and a new set quickly replaced them, until all the cars were full, save for the lead car, the one at the very front, which must have been saved specifically for Chester, who was taken by the hand by the one-legged woman and led directly to it.

  She smiled when she lowered the bar that locked him securely into his seat, smiled and said, “We’ve been waiting.”

  He sat for a moment, alone in a car that could easily have held another three people, but nobody stepped forward to join him—no one even tried. A crowd of people lined up in front of the peg-legged woman, and her mate stood silently by, watching Chester Roebuck settle back into a seat of rich, plush leather. There were sounds in the air: the rush of steam, the churn of an engine, the buzz of the crowd as somebody called out, “All aboard, folks! All aboard Hannibal Cobb’s Screaming Rails Of Death!”

  “Alllllll aboarrrrrd!” the crowd called out as the whistle blew, the train left the station and the ride jerked forward, and then started to climb. Higher and higher it rose, looping and swirling and dipping and diving, Chester’s heart high in his throat as his fingers clutched the security bar, and those coupled cars executed an impossible stomach-churning, three-hundred and sixty degree spin, high above the crowd below them.

  His eyes were wide, his hands high in the air when they came out of the spin and started a slow and steady uphill climb. The old train whistle blew loud and long, the wooden planks supporting those gleaming steel rails groaning as the cars rose straight up toward the sky. Chester, pressed snug against his seat as if he were lying flat on his back on the ground, stared up at stars so close he could almost reach out and touch them.

  The engine chugged as the rush of steam filled the air around him. The whistle blew and somebody started to cry. Chester turned to look to see who it was, to offer a consoling word or two, but the laws of gravity wouldn’t allow it. So he stayed in his seat and stared up at that fat, full moon, at the shimmering stars that surrounded it.

  “Look at ‘em go!” a far away voice called out, so far away, Chester barely even heard it.

  He looked down at the clearing, surprised to see that everything had changed. Gone were most of the stalls and booths; gone were the gleaming food wagons, and tents of fine white canvas, leaving behind a few straggly carts and a couple of worn and weathered tents. All the people who had laughed at him, and those who had cheered him on as the ride had departed—they were gone too, replaced by a rabble of rednecks who wandered aimlessly throughout the clearing.

  There was Jack Everett, sitting on a log in the middle of Godby’s field.

  And there was old man Kreigle, spinning around in a circle, head thrown back, arms held straight out at his sides, smiling and staring up at the sky.

  And here was Chester Roebuck, in the sleek black carriage of a roller coaster climbing all the way up to the stars. The ride jerked forward and Chester closed his eyes. He could feel himself rising, higher and higher, the cool wind brushing across his face as he went higher, still. The car leveled out as the ride reached its zenith, and then stopped entirely when the car curled forward, leaving Chester Roebuck staring wide-eyed down the rails, at a pinpoint of light that could only have been the clearing, miles and miles away from him.

  He was smiling now, because it was getting good now, getting to it.

  The car would drop and his heart would rush to his throat, the laws of gravity suspended as the ride plummeted ever-downward, spinning and twirling and loop-de-looping, the crowd cheering and riders screaming, all the way down to the end of the line.

  He closed his eyes and smiled, opened them and Hannibal Cobb appeared beside him.

  “You’ve been a bad boy tonight, haven’t you?” Cobb said. “Done a very bad thing. But that’s not very surprising, is it? Not really. You come from a long line of folks who’ve done a long, sordid laundry list of bad things… Don’t you?”

  Chester said nothing.

  He stared wide-eyed at Hannibal Cobb as if he were a shroud of ectoplasm hovering before him.

  Then the ride jerked and Cobb winked out like a snuffed candle.

  The bottom fell out and Chester Roebuck plummeted straight down those gleaming steel rails, to a place he really didn’t want to see.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After all these years, Jack Everett had finally met a man equal to himself. He could tell by the way Hannibal Cobb talked, by the look in those coal black eyes of his that he was a powerful man used to getting his way, a man to be reckoned with. Just like Jack Everett himself, who lorded over Pottsboro, South Carolina just as Hannibal Cobb ruled his little backwoods country carnival, which Jack was beginning to find was not such a small place after all. From the happy little clown standing beneath the ‘welcome to the carnival’ sign in his orange outfit and his elaborately painted face, to the Ferris wheel spinning high above the treetops, all the way down to the huge skyscraper of a roller coaster Chester Roebuck had been so infatuated with, everything in this place seemed big. So big, in fact, that Jack didn’t see how it all could have fit into Godby’s field. Jack didn’t remember the place being so wide and spread out, and he’d spent many a night out here, back in the fifties when his grandfather was riding herd with those white-sheeted pals of his. Jack had seen some shit back then, all right. From beatings and hangings, to rapes and murders and everything in between, Jack had pretty much seen it all. Of course, times had changed since then. Now days, one man kept his foot on the neck of another in a more subtle fashion: a telephone call to excise his job; a word to Charlie Strawn to call in his note, a stroke of a pen to foreclose on his house and property, sometimes shutting down, if not his lifestyle, his very life itself. And Jack Everett, who considered himself to be an enlightened man, an equal opportunity type of guy, had lowered his economic boom on a great many families in and around Pottsboro, South Carolina, irregardless of race, creed or color.

  They stood at the entrance sizing each other up, two powerful personalities gauging what stood before them. Jack saw respect in the man’s dark eyes, a genuine regard for the wealth and breeding that stood before him. And why not? They weren’t really equals. Jack’s forefathers had settled this land, claiming a huge swatch of it for themselves. Through the years the Everett clan had built fortune upon fortune up and down and all around South Carolina. Elections had been swayed on their say-so, governors planted firmly in office and governors run from the capital building with their tails tucked firmly beneath them. Few men could be considered Jack Everett’s equal, certainly not some country hick from the dusty plains of northwestern Missouri. He wasn’t Jack’s equal, but he was close. He was close, all right. Jack could feel it in his sixty-three year old bones.

  They stood there, eye to eye, until Cobb waved him in and bade him welcome, and Jack and his cronies headed up the midway, past the Sideshow tent and the food wagons, the booths and stalls with their hip young games and high tech gadgetry. The smells wafting from those wagons were intoxicating. Not the usual carnival fare, but top shelf cuisine found in five-star hotels the world over: lobster tails in rich, creamy butter, roasted duck in a thick sherry sauce that would melt that tender meat right off the bone and into your mouth. No funnel cakes here, no sirree. Just a cart piled high with enough fluffy white pastries and rich, decadent cakes to have made the finest chefs in all of France proud to have presided over it. And the women manning these carts, all of them five-star beauties themselves, smiling and winking at Jack as he strolled by, all of them free and avai
lable for the grand patriarch of Pottsboro, South Carolina’s taking.

  So many beautiful women were there sauntering up and down the midway that Jack barely noticed when Tricia Reardon and her little companion struck out on their own. Didn’t matter to Jack, though. He’d see her soon enough—she loved him, as did every woman he had ever graced with his presence. It was his money, he guessed, and the attention he lavished upon them.

  He left Chester Roebuck at a crowd of people lined up in front of Hannibal Cobb’s Screaming Rails Of Death, a roller coaster ride made up of sleek black carriages resembling the passenger cars of an old-time locomotive. Up, up, and up, that roller coaster went, while Chester stepped forward and Jim Kreigle ran off squawking about the spinning cups—although no matter how high or low Jack looked, he saw no Spinning Teacup ride anywhere on the premises.

  No one seemed to notice the blood spattered across his front as he wandered through the carnival grounds. Or maybe they did notice, but out of respect for his station in life, they chose wisely to ignore it. After all, he was the town’s benefactor. It was he they ran to when an unsolvable problem arose, he they came to when the going got tough and there was nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to. Jack Everett, who held all the answers in a bank account sizable enough to bail anyone out of any kind of trouble. If he wanted to, of course. And God help you if he didn’t want to. God help you if you ever found yourself out of Jack’s good graces, with nowhere to turn but to the good Lord above, who could get you into heaven, but could do nothing to get your mother on the list for the Green Grove Extended Care Facility in Columbia, South Carolina.