The Pilo Family Circus (23 page)

‘Crystal ball?’ said Gonko. ‘What, hers? Who do you think has it?’

‘Winston,’ said Shalice, giving Gonko a cold stare. ‘Your friend Winston.’

‘Winston? No way,’ said Gonko. ‘What the hell makes you think he has it?’

Shalice smiled and tapped her forehead with a long manicured nail. ‘My “spooky powers” as you would put it. So tell me, was he acting alone or under someone’s instructions?’

Kurt smiled serenely as he looked from one to the other.

‘You tell me,’ said Gonko, ‘use your spooky powers.’

‘Which room is his?’ Kurt said pleasantly.

Gonko led them to Winston’s room. It was locked and Winston wasn’t home. Gonko kicked the door in. Shalice brushed past him and started digging through the clothes and boxes. ‘It’s here somewhere,’ she said. ‘I saw the old pervert this morning. He has been enjoying free peepshows every day.’

Gonko watched with narrowed eyes as the fortune-teller turned over everything in sight.
Peepshows
did not sound like the Winston he knew. She started tapping on the walls, looking for an echo to reveal some hidden hollow. ‘All right, cut the shit,’ said Gonko. ‘Winston’s one of my most trusted performers and —’

‘Aha!’ Shalice said, a gleam in her eyes. She pried with her nails at a patch of wall painted a slightly lighter colour than the surrounding wall, and with a
crack
it came away. She reached her arm down into the hollow and, grinning, brought the crystal ball out from its hiding place.

Gonko ran a hand over his face and sighed. ‘Ah, boss, I’m as shocked as you are.’

Kurt was still smiling serenely, but Gonko knew Kurt and could see the disappointment in his face; and he was glad it was only disappointment. ‘Oh, I understand,’ said Kurt. ‘We’ll talk about it after the wedding, though, don’t you think?’

‘Your call, boss,’ said Gonko.

‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Kurt. He loped away. Shalice followed him, not glancing at Gonko as she passed. He watched them go, then slammed his boot into the wall, punching a hole in the plaster. ‘Winston …’ he said with a sigh, and left it unfinished. The rest of it went something like this:
You have some explaining to do, old feller
.

While Shalice was finding the crystal ball, Winston was at Mugabo’s tent on George Pilo’s instructions. Rumour had it Mugabo was in a bad state, letting no one near his hut, which spelled trouble the day before show day. Winston had no luck getting in there either; the magician was worked up like never before. After calling platitudes through Mugabo’s door for an hour Winston gave up and headed home. Now at least two acts were scratched from tomorrow’s show, and the afternoon was young — with a little more pandemonium, maybe they could get the whole show day cancelled. It would be the first time a show had been cancelled in Winston’s memory.

Just before he stepped through the door to the clowns’tent he was hit by a sudden bad feeling, and a second later saw Gonko sitting at the card table, staring at him through narrowed eyes. He did not look happy. ‘Have a seat, Winston,’ he said.

A wild fluttering thought flashed through Winston’s head:
Something’s wrong — JJ told. He remembered everything and he told. It’s all over.

He sat down and it struck him that Gonko looked saddened rather than angry, which seemed more ominous still. Gonko looked him in the eye and said, ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

Winston shifted on his chair and fought to keep a quaver from his voice. ‘What do you mean, Gonks?’

‘Kurt and Shalice found it,’ Gonko said, slowly and quietly. ‘In your room. I don’t care that you had it, but how could you let them find out? I thought you were smarter than that.’

For a moment Winston was genuinely confused, then a rush of relief came on him. The ball, that was all. The bigger secrets were still secret. ‘Ohh,’ he said. ‘They found it.’

Gonko’s eyes flashed. ‘Don’t sound so damn happy about it.’

‘Happy? No, just didn’t understand you at first.’ Winston tried to think fast. ‘I saw the ball lying around, out in the open. Knew it’d be trouble if it got found, so I put it in a safe place. Thought it was a safe place, anyway.’

Gonko nodded; he looked satisfied with that, though it was very hard to read him in situations like this. ‘Bad timing, Winston,’ he said. ‘We needed to cash in on Kurt’s birthday, but that’s fucked it now. Good and proper.’

‘Ah, damn it — I’m sorry, Gonks.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Gonko said, sighing. ‘I don’t know how they found it; probably she had one of those visions. But that doesn’t matter. You don’t put a foot wrong too often, so I’ll let this one slide.
I
will, but I don’t know if Kurt will.’

Winston straightened up in his chair and wiped his brow. ‘Kurt? What did Kurt say?’

‘He wants a chat with you. Wants me to send you over there right away. He probably sees this as serious shit, after he specifically asked for the ball back. He’d see it as directly disobeying his orders — which it was, actually. And Kurt’s not in the best of moods lately, with all this …
freedom
stuff.’

‘Jesus …’

‘Nah, don’t sweat it too much,’ said Gonko. His eyes looked closed, but he was watching Winston very closely. ‘Go see him, get it over with, then forget about it. You ain’t let me down before … I’m guessing you won’t do it again.’

Winston nodded and stood but his legs gave from under him and he grabbed the table for support. He left and Gonko’s eyes followed him out. The clown boss sat there for a while, lost in thought.

In stunned calm Winston knocked on Kurt’s trailer door. He wondered whether Shalice had really had a vision or whether JJ had squealed on him out of spite. ‘Hmmm?’ Kurt’s jovial voice called from within.

Winston managed to keep the stammer from his voice. ‘It’s me, Mr Pilo.’

‘Oh, Winston! Come in.’

He opened the trailer door, stepped inside and froze when he saw Shalice sitting in a chair beside Kurt’s desk.
Oh, wonderful
, he thought. This was going to make lying very tricky work, and the excuses he’d come up with on his way to the trailer were now useless.

Kurt clasped his hands together on the desk, resting them on a thick Bible. ‘Winston,’ he said, ‘I wanted to ask you
something … What was it again? … Oh yes. What were you doing with the fortune-teller’s crystal ball?’

‘Well, boss,’ said Winston. ‘I don’t really know. Can’t say what possessed me to keep it in my room after I found it. But I want you to know I’m very sorry.’

Kurt didn’t react to this at all. There was a very thick silence, and when Shalice spoke Winston was almost grateful, even though she said: ‘You did not
find it
. You are lying. I can see it on your face.’

Winston kept his eyes fixed on Kurt. ‘Boss, I’m sorry.’

‘Was
thou shalt not steal
one of those, what do you call them?’ said Kurt.

Unsure who he was addressing, Winston stayed quiet. After a moment Shalice said, ‘Commandments? Yes.’

‘Hm,’ said Kurt, tapping an index finger on the Bible. ‘Then this is a bit serious, isn’t it? I don’t approve of stealing. And you were spying on me, too. Was that one of those commandments? Don’t spy on me?’

‘No sir!’ Winston said, wondering how JJ could be so unbelievably stupid. ‘I never even looked in the thing. Swear to … to God. I didn’t steal it from the fortune-teller either.’ With effort Winston stopped himself from saying more.

Kurt glanced at Shalice and while Kurt’s eyes were averted Winston felt like he’d been released from a hard grip. She nodded reluctantly. ‘Truth.
This
time.’

‘Hmm,’ said Kurt. ‘It’s not so serious then, I suppose. What worries me, Winston, is that since Shalice lost her ball, there’s been a number of
incidents
. Do you know the ones I mean?’

This was the moment. Winston summoned what willpower he had left to keep every muscle in his face completely still, his voice even. ‘Yes sir. I think so.’

‘Hmm.’ Kurt tapped on his Bible again with a thick finger, his long sharp nail gouging into the hard cover,
tap tap tap
. ‘I’m all for a little sport here and there,’ said Kurt. ‘Competition helps the show. Would you repeat that for me, Winston?’

Winston swallowed. ‘Competition helps the show, sir.’

Kurt nodded. ‘That’s a very good point, Winston. But the acrobat tent was a very expensive piece of equipment. It’s going to take a long time to get it up and running again.’

Tap tap tap.
The drumming got faster, drilling into Winston’s head like Chinese water torture. He tried to concentrate but there was no hiding the quaver in his voice now. ‘Yes sir, I imagine so,’ he said.

Tap tap tap.
Two monstrous eyes bored into Winston like hot white lights, and he felt he was about to scream. One more second of that glare and he was going to wet his pants, turn tail and run.

Suddenly Kurt sat back in his chair and unclasped his hands. Winston flinched back at the sudden movement. The Bible on the desk had a hole in its cover as though it had been shot. ‘Very good,’ Kurt said lightly. ‘I’m glad we had this chat, Winston.’

Winston started. Had his ears deceived him? The way Kurt’s questions were headed, with a living lie detector by his side, he had been bracing himself for catastrophe. ‘Thank you, Mr Pilo,’ he said after a moment’s silence.

‘Hmm,’ said Kurt. Then, as though an afterthought, ‘Oh, but stop by the funhouse tonight, please. I’d like you to see the matter manipulator. Can’t have people thinking I’m a soft touch, I hope you understand.’

Winston’s mouth went dry and his knees buckled under him. ‘Yes, Mr Pilo,’ he whispered.

‘Good man,’ said Kurt. ‘Off you go then. Enjoy the wedding.’

Winston wandered away from the trailer in haunted shambling steps, looking as dazed as the tricks who wandered through on show day. Shalice passed him without a word, feeling justice had been partially served, which was about as much as she could hope for in this charade. But now there were more pressing matters, among them a certain chain of events she had to quickly reconsider. To secure the Pilos’ help in retrieving her crystal ball, she’d stressed to George that if she had it she could be monitoring these vandal attacks. To emphasise the point, she’d set about staging an attack of her own. The dominos were toppling already, she could see this as she walked through the showgrounds. Two carnies passed her carrying a crate of fireworks to the funhouse, as per a written order fraudulently signed in George’s name by Sven of the acrobats, who intended to use the fireworks in an attack on the clowns. Shalice had set this up the night before by watering a patch of ground on the path outside the acrobats’ tent until it was slippery. A dwarf passing the tent had slipped, dropping a glass cabinet he was carrying to the freak show. Investigating the noise, Sven had presumed the clowns were up to something, and conceived the fireworks plot as a shooting star streaked across the sky.

Like the shooting star, the dwarf’s role in this had been destined, part of a natural chain of events Shalice had hijacked by watering the ground. It was that complex and that simple, like switching a track lever at a train intersection;
all that was needed was a map of the future’s landscape to see what went where, and when. It had taken her three hours of meditation, examination of the tarot cards and consultation of her star charts and fate-webbing charts. Had anyone seen her watering that patch of ground, would they have been in any position to accuse her of an untimely explosion?

She probably had time to alter that train of events and stop the conclusion, but now that she thought about it, she owed the Pilos no favours. Besides, she had other fish to fry — or one other at least, and his name was Mugabo. She had some courses of action ready to roll for the magician but she was holding off, waiting for more clues to shed some light on this business. What was his beef, for heaven’s sake?

As yet no more visions had come, but no matter — the ball was hers again. She would be watching the magician like a hawk.

Him and, for the moment, no one else. The rest of the circus could burn to the ground for all she cared.

‘NO, Goshy, you can’t see the bride before the wedding, you just can’t. It ain’t
tradition
, Goshy, it ain’t
tradition
!’

‘
HMMMMM! HMMMMM!
’

He had one hour to wait.

The dwarfs and carnies set up the clowns’stage tent for the wedding, with Doopy overseeing it and making a nuisance of himself by complaining that it wasn’t ‘purty enough’. But they got it as purty as they could at short notice, and it seemed to satisfy Goshy. He’d acquired a suit from somewhere and his brother led him through the tent, asking his opinions on this and that. He wasn’t upset, that was all anyone knew for sure.

Doopy had never seen the bride so radiant. He’d lured Goshy out of his room and convinced him to stare out the parlour window for twenty minutes while he’d decorated her. He’d put on some tinsel, Christmas lights and bulbs.

By midafternoon all were gathered. True to his word Kurt brought the priest, who stood before the plastic seats with wide haunted eyes. He held in his shaking hand the marriage vows. On a table before him Goshy’s bride sat in her pot, thin yellow-green fronds swaying gently.

Goshy was coaxed into the tent, waddling like some kind of mutant penguin in his suit. Some bridesmaids had been found among the gypsies, and they stood waiting like everyone else; sullen, staring in silent revulsion at the plant and at Goshy. All who were able to decline their invitations to the wedding had done so, and the acrobats were certainly nowhere to be seen. Fishboy, Gonko, Nugget, Yeti and Kurt Pilo were the only guests who were there voluntarily.

Under the close and affectionate scrutiny of Kurt, the priest — who had parted company with his two front teeth — began reading the vows. From the look on his face it was clear he was holding onto one last thread of hope he’d wake from this nightmare. His voice trembled as he began. ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today … Ah, to witness the union, ah … between …’

He shook himself and peered around at everyone. Kurt laid a hand gently on his shoulder as though for moral support. The priest flinched, shut his eyes and with difficulty continued. ‘To witness the union between, ah, Gosh … Goshy? And …’ Doopy bustled over and whispered something in the priest’s ear. ‘And this
Athyrium filix-femina
. Uh, the importance of love is … all through God’s teachings … and, ah …’ The priest swayed on his feet, about to faint. Kurt whispered something in his other ear, evidently a prompt to cut to the chase. ‘If anyone here can see why these … these two shouldn’t be wed, may he speak now or forever hold his peace.’

The silence was the loudest thing JJ had ever heard.

‘I pronounce you …’ said the priest, ‘oh God help us.’

Kurt slapped his paws together in hearty applause. Gradually the rest of the gathering joined in. Doopy nudged
Goshy in the ribs. Goshy had seemed confused and startled throughout the ceremony, arms locked at his sides, eyes wide. As the applause wound down everyone held their hands to their ears; a single burst of high-pitched sonic assault shot from Goshy’s mouth, a note that rang out for no longer than a second, striking all ears present like a bullet. ‘What’s that one mean?’ said Rufshod as the clowns lowered their hands from their ears.

‘I think it means he’s happy,’ said Gonko, ‘but that’s a guess.’

The gathering dispersed much quicker than they’d coalesced. JJ ran ahead of the others. He’d broken into Rufshod’s room earlier to steal some powder, as he had something in mind for young Jamie. He went into Goshy’s room, opened the cupboard, perched his backside on the bag of fertiliser inside and frantically scrubbed off his face paint. He slid the cupboard door shut — it was a tight fit, and his knees were pressed up around his chin. With some difficulty he melted the stolen powder and wished for exactly two hours sleep.

When the bride and groom entered the room, he didn’t stir.

Jamie woke right on time in the cramped confines of Goshy’s cupboard. He wondered where he was, why he was here, and why he could smell fertiliser. He clutched at his lower back, grimacing. Straight lines of light marked the outline of the closet door. He held his eye to the gap, trying to work out if he was in some kind of immediate danger, but could see nothing outside.

Before he could remember what JJ had been doing up
until he slept, he heard a noise close by. Strange noise, too, possibly made by a human throat, but it was hard to tell — a kind of high-pitched chortling, a mix between a whistle and a throat gargling water. There was a papery, rustling sound in the background.

As quietly as he could, Jamie slid the cupboard door open. Lantern light flooded in.

He saw two bulbous fleshy pads, wrinkled and pink, skin that looked like it had never seen sunlight. There was a trail of stubbly hair running down the middle, as was a single drop of sweat. It was a backside, sitting atop two creased fatty thighs, connected to calves, to ankles, around which a pair of clown pants sat in a bunch. The whole package was moving in a grotesque steady rhythm that could only be sexual, were there not something so unearthly about it. Jamie’s eyes travelled upwards and he saw that waist high to the apparition was a table with a plant sitting on it, the species
Athyrium filix-femina
, feathery yellow-green leaves. It was decorated with tinsel.

Jamie understood then that JJ had locked him in the honeymoon suite. Payback.

Forward and back Goshy’s backside plunged and withdrew. His throat made that horrible gargling whistle sound as the plant’s leaves shook with his thrusts. The buttocks loomed over Jamie larger than life. The chirping sounds became more urgent as Goshy upped the pace.
Oh Jesus,
Jamie thought. Shivering, he slid the door back in place. The wood creaked.

Goshy turned around, his face pulled back into fleshy rings, eyes bulging. His penis, six solid purple-pink inches of it encased in a condom, wobbled from side to side. His face flashed with livid alien fury. Then came the screams.

The noise pierced every room in the tent, short jabs of violent sound, each outburst louder than the last. Jamie huddled back in the cupboard, shivering, while above him Goshy loomed, pants still down, erect and wailing. The plant sat mute on the table. Someone pounded at the door. Goshy stopped hollering and seemed to come to some kind of decision. He reached for something on the floor then took a step towards Jamie. It was a wood saw.

‘HELP!’ Jamie screamed.

‘Goshy!’ Doopy cried.

Gonko and Doopy kicked down the door and surveyed the scene: Goshy, armed, aroused; Jamie cowering at his feet. Goshy turned to face them and Jamie seized the moment, scurrying out like a rabbit and sprinting through the door, the parlour and out into the showgrounds. He ran till his legs could carry him no further, then he bent over, retching.

After a time, he took in his surrounds and found he was near the fence plank, the exit to that odd space outside the showgrounds. Not knowing where else to go, he pushed on the board until it loosened, then stepped out there.

Back in the clowns’ tent Gonko lay on the floor of Goshy’s room, mildly concerned. He was concerned he would soon die of laughter.

As directed by the bogus orders, the crate of fireworks was left by the funhouse, where Sven had believed no one would stumble across it since, to his knowledge, hanging around the funhouse was not anyone’s idea of a good time. The fireworks were covered by an empty potato sack, and after Sven’s visit out here earlier in the day the load included five
extra sticks of dynamite. He was considering nuking the entire clown tent in one blast, but he wouldn’t get his chance this time around, thanks to Shalice and a carnival employee known as Slimmy the smoking dwarf.

It was Slimmy’s habit to sneak out of his house every evening at six and enjoy a cigar in the shadows of the Funhouse, away from his enemies amongst the short folk. Slimmy’s bad habit included throwing his lit match at the discarded tyre lying on its side four feet from the crate on which he sat. He’d been keeping score — so far he’d dropped the match into the tyre 12 566 times, just better than 50 per cent. That afternoon Slimmy’s daily routine, which had gone unchanged for sixty years, would prove costly. Slimmy lit up, tossed the match and watched it fly through the air, glance off the tyre’s rim, and land just out of sight. Slimmy grunted with annoyance and marked a notch in the
Miss
column in his mind.

The match landed right on top of a fuse trailing out of the box of explosives like a tail. Slimmy heard the faint hissing noise as the fuse burned, but still had time to enjoy three- quarters of his cigar before the blast. He died doing something he liked.

The blast ripped away one of the funhouse walls and roared through the carnival. Every head except Shalice’s turned towards the sound. Flying debris shot skyward and fell as lethal missiles onto roofs and paths, ripping holes in tents and smashing windows. Two dwarfs who’d been on the verge of fisticuffs over a game of dice had their dispute settled for them as they were flattened beneath a section of airborne roof.

In the clown tent Gonko sat up, muttered ‘Goddamn’. then ran out into the parlour just in time to see a brick land
in the doorway. He had a sudden impulse to check up on Winston.

He went round to each of the clowns’ rooms, knocking or pressing his ear to the panels and listening. Winston and JJ were both absent.