by Hob Broun
Odditorium
A Novel
Hob Broun
FREDA
a little piece always
Contents
Take One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Take Two
11
12
13
14
15
Epilogue
About the Author
“ODDITORIUM was launched by Robert L. Ripley to designate an exhibition of oddities at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933–34, but his claim to its invention has been challenged by Allan Walker Read who reports that there was an Odditorium in Kingston-on-Thames, a village outside London, before World War I.”
—H. L. Mencken,
The American Language,
Supplement Two
TAKE ONE
Tropical hotdog night
Like two flamingos in a fruit fight
Everything’s wrong at the same
time it’s right
—Captain Beefheart (a/k/a Don Van Vliet)
1
BIRDS. DIRTY BIRDS. DIRTY little birds that toddled and pecked at the edge of high weeds. Steep-angled light that was too steady, too bright on a pile of broken bricks. Wind that drove through this dead corner pocket of Hillsborough County like a nasal voice, by the limp clothesline, over a curving neck of pine needles, through saw grass and cattails, and out past the cabbage hammocks to where the water moccasins lived. On the white sill two beetles clambered over each other, fighting or mating or eating. And that goddamn light out there. A nonstop frenzy of it. Windows around here should be dark green. Like sunglasses.
Karl Gables did not know the time of day. His liver worked feverishly to oxidize the last transfusion of Night Train Express while the bubblegum taste went sour in his mouth. A fortified wine, 18 percent alcohol; the kid at the store said junkies used it to taper off with sometimes. Karl picked up the empty bottle, looked through it. It was green and soothed his eyes. Sweat filmed his face and neck, dribbled down his chest, over the delta of his ribs. He was like a fountain.
L & M Shows had cut him loose and he was home in disgrace one more time. So what’s the big deal? This sort of thing was sure enough going around. From sea to shining sea folks were being docked, garnisheed, cashiered, laid off and struck from the rolls. Here’s the difference, Karl reminded himself: You’re chronic.
Last Friday’s edition of the Rocky Mount Courier:
A brawl involving some 25 local residents and traveling carnival workers broke out yesterday evening after Koko the Clown and an allegedly drunken man traded epithets at the Firemen’s Fair in Gloverville. Police said the fighting started at the fair booth that featured Koko, part of whose act is to insult customers when they fail to dump him into a tank of water by throwing baseballs at a target activating a trapdoor.
Several persons suffered minor injuries. They were treated at Geismar General Hospital and later released. In addition to Karl Gables, 34, who a spokesman for L & M Shows said was filling in as Koko the Clown because another employee was unavailable due to an early morning automobile accident, and the irate patron, Buddy Layne, 52, of Rick’s Road, South Newby, police arrested ten others, including two juveniles. All are being held in City Jail until the return of Judge Edwin Geismar, who is said to be on a fishing trip with relatives.
The disturbance began on the fair’s “midway” around 7:30 PM and later spread to the parking area.
“Apparently the clown was riding this man pretty good,” reported Constable Elvis Dunbar. “He took exception to it, picked up a wooden board and started after him. Before long we had a real fracas going. I had to call in back-up support from the State Police barracks.”
One time I get a break from the shit cabins and, pow, right in the head. Must be a curse working on me. Nothing too strong in “Hey, Elephant Ears.” Johnny Jugs, the regular Koko, had said a lot worse to people. Stuff about what the missus liked to do with her hair down in the bedroom, real rank stuff. But old J.J. had to clip four posts off a center divider in his Impala. Right. And this rube had to have a sore spot about his frigging ears. And some asshole angel up in Central Control just had to say, Let’s give ole Karl Gables’ chain another jerk. Oh sure.
At least he wouldn’t have to disclose this latest flop to his wife; not quite yet. Tildy was still out on tour, bless her heart, and probably would not come home till late next month. That was good and not so good. On his own in their cinderblock hacienda, alone with his mutilated thoughts, Karl was at times subject to the cold creeps. All was nebulous and dark in these periods, a swirling murk of all-purpose dread, and carrying through the emptiest of days became a bona fide ordeal, like waiting out a volcanic eruption on an island everyone else has left. He would talk to himself, advising calm and patience, the sound of his own voice as monstrous as his passing reflection in a mirror. On a trip to the mailbox, he could panic at the sight of pale undersides of leaves turning in the breeze. He would experience a tightness across the chest, a quickening heartbeat. He would have difficulty swallowing his own saliva.
Down home was down all right. Maybe that explained why, after a week in jail and three hard days’ thumbing, he’d felt no relief yesterday on first sight of the place, gazing through the bug-splattered windshield of a delivery truck that had picked him up right outside of Lakeland.
“It ain’t Better Homes & Gardens, but we like it,” Karl said and then, as a pretext, so he would not have to enter the house alone, invited the driver in for a cold one.
“White of you, my friend, white of you. But I gots this ’frigerator to drop off up the road….”
Karl pulled the oilcloth shade, turned from the window and looked upon his hostile friends: sagging sofa-bed with flocked upholstery, coral-colored plastic coffee table, water-stained carpet glued over cement floor, 19-inch black-and-white television in Mediterranean finish wood console stippled with cigarette burns, easy chair supported in front by phone books, white fuzz padding showing through at both arms, magazines in a cardboard box, potted cacti on a buffet tray with folding legs, sunburst clock obtained with six full books of Triple-S Blue Stamps.
Hello, walls. There was an old song that went something like that.
He moved into the kitchen to check supplies, throwing open cabinets covered inside and out with knotty-pine contact paper. Not much more than a week’s worth of packaged goods, and only if he skipped lunches. Plenty of pea soup, at least, which was pretty good straight out of the can. A decent amount of Kool Aid and an unopened jar of Skippy with which to make his favorite dish, scrambled eggs and peanut butter. Except there weren’t any eggs. But there were berry thickets out in the woods. He could forage, like a bear.
Karl put some water on to boil and examined the booze situation which, it became immediately clear, was only hours away from desperate. The entire inventory consisted of some cooking sherry, a pint of blackberry brandy bottled in cut-rate bond by Palmetto Liquors of Greater Tampa, and two airline vodka nips. After that it was Mayday.
He fixed himself a bowl of rice and white sugar, saucing it up with one of the vodka nips, and ate standing. Then glucose and alcohol clashed in his bloodstream and he had to stretch out on the floor with his head on the overturned bowl. His eyes dropped shut, he listened to the birds and the dripping of the faucet, and within minutes had entered a capricious dream state that was not quite sleep.
… The hand-lettered bedsheet banner that trails behind the biplane says BUY WAR BONDS NOW. Waving as he dips low over the crowd, the 17-year-old pilot circles to the rear of the stadium. “His only protec
tion, ladies and gentlemen, a leather helmet and our prayers to a merciful God.” A fragile conformation of canvas and wood, the biplane skims over the end zone bleachers, engine roaring, clips off both wings on a pair of carefully placed telephone poles, and makes a shattering pancake landing on the 40-yard line. The pilot jumps free as a Sousa march blares from the public address. The crowd stands as one, shouting, clapping. Take that, Hitler. Our kids don’t know what fear is.
Lucky Teter, king of the thrill drivers, knots a white silk scarf around his neck, and fingers the crease in his jodhpurs. He leaves for basic training at Fort Bragg at six o’clock tomorrow. Lucky’s wife and his mother are on hand to see his last performance. Strapped into a big black Packard, he is going to shoot up a wooden ramp, soar high over the wreckage of the biplane and come to a dead stop in clouds of dust, directly under the goalposts. Lucky takes a last long drag from a cigarette, then flips it into the grass. It is time now. The ramps have been moved into place, the car is waiting already warmed up, motor running. As Lucky runs onto the field someone from the crew tells him to take it easy, don’t push.
He makes one slow lap, working the crowd, building the tension. When it’s all lined up he waits, revving out, spitting exhaust, rumbling like a mad bull about to charge. A massive cheer as he lurches forward and bears down on the ramp. Airborne for a second, sunlight all sleek and opaline on its black flanks, the roadster dips, falls short and smashes head-on into the landing ramp; its support beams are laid lengthwise and they thrust forward on impact, impaling Lucky, tearing his head off. Lucky’s wife leaps from the stands. Flames have begun to blister paint along the rocker panels and a thin red line widens and extends along the white silk scarf floating out the window….
Karl’s head slid down the side of the bowl and met the floor. He turned on his side and drew up his knees at the ambush of nausea. Then in surflike action, the nausea subsided and something else rolled in: an indefinite sense of wrong, a soft minor chord vibrating along his spine. Lucky Teter had been wearing the face of someone Karl knew well. That laughing face inside the ruined car.
Good Christ, but he needed a drink. He took a firm hold on the bottle of blackberry brandy. The first beams of warmth and peace danced in his abdomen and he whispered across the bottle mouth—creating a kind of flute-like accompaniment—the one and only Bible passage he knew by heart.
“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.”
So overcome was he by the wisdom and compassion of these words that his jaw began to tremble and his eyes welled with tears. Why couldn’t the folks out there show a little understanding? A reassuring hand on the shoulder, a murmur of sympathy; it didn’t have to mean anything, just the sound would be enough, some small indication that a drunk was not without his logic. But there were smirks instead, the hard little eyes that seemed to read a permanent plaque on Karl’s chest: DAMNED FOREVER.
Like that cozy roadside spot he’d drifted into on the way home, stiff and sore from a night in an irrigation ditch and forty miles in the back of a gas fitter’s pickup, looking for nothing more than a little something to rinse the exhaust fumes out of his mouth. The place was called Happy’s. They had padded stools and a bumper pool table right by the front window. Working the bar was this sullen granny in a T-shirt. For close to twelve minutes (Karl timed her on a silvery plastic rotating clock advertising a line of canned martinis), she bustled all over, buffing the glass on the cigarette machine, counting empty beer bottles and freshening the bourbon and milk of the only other customer in the joint. It was only after, looking straight at him, she had released some vile perfume from a spray can that she finally asked if he wanted something. And she wouldn’t let go of the beer bottle until he’d put some money down.
Yeah, it was that kind of thing. The way people liked to shit on you out there. Even people that knew you, like R.C. Owens right down at the crossroads store. Anytime Karl walked in there, R.C. would come out from behind the counter and follow his every step like he was some spic fruit tramp between harvests; and he’d explained that thing last April a dozen times. How he’d carried those wieners outside because he remembered that he’d left his wallet on top of the Coke machine. But there was no human charity out there. Folks needed their victims.
Karl leaned shakily against the bedroom door, the bottle nestled against his cheek. He yearned miserably for his wife. She could soothe him with her voice, comfort him with a sandwich. So young and lovely, how had he kept her this long? He browsed through hangers in the closet, stroking her clothes, craving the slightest trace of her that might still reside in the fabric. His head swaddled in bunched skirts, jackets and blouses, he haltingly recalled their last time in bed. Crackles of heat lightning on the radio, handcream spilled on the sheets. Difficulty staying firm. Oh well. He wobbled to the floor, sat cross-legged and contemplated Tildy’s shoes neatly aligned on the closet floor, each insole dappled with the gray outline of heel and toes like paw prints in sand. It was hell, missing her this way, looking for her in a batch of empty shoes.
He took an enormous hit of brandy as a kind of blunting agent. Real nice, he’d stopped tasting it now. Ought to have just about a full tank by this time—there was an audible sloshing in his belly when he moved—but it didn’t seem to be putting him any closer to the hollow stupor he’d been longing to enter for days. And it was into the cooking sherry after this. He was going to need a miracle at this rate, some of that water-into-wine action. Karl tipped back, curled himself at the foot of the bed in the hope that, given a few minutes, he might pass out.
The floor was hard; his left ear throbbed. There were dust balls and odd pillow feathers right next to his eyes when he opened them. Wouldn’t mind if the whole house looked like it did under the bed, dark and untouched. Secret. A man could pass out in style in a house like that. Gradually, he extended one arm into the shadows and touched something hairy, more substantial than dust. He closed his hand around … It had bulk, there was fur. A dead animal. He would have squawked, probably injured himself with a sudden recoil, but his ganglia were so numbed, his reflexes so torpid, that he pulled weakly and the object skittered into light. It was one of Tildy’s slippers. He lifted it out and, cringing at himself even as he did so, kissed the spiky floss of blue orlon. Grit adhered to his lips sticky with blackberry brandy. More shoes, for Chrissakes. Into the slipper’s interior, stiff with wifely sweat, went his hand.
“I love you, Karl,” he squeaked, pinching the sole of the slipper into a kind of puppet mouth.
Inside something skidded under his fingertips. Square, crisp, with sharp corners.
“You got to ask to get,” he said in the puppet voice.
He looked at the ceiling, drew out his hand, dropped his eyes again. A fifty-dollar bill folded eight ways. Didn’t General Grant look fine, even with a crease right through his eyes!
Sweet, sweet Tildy. There when he needed her even when she wasn’t there. She’d been paying the cost to be the boss right from the start; hired Arlo the Aqua Boy to be best man at their wedding. And hadn’t the preacher swallowed hard when Arlo handed up the ring in webbed hands.
Karl chugged the brandy dregs and came to his feet shadowboxing, a new man. Flush. He knew just what he was going to do, too. Get hold of that turnip squeezer, R.C. Owens, and order up.
He dialed, waited. “Yo, R.C, this is your day and mine to shine.”
“Who in hell is this?”
“Karl Gables, good buddy.”
“What you want, thief?”
“No way to talk, R.C. No way at all. I wanna mend fences with you, throw a little business your way. Got some friends coming in for the weekend, gonna need some stuff. Lessee … two pounds of olive loaf. Uh-huh. Couple of white breads.”
“Listen up. I done told your wife a while back you two ain’t got no more line a credit with me.”
“This is a straight cash d
eal here. Greenest greenbacks you’ll ever see. Now we got the olive loaf and the bread, yeah, maybe a couple cans of tuna. Need a dozen eggs, and you pack ’em careful, you prick. Then gimme two jugs of that hearty Burgundy … you writin’ this down?”
“Sure, Gables. In blood.”
“Real smart, R.C. Just for that I’ll take one case of that Gatortail Ale ’stead of two. Now you get that stuff all together ’cause I’m sendin’ my boy for it right quick.”
The moment he cradled the phone, Karl found he was overwhelmingly tired, as though he had dispersed his energy through the mouthpiece and along the wires. His knees were quivery, his vision slightly fractured, but he couldn’t let himself go just yet. Things to be done still. Had to get Ondray Keyes down here and work out some kind of deal.
The Keyeses were Karl’s closest neighbors. There were a lot of them up there; Karl wasn’t exactly sure what the total count was. Amos Keyes worked at a sawmill somewhere inland, but it was an off-and-on thing. Members of the family were constantly off here or there, running down a few days work. Ondray, the second youngest, was sometimes willing to come down the road and do a few things for Karl—run errands for him on his bicycle mostly. He had a basket in front and two saddlebags in back. He’d load up on goodies at the crossroads store, ferry them back, and usually end up keeping Karl’s change. Ondray was only in the fourth grade, but sharp, a demon with figures. He looked up at the sky when he talked and never smiled. Hard-ass little kid. And his pricing procedures were too.
Once Ondray had delivered two quarts of beer, hot, nearly explosive from a long trip in the saddlebags, in exchange for a pocket knife with bottle-opener attachment. Frantic for someone to talk to, Karl invited him to stick around. Ondray didn’t say a word, just hefted the knife in his small hand and stared at his bike lying on its side in the grass.
“Aw, c’mon, don’t be a wallflower,” Karl said. Then, in a ruinous stab at joviality. “I really like you, kid. You’re the cutest little Sambo I ever saw.”