Nightmare Alley

by William Lindsay Gresham

  “I see now that Mr. Stanton has got a good handful of questions, so if he’ll bring them right up here on the stage we’ll continue with the readings.”

  Stan pushed through the crowd to a curtained door on one side of the little proscenium. He passed through. Inside there was a flight of rough board steps leading to the stage. It was dark and smelled of cheap whisky. Under the steps there was a square window opening into the low, boxlike compartment beneath the stage. At the window a bleary, unshaven face blinked out over a spotlessly clean white shirt. One hand held out a bunch of envelopes. Without a word Stan handed the man the envelopes he had collected, received the dummy batch, and in a second was onstage with them. Zeena moved forward a little table containing a metal bowl and a dark bottle.

  “We’ll ask the gentleman to drop all the questions into this bowl. Now then, people ask me if I have spirit aid in doing what I do. I always tell them that the only spirits I control are the ones in this bottle—spirits of alcohol. I’m going to pour a little on your questions and drop a match into the bowl. Now you can see them burning, and that’s the last of them. So anybody who was afraid someone would find out what he wrote or that I was going to handle his question can just forget it. I’ve never touched them. I don’t have to because I get an impression right away.”

  Stan had backed to one corner of the stage and stood watching the audience quietly as they strained their necks upward, hanging on every word of the seeress. In the floor, which was a few inches above their eye level, was a square hole. Zeena stroked her forehead, covering her eyes with her hand. At the opening appeared a pad of paper, a grimy thumb holding it, on which was scrawled in crayon, “What to do with wagon? J. E. Giles.”

  Zeena looked up, folding her arms with decision. “I get an impression— It’s a little cloudy still but it’s getting clearer. I get the initials J … E … G. I believe it’s a gentleman. Is that right? Will the person who has those initials raise his hand, please?”

  An old farmer lifted a finger as gnarled as a grapevine. “Here, ma’am.”

  “Ah, there you are. Thank you, Mr. Giles. The name is Giles, isn’t it?”

  The crowd sucked in its breath. “I thought so. Now then, Mr. Giles, you have a problem, isn’t that right?” The old man’s head wagged solemnly. Stan noted the deep creases in his red neck. Old sodbuster. Sunday clothes. White shirt, black tie. What he wears at funerals. Tie already tied—he hooks it onto his collar button. Blue serge suit—Sears, Roebuck or a clothing store in town.

  “Let me see,” Zeena went on, her hand straying to her forehead again. “I see— Wait. I see green trees and rolling land. It’s plowed land. Fenced in.”

  The old man’s jaw hung open, his eyes frowning with concentration, trying not to miss a single word.

  “Yes, green trees. Probably willow trees near a crick. And I see something under those trees. A— It’s a wagon.”

  Watching, Stan saw him nod, rapt.

  “An old, blue-bodied wagon under those trees.”

  “By God, ma’am, it’s right there this minute.”

  “I thought so. Now you have a problem on your mind. You are thinking of some decision you have to make connected with that wagon, isn’t that so? You are thinking about what to do with the wagon. Now, Mr. Giles, I would like to give you a piece of advice: don’t sell that old blue-bodied wagon.”

  The old man shook his head sternly. “No, ma’am, I won’t. Don’t belong to me!”

  There was a snicker in the crowd. One young fellow laughed out loud. Zeena drowned him out with a full-throated laugh of her own. She rallied, “Just what I wanted to find out, my friend. Folks, here we have an honest man and that’s the only sort I want to do any business with. Sure, he wouldn’t think of selling what wasn’t his, and I’m mighty glad to hear it. But let me ask you just one question, Mr. Giles. Is there anything the matter with that wagon?”

  “Spring’s broke under the seat,” he muttered, frowning.

  “Well, I get an impression that you are wondering whether to get that spring fixed before you return the wagon or whether to return it with the spring broken and say nothing about it. Is that it?”

  “That’s it, ma’am!” The old farmer looked around him triumphantly. He was vindicated.

  “Well, I’d say you had just better let your conscience be your guide in that matter. I would be inclined to talk it over with the man you borrowed it from and find out if the spring was weak when he loaned it to you. You ought to be able to work it out all right.”

  Stan quietly left the stage and crept down the steps behind the draperies. He squeezed under the steps and came out beneath the stage. Dead grass and the light coming through chinks in the box walls, with the floor over his head. It was hot, and the reek of whisky made the air sweetly sick.

  Pete sat at a card table under the stage trap. Before him were envelopes Stan had passed him on his way up to the seeress; he was snipping the ends off with scissors, his hands shaking. When he saw Stan he grinned shamefacedly.

  Above them Zeena had wound up the “readings” and gone into her pitch: “Now then, folks, if you really want to know how the stars affect your life, you don’t have to pay a dollar, nor even a half; I have here a set of astrological readings, all worked out for each and every one of you. Let me know your date of birth and you get a forecast of future events complete with character reading, vocational guidance, lucky numbers, lucky days of the week, and the phases of the moon most conducive to your prosperity and success. I’ve only a limited amount of time, folks, so let’s not delay. They’re only a quarter, first come, first served and while they last, because I’m getting low.”

  Stan slipped out of the sweatbox, quietly parted the curtains, stepped into the comparatively cooler air of the main tent, and sauntered over toward the soft drink stand.

  Magic is all right, but if only I knew human nature like Zeena. She has the kind of magic that ought to take anybody right to the top. It’s a convincer—that act of hers. Yet nobody can do it, cold. It takes years to get that kind of smooth talk, and she’s never stumped. I’ll have to try and pump her and get wised up. She’s a smart dame, all right. Too bad she’s tied to a rumdum like Pete who can’t even get his rhubarb up any more; so everybody says. She isn’t a bad-looking dame, even if she is a little old.

  Wait a minute, wait a minute. Maybe here’s where we start to climb.…

  CARD III

  The High Priestess

  Queen of borrowed light who guards a shrine between the pillars Night and Day.

  BEYOND the flowing windshield the taillight of the truck ahead wavered ruby-red in the darkness. The windshield wiper’s tock-tock-tock was hypnotic. Sitting between the two women, Stan remembered the attic at home on a rainy day—private, shut off from prying eyes, close, steamy, intimate.

  Molly sat next to the door on his right, leaning her head against the glass. Her raincoat rustled when she crossed her legs. In the driver’s seat Zeena bent forward, peering between the swipes of the wiper, following blindly the truck that held the snake box and the gear for the geek show, Bruno’s weights, and Martin’s baggage with the tattoo outfit. The geek, with his bottle, had crawled into a little cavern made by the piled gear and folded canvas.

  In her own headlights, when the procession stopped at a crossing, Zeena could see Bruno’s chunky form in a slicker swing from the cab and plod around to the back to look at the gear and make sure the weights were fast. Then he came over and stepped on the running board. Zeena cranked down the window on her side. “Hi, Dutchy—wet enough for you?”

  “Joost about,” he said softly. “How is things back here? How is Pete?”

  “Right in back of us here having a snooze on the drapes. You reckon we’ll try putting up in this weather?”

  Bruno shook his head. His attention crept past Zeena and Stan, and for a moment his eyes lingered sadly on Molly, who had not turned her head.

  “I joost want to make sure everything is okay.” He turned b
ack into the rain, crossing the streaming beam of the headlights and vanishing in the dark. The truck ahead began to move; Zeena shifted gears.

  “He’s a fine boy,” she said at last. “Molly, you ought to give Bruno a chance.”

  Molly said, “No, thanks. I’m doing okay. No, thanks.”

  “Go on—you’re a big girl now. Time you was having some fun in this world. Bruno could treat you right, by the looks of him. When I was a kid I had a beau that was a lumberjack—he was built along the lines of Bruno. And oh, boy!”

  As if suddenly aware that her thigh was pressed close to Stan’s, Molly squeezed farther into the corner. “No, thanks. I’m having fun now.”

  Zeena sighed gustily. “Take your time, kid. Maybe you just ain’t met the right fella. And Stan here ought to be ashamed of himself. Why, me and Pete was married when I was seventeen. Pete wasn’t much older’n Stan. How old are you, Stan?”

  “Twenty-one,” Stan said, keeping his voice low.

  Approaching a curve, Zeena braced herself. Stan could feel the muscles of her thigh tighten as she worked the wheel. “Them was the days. Pete was working a crystal act in vaudeville. God, he was handsome. In a soup and fish he looked about two feet taller than in his street clothes. He wore a little black beard and a turban. I was working in the hotel when he checked in and I was that green I asked him when I brought in the towels if he’d tell my fortune. I’d never had my fortune told. He looked in my hand and told me something very exciting was going to happen to me involving a tall, dark man. I got the giggles. It was only because he was so good-looking. I wasn’t bashful around men. Never was. I couldn’t have kept that hotel job a minute if I had been. But the best I’d been hoping for was to hook some gambler or race-track man—hoping he would help me get on the stage.”

  Suddenly Molly spoke. “My dad was a race-track man. He knew a lot about horses. He didn’t die broke.”

  “Well, now,” Zeena said, taking her eyes from the point of ruby light ahead long enough to send Molly a warm look in the darkness. “What d’you know. Oh, the gamblers was the great sheiks in my day. Any gal who could knock herself off a gambling man was doing something. We started when we were fourteen or fifteen. Lordy, that was fifteen years ago! Seems like yesterday some ways and like a million years in others. But the gamblers were the heartbreakers. Say, honey—I’ll bet your dad was handsome, eh? Girls generally take after their fathers.”

  “You bet he was handsome. Daddy was the best-looking man I ever saw. I always said I’d never get married until I found a man as good-looking as Daddy—and as sweet. He was grand.”

  “Umm. Tall, dark, and handsome. Guess that lets you out, Stan. I don’t mean about being tall. You’re tall enough. But Molly likes ’em dark.”

  “I could get some hair dye,” Stan said.

  “Nope. Nope, never do. That might fool the public, Goldy Locks, but it would never fool a wife. Less’n you wanted to dye all over.” She threw back her head and laughed. Stan found himself laughing too, and even Molly joined in.

  “Nope,” Zeena went on, “Pete was a real brunette all over; and, boy, could he love. We got married second season I traveled with him. He had me doing the back-of-the-house steal with the envelopes at first, in an usherette’s uniform. Then we worked out a two-person act. He worked the stage, with his crystal, and I worked the audience. We used a word code at first and he used to ring in that part of the act as a stall while another girl was copying out the questions backstage. I’d go out and have people give me articles and Pete would look into his crystal and describe them. When we started we only used about ten different things and it was simple, but half the time I would get mixed up and then Pete would do some tall ad-libbing. But I learned. You should of seen our act when we were working the Keith time. By God, we could practically send a telegram word by word, and nobody could tumble, it was that natural, what we said.”

  “Why didn’t you stay in vaudeville?” Stan asked intently. Suddenly he knew he had said the wrong thing; but there was no way to recall it, so he kept quiet.

  Zeena paid close attention to her driving for a moment and then she rallied. “Pete’s nerve began to go back on him.” She turned and looked back into the rear of the van at the curled, sleeping figure, covered with a raincoat. Then she went on, dropping her voice. “He began muffing the code and he always needed a few shots before going on. Booze and mentalism don’t mix. But we do as well in the carny, figuring up the net at the end of the year. And we don’t have to cut no dash—living in swell hotels and all that. Horoscopes are easy to pitch and cost you about twenty-five a thousand. And we can take it easy in the winter. Pete don’t drink much then. We got a shack down in Florida and he likes it down there. I do a little tea-leaf reading and one winter I worked a mitt camp in Miami. Palmistry always goes good in a town like Miami.”

  “I like Miami,” Molly said softly. “Dad and I used to go there for the races at Hialeah and Tropical Park. It’s a grand place.”

  “Any place is grand, long as you got the old do-re-mi in the grouch bag,” Zeena said. “Say, this must be it. They’re turning. I can tell you I ain’t going to sleep in the truck tonight. Little Zeena’s going to get her a room with a bathtub if they got any in this town. What say, kid?”

  “Anything suits me,” Molly said. “I’d love to have a hot bath.”

  Stan had a vision of what Molly would look like in the bathtub. Her body would be milk-white and long-limbed there in the water and a black triangle of shadow and her breasts with rosy tips. He would stand looking down at her and then bend over and she would reach soapy arms up but she would have to be someone else and he would have to be someone else, he thought savagely, because he had never managed to do it yet and always something held him back or the girl seemed to freeze up or suddenly he didn’t want her any more once it was within reach and besides there was never the time or the place was wrong and besides it took a lot of dough and a car and all kinds of stuff and then they would expect you to marry them right away and they would probably get a kid the first thing.…

  “Here we are, chillun,” Zeena said.

  The rain had slackened to a drizzle. In the lights of headlamps the roughnecks were busy tearing canvas from the trucks. Stan threw his slicker over his shoulders, went around to open the rear doors of the truck. He crawled in and gently shook Pete by the ankle. “Pete, wake up. We’re here. We’ve got to put up.”

  “Oh, lemme sleep five minutes more.”

  “Come on, Pete. Zeena says to give us a hand putting up.”

  He suddenly threw off the raincoat which covered him and sat up shivering. “Just a minute, kid. Be right with you.” He crawled stiffly from the truck and stood shaking, tall and stooped, in the cool night air. From one pocket he drew a bottle, offering it to Stan, who shook his head. Pete took a pull, then another, and corked the bottle. Then he drew the cork out, finished it, and heaved it into the night. “Dead soldier.”

  The floodlights were up and the carny boss had laid out the midway with his marking stakes. Stan shouldered planks that fitted together to make Zeena’s stage and drew one bundle of them from the van.

  The top of the Ten-in-One was going up. Stan gave a hand on the hoist, while watery dawn showed over the trees and in houses on the edge of the fair grounds lights began to snap on in bedrooms, then in kitchens.

  In the growing lavender of daybreak the carny took shape. Booths sprang up, the cookhouse sent the perfume of coffee along the dripping air. Stan paused, his shirt stuck to him with sweat, a comfortable glow in the muscles of his arms and back. And his old man had wanted him to go into real estate!

  Inside the Ten-in-One tent Stan and Pete set up the stage for the mental act. They got the curtains hung, moved the bridge table and a chair under the stage, and stowed away the cartons of horoscopes.

  Zeena returned. In the watery gold light of morning lines showed around her eyes, but she held herself as straight as a tent pole. “Got me a whole damn bridal suite—two r
ooms and bawth. C’mon over, both of you, and have a good soak.”

  Pete needed a shave, and his gaunt, angular face seemed stretched tighter over his bones. “I’d like to, sugar. Only I got to do a few little chores first in town. I’ll see you later on.”

  “It’s 28 Locust Lane. You got enough dough?”

  “You might let me have a couple of dollars from the treasury.”

  “Okay, honey. But get some coffee into you first. Promise Zeena you’ll have breakfast.”

  Pete took the money and put it carefully away in a billfold. “I shall probably have a small glass of iced orange juice, two three-minute eggs, melba toast and coffee,” he said, his voice suddenly vibrant. Then he seemed to fade. He took out the billfold and looked in it. “Must make sure I got my money safe,” he said in an off-key, strangely childish tone. He started off across the lot toward a shack at the edge of the village. Zeena watched him go.

  “I’ll bet that joint is a blind pig,” she said to Stan. “Pete’s sure a real clairvoyant when it comes to locating hidden treasure— long as it gurgles when you shake it. Well, you coming back and clean up? Look at you! Your shirt’s sticking to you with sweat!”

  As they walked, Stan breathed in the morning. Mist hung over the hills beyond the town, and from a slope rising from the other side of the road came the gentle tonk of a cowbell. Stan stopped and stretched his arms.