Nightmare Alley (5 page)

“Now then, if I can have your attention for a moment. I have here a bunch of steel rings. Each and every one of them a separate, solid hoop of steel. I have one, two, three-four, five, six-seveneight. Right? Now I take two. Tap ’em. Joined together! Would you take these, madam, and tell me if you can find any joints or signs of an opening? No? Thank you. All solid. And again, two separate rings. Go! Joined!”

Better speed it up, they’re getting restless. This is the life, though. Everyone looking at you. How does he do it? Gosh, that’s slick. Trying to figure it out. It’s magic to them, all right. This is the life. While they’re watching and listening you can tell ’em anything. They believe you. You’re a magician. Pass solid rings through each other. Pull dollars out of the air. Magic. You’re top man—while you keep talking.

“And now, folks, eight separate and distinct rings; yet by a magic word they fly together and are joined inextricably into a solid mass. There you are! I thank you for your kind attention. Now I have here a little booklet that’s worth its weight in gold. Here is a collection of magic tricks that you can do—an hour’s performance before your club, lodge, or church gathering or in your own parlor. An hour’s practice—a lifetime of fun, magic, and mystery. This book formerly sold for a dollar, but for today I’m going to let you have it for two bits—a quarter of a dollar. Let’s hurry it up, folks, because I know you all want to see and hear Madam Zeena, the seeress, and her act does not go on until everyone who wants one of these great books gets one. Thank you, sir. And you. Any more? Right.

“Now then, folks, don’t go ’way. The next complete show will not start for twenty minutes. I call your attention to the next platform. Madam Zeena—miracle woman of the ages. She sees, she knows, she tells you the innermost secrets of your past, your present, and your future. Madam Zeena!”

Stan jumped down lightly from his own small platform and pushed through the crowd to a miniature stage draped in maroon velvet. A woman had stepped out from between the curtains. The crowd flowed over and stood waiting, looking up at her, some of the faces absently chewing, hands cupping popcorn into mouths.

The woman was tall, dressed in flowing white with astrological symbols embroidered on the hem of her robe. A cascade of brassy blond hair fell down her back and a band of gilt leather studded with glass jewels was around her forehead. When she raised her arms the loose sleeves fell back. She had large bones, but her arms were white and capable-looking, with a spattering of freckles. Her eyes were blue, her face round, and her mouth a shade too small, so that she looked a trifle like an elaborate doll. Her voice was low-pitched with a hearty ring to it.

“Step right up, folks, and don’t be bashful. If there’s any of you that want to ask me a question Mr. Stanton is now passing among you with little cards and envelopes. Write your question on the card; be careful not to let anybody else see what you write, because that’s your business. I don’t want anybody asking me about somebody else’s business. Just let’s all mind our own and we’ll stay out of trouble. When you’ve written your question, sign your initials to the card or write your name as a token of good faith. Then give the sealed envelope to Mr. Stanton. You’ll see what I’m going to do next.

“Meantime, while we’re waiting for you to write your questions, I’m going to start right in. It isn’t necessary for you to write anything, but that helps you to fix it firmly in mind and keeps your mind from wandering off it, same as if you want to remember somebody’s name you just met it helps to jot it down. Isn’t that so?”

One out of every five heads nodded, entranced, and the rest looked on, some with dull eyes, but most of them with questions written on their faces.

Questions? They’ve all got questions, Stan thought, passing out cards and envelopes. Who hasn’t? Answer their questions and you can have them, body and soul. Or just about. “Yes, madam, you can ask her anything. The questions are held in strictest confidence. No one will know but yourself.”

“First of all,” Zeena began, “there’s a lady worried about her mother. She’s asking me mentally, ‘Is mother going to get better?’ Isn’t that so? Where is that lady?”

Timidly a hand went up. Zeena pounced on it. “Well, madam, I’d say your mother has had a lot of hard work in her life and she’s had a lot of trouble, mostly about money. But there’s something else in there that I don’t see quite clear yet.” Stan looked at the woman who had raised her hand. Farmer’s wife. Sunday best, ten years out of style. Zeena could go to town on this one— a natural.

“I’d say, ma’am, that what your mother needs is a good long rest. Mind, I’m not saying how she’s going to get it—what with taxes and sickness in the family and doctor’s bills piling up. I know how it is because I’ve had my share of troubles, same as all of us, until I learned how to govern my life by the stars. But I think if you and your brothers—no, you have a couple of sisters, though, haven’t you? One sister? Well, if you and your sister can work out some way to let her get a couple weeks’ rest I think her health ought to improve mighty quick. But you just keep following a doctor’s orders. That is, you better get her to a doctor. I don’t think them patent medicines will do her much good. You got to get her to a doctor. Maybe he’ll take a few bushels of potatoes or a shoat as part of the bill. Anyhow, I think she’ll be all right if you have plenty of faith. If you’ll see me right after the demonstration, maybe I can tell you more. And you want to watch the stars and make sure you don’t do anything at the wrong time of the month.

“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.…

B
EYOND
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.