Kaleidoscope Page 13

  “Not interested,” Jack replied.

  “Then get interested.”

  Was a woman giving that command; Luna Chevreaux appeared as if by magic at his shoulder.

  “We already got too many mouths to feed, Jack. If you wanna stay, you’re gonna have to pay your way and that means you got to get an act.”

  “Didn’t say anything about that when you hired me,” Jack objected.

  “Didn’t invite you down, either, did I? Did anybody?”

  How much did she know? How much did she suspect? It didn’t matter; he had to find a way to stay near the beddy.

  But eating fire?!

  “You know Flambé’s been handling Ambassador,” Luna went on. “He’s the only trainer we got left, which means somebody’s got to pick up his act.”

  “It’s mostly spectacle,” Flambé assured him. “Not like swallowing swords, not at all. There is a certain technique, of course. And be foolish to say there aren’t risks.”

  Jack took a gander at the rods. They were slender, some sort of light metal. A doweled handle at one end led to a not-quite-closed loop at the other extremity, a kind of hook. Flambé wadded a strip of cloth into that clutch.

  “Your torch”, he demonstrated.

  Then the veteran performer slipped the lid off a covered can and soaked the cloth with a clear fluid.

  “Your fuel,” Flambé declared and Jack could smell the gasoline.

  “I don’t think this is my act,” he demurred.

  Flambé smiled as if he’d heard not a wisp of reservation.

  “The essential thing with swallowing flame is to keep the fumes out of your lungs,” he instructed. “Get any vapor at all inside your lungs, the fire follows down and you get an ignition like in the cylinder of an automobile. Only your lungs aren’t made of steel.”

  “Not the way I wanna travel,” Jack tried to back away but Luna blocked his retreat.

  “You wanna stay, Jack? Then try it. Try it or leave.”

  “I’ve seen what gas can do to a set of lungs,” Jack grated. “I’ve seen plenty.”

  “Said you wanted to start over.”

  “Just have some minor concern about burning out the inside of my lungs is all.”

  “I’ve seen men survive.” All of a sudden Flambé was all business. “Not saying the odds are good, naturally.”

  “I know the odds.”

  “Well, then, if you want to improve your chances the trick is to keep up a gentle exhalation. Some performers hyperventilate in preparation, though I suggest against it. Just fill your handsome chest with air. Like this—”

  The old trouper’s diaphragm rose visibly.

  “—Come on, Jack. Let’s see those marvelous pectorals.”

  Jack could feel Luna at his back. He ran a dry tongue over dry lips.

  “I’ll try,” he said. “Just once.”

  “Fill up,” Flambé encouraged evilly.

  Jack pumped air into his lungs until it hurt.

  “There, there, don’t overdo. Once you’ve got a constant pressure of exhalation your only worry is to avoid the burns that can come when the fire exits your mouth.”

  Jack’s chest collapsed like a balloon.

  “That’s all I got to worry?”

  “Your chest, Jack. You’ve let it collapse. So once again—Inhale! That’s right, overdo. Now, all you need to do is make sure your mouth and lips are wet.”

  The silver-haired devil was silver-tongued, too. About a foot of tongue, which he rolled salaciously about his lips; Jack fought a tide of crimson that was rising in his face. His own mouth felt dry as toast.

  “Take the torch.”

  Flambé wrapped Jack’s already blistered hand around the instrument. That weight. Heavier than he expected.

  “Now for the match. Luna, would you assist?”

  A match scratched to life and Jack jumped as if stung.

  “Easy, Jack,” his tutor cautioned sharply. “It’ll be all right. Just listen to me. I am lighting your torch.”

  Jack could feel the heat. It felt like a blowtorch.

  “Now you must insert the torch at just the right angle into your mouth.”

  Flambé illustrated with an unlit rod, tilting his own head back to illustrate.

  “Just that slant, you see? Neophytes generally use their free hand to guide it. Like a blind man lighting a cigarette. Don’t want to miss, do we?”

  “No,” Jack croaked.

  “Don’t speak,” Flambé commanded. “You begin a gentle exhalation even before entry, very light. Constant pressure. We there? Good. Head back. Back, Jack. Hold. Gentle exhale. Now when the fire comes push it out. Here it comes…”

  Flambé trapped Jack’s hands in his own to guide the torch in. Air seemed to torrent from Jack’s lungs like a fire hose and a yard of flame leaped from his mouth.

  Jack jerked the torch free.

  “Bravo!” Flambé applauded. “Now once more. For confidence.”

  He could see Luna watching him. Was this her way to run him off? Wasn’t going to work. He had a family at stake, Martin and Mamere. Not to mention his own hide. Jack thought of Gilette. He thought of a church full of men coughing up their lungs.

  No way he was going to let this muddy bitch bust his hump.

  “Head back,” Flambé commanded.

  “Give me the torch,” Jack replied.

  It was a true solo, this time. But going in Jack nicked a tooth with the iron torch, his head dipping on instinct—

  “LOOK UP, JACK.”

  He could feel the fumes in his throat—

  “BLOW IT OUT.”

  Jack blew air from every orifice in his body, his mouth, his nose, his ears. His ass, if he could.

  WHOOOOOSH!!!

  The gas vaporized on contact with the atmosphere to throw a spear of flame from his badly singed mouth.

  Then it was done. It was over. He was alive.

  Jack swayed dizzily.

  “I gan thmell ’air,” he wheezed.

  “God’s little way of getting your attention,” Flambé’s comfort seemed deliberately ambiguous.

  Jack worked his mouth.

  “Blithtahs, doo. I god blithtas.”

  “A journeyman’s scars,” Flambé assured him. “This was an excellent start, believe me. An outstanding premiere.”

  Jack felt weak in his legs and was surprised to find Luna’s hand steady on his back.

  “Well, Jack. Now you know the life.”

  Jack doused his own torch in the basin and walked away under his own steam. He wasn’t twenty yards down the midway when Tommy Speck came bustling out of The Snake Lady’s pit.

  “Jack?! Goddammit, where you been? Grab a shovel, for chrissake. Move it!”

  Evening fell with the ever-entwined aromas of hotdogs and cotton candy. Every pit, tent and concession was draped in primary colors, splashed in bright paint and lit with white-hot lamps. The rap of talkers warred with the jangle of the rides and the shrieks of rubes throwing away their money. The Tilt-A-Wheel turned slowly before a harvest moon, the midway’s Milky Way. Jack was back to his role as a working man, again following Tommy Speck from one menial task to another. He had just repaired one stall when Tommy rushed him to the heart and soul of the midway. A gaudy banner offered its oil-painted advertisement in lurid detail:

  THE CONGRESS OF HUMAN CURIOSITIES

  The men and women familiar to Jack from the cookhouse counter, those sturdy folk who threw horseshoes outside their trucks and trailers, or gossiped in the G-tent, were transformed now under the influence of paint and oilcloth and costumes into creatures of a disturbing and alien world. Half Track looked positively foreign from the waist up, as ‘Princess Monica, The Half Woman of Saint Albans’.

  A talker unfamiliar to Jack lured natives to the stage where Marcel & Jacques shared hands and heads over a cello.

  “BROUGHT to you by SPECIAL engagement from the Louvre, the Somme and the streets of PAREEEEEE! The most amaaaaaaazing Spec-Ta-Cal! Siamese Twi
ns JOINED at the breast since birth and BLESSED with the gift of music these ENTIRELY original creatures PERFORM AS CAN NO OTHER MUSICIAN IN THAAAAA WOOOOORLD!!”

  Beethoven’s Ode To Joy rising sweet and clear as a child’s tears above the raucous clamor of barkers and rubes and the distant hoot of a calliope.

  “C’mon,” Tommy snapped. “Ain’t you ever heard a fiddle?”

  A few steps away from the Svengali Twins came a display with a different appeal:

  SEE THE INCUBI! LIFE IN STASIS!

  A score of fetuses floating like fairies in jars of formaldehyde.

  “Pickled punks, we call ’em,” Tommy barely spared a glance.

  Jack’s stomach rebelled.

  “Need a douche?”

  “You’re an asshole, Tommy.”

  The little man just laughed.

  Performers worked the right-hand tickets, geeks worked the left. Jack saw Blade at work, swallowing a sword that looked long as a fishing pole. Jack had to reflect that his own, recent introduction to the arts made him more appreciative of the younger man’s skill and aplomb.

  On the other side of the sawdust a hootchy-kootchy offered the always-popular strippers. “Luna’ll perform sometimes,” Tommy mentioned offhandedly.

  But not this evening, Jack noticed. Tonight the natives would see Cassandra at work.

  Tommy was keen to see Flambé’s act.

  “He’s been workin’ on somethin’ special.”

  And indeed he had. The Great Flambé’s act combined his twin capacities to tame elephants and fire. Jack watched with Tommy as the veteran rode Ambassador’s tusks to take a tin of gasoline off a bunted barrel.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” the crowd cooed in anticipation.

  The torches came next. Twin pillars.

  “UP,” Flambé commanded, and rode the bull’s tusks a dozen feet into the air.

  Jack watched Flambé balance on his ivory pedestal, fill his mouth with gasoline and without a moment’s hesitation swallow a flaming torch. Fire spewing from his elevated perch to incinerate a papier-mâché castle set twenty feet away.

  The crowd roared its astonished approval and Jack with them. The son of a bitch was a pleaser, no doubt about it.

  The Penguin Lady did her shtick in a sideshow down from Flambé’s act. Jack had never seen Charlotte in other than modest and ordinary attire, but here she was, hair down and stretched nearly naked on an oil-painted iceberg, dry ice wafting over the set to provide the illusion of chill in the tropics.

  A wooden puppet boot-blacked to resemble a penguin cuddled between Charlotte’s webbed extremities. As the marks milled outside her pit, The Penguin Lady drew her scenario with Delphic indifference.

  “…What kind of creatures are these, little ones?” The Penguin Lady regarding the natives as though they were the creatures on display. “Who are these myrmidons who stare at us as we seek to take our bed?”

  The puppet answering in Charlotte’s thrown voice.

  “These are the most wonderful and terrible of beings, my lady. They are called…people.”

  Some nervous jitters, then, from an audience suddenly quiet.

  “Tell them to be careful,” The Penguin Lady stretched lasciviously. “What they seek may not be what they neeeeeed….”

  Down from The Penguin Lady, a headless woman rose from her chair to the amazement of all. Her barker really had the rubes going—

  “…HEADLESS at birth HEADLESS FAYE is kept alive ONLY by a LIQUID NOURISHMENT developed by Doctor Anaximander Albatross Ethelreld, Ph.D., M.D., L.L.D. and communicator with the SPIRITS BEYOND!!!”

  A coil of hoses gurgled fluids into the severed neck.

  Jack leaned close to Tommy’s ear.

  “Is that real?”

  Tommy chortled. “The fuck, Jack! You are a rube!”

  So it went. A troupe billed as the “Original Wild Men of Borneo” threw bananas at the crowd. Turned out there were at least a dozen troupes of Negroes claiming to be the last and cannibalistic inhabitants from that ill-defined location. On the other hand, he also saw legitimate performers like Pinhead drive nails up his nose. The Armless Man he’d first seen at Luna’s café had the rubes going when he pulled somebody from the audience and with nothing but the toes of his feet proceeded to untie the mark’s shoes and re-tie them! Then he slipped off the rube’s tie and re-knotted it!

  A pair of dwarfs, friends of Tommy’s, weighed in for an incredulous circle of admirers at a combined weight of—

  “One hundred forty-nine and a half pounds!”

  And at the other extreme was Princess Peewee.

  Tommy stopped Jack short at Peewee’s elevated stall. The Fat Lady sat spraddle-legged above the crowd with no pretense at royalty. A loose shift left all the folds and creases corpulent and plain to see. She wore no underthings, Jack noticed, and noticed, too, that she didn’t seem to care.

  655 POUNDS—a pair of scales were rigged to exaggerate, but only slightly. Jack could see that The Princess was the largest draw of any sideshow; must have been a hundred natives jostling to get a gander. And she definitely knew how to cater to their several interests, rocking those huge breasts to and fro as she fanned herself with a faux feather of ostrich.

  “Say, Peewee!” some yokel yelled from the crowd. “Will ya MARRY me?”

  “Depends if yer BIG enough,” Peewee shot back, and the rubes roared laughter.

  Dollar bills fluttered like pollen into a tub placed below Peewee’s rude throne. Coins were tossed onstage.

  “Look at these people,” Tommy said proudly. “They eat her up.”

  Not a hint more of acknowledgement from The Princess to her admirers, however. Not so much as a nod to the men and boys who filled her tub with bills and silver. She lapsed to a feigned indifference, now that she had them on her leash. Those golden curls plastered close to her skull. Royal and aloof. Quite literally above the fray.

  Jack nodded to the half-filled tub.

  “Want me to sack the money?”

  “Not tonight. Tonight you’re the bruno.”

  “Okay, I give up, what’s a bruno?”

  “From the mines, dickhead. Coal mines? The fella that shovels coal into the cart.”

  “Don’t see any coal mines here.”

  “Well, you ain’t workin’ for a mine, are ya?”

  “So what am I shoveling?”

  “You’re shoveling her shit.”

  “…Hers?”

  “That’s right. Doniker’s built right under.”

  “You’re shitting me, right?”

  “No, but she will. Dump a loaf on yer basket, she thinks yer takin’ advantage.”

  Jack swallowed a surge of bile; Tommy smiled.

  “There’s a wheelbarrow behind the stall. Got a ditch out back for the leavings.”

  “I’m not gonna do it.”

  Jack dropped his shovel. Tommy glanced down at the abandoned tool.

  “What was that?”

  “I’m not gonna do it,” Jack repeated. “I’m not gonna shovel some fat lady’s shit.”

  “Then pack yours and leave,” the dwarf replied calmly. “I’ll tell Luna to draw yer pay. I could care less, one way or the other.”

  “I’m a performer.”

  “Not yet.”

  Jack knew there was no appeal. It was take it or leave it and he couldn’t afford to leave.

  Tommy kicked the blade end of the shovel and its handle popped into his hand.

  “Here.”

  He handed Jack the implement.

  “There’s a shower set up behind the grabjoint when yer done.”

  By the time Jack finished clearing Peewee’s latrine he was dryheaving and filthy and frustrated. By the time he had finished spreading the last of Peewee’s offal, the midway was shut down. Nothing remained but a flotsam of paper wrappers and peanut bags, the detritus of natives returned to town that would, Jack was sure, be his first task to clear the next morning.

  The sing-song of the calliope was long silent,
the rides still. The calls of frogs had taken over, now, and the infernal buzz of insects. Jack scrubbed down in cold water fallen from a barrel rigged for an outdoor shower. He scrubbed a bar of lye soap down to a nub. His hair was stiff as a board and his skin raw, but he was clean. Which fact drew the unwanted attention of mosquitoes.

  He cursed defecation, insects, and gangsters. He cursed Oliver Bladehorn. Most of all he cursed his own cursed luck. There could be a pile of gold buried under Peewee’s bench and he’d spread shit for a century before he found it.

  And there was no help in the offing, no ally, no confidant. The freaks down here were not about to trust him, no matter how much fire or crap he swallowed. He was a fool to think he could con a carney.

  “God DAMMIT!”

  He could not reach a skeeter sinking its probe between his shoulder blades.

  “Let me.” Cassandra appeared from nowhere.

  And before he could decline she stepped quickly to his flank and slapped the offending insect dead.

  “We should put some netting up,” she traced the line of his spine with her finger. “Better than a smudge pot.”

  Jack scratched a bite furiously.

  “I have some citronella oil in my trailer, you know. Will take out the itch.”

  “I just wanta sleep,” Jack grabbed a towel.

  “Sleep with me, then.”

  “Take a raincheck, Cassandra, all right?”

  He was reaching overhead to kill the spigot when she asked him, “Why are you interested in Alex Goodman?”

  Goosebumps on his back along with a sudden stir of tropical breeze.

  “Got no interest,” he mumbled. “Nothing special, anyway.”

  She circled her arms around his naked waist. She wore a translucent shift of some sort, a kind of peignoir pulled high around her multiple breasts. A narrow waist, he had not expected that and could not help but feel her legs, long and hairless and apparently impervious to the insults of mosquitoes. Her hair caught in the moon like a basket of pearls.

  She smelled of jasmine.

  “Alex Goodman,” she pressed her hands flat on his butt. “What’s Alex to you?”

  “I met him. Had a couple of drinks. That’s all.”