And then he was holding a stray dog underwater.
The dog’s claw scratched his hand and made it move.
The wagon door fell open.
Paul stepped inside with Sandy just behind him. He saw Roy holding a candle in one hand, his father’s old revolver in the other. The revolver’s hammer was cocked back, the gun aimed. At the far end of the wagon Paul saw the target—two eyes reflecting candlelight in the darkness. He could make out George Fickas’ weighty silhouette. The man was crouched like an animal and seemed ready to pounce.
Paul had expected to feel rage. He’d expected his mind to go blank and his hands to act on their own accord, loosing his Dragoon and filling George Fickas’ body with bullets. But all he felt was pity. This creature was not the bully he once knew. George Fickas was nothing more than a bad memory.
“Hello, Paul,” Roy said.
“Hello, Roy.”
They stood in silence for a moment. A drop of wax fell from the candle and hardened, trapping a length of straw against the floorboards. Rain lashed the roof and walls of the wagon, but the dominant sound was the creature’s labored breathing.
“Come to take me back?” Roy said.
“No.”
“Come to kill me, then?”
“No chance at that.”
Roy glanced at Paul. A smile came to his face.
Paul put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“He’s got my knife,” Roy said.
Paul looked in the creature’s direction. Its body was inflating and deflating with each breath.
“Let him keep it,” Sandy said.
Both men looked down at the little girl between them. She was transfixed by the creature at the back of the wagon.
“Let him keep it.”
Roy set the candle on the nearby ledge. He holstered his revolver and they turned to leave.
“Faggot,” the creature said. The sound of the voice hit Paul like a punch to the kidney. His core went cold. Blood rushed to the extremities. His ears and eyes burned. He released Sandy’s hand.
“Killer,” the creature said.
“Keep going,” Roy said. He put a hand on Paul’s back, pressuring him toward the door.
But Paul slapped Roy’s hand away. He came back and faced the creature straight on, ten feet between them. His right hand hovered near the Dragoon on his waist. A bit closer now, and with his eyes adjusted to the low light, he could make out the creature’s horrible features, the scales and the closed scar on its head, the bleeding wounds.
The creature pounded the floor with two fists. “Why you here?”
Paul opened his mouth to reply, but he found no words. Throughout his youth he envisioned what he’d do differently if ever facing George Fickas again. Growing up he’d lie awake at night, seeing things in new ways. He would have run off with that dog, taken it home, and given it a name. He would have grabbed a stick and cracked Fickas over the head. He would have pleaded with those cowardly thugs to help him overtake their leader and do the right thing. But now here he was, given his chance to fulfill a myriad of vengeful dreams, and he had no words, no action. The creature had asked him why he was here, but he couldn't say.
Paul heard a metal ting against the floorboards. The beast had dropped something. A spoon. The horrible thing coiled back on its haunches into a bull’s stance. It said, “Dog killer.”
Paul stepped toward the creature, but Roy’s hand came to his shoulder.
“Enough,” Roy said.
Again Paul slapped his friend’s hand away. He took another step toward George Fickas, but suddenly found himself against the wagon wall, his lips thumping in pain.
Roy had punched him.
Paul reached a hand up to his mouth, found his upper lip split and bleeding.
“Enough,” Roy said. One of his hands was flat against Paul’s chest, the other was a fist up near Roy’s ear, ready to fire again. Paul looked down at his own hand. It trembled. He clasped it together with the other but the trembling wouldn’t stop. He looked at Sandy. Her hands covered her mouth and nose in fear.
Roy drew back the hand on Paul’s chest. He gestured for Paul to come forward. Paul did. He gathered Sandy to his front and they started again toward the door with the creature at their back. Roy reached for the door latch. As he gripped the handle there was the sound of a thrown knife splitting the air.
The blade appeared on Sandy’s back, just inside the shoulder. T. Pellerin was etched into the metal.
The girl fell.
Four rapid-fire gunshots echoed in Paul’s ears. A sulfuric scent filled the wagon. The creature that was once George Fickas teetered for a moment, and then crashed to the ground, face down in the straw. Paul found his arm was extended straight out. Clutched in his hand was his father’s old revolver, ripped from Roy’s holster in the moment when Sandy fell. His finger repeatedly worked the trigger, clicking the impotent hammer in the silent aftermath.
41
A pool of blood spread from beneath the creature’s chest. Roy could see his reflection in the dark liquid, could smell the iron scent mixing with scorched black powder. Outside, wagon doors opened and closed. Voices punched through the drumming rain. Roy heard Camilla. “What was that noise?”
“They’re coming,” Roy said. He looked down at the girl, who was lying on the wagon floor, eyes closed. Paul had removed the knife and was packing her wound with material torn away from his shirt.
Outside, Cecil Darton said, “Sounded like gunfire.”
“I’ll explain it to them,” Paul said, he gestured toward the wadded cloth over the girl’s wound. “Just hold this in place to stop the bleeding.”
“You have a family?” Roy said.
Paul nodded.
“Go to them. I’ll take care of this.” He gripped the door latch.
“No,” Paul said.
“I'm not giving you a choice,” Roy said. He turned to leave.
“Wait,” Paul said.
Roy stopped, turned back.
“I followed you that night,” Paul said. “That night my mother took you away.”
Roy let go of the latch.
“I saw her give you to that man, Jack McLean. I went to him after my mother left, asked him if what she had done was right.”
Roy saw a vision of a brave young Paul standing beneath Jack McLean’s podium, looking up at the terrifying man, just as he himself had done.
“He told me you were with your real family now,” Paul said, “and that you’d be happy with them all the days of your life. I knew then that I could let you go, Roy, but, God help me, I need to know now… have you been happy?”
A series of memories flooded Roy’s mind. They spanned from his days in the Bayou Rouge with his parents to his days with the sideshow, with Jesse, with Jukey, with Miriam and Randy, and with Jack McLean. He saw all of their laughing faces, and he saw their sadness. He understood their tears. He saw visions of all the places he’d been—the lakes, the oceans, the mountains, the cities, and all the roads in between. He saw the wide-eyed stares of the audiences and he heard their applause. He saw the river in which he and Paul swam that fabled summer, the summer he’d spent with his best good friend. The hollow in his chest, that unknown and empty place he’d discovered in the heart of Chicago only hours before, now felt full and overflowing. It had been a good life. By God, it had been an adventure.
“It’s been a humdinger.”
42
Roy came out of the wagon, pulling the door closed behind him. He took off his jacket and shirt, exposing his carved chest. The freaks stood before him in a half circle. Beyond them was Jesse. She stood on the steps of Jack McLean’s wagon, a hand once again concealing the weapon behind her waist. Her other arm was crossed over her chest, gripping against the cold. Her face looked washed away.
One of the freaks stepped forward and pointed. “He shot Scales.”
The rest murmured.
Roy tapped the iron ring on the butt of Paul’s
old revolver as he walked out into the camp’s center, allowing the freaks to encircle him. He suddenly drew the weapon, but none of the faces flinched. Somehow this pleased him. He tossed the gun outside the circle.
The freaks drew closer. Their clothes were drenched with rain. Roy wasn’t sure if they’d embrace him as a brother or tear him apart as the murderer they had already executed. He slapped both hands on his chest, making sure they saw their vile word.
Jesse came down. She pushed between two of the freaks and entered the circle with Roy. She revealed her snub-nosed pistol, extended her arm and aimed the gun. Above and behind her the rain clouds began to separate.
Roy stepped toward her. He stopped when he felt the gun’s cold barrel against his sternum, against their word. She’d already sentenced him at the Corktown Inn, and now his stay of execution was over. He spread his arms and tilted back his head. He could see through the twisted canopy of trees. He could see past the clouds to find the moonlit sky full of twinkling stars. He could see the foundation of Heaven, and he found it beautiful.
43
Paul heard the gunshot and knew its meaning. He pushed the pain aside. Sandy’s bleeding had stopped, but the wound was bad, potentially fatal if she wasn’t helped soon. He lifted her into his arms and kicked open the wagon door. The performer’s stood before him in a half-circle. The illustrated woman was standing above Roy’s body with a pistol in her hand.
“She needs help,” Paul said, gesturing with his head toward the girl in his arms.
The illustrated woman came toward Paul. She showed him the gun she’d just used on his friend. “You’ll die here now, lest you leave.”
“I’ll take him with me,” Paul said.
“And I’ll take that,” the woman said, nodding at the ornate Dragoon on Paul’s waist.
“Can you stand?” Paul said to Sandy.
The girl nodded slowly, but didn’t open her eyes. Paul set her down on her feet. She stayed upright, but unsteady. Paul removed the Dragoon slowly and handed it to the woman, hilt first. The woman took the gun, stepped aside, and gestured toward Roy’s body.
Paul picked up Roy’s body and slung him over his shoulder. He came back to Sandy and took her hand.
The illustrated woman stopped him as he turned to leave. She picked up Paul’s father’s revolver from where Roy had tossed it, opened the chamber, and dumped the empty shells. She plugged the gun into the holster on Paul’s hip.
Paul walked back up the midway with Roy over his shoulder and Sandy at his side. The rain had stopped and the cloud cover was sporadic. The circus tents rippled in the wind. They made their way back to Pine Street and started back toward the city center.
Sandy stumbled as she walked. She was growing weaker.
“Come on, now,” Paul said. “You can do it. It’s a short walk back.”
She stumbled again and fell to her knees.
Paul reached down with one arm and lifted her off the ground, up on to his hip. He clutched her there and began to run, balancing Roy on his opposite shoulder. “Stay with me now.”
Sandy murmured. She was fading.
“I’ll tell you a story,” Paul said. He was breathless, but he continued. “This is one about little Tommy… Tommy was a naughty young boy.” He ran several more yards with weakening legs. He steeled his spine, re-hefted Roy’s weight, and kept on. “Now, everyone knew Tommy was a foul-mouthed boy-”
A distant sound slowed Paul’s pace. A song. He looked down Pine Street to see the silhouette of a man walking up the road. The man was whistling a spirited version of Camptown Races.
Paul kept moving. Close enough now to see, he hardly recognized a refreshed and invigorated Frank Ledger. The insomniac look had abated. His face was flush and his eyes were bright. The bastard was damn near skipping down the lane.
Despite himself, Paul’s face burst into a smile to match Ledger’s. New blood poured from the split in his lip where Roy had punched him. Had Ledger eaten? No. He had rested. The seizure had taken him down hard. The serving woman must have taken him to the hospital, as she said she would. No doubt they supplied him with a dose of Laudanum to put him out, at least for an hour or so. The short sleep must have felt like a week’s worth to the restless man.
Paul dropped down to his knees, set Roy down at one side, and stood back up with Sandy still in his arms.
Ledger stopped in front of Paul, and at the sight of Roy’s dead body, he stopped whistling. He knelt down and placed a hand on Roy’s chest, over the word carved into Roy’s diamond skin, over the bullet hole.
Without looking up, Ledger said, “I ought to end you for that story you told. You knew what it would do to me.”
“She needs a hospital,” Paul said.
Ledger nodded toward Roy’s wound. “Your doing?”
“No.”
“Was it just?”
“Does it matter?”
Ledger removed his hand from Roy’s chest and examined it. There was blood on his palm, his fingers. He rubbed it in like oil, and for a moment just stared as his blood-covered hand. It wasn’t trembling, but perfectly still. “Rush Street,” he said, “a few blocks down from the Fisherman’s. You won’t miss it. I’ll see this man to the sexton.”
Paul holstered his gun and started down the street, moving faster now without Roy’s weight on his shoulder. “Hale County,” he called back. “Have him sent to the law office of Delmont Graves.”
“I know that lawyer well,” Frank Ledger said, “you have my word.”
Paul glanced back to see Frank Ledger now standing over Roy’s body. His head was bowed and his bowler hat was in his hand, held over his heart.
Epilogue
Paul knelt in front of Roy’s freshly dug grave, Jacob at one side, Sandy at the other. The headstone simply read Roy. Jacob played with the wooden pop-gun his grandfather had given him while Paul was gone. The boy’s lips and tongue were green from the rock candy Paul had gifted him after he’d helped dig.
Jacob pulled back the pop-gun’s handle and shot it forward. A cork shot off the end and then hung loosely by the thread keeping it attached to the barrel.
Paul’s wife had consumed a nearly lethal combination of alcohol and opium. One of Delmont’s hands had come to get clothes for the boy and found her facedown in the kitchen, faintly breathing.
Gloria survived the ordeal. Currently she was in the back bedroom, resting. She’d been there since Paul had come home, though she had awakened for a moment when he arrived, had clutched his hand and squeezed it. In that touch he felt more for her than he had in years. He kissed her forehead and told her he was sorry. He vowed to be a better husband to her, a better father to their son and to their adopted daughter. Gloria’s tired eyes found Sandy in the room. A faint smile moved across her lips before she closed her eyes again.
The warden informed Paul he was no longer a prison guard. Paul supposed he’d known it all along. Delmont offered him the clerk’s job and he took it. He would start next week.
Again Jacob took aim with his popgun. It looked like he was going for a lone dandelion out near the road. The handle shot forward and the cork popped free. “Pow,” he said.
“Did you get him?” Paul said.
Jacob nodded. He watched the dandelion for a moment and then slid the wooden gun into the small holster at his side. He looked up at his father. “Tell me again, dad, where’d you go?”
“To the big city,” Paul said. He picked Jacob up on his hip. “Chicago.” He breathed the city’s name and drew it out to give it mystique.
Jacob reached a hand up to his father’s face. He touched Paul’s lips while touching his own, as if comparing the injury to undamaged skin. The boy’s touch tickled and stung.
“Why?” Jacob said.
Paul thought on his son’s question. There were many answers. Some he understood, others he didn’t. The easy thing would be to say he was just doing his job, but that would be a lie. He recalled the way his body felt after he’d sprinted to the
Lincoln Park fairgrounds with Sandy in his arms. He’d been happily exhausted. It was a feeling he hadn’t felt since youth. He couldn’t quite define it, but he knew the answer was somewhere in that feeling, somewhere in the abandon of it. It was somewhere in the Bayou Rouge, hidden in an old bloodhound’s grave. And it was somewhere in the stitched wound above his lip—one of the marks his friend left on him, ensuring he would always have a story to tell.
Normal Page 23