Out in the daylight he looked even better. But he was acting kind of confused, so I had to locate a rope to tie around his neck to help guide him. Next problem was put the top up or leave it down. The sun is what I was thinking about. On the other hand, maybe the tar would protect him from it. Tar is black, and so was Mot, so I figure leave it down. And while I’m fixing that blanket up tight like a seat cover so there’s no damage to the Buick, here she comes.
First of all, she wants to know what’s going on. But a woman who spends all day wondering why she’s alive and the rest of the night drinking I doubt could get a quick understanding of something like the Wild Man. In fact, she’s so surprised by what I done with Mot, she doesn’t say diddly about the car. She never drives it anyway, doesn’t have a license for it because of her record. When she’s finished hearing my plan, she goes off about the rope, doesn’t like it around his neck, says it’s dangerous. I need it to keep him from falling behind, I tell her; plus it looks good. But she has a point, so I take it off and tie it around his waist. It was my confidence that took the wind out of her. Her and Auto just standing there watching me and Mot drive away to our meeting with Jack LaHand.
Out where the carnival is the land is flat, nothing out there except the carnival. Even from a distance you can see it, especially if it’s night. You can see the rides lit up against the sky. That’s why Doc named it Skyland. Skyland stays open all year long because the lake is pretty nearby, and the lake never closes. They got the hotel out there and other little places you can stay for people who don’t have enough money to take a vacation someplace better. Fishing and speedboat rides you can do just so much of, then it’s, let’s go over to Skyland, go on the Tilt-A-Whirl, take in the sideshow. Also, the carnival’s a good place to bring a date to.
In the afternoon, especially if it’s not the weekend, there’s not much action. But still there was some people hanging around and the lights were on, which was a good sign, except that they were flickering, which is how I knew Jack would be in the generator truck.
On my way over there I show Mot the Ferris wheel and point out one of the big cats asleep in his cage. Mot seems to have more interest in animals than in people. He was looking at that lion like he knew him, when up comes Funny the Fat Lady. Funny isn’t fat enough to be the fat lady anymore. Besides, the real freaks stay out of sight because why pay to see ’em if you can see ’em for free? Cotton candy and apple-dipping is what she was doing these days, plus running some rides.
She gives me a hug, then steps back, giving Mot the once-over, says, Whoaa! Whatcha got there, Spence? The Wild Man, I tell her. Tell her we’re on our way over to see Jack, and she fills me in. Tells me the deal on the new acts, three of ’em. One’s a contortionist who’s a Bulgarian girl, an acrobat basically. Does her show on two chairs in a bikini and is a pretty good draw. Then this old guy by the name of Harold Peerson up from Florida, he plays dead. Lies in a hole, and the hummers—what we carnival people call the customers—watch him to see if they can catch him taking a breath. He looks deader every day, she says. But the big attraction is this guy from Brazil. Calls himself the Swallower. Puts a live white rat in his mouth, swallows it, then puts a big snake in there that goes down his throat and swallows the rat. That’s a pretty good attraction, I say, a swallower that swallows a swallower.
There’s lots of drunks in this line of work. Duke the Midget was a drunk and still is, far as I can see. I knew him as a clown, but before that he was a wrestler. Wore his hair in a Mohawk and did his wrestling to tom-tom music. But he was no Indian. In fact, he wasn’t even a midget. He was a dwarf, but didn’t like the two D’s on his billing. I see him standing over there by the generator truck with a pipe wrench, sneering at me. It goes back to a fight he picked with me before I left for New York. One thing you don’t wanna do is get down in the dirt and wrestle with a dwarf. Not only doesn’t it look right, but the center of gravity is not in your favor. My thought was just punch him, get it over with, but he came in low, had me around the legs, trying to knock me down on the ground so he could put a hold on me. That’s what forced me to kick him. Sounds unsportsmanlike, but he’d been kicked by bigger guys than me. He even jumped the Giant once, an eight-footer from Iceland that was also a drunk and stomped Duke in the head so hard he knocked out his eye. That’s why Duke wears a patch over it and dresses like a pirate when he’s not working the big top.
Word travels fast in the carnival. All I had to do was stand there waiting for Jack to come out, which after about two seconds he does. My hope is Doc already called him, but it turns out I gotta handle it myself. I start out sociable, ask Jack how his daddy’s doing. He tells me Wolf is great, couldn’t be better. Jack’s being sarcastic. I inquire if Wolf still sells war souvenirs at the playground. Not every weekend anymore. What he does is oversee things now, Jack says. Bayonets, medals and badges, flags and uniforms, you name it, Wolf sells it, featuring mainly German regalia. He’s telling me all this without so much as glancing at Mot.
I came by to show him the Wild Man, I tell him. So he looks at Mot like it’s nothing special, tells me they already got a half-animal, half-human performer. He’s talking about Chicken Man, and before I can tell him Doc already sanctioned this deal, we’re onto an argument about the damn Chicken Man. Who wants to see some fat white guy dressed up like a hen with a plastic beak? He says people are used to the Chicken Man, he’s a familiar sight, tourists are comfortable with him. I say, Sure they are, he puts ’em to sleep.
Things are heating up because this is more than just about the Chicken Man, it’s about what happened to his daddy, it’s about Doc. And about me going off to New York. I tell him, Go call Doc, straighten things out, but Jack doesn’t like being told what to do. He’s standing there working his jaw like he’s setting up to do something he’ll be sorry for if he tries it. I see Duke the Midget smiling at me, hoping it’s gonna hit the fan so he can jump in with his monkey wrench. Fine, let him. Then I whisper, You wanna tangle with the Wild Man? Say the word, Jack, all I gotta do is . . .
I give Mot’s rope a little jiggle, leaving it to Jack’s imagination about what could happen next. It’s getting serious now.
You making me a threat, Spence?
I lean forward smiling at him, I say, You get between a dog and his bone, you know what happens?
Then what he does is whip out his gun, points it mostly at Mot. Mot doesn’t give a damn, probably didn’t know what it was. Then Jack starts backing away, going to the phone was my guess, but had to do it on his own terms.
I felt pretty sure that what just happened, happened in my favor, so I guide Mot to the parking lot. And sure enough, not two hours after we get back home, Doc calls. He was drunk maybe, but from what I get out of it, we had a conversation that said Spence Hooler and his Wild Man were in business.
I felt good about how things went, so when Sister comes into the kitchen with her bottle, I had a drink, gave one to Mot too. He swallowed it straight down; then about six seconds later, without any warning, he throws up. Something he ate that the gin must of triggered. Falls to me to clean it up, and when I finish I see Sis is making a study of him. I was glad to see her take an interest. Of course, that’s always how it starts, a family gathered around itself before it turns into trouble.
I tell her how I’m gonna have to locate a man-size cage to put him in for the show, put a blanket over it to hide him from the hummers to build up the suspense. She objects to the whole idea, says nobody wants to be covered in tar and put in a cage with a blanket over it. Says she thinks Mot is depressed, wants to take him somewhere for an “evaluation.” I tell her I gotta go upstairs. Tomorrow was gonna be a big day.
Up in my room I stand Mot next to me, and facing the mirror, I start practicing ideas. The first thing about being a good barker is knowing psychology. Get their attention, make ’em wonder if maybe you got something nobody ever seen.
“There are
things in this world nobody can explain. Observe and marvel, ladies and gentlemen! Under this blanket I have a creature that medical science would like to get its hands on. He eats raw meat, live chickens! And if I can’t get him any of that, he’ll chew the grass, eat the worms right out of the dirt!”
Then I’ll whip off the blanket, and the question then is gonna be, will Mot perform? Will he have the heart for it? And right then, like he was inspired by our little rehearsal, he starts gnashing his teeth, growling like a dog, wagging his big head around. And I knew we were in business. Best to save our energy for the performance. I call it a night.
Next day was lots to do. First thing was make sure Mot wasn’t left to go wandering into Sister’s attention, because I had no time for complications. And he couldn’t be left in the yard either, because I’d caught Auto nibbling at his tar. So I had to lock him in the barn for the day while I attended to my appearance.
I went down in the basement, go through what’s left of Daddy’s belongings. First thing I find is a little box. I think what’s going to be in there is cufflinks, but what’s in it is a rattle off a rattlesnake Daddy killed. Daddy’s clothes are stored in a cardboard box. Suits, shirts, and shoes. I try on a checkered coat. It’s thick and got leather at the elbows, but it’s the right look, and a tweed cap to go with it. There’s gloves too, soft Italian ones for driving with. And a cane covered in snakeskin I’m going to use to point out the importance of what I’ll be saying.
I go up to find Sister to invite her to the show, but she says she hates the carnival, even if her own brother was gonna be one of the main attractions. She makes a comment about my outfit, doesn’t like that I’m wearing Daddy’s clothes. I feel like saying, Hey, you wanna wear ’em? Go ahead. But there’s no point in it.
Okay, here’s what happened. We get to Skyland on the early side so I can get certain details settled. For instance, I gotta arrange for the cage, so we go on over to the office first. That’s when Jack tells me some crap about being over the limit on platform space. Says it’s state regulation, and if an inspector comes by, that’s it, they’ve had it.
Who says? I wanna know.
Doc, he tells me.
I say, Bullshit!
He says, Call him.
I do. Called him on Jack’s bastard cell phone. When I heard it from Doc I started yelling, telling him I wanted paperwork on this, something in writing. Telling him, You don’t go around dropping somebody out of his job without having a legitimate reason for it. He says that I never had the job in the first place. I remind him it was all sewed up the night before on our phone conversation, but Doc can’t remember it. Drop Chicken Man, I tell him. Me and the Wild Man will take his place. But it turns out Chicken Man has a contract. I tell him I’m getting a lawyer on it, and he hangs up on me.
I can hardly believe it, but I do. That’s the kind of crap that happens down here. I even bought a big chocolate cake so after our opening me, Mot, and Sister could celebrate.
When we get back home, I join Sister in helping her finish off her nightly bottle. Seeing the cake was a sad thing. Me and Sis sat there drinking the gin, not talking much, just watching Mot. Watched him stick his finger into the icing, testing the taste, then watched him eat the whole damn thing. I knew what was gonna happen, so did she, and we were right. He threw up. This time we cleaned it up together.
I was fired up on all kinds of dirty tricks I wanted to play on Jack. I didn’t blame Doc so much as the LaHands. I knew they had him over a barrel. And when Sis heard enough about my ideas of getting even with those needleheads, she went off to bed. But I couldn’t stop, and there’s Mot sitting there, staring at me like he knew what I was thinking. I’d taken my thinking about as far as it would go by sunup. Then I knew what I had to do, and it had nothing to do with setting fire to Skyland. What I really needed to do was what I’d been dreaming about doing for a long time before all this ever happened. So I take myself a shower, wake up Mot, and drive us out to the lake to go fishing.
But an excursion that starts out simple can pull you right out of what you expect into a fate you never dreamed of.
The shoppers and the merchants were gone. The silence of leftover noise, of leftover smells, was strong. Everything closed. Almost dark. It was Sunday.
The horse’s head above the horse-meat shop. The machine that made it cannot be imagined by the man looking at it. But nothing is a waste, he thinks, for him who will touch the bottom of no matter into what he falls, and he thought of the Arab girl. Saw himself as a restless tired bird, her as an island.
Later in his cool sheets waiting for the noise of morning, he imagines her sitting alone somewhere eating, and vaguely all the other functions of her body, running sure as the cycles of the moon, like a rock or a cat. The little hairs of her body stood out like stars in the dark of his love, and he made a note of it.
A page full. And after hesitating to throw it away, he threw it away, then bit into the skin of his wrist so hard the impression of his teeth remained for a day.
If he knew her, there would be nothing he couldn’t tell her, nothing he wouldn’t show. He was sure she was noble. He liked her hands. Here all alone from Algiers, he liked to think. Proud. Expecting nothing. Actually she was from Jerez de la Frontera. She was Spanish. She’d been in Paris almost a year. Worked at the confectioner’s washing dishes and silverware up the narrow steps on the second floor where they had a small counter and tables.
From her window above the street she watched him standing in front of the horse butcher’s, looking up at the plastic horse head. Her stomach was empty. Her fingers went to the scar on her abdomen. She rubbed her belly through the cotton shirt. Two years before she had awakened with a pain like fire and it didn’t go away. At work that morning, finally she could no longer walk, and was taken in a cab to the hospital and operated on.
They found teeth in her belly. She didn’t want to see them. The doctor said they were little vestigial teeth. She tried not to show her fear so he wouldn’t tease her. He would have if he thought she was better-looking, and told her that it was not unheard of to find such things, probably left over from what might have been her twin. It sounded nasty, and when she went to her village the following Christmas she was afraid to tell her mother, but she did. Her mother said nothing.
There was still light in the sky, but the streetlights were on. The street completely empty. The man had gone. She didn’t like to go to bed so early, but there was nothing else to do. At least this way she would sleep through her hunger, wake up and go to work where she could eat. She drank a glass of water from the bottle and lay down.
It rained. To get out of it he went into an English-language bookstore on the rue de Rivoli. Glancing through some Stephen King, he noticed a sign and a stairway that led to a smoke-filled tearoom with uncomfortable chairs and poor service. He took a table next to a young American girl eating bread and a salad. A redhead—not the orange flaming kind, but darker and cut short. She was tall, had a slim strong body with the hands of a boy and a redhead’s firm, almost opaque skin.
Her face was sharp, sensuous, alert, easily given to irritation. Or ecstasy, he thought. A touch of consternation on the forehead. Nothing blurred; she was exact, she was radar. She was reading a French magazine, but he knew she wasn’t French. It was her shoes. They were scuffed, well used. This girl was an American who had done some walking.
“You ever had a fire in your refrigerator?”
That was a good line. Stupid, but unique. She’d have a mind that might appreciate something like that. She would respond:
“You mean stove?”
“Depends on what you keep in it.”
“Like what?” she would ask.
“Artwork.”
That would be good. She might ask him if he was an artist. No, she wouldn’t—she wasn’t an asker. What was she? Student? No, Ph.D. maybe. Maybe just on va
cation. Maybe married. Nope, no ring. Boyfriend then. So what?
He could ask her if she knew Tartini.
“Tartini who?” Or maybe she would know. No, she wouldn’t know. He’d have to tell her. Italian. First half of the eighteenth century. Composer, violinist. “The Devil’s Trill.” Fuck Tartini, she’d think he was a nerd.
He watched her eat. She used her teeth like she didn’t want to get her lips in the way. Gave her a kind of snarling affect. This girl was against her own best gift, constitutionally. What gift?
To give, to be true, to be known. She lacked goodness. She had it, but didn’t have a clue how to live with it. She confuses it with compromise. A lady, sure, but still a teenager. Her own way or no way. A sensualist, but her trust was pinched. Her hunger, her sentiments, be damned. Yet he could see that there were mountains of it. A woman with sympathies she can’t express. Her sweetness rotting in the brig. She loved so strongly she couldn’t live with it, is what he decided. But so what, not acting on your best qualities is like not having them. But he needed something from her. Needed her to look at him, to want to know him, to help him. He needed her goodwill.
Humor was the way: “A lot of people die on the toilet. A friend of mine’s wife just did.” That he had a friend who had a wife might help. It was a lie. But it was a grabber. “Lenny Bruce too, he died on the toilet.” That was true. Then maybe in a barnyard voice he would say, “I tol’ you not to go in the outhouse, Billy, Grandpa’s busy. / No he ain’t, Ma, he’s dead!”
Shape of the Final Dog and Other Stories (9781101600665) Page 3