Nightmare Alley (38 page)

The Rev. Carlisle had doubled in the middle, as if taken by a violent stomach cramp. He moaned, bending over, and the fat man dropped his guard an inch. It was low enough.

When Stan sprang he carried a thick faggot from the fire and with one lunge caught the hobo with its burning point just below the breast bone. The man went down limply and heavily, like a dummy stuffed with sand.

Stan watched him gape, fighting for breath. Then he smashed the torch into the open mouth, feeling the teeth crush under it.

The alcohol was draining out of his mind. He was alone and cold, under an immensity of sky—naked as a slug, as a tadpole. And the shadow of the crushing foot seemed to move closer. Stan began to run.

Far away, up on the drag, he heard the hoot of a whistle and he ran faster, staggering, a stitch in his side. Oh, Jesus—the Tarot. I left it by the fire. One more signpost pointing to the Rev. Carlisle.

A freight was slowing. He ran, his breath scorching, looking ahead, through the dark, for obstructions on the line. An iron step came whipping by him and he reached for it, but it tore from his fingers. The job was picking up speed.

A wide-open boxcar door slid up to him and he leaped.

Then, with the scalding panic rushing over him, he knew that he had missed and was swinging under.

A hand from the car gripped his shoulder and held him, half inside the car and half out, while under his feet the earth flew past.

The freight high-balled along.

I
N THE
parking lot the Maryland sun beat down, flashing from rows of windshields, from chromium handles and the smooth curves of enameled mudguards.

Cincinnati Burns eased the battered convertible into line while Molly, standing out on the gravel, shouted, “Cut her left, honey. More left.”

He drew out the ignition key and it was suddenly snatched from his hand and hurled out between the cars. Cincy said, “You little devil! You’re mighty sassy. Ain’t you? Ain’t you?” He boosted the child high in the air while it screamed with joy.

Molly came running up. “Let me hold him, Cincy, while you get the key.” He passed the baby to her and it grabbed a damp handkerchief from the gambler’s coat pocket and waved it triumphantly.

“Come on, precious. Let’s let Daddy get the key. Hey, quit kicking me in the tummy.”

The big man set the boy on his shoulder, handing Molly his hat for safekeeping, and they headed for the grandstand. The gambler shifted the baby and looked at the stop watch on his wrist. “Plenty of time, kitten. The third race is our spot.”

They stopped to buy paper cups of raspberry sherbet and Cincinnati whispered suddenly, “You hold the bambino, Molly. There’s Dewey from St. Louis.”

Treading softly, he approached from the rear and squatted down behind a glum, lantern-jawed man in a seersucker suit. Cincy took a pack of matches and holding his thick fingers, knuckles covered with red hair, as delicately as if he were threading a needle, he stuck a match between Dewey’s shoe sole and the upper. Lighting the match, he sneaked back a few steps and then strolled over to where his wife and son were watching from behind the refreshment stand.

When the match burned down the long-faced horse player shot into the air as if hoisted by a rope and began smacking at his foot.

Molly, Cincy, and young Dennis, peeking around the corner of the stand, began to shout in unison. Molly dropped her cup of sherbet, and Dennis Burns, seeing it fall, threw his after it gleefully.

“Hey, what goes on?” Cincy rattled change in his pocket and said, “You go on. I’ll catch up to ye’s.”

When he joined them he held four cups of sherbet. “Here, kids—one to suck on and one to drop. Dewey is sure a sucker for the hotfoot. This must be a thousand times somebody gives him the hotfoot. It’s a dozen times, at least, that I give him the hotfoot myself. Let’s get up in the stand, kitten. I’ll get you organized and then I’ve got to get the roll down on that hay-burner in the third; he shouldn’t drop dead,
kennahurra
. You wouldn’t know that, that’s Gaelic. If he breaks a leg we’re going to have to talk fast back at that fleabag. What the hell, it’s time we was pulling out of that trap anyhow. Every time I wake up in the morning and get a glim full of that wallpaper I feel like I ought to slip you five bucks.”

S
TAN
lay on the splintery boards, feeling the vibration against his elbows, smelling the acrid odor of machine oil rising from the planks. The freight thundered along, gaining speed.

The hands drew him further in and then slid under his armpits and helped him to sit up. “You all right, son? You sure come near swinging yourself into Kingdom Come.” The voice was soft and friendly.

Now they were passing the outskirts of a town, lonely street lamps sending bars of light winking through the door. The man who had dragged him in was a Negro, dressed in denim overalls and a denim work coat. Above the bib of the overalls a white shirt was visible in the shadows. His smile was the only part of his face Stan could see.

Getting to his feet he braced himself against the sway of the car under him and worked his fingers and arms, easing the strain out of them. “Thanks, pal. It was too dark for me to put on any speed myself—couldn’t see what was ahead of me on the drag.”

“It’s tough, dark night like this. You can’t see the grab-irons. You can’t hardly see
nothing
. How about a smoke?”

Stan felt a bag of tobacco pressed into his hand. He twisted himself a cigarette and they shared the match. The Negro was a young fellow, slim, with smooth, handsome features and close-cropped hair.

Stan drew in smoke and let it dribble from his nose. Then he began to shake, for the steady pound of the wheels under him brought back the stab of that hopeless, desperate fear, “This is it,” and he trembled harder.

“You cold, mister? Or you got a fever?”

“Just shaken up. I thought I was going to hand in my checks.”

Their cigarettes perfumed the darkness. Outside the rising moon rode with them, dipping beyond treetops.

“You a working stiff, mister, or just on the road?”

“On the road.”

“Plenty fellows likes it that way. Seem like I’d rather work than knock myself out hustling.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Any kind. Porter work, handyman. I run a freight elevator once. I can drive pretty good. Biggest old truck you can find, I’ll drive her. I’ve shipped out: cook’s helper and dishwasher. I can chop cotton. Reckon there ain’t anything you can’t do, you set your mind on it.”

“Bound north?”

“New Jersey. Going to try and get me a job at Grindle’s. What I hear, they taking on men. Taking on colored.”

Stan braced his back against the closed door on the other side of the car and drew a final puff from the cigarette, sending the butt flipping through the open door, trailing sparks.

Grindle. Grindle. Grindle. To drown out the chatter of the wheels he said, “Why are they hiring guys all of a sudden? Business must be picking up.”

The youth laughed a little. “Business staying right where she is. They hiring because they done a whole mess of firing a while back. They hiring all colored, this new bunch, what I hear.”

“What’s the idea of that?” Tame lawyers, tame psychologists, tame muscle-men. Bastards.

“What you s’pose? They get all the colored boys in there, and then they stir up the white boys, and pretty soon they all messing around with each other and forget all about long hours and short pay.”

Stan was only half listening. He crawled into the corner next to the Negro and sat down, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Hey, bud, you wouldn’t happen to have a drink in your pocket, would you?”

“Hell, no. All I got is four bits and this bag of makings. Traveling fast and light.”

Four bits. Ten shots of nickel whisky.

The Great Stanton ran his hands over his hair.

“My friend, I owe you a great debt for saving my life.”

“You don’t owe me nothing, mister. What you expect me to do? Let you slide under and make hamburg steak out of yourself? You forget all about it.”

Stan swallowed the cottony saliva in his mouth and tried again. “My friend, my ancestors were Scotch, and the Scotch are known to possess a strange faculty. It used to be called second sight. Out of gratitude, I want to tell you what I see in the future about your life. I may be able to save you many trials and misfortunes.”

His companion chuckled. “You better save that second sight. Get it to tell you when you going to miss nailing a freight.”

“Ah, but you see, my friend, it led me to the very car where I would find assistance. I
knew
you were in this car and would help me.”

“Mister, you ought to play the races and get rich.”

“Tell me this—I get a decided impression that you have a scar on one knee. Isn’t that so?”

The boy laughed again. “Sure, I got scars on
both
my knees. I got scars on my ass, too. Anybody got scars all over him, he ever done any work. I been working since I could walk. I was pulling bugs off potato plants, time I quit messing my britches.”

Stan took a deep breath. He couldn’t let this wisenheimer townie crawl all over him.

“My dear friend, how often in your life, when things looked bad, have you thought of committing suicide?”

“Man, you sure got it bad. Everybody think they like to die sometime—only they always wants to be hanging around afterwards, watching all the moaning and grieving they folks going to do, seeing them laid out dead. They don’t want to die. They just want folks to do a little crying and hollering over ’em. I was working on a road gang once and the captain like to knock me clean out of my skin. He keep busting me alongside the head whether I raise any hell or not—just for fun. But I didn’t want to kill myself. I wanted to get loose. And I
got
loose, and here I am—sitting here. But that captain get his brains mashed out with a shovel a couple months later by a big crazy fellow, worked right next to me on the chain. Now that captain’s dead and I ain’t mourning.”

A fear without a form or a name was squirming inside Stanton Carlisle. Death and stories of death or brutality burrowed under his skin like ticks and set up an infection that worked through him to his brain and festered in it.

He forced his mind back to the reading. “Let me tell you this, friend: I see your future unrolling like thread from a spool. The pattern of your days ahead. I see men—a crowd of men—threatening you, asking questions. But I see another man, older than yourself, who will do you a good turn.”

The Negro stood up and then squatted on his haunches to absorb the vibration of the car. “Mister, you must of been a fortuneteller sometime. You talk just like ’em. Why don’t you relax yourself? You last a lot longer, I’m telling you.”

The white hobo jumped to his feet and lurched over to the open door, bracing his hand against the wall of the car and staring out across the countryside. They roared over a concrete bridge; a river flashed golden in the moonlight and was gone.