The School of Beauty and Charm (27 page)

Arthur was a born orator. He had boom. “Who was the lover of this pale city girl, lovely, nubile, just seventeen? Alas, it was not the bridegroom, who fell into the jaws of an alliga tor, leaving the nymph alone and frightened in the thick jungle. Young Madge fell prey to serpentophilia. Serpentophilia— a long word for the love of snakes. Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to see Madge with her lover, Percy, the nine-foot Burmese albino python who shares her bed today. Let your imaginations play freely as you see the lovers here on the stage, caressing each other, intermingling their fine bodies. Keep in
mind that this reptile, the
Python molurus bivittatus
, weighs over sixty pounds; he can swallow a baby and squeeze a grown man to death.”

The crowd was silent, staring at the red curtain behind him. “I ask you, Ladies and Gentlemen, not to content yourself with a quick glance. Take a second look, and a third. You may need to return and see the act once more in order to answer the question, Who controls this relationship? You will see Madge hypnotize Percy and bend him to her will. However, there are those who say that Madge is not free to leave. She is entangled with the snake, in body and heart. But you will have to decide. So keep your eyes open, my friends, and please, stay away from the fence.” A drum rolled. “And now, may I present—the strangest couple in the world! Madge and Percy!”

I almost didn't recognize the lady who stepped out in a spangled harem suit and high heels, wearing her snake piled on top of her head. A shiver ran through me as he slid his yellow head over her bare shoulder. Although Madge hadn't seen seventeen in some time, the image Arthur had painted colored the entire act, and as the thick serpent entwined himself through her legs, coiling his strange yellow body around her waist, I found it impossible not to see a blonde Lolita in the bayou. She did a fair hypnotist act with him although she played the flute badly, and Percy was an awkward dancer—pythons are a little heavy for this routine—and Percy was getting on in years, but they were definitely a couple.

When the curtain went down, we shuffled along the fence to the Tunnel of Love, which I had helped patch together with tinfoil, red lightbulbs, and pinups. The marks loved it. They laughed at the recording of Jungle Jim's voice saying things
like “Darling, I can't live without you, but I want to try” and “Honey, please don't leave me with the bills!” We'd rigged up a heart-shaped button that kids could push to hear “Violets are red, roses are blue, you're mine, and that's a lie, too!”

Stepping out of the tunnel, we ran smack into Eva's web. From the shadows, Arthur emerged smoking a pipe.

“Spidora,” he said gravely. “Born Eva Pisano, in the small village of Positana, Italy. Mother Nature plays her tricks; no one knows why. Here a child is born with two heads, or an elephant ear, or perhaps a tail. Perhaps our creator has some lesson to teach us, a lesson in tenderness, compassion, and mercy. A lesson from the Almighty. Shall we throw it away?”

“His dad was a preacher,” whispered Zane. “Baptized the entire state of Mississippi—two or three times.”

“That's what the people of Positana did with Baby Eva. They threw the three-legged child into a Dumpster.”

Arthur sighed. His pipe smoke filled the room, and we all squinted to get a better look into the nine-foot web. Spidora, lit by a black light, wore a short black dress, black-lace gloves, and three black stockings fastened to garter belts. She swayed above us. Onstage, she wore a black wig plaited into tiny braids, which somehow gave the impression that she had more than three legs. If anyone leaned against the fence, she smacked her lips dangerously.

“In the Dumpster,” Arthur said sadly, “behind the KFC in Positana, Italy. She was eleven months old, surviving on chicken bones.” He shook his head and drew on his pipe while we stared at Spidora and imagined her as a baby in a Dumpster. “Yes, friends, in Positana, a picturesque Italian village built on ancient cliffs spiraling up from the sea . . . can you hear
Homer's sirens singing from the Isle dei Galli? Listen . . .” Off cue, Spidora spit a long rice noodle from her mouth. “Positana could tolerate a KFC, but not a deformed child. And this is what we call progress.” Eva waved her third leg.

“No honey, that ain't real,” a mother whispered to son as we were leaving. “That's rubber.” The child, however, did not believe his mother and continued to whimper.

Behind them, a stranger tried to help. “Third leg! That was just too fake for me. Believe me, if a person was to have another leg, it wouldn't go there.”

“Well, where would it go?” demanded his wife.

“Well, it wouldn't go there. On the other side, maybe. Or on the back. That's where I'd put it, right in the back.” The child cried more loudly.

“That rubber snake killed me,” someone said. “Did you see the stamp, made in korea? That just killed me.” Several people agreed that they had seen the stamp on Percy's belly. “I can't believe I paid ten dollars to see that piece of junk. They git ya, don't they?”

In staging the ten-in-one, Arthur had anticipated the marks' disillusionment at precisely this point. Pretending to open a curtain by mistake, Arthur swiftly unveiled Lollibells. Decked out in bows and polka dots, Warren sat in a dunking cage on a springboard over a tub of water. For just fifty cents, anyone could buy three balls and hurl them at him.

“Hey you!” he called out to a large man. “Fat guy. Porker. No, not you. The other bubble butt. The one with the ugly girlfriend. Yoo-hoo! Can't catch me.”

Quarters clanked; the balls began to fly. Lollibells splashed into the water and came up grinning. “Hell of a way to make
a living, ain't it,” I said, rapping on his cage, but he didn't hear me.

In a few minutes, Arthur ushered us through a tent flap into some makeshift stands placed in front of a mattress ringed with chicken wire. Red, white, and blue crepe paper streamed from the ceiling, and a large sign announced
DAISY AND SPENCER, THE BOXING CHIMPS
.

“Ah,” cried Zane. “The monkey smell! I love it! This is the best act in the ten-in-one!”

“Except for yours,” I said.

Shrugging, he blushed beneath his Instant Tan. Backstage, Tic Toc slapped in a tape of jungle sounds. Arthur paced in front of the empty ring with his hands clasped behind his back, inexpertly followed by a green light.

“The esteemed physicist Stephen Hawking said, ‘We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.'” He rubbed his goatee and faced the audience. Lecturer, the carnies called him. “I don't know if I understand the universe or not, but I do know that although it may be hard for the average man to believe he has descended from an ape, it's even harder for the ape to believe.”

“Here comes the Bible lesson,” whispered Zane. A couple of toucans squawked over the drum beats, which were increasing in tempo.

“Did we come from these hairy beasts? Did we once swing from branch to branch, picking each other's fleas as a sign of affection? Did we, too, sometimes brutally attack our mates?”

Behind me, a woman rose and answered him. “No sir, we did not! We come from Adam and Eve and they was made in
the image of the Lord! The Bible says it. Genesis 1:26. And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' That means monkeys!”

“Ma'am, you are absolutely correct,” said Arthur Reese, nodding at her. “Thank you. Now let us pose another question—”

“Jesus weren't no monkey, I know that much,” interrupted the woman.

No one volunteered to go in the ring.

“Let me ask you one question,” the woman said, standing up. She wore pale-blue slacks and a pink-striped shirt that outlined her drooping bosom. A series of bad perms had turned her hair into hay; blue eye shadow swept glamorously toward her ears. Her face was red with excitement. “You tell me,” she called out to all of us, “if God is a monkey, then how could He write the Bible? You answer me that.”

Beside her, a lumpy teenage girl in thick glasses hunched her shoulders and dropped her head.

“Anybody here go to church?” challenged the woman.

“Mother!” hissed the teenager. “Sit down.”

“You hush. I just asked a question.”

“Second Pentecostal,” said a skinny man with a pocked face.

“That don't count, honey. Anybody here go to the Baptist church?”

“Don't count for what?” cried the skinny man, but just then Arthur motioned backstage, and the music rose to a level that drowned out every voice but his own.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” he called out. “Meet two very special members of the Arthur Reese Traveling Show.” As he bowed, he made a wide sweep with his arm; bashfully, the two chimps stepped out from behind the curtain and climbed into the ring. Daisy wore her yellow sundress with matching ruffled underwear and curtsied for her admirers. Spencer, butt-naked except for a bow tie similar to Arthur's, bowed. The audience clapped, and several women cooed.

“These two pygmy chimpanzees, brother and sister, came from south of the Congo.”

“Ain't he cute,” said a huge man beside me. When Daisy and Spencer wrapped their arms around each other and began to dance to “Feels So Good,” the audience buzzed with admiration. Every child in the crowd asked his mother for a chimpanzee.

After the dance, Jungle Jim hopped over the chickenwire and instigated a comedy routine. Hooting and squealing, Daisy and Spencer chased him around the mattress. They did flips and somersaults, and Daisy did a headstand on Spencer's shoulders, proudly showing us her ruffled panties. Spencer yawned, exposing his enormous yellow teeth, then scratched his ass. We were all laughing, even Zane, who had seen this show hundreds of times. When Arthur asked if anyone wanted to box with Spencer, he received a round of giggles and snorts.

“For a mere five dollars, Ladies and Gentlemen, you are welcome to challenge our chimp. If you can stay in the ring for five minutes, I will give you one hundred dollars.” He pulled a wad of money from his vest pocket and flipped through the crisp green bills.

Spencer raised a hairy arm to show us his skinny muscle.

The Pentecostal stood up. “I'll go a round with the little fellow,” he said with a kindly smile on his face, as if he were about to play with a toddler.

“I must warn you, sir,” said Arthur, pocketing the five. “Our hairy little brother is a champion boxer. He may inflict pain; he will certainly leave bruises.” With a mocking grin, the challenger signed a waiver. Then he removed his cap and did a boxing step, winking at Spencer. “Your glasses, sir,” said Arthur, holding out his hand.

“I gotta see my target, don't I?” protested the man, but he was laughing. “For all I know, this fellow gets real quick in the ring.”

Everything happened so fast that afterward I perceived it as a single instant—a scream and a whorl of blood. Zane, who had set his watch, told me the fight lasted one minute and three seconds. First, Jungle Jim hauled Daisy out of the ring, pretending to be jealous when she blew kisses over her shoulder. Then he straightened Spencer's bow tie, gave him a whack on the butt, and led him to his corner. The challenger, grinning sheepishly, went into another corner. When Jim was out of the ring, Arthur blew a whistle. In a flash, Spencer was on the man's chest, giving him rapid blows to the head. Blood spurted, a fountain of blood. When the man screamed “Oh, God, please make him stop!” Arthur blew a second whistle, and Spencer wandered away from his victim and began to pick his teeth. Jim switched tapes and slid the man away on a gurney to the tune “Dog and Butterfly.”

“Do we have another challenger?” asked Arthur.

I elbowed Zane. “Not on your life, sweetheart. And you're not going up there, either. Do you know what that waiver says? In case of injury or death. The lawyer cut accidental.”

Beside me, the big man was heaving himself out of the stands.

He walked toward the ring with his jeans sliding down his hips. Numerous cans of Skoal had worn a ring in his rear pocket. His belly was the size of a watermelon, and when he raised his arm in anticipated victory, his hairy white flesh gleamed under the lights. His face bore the expression of a bulldog. With fondness and embarrassment, I thought of T. C. Curtis.

“Ed Larkin,” he said, shaking Arthur's hand.

“No need to crush my bones, Mr. Larkin,” said Arthur, recovering his hand. I can see that you are a strong man. How tall are you, if I may ask?”

“Six three and a half, last time I measured. Weight, 296.”

“Very impressive. Your opponent, Spencer of the Congo, is three feet two inches tall and weighs 55 pounds. Do you really think this is a fair match?”

Larkin shrugged. “You all set it up. I get a hundred bucks right here if I stay in the ring five minutes, right? I don't want no check in the mail.”

Arthur patted his vest pocket. “It's right here, waiting for you. And if you stay in the ring for six minutes, I'll double it. Two hundred dollars.”

“Let me at ‘em.”

Spencer took an immediate dislike to Ed Larkin. He circled him in the ring, baring his teeth and spitting. His hair stood straight up. When Larkin took a swing, Spencer lifted him up and threw him over the chickenwire.

“I ain't outa the ring!” screamed the man, jumping back on the mat, and that is when the real beating began. With my hands over my eyes, I heard bones breaking.

“Holy shit,” said Zane. “Where's Jim? Holy shit.”

When I looked again, Spencer had ripped off the man's shirt and was scratching his back, leaving long red stripes on the flesh. Blood bubbled out of Larkin's mouth as he cried out, “Mercy!”