Sideshow

by William Ollie

  Justin turned, flicked off the light and left the room. He went back down the hallway to the living room, but Mickey wasn’t in the living room. Justin found him in the kitchen, opening a couple of Cokes. He handed one to Justin and lifted the other to his lips, took a drink and set the bottle on the counter, next to a half loaf of bread. There was a coffeepot on the counter, too, a microwave oven and a can opener, which sat next to an ash-blond block of wood—six long-handled butcher knives dotted its surface, leaving one empty slot where the largest of the set should’ve been. Dirty dishes were piled high in the sink, more than a day’s worth, obviously—possibly more than a week’s worth.

  “What’s with the dishes?”

  “Eh, she doesn’t do ‘em anymore.”

  “What do you mean, she doesn’t do ‘em anymore?”

  “She’d stand there, sometimes, after Dad left, stare out the window and start crying. Finally she quit standing there at all. Said she didn’t like the view.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Besides the fact that she won’t wash the dishes anymore? Fuck if I know. I was doing them, but fuck it. They can pile up ‘til they hit the ceiling, for all I care.”

  “Huh,” Justin said, and then took a long drink of his Coke.

  They stood around for a minute or two, neither boy saying much of anything as they worked on their soft drinks. Reardon burped and Justin giggled; he farted and Justin started laughing. It went on like that for a while, Reardon flattening a hand under his shirt, against his armpit, Justin grinning and shaking his head while Reardon mimicked the noise he’d just made by pumping his shoulder against the hand he’d flattened. Finally, their drinks depleted, the merriment ultimately having worn away, Reardon said, “Let’s get outa here, huh?”

  Justin sat his drink on the kitchen counter, beside that huge pile of dirty dishes, and then followed Mickey through the kitchen, past Tricia Reardon’s brown leather purse, which hung by its strap on one of the wooden-backed chairs surrounding a small rectangular table that butted up against the kitchen wall. They walked through the dining room, into the living room and out the front door, Reardon easing the door shut behind them when he stepped onto the porch.

  They left the house just as they had found it, the lights on and the door unlocked, neither having thought much about securing the place, because right now their minds inhabited a realm of carnivals and clouds, Ferris wheels and sideshow freaks, and a tall man with magic fingers and a wicked-looking corncob pipe.

  The bikes were stood up and mounted; pedals were utilized and legs began to churn. A candy wrapper blew down the road in front of them, pushed forward by a breeze that rustled the leaves in the tree branches hovering above them. It was a cool, crisp night in South Carolina, a perfect setting for a ride out to the edge of town.

  They were halfway down the block, when Reardon said, “Let’s go get Ears.”

  “And do what with him?”

  “Take him with us, of course.”

  “And we’d want to do that why?”

  “Because he’s our friend and we like him?”

  “Couldn’t be because he’s the only guy around goofier-looking than you, could it?”

  “Huh uh,” Reardon said. “That’s what I’ve got you for.”

  Justin laughed as they hung a right and continued out of the neighborhood. It felt great being out in the night, out and about with no one to monitor them, no one to tell them to come in, to settle down and go to bed, no one to tell them ‘no’. There really was magic in the air tonight. Magic in the air and a fascinating mystery waiting at the end of the line. They rode side by side, close enough to reach out and touch one another.

  They were halfway through a four-way intersection, when Justin said, “I can’t wait to see the look on his face when we tell him about what we saw this afternoon.”

  “The way he gets all worked up? No shit.”

  “He thinks Devil Slayer’s a mind blower, wait’ll he gets a load’a the tall man!”

  “I can’t wait to see what else is out there tonight.”

  “What, you think there’s more?”

  “The way that guy was going this afternoon?” Reardon said. “I bet there’ll be a lot more stuff there tonight. Looked to me like he was just getting started.”

  “We should’ve stayed and watched him.”

  “I didn’t have the nerve for it.”

  “Me either!” Justin said, then, “Did you see what he did with those tents?”

  “Flat on the ground and those people come pouring out of them?”

  “The way he lit that pipe with just his fingers?”

  “Gotta be a trick.”

  “Gotta be,” Justin said.

  They turned another corner, and Reardon said, “And that cloud, how the hell could he have done that?”

  “I don’t know,” Justin said. “But I’d sure like to find out.”

  “Maybe we could ask him.”

  “Shoot. Magicians don’t never give up their tricks.”

  “Be great if they did though… huh?”

  “Sure would be. Could you imagine pulling something like that at school?”

  “Snap your finger and light Bo Johnson’s cigarette with it?”

  “Wouldn’t fuck with you anymore if you did that, huh?” Justin said.

  “That wouldn’t stop Bo Johnson,” Reardon said. “Nothing would stop that crazy fucker.”

  “Might slow him down a bit, though,” Justin said, and Reardon gave his shoulders a shrug, as if he had no opinion on the matter one way or the other.

  They were on Danny Roebuck’s street now, a block and a half away from Justin’s house. Headlights swept the road ahead of them as a car went speeding down the lane. Any second now, somebody could come up behind them, somebody Justin might know. More importantly, somebody who might know Justin. Some busybody who might know Justin, and know his mother wouldn’t want him out after dark. And that was the last thing he needed, some do-gooder pulling the rug out from under their plans before the night had even started. There was an alley parallel with the street running behind the houses on Danny Roebuck’s block, a dirt path wide enough for a single vehicle.

  “C’mon,” Justin said.

  He hung a left at the next street corner and Reardon followed his lead, down the street to the alley, where both boys veered right, following the path until they came to Danny’s house, which was bordered by another side street. No lights were on at the rear of the house, but as they ventured further along, they saw a soft yellow glow emanating from Danny Roebuck’s bedroom window. They stopped, leaned their bikes against the chain-link fence bordering Danny’s property, and then hopped over it. They crept up to the house to Danny’s bedroom window, but Danny wasn’t in the bedroom.

  They stood for a moment.

  Finally, Reardon said, “What do you think?”

  “Let’s check out the front of the house, see if we can get his attention… if he’s in there, that is.”

  “Where else would he be?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Justin said, and Reardon gave his shoulders another shrug.

  They slipped around the side of the house, to the dining room window. From here the table the Roebuck family gathered around at night could be seen, the living room, the wide open front door and a good part of Mary Roebuck’s kitchen. The table stood empty, no plates on the table and no one around it. The television was on and Mary Roebuck was watching an old Andy Griffith Show rerun Justin had seen way more times than he could remember. The back of Mary’s head was visible above the couch she sat on. Her hand rested on its plush fabric arm. They could see Mary Roebuck, but not her son, who may or may not have been slumped next to her on the couch. As far as Justin could tell, Danny Roebuck wasn’t around, nor was his father, and he saw no reason to risk further exposure by adhering to Reardon’s cockamamie scheme of dragging someone along to deflect the slings and barbs that would be tossed his way once they found themselves a
mongst half the school’s population, which would surely be in attendance tonight. He held out his palm, made legs out of the index and middle finger of his other hand, and then walked them straight down his palm and off the end of his fingers as he nodded toward the rear of the house.

  Once they were back to the fence, over it and back on their bikes, Reardon said, “So much for that.” And then he and Justin took off in the direction from which they had come, back up the alley and back to the street Danny Roebuck lived on, where they turned north toward town. Enough of their time had been wasted on frivolous pursuits.

  Something was waiting for them at the edge of town.

  And Justin could hardly wait to see it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It didn’t take long to get to town, ten minutes to reach the city limits, another five and they were in the middle of Pottsboro. They passed the schoolyard, the town hall and Jim Kreigle’s general store. They thought about stopping there, but Rusty Piersol’s patrol car parked in front of the place quickly changed their minds. Across the street was the Wagon Wheel Bar and Grill, and Justin (Mickey, too, Justin was pretty sure) wondered if Tricia Reardon was in the place, bellied up to the bar with old man Everett, throwing down her umpteenth shot of liquor. It was the first thing Justin thought of when he glanced over at the place, and he knew it had to be weighing heavily on his friend’s mind, so he said, “Man, this is gonna be great.”

  “Damn straight it is.”

  “A magician’s carnival, with all kinds of neat stuff.”

  They were past the Wagon Wheel, heading down a dark street that would lead them closer to the highway, closer to the edge of town, to the old dirt road that would take them straight to Godby’s field. The full moon lit the way as their legs churned, their wheels turned, and their destination grew closer.

  “It really is gonna be great,” Reardon said. “Isn’t it?”

  “With all that stuff this afternoon? It’s gotta be!”

  “I knew you’d come around.”

  “Heck, I knew when we were leaving there this afternoon, we’d be coming back, weird black cloud or no weird black cloud.”

  “Just a magician’s trick,” Reardon said. “That’s all it was, and like I said, he was probably just getting started. Just think of what we’ll see, now that he’s had all day to get everything ready.”

  They went on like that for a while, each child commenting on what he thought they might find out at the old field. Though neither of them really knew what to expect, they were quite sure something incredible was going to happen once they reached their destination. How could it not, with what they had witnessed this afternoon?

  Their legs pumped and the wheels turned round and round, and before they knew it they were on the old dirt road. Above them was that fat, full moon, and something else, Justin knew—a black cloud shaped like a top hat, a stationary object blotting out a section of a shimmering field of stars that just last night had filled the entire night sky; a dark object, a mysterious artifact that looked down upon the bright lights of a Ferris wheel. They could see it now, spinning high above the tree line, and they could hear the music, floating to them on a gentle breeze that ruffled their hair as they peddled their way up the road. The clank and clamor of the rides—that was there, too; laughter, joyful shouts and the carnival Barkers’ excited cries.

  It called to them, it pulled them. Just as the tide sucks water away from the shoreline, Justin and Mickey were drawn forward, which was fine by them—wild horses couldn’t have dragged them out of there tonight.

  They burst through the tree line, into a clearing populated with pickup trucks, cars and old jalopies, parked in rows on either side of them. Doors were opening and slamming shut, people laughing and cussing, whooping and hollering on their way to the entrance. There was a sign hanging above the entrance, the same one Justin had seen earlier in the afternoon. Hannibal Cobb’s Kansas City Carnival, it read, and it swung on the breeze, reflecting moonlight off its flat wooden surface. There was magic in that sign—Justin could feel it, just as he could feel the warm and inviting arms of the carnival opening up before him. They were here now, and the nervous apprehension they’d felt this afternoon had suddenly melted away from them, giving way to the awe and wonderment that had passed their way this time of the year for as long as they could remember. They were here now, and they damn well meant to enjoy themselves.

  They looked for a place to park their bikes, finally selecting one of the poles that had magically appeared while they’d been watching the cloud this afternoon. They leaned the bikes against it and walked off toward the entrance. There were lights on those poles now, and they bathed the entire area with a warm phosphorescent glow. A clown stood at the entrance, an honest to goodness clown. He wore striped silk pants and bright purple suspenders. The red and white stripes, several inches wide, ran vertically up his legs. A red-checkered jacket hung loose on his lanky frame, and an orange and yellow and florescent-green wig sat atop his head. He had penciled-in eyebrows that looped high into his forehead, a thick layer of white pancake makeup and multi-colored stars covering his face, along with a wide, painted on smile that took up half of his chin. He was smiling, all right, smiling and waving everyone inside.

  “Welcome!” he called out when Justin walked by him. “We’ve been waiting!”

  Then they were through the entrance and onto the thoroughfare, and what a thoroughfare it was. Reardon had been right on target. This afternoon, there’d been a Ferris wheel and a couple of weather-beaten tents. But the tall man had just been getting warmed up. Before them on either side of the walkway were a series of high-arcing tents made of thick, clean canvas. All along the clearing, there stood booths and stalls housing a variety of games. Squirt guns that fired water into painted circles, carved into a rainbow-colored sheet of wood a few feet away. A couple of kids were letting it rip, laughing as plastic rocket ships on the sides of their holes raced steadily higher and thin streams of water jetted into those painted circles, until one of the rockets reached its zenith and a buzzer went off.

  “Annnnnd we have a winner!” a guy called out. Justin recognized him from this afternoon. He was tall and thin, with curly brown hair. The white t-shirt he wore was striped with horizontal blue lines. There was a ring in his ear and one in his nose. He plucked a kewpie doll off a long shelf full of them, smiling as he handed it over to the happy winner.

  Next door, a man reared back and let fly a baseball, which went wide right of a stacked-pyramid of three metal milk bottles. He grabbed another ball, tossed again and the top bottle went over. His hand went into his pocket, and out came three one-dollar bills, which were slapped down on the counter and quickly snatched away. The guy who did the snatching looked remarkably like the man at the squirt gun booth—Justin had to look back at the squirt gun guy to make sure it wasn’t him. They both had on the same outfit, but no ring hung from this guy’s nose. He handed the pitcher a couple of balls, stepped back and shouted, “Come one, come all! Knock ‘em down and grab yer prize!”

  Further down the way were the spinning teacups, Justin’s favorite ride. Last year he and Mickey had stepped off them so dizzy they could barely stand up. They walked up the midway, past a hot dog stand and an Italian Ice wagon. They stood for a moment in front of a stall, which had BB guns placed a foot or two apart up and down its long counter. A line of little yellow ducks spaced several inches apart rolled along the rear of the stall, targets for all who wished to try their luck. Not far ahead was a square wooden platform with rails running around its sides. A painted bulls-eye stood in the middle of the platform, attached to a narrow wooden channel that stood near eight feet tall. A round metal ball sat at the base of the channel, waiting for the time when someone would pound a mallet into the bulls-eye, sending the ball racing skyward. It was the old ‘Ring The Bell’ game that had inhabited every carnival Justin had ever attended. One year, back before Justin was old enough to go off to the carnival on his own, his dad had actually rung
the bell. Justin never had, but he knew his time was coming, sooner or later.

  “What do you think?” Reardon said.

  “What?” said Justin.

  “You hungry? I am. I’m hungry as all git-out.”

  “Man,” Justin said. “Do you realize we haven’t had anything to eat since that Snickers bar this afternoon?”

  “Wow,” Reardon deadpanned. “Snickers really does satisfy you.”

  There was a booth a little further up the midway, a large rectangular shell inhabited by the fat woman Justin had seen filing out of one of the tents earlier today. She had on a white dress patterned with large black polka dots—the material, shiny and sheer, shimmered beneath the lights, as if it were a costume and she a circus performer. Her hair was a black bonnet of swishes and curls. A wide circle of red rouge decorated those flabby cheeks of hers. A lit cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth, a metal spatula from her hand. A sign running along the top of her stand advertised a variety of carnivalicous cuisines: hamburgers and hot dogs, corn dogs and French fries and roasted ears of corn. The grease, as magical to Justin as the carnival itself, drew him to it.

  “What’ll it be, sweetie?” she said, when Justin reached the booth.

  “Ah, a corndog, I guess… maybe two? And a Coke!”

  “And you?” she said to Reardon, who shrugged and said, “The same, I reckon.”

  They stood for a moment looking out at the midway, while the woman scurried around her stand. People were moving about the different booths and stalls, old men and young men, and couples with children; some children all on their own, like Justin and Mickey. There was a carousel down the way, with painted horses that went up and down, while the multicolored platform they were attached to spun round and round. And there were the tents, of course, brand spanking new tents that called them forward. Banners and pennants flapped in the breeze above and alongside those tents.