Odditorium: A Novel (11 page)

Each year since, from late October to Thanksgiving, the folks have streamed into Gibsonton—pitchmen, palm readers, barkers, animal trainers, jointees, “human oddities”—to take up residence in their cottages and housetrailers until it’s time to go back on the road again in spring. The pace of life is languid, the atmosphere blasé. A man with a pair of miniature legs sprouting from his chest can walk down the street without drawing a second glance, and the town’s postmistress, now retired, weighs just over eight hundred pounds.

Karl Gables could smell his own breath, fumes from a derelict cheese works. He was woozy from fourteen hours of sleep and there was a throb in his stomach that fried pimento loaf on toast hadn’t been able to muffle. Wearing khaki slacks, rubber sandals and a painter’s hat, he sat cross-legged by the kitchen door and drank Bromo Seltzer. A soft breeze came through the screen, played over his face. It felt good. A day like today, he ought to walk down to the river and have a swim.

Karl stuck his head out the door and sniffed. Something warm and sweet, a little like vanilla extract. Uneasily, he wandered into the yard. Brown grass crunched under his feet. A rustling came from somewhere in the underbrush and Karl answered by stomping the ground. Sounds kind of hollow down there, he thought. His stomach puckered and a humming began in his ears, grew louder. The river was just too far.

He jumped back in and latched the door. Then he went to the living room and picked up the book he had passed out with last night, Dr. Herbert J. Wigmore’s
Gemology for the Hobbyist
.

STAR OF ESTE

While a relatively small stone, its alleged weight being a mere 25½ carats, the Star of Este is noted for its perfection of form and brilliant quality. It belonged to the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria. Subsequent to his assassination, presumably, it reverted to the Crown and was said to have been in the possession of Emperor Charles, who died in exile in 1922. The later history of this stone is unknown.

Tales of buried treasure had been circulating around Gibsonton for years—pirate booty, smugglers’ coves, sea chests crammed with gold or precious stones. Donut Willie, who was forever buttonholing people on the sidewalk, claimed that a few years back his mother had gone to fillet an amberjack and found a ruby the size of a golf ball in its belly. There were lots of stories. In lunch counters, around gas pumps, at the barber shop, old mugs told each other about the fortunes that were out there, the made life waiting for someone who dug in the right place.

Sometime in the late ’30s a sword swallower by the name of Stix Morgan, who had been forced into retirement by a chronic allergy that caused him to sneeze suddenly and without warning, was digging along a sandy rise behind the fish hatchery at Bullfrog Creek. The blade of his shovel struck something hard. Stix fell to his knees and began scooping with his hands, already visualizing himself in spats and a vested suit, tooling around Miami in a chauffeur-driven roadster and tossing silver dollars to pedestrians. Something black and round began to emerge from the sand. Its surface was pitted. Stix thought of the pirate coffers in storybook illustrations, the shape of their lids. But when he brought his lantern closer what he saw was a human skull with most of its teeth still in place. Quivering, bathed in cold sweat, he kept on digging. Had he come upon the bones of some long-forgotten buccaneer? Some rapacious fiend who had fled Hispañola with a heavy purse, evading both enemies and history alike? The skeleton was finally excavated. Propped on its worm-eaten breastbone was a rusted metal disk marked with the points of the compass. Rabid with doubloon hunger, Boots grabbed at it without first noticing what it read. The compass needle fell to the ground between his feet.

With a shovel in his hand, Stix Morgan died six months later of a heart attack. He had been at it all night every night, digging up every last inch of that rise, discovering nothing more valuable than an old padlock for which an antique dealer gave him three dollars.

It was only a week or two after he and Tildy moved down to Gibsonton from Virginia, where they had passed the first year of their marriage in noise and trepidation, that Karl heard this story. He laughed until it hurt.

“What a loser, this guy,” he said to the barfly who’d told him. “Had it right there in his hand and let it slip.”

Not long afterward, in that very same bar, Karl would meet an individual known as Zeke the Freak and eventually become something of a story himself.

From a Cuban chambermaid in a Tampa hotel, Zeke had purchased an old “chart” divulging the location of a fortune in gold bullion. Some legendary rumrunner of Prohibition days had buried a whole shitload of ingots over on Bird Island, a barren lump only a few miles out across the bay. Karl and Zeke went partners on some tools and a small skiff with a six-horsepower Evinrude. Every couple of days they would chug over to the island and dig. Empty-handed after two weeks of this, they were only mildly discouraged. The chart, rather freely rendered on the back of a telegraph blank, was after all a bit vague.

Zeke advocated persistence. “One percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Guy invented the lightbulb said that.”

One Friday Karl won a few hands of five-card stud and went on to close the bars. When Zeke came by to pick him up for Saturday’s expedition to the island, he begged off.

“I been heaving all night. My gut is killin’ me.”

That was the day that Zeke, taking five on the beach with a panatela and a bottle of warm beer, caught sight of a large, gray and waxy mass bobbing in the shallows. Long a devotee of nautical fiction, Zeke knew instantly what it was: ambergris, the intestinal secretion of sperm whales valued so highly in the manufacture of perfume. The agent for the New York cosmetics firm who flew down to confirm the discovery speculated that it had originated with a pod of whales off the coast of Africa, floated down to the South Atlantic, then followed a favorable current back up to the North Atlantic and on into the Gulf of Mexico.

“You must be living right,” he said, shaking his head and writing Zeke a five-figure check. “Goddamnedest fluke I ever saw.”

Karl’s share of the deal, excluding the case of Johnnie Walker that Zeke had delivered to the house, was exactly nothing. A couple of weeks later, with the kind of frigid, superfluous irony that tries men’s souls, Karl was emptying the last dribbles of Scotch into his morning coffee when the mailman dropped off a postcard from Bimini.

Who could have thought an old crud like me could win a limbo contest?? Got a suite overlooking the beach and all the snatch I can handle. Everybody around here knows me. The Whale Vomit Man!! I just sit in the lobby and wait for them to come to me. And you know, I ain’t tired of telling the story yet. Maybe cause I tell it different every time.

God bless your hangover!!

Love, Zeke.

Karl heard car sounds as he moved between rooms, thinking at first that they came from the teevee. Motor shuddering off, screek of car door opening, thunk of car door closing. Then he saw a movement across the window, a flicker of dark blue. Tildy. She had a pissed-off expression, walked with a slight limp and carried some kind of metal tube. He wanted to go somewhere and hide but there wasn’t time.

Seconds later she was in the door and looking at the wine jug halfway to his lips, his skewed hat, guilty eyes.

“Honey, I’m home,” she said flatly. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s a sort of complicated story.”

“I think I’ve heard it already. You got canned, am I right?”

“Yup.”

“For God’s sake, Karl.” She came foreward to gently squeeze, as if it were a clown’s shiny red honker, her husband’s nose.

Karl was all over her then. “Baby, I missed you so.” He sucked her neck, clamped hands behind her thighs and lifted her off the floor. “You got no idea how good it is to see you, darlin’.”

“Put me down.”

“Okay, okay, but what about you? You ain’t supposed to be here neither.”

“I’m out of a job myself. Guess I quit.” She dropped into a chair. “Amounts to the same thing.”

“That’s a cold shot, baby. What do we do for money?”

“Not now, Karl.”

He lowered his eyes. In spite of the bad vibes, he felt happy. She was back. She’d take care of him. “What’s that thing?” He pointed to the tube she rolled between her palms.

“My father. You’ve never met, have you?” Tildy extended the thing as if Karl was supposed to shake hands with it.

He ran his fingers over the cool curve of metal. “Kinda small, ain’t he?”

“He died day before yesterday, Karl. These are his ashes.”

Karl blinked and his head seemed to fill like a balloon. He had been but vaguely aware that Tildy had a living parent. He removed his hat, nibbled momentarily on the brim. “Must be some kind of blue for you, baby. I’m real sorry.” He started toward her, arms out.

“Freeze right there. Don’t you comfort me, damn it. That’s not what I want.”

“Can I sit next to you on the arm? Would that be okay?”

“If you want. Just don’t touch me. I’m booby-trapped.”

Utterly dazed, Karl perched next to his wife, hands held in to keep from stroking her. Hairs were erect at the rims of her small ears.

“You’re lookin’ awful good, considerin’.”

“Please don’t.”

“Forget I’m here then.” Karl slid off the chair arm and went to retrieve his jug.

“Poor Karl. Don’t try to understand me, it’s a waste…. I don’t mean to be mean, it’s just that I’m so tired. And a reunion is not what I’d planned on. I wasn’t ready for you, not at all. What I wanted was a decent interval, you know? Deserted house, blank days, some long-distance-sleeping. Last few weeks, I’ve been bounced all around like a basketball. I need to find out where the bruises are.”

Karl shrugged, turned up the teevee. “Forget it. Have some wine.”

Tildy was mighty tired of tailoring her behavior to outside specifications, wanted merely to burrow like a mole through the black earth, but she left her seat, moved to Karl’s side, touched him.

“What’s on?” she said.

“You’re lookin’ at it.”

Reclining on a blanket stained with motor oil, Tildy and Karl were silent. Hot dogs crackled on a grill behind them and the portable radio discharged clear channel mood music. Airport rhumba. A crow sailed from the rubbish heap to its mess of a nest high in an overhanging tree. Turning onto his belly, Karl felt the ground with an open hand. He dug through the mat of pine needles and mulch and the smell of earth on his fingers was rich, good enough to eat.

“Another dog?” Tildy said, poking at the coals.

“At least.”

There were no buns so they held the hot dogs by their split and blackened skins, dipping them in the mustard jar before biting. Karl poured wine into a common cup.

“How’s your season been? Steal a lotta bases?”

“I was playing a little flat actually. Been in a slump, just wasn’t seeing the ball real good.”

“And Flora? She still mowin’ ’em down?”

“More or less.”

“I cannot believe you’re really finished with those Cougarettes. You’re a star, don’t you know it?”

“No future there. Don’t expect they’ll last through the month.” Then, anxious to change the subject—“Sun feels awful nice.”

“Sure. Sunshine State, it’s even on the license plates.”

“Looks like you could use some of it, too. Your skin tone is lousy. Been living like an invalid, have you?”

“You know how I get.”

“Do I?”

“We talked about it. You never remember.” Karl plucked blades of grass for chewing. Cheeks unshaven and slightly puffy, his elongated, loaf-pan face flushed with effort; an effort first to locate Tildy’s good graces, then worm his way in. “It’s only sometimes. When you’re away and I have to go it alone around here. I’m trapped in that house. Little things get to spookin’ me. I spring a leak somewhere, start to feel sick every time I set foot outdoors.”

“Is that it? Some people might want to call that a little bit crazy.”

“So maybe I am. Nothin’ I can do about it.”

“Except open another bottle.”

“Nag, nag, nag.” Karl spat green. “I got reasons to drink, sweets, and you’re one of ’em. Bet we ain’t spent more than two weeks under the same roof so far this year. And when you are around, ain’t long before you’ll be remindin’ me, even when it’s not in words, about who’s supporting who.”

“Oh, shut up.” She stood, knocking the radio over; a muffled crescendo of yoyo violins. “For days I watch my team disintegrate into a summer camp revue. I cut loose from there in a rental car for Ville Platte where I watch my father die. Clean up what I can down there, motor nonstop to Jacksonville to retrieve my own wheels, then on in here with an urgent need for peace and quiet only to find my hopeless Karl fired again, moping around like a granny. And within three hours here we are back again on the same old shit as the day I left. Me, I’m going to take a nap.”

Karl would have liked to join her, but was afraid to ask.

Tildy dreamed of moonlit jungle alleys, the hushed stalking of pygmy commandos, their faces smeared with ash. They hunted her with devotion, wishing only to dance in her honor. The stillness was broken all at once by the flounderings of a wounded beast …

She pushed the pillows away. “Be still.”

Thumps and scrapes of Karl battling furniture outside the door, then a splintering of glass and the last coils of sleep came loose from around her.

“Sellerass them auto workers, ain’t on my shoulders.”

“Shit.” Tildy wrapped herself in the sheet, opened the door and looked out.

Karl was halfway bent, gasping like a beaten fighter. His hair was matted and his eyes looked like bottle caps. “Tildy best watch her feet.” He chuckled. “Them little white toe’s like candy.” He pointed to the broken mustard jar on the floor.

Tildy linked her arms around his middle and wrestled him down into a chair though he outweighed her by some sixty pounds. She closed his eyelids with her fingers. “Play dead for a few minutes.” Kneeling, she picked out the larger chunks of glass and took up the rest with a spatula and paper towels. “One thing at least, I won’t ever need to have children as long as I have you.”