The School of Beauty and Charm (24 page)

In Counterpoint, trailers sprouted like weeds in forgotten corners of town. Henry liked to drive by them, frowning at the trash in the barren yards, the cardboard on the windows, the grubby barefoot children gaping back at us.

“How can people live like that?” he'd wonder aloud, and Florida would answer, “Riffraff.”

I'd always liked the sound of the word.

Although most of my sexual fantasies about T. C. Curtis had taken place in trailers, until now I'd never been inside of one. This was an old trailer with warped walls, torn linoleum, and a rusty bucket sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor to catch the rain. It smelled of mold, cigarettes, and stale whiskey.

Posters of the Arthur Reese Traveling Show covered the stained walls, introducing circus wonders:
POPEYE—THE MAN WITH ELASTIC EYEBALLS; DEVIL BABY—BORN WITH REAL HORNS AND A TAIL—ATE HIS OWN MOTHER;
and
FIFI THE HEADLESS WOMAN,
picturing the decapitated gal holding her head under one arm. I recognized Lollibells, grinning down at me from a poster plastered across the ceiling, and Jungle Jim, featured with Daisy and Spencer on his lap, a gorilla standing by his side like a wife, and a parrot on his head. There was a middle-aged woman wrapped in a python, a pissed-off midget, and a Gorilla Girl—a bikini-clad chick in a gorilla mask. She signed her poster “With Love” right on the crotch. Hanging next to Gorilla Girl, a banner announced
ZANE WILDER— THE HUMAN DRAGON
! A collage of photos showed the dragon swallowing fire, swallowing a sword, and biting into a light bulb. He was tall and lean and buff, with a flat belly, bronze skin, long red hair, and big, crazy green eyes. His teeth were as bright as ice.

In the dim bedroom, I looked at the snoring hump under the sheet. Red hair fanned out over the pillow. I tiptoed closer and examined a freckled shoulder and the shapely hand resting on his his smooth golden chest—a wedding ring. In my head, I heard Florida's voice: “Well, I hope you're proud of yourself now!”

Outside, I sat down on the concrete block steps in front of the door, and not knowing what else to do, opened
King Lear
. I skimmed the introduction, then closed the book again.

I wandered out along the chain-linked fence, staring glumly at the empty midway. There were the shells of hankypanks. They taught me the word last night, and I laughed at the sound of it, laughed as we staggered through the crowd of rubes waving hot dollars in their fists, shouting winning numbers for teddy bears. The song “Le Sabre” blared through a speaker at the carousel. It made me want to throw my money away, do cartwheels, kiss strangers. A cop on duty picked up the play rifle and, with a cruel squint, tried to shoot the piano player in the back. “Aim again, Officer!” cried the carnie. “One more try, just one more try.” The policeman was there for the rest of the night, passing dollars over the counter, squinting into the toy gun. This morning the abandoned hankypanks looked like chicken coops.

Circling the carousel that had spun in a ring of pretty lights, up, down, and around—a tiny galaxy of stars and ponies, “Step right up, step right up, put your darlin' on a pony, step right up”—I stared ruefully at the scarred horses with lopsided stirrups, a chipped hoof, a tail lopped off in midcurl. The whip that had snapped through the glowing black sky like a biting snake now lay dead on the ground. At last I came to the Ferris wheel I'd seen from the bus station. Chaise volonte, they called it. Up close, it had been even more fantastic, a wheel of colored light turning through the sky in a concert of Sinatra tunes: “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Come Fly with Me,” “That's Life”—and the night rushed back to me.

Rufus Swaziek, the operator, had confided that he hated Sinatra, but the owner of the carnival, Arthur Reese, would allow no other music on the chaise volonte.

“Means ‘flying chairs' in Spanish,” said Rufus. He shook his head. “Arthur is a tragic man. Don't tell nobody I told you, but he is a tragic man. I'd like to play a little disco, a little country music, but he won't have it. He's got to have a sad song, see? Tragic. Puts the damn thing over here in the corner with me. I ain't complaining, but now and then I'd like to hear something a little more upbeat, more modern. It affects your brain rythmns to hear this shit all night long. I go to bed depressed, wake up depressed. Now I ain't blaming him—he's just playing the hand the Lord dealt him, and all the money in the world don't change that, but it affects my brain rhythms. You put me over on the merry-go-round, and I might be dancing to ‘Le Sabre.' That's the carnie tune.”

Rufus didn't look like he'd ever danced in his life. He was a wiry little guy of no particular age: bowlegged, pockmarked, tattooed, also missing some teeth and a heart valve. The other carnies called him Tic Toc because his artificial heart valve sounded like a clock. Over his scraggly ponytail, dyed the color of summer squash, he wore a greasy cap. “Now git down,” he said after I'd been riding for half an hour. “Arthur will kick my butt for giving free rides.” Then I passed him my small amber bottle. “Shit!” he cried. “Where did you get this shit? What did you call it? Parachute?”

“Paregoric. It's for menstrual cramps.”

“Goddamn!” He ducked his head as my chair swung up for another round on the chaise volonte. “I wished I was a girl.”

Above me, painted onto the gilded ceiling of the ride, were
portraits of ladies—old-fashioned ladies with piled hair, pink cheeks, milky white necks, and lips painted into bows. There was a green-eyed redhead, a blue-eyed brunette, and a brown-eyed blonde. Chugging my paregoric, I began to feel about these ladies the way Catholics feel about the Virgin Mary. While Frank Sinatra crooned that this was life, or that was life, or there was life on the moon, or something wonderful, Rufus switched the spotlight from green to violet, and my chair swooped up to the stars. I was flying.

In the mean light of day, the chaise volonte was a piece of junk. A hot breeze came up, smelling of dead fish, melting asphalt, cocoa butter, and salt. The lot was still empty, save for a skinny stray dog poking through an empty red-and-white popcorn box in the weeds. The flaps were down on the dingy tents, and the metal roofs of the trailers glared.

“Reality,” Florida called this. I needed a drink. I needed to get my gym clothes and Shakespeare books and go back home. I headed toward the glare of metal roofs.

Pushing the warped door open with my shoulder, I stumbled inside, blinking in the darkness. It took me a moment to realize I was in the wrong trailer. Suddenly, a light switched on, and a woman shot out the corner with a broom.

“Hold it right there!” she shouted, raising the broom.

“Okay,” I whispered.

“Who are ya?” she demanded. “What are ya doing here?” She was a big-boned woman with a round Slavic face and bright blue eyes. She had pale hair, very fine and straight, that fell past her strong shoulders. She wore a powder-blue bathrobe.

Gingerly, I backed away from her. It was the right thing to do. I had run into another animal lover, partial to strays.

“Easy now. Don't be scared. It's just me. Just old Madge.” She took a better look at me. “Are ya lost, honey?”

“I slept with somebody in a different trailer. I think.”

“Well fuck me running! Wrong trailer!” She slapped her knee. “
Whoeee
! Girl, you need a map!”

I stood stiffly in the tiny hallway, shifting in my muddy espadrilles. With a grip like a welder, she took my hand and shook it heartily. “Madge Olinick,” she said. “You're a girl after my own heart. Wrong trailer! Wait till Arthur hears this one. I heard yous guys whooping it up last night, and I would have joined yous, but I'm Percy's old lady now. He wraps hisself around me so tight in that bed, I have to fight him off to go to the john.”

“Louise Peppers. Nice to meet you.”

“Louise Peppers, I don't know where you spent the night, honey, but it sure wasn't here. Percy—he don't miss a beat. If he could bark, he'd be a regular watchdog. You want some coffee?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said, taking a furtive look around for a man as I followed her into the kitchen. Percy must still be sleeping.

“Excuse the mess. Sink's stopped up. Tic Toc was supposed to get in here last night and look at it, that goddamned drunk.” She laughed again and handed me a mug of thick sweet coffee swirling with cream. “Go ahead and pour some of that rum in there; yous shaking like a wet rat. If ya puke, ya clean it up. That's my rule. I keep a clean house. Clean as a snake myself. Always have been. But goddamn, I married some pigs! Now why would I go and do that?” She put some bacon in a frying pan and lit the stove. “You're not with it, are ya? Never mind.
We get rubes—that's people not in the carnie business— wandering in here all the time. Some of ‘em never leave. Take Lollibells.”

Sitting at the fold-out table with my rum coffee, I tried to focus on the wallpaper to keep myself from throwing up. It was a mind-altering plaid: avocado green, gold, and orange. One of the stripes seemed to be waving. Madge was leaning over me with a cigarette in her mouth, so I pulled out my Southern Board lighter and lit it. “Lollibells,” she said, blowing smoke from her nostrils, “he was doctor material. Did ya meet him? Black fellow. Clown. Fudgepacker. Without his makeup on, looks just like a doctor. Got that serious eye. Always thinking, thinking, thinking. Probably thinks in his sleep, poor bastard. His real name is Warren Tucker, from Rocky Mount, North Carolina—a medical doctor, bless his heart. You got an act, darlin'?”

The stripe in the wallpaper was definitely moving.

“Actually, I'm a clown.”

Madge poured some rum into her own coffee. “Yep. Ya got that serious look. Just like Warren when he come around the back lot and says to Arthur Reese, ‘You all need any clowns today?' Sound just like him, too. You all. I'm from Chicago, East Side. My old man was a cop. And me in a ragbag. Go figure. We're all family here, darlin'. We may not look it, but when push comes to shove, we take care of each other. Now Arthur, he'll pay ya in kewpie dolls and hot dogs if ya let ‘em, but that's just human nature. Yous gotta speak up to him. Real nice, like. Sunny, that's our Gorilla Girl, she'll spit right in his face, but she ain't got no hometrainin'. I ain't saying anything against her, but if I was her mother I'd of washed her mouth out with
soap at least twice a day. Till bubbles come out of her butt. It ain't what she says so much as how she puts it, if ya know what I mean. Now where'd I put them pliers?”

She found them attached to the sink faucet, serving as a faucet knob, and palmed them. She rolled her bathrobe sleeve up a muscular forearm and set to work. The lines on the wallpaper slid in and out.

“Ah, them good ole days,” she said, giving the pipe two hard taps with her pliers. “Back then we had ten shows in the ten-in-one, not three. We had us two clowns, and a kootch show—you'd see yours truly in a bikini, and darlin', you wouldn't know it to look at me now, but when that thing come off, it rained money, whooee! We had us a ballyman, and a baby with a tail, and a tiger. Larry was his name. He was just a little ole mountain lion from Pigeon Forge, in the Smoky Mountains. Arthur run over him one day, caught his tail is all, and picked him up. We dyed stripes on him, and darlin', when he jumped those hoops, he looked just like a jungle cat. Larry had sawdust in his blood. I seen him catch his tail on fire and go right on with the act. They say dogs is loyal, but that cat was ready to go down with the ship. Then one night he run off, Arthur says. You tell me how a cat that works with his tail on fire gets it up his butt to run off? In Arkansas? We had everybody looking for him—cops, fire department, boy scouts. I says to Arthur, ‘Ain't it strange that we can't turn up one little ole mountain lion with dyed stripes?' It ain't like Larry blended in. Of course a rube stole him. Arthur don't admit that kind of thing cause it's bad for business. Right now, poor Larry is a striped rug on some redneck's floor. I sure do miss him.”

All this time, I'd been trying to figure out what Madge did
in the carnival, but I was afraid to ask in case she was a freak. She didn't look like she had anything wrong with her, but what if she was a hermaphrodite, or some kind of anatomical wonder who could pull herself through a coat hanger? It wasn't something I wanted to see on a queasy stomach. On the other hand, was it rude not to ask? I steeled myself for the inquiry, but Madge changed the subject.

“I'll tell ya what, I love animals, more than I love people, but I could not stand living with a bunch of monkeys. They're just like toddlers ‘cept strong as bears. That is my idea of hell. I don't know how Jim stands it. Between you and me, I don't think he's right in the head. Take a look at his belt sometime. Them leathery things hanging there? They's two of his fingers a monkey bit right off. If you don't believe me, look at his left hand and see what's missing. That's sick, if you ask me. He lives right over there in the next trailer. Shares a tub with his chimps, Daisy and Spencer. They play in the toilet then eat right at the table, or on top of it. Used to have him a gorilla in there, too. None of ‘em housetrained. I kid you not. Goddamn, that place stinks! I hold my nose when I open my windows. Jim's Jungle, we call it. It ain't decent. He don't care. Furballs! Monkey shit!” She sprayed some ammonia on a sponge and began to wipe her clean counter, shaking her head all the while. “Nasty, nasty, nasty! I hope ya didn't spend the night in there. Was he hairy?”

She set a plate of bacon and eggs in front of me. “Eat this while it's hot. I got to get back under that sink. I watched her kneel on the linoleum floor, clenching a pair of pliers, and tried to imagine the day when her broad backside fit into a bikini. She was saying, “I told Tic Toc not to use them goddamned
plastic washers, but he don't listen, that fucking drunk.” Her head disappeared under the sink, and for a moment, listening the soft drone of her muffled voice, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes.