Kaleidoscope Read online

  He dodged puddles crossing the sandy rut separating the café from a shack across the street. “The Sugar Shack” Half Track had sent him to, not much more than a lean-to propped as first among equals to a handful of other shelters of rough timber and tin. A screen door wobbled on flimsy hinges to let him enter what passed for an office. An abbreviated counter and cigar box fronted a pegboard draped with a dozen brightly tagged keys.

  Tommy Speck climbed off an orange crate to give a key to an odd couple waiting at the counter.

  “I never know what to do with these guys,” Tommy declared cheerfully as Jack scraped the mud off his cityslickers.

  Two heads turreted to acknowledge Romaine’s arrival. Two identical faces. But only one body.

  Jack found himself once again staring.

  “Jacques and Marcel DuBois,” the dominant male introduced his genial twin.

  They looked to be joined side by side about the chest, some Frog version of Chang and Cheng. Not youngsters, these two, Jack would guess somewhere into their forties, though it was impossible to say for sure.

  They were dressed ludicrously for the climate, twin collars stiff above some bastardized version of a black wool suit. Twin cravats winked diamonds Jack was sure were paste. It was easy to see that they shared a single pair of arms and legs.

  Jack wondered what else they shared.

  He nodded politely. “Jack Romaine.”

  Two heads bowed in unison.

  “Some pair, ain’t they?” Tommy grinned from his crate. “Musicians, too, both of ’em. Violin. They take turns with the bow, ‘The Siamese Svengalis’. Class act. Thing is—I never know when they come in here. Do I charge ’em for a single? Or a double?”

  The midget burst into a cackle of laughter, slapping his bowed leg. Hooting at the top of his toy-sized lungs.

  “Glad you’re so pleased with yourself, Speck.”

  But the little man was unfazed. “‘Single or double’! That’s pretty good. Gotta work that inta my gig.”

  Tommy shuffled over to the cigar box that functioned, apparently, as a cash register.

  “Two bits,” Speck informed them.

  Marcel turned his head nervously to his twin.

  “(But we cannot pay!?)” That lament murmured en Francais. “(We have no money?!)”

  “(You are ill, brother. We need a room.)”

  “(Still. What can we tell him?)”

  “You two can moonshine later,” Speck growled. “Right now I need two bits for the night.”

  Which got no response from the twins.

  “Fifty cents?” Tommy tried again. “Half-a-Washington? Can’t you guys parley voo English?”

  “I’ll cover it,” Jack spoke up. “Go ahead and make it for two nights. For them and me.”

  Jacques and Marcel looked up startled.

  “Parlez vous francais, monsieur?”

  “(My wife was French. She taught me a little. And I have a mother-in-law from Normandy—)”

  “(Poor man!)”

  “(—she taught me a lot.)”

  The twins’ laughter was light as a pair of starlings.

  Tommy scowled. “You bastards yakking it over me?”

  “(There is…nothing at your expense, monsieur.)”

  Tommy turned to Jack.

  “The joke’s not on you, little man.”

  “Better goddamn well not be,” Speck took Jack’s money. “And the next time you call me little, yer gonna be sleeping in the shitter.”

  Jacques and Marcel received their key graciously. “We heard performers could find respite here,” Jacques bowed to Jack.

  “Really? Where’d you hear that?”

  “Monsieur is too modest,” Marcel blushed.

  It was odd to see one face blushing while on the same set of shoulders the other face remained composed.

  “We heard a benefactor inhabited this place,” Jacques took up his brother’s thread. “But we did not expect such generosity so soon. Merci. Merci beaucoup.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Jack stood aside as the twins took a bag each to crab out of Tommy Speck’s miniature office. Looked like a pair of Chaplins, the twins did, waddling out into the rain.

  Jack tapped a cigarette from a pack of Chesterfields.

  “What was all that about a benefactor?”

  “No idea,” Speck got busy at his board of pegs.

  “Seemed pretty sure they’d find somebody willing to help.”

  “Work the midway long enough, you’re bound to find a sucker someplace. Here—”

  Speck tossed Jack a towel.

  “One per room. You don’t like the sheets, laundry ’em yourself. There’s a pot under the bed if you need it. Outhouse out back.”

  “Anyplace I can wash up?”

  “Fuckin’ rainin’, ain’t it? Or you can use the stock tank.”

  Romaine spent the rest of the night in his shorts on a litter that might have been rescued from the trenches. An east-facing window and a blistering sun the next morning were not enough to rouse him from that rude cot. He had dumped his wallet and watch beside an alarm clock on the orange crate that served as a nightstand, stripped to his shorts and collapsed on sheets that needed to be boiled in lye.

  The room was not much more than a closet, a perfect square roughed in. Already the shack was heating up, the tin walls and roof an oven in the sun. One large, unscreened window faced east onto the boulevard outside. A curtain rigged from a flour sack bent the slender dowel nailed into that pine frame. Jack stirred damply in his skivvies, deep in some lunar dream.

  But then something like the trumpet of Gabriel blasted the tin walls.

  “Jesus!”

  He tumbled or was spilled from bed.

  Another blast shook the timbers.

  “Fucking Christ!!”

  He staggered to the window to see an enormous bull elephant on the street outside. An African behemoth. The beast raised its trunk for another trumpet and Jack could swear his hair blew back.

  “Up and at ’em, bright boy!”

  There was Tommy Speck, about the size of a bucket, leading a beast the size of a small house down the street.

  “The hell—?” Jack groped for his watch.

  “You got thirty minutes if ya want breakfast, Buster Brown,” Tommy informed him loudly. “After that it ain’t nuthin’ but the sweat off yer balls.”

  Jack slipped on his travel slacks and a clean undershirt and hustled across to the Kaleidoscope. He steeled himself against any fresh surprise he might encounter on entering the carney’s café. No matter what he saw, Jack told himself, he would not react. He needed information from these people and he wasn’t going to get it if he acted like a chump.

  Jack entered the cookhouse and immediately spotted Half Track negotiating one of the several ramps that allowed her to tend the counter and grille. The sight of an ordinary-looking man nursing a smoke and coffee at a neighboring booth was reassuring, though the purpose of the wheelbarrow next to him was not immediately obvious. And then Jack saw a snout centered in a mane of shaggy hair rising from behind the counter.

  “Morning, Jo Jo.”

  A low growl answered, the head dipped from sight and it took the scratch-scratch-scratch of paws on a pine floor before Jack realized his mistake.

  “Easy, fella!” he backed away from around a hundred pounds of half-bred mutt.

  “Off, Boomer,” Half Track commanded and the dog plopped like a rug to the floor.

  “Sorry,” Jack offered as he found his stool.

  “Fucking rube,” she shook her head.

  Jack decided he might as well take this one head-on.

  “Got a thing against rubes, Half Track?”

  Half Track pushed him a cup of coffee.

  “A rube is a mark, lot lice, whale shit. He’s anyone who’s not a carney. He’s a tag, a meal, a cheap trick. He sure as hell ain’t one of us.”

  “Long as we’re clear,” Jack raised the scalding caffeine to his mouth. “So
what’s for breakfast?”

  “Cash only.”

  “I’ve got cash.”

  “In advance, no circus terms for you.”

  Jack forked over two bits.

  “Everything comes with grits.” She hauled herself up to a griddle big enough for Paul Bunyan. “So don’t bitch.”

  Turning then to her other customer.

  “Freddie? Coffee?”

  “Nah, I’m ’bout jazzed out.”

  The man took a last sip of java, stubbed out his cig. Jack offered his best marquee smile.

  “So. You off work for the season, too?”

  The man regarded him coolly. “First off, I ain’t a working man. As any carney would know. Second, if I want conversation, I’ll ask for it.”

  With that the fella dragged himself out from behind his table and revealed the purpose of the wheelbarrow.

  “You lookin’ at, dickhead?” Freddie grunted as he squatted to heft his load.

  What Freddie loaded into the wheelbarrow was his own scrotum. Jack could not help watching as the slender man lugged a set of balls the size of a bale of hay into the barrow’s shallow bowl. Jack had heard of elephantiasis, and who hadn’t slipped into a sideshow to see the usual distensions of arms or fingers or clits or dicks, most of which he had assumed were faked. But there was nothing phony here. With his own eyes Jack was watching Freddie load fifty pounds of his own testicles into a wheelbarrow.

  “See ya, Half Track,” the freak offered over his shoulder and followed his gonads out the door.

  “Now there,” Half Track paused in admiration, “is a real performer.”

  She slid a platter piled with eggs and grits and bacon and pancakes down the counter.

  “Five cents,” she said before Jack could touch his coffee.

  “For what?”

  “For refills.”

  “I haven’t had a refill.”

  “Not yet, but you will. That’s what ‘advance’ means, ain’t it?”

  “Any other rules I should know?”

  “I imagine, yes.” The answer came from the front door. Jack swiveled his stool to see Luna Chevreaux strolling over.

  She was dressed like a dyke. Trousers and brogans. Khaki shirt cinched in on that insect waist.

  “Any coffee left, Half Track?”

  “On the way.”

  Luna slipped a folding knife from her trousers.

  “We were speaking of rules.”

  “I was, at least,” Jack nodded.

  She stretched over the counter, speared an orange from a bowl.

  “Well, there are rules in any society, aren’t there? For instance, you might have figured out that in Kaleidoscope you’re either a working man or a performer. If you last, which I doubt, you’ll be a working man. Important not to forget your place.”

  “Okay,” Jack nodded.

  “Another rule. Do not for any reason bullshit me. I don’t care if you robbed a bank, fucked somebody’s wife or killed a copper, but do not piss on my leg and tell me it’s fucking dewdrops.”

  One long peel unwinding the whole time from the peeling orange. Jack swallowed his coffee. “Fair enough.”

  “Now. What do you have to offer us, Mr. Romaine?”

  “Hard to say. I’ve never worked at a beddy before.”

  “You bed down when you aren’t working’,” Luna corrected him. “Winters the shows close up, people have to go someplace. Circus tramps, they usually winter over in Sarasota. That’s fine if you work the wire or throw a knife but nobody wants freaks around. Most natives see you outside a tent they shit themselves. Half of them think we’re cursed or subhuman or spawned from the devil. Hypocrites, all of ’em. It’s jake getting your jollies watching Jo Jo’s mug or Frankie’s balls, but, hey! don’t bed down in my neighborhood!

  “Till this place we had no place. I first came down here it was no more than a fishing camp. Back then we just had tents. Giant was the first one to put down a shack. Then Tommy and his wife. First thing you know freaks from all over the country started bedding down here.

  “Won’t be long before Kaleidoscope is an honest-to-God town. Maybe one day even have a mayor and cops! A fire department. And nothing but carneys running the joint.”

  “‘Kaleidoscope Fire Department’? Too much.”

  “What—you think this is a joke?”

  “I didn’t say that.

  “Hell, you didn’t,” Half Track sniffed.

  “Every seen a kaleidoscope, Jack?” Luna dropped the perfect peel of her orange onto the counter. “Every looked through a kaleidoscope?”

  “When I was a kid, maybe.”

  “All those shapes and colors look mismatched, at first, don’t they? Out of place. But then you put ’em in a barrel and turn ’em and you get something beautiful. That’s what we are. That’s what we want Kaleidoscope to be.”

  She pulled her stool close to him. He could smell the nectar of orange in her gypsy hair.

  “So how’d you find us, Jack? Who told you about Kaleidoscope?”

  Jack stirred his sunnyside into the grits. “Ran into a guy at a speakeasy said he used to travel with the circus. Went on and on about this place near Tampa. Place to beddy when work dried up.”

  “You could have picked up that much anyplace.”

  “Tellin’ ya, I got it from this guy.”

  “This Doe have a name?”

  “Well, like I said I only met him the one time and we were both hitting it pretty hard,” Jack squinted as if trying to recall some distant memory. “But seems like he told me his name was ‘Alec’. Or maybe it was Alex. Yeah, that was it, Alex. Alex Goodman.”

  Jack was sure he saw something ripple across that blue skin.

  “And how well did you know this Alex?” Luna’s voice was casual.

  “I just ran into him, that’s all. I don’t even know if he’s a carney.”

  “What he is, is dead,” Luna declared.

  “…Run that by again?”

  “Alex Goodman is dead.”

  A cold fist reached into Jack’s entrails and twisted them.

  “You sure?” he asked like an idiot.

  “Oh, yeah,” Half Track affirmed. “Ambassador killed ’im just this Monday past.”

  Jack didn’t need a calendar to realize that if Goodman bit the dog Monday he wasn’t in Cincinnati on Tuesday.

  But somebody had been.

  “Who’s this Ambassador?” he stalled for time.

  “Our elephant,” Luna answered, watching him closely. “Big bull, you’ve seen him?”

  “Heard him, anyway,” Jack replied but his mind was racing on different tracks.

  He only had Luna’s word that Goodman was dead. On the other hand he knew that someone claiming that identity had sure as hell been in Ohio at the Hotel Milner late Tuesday. If it wasn’t Goodman, it had to be somebody standing in for him.

  Maybe the same Johnny who was supposed to meet Sally at the station?

  “How’d it happen? With the elephant?” he tried to buy time.

  Luna shrugged. “Alex must have spooked him.”

  Half Track cackled. “Time he was through there wasn’t enough left of that drunk’s bony ass to bait a mouse trap.”

  Jack felt the color draining from his face.

  “Concerned, Mr. Romaine?” Luna was close to him now. That bruised skin. Uncomfortably close.

  “Just shook is all,” Jack wished he had a drink.

  “Odd reaction, don’t you think, Half Track? From a man says he barely knew Alex.”

  “It’s the way he got it, that’s all,” Jack tried to cover himself. “Stomped to death by an elephant? I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Not on my worst enemy.”

  Luna folder her knife into her pocket. “Toss me a mug, would you, Track?”

  Half Track tossed her boss a chipped coffee cup. Luna caught it and reached past Jack for a fill. Leaning all the way across. Her breasts hanging in his face. Her hair. That hyacinth smell.

  But that
skin. Thick as mustard.

  She poured her coffee leisurely, withdrew. Then she placed her cup next to Jack’s. Pulled her stool even closer.

  “Accidents happen, Jack. All the time. Could happen to anybody. Could happen to you. Hard work, Jack. You’ll be sucking hind tit. Swinging mallets and shoveling shit from dawn ’til dark. You still wanta stay?”

  Jack lifted his own mug. Nothing but dregs left.

  “…I got no choice,” he said, finally.

  Luna leaned away.

  “I think that may be the only truthful thing you’ve said since you got here.”

  She slid from her stool.

  “We’re starting a one-nighter, Saturdays only. Nothing fancy, just once a week. Under the stars. You’ll need some work clothes. And brogans, you ain’t gonna last a day in those shoes.”

  “When do I start?”

  “Tomorrow. Five sharp. That’s in the morning, Jack. I’ll know by noon if you can brodie a freak show.”

  It was barely light the next morning when Jack dragged himself to the cookhouse for grits and coffee. It was already hot. Not a breath to stir the flag mounted on the café’s roof.

  Tommy Speck was talking a mile a minute. Cleary taking great pleasure in having Jack on his leash.

  “So I’m a, what—a brodie?”

  “Close enough. A gopher, a working man. Bottom of the heap. The lingo’s meant for the road. Like this ain’t really a cookhouse—a real cookhouse’d be in a tent or maybe a wagon. But what the hey. We’re carnies, even when we’re bedding.”

  “Bed sounds pretty good, about now.”

  “Forget it, pretty boy. You got to earn your keep.”

  “So are we like a circus?”

  The word ‘circus’ got the attention of a pinhead nearby.

  Tommy leaned forward. “Not the circus, awright? We ain’t the fucking circus.”

  “Sorry.”

  “This thing we’re doin’ is strictly midway. No Big Tent. No Liberty Ride. Nothing fleabag, but not no Sunday school, neither. What we are is hully-gully and hootchy-kootch. Freaks and performers and candy butchers.”