The Man in the Tree (15 page)

He moved on to the chair in which the Lizard Man had taken his position
quietly.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, for your edification and amazement, I present
the one and only Lizard Man. Ladies and gentlemen, it is unbelievable
but true. Born in the dark bayou country of Louisiana, his mother was
attacked by alligators in the swamp and lingered for two months between
life and death. She recovered from her horrible ordeal, but when her
child was born -- you see the result before you."
The Lizard Man removed his robe; he was wearing white boxing shorts. His
arms, legs, and chest were covered with gray, peeling scales. Between
the patches of scales, his skin was red and chafed.
"Was that okay, Ed?" Wilcox asked.
"Last year you said, 'Born in the mysterious swamps of Louisiana.' I thought
that was better."
"Right. The mysterious swamps of Louisiana, thanks for reminding me."
The next space was empty except for a wooden table. Wilcox gestured
at it. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, a true freak of nature, one of
the mysteries of the age, the Two-Headed Calf. As you can plainly see,
the calf has two complete heads, two noses, four eyes, four ears -- "
"Is it an invisible calf?" Gene said to Irma, who was standing near him.
She looked up and smiled with amusement. "It's pickled, in a glass
tank. No use bringing it out for the run-through."
"Oh."
He saw Wilcox looking at him, and realized that it was his turn next. He
walked to his chair and sat down.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your amazement and delight I proudly
present Big John Kimberley, nine feet three and one-half inches tall,
the tallest man who ever lived. Stand up, if you will, Big John, and let
them see you. Isn't that amazing, ladies and gentlemen? Big John was
born on a cattle ranch in the wide-open spaces of Wyoming in nineteen
forty-four; he is twenty years of age, ladies and gentlemen, and he is
still growing! Every article of his clothing has to be specially made
for him. His shoes are hand-made in London, England; they are fourteen
and one-half inches long. There is enough cloth in his coat and trousers
to make suits for three men of normal size. The ring which you see on
his finger contains four ounces of fourteen-carat gold, and it is one
and three-quarters inches across. If you will, Big John, let me borrow
your ring for a moment -- I'll be careful of it."
He held up the ring, showed that it would fit over two of his fingers.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, Big John has made replicas of this unique
and valuable ring for distribution to the public as souvenirs. These
rings are hand-crafted of genuine gold-filled metal, each and every one
is an exact duplicate of the ring you see before you, and Big John has
consented to sell a limited quantity of these unique and valuable rings
for the amazing price of only seventy-five cents each! Take them home,
show them to your family and friends, they won't believe you unless
they see it with their own eyes. And for an additional proof, ladies
and gentlemen, you may purchase for just a dollar one of these large
autographed photographs of Big John. Get them now, because this offer may
never be repeated! That concludes our performance, ladies and gentlemen,
and I hope we have entertained and surprised you. If you can't believe
your eyes, if you want to see it again, the next performance will begin
in five minutes."
Wilcox looked at his watch and remarked, "Just on eighteen minutes --
that's a bit long, but we'll trim it down. Thanks, all."
The performers began to disperse; Gene saw Irma walking away hand in hand
with a slender young man in dungarees. A stout little man had come up with
a wheelchair, so large that Gene thought it must have been custom made;
with the help of two workmen, he got the Fat Lady into the wheelchair
and began pushing her toward the line of trailers. After a moment Gene
found himself alone with Wilcox.
"I suppose you know you've added a couple of feet to my height," he said.
"Yes, that's all right. The marks don't know the difference, and
nobody's going to measure you. There's never been a giant whose size
wasn't exaggerated -- beginning with Goliath, probably."
"Or the Nephilim."
"Oh, sorry, who'were they?"
"'The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.' Genesis.
The Nephilim were the children born of those unions -- 'There were giants
in the earth in those days.' They had a lot of other names too -- Anakim,
Emmim, Zamzummim. The Israelites found them in Canaan, and they said,
'We were as grasshoppers in their sight.'"
"Yes, I see. I'm not very strong on the Bible, I'm afraid -- never
got past the begats. But about the nine feet and so on -- it's harmless
deception, or beneficial really, because the marks pay to see a tall man,
and the taller they think he is, the more they get for their money. We're
all in the illusion business here. Well, I'm off -- tomorrow's the first
of May."
"The first of May?"
"That's what they call opening day, heaven knows why. If anybody asks
you, 'Are you first of May?' that's what they mean -- are you new to
the show? You'll catch on. See you tomorrow."
The driver Wilcox had promised appeared later that afternoon; he was a
pleasant, shy young man named Larry Scanlon, who seemed to think it was a
privilege to drive for a giant. The carnival caravan put itself together
late that evening, with what seemed an enormous amount of confusion;
it was after one o'clock when Larry told him they were ready to roll.
"Does the carnival always travel at night?" Gene asked.
"Sure, because, you know, you got to tear down one place and set up
the next day somewheres else. And besides there's less traffic at night
and the staties don't hassle you so much. You might as well go on and
go to bed, Mr. Kimberley. I see there's a intercom here in the cab --
is it working?"
"I suppose so."
"Let's try her out."
Gene went into the trailer and turned on the intercom over his bed. There
was a hiss, then a crackling voice: "Mr. Kimberley, can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Well, okay, then we're all set. If you want to talk to me, like if you
wake up or anything, or there's any problem, give me a holler. Otherwise,
why, just get your sleep. Good night, Mr. Kimberley."
Chapter: Thirteen
In the morning when he opened the door, he found the carnival already
set up. The rides were clustered near the entrance -- the sky ride, the
Ferris wheel, the merry-go-round, loop-the-loop and the rest. Beyond them,
booths selling food and soft drinks were in a line down the middle, and
around the sides of the lot were the games of skill and the sideshow. Gene
had picked up a little carny jargon; he knew that anybody who sold food
or drink was a "butcher," and that the purple and orange drinks that
the carnival people made in big tubs were called "flookum."
The freak tent was called "the string joint," because its compartments
were arranged in a row or "string." Behind it, campers and trailers
were parked, leaving an enclosed space, "the back yard"; the freaks were
allowed to use it between performances, but only the Lizard Man did so;
the Fat Lady, who was too heavy to move without great effort, sat in her
special chair in the freak tent all day long, and Gene Anderson stayed
in his trailer.
They showed three days in Orlando, then packed up and moved overnight
to Leesburg. All day the carnival went on, out there beyond the walls
of the tent; he could hear the canned music bracketing the lot from
loudspeakers on poles, and the distant chime of the merry-go-round, and
he could hear Wilcox's voice as he gathered a tip, but he could only
imagine the crowds, the young men and girls in short-sleeved shirts,
the mothers carrying children, the old people in their Sunday clothes.
At night after the show closed he sometimes wandered around the lot,
watching as the concessionaires shut up their stands -- the dart throw
with its limp array of balloons on a board punctured by a thousand
misses; the string pull, the penny toss, the steeplechase. The ground
was covered with a sad litter, candy wrappers, ticket stubs, paper cups,
the detritus of pleasure. He often saw Irma LeFever at the candy-apple
stand, where she worked between shows with the sad-faced young man who
appeared to be her husband. She spoke to him when he passed, but the
other concessionaires were too busy to talk.
In the mornings it was another kind of loneliness: the early sun lit
up the wooden and canvas stalls with a pathetic promise; the lot was
clean and empty. Everyone was busy then too, the ride attendants taking
canvas covers off the cars, butchers filling their popcorn machines,
mixing flookum, breaking out cartons of foot-long dogs.
It was an unspoken rule in the carnival that the freaks did not appear on
the midway or in town. The fire eater could come and go as she pleased,
and so could Wilcox, but if the real freaks had appeared in public, they
would have been giving away what they had for sale. They could not eat in
local restaurants, or even go to the drugstore for a tube of toothpaste;
others performed such errands for them. Their view was always the same:
the canvas walls of the tents, the rear ends of trailers, the tattered
grass.
The first performance of the sideshow was at one o'clock; after that,
as long as the talker could keep gathering a tip, they appeared every
twenty minutes until dinner time. By the second week, Gene no longer had
to look at his watch; he knew when it was time to leave the trailer,
sit for a moment in his outsize canvas chair behind the string joint,
and then enter through the back wall and sit on his throne as Wilcox
finished his spiel about the preserved calf embryo. He worked only
five minutes in every twenty throughout the day, and during those five
minutes he learned to carry in his mind the argument of the book he had
been reading, to look at the customers -- "the marks" -- and not see them.
The Carnival moved north up the Atlantic coast, then west
into Georgia and South Carolina, a week here, three days
there. Sometimes they traveled as much as a hundred miles
between stops, sometimes only thirty or forty.
One evening after the last performance, Wilcox came up to him at the
door of his trailer. "Like to talk to you a moment, John."
"Okay. Come in."
"No, I'll stay here, thanks. It's just this. You've been with the show
almost a month, and I'm practically the only one you talk to. You don't
even eat with the others. Why is that?"
"Not feeling very social."
"If you don't mind my saying so, you're like a guy running off to join
the Foreign Legion because his girl's thrown him over. You came here
because you thought it was going to be awful, and now all you can think
about is how awful it is. When you look at the others, you're thinking,
'Ugh, they're freaks.'"
"I'm a freak too," Gene said. He was trembling, and he could feel his
face growing warm.
"Yes, you are, but we're using the word in two different senses. In a
sideshow a freak is a member of the aristocracy, something most people
can never be. But when you say 'freak,' you mean not human. Well, they are
human, and so are you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get drunk."
He turned and walked away.
Gene closed the door and sat down with his hands between his knees,
staring at nothing. After a few minutes he went to the refrigerator
and got out the ham and vegetables he had been thawing for his dinner,
but one look was enough; he knew the food would choke him. Shame and
anger came in waves. He wanted to hit Wilcox; he wanted to walk out of
the trailer and never come back; he didn't know what he wanted.
Over the line of tents the white lights of the Ferris wheel were revolving
under a few early stars. The air was cool. Gene walked across the yard
to Wilcox's little trailer and knocked on the door.
"Yes."
"Mike, it's John."
After a moment the door opened; Wilcox stood there, looking a little
flushed.
"You were right," Gene said. "Thanks."
Wilcox smiled. "You know, that's the most marvelous -- oh, damn. Come
in and have a drink."
"I'll just sit here in the doorway for a minute, if it's all right."
"Of course -- I wasn't thinking. Half a mo." He disappeared and came
back with a tumbler of whiskey in each hand. "You're my first giant,
actually -- Tim Emerson was before my time. It must be a nuisance,
doorways and taxis and so on."
"It wasn't so bad until this year. Then I had some other problems, and
I began to think, if it's hard now, what will I do when I'm eight feet
tall, or nine? I might as well get used to it."
"Yes, I see. I feel much the same way, if it's any help. There isn't a lot
of give in the world, most places, for anybody who's a bit different. I
mean they don't seem to make allowances. My God, the people on the street
where I lived with my mother in Birmingham, you wouldn't believe it,
they lived in identical houses and wore the same clothes, carried the
same umbrellas and went to work at the same time every morning, I mean,
you couldn't even tell the wives and children apart. I used to think of
changing the house numbers; I thought the husbands coming home would go
into the wrong houses and say, 'Hullo, Mum, what's for tea?' and nobody
would notice. I had dreams about the factory where they made people
all alike."
"You said you lived with your mother -- was your father dead?"
"Yes, he jumped off a bridge when I was nine -- bit of a jolt all
round." He held up the bottle. "Have another drop of this."
"What is it, Scotch?"
"Yes. Not the best, I'm afraid, but it does the trick. Look, what I
meant to say before -- I know it must be hard to get used to. Being on
exhibition like a man from Borneo or something, but, you know, these
people here are the ones who couldn't stand the conformity. Really when
you come to think of it, it's fantastic luck that we've got any place to
go to. I can imagine a world where there's nothing but those semidetached
houses all in a row. That gives me the shudders."
"I understand what you're saying." Gene stood up. "I'm going on back,
I've got some thinking to do."
"God bless," said Wilcox.
The next day, instead of going back to his trailer after the first
performance, Gene sat down with a book in the back yard. The Lizard
Man, who was also reading, glanced over and nodded. After a while they
fell into conversation. The book the Lizard Man was reading was called
"Genetics and the Races of Man"; he offered to lend it to Gene when he
was through.