Kaleidoscope (11 page)

The only encouraging news—somebody down here was clearly hiding something. Who was the rumored benefactor bailing geeks out of hard times? The Fiddle Twins assumed Jack was the moneybag, but who was it really? If Alex Goodman hadn’t been in Cincinnati to meet Sally Price, then who had? It didn’t take a Pinkerton to figure that Luna had hired Jack largely to make sure he didn’t get answers to those questions. She had Jack by the balls and he had to play along. He wasn’t going to find any leads to Bladehorn’s stash from the outside of this closed-in camp, after all. If there was something down here that belonged to Bladehorn, somebody inside this tight knit of misfits had the beans and Jack had to make them spill.

He fell into bed exhausted, but could not sleep. Tommy roused the new brodie the second day at five sharp to work another day just like the first. By the third day Jack was close to folding.

What if he’d simply hit a dead end? What if there was nothing to be found in this fucking place but snakes and mosquitoes and freaks who never rubbed two honest dimes together in their lives?

Problem was, there was no other place to look. You couldn’t stash fifteen large and a quarter million in bonds on your lonesome. Somebody in this con-wise camp had to know something.

But what are the odds, Jack, that they’ll talk to you?

By the fourth day, Jack decided it didn’t matter what the odds were. Sometimes you got a bad hand you couldn’t fold; you just had to keep on playing hoping to draw that ace or else slip it up your sleeve. Jack decided he’d work on Tommy Speck. Four days of constant labor had diminished the distance between the two men. Tommy liked to talk. He liked to drink, too, and to gamble. Those were diversions which might be worked to advantage.

The G-tent provided his opportunity. On the road, a G-tent was a kind of social hall for carneys, a place to trade the virtually constant gossip that characterized the freaks’ conversation, and a place to gamble, which was their continual recreation. Brodies were generally discouraged from socializing with performers. The card table, however, proved a major exception to that rule.

The tent was raised on the backside of the midway, just behind the menagerie and the mechanical rides. The canvas was glowing like a jack o’ lantern from kerosene lamps as Jack stepped inside. Tommy was already in high form over a stein of homebrew, descanting to everyone in earshot on the differences between carney life and circus life right down to the knots used to secure the stakes anchoring their always-separate tents (“…Ya never see a carney usin’ that extra hitch!”), swapping stories with The Giant and Jo Jo and Frankie about the great carnivals and their owners, names completely unfamiliar to Jack—Mr. Jones, Mr. Ferari, and the feisty Hody Hurd.

“Fuck with that lady, you’d be redlighted overnight,” Tommy promised. “You’d be nursing a hangover in the stockcar, just sleepin’ it off at sixty miles an hour, next thing you know the sidedoor’s open and your ass is wrapped around a telegraph pole!”

“Lady knew how to take care of business!” Cassandra chortled, those three breasts rising and falling in perfect, firmly packed unison.

“Got sawdust in her veins,” Tommy echoed the sentiment. You might miss the small, plump woman smiling quietly at his side. In all their conversation, Tommy had not once referred to his wife. Eileen was her name, Jack learned that much from Penguin. Had been married to Tommy for years but was only just now
embarasso
with their first child.

She was a small woman, barely four feet tall, which still made her a head taller than her husband, but Penguin told Jack that Eileen was not a dwarf.

“Not all little people are dwarfs,” Charlotte informed him. “You can tell by looking at her joints, the way she walks—she’s not like Tommy. She’s a midget.”

“Will their child be a dwarf?”

“Won’t know ’til the pickle pops.”

Jack was tempted to sample the carney’s homebrew but settled instead for a firkin of tea sugared like molasses and poured over ice. He found a crate near Speck and his wife and settled in, feigning interest as the little man recalled his days with Guy Dodson and May Cody Fleming. Jack laughed along with the other carneys as Tommy aped or skewered the various managers whose railroad cars took shows all over the country. Speck knew them all. He knew the corporate side of the midway, as well, tracing the Byzantine ownership of the Royal American or the Amusement Corporation of America with the same rigor that a biographer would bring to bear on Carnegie or Mellon.

The more the dwarf drank, the less precision was involved, naturally, Tommy turning from fact to fiction, spinning yarns that always tied to girls and cards and booze and claiming a ringside seat at every significant event in history.

“I was
in
Buffalo in 1901 when they shot President McKinley.”

“Ought-One,” Half Track repeated and pressed the date onto The Slate’s palimpsest skin with a spoon.

One outrageous lie after another. Or perhaps they really were outrageous truths—no one seemed to care.

Every freak, knife-thrower and sword-swallower present had stories to tell, weaving incidents with histories and genealogies completely foreign to any outsider. There was a pair of faces though, new arrivals, who seemed very familiar to Jack.

They were twins, good looking brunettes, bright, happy faces. Kind of sexy.

He nudged Half Track.

“Know those two?”

“What two?”

“By Jo Jo. Sitting back to back.”

She followed his finger and snorted, “They ain’t sittin’ back to back, moron. They’re
joined
back to back.”

Even Jack had heard of the famous Hilton Sisters, and now he recalled where he’d seen them. It had been a vaudeville in Chicago. The twins headlined the show, two sweetly harmonized voices forever linked. He’d even bought a photograph afterward, that photo along with the attached promotional material intended to show how perfectly “adjusted” and “normal” the sisters really, truly were. Jack recalled the picture clearly now. Two young ladies dancing back to back with a pair of smiling, well-dressed beaus.

And here they were, another pair of Siamese freaks, sitting not ten feet from Jacques and Marcel. But unlike the Svengali Violinists, the Hilton Sisters were famous.

Were they rich as well?

Jack edged over to Tommy Speck’s wife.

“Somebody said those are the Hiltons, over there,” he pointed.

She smiled affirmation.

“They’re pretty big, aren’t they?”

She smiled again. “Tommy said you weren’t too sharp.”

There you go. Another dead end. But Jack had to keep playing.

“Jack Romaine. Don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Eileen. Pleased to meetcha.”

“Is it true the sisters are gonna be in the pictures? I heard something about a talkie.”

“They’re real troupers,” she nodded.

“Not a bad life,” Jack offered.

“Depends,” she shrugged and something in her tone changed.

Jack leaned over. “They got problems?”

Gossip. That was all it took for Eileen to open up.

“Word is they’re damn near hostage to their managers,” she said, and her little nostrils flared. “They never see a dime of their take. They’re put up in this mansion in San Antonio but it might as well be a prison. Poor kids never see a fella unless it’s for some promotional. Never get loose from the show unless the Meyers orchestrate it.

“Took a month to give those pricks the slip. The girls—? The Meyers think they’re in Saratoga. Luna brought ’em up to see an attorney in Tampa. See if she can cut ’em loose from Meyer and Edith. Those two! They ain’t even the girls’ real parents, for God’s sake!”

Lots to glean, there. Such as, for instance, how Luna Chevreaux had come to know any attorney prominent enough to represent the Hilton Sisters. But before Jack could even go about finding a way to frame that question, Eileen was back to her husband and another run of carney lore.

People and places. Name after name. Bill Lynch and the Lee brothers. Carl Sedlmayr. Nat Worman (“…you need somethin’ fixed, get it to Nat…”)

Jack learned the histories of Tom Thumb and Little Egypt sitting in that side-open tent. The freaks talked and talked, and as the lanterns wicked low and shadows pushed from the corners of the canvas their voices began almost imperceptibly to override the sight of their extra or missing limbs, their lesions, their anatomic anomalies or folds of skin. These were the voices of a genuine family, Jack began dimly to realize, an extended family flung on railroad cars and gas wagons all over the country, a soiree of misfits returning with the frost each year for renewal in a familiar, if not familial reunion.

There were celebrities on the billboard, but not on the backside. The Hilton Sisters who were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars fetched their own drinks right along with Half Track and Penguin. They got ribbed and kidded just like every other performer. And there were other named stars present as well, performers with royal status in this offbeat world, who were met with equal equanimity.

Jack Earl himself dipped into the pavilion just before midnight, higher by a foot than The Giant, looking taller still with a ten-gallon hat perched on his lantern-jawed head.

“Just in the neighborhood,” Earl replied to a casual question. “Thought I’d play me a hand or two of some cards. Get some of my money back from Tommy Speck.”

“How long ya got, Earl?” Tommy was already clearing a crate for a table.

“Not long enough.”

It was odd to see a man eight and a half feet tall pull up a fifty gallon barrel for an ottoman.

The world’s tallest man tipped back his ten-gallon to feature a weary face.

“Got to hitch up with Barnum’s in Sarasota.”

“Tell that shithead he can wait,” Cassandra challenged, as Tommy pulled out a deck of Players.

“Tell P.T. I’m takin’ you fishing.”

“Been fishin’ with you b’fore, Cassandra,” Earl winked. “An’ it damn near killed me.”

The whole tent roared laughter. A slow smile eased The Giant’s craggy face. The deeply set eyes roamed the tent briefly before they settled at last on the only unmarked face under the tent.

Without warning, Jack Earl reached over and took Jack Romaine’s dealing hand.

“Don’t remember seein’ you anyplace,” Earl turned Jack’s hand palm-up without waiting for a reply.

“I’m just a working man.” Jack resisted the urge to jerk his hand away. The tent was suddenly still as a house of stiffs. “Just started, really. Tommy’s showing me the ropes.”

Earl shrugged as he shuffled the cards.

“Ever’body’s got to start somewhere,” he said. “Word of advice, though. If yer willing.”

“Sure.”

“Get yerself an act. Walk nails, shit turds out yer mouth, somethin’. You don’ wanta be a brodie forever.”

The pronouncement seemed to be received as a kind of benediction. A buzz of life and laughter resumed as if wound up from a gramophone’s seashell speaker and within seconds the tent was as raucous as ever.

“Deal the man in, Tommy,” Earl said, and Jack took a familiar seat.

They played a few hands. Small talk. Then Jack Earl turned to address Tommy Speck’s wife.

“Ran into yer brother the other day. In Saratoga. Said he was pitchin’ for the Reds.”

Jack kept a poker face.

“He’s just tryin’ out,” Eileen blushed pleasure. “But Aaron’s good.”

“Got himself a hell of an arm,” Tommy agreed.

“They could use one,” Earl rejoined and Eileen laughed with everyone else.

Jack let a couple of cards slide before he risked an aside to Mrs. Speck.

“You from Cincinnati, Eileen?”

“My family lives there,” she nodded brightly, and Tommy broke in smoothly.

“Cain’t exactly call it home, though, can we, babe? Bein’ on the road alla time.”

Jack passed it off with a friendly nod. He waited long enough to finish a few more hands before he folded.

“I gotta hit the hay, gentlemen,” he announced, and with that excuse left the Specks and the other carnies to themselves.

Skirting the pines back to his shack, Jack mulled over the information he had gleaned from the evening’s society. There were a couple of things, he decided. First off it was apparent that Tommy did not want Jack to know his wife hailed from Cincinnati. Why? Could be a simple matter of coincidence that Eileen Speck was a citizen of the Queen City. And what about Eileen’s brother? A traveling man, apparently, playing games from Ohio to Florida. Could
he
be Alex Goodman’s go-between? Had Goodman been using Eileen’s brother or someone in her family to shepherd Sally Price?

Then there was that business with the Hilton sisters. Why had the twins come to Kaleidoscope in the first place? What made them think that Luna Chevreaux had the resources to end their indenturement?

Something stirred in the shadows beyond the needles of pine. Moving between the moon and the trees. Jack pivoted carefully. Luna regarded him from a distance, nearly invisible in the late night’s lunar shadow.

How long had she been watching?

“Better get some rest, Jack.” The arc of a cigarette hissed to the sand. “Brodies start early.”

Gimmick—
the control on a crooked game of chance.

T
he next morning put Jack behind a shovel and mallet trying to keep up with Tommy Speck as the little man pushed to complete preparations for the Saturday show. It was nearly noon when trucks came rolling down the sandy lane and Jack left his hammer and shovel to unload hay and oats and staples for the cookhouse.

“For a beddy, this place takes a lot of work,” Jack observed.

Speck grinned. “Kaleidoscope’s more than a beddy between seasons. It’s supply and credit, billboard and employment. It’s a listening post and a way station for people who don’t fit anyplace else.

And it ain’t just geeks comin’ down. Take a look over there—”

Jack followed Speck’s direction to see a young athletic man pulling swords from a tarp-covered truck.

Jack nodded. “He’s no geek.”

“He’s a performer. Circus ain’t got no monopoly on talent, have they? We got plenty to see. Take a look at Charlie, you wanna see somethin’.”

The young man had tossed off his shirt and was carefully inspecting a sword that looked as long as a yardstick.

“Oh, shit,” Jack said and as if on cue the youngster leaned far back, opened his mouth and with perfect aplomb slid the blade down his throat to the hilt.

“Real comer,” Tommy grunted approval. “Kid got four swords down this summer.
Four
. Plus a dagger. That’s real talent.”

“But it’s a gimmick, right?” Jack protested. “I mean, the blade slides up in the handle or something, is that it?”

Tommy snorted. “Not a carney. I knew this swallower once, been at it for years. He gets up one morning, lines up his tools. Little June bug lights on one of his blades. Little bitty, no more than a pin. It’s showtime; Larry opens his gullet and down goes the sword—with the bug.”

“What’d he do?”

“Same as you. Or me. He coughed.

Jack winced.

“Yep. Gutted himself on the spot. Rubes got their money’s worth that day, I can tell ya.”

“Hey, Tommy!”

The bare-chested performer was replacing his sword with its fellows.

“Tommy, you got a minute?”

“Minute, maybe,” the dwarf seemed suddenly cool.

The man grabbed his shirt as he jogged over.

“Charlie Blade,” he extended a hand graciously to Jack.

“Jack Romaine. Pretty impressive act you got.”

Tommy spit a wad into the sand. “Charlie, whatchu want?”

“Need you da see Luna for me,” Blade clasped his hands like he was at prayer. “I juss needsum snatch. Little bread. Justa tide me over.”

“You were here just last month, Blade. Month early, why weren’t you workin’ a show?”

“Luna knows.”

“Yeah, well, yer wearin’ out yer welcome.”

“Jussum green till the moon turns. I gan worka show Saturday. You gan hav’ all my take.”

Jack recognized the slurred speech. The dilated pupils.

“You want somethin’ from the Boss, yer gonna have to ask ’er yerself.” Tommy rendered his verdict coldly.

“Thags, Tommy, thassa good idea. I juss see Luna, then. Ask her myself.”

But Tommy was already walking away. Jack had to hustle to catch him.

“What was that about?”

“Money,” Tommy dismissed it too quickly. “Charlie’s always short.”

Something else going on? Tommy might need a drink to let something slip, but Jack already had Charlie Blade’s number.

The next stop on the runway introduced Jack to another newly arrived performer. “The Great Flambé” was a ravaged old-timer with a lion’s mane of silver hair, hurling fire from his mouth like a dragon onto a miniature castle fashioned of papier-mâché.

WHOOOOOSH!
and the citadel burst into flame.

“What you think, Master Speck?” Flambé’s address was formal, a European accent. He barely acknowledged Jack, stepping back instead to admire the effect of his work.

“Tits,” Tommy approved. “And maybe you could put a little moat around it, too? Let the rubes throw in a dime every time you torch ’er.”

“An excellent suggestion!” Flambé beamed. “You are genius, Master Speck!”

Only then deigning to acknowledge the working man alongside.

“And who is this choice specimen in your thrall?”

“New man.”

“Name’s Romaine,” Jack spoke up but did not extend a hand. “Jack Romaine.”

“How all-American,” the older man’s smile displayed perfect teeth. “My familiar to my friends is
Flambé.
Be delighted to become familiar. My trailer is just past the lion’s cage. You will recognize the artwork.”

“Uh. Thanks.”

Jack hung on Tommy’s shoulder as they walked away.

“‘Become familiar’……that mean what I
think
it means?”

“What, you ain’t had yer huckle berried?” Tommy chuckled. “Just grab your hammer, Pretty Boy. Time you finish this next job, Flambé’s not gonna want you anyplace close.”

The job waiting led Jack beyond the bounds of the nearly-finished carnival to a barricade of yellow heart pines pierced by a narrow gauge of railroad track.

“Where’s this go?”

“Follow ’em and see,” was Speck’s reply and a minute later Jack spotted a pennant wafting from the twin-poled tent he had first seen on his rainy arrival at Kaleidoscope.

He glanced over to Tommy. “Got some more acts in the bigtop?”

“No, this is a private residence.”

“A residence? You’re kidding.”

“No, Peewee lives here. And Ambassador, too.”

“The elephant?”

“Yeah, he stays with the Princess. Kind of like her companion.”

“Pretty weird, don’t you think?” Jack risked a provocation, “A woman living with an elephant?”

If Tommy saw the bait he didn’t take it.

“I dunno,” the dwarf’s shrug was noncommittal. “Peewee and Ambassador—they get along real well. She’s got her bed right where she can talk to him. She needs something, anything—change of clothes, pitcher of water—he brings it over gentle as a lamb. She wants a bath, he puts her in the tank. Takes her out, too, good damn thing. Take a crane and a crew of men, otherwise.”

A wagon of hay waited outside The Fat Lady’s residence. A ring of barrels surrounded a corral of packed earth. Clearly, the place was used to train an act; there were oversized balls stowed to the side, what looked like riding crops the length of fishing poles stowed on the perimeter. There was also a plow and harrow that looked oddly out of place.

The tent was larger than Jack had imagined, must have been a hundred, hundred and twenty feet wide. Two lines of quarter poles supported the canvas between the side and center poles. No water bags. The tarp pulled tight on guys strung like piano wire all around.

“Tight as Dick’s hatband,” Tommy checked the sun’s height. “Shouldn’t be this tight this late in the day. Speakin’ of late in the day, must be near noon. Take a gander.”

There was someone ahead of them on the narrow rail. It was The Giant, pushing what looked like a luggage cart along the iron track. Getting closer, Jack saw a feast of food steaming from that hand-pushed truck, whole chickens on a platter beside bowls of carrots and mashed potatoes. A separate roast. A string of sausages.

Jack shifted his mallet.

“He feeding an army?”

“Nope,” Tommy smiled proudly. “It’s all for Peewee.”

“For the week?”

“For a meal. One meal.” Tommy beamed. “Magnificent, ain’t it?”

“Can’t wait to see.”

“Grab the flap for Giant.”

Jack jogged ahead of the cart. Two sheets of tarp sang on metal rings allowing entrance into the rude palace. The Giant pushed his moveable feast into the gloomy interior without a word of thanks or acknowledgement. It was darker inside than Jack expected. Tommy nudged him in the direction of what looked to be a stack of ordinary iron bars.

“Grab some of them tie-downs.”

The bars turned out to be thick as Jack’s arm and six feet long. Jack noted the eyelets welded on top.

“Luna wants us to put in some extra security for Ambassador.” Tommy went on to give detailed instruction for a perimeter of stakes designed to prevent another rampage by the aging elephant.

“But all you got to do is hammer in the iron. Spots are already marked. Then we’ll thread lines through the eyebolts to tie the old boy off.”

“I never tied off an elephant.”

“And you ain’t gonna start with this one; that’s the trainer’s job.”

By the time Jack managed to heft a single iron stake onto his shoulder, The Giant was leaving. The black man nodded almost imperceptibly to Tommy, but for Jack—nothing. The brodie might as well have been invisible.

“Not much of a talker, is he? The nigger.”

“Call him nigger to his face and you’ll see.

Another reminder to Jack that he was an outsider in this strange community. A series of sheets appeared ahead, ghostly demarcations strung on what might have been clotheslines set up near the center of the tent. Tommy pulled up short and Jack almost stumbled into him.

“Watch yer step.”

“Sorry.”

“Now, yer about to meet the Princess, awright? Our biggest draw. Our most respected performer.”

“Fine, sure.”

“It ain’t fine and it ain’t ever sure,” Speck contradicted him coldly. “Peewee can be tricky. She’s feeling sociable, you’ll be all right. But if yer smart you’ll just shut up, do yer job, and get the hell out. And do not gawk. She’s on her own time, now, and in her own house. Show some goddamn respect.”

Tommy left him there, halfway between the inner sanctum and the canvas skin behind. The only light coming into the tent shut off, suddenly, when Speck closed the flap on his way outside. Nothing left to guide Jack then but the ghostly pale of the wall ahead.

He was already sweating like a French whore in church. The interior, though dark, was sweltering. There was no sound, either. No trumpet of jungle beast. Not a sound from The Princess. Jack found the narrow strip of track with his city-slicker shoe and followed that iron ribbon to the sheeted boudoir waiting ahead.

A flickering glow from inside, a lantern.

“Well, ya comin’ in or what?”

He slid the sheet aside and saw her, Princess Peewee grazing like some pampered bovine off a cart chocked on its rails directly beside a bed reinforced with enough timber to build a barn.

A Raggedy Anne doll propped ludicrously on a pillow that was a napkin next to Peewee’s tub-sized head. Another surprise—there were books all over the bed, books half-opened on the bed itself, books stacked from the sawdust floor, more books in the shelves of her headboard. A couple of the authors were familiar; some man’s wife had given Jack a copy of
The Great Gatsby
after a furtive encounter, an absolute must, she had told him, the defining book of our generation, but he hadn’t got around to it. Peewee, on the other hand, was clearly committed to the hardback propped open on top of her breasts.

Jack turned his attention to the water tank. The tank was situated at the foot of the bed, a Brobdingnagian cistern at least thirty feet in circumference. Deep as a man was tall. You could see where the iron cylinder had ruptured, new rivets bright as silver dollars up and down to repair the broken seam. The welds did not look professional. Jack wondered if it would hold.

Peewee’s jaw was working like a heifer’s. A breast of chicken competing with the book in her free hand.

“Well, now, Ambassador, this one’s new.”

It wasn’t until Peewee’s remark that Jack actually saw the beast. Talk about missing the elephant in the fucking room! But in fairness it was a big room, and dark, and until he moved the water tank had concealed Ambassador from easy view.

The earth trembled as the bull ambled, that’s how you’d have to describe it, to the head of Peewee’s bed. At least twelve feet high, the creature would have to weigh, what—four thousand? Five thousand pounds? Jack could only guess. The tusks alone would have made some bushman a fortune, great prongs of ivory anchored on either side of the massive proboscis.

Peewee sat up and Jack saw the title of her book,
The Age of Innocence
.

“Edith Wharton,” Peewee supplied the author and Jack wondered if he was being encouraged to communicate.

“Wharton, you know her?”

“Ah, no. No, Princess, who is she?”

“Writer. Free thinker. Henry James calls her his angel of destruction which makes me think he needs her a hell of a lot more than she needs him.”

Peewee broke off a drumstick.

“Well, you gonna gawk or you gonna work?”

“Don’t mind me,” Jack apologized, and hurried over to the stack of eye-bolted stakes that were to become the puny restraint for Peewee’s guardian.

He stripped to the waist and got to it. There were a dozen bars which had to be pounded into place with their dozen or more tethers. Tommy had arranged the stakes to allow Ambassador a range through his normal circuit. Beyond her initial remarks, The Fat Lady appeared to ignore him entirely, returning to her competing appetites with a relish that was audible from yards away.

Within minutes he was pouring sweat, but Jack was determined not to beg for either water or rest. He tapped a spike gently to stand, then swung the sledge back and rode it down. The impact of steel on steel was lost in the vast interior, a mere
tink
, like a distant hammer on a ten-penny nail.

Over and over he drove the heavy sledge, one iron stake after another coaxed inches at a time into the yielding earth. Then to thread a chain heavy enough to hold a barge through those waiting eyes. Rounding the circuit until after some interminable interval he was returned again to the side of The Fat Lady’s bed.

Jack grabbed his back as he straightened from his labor and found Peewee regarding him in unabashed inspection. Two small, bright eyes pressed like berries into that pie face.

“Should keep the big fella on campus,” Jack gestured awkwardly in the general direction of the elephant. “If he’s rigged right.”

“That’s what they said last time.” Peewee closed her book.

“I’m not the man actually tying the tether.”

“Never imagined you were. AMBASSADOR—”