Kaleidoscope

by Darryl Wimberley

  Jack had crashed early into his kip. The first real hint of autumn poured through the shack’s single and open window, a welcome breeze entering with the flood of an ochre moon. Something came between Jack’s bed and that fallen illumination. A shadow rippling over the cot.

  A hand reaching out to close on Jack’s curled arm.

  “The hell?!”

  Jack jerked away to find Charlie Blade shivering beside his bed.

  “I need a fix!”

  He was coming down, Jack knew the signs, the sword-swallower trembling like a colt in a thin, puke-stained shirt. Smelling otherwise of urine and beer.

  “Get outta here,” Jack ordered.

  “I need some candy. You know!”

  “I know what I’m gonna do if you don’t get your ass out of my crib,” Jack pulled the brass knuckles from beneath his pillow.

  The young man retreated a notch. But then—

  “You wanna know about Alex Goodman?”

  Jack felt ice water run down his spine.

  “What was that?”

  “Goodman,” Blade repeated. “You don’t think you got the skinny from these freaks, do ya?”

  Jack curled the brass bangers into his hand.

  “Just get me a fix,” Charlie scrambled back. “Get me straight I’ll tell you about Alex.”

  Jack considered a moment.

  “Not here,” he put the knuckles into his trousers. “We’re gonna talk, I want to make sure its private.”

  The midway’s Ferris Wheel framed a waxing moon in a motionless spider of iron. You would have to look hard to see the two men installed in the lowest seat of that ride. Jack rolled a cigarette of Prince Albert for Charlie Blade. The small, white cylinder of tobacco weaving in the young addict’s hand.

  “Thanks,” Blade inhaling greedily.

  Jack followed the smoke with a ten-spot.

  “Should get you fixed.”

  Charlie tried to snatch a grab, but Jack held back.

  “Not ’till you spill.”

  “Awright, awright…Few years ago I got in some trouble. Was in Tampa, I needed a patch, a lawyer. Somebody gave me a number, some mouth name of Dobbs. Terrence Francis Dobbs.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Yeah, you have. He got stomped to death by Peewee’s elephant.”

  Jack worked to keep a poker face.

  “Alex Goodman? You saying this lawyer Dobbs is Alex Goodman?”

  “Goodman was his carney name,” Charlie sucked on his butt as though it were the last tit giving the last milk ever to be had in the world. “But he was a lawyer in Tampa ’way before he started callin’ himself Alex Goodman.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “’Cause, I worked for him. Sort of a sideline; this was three years back, and he had it made. Had his practice in town, real estate, stocks. Got short of cash—that’s when he started bringing in merchandise from Cuba. You could say I was one of his retailers.”

  “Not talkin’ about you,” Jack warned. “So why’d this Gatsby leave the good life?”

  “He was playin’ the market on the margins and got behind. Tried to make it up with bolita and rum and cigars, which left him owing some pretty nasty partners, so he changed his name and hit the road as a fixer.”

  “Fixing what, exactly?”

  “If you’d ever worked an opera you’d know there’s somebody in every berg, town and pigtrail that’s gotta be paid off. Might be the local sheriff, an alderman, a mayor. Somebody always gets greased. That’s what Dobbs did, only, on the show he didn’t call himself Dobbs, he called himself Goodman. Alex Goodman.

  “Didn’t work out that well, though. He only worked one, maybe two seasons. Made his bed in Kaleidoscope a year ago, maybe a little more. Pitiful fuckin’ case by then. Drunk on gin half the fuckin’ time…”

  This judgment rendered without irony.

  “’Magine a guy like that humping The Fat Lady!!”

  Charlie wheezing laughter as his cigarette burned down to his fingers.

  Jack pulled out a paper for himself.

  “I got questions.”

  “My meter just ran out,” Charlie smiled crookedly.

  Jack displayed the tenner and this time Charlie snatched it clean.

  “First question I got isn’t about Alex,” Jack leaned into Charlie’s fetid face. “It’s about Kaleidoscope. This beddy. This place.”

  “Your dime.”

  “The hell does Luna pay for this operation? One show, one night a week? Can’t possibly pay the bills. And half the geeks eating at the café never pay anything. Who’s picking up the tab?”

  Charlie was ironing the ten-dollar smooth on his thigh.

  “All I can tell ya is couple of winters back, the whole shooting match was goin’ under. The café, the carnival—everything. Some bank in Tampa was set to foreclose, what I heard, then a year later the bank gets its money. How? I don’t know; I don’t have the books. But I can tell ya that until a few months ago I could walk up to Luna and ask her to spot me a hundred, two hundred clams and I’d get it no questions asked.

  “Word got out that if you needed a hand this was the place to come. Carneys drifted in from all over. Freaks. Juiced-out acts going nowhere. Even a couple of circus performers. How you think HighWire got his job?

  “Way it’s set up, when you got money you pay. When you get more money, you pay back, an’ in a bind you eat free. Get a roof over yer head. See the doc, you need to.

  “There was no loans signed, no ious. But then I never seen any cash, neither, and with my particular problem—”

  “You need the green.”

  “Dollars for doughnuts.”

  Jack displayed another ten-dollar bill; Charlie reached out greedily—

  “Ah ah,” Jack chided. “This one you gotta earn. Find out anything you can on your man Dobbs. Tell me anytime anybody goes to Tampa. And if you see anyone new in town—”

  Blade gathered his slim green salvation.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll let ya know.”

  Jack tossed about in his cot worrying over Charlie Blade’s credibility. He did not doubt that a lawyer out of work was the ideal hire for a carnival’s fixer. Jack had always known that carnival operators employed go-betweens to grease the natives in whatever towns they staked a lot. There was always some minister or misanthrope clamoring for a spotlight to accuse the carneys of peddling pornography along with popcorn. More strident voices saw in the freaks, particularly, darker signs of Satan and his works, and these voices could run a show out of town. Of course, the more the righteous or self-righteous clamored to banish the forbidden fruit, the more their community was enticed to sample it. Tommy Speck often chuckled that a preacher was worth a hundred billboards.

  But you paid for advertising, no matter how you got it, the printer getting his geld for posters and handbills, the councilman or clergy getting silver for silence. It was not hard to imagine Terrence Dobbs, AKA Alex Goodman, employed in that role. Was easy as well to understand how a disbarred lawyer hoping, perhaps, to re-establish his practice in some other state would change his name in association with the interim employment. It was not the accuracy of this information that kept Jack awake in his cot. What worried Jack was that the only thing he knew of Alex Goodman came from Charlie Blade.

  Surely the disgraced sword-swallower was not the only carney in the beddy who was familiar with Alex Goodman’s other life in Tampa? Surely the freaks and performers with whom Jack worked every day knew Terrence Dobb’s history; like Cassandra said, there were no secrets in Kaleidoscope.

  “Except mine,” Jack amended aloud and suppressed the guilt that stirred.

  Clearly, Luna and the other carneys in the community had decided to keep Jack in the dark about Alex Goodman’s real identity and purpose. But why? Was it simply the freaks’ tendency to distrust outsiders that made Luna and her fellows loathe to speak of Goodman? Were they protecting Goodman’s identity? That was easy enough to swallow, and Jack would be
happy enough to buy it, except for a couple of salient points—

  First of all, this community was clearly getting revenue from someplace other than candy and hootchy-kootch. Secondly, Alex Goodman was connected to Sally Price and Bladehorn’s stolen money. It was possible, of course, that the carneys kept silent simply out of loyalty to Goodman, but was there a less noble reason for silence? Jack was convinced that the carneys knew something about Goodman’s role in their community that they were not going to reveal to a mere brodie.

  But was this distrust directed at all outsiders coming to Kaleidoscope, or was Jack its specific target? Jack swung from his cot and reached for a cigarette. “Don’t get loony,” he muttered to himself. After all, it was natural the geeks wouldn’t open their souls to a newcomer. And Jack had to admit that since he had saved Marcel & Jacques, he seemed to be entirely assimilated into Kaleidoscope’s odd assortment of parts. Everybody from The Bearded Lady to The Alligator Man greeted him warmly. He hadn’t paid for his coffee in a week. And then there was Luna.

  He could still feel her skin, smell her hair in that cold, spring-fed water. Her legs around his waist. Coupling like a pair of goddamn otters. Warming after. That alone was enough to assure Jack that he had turned the corner, wasn’t it? That he had gained Luna’s trust, and Tommy’s, and the others?

  He had swallowed fire, hadn’t he? He was one of their own.

  Jack had not anticipated being embraced so suddenly by the mercurial family of freaks, or so warmly. And Jack was surprised at the changes in his own perception. Only the day before he was gabbing with Friederich over a wheelbarrow of the man’s completely exposed testicles with no feeling of revulsion or fascination. He enjoyed playing cards with Charlotte and Jo Jo and Jacques & Marcel. And making love to Luna he never once thought of the color of her skin.

  But for a man living a lie, the warm greetings and café banter now freely offered by these malformed and unusual people made Jack uneasy, as though he had incurred a debt, as though he were cheating cards at a table of children. Didn’t take much reflection to realize that it was in precisely these moments that Jack was reminded he was cheating these people, all of them, and that if Luna and Tommy and the other freaks had grown to trust their new brodie, it was not the fruit of any fidelity on his part, but the product of his fabrication.

  Jack pressed his hands to his temples. It was hard to know what was true when you spent so much time lying to yourself. But what the hell could he do about that, now? He wanted to deal straight, that was what Jack told himself, but he had no choice! He couldn’t tell Luna why he was down here or who had sent him or what he was really trying to find. What would she do to him if she knew? What would happen to his own family if the carneys discovered a con-man in their midst?

  All night went the merry-go-round. From there to the Funny House, Jack stumbling through a hall of mirrors searching for the authentic face in the endless souls receding into infinity on either side. Which was the knock-off, the facsimile, the fake?

  Was there a real Jack Romaine at all?

  But the old defenses would reassert themselves. The old voice that had taken him from New York to Chicago to Cincinnati pushing forward to say, Listen, chump, it don’t matter what game you got goin’, you think these geeks are playin’ straight? You think these freaks don’t got a card up the sleeve?

  The old, familiar rationalization:

  Just because you’re playing them, Jack, doesn’t mean they aren’t playing you.

  That was what Jack held onto as he sought slumber in a sleepless night. For all he knew Luna could be lying to his face. So could Tommy. So could they all. These people weren’t telling him everything they knew, that was for sure. Not about Alex Goodman, not about their money. There was definitely something fishy going on and if Jack had learned anything since coming to Kaleidoscope it was that a carney could hide a lie behind a smile easier than a rube could wipe his ass.

  It was possible, his own sins aside, that the generosity Jack had experienced since saving Jacques & Marcel was no more than a come-on, a turn, a shill. It was possible, signs to the contrary, that Luna did not really trust him. That she was using him exactly as he was using her.

  There was no way out of the maze. He had to protect Martin and Mamere and the only way to do that was to get Bladehorn his property. Time was running out; Jack knew he couldn’t keep Bladehorn at bay with telegrammed encouragement. Jack had to get the gangster his property and if that meant he was a rat to Luna and Tommy and the other freaks, well—to hell with it.

  There was nothing he could do.

  Those were the thoughts that robbed Jack of sleep that night and embittered the early morning coffee he was sipping the following day in the café when Luna came in, her hair swaying down that long, hard back, to hand him his first pay check.

  “Here,” she ran her hand through his hair. He tried to respond in kind.

  “Four and a half bucks. Thank you, Boss Lady.”

  “Don’t spend it all in one place.” She winked, and then turned to Half Track. “I’ll be gone most of the day, Jenny. Giant needs some lumber to repair the camels’ paddock and we’re short on hay. You need anything?”

  “Nope,” Half Track scooped sugar into a jar. “We’re stocked up.”

  Luna bent to brush her lips on the nape of Jack’s neck.

  Sent chills down his spine.

  “You all right?”

  “I’m fine.” He smiled reassurance and she gave him a squeeze on the shoulder before she swayed away.

  Jack watched Luna leave the café and cross the street. If she was shining him, she was doing a good job. Jack sipped his coffee. Luna said she’d be gone for the day, but it didn’t take a day to get lumber and hay. Didn’t take half a day. Jack had made runs for supplies with Tommy and even buying lumber and feed and all the rest he’d never missed the noon-meal’s flag.

  Was there something else taking Luna’s time?

  Something else in Tampa?

  Jack made up his mind to follow her. Luna would obviously bring back a load of lumber and fodder—failing to complete that errand would look odd. And Jack knew that any run for timber and hay meant she’d be taking the Big Truck, the sideboarded Ford that had towed Peewee’s wagon from the train station. The Ford was the only vehicle suited for heavy loads and would be a snap to tail. But Jack would need a vehicle of his own if he was to follow Luna’s. The Model T—Shouldn’t be hard to borrow the flivver for a daytrip to Tampa.

  Jack left the café and found Tommy filling the stock’s tank with fresh water.

  “I wanta bank my pay,” Jack explained. “I got nearly seventy bucks in cash, countin’ what I brought down with me. It’s too much to have layin’ around.”

  Tommy agreed and without a qualm gave Jack the coupe.

  Jack let Luna have a good five minutes’ start before he cranked the T and rattled off in pursuit. He had changed clothes in the interim, into a suit appropriate for a visit to a bank, but not the duds he’d been wearing when he arrived at Kaleidoscope. He did what he could to create an unfamiliar appearance, tossing aside his fedora for a planter’s hat, a local straw-woven headpiece with a loose, drooping brim. Discarding his pin-striped shirt for a solid, cotton weave. A bowtie and new second-hand shoes. In that camouflage Jack pulled onto the Tamiami Trail.

  He could not see the Big Truck on the narrow two-lane ahead, but was not worried. Jack knew that Luna’s first stop would be to get lumber and feed. Griffith’s Lumber was not located in Tampa proper, but was situated north of the city, off a rail-line’s spur. There were a series of sawmills and warehouses and other businesses located not far from the Tampa train station along a variety of feeding lines. Businesses dealing in large quantities of timber or produce or retail goods loaded and unloaded cars of goods along these lines.

  The blacktop took you almost all the way to the lumberyard. As Jack drove in he saw long stretches of cypress and pine and palmetto give way to the burned ruins of orange groves. The Medi
terranean fruit fly had destroyed tens of thousands of acres of these and other orchards. Virtually every manner of fruit could host the insect; every form of that produce had had to be destroyed, even down to individual trees at residences in town.

  Stiff penalties were enforced against any attempt to transport fruit of any kind. The Tribune warned travelers that every outgoing trunk, portmanteau and handbag would be inspected for hoarded samples of guava or tangerine. Even that meager contraband could spread the plague of the fruit fly to the entire southeast, the paper warned its readers, a prospect terrifying governors from Florida to the Carolinas.

  The smell of petroleum and smoke wafted into the Model T’s cab. Jack could see fires stretching in straight lines alongside the road and across barren fields. Ditches normally used for irrigation or drainage had been filled with motor oil to burn tens of thousands of acres of fruit. What had been some of the most productive soil in agriculture was now no more than a grid of darkened stumps. Jack turned off the blacktop and away from a horizon of devastation to find the clay road leading to Mr. Griffith’s yard.

  He spotted Luna’s truck pulling into the lumberyard. He found cover for the Model-T behind a drying yard and stacks of field fence, kicked the door open to let some air in and surveyed the grounds. A pair of yardboys were already at work with The Giant loading two-bys and lathe onto the big Ford. Then came the hay. He saw Luna step inside the one-story clapboard that was Griffith’s office and for the next half hour the only thing Jack saw entering the yard was a Studebaker coupe and a pair of deuce-and-a-halfs. The coupe arrived first. A tepid hoot from the driver and the man at the gate waved him through to a meager shade beneath a cottonwood near the office. Somebody employed by the yard, Jack figured. Or maybe a salesman. Sure wasn’t hauling lumber in a Studebaker.

  The deuces came in later, offloading barrels it turned out. The workers moving slowly, sweat shining on mostly black skin.

  The morning’s heat and humidity made the cab stifling hot; Jack finally got out and made a shade for himself in the bed of the truck. He had begun to think he had blown a day off, that Luna was on a routine errand, and taking her own sweet time about it, too.