Madball (20 page)

"Sing 'Three Blind Mice,' real loud."

"That's my boy, Sammy. And then, after you've sung it, you go back to the mitt camp. I'll be there already, around the back way. Now you don't think about anything else. You just watch and be ready to sing."

Mr. Magus patted him on the arm and disappeared into the shadows.

Mr. King didn't come.

After a few minutes Mr. Magus was there beside him again. He said, "Good work, Sammy. Thanks a lot. And now you're going to forget all about this. You're not even going to tell Jesse. It just never happened. Right, Sammy?"

"Sure, Mr. Magus."

"You see, the joke wouldn't be funny if Mr. King ever learned, from anybody, that I'd been there tonight. And now let's go back to my place."

"Do you still want to talk to me, Mr. Magus?"

"Try me and see, Sammy."

And then they were back in the mitt camp, sitting as they were before. Dr. Magus picked up the whisky bottle and grinned at Sammy. He handed it across. "Have one, Sammy. In fact, have the three Jesse allows you, but not all at once. Only remember this
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he didn't tell you exactly how big those brinies could be. So take a long one."

Sammy took a long one, and it almost choked him and made his eyes water. But even so it tasted so much better and so much smoother that he didn't mind it as much. He looked at the bottle and saw that it was different; it had paper on it, a label; the color was darker. He looked at the label again before he passed it back. He asked, "What does it say on there, Mr. Magus?"

Mr. Magus smiled "What it says is irrelevant, Sammy. What it should say is just two words, Drink Me, in big type. Have you ever read
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had read to you
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Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass?"

And Mr. Magus looked genuinely shocked when Sammy said he'd never heard of them. "Have they got pitchers in them?" he asked.

"Yes, they have pictures. Very good drawings. But it's the stories
th
at really matter. I wish I had one of them here, Sammy; I'm in just the mood to read aloud from Lewis Carroll. But about the label on the bottle. It's in the first book and Alice finds it just after she gets down the rabbit hole. She finds a bottle with a label that says Drink Me and a cake with a tag that says Eat Me. But Lewis Carroll, the man who wrote the stories, had the labels mixed because when Alice drank from the bottle it made her smaller and eating the cake made her bigger again.

"But Mr. Carroll got that wrong because he wasn't really Mr. Carroll at all; he was a minister named Dodgson, and a teetotaler, so he didn't understand about drinking. Only small men drink, Sammy
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but so many of us are small men. Small men drink because drinking makes them bigger for a while and frees them from the bitter knowledge of how small they are. For a while, no matter how short a while, they can stride like giants, reach for stars. It's all illusion, yes, but who can say the dull world of sobriety is not also an illusion, and certainly a less happy one. Do you not agree?"

Sammy said, "Gee, Mr. Magus, I dunno." But he didn't really care because he liked the sound of Mr. Magus's voice and he liked the roll and march of the strange words. But there was something he wanted to know. "Tell me some more about my being rich, Mr. Magus."

"Your being
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Oh, yes, Sammy. Well, there isn't much to tell except that you will be. And what will you do with your money? Besides, of course, buying a cotton candy spinner and hiring an expert operator to run it for you."

"Gee, I dunno. I guess maybe I'd get myself a woman."

Mr. Magus's eyes widened. "Haven't you ever had a woman, Sammy?"

Sammy shook his head. "But I know how, Mr. Magus. I seen pitchers. Mr. Evans's got books with pitchers and I seen them, honest. Only now Mr. Evans doesn't like me any more and won't let me look at them. Do you have any pitchers like that?"

"Some very lovely ones, Sammy. But only in my mind. I fear I cannot show them to you."

"Why can't you show them to me, Mr. Magus?"

"As I told you, Sammy, they are in my mind. Don't you have some pictures in your mind? Of course you have. Close your eyes and think of
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of the merry-go-round. Doesn't a picture of it come into your head?" Sammy nodded.

Mr. Magus's eyes twinkled at him. "Why can't you show it to me, Sammy?"

Sammy grinned and didn't answer. But he understood now what Mr. Magus had meant.

"You see, Sammy, those are the best kinds of pictures to have. You can't lose them and nobody can take them away from you. Only people whose minds can't hold pictures for them want pornographic pictures to look at. Pictures in the mind are better by far because they are things one has already experienced and can re-experience by remembering them
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and with tactile sensations as well as merely visual ones."

"But how can I get pitchers like that, Mr. Magus?"

"There is only one way, Sammy. But, ah, I fear I do see practical difficulties in your case, not insurmountable ones
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no difficulty and few women are completely insurmountable
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and yet-" Mr. Magus stared darkly at the bottle and then handed it over to Sammy wordlessly. Sammy drank from it and handed it back.

Sammy said, "But when I'm rich like you say I'm gonna be, with paper money, then I can have a woman. Mr. King, he told me that's what I'd need"

"Mr. King has a point there. I had not thought of that possibility, being personally prejudiced against the commercialization of such transactions. But granting them to be better than no transactions at all, which I freely grant -
yes, Sammy, in your particular case Mr. King indubitably has a point. But if
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I mean when you become rich you must be careful in deciding what woman to offer paper money to. Some would slap you in the face and some would call copper. You sound as though you've been thinking seriously about this, Sammy."

"Gee, I have, Mr. Magus. About Miss Trixie. I like Miss Trixie a lot and Mr. King said she'd do it for paper money. She wouldn't
s
lap me or call copper, would she?"

"Ummm, a most fortunate choice, in a way. Your own instincts and Barney King's advice are equally good I am tempted, I am very strongly tempted-"

Mr. Magus took a billfold out of his hip pocket and took a piece of paper money from it, stared at the money.

"Is this a tenner that I see before me?" Then he sighed and put the money back. "No, Sammy, it would be wrong for me to give you that money. For me to give you money for that purpose would be playing God. And I am too small a man, even in my cups, to play God."

He took another drink, a long one, from the bottle. "You see, Sammy, there are factors involved not even my madball could tell me. There is Jesse. While I do not personally approve of Jesse's, uh, philosophy, there is the undeniable fact that because of it you have a degree of security that would be impossible for you to have otherwise, outside the confines of an institution. You were in an institution before Jesse found you, weren't you?"

"I was in a place, Mr. Magus. They kept me there. I guess it was an ins
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what you said."

"And you didn't like it?"

"I hated it. I ran away. I like here better, the carney."

"And by giving you money I might be jeopardizing your chances of staying here. It might lead to either of two things
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Jesse learning about it and kicking you out, as he might, or you yourself deciding to run away from Jesse. Sammy, all my humanitarian and Pindarean instincts tell me that all is nothing beside the fact that you are apparently ready for a great experiment and that it should not be denied you
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whatever the consequences. Yet I am stopped by the ugly specter of my common sense which tells me
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what it tells me."

"You mean you don't think I should have a woman?"

"I did not say that, Sammy. Please remember that I did not say that. I mean only that I do not believe in omniscience, even my own. Get thee behind me, Sammy. And hie thee hence that I may Morpheus woo. Good night."

"Good night, Mr. Magus. And thanks for the cotton candy and everything."

Lonely as a cloud, Sammy wandered. The midway was dark now except for the few bulbs that burned all night. His stomach felt warm from the drinks he'd had from Mr. Magus's bottle and his head felt light. And it had been wonderful having Mr. Magus talk for so long, just to him. Despite the loneliness of the deserted lot he felt almost happy now, almost satisfied to be alone.

It was so nice that Mr. Magus would talk to him and not care whether he understood or not. Other people weren't like that. If Jesse said something to him and he didn't understand, Jesse got awful mad. Most other people got impatient. Only Mr. Magus didn't mind at all.

It came to him that maybe, this late, Jesse was back in their quarters and getting mad because he wasn't there, so Sammy walked to the G-top and listened outside it until he heard Jesse's voice and knew Jesse was still playing cards.

He was still standing there in the shadow of the G-top, still with his ear near the canvas, when he saw Miss Trixie. She was walking fast, away from him. He wondered where she was going and stepped out of the shadow so he could follow her with his eyes. She went toward the trailer, Mr. Evans's trailer. She rapped on the door. A light went on inside and the door opened. Miss Trixie went in and the door closed behind her.

Just a few days ago Sammy would have thought she was going there just to talk to Mr. Evans and maybe have a drink with him. But Sammy had learned a lot since then. He knew about women now and what some of them did, and he knew Miss Trixie was one of the ones who did it.

He wondered if they'd let him watch. That would be better than looking at the pictures again. That would give him pictures in his mind and Mr. Magus had just told him those were the best kind and that if he had pictures in his mind he wouldn't want to look at pictures on paper.

But then he remembered that Mr. Evans was mad at him and had hit him. And might hit him again if he even went there to ask if he could watch.

The shades on the windows of the trailer were being pulled down now but one of them, the one just to the left of the door, didn't go quite all the way down; there was still a crack of light between it and the bottom of the window. Maybe he could see through there and watch and Mr. Evans wouldn't even know he was watching.

Sammy tiptoed over.

He hoped he wouldn't have to stand there too long because the night had turned chilly and he was shivering.

The bottom of the trailer window was at the level of his chest; he had to bend down a bit to put his eyes to the crack. At first he couldn't see anything except the edge of the bunk and the wall past the bunk. Then Miss Trixie
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alked into view. She still had all her clothes on except for the coat she'd been wearing on her way to the trailer. At his angle of vision he could see only from her knees to her breasts. Then she sat down on the bunk, facing his way, and he could see her face too.

Then Mr. Evans came into view. He had an old bathrobe on. Sammy remembered the trailer had been dark until Miss Trixie had knocked; Mr. Evans must have been in bed and put the bathrobe on when he got up to turn on the light and let her in. But why had Mr. Evans put on clothes instead of Miss Trixie taking hers off? Maybe Miss Trixie had come just to talk after all. Then Sammy saw that Mr. Evans had a drink in each hand, two drinks altogether, and he handed one to Miss Trixie and sat down beside her. Maybe they were just going to have a drink first and then do some of the things like in those pictures in Mr. Evans's books.

Sammy shivered again and wondered if he had time to go back and get his jacket. But he might miss something if he did. And what Mr. Evans did next showed Sammy that there would be something to miss all right. He sat farther back on the bunk than Miss Trixie was sitting, leaned back against the wall. He held his drink in his left hand and his right hand reached behind Miss Trixie and Sammy could tell that it was unbuttoning buttons at the back of her dress. Then his hand pulled her back to lean against him and slid inside the front of her dress.

Suddenly Sammy sneezed.

The sneeze was not only a loud one but it was so unexpected that it made his head jerk forward; his forehead hit the pane of the window with a resounding thump, so painfully as almost to blind him for a second.

He turned and ran for the concealing shadow of the G-top, but he'd taken only a few steps when he heard the door jerk open behind him and he knew Mr. Evans was seeing him run, recognizing him even from behind at so short a distance, in the moonlight.

But no footsteps came running after him and he paused and waited in the shadow of the canvas. He stood there panting, wondering what he should do, or if he should do anything at all. Mr. Evans hadn't run after him, hadn't even called out at him, so maybe it was all right. Maybe Mr. Evans hadn't minded and it would be all right for him to go back and watch as long as he didn't sneeze and bump the window again.

But while he was wondering the door of the trailer opened again and Mr. Evans came out. He'd put on a shirt and trousers and he started walking, but not toward Sammy. After a few steps Sammy could see that he was heading around for the other side of the G-top, where the entrance was.