Nightmare Alley

by William Lindsay Gresham

  The geek had picked up a black snake, holding it close behind the head so it couldn’t snap at him, and was rocking it in his arms like a baby, muttering sounds.

  The talker waited while the crowd rubbered.

  “You may well ask how he associates with poisonous serpents without harm. Why, my friends, their poison has no effect whatsoever upon him. But if he were to sink his teeth in my hand nothing on God’s green earth could save me.”

  The geek gave a growl, blinking stupidly up into the light from the bare bulb. Stan noticed that at one corner of his mouth there was a glint from a gold tooth.

  “But now, ladies and gentlemen, when I told you that this creature was more beast than man I was not asking you to take my word for it. Stan—” He turned to the young man, whose brilliant blue eyes had not a trace of revelation in them. “Stan, we’re going to feed him one more time for this audience alone. Hand me the basket.”

  Stanton Carlisle reached down, gripped a small covered market basket by the handle, and boosted it over the heads of the crowd. They fell back, jamming and pushing. Clem Hoately, the talker, laughed with a touch of weariness. “It’s all right, folks; nothing you haven’t seen before. No, I reckon you all know what this is.” From the basket he drew a half-grown leghorn pullet, complaining. Then he held it up so they could see it. With one hand he motioned for silence.

  The necks craned down.

  The geek had leaned forward on all fours, his mouth hanging open vacantly. Suddenly the talker threw the pullet into the pit with a whirl of feathers.

  The geek moved toward it, shaking his black cotton mop of wig. He grabbed for the chicken, but it spread its stumpy wings in a frenzy of self-preservation and dodged. He crawled after it.

  For the first time the paint-smeared face of the geek showed some life. His bloodshot eyes were nearly closed. Stan saw his lips shape words without sound. The words were, “You son of a bitch.”

  Gently the youth eased himself out of the crowd, which was straining, looking down. He walked stiffly around to the entrance, his hands in his pockets.

  From the pit came a panicky clucking and cackling and the crowd drew its breath. The drunk beat his grimy straw hat on the rail. “Get ’at ole shicken, boy! Go get ’at ole shicken!”

  Then a woman screamed and began to leap up and down jerkily; the crowd moaned in an old language, pressing their bodies tighter against the board walls of the pit and stretching. The cackling had been cut off short, and there was a click of teeth and a grunt of someone working hard.

  Stan shoved his hands deeper in his pockets. He moved through the flap entrance back into the main ring of the Ten-in-One show, crossed it to the gate and stood looking out on the carnival midway. When his hands came from his pockets one of them held a shiny half-dollar. He reached for it with his other hand and it vanished. Then with a secret, inner smile of contempt and triumph, he felt along the edge of his white flannel trousers and produced the coin.

  Against the summer night the ferris wheel lights winked with the gaiety of rhinestones, the calliope’s blast sounded as if the very steam pipes were tired.

  “Christ a-mighty, it’s hot, huh, kid?”

  Clem Hoately, the talker, stood beside Stan, wiping the sweat from the band of his panama with a handkerchief. “Say, Stan, run over and get me a bottle of lemon soda from the juice joint. Here’s a dime; get yourself one too.”

  When Stan came back with the cold bottles, Hoately tilted his gratefully. “Jesus, my throat’s sore as a bull’s ass in fly time.”

  Stan drank the pop slowly. “Mr. Hoately?”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “How do you ever get a guy to geek? Or is this the only one? I mean, is a guy born that way—liking to bite the heads off chickens?”

  Clem slowly closed one eye. “Let me tell you something, kid. In the carny you don’t ask nothing. And you’ll get told no lies.”

  “Okay. But did you just happen to find this fellow—doing—doing this somewhere behind a barn, and work up the act?”

  Clem pushed back his hat. “I like you, kid. I like you a lot. And just for that I’m going to give you a treat. I’m not going to give you a boot in the ass, get it? That’s the treat.”

  Stan grinned, his cool, bright blue eyes never leaving the older man’s face. Suddenly Hoately dropped his voice.

  “Just because I’m your pal I ain’t going to crap you up. You want to know where geeks came from. Well, listen—you don’t find ’em. You make ’em.”

  He let this sink in, but Stanton Carlisle never moved a muscle. “Okay. But how?”

  Hoately grabbed the youth by the shirt front and drew him nearer. “Listen, kid. Do I have to draw you a damn blueprint? You pick up a guy and he ain’t a geek—he’s a drunk. A bottle-a-day booze fool. So you tell him like this: ‘I got a little job for you. It’s a temporary job. We got to get a new geek. So until we do you’ll put on the geek outfit and fake it.’ You tell him, ‘You don’t have to do nothing. You’ll have a razor blade in your hand and when you pick up the chicken you give it a nick with the blade and then make like you’re drinking the blood. Same with rats. The marks don’t know no different.”’

  Hoately ran his eye up and down the midway, sizing up the crowd. He turned back to Stan. “Well, he does this for a week and you see to it that he gets his bottle regular and a place to sleep it off in. He likes this fine. This is what he thinks is heaven. So after a week you say to him like this, you say, ‘Well, I got to get me a real geek. You’re through.’ He scares up at this because nothing scares a real rummy like the chance of a dry spell and getting the horrors. He says, ‘What’s the matter? Ain’t I doing okay?’ So you say, ‘Like crap you’re doing okay. You can’t draw no crowd faking a geek. Turn in your outfit. You’re through.’ Then you walk away. He comes following you, begging for another chance and you say, ‘Okay. But after tonight out you go.’ But you give him his bottle.

  “That night you drag out the lecture and lay it on thick. All the while you’re talking he’s thinking about sobering up and getting the crawling shakes. You give him time to think it over, while you’re talking. Then throw in the chicken. He’ll geek.”

  The crowd was coming out of the geek show, gray and listless and silent except for the drunk. Stan watched them with a strange, sweet, faraway smile on his face. It was the smile of a prisoner who has found a file in a pie.

  CARD II

  The Magician

  who holds toward heaven the wand of fire and points with his other hand toward earth.

  “IF YOU’LL step right over this way, folks, I want to call your attention to the attraction now appearing on the first platform. Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness one of the most spectacular performances of physical strenth the world has ever seen. Now some of you young fellows in the crowd look pretty husky but I want to tell you, gents, the man you are about to see makes the ordinary blacksmith or athlete look like a babe in arms. The power of an African gorilla in the body of a Greek god. Ladies and gents, Herculo, the world’s most perfect man.”

  Bruno Hertz: If only once she would over here look while I have the robe off I would be glad to drop dead that minute. Um Gotteswillen, I would cut my heart out and hand it to her on a plate. Cannot she ever see that? I cannot get up courage to hold her hand in the kinema. Why has a man always to feel over some woman like this? I cannot even tell Zeena how crazy I am for her because then Zeena would try to put us together and then I would feel a dummkopf from not knowing how to say to her. Molly—a beautiful Amerikanische name. She will never love me. I know it in my heart. But I can tear to pieces any of the wolves in the show such as would hurt that girl. If one of them would try, then maybe Molly could see it. Perhaps then she could guess the way I feel and would give me one word for me to remember always. To remember, back in Wien.

  “… right over here, folks. Will you step in a little closer? On account of this exhibit ain’t the biggest thing you ever seen; how about it, Major? Ladies an
d gentlemen, I now present for your edification and amusement Major Mosquito, the tiniest human being on record. Twenty inches, twenty pounds, and twenty years—and he’s got plenty of big ideas for his age. Any of you girls would like to date him after the show, see me and I’ll fix ya up. The Major will now entertain you with a little specialty number of his own, singing and tap-dancing to that grand old number, ‘Sweet Rosie O’Grady.’ Take it away, Major.”

  Kenneth Horsefield: If I lit a match and held it right close under that big ape’s nose I wonder if I’d see the hairs in his nose-holes catch fire. Christ, what an ape! I’d like to have him tied up with his mouth propped open and then I’d sit back smoking my cigar and shoot his teeth out one after another. Apes. They’re all apes. Especially the women with their big moon faces. I’d like to sink a hammer in ’em and watch ’em splash like pumpkins. Their great, greasy red mouths open like tunnels. Grease and filth, all of them.

  Christ, there it goes. That same crack. The one woman makes it to the other behind her hand. If I see that same hand come up and that same routine once more I’ll yell the goddamned place down. A million dames and always the same goddamned crack behind the same goddamned hand and the other one always champing on gum. Some day I’ll blast ’em. I don’t keep that equalizer in my trunk to play Boy Scout with. And that’s the dame I’ll blast. I’d of done it before now. Only they’d laugh at seeing me hold the butt with one hand and work the trigger with the other.

  Joe Plasky: “Thank you, professor. Ladies and gents, I am known as the Half-man Acrobat. As you can see, my legs are both here but they’re not much good to me. Infantile paralysis when I was a kid—they just naturally never growed. So I just made up my mind to tie ’em in a knot like this and forget about ’em and go on about my business. This is the way I get upstairs. Up on the hands. Steady. Here we go with a hop, skip, and a jump. Turn around and down we go, easy as pie. Thank you, folks.

  “Now here’s another little number I worked out by myself. Sometimes in a crowded trolley car I don’t have room enough to stand on both hands. So up we go. Steady. And I stand on one! Thank you very much.

  “Now then, for my next number I’m going to do something that no other acrobat in the world has ever attempted. A full somersault from a handstand back onto the hands. Are we all set? Let’s go. It’s a good trick—if I do it. Maybe some of you folks in the front row had better move back a couple steps. Don’t bother. I’m just kidding. I’ve never missed yet, as you can see, for I’m still in the land of the living. All right, here we go—up—and over! Thank you very much, folks.

  “And now if you’ll just step right in close I’m going to give away a few little souvenirs. Naturally, I can’t get rich giving away merchandise, but I’ll do my best. I have here a little booklet full of old songs, recitations, jokes, wheezes, and parlor games. And I’m not going to charge you a dollar for it, nor even a half, but a cold, thin dime. That’s all it costs, folks, a dime for a full evening of fun and fancy. And with it I’m going to give away, as a special inducement at this performance only, this little paper shimmy-dancer. Hold a match behind the paper: you see her shadow; and this is how you make her shake.

  “You want one? Thank you, bud. Here you are, folks—brimful of assorted poems, dramatic readings, and witty sayings by the world’s wisest men. And only a dime.…”

  Sis wrote me the kids are both down with whooping cough. I’ll send them a box of paints to help keep them quiet. Kids love paints. I’ll send them some crayons, too.

  “Sailor Martin, the living picture gallery. Ladies and gents, this young man that you see before you went to sea at an early age. He was shipwrecked on a tropical island which had only one other inhabitant—an old seafaring man, who had been there most of his life—a castaway. All he had managed to save from the wreck of his ship was a tattoo outfit. To pass the time he taught Sailor Martin the art and he practiced on himself. Most of the patterns you see are his own work. Turn around, Sailor. On his back, a replica of that world-famous painting, the Rock of Ages. On his chest—turn around, Sailor—the Battleship Maine, blowing up in Havana Harbor. Now if any of you young fellows in the audience would like an anchor, American flag, or sweetheart’s initials worked on your arm in three beautiful colors, step right up to the platform and see the Sailor. No sissies need apply.”

  Francis Xavier Martin: Boy, that brunette working the electric-chair act is a beaut. Have I got what would make her happy and moan for more! Only Bruno would land on me like a ton of tomcats. I wonder if I’ll hear from that redhead in Waterville. God, I can get one on thinking about her yet. What a shape—and knowing right where to put it, too. But this brunette kid, Molly, is the nuts. What a pair of bubbies! High and pointed—and that ain’t no cupform either, brother; that’s God.

  I wish to Christ that kraut Bruno would bust a blood vessel some day, bending them horseshoes. Goddamn, that Molly kid’s got legs like a racehorse. Maybe I could give her one jump and then blow the show. Jesus, it would be worth it, to get into that.

  “Over here, folks, right over here. On this platform you see one of the most amazing little ladies the wide world has ever known. And right beside her we have an exact replica of the electric chair at Sing Sing prison….”

  Mary Margaret Cahill: Don’t forget to smile; Dad always said that. Golly, I wish Dad was here. If I could only look out there and see him grinning up at me everything would be hunky dory. Time to drop the robe and give them an eyeful. Dad, honey, watch over me.…

  Dad taught Molly all kinds of wonderful things while she was growing up and they were fun, too. For instance, how to walk out of a hotel in a dignified manner with two of your best dresses wrapped around you under the dress you had on. They had to do that once in Los Angeles and Molly got all of her clothes out. Only they nearly caught Dad and he had to talk fast. Dad was wonderful at talking fast and whenever he got in a tight place Molly would go all squirmy inside with thrill and fun because she knew her dad could always wiggle out just when the others thought he was cornered. Dad was wonderful.

  Dad always knew nice people. The men were sometimes soused a little but the ladies that Dad knew were always beautiful and they usually had red hair. They were always wonderful to Molly and they taught her to put on lipstick when she was eleven. The first time she put it on by herself she got on too much and Dad burst out laughing loud and said she looked like something from a crib house—and jail bait at that.

  The lady that Dad was friendly with at the time—her name was Alyse—shushed Dad and said, “Come over here, darling. Alyse’ll show you. Let’s take this off and start over. The idea is to keep people from knowing that you have any makeup on at all—especially at your age. Now watch.” She looked at Molly’s face carefully and said, “This is where you start. And don’t let anybody talk you into putting rouge on anywhere else. You have a square face and the idea is to soften it and make it look round.” She showed Molly just how to do it and then took it all off and made her do it herself.

  Molly wanted Dad to help her but he said it wasn’t his business—getting it off was more in his line, especially on the collars of shirts. Molly felt awful, having to do it all by herself because she was afraid she wouldn’t do it right and finally she cried a little and then Dad took her on his lap and Alyse showed her again and after that it was all right and she always used makeup, only people didn’t know about it. “My, Mr. Cahill—what a lovely child! Isn’t she the picture of health! Such lovely rosy cheeks!” Then Dad would say, “Indeed, ma’am, lots of milk and early to bed.” Then he would wink at Molly because she didn’t like milk and Dad said beer was just as good for you and she didn’t like beer very much but it was always nice and cold and besides you got pretzels with it and everything. Also Dad said it was a shame to go to bed early and miss everything when you could sleep late the next day and catch up—unless you had to be at the track for an early workout, to hold the clock on a horse, and then it was better to stay up and go to bed later.

  On
ly, when Dad had made a real killing at the track he always got lit and when he got lit he always tried to send her off to bed just when everything was going swell and because other people in the crowd were always trying to get her to take some, Molly never cared for liquor. Once, in a hotel where they were stopping, there was a girl got terribly drunk and began to take her clothes off and they had to put her to bed in the room next to Molly’s. There were a lot of men going in and coming out all night and the next day the cops came and arrested the girl, and Molly heard people talking about it and somebody said later that they let the girl go but she had to go to the hospital because she had been hurt inside someway. Molly couldn’t bear the thought of getting drunk after that because anything might happen to you and you shouldn’t let anything happen to you with a man unless you were in love with him. That was what everybody said and people who made love but weren’t really in love were called tramps. Molly knew several ladies who were tramps and she asked Dad one time why they were tramps and that’s what he said: that they’d let anybody hug and kiss them either for presents or money. You shouldn’t do that unless the guy was a swell guy and not likely to cross you up or take a powder on you if you were going to have a baby. Dad said you should never let anybody make love to you if you couldn’t use his toothbrush, too. He said that was a safe rule and if you followed that you couldn’t go wrong.

  Molly could use Dad’s toothbrush and often did, because one of their brushes was always getting left behind in the hotel or sometimes Dad needed one to clean his white shoes with.

  Molly used to wake up before Dad and sometimes she would run in and hop into his bed and then he would grunt and make funny snorey noises—only they sounded all funny and horrible—and then he would make believe he thought there was a woodchuck in the bed and he would blame the hotel people for letting woodchucks run around in their joint and then he would find out it was Molly and no woodchuck and he would kiss her and tell her to hurry up and get dressed and then go down and get him a racing form at the cigar stand.