The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus

by Allan Gurganus

  Alone I was again. Mother’s bell had been muted by six feet of Ohio loam frozen solid. My studying the ocean? Worth maybe three full minutes daily. Now what?

  The ringmaster across my highway finished digging a whole lake using his yellow rental bulldozer. From floor two and then from my flat roof, I caught chance peeks at his radical new land use behind the screening placards. Finally, one afternoon as I sat reading, all at once, in the bull’s-eye center of the lake he’d scooped, up spouted a wild central jet. It went off like Moby-Dick sighing straight aloft. This secret fountain caught me utterly off guard. I felt surprised, then half scared by such a tacky surge, felt something possibly akin to sheer dumb joy. A column of white foam shot forty feet, then fell heavily aside to make a plash half violent, half joke. My every suite seemed cooled some eight to ten degrees.

  I rose. I saw that I had been a snob. These tanned, pretty circus folk were new here and living so en masse—and God knows I was none of the above.

  I finally understood it’d been Mother, that old eighty-five-pound Denver boot, still holding me back—her scoldings about manners and the standards required of a family fine as ours. She’d never let me play with my favorites, twins, “coarse, grocers’ daughters.” Having risen, I now slammed shut Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. It was my third time through. Why be trapped in a book as some Chinese peasant girl when I had Maturity’s sloppy, festive here-and-now?

  Darting downstairs to my office-kitchen, I pulled forth a fresh-baked piping coffee cake, carried it bold across the highway (as soon as the steady stream of Key-bound tourists allowed a gap for a running gal my age). That’s how I first met Buck and his wives.

  “Well, aren’t you the perfect welcome wagon,” he himself spoke, deep. “We noticed you seemed to be in every window. Sure you ain’t triplets? Does your coming over mean you forgive a guy’s road show for complicating your property value? But aren’t you scared my prize Burmese python will wind up in your”—he studied unlit neon—“Parnassus Palms dresser drawers?”

  “That a threat or a promise?”

  Well, this cracked him up. “You’re a right good sport.”

  “Looking like this, do I have a choice?”

  The ladies laughed, he didn’t. I am such a patented virgin I can say things only some ancient cross-eyed nun might risk.

  “Everybody has a choice,” Buck met me head-on. “That’s what we mean by ‘sport.’”

  Soon, over a berry-pink daiquiri in his teak-lined trailer, I asked Mr. Buck how many snakes he owned—did he hire them from some animal-theater agent or catch them by hand? The man’s voice had gathered accents from pretty much everywhere. These were basted in a unifying baritone the hue of Myers’s dark rum.

  “Some, lady, I personally snagged in Brazil. Gators just seem to find me. Mowgli, why, she swam up a service-station drainage ditch in Kissimmee. I rescued Stump after he fell into the pool of some bad motel, no offense. My alligators start, like seeds, you know, small, but you feed them into becoming attractions. Funny, but they’re loyal in their way. The fancier snakes I have been known to order by phone but will probably say I caught bare-handed. I did, by dialing Princeton, New Jersey, same outfit that pervides mice to your finer cancer labs. Yep, always have been fascinated by the cold-blooded. As a kid, I tanned muskrat and otter pelts, kept corn snakes on-hand, pretty, non-poisonous. Been on my own since I was nine. Lost Mom to diphtheria, Dad to a traveling lady preacher. So be it. A longish adventure. —But enough ’bout me. What’s your setup, Esther? You didn’t start in Florida. Naw, you’re like me. On the lam from another buncha lives squandered elsewhere, eh?”

  I lowered my eyes, unwilling to seem simple as the word “unopened.” But then Buck did something unheard-of. Awaiting my response, he looked unashamed, a tamer of beasts, right at me. I peeked back up. I stood here and he stood there, with his ladies slouched to all sides, and he did not avert his eyes or flinch, not even men’s usual once. “Ouch at first sight,” I call it. My teeth are independent; each has its own unique sense of direction. And my hair, despite backcombing, had grown somewhat thin on top. All my life, even when I was six, males have treated me like the Maiden Aunt. A self-fulfilling trend. But this Buck, he stared straight at (not through) me. Seemed only he was strong enough to take it.

  Buck soon bounded clear across north- and southbound lanes, inviting me to his show, for free. He’d asked everybody door-to-door for miles. He included massage parlors and churches, all the same to him. By now his toy-like bulldozer had piled real hills around Buck’s spitting lake. He’d imported full-grown royal palms. He’d made the white gravel paths look almost natural, going nowhere, if fast and in four-leaf clovers.

  Pastors, bleach-blond masseuses, two education-minded Cuban couples, and a bunch of glum little boys gathered, plus me. “Everybody ’bout ready? Come one, come all. Price is right, if today only.” Then he performed his entire test spiel. Buck’s first jokes did seem stale, even for 1959. (“Welcome to Florida, Land of Palms … all open!”) But it was like a starter try for us all. If he tended to ramble, en route Buck charmed. He mapped out Amazonian rainy seasons, warned of visa requirements, described his sleeping-sickness onsets. He showed early claw damage to one forearm. Facing certain snakes, he recounted their especially nasty captures. As he grew loud, his creatures got stiller and even beadier-eyed, as if out of guilt. He draped any creature not gator-weighty around his neck. They looked like leis that flexed; they seemed to enjoy it.

  When Buck laughed, he gave off a smell like flint, ham, and 3-in-One motor oil. Active as he was, one of his fingernails was always black-blue, coming and going. He lived in his great-white-hunter gear, jagged khaki collar, epaulets. Pall Malls got buttoned into a customized slot, the Zippo lighter slid snug into its own next door. This man had a brown face like a very good Italian valise left out in a forest during World War Two and just refound. Weathered, but you could still see how fine its starter material had been.

  Buck owned alligators, about forty, and three were the stars—huge, I mean as big as ever I saw in Mother’s precious back numbers of the Geographic. As with cows, they each had whole sides to them. They loved their new lake; most showered in its hourly fountain. Large amounts of lettuce got eaten. (Buck had already payolaed the produce clerks from Piggly Wiggly and Winn-Dixie to bring their cast-offs here instead of leaving them lonely in trash vats back of stores. He also fed his reptiles frozen chickens—claimed the birds’ iciness made a crunch the beasts considered their own achievement.)

  I soon noticed grocery trucks over there at all hours, as much for curiosity as delivery. TV stations covered his Grand Opening. By now, the show was charging (except for me) full admission and Buck let each visiting child feed one gator apiece. Only the bravest dared. The kid would inch out on a diving board wearing rubber gloves to keep from getting lettuce drool on his paws. Parents took snapshots. I feared a lethal topple. I briefly wondered about the Reptile Farm’s insurance picture; then, suspecting no coverage whatever, thought of something else. Smelling chow, gators hissed like gas leaks. Large white mouths opened. Seemed it was always time to feed the gators. Anything could be tasty. Loose luncheon meats, crates of limes, you name it—they ate each thing before deciding.

  Till Buck and his wives appeared, my afternoons had been somewhat less eventful; the local library (open three to five Tuesday afternoons) featured only past-due bestsellers stinking of Coppertone. Come one p.m., I had been mostly monogamous with my favorite soap, One Life to Live. Sure, Fridays I might go wild, pop popcorn. But, finally, in the Parnassus Convent vs. Reptile Coliseum battle for my interest? No contest. By then Buck had made me a charter member of the Snake Farm Family Board, meaning I always got in free.

  His one request: “How’s about you arrive five minutes prior to showtime wearing a flowered hat and carrying a purse, Esther? Just to keep up our sense of how my place is classy, scientific, er, whatever. Pretending to listen like you do gives my talks real tone, your being the re
tired educator. Eyeglasses would be good, even your reading specs. Hell, hon, with old school smarts like yours on view, I can charge a dollar more per customer.”

  Oh, he was sly, that Buck. He wore a cap pistol rammed into his holster, had on thigh-high treated boots, double-thick to keep rattlers from snagging clear through. He would be wading into their humid glass booth, where thirty snakes curled clicking like seedpods on a binge.

  Nobody hates snakes more than snakes do. That’s part of why we fear them. We recognize our own self-loathing, but slung even lower, it’s armless-legless with self-pity. And yet, even during a heat wave, snakes piled one atop the other like trying to form some sloppy basket. I did not get why. Myself being a single person, myself with typing margins set Maximum Wide, with me needing 13,500 square feet just to feel sufficiently dressed, simply watching such constant summer skin contact made me feel half-ill.

  Sometimes if I saw a crowd of especially nice cars—Lincolns, Caddies or Imperials—I might wander over. First I limited myself to Mondays and Wednesdays—plus, of course, weekends. (Mother had always rationed my attending other children’s birthday parties: “You come home a sticky blue from their cheap store-bought sheet cakes. You forgive their whispering jokes about your … features. Listen to you, still wheezing from having run around screaming till you sound asthmatic, Esther. —No, we’re alike. Too sensitive for groups. You are one overstimulated young lady. So let’s just sit here a few hours and collect ourselves, shall we, Little Miss?”)

  Buck’s wives swore that if I stayed away too long certain snakes sulked. How could the ladies tell? You mostly recognized different reptiles by their size and how much of that the others had chewed off. I got to know on sight Buck’s largest rattlers: Mingo, Kong, and Lothar. Stumpy was the hungriest gator and often got in the way of others’ frozen chickens. Stumps never learned. And he paid dearly with his limbs, his tail mass, and, finally, his life. God bless his stubborn appetite.

  After-hours, hanging out with wives in the Reptile Postcard Shop & Snack Canteen, Buck claimed he had once bought Hemingway a rum drink in Key West and got invited home to “Papa’s” hacienda for an all-night poker game. I usually asked him what Hemingway was really like. Buck would shake his head sideways: “Good talker, sore loser.”

  During tours, I don’t think Buck’s grasp of species names’ Latin was all it might have been. More than once I heard some pushy customer loiter before a ragged cage, jab his camera toward Exhibit A, and demand, “Hey, what kind of snake is this un’ hiding here?” “That one? That’s a big mean red one is what that is. Sooner bite you than look at you. Now, ahead on our left …” People would laugh, not knowing if he was joking or muleheaded. But, with this level of poison around, considering his German Luger and hooked stick, no one ever asked Buck for refunds or repetitions.

  After one show, I quizzed him: “I guess it’s that people love to be scared?”

  “No, dear Esther. It’s: people love to be scared by something new.”

  I looked at him. I sipped straight bourbon.

  In time I’d learn that Buck had been married four times, and three-quarters of his troubles were still with him. “Buck’s harem,” locals soon called them. Each gal kept her sleek identical trailer parked behind the backmost palms. I heard tell Buck visited a different lady every night. I’d never stayed up late enough to see. Some part of me did wish he would at least come nap in any of Parnassus’s comfy settings. I kept the central fans of all twelve suites going, just in case. He plainly had no sleeping place not already warmed by a previous nesting wife. “Feeding them’s cheaper ’n alimony,” one local boy claimed Buck said. But that sounds like any of the hundred rumors that made his stint here on our highway so lively during those glory years of latest Ike-Mamie, earliest Jack-Jackie.

  Buck’s wives seemed another sort of specimen collection. They wore stage makeup, as if competing with each other during those long hot afternoons spent waiting for Buck’s last show to end. Of all ages, his wives were either very young now or had been even better-looking pretty recently. Each still appeared sun-baked with strong ceramic traces of her starter glamour.

  Working the concession trailer, they were supposed to sell the tourists food and souvenirs. They mostly smoked, drank Cokes and ate the merchandise. They’d say funny things about our paying customers. “With those ears, we should stick ole Clem there out in the monkey cage,” or “Some of our exhibits eat their young, ma’am, and if you can’t quiet those bawling twins of yours we have the livestock that will.” “Now, ladies.” Buck came in laughing. He liked them spirited. Of my outfits, he preferred me in the lilac-covered hat and the white patent-leather shoes with matching bag. He wanted his wives to lounge out front—like auditioning—in halters, waving at the cars, bringing in considerable business. (Me, I’d drag a kitchen chair into shade off to one side.) Truth is, the girls looked a little better from sixty-five mph. But don’t we all?

  Come drink-time, the former wives changed into beautifully ironed off-the-shoulder gypsy blouses. They sported pounds of Navajo silver and turquoise squash-blossom necklaces that would bring a fortune today. They were always painting their fingernails and toenails or working on each other’s. You felt their tensions crest only at the sound of the final blanks Buck fired to end his show. When at last he stalked in, there’d be this pinball ricochet of love-starved looking: him gaping at the nut-brown breasts of one while another studied Buck’s flat backside, as the other kept glowering at his front. Nervous, I once blurted, “Can I grab anybody a cold Coke?” and got one hot unified glare. They all seemed to like this body tension. Would just not be distracted.

  His exes were intelligent girls who had not enjoyed my state-school advantages. They’d once felt too attractive to ever need much additional information. Doing crosswords out loud between shows, they’d squeal at how often I helped. “Flanders Fields!” I found myself yelling as my mother told me I should not at parties. The girls soon treated me like Einstein’s sister, and I admit I humored them.

  Christmas and Easter, I had the whole crew over to Los Parnassus Palms for my turkey, dressing, pies. The wives arrived in drop earrings, evening gowns. Slinky and powdered, they unfolded from matching Caddies. Buck would wear a crumpled tux that looked like Errol Flynn at the end.

  Beloved fellow snake farmers seemed most impressed by my owning countless solid-silver napkin rings from Mother. (Funds she might’ve spent on her only child’s teeth braces.) “Good weight,” Buck said, testing, as all his holiday ladies nodded, giving him hooded looks. His wives had each been in or near the Show business. Buck’s first, Dixie, once worked as a juggler’s assistant in Reno; Peggy, numero dos, claimed to have been a buyer (estate jewelry) for Neiman Marcus; Tanya was runner-up to be a studio player at Metro pictures in the class that included Janet Leigh. Over wine, they revealed more of Hollywood’s sad secrets. Hearing the crazy vices of the stars, I cried, “No, not him, too. What leading man’ll be left for Esther!” The wine flowed.

  (Later, some local yahoo tried telling me Buck had never married those three girls, said that they were just part of his roadside attraction, that their separate trailers made nightly cash admissions possible. I don’t believe it for an instant and I think some people along this road have very dirty minds. They adored him. That was all.)

  Not long into Kennedy’s administration, the wives sped off to buy new outfits in Bradenton where the circus folks retire. I saw their fin-tailed Cadillacs scratch off around three, and at four I notice Buck, waving a big white hanky to make cars stop, looking sick as he come staggering across four lanes of traffic toward my Parnassus Palms. I can’t say I hadn’t pictured this house call before. But not in crisis, not owing to illness. When I opened my screen door, he frowned, head wedged against one shoulder, and his face was all but black. He handed me a razor blade. “Esther? Some timber rattler, either Kong or Lothar, snagged me a good one in the back. Here, cut an X. Then pour ammonia on it. Go in an inch at least. I can’t see t
o reach it and my focus … It’s already all over, focus sliding, Esther.”

  He whipped off his shirt. Front down, he fell across my rattan lounger. I now stood behind him. Two fang marks weren’t hard to find because of all the purple swelling. “Okay,” I said. I dashed to get a towel and some ammonia. I splashed a dollop of cold water in my own face. Buck’s upper back was seizing something terrible. And yet its shape was very strong, copper-brown, tapered like a swimmer’s. I cut far deeper than I wanted, then blotted at least two pints into a large white beach towel. “Now,” Buck said, “I’m going to have to ask you, Esther. And for a friend like you I’d do it in a heartbeat. Feels I … feels I’m going into shock here. I’d never ask for any reason shy of Life and Death. —But, honey, would you suck it?”

  I might sound funny if I tell you my thin legs nearly buckled. I fought then not to faint. Blame my seeing his dark blood, or my viewing his entire back. More than once I had pictured him across the road being worked on by his full swarm of wives. I’d imagined how Buck might look shirtless, and he looked better, even with the blood, which made this more a movie. With Buck in the lounger, I could not bend forward far enough to help. “Here.” I lifted him and led him to my davenport. He was only half conscious and the weight of him was wonderful and tested my full sudden Esther strength. I helped him stretch out there, facedown. God, how he trusted me!

  I settled on the floor beside his ribs. Finally, breathing for two, I rose up on my knees. My teeth are bucked, as you’ll have noticed. My own low-cost form of fixing them has always been to make the joke about them first. “Need a human bottle opener?” I once heard a handsome young man quip to pals (and me only seven, trailing embarrassed pretty girlfriends). But now, knowing I might finally be useful to someone, I managed to say nothing. No Esther jokes today, Esther!