The Nine Pound Hammer (9 page)

“You betcha, buddy.” Lenny grinned. “I got it off.” He touched a hand to the porkpie but didn’t remove it.

Buck held the pistols hip level. The audience took a collective breath. All was quiet but the snorts coming from Lenny’s nose. Then the pistols discharged in three ear-shattering blasts. The apple disappeared into a white cloud of particles. Lenny’s face clamped with visible fear as the second bullet formed a smoking hole in his porkpie hat. What were once chuckles now became whimpers when he reached his fingers down to his hip, where a hole was smoking from his coat pocket. Lenny pulled out the other apple, blown into a gooey cream by the third bullet.

Lenny scuttled from the stage to the heckling of his friends.

*  *  *

The afternoon continued with another pitch from Peg Leg Nel and a lilting version of “Bonaparte’s Retreat” from the band. Ray watched Conker emerge on the left-side stage carrying a black lacquered trunk. For a moment he thought this was going to be the giant’s performance, but Conker left the stage after placing the trunk before the wondering audience.

Ray helped Nel with the tonics and tinctures. As the pitchman heard people’s ailments, he’d call out a name such as
Simpleton’s Memory Salve
or
Gold Brick’s Lassitude Livener
, and Ray looked through the crates to deliver the tonic. As he went back and forth, he kept an eye on the stage, watching the performance and wondering which performer was going to use the trunk.

The black lacquered trunk was no bigger than an ordinary footlocker and had a gold Oriental dragon encircling the four sides until it met its own tail. The crowd restlessly scratched their heads and whispered to one another, waiting for what would happen.

The trunk rumbled and shifted; then it was still again. A sharp crack rang out as the lid popped open. Two bare feet could be seen sticking up from the interior. The feet pulled back into the trunk, and then a figure emerged, standing up slowly. At first Ray could not make sense of what he was seeing. It looked like a jumble of chains wrapped around a potato sack, no taller than three feet.

Something was erupting from beneath the small bundle of chains. It reminded Ray of a butterfly emerging from a
metal chrysalis. Then in one moment the chains went from taut to loose and rattled down into the box. What remained was a pretzel of a figure. Ray couldn’t believe anybody could get so tangled up. It looked like somebody had gotten twisted up in some horrible piece of machinery. He had to look carefully to distinguish a leg from an arm, a shoulder blade from an ankle.

Si was tied up with her arms wrapped around her back until they emerged from either side of her waist. But her torso was also tied to her legs, which were wrapped over her shoulders. How had she gotten those chains off? Ray wondered. How had she opened the box? Come to think of it, how did she fit in that tiny box in the first place?

Si rolled forward out of the lacquered trunk, careful not to tip it as she exited. With her feet firmly planted on the stage, Si rose and began slowly winding around like a miniature carousel. It seemed that at any minute she would reach the point where her waist could twist no further and she would pop in half. The ropes began loosening from her torso. Twisting back the other direction, Si worked the ropes off her back until they collapsed at her feet. In a bizarre spiral, her shoulders surfaced from between her knees, and she rose upright to the whistles and applause of the audience.

Nel called out to the audience, “Does anyone have a handkerchief we might borrow?”

A man wearing a gold badge on his collar extended a
handkerchief up to Nel. “Thank you, sir,” Nel said, inspecting the square of blue cloth. “ ‘H.M.’ Your initials here in the corner?”

The man nodded and mumbled, “Henry Mulvey.”

“Thank you, Sheriff Mulvey.” Nel then showed the handkerchief to Si. She gazed at it and then turned her back to the audience.

“Sheriff Mulvey, I’m going to hand back your hand kerchief, and if you would, give it to someone in the audience.” Mulvey nodded and then walked through the crowd. “Is someone else in possession of the napkin, sir?” Nel asked. Mulvey came back to the front of the stage and nodded.

Si turned and walked to the edge of the stage. The audience watched her curiously, and as she jumped from the stage, the crowd backed a few steps from the exotic-looking girl. Si wandered through the audience until she reached an elderly lady in a cottage cloak. Si nodded at the woman’s sleeve.

Nel called to the lady, “Dear woman, do you have Sheriff Mulvey’s square?”

A smile broke out on the woman’s face as she produced the handkerchief from the cuff of her dress. Cheers and applause followed Si as she returned to the stage.

Ray’s eyes were drawn to Si’s dark hand. It swirled with slight sparkles, like lightning bugs in twilight.

*  *  *

Ray laughed as Conker lifted a fat woman up in a chair one-handed.

“Ray,” Nel hissed for the third time, batting Ray’s head with his fez. “We’ve nearly reached the denouement and I need you to go retrieve more tonics. There’s a boxcar toward the back of the
Ballyhoo
. You’ll find the extra supplies of tonics. We’re dispossessed of the
Johnny Chapman’s Apple-flavored Arthritis Anodyne
. Can you remember that? Get a dozen bottles and some tins of the
Chief Joseph’s Nasal Naphtha
. They’re all labeled. Hurry! After Marisol and Redfeather, we’ll be bustling with customers. Run!”

Ray looked once over at Conker as the giant lifted four people effortlessly, each pair clinging together to a bench ten feet above the stage. Sorry to miss the rest of Conker’s performance, Ray dashed off the back of the stage. The noise of the crowd dissipated until all Ray could hear was the lone melody of Mister Everett’s fiddle. He reached the side of the boxcar and climbed up through the open doors. Ray pulled the Pirate Queen’s silver dagger from his coat pocket and used it to pry the lids off several boxes. Jangling bottles and tins in their crates, he read the labels until he found the
Arthritis Anodyne
and the
Nasal Naphtha
.

A sound jerked his head from the task. He cocked an ear and listened. It was faint at first, but as he focused, he could detect a soft singing. Ray dropped the bottles into an empty crate and slipped out the door of the boxcar. He
tilted his head about until he discovered the source of the song. It was coming from the locked car next to the boxcar.

The singing was low and melancholy, and Ray placed his ear to the door to listen better. There was something about the voice, something about the song that made him want to listen, made him want to get inside the car. Ray was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to pick the lock, to break down the door, to tear the side off the train if only it would allow him to hear the singing better.

“What do you think you’re doing?” A sharp voice startled Ray. The spell was broken and Ray turned shamefully to face the Chinese escape artist. Si’s eyes flickered as she saw the dagger in Ray’s hand.

“Using it to pry the lids off,” Ray explained as he slid it back into his belt.

Si scowled. “I assumed you were a half-wit, but that’s not a lid. That’s what we like to call a door. Nel sent me to find you. Now, get back to the show with those tonics!”

As Ray followed Si, he glanced back once more at the locked car.

The musicians were playing a slow, sinuous song in some exotic scale that accentuated Marisol’s serpentine dance. She wore tinkling bangles on her wrists and ankles. A pair of rattlesnakes coiled down each of her arms, shaking their tails in time with the dance. A black viper, exposing its long fangs at the audience, was wrapped around Marisol from her waist to her neck, but Ray could not pay attention.

His heart was still pounding. His throat felt hollow and dry. What had just happened to him?

After Marisol finished and Ray helped Nel sell the next batch of tonics, he was starting to feel less shaky.

“You all right?” Shacks asked as Ray settled back to the floor next to him. Ray nodded and turned to Nel at the front of the stage.

“Allow me to introduce our final performance of the afternoon … from the land of Cochise and Geronimo, grandson of the only warrior to escape the Salt Canyon Massacre in the Arizona Territory …” The pitchman pointed to his right. “The bloodthirsty Chiricahua Apache scout … our fire-eater … Ember Joe!”

Stepping out from behind the curtain on the left-hand stage, Redfeather wore his pin-striped brown pants and a newly donned crimson shirt over which he had layered dozens of necklaces of beads, shells, polished bones, and copper. His long braids were crowned with a pepper-red silk sash. A stream of fire burst from his mouth over the heads of the ducking crowd. Squeals jumped from those at the front of the stage.

In the middle of the stage, Redfeather placed a copper bowl filled with burning coals onto a stool. He took two flaming batons from the bowl and began spinning them through his fingers and throwing them high in the air. He danced and somersaulted, all the time creating twin circles of flames with the batons. After returning them to the copper bowl, Redfeather poured a vessel of oil
onto the hot embers, shooting tall flames up from the bowl.

Redfeather rolled up one of his sleeves past the elbow. He pulled a penny from his pocket, showed it to the audience, and then stuck the penny and his hand into the center of the flames. The audience shouted. Dumbfounded, Ray leaned forward to get a closer look and saw that although the fire lapped Redfeather’s arms, his flesh had not the slightest indication of being burned.

Redfeather pulled his hand from the flame and held up the glowing molten penny for all to see. The fire-eater then pinched down on the penny, mashing the coin into a lumpy shape, which he then rolled in his hand into a string of copper. Putting the melted coin back into the flames, Ray watched as Redfeather fashioned the copper that had once been a penny into a ring. Redfeather dropped the copper ring into a bucket of water on the edge of the stage. As the audience applauded, Redfeather took the cooled ring from the water and tossed it to a young boy standing at the front of the stage.

“Give him a hand,” Peg Leg Nel urged the crowd. Redfeather took a bow. Nel then asked, “Would you like to see our fire-eater bob for an apple?”

Nel took an apple from a bowl by his tonics and tossed it up to Redfeather. Redfeather placed the apple into the flaming copper bowl. Ray could see the apple burning, its skin quickly turning a papery black.

Standing before the bowl of fire, Redfeather pushed his
braids back over his shoulders and readied himself. To Ray’s astonishment, Redfeather plunged his head into the heart of the flames. Then Redfeather stood upright, the charred apple locked between his teeth. His face did not seem to have even broken a sweat, much less been burned.

The audience erupted in whistles and cheers.

As the performers poured out onto the stage to take a final bow, Nel beckoned Ray to the front of the stage. Several customers gathered around with outstretched hands full of coins, bills, even some barter items. “Get these people some of the
Molly Pied Salve
. Yes, sir. Burning belly? Ray, hand that man a
B. Zell Bub Tincture
.” Ray snapped to work, taking money and handing out the medicines.

As he did, he thought about the performers. Conker was unusually strong and Seth skillful, but Si’s tattoo was something more. And what he had just seen Redfeather do was … impossible! Ray realized now what Seth and Redfeather had meant at lunch when they said some performers were born with skills but others had to work for their talent. No amount of work and training could have taught Si or Redfeather to do the things they had done.

Nearly an hour later, Ray and Nel finished with the last customers.

“We’ll have more tonight. Sorry, folks,” Nel said over and over. “Come back at seven o’clock this evening and we’ll have more—more miraculous tonics and more astounding acts! Tell your friends.”

As the last people exited the tent, Nel turned to Ray,
drawing his sleeve across his sweaty forehead. “I take it you enjoyed the performance?”

“Yes,” Ray said.

“Well, we’re heading off tomorrow. I could certainly use your help.”

“Where are you going next?” Ray asked.

“Winston,” Nel said. “And then vagabonding south to—”

“South?” Ray asked. “You’re going south?”

Nel spread his hands and gave a wide grin. “Unless the cardinal points have shifted, I do believe we’ll venture south.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” Ray said, unable to contain his relief as he smiled. The lodestone had been leading him south before it inexplicably stopped … before it had brought him to the medicine show.

“Of course you are.” Nel nodded. “Abide as much time as you wish with us. The job is yours. Come. Let’s get more tonics unloaded from the boxcar.”

R
AY HAD BEEN UP LATE WITH THE OTHERS, DISASSEMBLING
the medicine show’s tent and stage and packing everything into the
Ballyhoo
. He woke the following morning to find the train already traveling.