Nightmare Alley

by William Lindsay Gresham

  Zeena stopped too. “Never get nothing like this working the two-a-day. Honest, you know, Stan, I’d get homesick just to hear a cow moo.”

  The sun, breaking through, sparkled in wagon ruts still deep with rain. Stan took her arm to help her across the puddles. Under the warm, smooth rubber of the raincoat he pressed the soft bulge of her breast. He could feel the heat steaming up over his face where the cool wind struck it.

  “You’re awful nice to have around, Stan. You know that?”

  He stopped walking. They were out of sight of the carnival grounds. Zeena was smiling at something inside herself. Awkwardly his arm went around her and he kissed her. It was lots different from kissing high-school girls. The warm, intimate searching of her mouth left him weak and dizzy. They broke apart and Stan said, “Wow.”

  Zeena let her hand stay for an instant pressed against his cheek; then she turned and they walked on, hand in hand.

  “Where’s Molly?” he asked after a while.

  “Pounding her ear. I talked the old gal that has the house into giving us the two rooms for the price of one. While I was waiting for her to put up her husband’s lunch I took a quick peek in the family Bible and got all their birth dates down pat. I told her right off that she was Aries—March 29th. Then I gave her a reading that just set her back on her heels. We got a real nice room. Always pays to keep your eyes open, I always say. The kid had her a good soak and hit the hay. She’ll be pounding her ear. She’s a fine kid, if she could only grow up some and stop yelping for her daddy every time she has a hangnail. But she’ll get over it, I reckon. Wait till you see the size of these rooms.”

  The room reminded Stan of home. The old house on Linden Street and the big brass bedstead in his parents’ room, where it was all tumbled and smelling of perfume on Mother’s pillow and of hair restorer on his father’s side.

  Zeena threw off her raincoat, rolled a newspaper into a tight bar, tied it with string in the middle and hung the coat up on a hook in the closet. She pulled off her shoes and stretched out on the bed, reaching her arms wide. Then she drew out her hairpins and the brassy hair which had been in a neat double roll around her head fell in pigtails. Swiftly she unbraided them and let the hair flow around her on the pillow.

  Stan said, “I guess I’d better get that bath. I’ll see if there’s any hot water left. He hung his coat and vest on a chairback. When he looked up he saw that Zeena had her eyes on him. Her lids were partly closed. One arm was bent under her head and she was smiling, a sweet, possessive smile.

  He came over to her and sat beside her on the edge of the bed. Zeena covered his hand with hers and suddenly he bent and kissed her. This time there was no need for them to stop and they didn’t. Her hand slid inside his shirt and felt the smooth warmth of his back tenderly.

  “Wait, honey. Not yet. Kiss me some more.”

  “What if Molly should wake up?”

  “She won’t. She’s young. You couldn’t wake that kid up. Don’t worry about things, honey. Just take it easy and slow.”

  All the things Stan had imagined himself saying and doing at such a time did not fit. It was thrilling and dangerous and his heart beat so hard he felt it would choke him.

  “Take all your things off, honey, and hang ’em on the chair, neat.”

  Stan wondered that he didn’t feel in the least ashamed now that this was it. Zeena stripped off her stockings, unhooked her dress and drew it leisurely over her head. Her slip followed.

  At last she lay back, her bent arm under her head, and beckoned him to come to her. “Now then, Stan honey, you can let yourself go.”

  “It’s getting late.”

  “Sure is. You got to get your bath and get back. Folks’ll think Zeena’s gone and seduced you.”

  “They’d be right.”

  “Damned if they wouldn’t.” She raised herself on her elbows and let her hair fall down on each side of his face and kissed him lightly. “Get along with you. Skat, now.”

  “Can’t. You’re holding me pinned down.”

  “Try’n get away.”

  “Can’t. Too heavy.”

  “See’f you can wiggle loose.”

  There was a knock at the door, a gentle, timid tapping. Zeena threw her hair out of her eyes. Stan started but she laid one finger on his lips. She swung off the bed gracefully and pulled Stan up by one hand. Then she handed him his trousers, underwear, and socks and pushed him into the bathroom.

  Behind the bathroom door Stan crouched, his ear to the panel, his heart hammering with alarm. He heard Zeena get her robe out of a bag and take her time about answering the tap. Then the hall door opened. Pete’s voice.

  “Sorry t’wake you, sugar. Only—” His voice sounded thicker. “Only, had little shopping to do. I sorta forgot ’bout getting breakfast.”

  There was the snap of a pocketbook opening. “Here’s a buck, honey. Now make sure it’s breakfast.”

  “Cross my heart, hope die.”

  Stan heard Zeena’s bare feet approach the bathroom. “Stan,” she called, “hurry up in there. I want to get some sleep. Get out of that tub and fall into your pants.” To Pete she said, “The kid’s had a hard night, tearing down and putting up in all that rain. I expect he’s fallen asleep in the tub. Maybe you better not wait for him.”

  The door closed. Stan straightened up. She had never turned a hair, lying to Pete about him being in the bathtub. It comes natural in women, he thought. That’s the way they all do when they have guts enough. That’s the way they would all like to do. He found himself trembling. Quietly he drew a tub of hot water.

  When it was half full he lay in it and closed his eyes. Well, now he knew. This was what all the love-nest murderers killed over and what people got married to get. This was why men left home and why women got themselves dirty reputations. This was the big secret. Now I know. But there’s nothing disappointing about the feeling. It’s okay.

  He let his hands trail in the hot water and splashed little ripples over his chest. He opened his eyes. Drawing his hand out of the steamy warmth he gazed at it a moment and then carefully took from the back of it a hair that gleamed brassy-gold, like a tiny, crinkled wire. Zeena was a natural blonde.

  The weeks went by. The Ackerman-Zorbaugh Monster Shows crawled from town to town, the outline of the sky’s edge around the fair grounds changing but the sea of upturned faces always the same.

  The first season is always the best and the worst for a carny. Stan’s muscles hardened and his fingers developed great surety, his voice greater volume. He put a couple of coin sleights in the act that he would never have had the nerve to try in public before.

  Zeena taught him many things, some of them about magic. “Misdirection is the whole works, honey. You don’t need no fancy production boxes and trap doors and trick tables. I’ve always let on that a man that will spend his time learning misdirection can just reach in his pocket and put something in a hat and then go ahead and take it out again and everybody will sit back and gasp, wondering where it came from.”

  “Did you ever do magic?” he asked her.

  Zeena laughed. “Not on your sweet life. There’s very few girls goes in for magic. And that’s the reason. A gal spends all her time learning how to attract attention to herself. Then in magic she has to unlearn all that and learn how to get the audience to look at something else. Strain’s too great. The dolls can never make it. I couldn’t. I’ve always stuck to the mental business. It don’t hurt anybody—makes plenty of friends for you wherever you go. Folks are always crazy to have their fortunes told, and what the hell— You cheer ’em up, give ’em something to wish and hope for. That’s all the preacher does every Sunday. Not much different, being a fortuneteller and a preacher, way I look at it. Everybody hopes for the best and fears the worst and the worst is generally what happens but that don’t stop us from hoping. When you stop hoping you’re in a bad way.”

  Stan nodded. “Has Pete stopped hoping?”

  Zeena was silent and her
childish blue eyes were bright. “Sometimes I think he has. Pete’s scared of something—I think he got good and scared of himself a long time ago. That’s what made him such a wiz as a crystal-reader—for a few years. He wished like all get out that he really could read the future in the ball. And when he was up there in front of them he really believed he was doing it. And then all of a sudden he began to see that there wasn’t no magic anywhere to lean on and he had nobody to lean on in the end but himself—not me, not his friends, not Lady Luck—just himself. And he was scared he would let himself down.”

  “So he did?”

  “Yeah. He did.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  Zeena bristled. “Nothing’s going to happen to him. He is a sweet man, down deep. Long as he lasts I’ll stick to him. If it hadn’t been for Pete I’d of probably ended up in a crib house. Now I got a nice trade that’ll always be in demand as long as there’s a soul in the world worried about where next month’s rent is coming from. I can always get along. And take Pete right along with me.”

  Across the tent the talker, Clem Hoately, had mounted the platform of Major Mosquito and started his lecture. The Major drew back one tiny foot and aimed a kick with deadly accuracy at Hoately’s shin. It made the talker stammer for a moment. The midget was snarling like an angry kitten.

  “The Major is a nasty little guy,” Stan said.

  “Sure he is. How’d you like to be shut up in a kid’s body that way? With the marks all yawping at you. It’s different in our racket. We’re up head and shoulders above the marks. We’re better’n they are and they know it. But the Major’s a freak born.”

  “How about Sailor Martin? He’s a made freak.”

  Zeena snorted. “He’s just a pecker carrying a man around with it. He started by having a lot of anchors and nude women tattooed on his arms to show the girls how tough he was or something. Then he got that battleship put on his chest and he was off. He was like a funny paper, with his shirt off, and he figured he might as well make his skin work for him. If he was ever in the Navy, I was born in a convent.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be making much time with your Electric Chair pal.”

  Zeena’s eyes flashed. “He better not. That kid’s not going to get it until she runs into some guy that’ll treat her right. I’ll see to that. I’d beat the be-Jesus out of any snot-nose that went monkeying around Molly.”

  “You and who else?”

  “Me and Bruno.”

  Evansburg, Morristown, Linklater, Cooley Mills, Ocheketawney, Bale City, Boeotia, Sanders Falls, Newbridge.

  Coming: Ackerman-Zorbaugh Monster Shows. Auspices Tall Cedars of Zion, Caldwell Community Chest, Pioneer Daughters of Clay County, Kallakie Volunteer Fire Department, Loyal Order of Bison.

  Dust when it was dry. Mud when it was rainy. Swearing, steaming, sweating, scheming, bribing, bellowing, cheating, the carny went its way. It came like a pillar of fire by night, bringing excitement and new things into the drowsy towns—lights and noise and the chance to win an Indian blanket, to ride on the ferris wheel, to see the wild man who fondles those rep-tiles as a mother would fondle her babes. Then it vanished in the night, leaving the trodden grass of the field and the debris of popcorn boxes and rusting tin ice-cream spoons to show where it had been.

  Stan was surprised, and gnawed by frustration. He had had Zeena—but how few chances ever came his way for him to have her again. She was the wise one, who knew all the ropes of the carny and everywhere else. She knew. And yet, in the tight world of the carnival, she could find very few opportunities to do what her eyes told Stan a dozen times a day that she would take pleasure in doing.

  Pete was always there, always hanging around, apologetic, crestfallen, hands trembling, perfumed with bootleg, always a reminder of what he had been.

  Zeena would beg off from a rendezvous with Stan to sew a button on Pete’s shirt. Stan couldn’t understand it; the more he thought about it the more confused and bitter he got. Zeena was using him to satisfy herself, he kept repeating. Then the thought struck him that maybe Zeena played a game of make-believe with him, and actually saw over his shoulder a shadow of Pete as he had been—handsome and straight and wearing his little black beard.

  The thought would strike him right in the middle of his act and his patter would turn into a snarl.

  One day Clem Hoately was waiting beside the platform when he came down after the last show. “Whatever’s eating you, kid, you better turn it off while you’re on the box. If you can’t be a trouper, pack up your junk and beat it. Magicians come two for a nickel.”

  Stan had acquired enough carny to reach over, take a half dollar from Hoately’s lapel, and vanish it in his other hand before walking away. But the call-down by the older man burnt into him. No woman or man his own age could drive the gall into his system like that. It took an old bastard, particularly when the stubble on his face looked silvery like fungus growing on a corpse. The bastard.

  Stan went to sleep that night on his cot in the Ten-in-One tent with fantasies of slowly roasting Hoately over a fire, inquisition fashion.

  Next day, just as they were about to open, Hoately stopped by his platform while Stan was opening a carton of pitch books.

  “Keep them half-dollar tricks in the act, son. They got a nice flash. The marks love it.”

  Stan grinned and said, “You bet.” When the first tip came wandering in he gave them all he had. His sale of the magic books almost doubled. He was on top of the world all day. But then came night.

  By night Zeena’s body plagued his dreams and he lay under the blanket, worn out and with his eyes burning for sleep, thinking back and having her over and over in memory.

  Then he waited until closing one night. He stepped back of the curtains on her miniature stage. Zeena had taken off the white silk robe and was putting her hair up, her shoulders white and round and tantalizing over her slip. He took her roughly in his arms and kissed her and she pushed him away. “You beat it out of here. I got to get dressed.”

  “All right. You mean we’re washed up?” he said.

  Her face softened and she laid her palm gently against his cheek. “Got to learn to call your shots, honey. We ain’t married folks. We got to be careful. Only one person I’m married to and that’s Pete. You’re a sweet boy and I’m fond as all hell of you. Maybe a little too fond of you. But we got to have some sense. Now you be good. We’ll get together one of these days—or nights. And we’ll have fun. That’s a promise. I’ll lay it on the line just as soon as ever we can.”

  “I wish I could believe it.”

  She slid her cool arms around his neck and gave him the promise between his lips, warm, sweet, and searching. His heart began to pound.

  “Tonight?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Make it tonight.”

  She shook her head. “I got to make Pete write some letters. He can’t if he gets too loaded and he’s got some that need answering. You can’t let your friends down in show business. You find that out when you get on your uppers and have to hit ’em for a loan. Maybe tomorrow night.”

  Stan turned away, rebellious and savage, feeling as if the whole surface of his mind had been rubbed the wrong way. He hated Zeena and her Pete.

  On his way over to the cookhouse for his supper he passed Pete. Pete was sober and shaky and profane. Zeena would have hidden his bottle in view of the letter-writing session. His eyes had begun to pop.

  “Got a spare dollar on you, kid?” Pete whispered.

  Zeena came up behind them. “You two boys stay right here and have your supper,” she said, pushing them toward the cookhouse. “I’ve got to find a drugstore in this burg that keeps open late. Nothing like a girl’s being careful of her beauty, huh? I’ll be right back, honey,” she said to Pete, fastening a loose button of his shirt. “We got to catch up on our correspondence.”

  Stan ate quickly, but Pete pushed the food around, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and wiped h
is hand carefully with his napkin.

  He crushed the napkin into a hard, paper wad and aimed it at the cook’s back with a curse.

  “You got a spare fin, kid?”

  “No. Let’s get on back to the tent. You got the new Billboard to read. Zeena left it under the stage.”

  They walked back in silence.

  Stan put up his cot and watched the Ten-in-One settle down for the night. Under the astrology stage a single light burned, winking through the cracks of the boards. Inside Pete was sitting at the table, trying to read the Billboard and going over and over the same paragraph.

  Why couldn’t Zeena have let him accompany her to the store, Stan asked himself. Then, on the way, maybe they could have warmed up and she would have forgotten about Pete and writing letters.

  Zeena had slipped the bottle under the seat of Major Mosquito’s chair. Stan jumped down from his own platform and crossed the tent softly. The Major’s tiny cot was just above his head; he could hear above him the quick breathing which sounded soprano. His hand found the bottle, drew it out.

  There was only an inch or two left in it. Stan turned back and crept up the steps of Zeena’s theater. A few moments later he came down and squeezed into the understage compartment. The bottle, more than half full now, was in his hand.

  “How about a drink, Pete?”

  “Glory be to God!” The flask was nearly snatched from his hand. Pete jerked the cork, holding it out to Stan automatically. The next instant he had it in his mouth and his Adam’s apple was working. He drained it and handed it back. “God almighty. A friend in need as the saying goes. I’m afraid I didn’t leave much for you, Stan.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t care for any right now.”

  Pete shook his head and seemed to pull himself together. “You’re a good kid, Stan. You got a fine act. Don’t let anything ever keep you out of the big time. You can go places, Stan, if you don’t get bogged down. You should have seen us when we were on top. Used to pack ’em in. They’d sit through four other acts just to see us. Boy, I can remember all the times we had our names on the marquee in letters a foot high—top billing —everywhere we went. We had plenty fun, too.