Nightmare Alley (10 page)

For the long haul the Ackerman-Zorbaugh Monster Shows took to the railroad. Trucks loaded on flatcars, the carnies themselves loaded into old coaches, the train boomed on through darkness—tearing past solitary jerk towns, past sidings of dark freight empties, over trestles, over bridges where the rivers lay coiling their luminous way through the star-shadowed countryside.

In the baggage car, among piles of canvas and gear, a light burned high up on the wall. A large packing case with auger holes bored in its sides to admit air, stood in the middle of a cleared space. From inside it came intermittent scrapings. At one end of the car the geek lay on a pile of canvas, his ragged, overalled knees drawn up to his chin.

Around the snake box men made the air gray with smoke.

“I’m staying.” Major Mosquito’s voice had the insistence of a cricket’s.

Sailor Martin screwed up the left side of his face against the smoke of his cigarette and dealt.

“I’m in,” Stan said. He had a Jack in the hole. The highest card showing was a ten in the Sailor’s hand.

“I’m with you,” Joe Plasky said, the Lazarus smile never changing.

Behind Joe sat the hulk of Bruno, his shoulders rounding under his coat. He watched intently, his mouth dropping open as he concentrated on Joe’s hand.

“I’m in, too,” Martin said. He dealt. Stan got another Jack and pushed in three blues.

“Going to cost you to string along,” he said casually.

Martin had dealt himself another ten. “I’ll string along.”

Major Mosquito, his baby head close to the boxtop, stole another glance at his hole card. “Nuts!”

“Guess it’s between you gents,” Joe said placidly. Bruno, from behind him, said, “Ja. Let them fight it out. We take it easy this time.”

Martin dealt. Two little ones fell between them. Stan threw more blues in. Martin met him and raised him two more.

“I’ll see you.”

The Sailor threw over his hole card. A ten. He reached for the pot.

Stan smiled and counted his chips. At a sound from the Major all of them jumped. “Hey!” It was like a long-drawn fiddle scrape.

“What’s eating you, Big Noise?” Martin asked, grinning.

“Lemme see them tens!” The Major reached toward the center of the snake box with his infant’s hand and drew the cards toward him. He examined the backs.

Bruno got up and moved over behind the midget. He picked up one of the cards and held it at an angle toward the light.

“What’s eating you guys?” Martin said.

“Daub!” Major Mosquito wailed, taking his cigarette from the edge of the box and puffing it rapidly. “The cards are marked with daub. They’re smeared to act like readers. You can see it if you know where to look.”

Martin took one and examined it. “Damn! You’re right.”

“They’re your cards,” the Major went on in his accusing falsetto.

Martin bristled. “What d’ya mean, my cards? Somebody left ’em around the cookhouse. If I hadn’t thought to bring ’em we wouldn’t have had no game.”

Stan took the deck and riffled them under his thumb. Then he riffled again, throwing cards face down on the table. When he reversed them they were all high ones, picture cards and tens. “That’s daub, all right,” he said. “Let’s get a new deck.”

“You’re the card worker,” Martin said aggressively. “What do you know about this? Daub is stuff you smear on the other fellow’s cards during the game.”

“I know enough not to use it,” Stan said easily. “I don’t deal. I never deal. And if I wanted to work any angles I’d stack them on the pick up until I got the pair I wanted on top the deck, undercut and injog the top card of the top half, shuffle off eight, outjog and shuffle off. Then I’d undercut to the outjog—”

“Let’s get a new deck,” Joe Plasky said. “We won’t any of us get rich arguing about how the cards got marked. Who’s got a deck?”

They sat silent, the expansion joints of the rails clicking by beneath them. Then Stan said, “Zeena has a deck of fortune-telling cards we can play with. I’ll get them.”

Martin took the marked deck, stepped to the partly open door and sent the cards flying into the wind. “Maybe a new deck will change my luck,” he said. “I been going bust every hand except the last one.”

The car shook and pounded on through the dark. Behind the open door they could see the dark hills and a sliver of moon setting behind them with a scattering of stars.

Stan returned and with him came Zeena. Her black dress was relieved by a corsage of imitation gardenias, her hair caught up on top of her head with a random collection of blond hairpins.

“Howdy, gents. Thought I’d take a hand myself if I wouldn’t be intruding. Sure gets deadly back in that coach. I reckon I’ve read every movie magazine in the outfit by this time.” She opened her purse and placed a deck of cards on the box. “Now you boys let me see your hands. All clean? ’Cause I don’t want you smooching up these cards and getting ’em dirty. They’re hard enough to get hold of.”

Stan took the deck carefully and fanned them. The faces were an odd conglomeration of pictures. One showed a dead man, his back skewered with ten swords. Another had a picture of three women in ancient robes, each holding a cup. A hand reaching out of a cloud, on another, held a club from which green leaves sprouted.

“What do you call these things, Zeena?” he asked.

“That’s the Tarot,” she said impressively. “Oldest kind of cards in the world. They go all the way back to Egypt, some say. And they’re sure a wonder for giving private readings. Every time I have something to decide or don’t know which way to turn I run them over for myself. I always get some kind of an answer that makes sense. But you can play poker with ’em. They got four suits: wands are diamonds, cups are hearts, swords are clubs, and coins are spades. This bunch of pictures here—that’s the Great Arcana. They’re just for fortunetelling. But there’s one of ’em—if I can find it—we can use for a joker. Here it is.” She threw it out and placed the others back in her purse.

Stan picked up the joker. At first he couldn’t figure out which end was the top. It showed a young man suspended head down by one foot from a T-shaped cross, but the cross was of living wood, putting out green shoots. The youth’s hands were tied behind his back. A halo of golden light shone about his head and on reversing the card Stan saw that his expression was one of peace—like that of a man raised from the dead. Like Joe Plasky’s smile. The name of the card was printed in old-fashioned script at the bottom.
The Hanged Man
.

“Holy Christ, if these damn things don’t change my luck, nothing will,” the Sailor said.

Zeena took a pile of chips from Joe Plasky, ante’d, then shuffled and dealt the hole cards face down. She lifted hers a trifle and frowned. The game picked up. Stan had an eight of cups in the hole and dropped out. Never stay in unless you have a Jack or better in the hole and drop out when better than a Jack shows on the board. Unless you’ve got the difference.

Zeena’s frown deepened. The battle was between her, Sailor Martin, and the Major. Then the Sailor dropped out. The Major’s hand showed three Knights. He called. Zeena held a flush in coins.

“Ain’t you the bluffer,” the Major piped savagely. “Frowning like you had nothing and you sitting on top a flush.”

Zeena shook her head. “I wasn’t meaning to bluff, even. It was the hole card I was frowning at—the ace of coins, what they call pentacles. I always read that ‘Injury by a trusted friend.”’

Stan uncrossed his legs and said, “Maybe the snakes have something to do with it. They’re scraping around under the lid here like they were uncomfortable.”

Major Mosquito spat on the floor, then poked his finger in one of the auger holes. He withdrew it, chirruping. From the hole flicked a forked thread of pink. The Major drew his lips back from his tiny teeth and quickly touched the lighted ember of his cigarette to the tongue. It flashed back into the box and there was the frenzied scraping of coils twisting and whipping inside.

“Jesus!” Martin said. “You shouldn’t of done that, you little stinker. Them damn things’ll get mad.”

The Major threw back his head. “Ho, ho, ho, ho! Next time I’ll do it to you—I’ll make a hit on the Battleship
Maine
.”

Stan stood up. “I’ve had enough, gents. Don’t let me break up the game, though.”

Balancing against the rock of the train, he pushed through the piled canvas to the platform of the next coach. His left hand slid under the edge of his vest and unpinned a tiny metal box the size and shape of a five-cent piece. He let his hand drop and the container fell between the cars. It had left a dark smudge on his finger. Why do I have to frig around with all this chickenshit stuff? I didn’t want their dimes. I wanted to see if I could take them. Jesus, the only thing you can depend on is your brains!

In the coach, under the dimmed lights, the crowd of carnival performers and concessioners sprawled, huddled, heads on each others’ shoulders; some had stretched themselves on newspapers in the aisles. In the corner of a seat Molly slept, her lips slightly parted, her head against the glass of the black window.

How helpless they all looked in the ugliness of sleep. A third of life spent unconscious and corpselike. And some, the great majority, stumbled through their waking hours scarcely more awake, helpless in the face of destiny. They stumbled down a dark alley toward their deaths. They sent exploring feelers into the light and met fire and writhed back again into the darkness of their blind groping.

At the touch of a hand on his shoulder Stan jerked around. It was Zeena. She stood with her feet apart, braced easily against the train’s rhythm. “Stan, honey, we don’t want to let what’s happened get us down. God knows, I felt bad about Pete. And I guess you did too. Everybody did. But this don’t stop us from living. And I been wondering … you still like me, don’t you, Stan?”

“Sure—sure I do, Zeena. Only I thought—”

“That’s right, honey. The funeral and all. But I can’t keep up mourning for Pete forever. My mother, now—she’d of been grieving around for a year but what I say is, it’s soon enough we’ll all be pushing ’em up. We got to get some fun. Tell you what. When we land at the next burg, let’s us ditch the others and have a party.”

Stan slid his arm around her and kissed her. In the swaying, plunging gait of the train their teeth clicked and they broke apart, laughing a little. Her hand smoothed his cheek. “I’ve missed you like all hell, honey.” She buried her face in the hollow of his throat.

Over her shoulder Stan looked into the car of sleepers. Their faces had changed, had lost their hideousness. The girl Molly had waked up and was eating a chocolate bar. There was a smudge of chocolate over her chin. Zeena suspected nothing.

Stan raised his left hand and examined it. On the ball of the ring finger was a dark streak. Daub. He touched his tongue to it and then gripped Zeena’s shoulder, wiping the stain on the black dress.

They broke apart and pushed down the aisle to a pile of suitcases where they managed to sit. In her ear Stan said, “Zeena, how does a two-person code work? I mean a good one—the kind you and Pete used to work.” Audiences in evening clothes. Top billing. The Big Time.

Zeena leaned close, her voice suddenly husky. “Wait till we get to the burg. I can’t think about nothing except you right now, honey. I’ll tell you some time. Anything you want to know. But now I want to think about what’s coming between the sheets.” She caught one of his fingers and gave it a squeeze.

In the baggage coach Major Mosquito turned over his hole card. “Three deuces of swords showing and one wild one in the hole makes four of a kind. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
The Hanged Man!
”

When Stan woke up it was still dark. The electric sign which had been flaring on and off with blinding regularity, spelling out the name of Ayres’ Department Store, was quiet at last and the smeared windowpane was dark. Something had wakened him. The mattress was hard and sagging; against his back he felt the warmth of Zeena’s body.

Silently the bed shook and Stan’s throat tightened with a reflex of fear at the unknown and the darkness until he felt the shake again and then a muffled gasp. Zeena was crying.

Stan turned over and slid his arm around her and cupped her breast with his hand. She had to be babied when she got this way.

“Stan, honey—”

“What’s the matter, baby?”

Zeena turned heavily and pressed a damp cheek against his bare chest. “Just got to thinking about Pete.”

There was nothing to say to this so Stan tightened his arms around her and kept quiet.

“You know, today I was going through some of the stuff in the little tin trunk—Pete’s stuff. His old press books and old letters and all kinds of stuff. And I found the notebook he used to keep. The one he had the start of our code in. Pete invented that code himself and we were the only people that ever knew it. Pete was offered a thousand dollars for it by Allah Kismet—that was Syl Rappolo. He was one of the biggest crystal-workers in the country. But Pete just laughed at him. That old book was just like a part of Pete. He had such nice handwriting in them days …”

Stan said nothing but turned her face up and began kissing her. He was fully awake now and could feel the pulse jumping in his throat. He mustn’t seem too eager. Better love her up first, all the way if he could do it again.