Unraveled

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  I limped along as we went through the spinning Barrel of Fun tunnel and I might near fell over twice because it made me dizzy. My foot wasn’t helping my balance neither. We left and stumbled across the dancing bridge that tilted ever which-a-way when we stepped on it. The place was full of noise and organ music. We went through a room with lights popping like flashbulbs while our eyes were trying to readjust. The next hall led into a room full of distorted mirrors.

  Pepper held Mark’s hand and they bulled on ahead, pushing past a gaggle of girls laughing at their wavy images. We turned a corner behind some boys and girls about our age and found ourselves in the glass house. There was no way to hurry, because the lights were set so’s you couldn’t see well and every little cubicle had only one way out.

  I was feeling each pane of glass when I realized Mark and Pepper had gotten ahead of me, and it wasn’t all because of my limp. “Hey!”

  They were only a few feet away, but when I reached out, my hand cracked against the glass. I hollered again, but they couldn’t hear me over the noise and screams of other kids. The music was so loud that it hurt my ears. My head pounded so full of pressure I thought it’d pop.

  Mark stopped about two cubicles over and pointed at his feet. I looked, but couldn’t figure out what he wanted me to see. He mouthed something and I frowned at the dirty floor that looked like it hadn’t be cleaned in a hundred years. There was something…oh! The wooden frames on the floor were the giveaway. You couldn’t find your way very fast by patting the glass, but when you looked at the frames on the floor, you could real quick tell that some had glass in them, and the empty frames told me the way out.

  From there it was only a few seconds until I caught up with them.

  Pepper acted as frustrated as I was scared. “Stay with us!”

  “My foot hurts! That’s why I’m in here in the first place, because I couldn’t outrun Calvin.”

  “No talking!” Mark sounded like Uncle Cody when he was mad. He checked over his shoulder to be sure Calvin wasn’t behind us and led the way again. “Come on!”

  We came to steps that bounced and jiggled, but using the pipe handrails, we climbed to a landing where a spinning barrel revolved around a slide. Pepper dropped down on her butt and slid out of sight. When she hit, we heard her scream, and it wasn’t one of fun.

  “Pepper!” Mark jumped onto the long slide and shot out of sight and I went in right behind him.

  I knew it. Calvin had come in from the other side.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Clocko watched Ned and Cody drift to a stop only feet away. His stomach clenched when Ned looked his way, but then Clocko remembered they wouldn’t recognize him under the greasepaint and wig. Even though Ned had known him from the time he was a kid in Center Springs, Calvin was as camouflaged as a quail squatting in tall grass.

  It was suddenly a glorious situation and he threw his head back and laughed. Baggy the Clown took it as a cue, and they laughed together, one a real guffaw, the other stage acting. Clocko’s attention flicked to Cody’s empty shirt pocket and another thrill ran up his spine when he remembered taking the sheriff’s silver Cross pen from the kitchen table that night in his house. Cody needed to suffer and worry just like him, only the pen didn’t throw enough suspicion his way.

  It was a spur-of-the-moment souvenir after he spent five minutes standing in their bedroom door, watching Cody and Norma Faye’s sleeping shapes in the moonlight. Breathing through his mouth, he thought about killing them both right then with the razor sharp knife riding in the homemade shoulder rig under his oversize clothes, imagining Norma Faye’s scream at the sight of Cody’s spurting blood, but he wanted them to suffer first, just like he did.

  Instead, he decided that he could sneak in any time before the carnival left and do it then.

  Calvin only took up the carney life to come back and get even with the man stole his wife and destroyed his future.

  Standing on the midway, Calvin frowned and pressed the knife against his chest with one hand. He never went anywhere without it and now he wanted payback. He wanted Cody to recognize him in the last seconds of his life, to watch his eyes widen in fear.

  Then he’d make Norma Faye beg as he cut her throat for leaving him when he needed her the most. He was weaker then, and confused about what he should do. But not anymore.

  He had the chance to bring it all to a head this night.

  He laughed again. It was exciting. Stir up a little trouble and the long-festering resentment between the families boiled over. It was beautiful to play those fools one against the other, burning houses and killing both Clays and Mayfields as if hunting season had opened, while the laws were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

  Ned and Cody looked as if they were waiting on someone, or maybe looking for somebody. It took a moment to realize it was probably Top. The kid recognizing him might change things, good or bad, one way or another, but Calvin knew as sure as he’d ever known anything before that the time had come for all of them.

  Cody’s eyes drifted over the balloons, Baggy, and then came to rest on Clocko.

  Calvin’s chest swelled when Cody didn’t register any recognition at all. Clocko’s painted smile widened, emphasized by the red lips and black outline. He danced a little jig, a shave-and-a-haircut move with his feet and then slapped the pavement with his shoe to finish.

  He gave Cody a wide wink.

  The sheriff responded with a curious grin which immediately faded when shouts came from the far end of the midway. “Fight!” was repeated back down the line of tents, rides, and games.

  Ned and Cody took off and Clocko’s smile became even wider. Tonight his knife was going to slice Cody Parker’s throat, as soon as he finished his business with that damned kid in the Funhouse. He waited for Top to come out and shuddered in ecstasy at how it would feel when the edge cut through Cody’s living flesh, arteries, and the crunchy cartilage of his throat.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Pepper was standing up in the flickering lights, wagging her finger in the face of a guy dressed in black. She had him against a wall and was giving him a good cussin’ when I hit the bottom of the slide and saw that it wasn’t Calvin after all.

  Mark grabbed her arm. “What’s wrong?”

  “This son of a bitch grabbed me.”

  The guy held out his hands when I was close. “Honest. That’s my job, to step out of the dark and grab you. I’m supposed to scare you.”

  “Well you damn sure grabbed something that you shouldn’t…”

  “Them little skeeter bites of yours ain’t enough to tell…”

  Pepper drew back her fist to punch the sneering teenager when Mark hooked her elbow and pushed on the exit door. “Cool it. We’re out of here.” He drug her across the threshold and out into the thick humidity at the same time a jet of air shot up from the floor with a loud whoosh.

  “Shit!” Pepper turned to charge back inside away from that startling burst, but Mark shoved her the rest of the way outside and followed. The jet caught him too, then me as I pushed outside and we stumbled down the metal steps to the ground.

  A clown with a bunch of balloons watched us. I gave him a good, long look to make sure it wasn’t Calvin Williams behind all that paint, but that guy had a wide red frown instead of Calvin’s half-finished smile.

  Another clown beside him reached out to rub a little boy on his bare head.

  Pepper and Mark led the way, and I limped along behind them. We hadn’t no more than stepped into the throng of people than we heard someone shouting there was a fight going on.

  It looked like our school yard when boys tangled up. More’n half the people close by us took off to see what they could see. I thought I saw Grandpa and Uncle Cody’s hats in the crowd. So many men wore straw Stetsons that I couldn’t tell for sure.

  Mark and Pepper disappeared int
o the crowd and I limped along behind, my bleeding foot killing me. “Hey, y’all. I can’t walk that fast.”

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Clocko nudged Baggy when Top and two others boiled out of the Funhouse. He immediately recognized Pepper. “Did you see what those three kids did?”

  The clown who was once a gas station attendant followed Clocko’s finger. “Cal, I see dozens of kids.”

  Clocko took a deep breath to calm himself, wishing he could slide his knife into the base of the dumbass’s skull like he did that idiot Joe Bill Haynes, just before he pushed him into his dirty swimming pool. Joe Bill was another of those who had to pay with his life, because right out of high school he’d asked Maybelle Simpson out on a date only a day before Calvin planned to express his own feelings to her. After that, he’d lost the battle as she and Joe Bill quickly became engaged and married.

  Maybelle didn’t have him now, though, that was for sure.

  Clocko grabbed Baggy’s oversize shirt and tugged. “Look. That long-haired Indian kid and the girl with the feather in her hair. I think they’ve been picking pockets all night. I saw him slip something out of that woman’s purse and he passed it to the girl and she stuffed it into that hobo bag on her shoulder.”

  Baggy squinted, shaping his makeup into a ghastly frown. “Oh, yeah.”

  “See that crippled kid limping along behind them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s the shill. I saw him limp in front of the lady to get her attention and the other two snatched her billfold.”

  “There ain’t no pros like that out here in the country. Maybe in Dallas, or Houston, but not here in the sticks.”

  The guy was driving Calvin nuts. Baggy was slower than most other people when it came to thinking, but he wasn’t getting the idea at all. “Look, they’re some of them hippie kids that travel all around the country. I bet they follow us and make a living stealing from these honest folks.” He took Baggy’s elbow. “C’mon. We’re gonna grab them when they pass the freak show tent. Help me drag the Indian kid and the girl out of sight and I bet the crippled kid’ll follow, and then we’ll get ’em all. One of us’ll hold them while the other’n goes and gets Delmar.”

  Baggy thought for a moment. “Why don’t we follow ’em ’til we come across somebody to help us?”

  The Wraith was fast taking over Clocko the Clown. His hand twitched, aching to feel the knife’s bone handle. “Because we might lose them. Look, they’re getting away. Come on!” He grabbed the remaining balloons from Baggy and handed them to a group of black kids who squealed with delight.

  Baggy followed and they broke into a jog, much to the amusement of the carnival’s patrons who expected a show. Clocko and Baggy grabbed the long-haired Indian boy and his girlfriend in painful arm locks and quickly ushered them between the tents.

  The boy with the limp shouted. “Help! It’s Calvin Williams!” He followed them out of sight. The crowd moved on. No one wanted to get involved.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Cody moved faster than Ned, bulling through the gathering crowd that packed tighter the closer he came to the confrontation near the ticket booth. Most of the gawkers stepped aside, but those sympathetic to either family intentionally held him back.

  Ahead, one rumbling voice rose above the others. There was anger radiating like waves of heat from Deputy John Washington, the giant of a man who rarely spoke above a normal tone. “Enough!”

  Ned trailed behind, shoving people aside before the wake behind Cody closed up. “Move! Laws coming through!”

  Cody’s subconscious heard Ned at the same time he broke into the circle of men and absorbed the terrifying picture of an imaginary fuse hissing toward several sticks of human dynamite. The tension was palpable in the garish flashing lights. Both deputies were squared off like dogs in a pit against two families who hated each other as much as the Devil himself.

  The sheen of John’s tight face came not from the humidity, but from the rising temperature of the confrontation. His right hand rested on the holstered revolver hanging from his dress belt. His left held a sap.

  Deputy Anna Sloan’s eyes were glassy with anger and pressure. Royal Clay lay bleeding at her feet and she faced Cecil with her own sap held ready.

  Cody’s relief that they hadn’t drawn their weapons was short-lived. The appearance of only one firearm in the crowd would trigger a slaughter. Too many people crowded in around them. If anyone were to fire, there was a hundred percent chance that onlookers would be soaking up lead.

  The feuding families knew it too. Outnumbering the deputies at least twenty to one, they closed in on each other until they were within spitting distance. It took a moment for Cody to hear them through the chaos and shouts.

  “You killed Hollis!”

  “One of you bastards burned down my house!”

  Cecil laughed. “I sure did and I’ll light another’n if you don’t get out of this county!”

  “Go ahead. Swing and see what happens.”

  “I ain’t startin’ nothin’!”

  “It’s done started you son of a bitch!”

  John held out the sap in his left hand like a dagger. The portion of the crowd closest to him shrank back as if it was sharp and dangerous. He hadn’t yet acknowledged Cody’s arrival. The big man pushed into the middle of the confrontation. “Bryce! You better get your hand out of that pocket.”

  Cody finally registered the entire scene. Bryce Mayfield’s hand was in the pocket of his overalls, where it shouldn’t be in the last few seconds before a fight. Behind him, relatives assumed rigid stances, ready to launch themselves at the Clays…

  …who mirrored their readiness. Royal Clay was on the ground, holding his bloody head and struggling to rise while others of his clan moved between him and the Mayfields to protect their own while he was down…

  …and Anna reached for Cecil’s collar when a voice rang out and Cody realized it came from Willie Mayfield…

  …who said, “John, go on and get gone. This needs to end here,” and…

  …John raised the sap for a blow saying…“Nothin’s happenin’,” and…

  …Ned placed one hand on Cody’s shoulder as he shoved past saying, “Oh, shit,” and drew his own sap, and immediately swung at Bryce’s head where it connected in a spray of blood as…

  …Bryce’s hand came out of his pocket and a snub-nosed .38 fell to the ground one second before Bryce landed beside it and…

  …seconds later the world exploded as men clashed like charging armies.

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  One of the clowns pushed Pepper to the ground and knelt with his knee on her neck. “Stay right there, miss!”

  She grimaced with her face in the beaten-down grass. “Get your knee off me you son of a bitch! You ain’t got no right to drag us back here!”

  Mark kicked back like a mule, trying to catch the other clown’s knee. He missed and I launched myself at the guy to make him turn Mark loose. Adults knew more about fighting and he didn’t do nothing but duck. I went over his shoulder at the same time Mark hollered because of the pressure on his shoulder from the hold that feller had on him.

  They both went down. I stumbled over them. I couldn’t believe this was happening right in the open behind the tents. Carnivals were supposed to be fun, but here we were in the middle of a nightmare.

  The snarling clown holding Mark reached out and grabbed my shirt and slung me down. “Let me go!” I tried to twist out of his fist, but he held solid.

  The other one wasn’t as mean. “You kids settle down and we’ll work this out!”

  Pepper screamed anyway, but it was lost in the noise from the midway. I rolled and fought and my shirt came up around my arms. I twisted some more and suddenly the clown was holding nothing but cloth. I was standing there without a stitch on from the waist up.

  Al
l that fighting and wrestling had messed up the talking clown’s paint. It smeared down one eye past his mouth, making it all droop like he’d had a stroke. I looked around for something to hit him with when the light caught him just right and clear as day I saw it was Calvin Williams.

  He dropped my shirt. Someone screamed like a little girl. It was me. A farmer in overalls shot into the light a second later, swinging something long and hard. It cracked across the side of Calvin’s head with a clang and his red nose popped off. Blood spurted and he hollered and fell back in a roll.

  The farmer swung again, squalling like an old tomcat, screaming and jabbering in what sounded like the tongues I’d heard in Miss Becky’s little Assembly of God church more than once. Babbling like a terrified lunatic, he took another two-handed swing and hit Calvin across the ribs with a bildukey shovel. It smacked against something solid. I hoped it was the sound of a breaking rib.

  The other clown let go of Pepper and stood up, hollering. “Hey! It ain’t us. These kids are thieves. They’re pickpockets! We’re holding them for the laws.”

  The farmer was still squalling and babbling. He juked to the side and took a swing at that talking clown, who squealed and ran away. By that time Calvin struggled to his knees where the farmer whacked him on the back of the head. His red wig flew away as he staggered to his feet and stumbled after the other clown.

  They disappeared into the crowd on the midway. I turned to see the wide-eyed features of Mr. Ike Reader who stood there trembling, waving the shovel. “Clowns! Listen, listen. I hate clowns!” He swallowed and I saw his big Adam’s apple bounce up and down. “Now, why was they after y’all?”

  Pepper laid on the ground and laughed herself sick. Mark, and I were shaking, but we managed to explain what was happening.

  Chapter Seventy

  A bright and shiny flash cut through the sparkling lights. Ned recognized it for a knife blade. He swung his sap again, missing the head he was aiming at. Cody surged forward, straining to get his hands on a Clay he recognized only by his features.