Ray swallowed. It was spicy on his tongue, causing a little tingling as it went down.
“Where am I?” Ray whispered. The room felt as if it was moving, swaying and jolting beneath him.
“Safe, now shhh,” she said, lowering his head back to the damp pillow. Ray’s eyes fluttered, and he fell back to sleep.
Morning light filtered in again, but the quality was different enough to make Ray believe it was not the same morning as the one he last remembered. Ray felt under the sheets and realized he was wearing only his underclothes. He rolled over and noticed a bundle on the floor next to the tick mattress: his cap, belt, and jacket stacked neatly on top of his tattered leather brogans. He reached a weak hand to lift his cap. Under it, he was relieved to discover the lodestone lying next to the silver dagger.
He ran his fingers to the back of his head and felt a scabbed wound. Standing brought a brief wave of dizziness, and he steadied himself against the walls of the curiously skinny room. It was little more than a bed and the floor beside the bed. At the foot of the bed was a window showing a sunny green field of corn. Turning, Ray saw a door with a curtained window.
Beside the door was a tin plate draped with a red cotton napkin. Ray lifted the napkin from the plate, revealing biscuits, greasy pieces of chicken, and cold potatoes. He set the food aside. First he wanted to figure out where he was and where his clothes were. Ray picked up his wool cap and noticed that the top was torn open from his accident. His brogans were in no better shape. The toes were worn nearly to little oval holes and the leather soles were swollen and cracked. Were they really that abused from the trek through the Lost Wood? Ray slid them on his feet, took a cold biscuit from the plate, and went in search of the woman.
Opening the door, Ray looked right and then left down a narrow hallway lined with windows on one side, more doors on the other, and a vestibule at each end. This was a train, he realized. The train was no longer moving, but out the window he did not see a depot or a station, only a sun-dappled clearing, bordered by a forest. People were walking around outside. Maybe one of them would know where the woman was with his clothes.
Ray began down the hallway toward the vestibule. Although he had never slept in one, he had wandered enough trains to recognize this car as a sleeper—much messier, however, than any sleeper car he had ever seen. To reach the vestibule, Ray had to maneuver across a jumble of crates and trunks scattered about the hallway. Strings of blue, red, and green bottles, rusty hardware, and bundles of drying herbs hung from the ceiling. Ray kept banging his head against the bottles, causing a clanking chorus that sounded like a gypsy tinker wagon.
Through the windows, he saw people erecting a long canvas tent and carrying boxes around a clearing. Where had they stopped the train? Surely not on a main line. He decided that this must be some sort of secondary rail, the sort that breaks off around towns to connect with mills and factories. He had lived in enough neighborhoods around smaller rail lines to know.
Where was the plump woman? He couldn’t go wandering around in his underwear.
As he reached for the vestibule door, somebody beyond opened it first. A girl looked up and gasped, “Caramba!” touching her hand to her throat with a start.
Ray was startled, too, but not for the same reason.
The girl was quite possibly the most beautiful he had ever seen. She had large black eyes, long fluttering lashes, and honey-colored skin. Her hair fell in thick black ringlets over her shoulders. She wore a fluted layered dress of exotic reds and purples, stitched with shiny spangles.
He was equally surprised by the rattlesnake draped about her neck. The serpent swayed out from her shoulder, poking its tongue to inspect Ray and shaking its rattles. Ray jerked back.
The girl’s eyes went from Ray’s face down to his attire, and then she erupted into laughter. Ray looked down at his gray woolen underclothes and bare chest, his pale, skinny legs protruding from the unlaced boots. He did his best to cover himself, more from embarrassment than modesty, but she had already looked away, giggles rippling out from the vestibule.
“Está despierto,” she called. “He’s awake.” She gave him one last look up and down, snorted, and closed the door.
A moment later the door opened again and this time it was the warm brown face of the giant who had carried Ray from the woods that looked in. As he saw the giant now, Ray realized he was a boy not much older than himself.
“You’re up. You feeling all right?” he said.
“Yeah, where am I?”
“Welcome to the Ballyhoo. It’s our train.” He blinked several times and chuckled. “Where’s your clothes?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you!”
A pained expression crossed the giant’s face, and he slapped a hand to his forehead. “Forgot … I’ll be right back.”
Ray’s appetite had returned with a sudden complaining growl. He went back to his room and sat on the edge of his bed, devouring the plate of food. As he was licking the remnants from his fingers, the giant squeezed into Ray’s room.
Tossing the shirt, trousers, and socks into Ray’s lap, he said, “Still a little damp. Ma Everett decided to wash them for you, and I was supposed to hang them up. I forgot. My mind seems to wander sometimes. Sorry they ain’t dry. Meet me outside when you change.” He squeezed back into the hallway, and Ray heard him curse as he stumbled on the wreck of crates and clattering bottles.
After dressing and lacing up his brogans, Ray picked up the lodestone, retied the twine to his belt, and began slipping the stone in his pocket. He stopped and then slowly took the lodestone back out. He stared down at the dark rock. It wasn’t moving.
“You ready?” the giant called.
Ray went out into the hallway, narrowing his eyes at the odd assortment of people busily working outside. He tossed the lodestone a few times in his hands, waiting to see if it would begin moving again. It didn’t.
With a frown, Ray dropped the lodestone in his pocket and stepped out onto the vestibule.
“Never seen anything like it. That bear was bucking, and you were flopping all around like a catfish,” the giant laughed.
He was leading Ray past the busy people—nearly a dozen—carrying rolls of canvas, dragging platforms, and hoisting banners above the clearing. As Ray had suspected, the train had stopped on a weed-tangled secondary rail line. Fields, ripe with high summer, extended on the back side of the Ballyhoo. On the side of the train where the tent was erected was a clearing of grass, bordered halfway by trees, then a burned-out factory. Beyond were the first clapboard houses on the edge of a town.
The Ballyhoo had none of the elegance or beauty of Mister Grevol’s train. This was a working train—a squat old eight-wheeler locomotive, rusty in places, with only six cars behind the tender. Ray doubted it could pull much more than that.
“You had a good ride on that old bear before she threw you,” the giant continued. “But what I can’t figure is why that bear didn’t maul you! All she did was sidle up and lick you like you was her baby.”
Ray narrowed his eyes with confusion. “I don’t really remember much after I hit my head.”
“Well, she did. Beats all, don’t it? What’s your name anyhow?”
“Ray. What’s yours?”
“They call me Conker. That girl you met in your drawers—that’s Marisol.” Conker pointed toward a tent several yards away. The black-haired girl was laughing as she talked to two boys putting up a makeshift fence of ribbon and pine poles.
“She has a snake on her shoulder,” Ray said.
As if it somehow answered Ray’s question, Conker replied, “She comes from the desert, out in Sonora, if I recollect.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “She’s a snake dancer.”
“A what?” Ray said.
Conker kept walking, and Ray had to hurry to catch up to the giant. Conker nodded to his right, not slowing his pace. “There’s Si. You remember her?”
The Chinese girl who had been in the fores
t with Conker was unwinding a heavy coil of rope with the help of a soot-faced young man. As she spied Ray, she turned away quickly, snapping the long ebony braid on her head like a whip.
“She?” Ray asked.
“Yeah, Si.”
“Her name’s She?”
“Not like ‘she.’ Just Si, spelled s-i. Sounds the same, I reckon. You’ll have time to meet her properly soon, but our pitchman wants to see you first.”
Ray was somewhat surprised at the strange people working. They were an exotic group. Not even in the cities up north, even among the sailors and dockworkers, had he seen so many different kinds of people working together.
“What’s a pitchman?” Ray began, but they had reached an area where a number of crates were stacked in various states of being opened and sorted.
“Nel,” Conker called.
An elderly black man popped up from behind a crate. He had bright manic eyes shining from his exceptionally dark face. His wide plume of silver hair was capped with a burgundy fez and a long tassel.
“Yes, yes,” he chuckled, clapping his hands together as he stood and stomped toward Ray. “Here he is, alive and well. Welcome to Cornelius T. Carter’s Mystifying Medicine Show and Tabernacle of Tachycardial Talent!”
Ray’s eyes hurt momentarily from the man’s screaming orange and red plaid suit. On one foot, the man wore a tall leather riding boot. The other leg was a polished mahogany peg extending from below the knee.
“Tabernacle of Tacky-what?” Ray mumbled.
“Tachycardial. Means heart-pounding!” he explained. “Son, I found the surest way to establishing credibility with the yokels—i.e., our customers—is to be flamboyantly verbose.”
Ray looked at Conker.
“He likes to talk fancy,” Conker said.
“And are you Mister Cornelius T. Carter?” Ray asked.
Waving his hands from his head down toward his foot, he said, “I am. I can see that despite your reticence to fully embrace the more ornamental aspects of speaking that you are no simpleton. They call me Nel. Peg Leg Nel. And what is your … er, moniker? What name do you go by, son?”
“Ray Fleming.”
Peg Leg Nel shook Ray’s hand heartily and clasped his shoulder.
“Not a provocative name for an entertainer, but a durable name I’m sure. I did hear however that you gave quite a performance to Conker and Si in the forest. Bear-riding! How … uncustomary! You may yet grow to overtake your name, dear Ray.”
Nel tilted Ray’s chin up with a finger and inspected his face. “I trust that you are recuperating from your injury?”
“Yes,” Ray said. “I’m feeling better.”
Nel nodded his head vigorously, saying, “Well, we are quite busy as you can see. Much to be done to be ready by two in the afternoon.”
“What’s the show? Is it a circus or something?” Ray asked.
“Circus?” Nel’s wooly brows nearly covered his eyes as he frowned. “No, son. You must have drifted during my introduction. We are a medicine show, Ray. Tonics. Salves. Nostrums. The like. Not the proprietary medicines of a common pharmacologist, mind you. I’m a root worker. But it takes more than a quality product and mere hawking to draw in the customers. People like a show. That’s how the masses are enticed, and we have the talent here to provide first-rate entertainment on par with the finest revues and rigmarole around. What we lack in splendor, we make up for in sheer audacity. I trust that you’ll do us the honor of viewing a performance?”
“Sure,” Ray said.
“Blunt, a little taciturn, but certainly not curt, are you?” Peg Leg Nel smiled down at Ray with a vast mouthful of glistening teeth.
“Come on, Ray,” Conker said. “You can help me get things set up.”
Nel wagged a finger. “Well, don’t forget, you’ve been indisposed with an injury, young Ray. So restrain from overexerting yourself. Now, if you’ll excuse me …” Stomping away on his peg leg, he added with an ear-jarring laugh, “Bear-rider. Ha! My goodness.”
RAY LEARNED THAT THE MEDICINE SHOW WAS SET UP JUST outside the textile town of Hillsboro. The timing had been selected to coincide with the cotton market, which was to close in a few days. Nel had paid some travelers a week earlier to post pasteboard signs on trees and telegraph poles around Hillsboro to announce the show. Farmers from the surrounding community were in town to auction their bales. If the season had been good, they’d have money to spend, and Peg Leg Nel was happy to relieve them of a few bits.
Nel’s crew was busy rushing about the performance space, getting the show ready. Nel was directing two men as they carried supplies from the train. Marisol and some others Ray didn’t know yet were setting up gasoline torches. Curious glances were cast toward Ray, but everyone was too busy to be interrupted.
Conker introduced Ray to Eddie Everett, the grimy young man Ray had seen earlier with Si. His face, neck, and hands were blackened and smudged with soot, which contrasted oddly with his clean outfit and the crisp derby cocked on his head.
Ray helped Conker and Eddie carry pieces of the stages to the open-sided tent, which was erected in full above the clearing and against the side of the train. The tent was partially fenced off, as Ray had noted earlier, with long bands of satin ribbon. They set up the three stages against the side of the train and hung a moth-eaten velvet curtain from the sleeper car as a backdrop. From the center stage Peg Leg Nel would pitch his tonics.
“See how this middle stage is set closer to the ground,” Conker explained to Ray as they worked. “Nel says it’s more persuasive if the tip—that’s what we call the crowd—is closer to him. Builds trust with the customers, he reckons. Other two platforms on either side are taller. They’re for the performers. Better that they’re higher. Makes the show more exciting.”
Conker waved his hand around the shaded interior of the tent after setting down a pair of tables on the center stage. “No chairs either, see. Nel used to put out chairs for folks. But he figures it’s best they ain’t too comfortable. Keeps them paying better attention. Also makes the tip seem bigger than it is. Audience gets more excited if it’s harder to see and a little too crowded.”
Ray nodded, taking it all in. “Sounds like he’s trying to trick them,” he said, and Eddie laughed.
“No.” Conker smiled. “Ain’t trickery exactly. People like to be entertained. And for Nel to entertain, he’s got to use a little gimmicking. That’s what I believe they come here for.”
“They want to be tricked?” Ray asked.
“No. They want something unbelievable. And we give it to them. Nel’d like to think it’s the tonics, which are really good, mind you. You ought to know! Cured your concussion, didn’t he? No, it ain’t why they come. Not really.”
“And all without the usual ploys,” Eddie added.
“Like what?” Ray asked.
“Like geeks.”
Ray raised an eyebrow. “What’s a geek?”
“Performers who bite the heads off live snakes and such.” Eddie smiled, relishing the look of disgust on Ray’s face. “Ha! Marisol, she’d hate that, wouldn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Conker nodded. “No. We got no geeks, no hootchy, no blackface. We got talent enough without all those … Hey, there’s Buck. Buck!”
Ray turned to see a cowboy passing beside the stage, staggering slightly with slow steps. The man was hard-faced and ragged as a cedar tree. His eyes had a sunken quality, the heavy lids barely cracked. He wore a fringed doeskin coat and tall, decoratively stitched cowboy boots—each deeply oiled and rubbed smooth but discolored in patches from wear and weather. Between the crisscross of gun belts slung across his waist and the tall, flat-brimmed hat, he was the very image of the Wild West gunslinger Ray read about in penny Westerns.
The cowboy cocked his head at the sound of his name, his gaze passing back and forth across the three of them. It struck Ray as strange the way his head swiveled so loosely on his neck. His eyes seemed shut, and after giving a sniff he strode on, not stopp
ing for introductions.
“That’s Eustace Buckthorn. Don’t mind Buck,” Conker whispered. “He’s just a bit crotchety sometimes.”
“What’s wrong with him? He seemed … drunk.”
“Drunk!” Conker laughed. “He ain’t drunk. He looks that way on account of he’s blind.”
“He is!” Ray looked back at the cowboy. “What’s he do?”
“I reckon you’d have telled from his outfit. He’s our sharpshooter. Good one, too.”
“How’s he shoot when he’s blind?”
“Got me,” Conker said, and began walking back toward the entrance to the tent.
Eddie took Ray’s elbow as he added, “I’ve heard that he murdered his own brother.”
“He wh-what?” Ray stammered.
“And didn’t he take up once with a band of pirates, Conker?”
Conker nodded. “Say he was in love with one of the pirates, too. Their queen, way I heard it.”
The Pirate Queen! Hobnob’s boss and tormentor. Ray looked once more with curiosity at the sharpshooter. Buck was just reaching a car—the third from the end. As he started up the steps, Ray noticed long silver and black hair falling from his cowboy hat.
“Ray!” Eddie called. “Lend a hand?”
Shaking the thoughts away, Ray ran over to where Eddie was pulling a canvas roll across the lawn. As he took a corner of the canvas roll, Ray asked, “Do you perform, Eddie?”
“Not me, I’m what they call the bakehead. That’s the name for the fireman on the trains.” Eddie nodded toward the low, flat car just behind the locomotive. “See the tender? It’s where the coal is stored. I shovel it into the tender-box up in the locomotive—keep the engine running. I hate my stinking job! Always getting burned. I wish Redfeather would let me borrow his copper.”
“You ought just to ask him,” Conker said.
“He won’t.” Eddie sighed.
“What’s the copper?” Ray asked.
The Nine Pound Hammer Page 4
