by Niall Howell
Just as my struggle to find the exit was beginning to boil into a frenzy, I felt a faint hint of the night’s breath brush across my face. I stretched my arm out and reached with my right hand and found the loose flap, yanked it open, and rushed out of the big top.
Once I got out, everything was quiet. For what must have been a few minutes, I stood there, drinking up my surroundings and trying to establish where the voice had come from. I thought for a second that maybe I’d imagined it all, that the voice I heard over and over was only my mind playing a departing trick on me, and that I’d finally achieved with I’d set out for: exhaustion.
But then I heard it again. It whipped me back to alertness, undoing anything I’d accomplished in my quest for weariness.
The voice was coming from Rowland’s trailer, which stood about thirty feet to my left. The window had a faint glow pulsing across it that suggested a light was on somewhere inside.
The voice I heard wasn’t Rowland’s.
The voice belonged to no one but Wally Jakes.
I walked toward it, crouching low. I’m not sure why, but for some reason I felt compelled—no, obligated—to investigate.
The dim murmur of Rowland’s voice could be heard as I closed in on the trailer, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying, either. All I could make out was the tone of the exchange between him and Wally. It didn’t sound like a friendly late-night visit.
I halted and knelt down in the grass a few feet from the trailer when the sound of Wally’s voice evolved from an indiscernible mucky racket into a string of words I could actually understand.
“Go to hell.”
This was followed by Rowland saying something I couldn’t quite hear. By nature, his voice was much softer than Wally’s, but this time, there was something different about his tone. It sounded…calming. Or maybe nervous, but trying to be calming.
I had to get closer.
I got up from the grass, but made sure to stay low. I could have stood up a bit more and still remained below the trailer’s window sill, but I wasn’t in a tempting mood just then.
I took one step forward, paused, took a second. I went to take a third, which would have got me nice and snug against the wall of the trailer, right below the window, but as I stepped down, the ball of my foot slid over something beneath me, tipping me flat on my back.
The fall felt huge, and I was certain that the resulting thud had been heard from inside. I remained perfectly still. A few seconds crawled by without either voice sounding from the trailer.
The creak of the trailer door opening got my heart moving double time.
From where I sat, I couldn’t see who was standing in the doorway, but a moment later, I heard Wally grumble, “Huh.” He sniffed, coughed, and cannoned a gob of spit over the railing, then slammed the door shut and returned to Rowland.
I let a minute pass and then crawled forward to see what I’d slipped on.
An empty wine bottle.
I picked it up, running my hands over its hard, rounded body, which was wet from the grass. Because it was so dark, I couldn’t tell for sure if I’d cracked it, but based on feel, the thing was still in one piece.
“You won’t just be fucking me,” I heard Rowland say from inside. His voice was still soft, but it had a desperate, ugly quality to it now, a sludgy green film floating on the surface of a pond. “You’ll be fucking everyone. Don’t you understand that, you selfish son of a bitch? You’re not only punishing me, you’re punishing every hard-working soul here.”
“I understand that just fine,” Wally said, and the image of an accompanying shrug came to me with little effort.
On my hands and knees, I crawled over to the bottom of the stairs. The door was ajar. I guess that when Wally had shut it earlier, he’d used enough force to cause the door to bounce open a little before it had a chance to secure itself shut.
I crawled up the first step. When I crawled up the second, I noticed I was carrying the empty wine bottle with me. I was holding it upside down, by the neck, like it were a club. I don’t know why, but it felt necessary to have it with me, and if I was going to have it with me, then that felt like the right way to be holding it.
“Only thing you seem mixed up about,” Wally went on, “is that it’s me doing the fucking. What I’m doing, old pal, is seizing an opportunity and getting out while there’s still out to get. The fucking? That’s all you. You’re the fucker. You’re always the fucker.”
I stopped at the top step. Through the open crack, I saw part of Wally’s back, and Rowland’s left hand, which was resting on a table in between him and Wally. Rowland was fidgety. He thumbed his cuticles back. He sped from index to pinky, then repeated. The second run looked painful.
“Now, I don’t know why you’re making this so hard on yourself. The way you’re dragging this out, Rowland—I bet you’re the kind of guy who takes a full hour to yank a bandage off. We can stay here talking all night, but it’s not gonna change a thing. Now, you reach in that drawer and give me what I know is in there—every damn penny of it—then I’m gone. You’ll never set eyes on me again, and you can take me at my word that I’ll keep my mouth shut about hiding the retard carnie and all the other shit-filled pots you’ve got on the burner here.”
“And if I tell you to go lay down on the train tr—”
“If you tell me anything other than, ‘Here’s what you asked for, Mister Jakes. Now you take care and go and enjoy the rest of your days in comfort,’ then you’ll see what a workingman’s callused, dirty hands feel like on your face, and you’ll wake up to chained wrists and ankles, your own new pair of striped pyjamas, and a pile of questions that you’re not gonna want to answer.”
Rowland’s hand disappeared from my view. A drawer—which must have been somewhere below his desk, because I didn’t hear him get up—slid open and thunked to a halt. “This will be the end of us. We won’t be able to come back—you realize that?”
“Cut the shit and quit lying to yourself. You did this, Rowland. All I’m doing is removing myself from ‘us.’”
Rowland spoke as if he hadn’t heard Wally at all. “Everything I’ve done,” he said, his voice beginning to crack. “All of it…was for this circus. To keep us going, to keep us alive. I…I did what I had to, damn it. I did what I had to and now you’re taking it away. Just like that. You’re taking it away and leaving us with nothing. Sticking a knife in our side and leaving us to bleed out.”
“I’m doing this because I have to!” Wally barked. “You’ve made a big fucking mess and you dragged me—you dragged all of us!—into it!” he said. “Don’t you cry to me. Don’t you dare cry to me, try to make me out to be the heel here!” He shoved an accusing finger in Rowland’s face and took a deep breath like he was about to start with the real lecture, but he didn’t get to say anything else. I bashed him in the head with the wine bottle, and Wally Jakes didn’t say anything else ever again.
He fell to his knees. He raised a shaking hand to the side of his head, to where I bashed him, and he touched the dripping wound with his fingertips.
He brought his fingers to his face and shuddered out a trembling breath at the sight of his wet, red fingers.
Blood gushed from the side of his head. There were shards of glass on the floor around him, and a few smaller bits lodged in his skull. He turned and looked up at me. I’ll never forget those eyes.
He reached for me with open hands. I’ll die without ever knowing if they were pleading hands or if they were hands that sought to wrap themselves around my throat and squeeze until my head popped clean off.
I bent my elbow back and angled it upwards, brandishing The Unholy Grail as if I were holding a sword; a hobo cavalier with a knack for improvisation. With a quick jab, I brought what was left of the bottle down, into his throat. Again and again, I brought it up and down until I knew I didn’t have to bring it up and down anymore.
THE THIRD LOAD OF DIRT COVERED THE REMAINDER OF Wally’s face. Rowland picked up another loa
d from the pile with his shovel, but before he threw it in, he looked at me over his shoulder.
“Thank you,” he said. They were the first words spoken in what must have been at least an hour, since I’d shut Wally up back in the trailer. I didn’t say anything in reply. I don’t think I was expected to.
Rowland continued filling the impromptu grave. I could smell his sweat from where I stood, a good ten feet back. The soil was hard and he’d done all the digging himself. I figured that was fair.
When the grave dirt was flush with the ground, he tamped the area down, then added some more dirt and tamped that down.
He speared his shovel into the ground, wiped the sweat from his brow—which took the full length of his arm—and then walked to a nearby tree, leaned against it, and puked. Once his stomach was emptied, he wiped his mouth on his remaining dry sleeve, and went about collecting branches and fallen leaves from the ground. When an armful had been amassed, he dumped it onto Wally’s grave and spread the mix around with his foot.
If you were looking for it, you could see difference in colour and texture between Rowland’s fresh plot and the ground surrounding it. But no one would have any reason that I could think of to venture this far into the woods outside our encampment, and even if they did, Wally Jakes wasn’t the type of person anyone would be looking for.
“You saved us, Toby,” Rowland said through wheezing breaths. He’d found a spot to sit a couple trees away from where he’d puked. “I know you must feel about as rotten as a person ever could, but I promise you, you did the right thing. Wally was going to bury this circus. Our circus. He was blackmailing me. Said—” a phlegmy cough barged in. Rowland rode the sucker out, spat up some stringy stuff. He found a dry spot on his shoulder, wiped his lips on it and continued. “He said if I didn’t give him everything I had, he’d tip the cops off about us letting Ke—about us letting Eddie hide out here. He said he’d rat on the mob deals and everything else I did…I had to do…to keep us afloat.”
Our eyes met. I’m not sure what mine conveyed, but they did something to stir him up. “Don’t you go thinking I was just worried for myself. You hear me? Don’t you think that for a goddamn second! If Wally took that money, that would’ve been the slow, miserable end for all of us.”
I nodded, and at least one of the angry wrinkles on his forehead went neutral. Rowland looked to the sky. I joined him. The sun hadn’t come up yet, but it wouldn’t be long. I walked over to him, offered my hand, and pulled him up. The shift in position triggered another coughing fit from him. When it finished, I was amazed that he didn’t have to slurp at least one of his lungs back inside. He caught his breath again, looked me in the eye, and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Thank you,” he whispered.
I swatted his hand away and began my walk back to my trailer, with the sinking realization that my sleep troubles were about to get much worse.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHAT THE HELL DO I MEAN? You heard me, Toby. I said, do you lie to everyone, or am I just special?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not a liar, Gloria. If you’re sore about something else, you’d better come out with it, because I don’t have much patience when it comes to false accusations.”
She throws her arms up in the air. “Oh, you don’t have much patience? Well, forgive me! I suppose I ought to thank you for using one of your precious little crumbs of patience up on me.”
“Christ,” I mumble, fishing a cigarette from my holder and sinking back into my chair.
“Yeah, ‘Christ,’ that’s about what I expected for an explanation.” Gloria reaches across the table and snatches a cigarette from my case. She lights, crosses her legs, and puffs. She mumbles something to herself that I can’t hear.
“Oh, be my guest,” I say, pointing to my case. “What’s mine is yours.”
“Well, I am your goddamn guest, aren’t I?”
“Sure you are, but there’s such a thing as being a good guest. I mean, hell, coming in here and being distant all night, drinking my liquor, smoking my cigarettes, then accusing me of being a liar and refusing to elaborate at all—that kind of guest isn’t really the type you’re itching to have back in your home any time soon, you get me?”
My blood feels electric. Sitting still makes it worse, so I stand up and pace the room, get things circulating before bolts come shooting out of my eyes and ears.
When I’m on about my third lap of the room, she says, “You want me to elaborate? Fine. I want to know what it is you do.”
“What I do?” I shout. “What I do is I’m a fucking clown in a fucking circus. That’s what I do.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she says.
I pour myself a drink. I notice Gloria’s glass is near empty and set the bottle down without offering her a refill. “Then please, enlighten me.” I wave an after-you gesture.
“What do you do, Toby? What do you do when we go to the city, and why have you been lying about whatever the hell it is?”
“What are you talking about? I do a lot of things when we go to the city. I go to movies, I go for walks, I go to the track, sometimes I go to a tavern a have a couple drinks. All that all right with you, honey?”
“Don’t speak to me like that, Toby. Don’t you dare.” She stands up so fast her chair shoots back a good foot or so. “Back when we were in Pensacola, Margaret, one of the girls in my group who commutes with us, went down to the track. She said that after she watched a few races, she got up to use the ladies’ room. When she came out of the ladies’ room, she spotted you standing by the entrance. She said you looked like you were watching for someone and that you were peeking out from behind a newspaper, like you were hiding. She thought you looked odd, but she went to say hello to you all the same. But before she got a chance to, you bolted after some fellow.”
“Some fellow? What fellow?”
“Margaret didn’t see his face because his back was to her, but she said you were zig-zagging through the crowd, in hot pursuit of this man—whoever he was.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Gloria,” I laugh. “I remember that man. The buffoon dropped his wallet when he walked by me so I rushed after him to return it. Can’t do much at the track without a wallet, can you?”
She crosses her arms. “Oh, is that it?” she says. “Then thank God that Toby, the patron saint of gamblers, was loitering behind that newspaper, hmm?”
“Sure, thank God all you want. Call the Vatican and see if you can get me on a stained-glass window while you’re at it.”
Gloria lets out this banshee’s howl I never would have guessed she had in her. She picks up her empty glass and whips it right at my head. I duck just in time and the glass shatters against the wall behind me.
“What in almighty hell is your prob—”
“My problem is that you’re not only a lying son of a bitch, but that you’re making fun of this situation!”
“Making fun of? I’m sorry, whether I’m remembering correctly or not, is there something so scandalous about me walking after a man at the track?”
“No. No there isn’t. And if the fishy behaviour ended there, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. But it doesn’t end there, does it, Toby?”
“You tell me. You seem to know more about what I do than I do myself.”
“When Margaret told me about what she saw, I thought it was odd, sure, but I didn’t think much of it. But then when we went to Atlanta, Margaret decides she wants to go to the track again. She says to me, ‘I wonder if I’ll see your friend Toby hiding behind a newspaper again.’ She didn’t intend it in a rude way, she said it like she was kidding around. Anyhow, I told her she definitely wouldn’t see you at the track that day, since you were going to the movies that day. I told her I knew so for a fact. So imagine, Toby, imagine my surprise when I see Margaret later that day and she tells me that she saw you at the track again. Well, at first I didn’t believe her. I told her there was no way it was you because you didn’t go to the track that
day. But she kept on insisting, Toby. She swore that it was you. So I said to her, ‘Tell me what he was wearing when you saw him at the track, then,’ because I was on my way to the Piedmont to meet you, and I figured if she said you were wearing one suit and I got to the hotel and saw you were wearing another, well, then I could get Margaret to give it a rest, and maybe talk her into seeing an eye doctor, too. So, Margaret tells me, ‘Oh, he was wearing navy trousers, a white shirt with a gray tie that had red stripes on it.’ I told her I’d remember that and then I went to meet you at the Piedmont. Now, when you greeted me at the door, do you know what you were wearing, Toby?”
I don’t respond.
“You were wearing navy blue trousers and a white shirt. And wouldn’t you know it, when I stepped into your room, what’s the first thing I saw? A gray tie with red stripes coiled up on the desk!”
“Aw, Christ, listen, Gloria, I—”
“No!” She stomps her foot for added punctuation. “No! Toby, that night when I saw what you were wearing and the tie on your desk, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe at the last minute, you decided not to go to the movies and instead went to the track. So I asked you what you did that day, and what did you tell me? Hmm?” She slaps my arm. “What did you say?” Slap. “You said that you went to the movies, Toby!”
She grabs the bottle off the table in a quick whipping gesture and takes a long drink right from it. “Now, let me be clear here,” she says, wiping her mouth on her arm. “I’m not asking you if you lied. I already know the answer to that. I’m asking you why, Toby. Why did you lie to me? Because there’s definitely something going on that you don’t want me to know about. Something at the track. And even though I’m worried that later I’m going to be kicking myself for demanding I get an answer from you, I’m going to go ahead and demand all the same.”
“You want an answer?” I shout. “I’ll give you an answer!” I stomp over to the door, open it fast. The door bangs against the wall and nearly shuts again, so I fling it back open and stick my foot in front of it to make sure it doesn’t try anything funny. “I will not dignify these ridiculous accusations—accusations of I don’t even know what, mind you—with any sort of defense. You want a detailed report on my every move over the last few months? Too bad! I don’t know what’s got into you, Gloria, but whatever it is, I suggest you get it fixed. Now get out before I catch your fucking paranoia!”