Killer, Come Back to Me

by Ray Bradbury

  “Come see what the elephants did to him, Father Dan,” someone said.

  The elephants had walked on Lal as if he were a small dark carpet of woven grasses; his sharp face was crushed far down into the sawdust, very silent and crimson wet.

  Raoul got sick to his stomach and had to turn away, gritting his teeth. In the confusion, he suddenly found himself standing outside the geeks’ tent, the place where he and Roger had lived ten years of their odd nightmarish life. He hesitated, then poked through the flaps and walked in.

  The tent smelled the same, full of memories. The canvas sagged like a melancholy gray belly from the blue poles. Beneath the stomaching canvas, in a rectangle, the flake-painted platforms, bearing their freak burdens of fat, thin, armless, legless, eyeless misery, stood ancient and stark under the naked electric light bulbs. The bulbs buzzed in the air, large fat Mazda beetles, shedding light on all the numbed, sullen faces of the queer humans.

  The freaks focused their vague uneasy eyes on Raoul, then their eyes darted swiftly behind him, seeking Roger, not finding him. Raoul felt the scar, the empty livid stitchings on his back take fire. Out of memory Roger came. Roger’s remembered voice called the freaks by the acrid names Roger had thought up for them: “Hi, Blimp!” for the Fat Lady. “Hello, Popeye!” This for the Cyclops Man. “And you, Encyclopaedia Britannica!” That could only mean the Tattooed Man. “And you, Venus de Milo!” Raoul nodded at the armless blond woman. Even six feet of earth could not muffle Roger’s insolent voice. “Shorty!” There sat the legless man on his crimson velvet pillow. “Hi, Shorty!” Raoul clapped his hand over his mouth. Had he said it aloud? Or was it just Roger’s cynical voice in his brain?

  Tattoo, with many heads painted on his body, seemed like a vast crowd milling forward. “Raoul!” he shouted happily. He flexed muscles proudly, making the tattoos cavort like a three-ring act. He held his shaved head high because the Eiffel Tower, indelible on his spine, must never sag. On each shoulder blade hung puffy blue clouds. Pushing shoulder blades together, laughing, he’d shout, “See! Storm clouds over the Eiffel! Ha!”

  But the sly eyes of the other freaks were like so many sharp needles weaving a fabric of hate around him.

  Raoul shook his head. “I can’t understand you people! You hated both of us once for a reason; we outshone, outbilled, out-salaried you. But now—how can you still hate me?”

  Tattoo made the eye around his navel almost wink. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “They hated you when you were more abnormal than they were.” He chuckled. “Now they hate you even more because you’re released from freakdom.” Tattoo shrugged. “Me, I’m not jealous. I’m no freak.” He shot a casual glance at them. “They never liked being what they are. They didn’t plan their act; their glands did. Me, my mind did all this to me, these pink chest gunboats, my abdominal island ladies, my flower fingers! It’s different—mine’s ego. Theirs was a lousy accident of nature. Congratulations, Raoul, on escaping.”

  A sigh rose from the dozen platforms, angry, high, as if for the first time the freaks realized that Raoul would be the only one of their number ever to be free of the taint of geekdom and staring people.

  “We’ll strike!” complained the Cyclops. “You and Roger always caused trouble. Now Lal’s dead. We’ll strike and make Father Dan throw you out!”

  Raoul heard his own voice burst out. “I came back because one of you killed Roger! Besides that, the circus was and is my life, and Deirdre is here. None of you can stop me from staying and finding my brother’s murderer in my own time, in my own way.”

  “We were all in bed that night,” whined Fat Lady.

  “Yes, yes, we were, we were,” they all said in unison.

  “It’s too late,” said Skyscraper. “You’ll never find anything!”

  The armless lady kicked her legs, mocking. “I didn’t kill him. I can’t hold a knife except by lying on my back, using my feet!”

  “I’m half blind!” said Cyclops.

  “I’m too fat to move!” whined Fat Lady.

  “Stop it, stop it!” Raoul couldn’t stand it. Raging, he bolted from the tent, ran through darkness some ten feet. Then suddenly he saw her, standing in the shadows, waiting for him.

  “Deirdre!”

  She was the white thing of the upper spaces, a creature winging a canvas void each night, whirling propeller-wise one hundred times around to the enumeration of the strident ring-master: “—eighty-eight!” A whirl. “Eighty-nine!” A curling. “Ninety!” Her strong right arm bedded with hard muscles, the fingers bony, grasping the hemp loop; the wrists, the elbow, the biceps drawing her torso, her tiny bird-wing feet on up, over, and down; on up, over, and down; with a boom of the brass kettle as she finished each roll.

  Now, against the stars, her strong curved right arm raised to a guy wire, she poised forward, looking at Raoul in the half-light, her fingers clenching, relaxing, clenching.

  “They’ve been at you, haven’t they?” she asked, whispering, looking past him, inward to those tawdry platforms and their warped cargo, her eyes blazing. “Well, I’ve got power too. I’m a big act. I’ve got pull with Papa Dan. I’ll have my say, darling.”

  At the word “darling” she relaxed. Her tight hand fell. She stood, hands down, eyes half-closed, waiting for Raoul to come and put his arms about her. “What a homecoming we’ve given you,” she sighed. “I’m so sorry, Raoul.” She was warmly alive against him. “Oh, darling, these eight weeks have been ten years.”

  Warm, close, good, his arms bound her closer. And for the first time in all his life, Roger was not muttering at Raoul’s back: “Oh, for God’s sake, get it over with!”

  * * *

  They stood in the runway at nine o’clock. The fanfare. Deirdre kissed his cheek. “Be back in a few minutes.” The ringmaster called her name. “Raoul, you must get up, away from the freaks. Tomorrow you rehearse with the Condiellas.”

  “Won’t the freaks detest me for leaving them on the ground? They killed Roger; now, if I outshine them again, they’ll get me!”

  “To hell with the freaks, to hell with everything but you and me,” she declared, her iron fingers working, testing a practice hemp floured with resin. She heard her entrance music. Her eyes clouded. “Darling, did you ever see a Tibetan monk’s prayer wheel? Each time the wheel revolves it’s one prayer to heaven—oom mani padme hum.” Raoul gazed at the high rope where she’d swing in a moment. “Every night, Raoul, every time I go around one revolution, it’ll mean I love you, I love you, I love you, like that—over and over.”

  The music towered. “One other thing,” she added quickly. “Promise you’ll forget the past. Lal’s dead, he committed suicide. Father Dan’s told the police another story that doesn’t implicate you, so let’s forget the whole sorry mess. As far as the police know Lal was blind and in the confusion of the lights going off, when the animals got free, he was killed.”

  “Lal didn’t commit suicide, Deirdre. And it wasn’t an accident.” Raoul could hardly say it, look at her. “When I returned, the real killer got panicky and wanted a cover-up. Lal suspected the killer, too, so there was a double motive. Lal was pushed under those elephants to make me think my search was over and done. It’s not. It’s just beginning. Lal wasn’t the kind to commit suicide.”

  “But he hated Roger.”

  “So did all the geeks. And then there’s the matter of Roger’s picture and mine torn in two pieces.”

  Deirdre stood there. They called her name. “Raoul, if you’re right, then they’ll kill you. If the killer was trying to throw you off-trail, and you go on and on—” She had to run then, off into the music, the applause, the noise. She swung up, up, high, higher.

  A large-petaled flower floated on the darkness and came to rest on Raoul’s shoulder. “Oh, it’s you, Tattoo.”

  The Eiffel Tower was sagging. Twin flowers were twitching at Tattoo’s sides as in a high storm. “The geeks,” he muttered sullenly. “They’ve gone on hands and knees to Father Dan!”<
br />
  “What!”

  “Yeah. The armless lady is gesturin’ around with her damn big feet, yellin’. The legless man waves his arms, the midget walks the table top, the tall man thumps the canvas ceiling! Oh, God, they’re wild mad. Fat Lady’ll bust like a rotten melon, I swear! Thin Man’ll fall like a broken xylophone!

  “They say you killed Lal and they’re going to tell the police. The police just got done talking with Father Dan and he convinced them Lal’s death was pure accident. Now, the geeks say either Father Dan kicks you out or they go on strike and tell the cops to boot. So Father Dan says for you to hop on over to his tent, tout de suite. Good luck, kid.”

  Father Dan sloshed his whiskey into a glass and glared at it, then at Raoul. “It’s not what you did or didn’t do that counts, it’s what the geeks believe. They’re boiling. They say you killed Lal because he knew the truth about you and your brother—”

  “The truth!” cried Raoul. “What is the truth?”

  Father Dan couldn’t face him, he had to look away. “That you were fed up, sick of being tied to Roger like a horse to a tree, that you—that you killed your brother to be free—that’s what they say!” Father Dan sprang to his feet and paced the sawdust. “I’m not believing it—yet.”

  “But,” cried Raoul. “But, maybe it would’ve been worth risking, isn’t that what you mean?”

  “Look here, Raoul, it stands to reason, if one of the geeks killed Roger, why in hell are you alive? Why didn’t he kill you? Would he chance having you catch up with him? Not on your busted tintype. Hell. None of the geeks killed Roger.”

  “Maybe he got scared. Maybe he wanted me to live and suffer. That would be real irony, don’t you see?” pleaded Raoul, bewildered.

  Father Dan closed his eyes. “I see that I’ve got my head way out here.” He shoved out his hand. “And this business of the torn painting of you and Roger that Lal found. It points to the fact that someone wanted Roger dead and you alive, so maybe you paid one of the other geeks to do the job, maybe you didn’t have the nerve yourself—” Father Dan paced swiftly. “And after the job was done, your murderer friend tore the picture triumphantly in two pieces!” Father Dan stopped for breath, looked at Raoul’s numbed, beaten face. “All right,” he shouted, “maybe I’m drunk. Maybe I’m crazy. So maybe you didn’t kill him. You’ll still have to pull out. I can’t take a chance on you, Raoul, much as I like you. I can’t lose my whole sideshow over you.”

  Raoul rose unsteadily. The tent tilted around him. His ears hammered crazily. He heard his own strange voice saying, “Give me two more days, Father Dan. That’s all I ask. When I find the killer, things will quiet down, I promise. If I don’t find him. I’ll go away, I promise that too.”

  Father Dan stared morosely at his boot tip in the sawdust. Then he roused himself uneasily. “Two days, then. But that’s all. Two days, and no more. You’re a hard man to down, aren’t you, number two twin?”

  * * *

  They rode on horseback down past the slumbering town, tethered up by a creek, and talked earnestly and kissed quietly. He told her about Father Dan, the split canvas, Lal, and the danger to his job. She held his face in her hands, looking up.

  “Darling, let’s go away. I don’t want you hurt.”

  “Only two more days. If I find the murderer, we can stay.”

  “But there are other circuses, other places.” Her gray eyes were tormented. “I’d give up my job to keep us safe.” She seized his shoulders. “Is Roger that important to you?” Before he knew what she intended, she had whirled him in the dark, locked her elbows in his, and pressured her slender back to his scarred spine. Whispering softly, she said, “I have you now, for the first time, alone, don’t go away from me.” She released him slowly, and he turned and held her again. She said, so softly, “Don’t go away from me, Raoul, I don’t want anything to interfere again.…”

  Instantly time flew backward. In Raoul’s mind he heard Deirdre on another day, asking Roger why he and Raoul had never submitted themselves to the surgeon’s scalpel. And Roger’s cynic’s face rose like driftwood from the tide pool of Raoul’s memory, laughing curtly at Deirdre and retorting, “No, my dear Deirdre, no. It takes two to agree to an operation. I refuse.”

  Raoul kissed Deirdre, trying to forget Roger’s bitter comment. He recalled his first kiss from Deirdre and Roger’s abrupt voice: “Kiss her this way, Raoul! Here, let me show you! May I cut in? No, no, Raoul, you’re unromantic! That’s better. Mind if I fan myself?” Another chortle. “It’s a bit warm.”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” screamed Raoul. He shook violently, jolting himself back into the present—into Deirdre’s arms—

  He woke in the morning with an uncontrollable desire to run, get Deirdre, pack, catch a train, and get out now, get away from things forever. He paced his hotel room. To go away, he thought, to leave and never know any more about the half of himself that was buried in a cemetery hundreds of miles away— But he had to know.

  Noon bugle. The carnies, geeks, finkers, and palefaces, the shills and the shanties, lined the timber tables as Raoul picked vaguely at his plated meat. There was a way to find the murderer. A sure way.

  “Tonight I’m turning the murderer over to the police,” said Raoul, murmuring.

  Tattoo almost dropped his fork. “You mean it?”

  “Pass the white top tent,” someone interrupted. Cake was handed past Raoul’s grim face as he said:

  “I’ve been waiting—biding my time since I got back— watching the killer. I saw his face the night he got Roger. I didn’t tell the police that. I didn’t tell anybody that. I been waiting—just waiting—for the right time and place to even up the score. I didn’t want the police doing my work for me. I wanted to fix him in my own way.”

  “It wasn’t Lal, then?”

  “No.”

  “You let Lal be killed?”

  “I didn’t think he would be. He should have kept quiet. I’m sorry about Lal. But the score’ll be evened tonight. I’ll turn the killer’s body over to the police personally. And it’ll be in self-defense. They won’t hold me. I’ll tell you that, painted man.”

  “What if he gets you first?”

  “I’m half dead now. I’m ready.” Raoul leaned forward earnestly, holding Tattoo’s blue wrist. “You won’t tell anyone about this, of course?”

  “Who? Me? Ha, ha, not me, Raoul.”

  * * *

  The choice news passed from Tattoo to Blimp to Skeleton to Armless to Cyclops to Shorty and on around. Raoul could almost see it go. And he knew that now the matter would be settled; either he’d get the killer or the killer’d get him. Simple. Corner a rat and have it out. But what if nothing happened?

  He frequented all the dark places when the sun set. He strolled under tall crimson wagons where buckets might drop off and crush his head. None dropped. He idled behind cat cages where a sprung door could release fangs on his scarred spine. No cats leaped. He sprawled under an ornate blue wagon wheel waiting for it to revolve, killing him. The wheel did not revolve, nor did elephants trample him, nor tent poles collapse across him, nor guns shoot him. Only the rhythmed music of the band blared out into the starry sky, and he grew more unhappy and solemn in his death-walking.

  He began walking faster, whistling loudly against the thoughts in his mind. Roger had been killed for a purpose. Raoul was purposely left alive.

  A wave of applause echoed from the big top. A lion snarled. Raoul put his hands to his head and closed his eyes. The geeks were innocent. He knew that now. If Lal or Tattoo or Fat Lady or Armless or Legless was guilty, they’d have killed both Roger and Raoul. There was only one solution. It was clear as a blast of a new trumpet.

  He began walking toward the runway entrance, shuffling his feet. There’d be no fight, no blood spilled, no accusations or angers.

  “I will live for a long time,” he said to himself, wearily. ‘‘But what will there be to live for, after tonight?”

  What good to
stick with the show now, what good if the freaks did settle down to accepting him? What good to know the killer’s name. No good—no damned good at all. In his frantic search for one thing he’d lost another. He was alive. His heart pounded hot and heavy in him, sweat poured from his armpits, down his back, on his brow, in his hands. Alive. And the very fact of his aliveness, his living, his heart pulsing, his feet moving, was proof of the killer’s identity. It is not often, he thought grimly, that a killer is found through a live man being alive, usually it is through a dead man’s being dead. I wish I were dead. I wish I were dead.

  This was the last performance in the circus in his life. He found himself shuffling down the runway, heard the whirling din of music, the applause, the laughter as clowns tumbled and wrestled in the red rings.

  Deirdre stood in the runway, looking like a miracle of stars and whiteness, pure and clean and birdlike. She turned as he came up, her face pale, small blue petals under each eye from sleepless nights; but beautiful. She watched the way Raoul walked with his head down.

  The music held them. He raised his head and didn’t look at her.

  “Raoul,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

  He said, “I’ve found the killer.”

  A cymbal crashed. Deirdre looked at him for a long time.

  “Who is it?”

  He didn’t answer, but talked to himself, low, like a prayer, staring straight out at the rings and the people: “You get caught. No matter what you do, you’re helpless. With Roger I was unhappy: without him I’m worse. When I had Roger I wanted you; now, with Roger gone, I can never have you. If I’d given up the hunt, I’d never have been happy. Now that the hunt is over, I’m even more miserable with what I’ve found.”

  “You’re—you’re going to turn the killer in, then?” she asked, finally, after a long time.

  He just stood there, saying nothing, not able to think or see or talk. He felt the music rise, high. He heard, far off, the announcer giving Deirdre’s name, he felt her hard fingers hold him for a moment, tightly, and her warm lips kiss him hard.