Winter Loon(21)
“That Paulie was dumb as a box of hammers. Not your dad, though. Only limb he’s like to lose is his pecker, ain’t that right, Ballot? Stick that pecker of yours in the wrong damn slot and that thing might get chewed right off.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” my father said.
Topeka was the first person I’d ever seen with a tattoo on his face. It was a bony hand reaching up out of his shirt with fingers poised to rip his eyes out of his head. He said it was to remind him of someone he once knew who might be trying to reach out to him from the grave. “Keeps me on my toes, kid.”
“Did you kill that sumbitch?” I asked, trying my hardest to curse like the rest of them.
Topeka lifted his porkpie hat and rubbed his shaved head. “Let’s say he and I had a difference of opinion and leave it at that.”
“You wanna give me that hat?” I asked.
“Nope, kid. This hat belongs to me.”
IT WAS THRILLING, DRIVING ALL night and waking up on the seat of the stock truck, Elizabeth curled up next to me. My father would go to town first thing—that was his routine—and get coffee at a local diner. He said it gave him a feel for the place, what kind of people might show up on the midway. He said you could know a town, take its measure, by the six a.m. folks. He’d return full of coffee and breakfast, ready to work. Usually he’d bring me a fist-size muffin or bacon biscuits. For Elizabeth, he brought coffee creamers, mostly, I think, because he knew how much I liked watching her lick from the tiny cups, her wisp of a tongue flicking to get the last drops.
Carnival life was like living at the playground where the ice cream truck was always parked. I was free to wander as long as I didn’t leave the fairgrounds. I never got bored of the rides and novelty tents or eating corn dogs and candied apples. When I wasn’t taking tickets for my dad, I helped keep the crew dogs off the midway, reset burst balloons, or duped marks for Topeka’s flat store that he ran behind the Fun House. “Jesus, even the kid can do it!” he’d say when I miraculously was able to locate the ball under the shell to win ten dollars, which I later returned to him for a five.
But one thing did scare me, and it was the Barbosa Wandering Freak Show—a collection of misfits who circled the midway hawking the chance to take a picture with a freak for fifty cents. One spectacularly fat lady with red hair and thick freckles all over her face took a shine to me early on. This woman, Delilah, she looked like a bullfrog in a party dress and she terrified me. She had a sidekick, a tiny man with long blond hair called Sampson, who she treated like a pet. Whenever she saw me, she’d grab me and pull me so close I could feel her giant bosom resting on my head and the flab of her lumpy arms on the back of my neck. Her teeth barely broke the gum. She used to tell me how sweet I was, that I was “like sugar, so fine,” she’d say. Sampson seemed to like me less and stood by silently watching this display, his pudgy arms folded against his chest.
One afternoon, green-black clouds cropped up in the western reaches of the prairie where we’d set up, rolling over the shelterbelt toward the midway like a tar carpet. The wind bent back the wheat, and the carnival crew scrambled to get booths shut tight before the storm hit. I stood next to the Tilt-A-Whirl and up comes fat Delilah. “You’d best run for cover,” she warned me, “or you’re like to melt.” I couldn’t move, thinking about that wicked witch I’d seen turn into nothing when the water hit her. I put my hands on my head and stood there, hoping against the rain.
She stared at me with her mushroom face, then waddled off, yelling, “Moss! Hey, Moss! Your boy’s ’bout to get drown out here. You best fetch ’im.” The sky cracked open and I got doused. Along comes my dad, running toward me. He was so tall and had that wicked smile, and to remember it I realize that he was probably just a little older then than I am now. “Hey, Little. You’re soaked through.” He scooped me up and stuck me under his arm like a sack of flour and carried me back to our trailer.
A dark-skinned woman was there, bobby-pinning loose strands into her hive of hair. Elizabeth was up on the table next to her, batting away at a dead sparrow my father had stuffed and tied to a string for her to play with. He jerked his head toward the door and the woman got up in no hurry. “I can take a hint,” she said, scratching the cat between the ears with her long painted nail. “Oh, and Moss, x-y-z.” He looked down and pulled up his zipper, then tossed a towel over my head. His big hands tousled my head and ears, muffling anything he might have said to her, blinding me to any look he might have given her.
I’D SEEN WOMEN LIKE THAT one before. My father called them lizards, women who wore short skirts and tight tops and waved back at the dirty men. The story goes that they’d get with some guy, then follow the show around from town to town until he got tired of them or they got bored or someone got beat up. They’d wiggle their asses at my dad, even with me standing there. Sometimes, he’d lean over the high rail and talk to them or give them rides for free if they asked nice. One time, he sent me off to find Topeka when a woman with a gap between her two front teeth showed up. I went back to our trailer when the gates closed, but the door was locked. I banged on it until a light flickered on. I heard a woman’s laughter, followed by shushing noises, then my father’s voice. “I’m feeling sick, Little. You go sleep at Topeka’s tonight.” The light went out and the laughter came on again. I scuffed the dirt and sulked away. Next day, my dad acted like nothing happened, just asked if I had fun sleeping over at Topeka’s, like that had been the plan all along. That woman showed up in the next town driving a crumpled bronze Firebird. I saw my father talking to her, but he didn’t look happy to see her.