Nightmare Alley

by William Lindsay Gresham

  Back in the Pelican Club the boss said, “Now you fellas run along. You tell McIntyre I’m not putting in no cig or novelty girls and I’m holding on to the hat check myself. It ain’t for sale.”

  CARD XVII

  The Hermit

  An old man follows a star that burns in his lantern.

  IN THE light of the fire the cards fell, forming the pattern of a cross. Stan dealt them slowly, watching them fall.

  The gully was shielded from wind, the fire hidden from the tracks a quarter of a mile away across fields standing high with brittle weed-stalks. Weeds grew to the edge of the gully, the fire turning them yellow against the sky where stars hung, icy and remote.

  The Empress. She smirked at him from beneath her crown of stars, holding a scepter with a golden ball on its end. The pomegranates embroidered on her robe looked like strawberries. Beyond her, trees stood stiffly—like the trees on a theater backdrop in a tank town. At her feet the ripening wheat-heads. Smell of ripening wheat. Venus sign on the couch where she sat. Smell of ripening wheat.

  What did they think, the wriggling bugs of the scum, jetting into the world to meet acids, whirling douches, rubber scum bags, upholstery of cars, silk drawers, clotted handkerchief … two hundred million at a shot …

  Across the fire the fat man lifted a steaming can from the embers with a pair of pliers. “Got yourself a can, bud? Java’s done.”

  Stan knocked tobacco crumbs from a tin and twisted a rag around it. “In there, pal.”

  The coffee set his stomach churning again. Christ, I need a drink. But how to snake out the bottle without that bastard cutting himself in?

  He eased the bottle neck from his coat and pretended to be studying the cards while the white mule trickled into the steaming can.

  The squat hobo raised his face. “My, my! What is this that gives off so heavenly an aroma?” His voice was like sandpaper. “Could it be Odeur de Barley corn? Or is it a few drops—just the merest suggestion behind the ears—of that rare and subtle essence, ‘Parfum Pourriture d’Intestin— You never know she wears it until it’s … too late’? Come on, blondy, gimme the bottle!”

  Through his smile Stan said, “Sure. Sure, pal. I was going to break it out later. I’m waiting for another pal of mine. He’s out trying to get a lump.”

  The fat man took the bottle of rotgut, measured it by eye, and very accurately drank half of it, handing it back and returning to his coffee. “Thanks, bud. The only pal you got is right in there. You better soak it up before some other bo muscles in on us.” He shifted his weight, crossed his legs, and took a long drink of coffee, which trickled down the shiny blue surface of his jowls. A two days’ growth of beard made him look like a pirate.

  He rested the can on his knee and wiped his chin, running his tongue around between his lips and gums. Then he said, “That’s right, bud—kill the bottle. How would you like it if we had an unexpected guest?” His voice took on a reedy, mincing tone and he held his head coyly on one side, lifting bushy eyebrows. “He’d find us in a dither—it being the maid’s day off. All we’d have to offer him would be a drink of that fine, mellow, wood-aged polecat piss.” The jowls swayed as he shook his head in mock concern. Then the dark face brightened. “Or perhaps he would be that priceless gem—the guest-who-always-fits-in—ready at a moment’s notice to don an apron (one of your frilly best, naturally, kept just for those special people) and join you in the kitchen, improvising a snack.”

  Stan brought the bottle to his mouth again and tilted it; the raw whisky found holes in his teeth and punished him, but he finished it and heaved the bottle into the weeds.

  The fat man threw another branch on the fire and squatted beside Stan. “What kind of cards are those, bud?”

  The man’s shirt was almost clean, pants cuffs scarcely frayed. Probably rode the plush a lot. In his lapel was a tiny steering-wheel emblem of a boat club.

  Stan gazed up into his face. “My friend, you are a man who has seen life. I get the impression that somewhere in your life has been an office with a broad carpet. I see a window in an office building with something growing in it. Could it be little cedar trees—in a window box?”

  The fat hobo stood up, swishing the coffee in his can. “Everybody had cedars. I had a better idea—an inspiration. Grass hummocks—just plain grass tufts. But this will show you the genius. What do you think I put in them? Katydids! I’d bring up a client late at night—town all dark there below us. Tell him to step back from the window and listen. You couldn’t believe you were in the city.” He looked down and his face tightened. “Wait a minute, bud. How’d you know about them grass tufts?”

  The Great Stanton smiled thinly, pointing to the cards before him. “This is the Tarot of the Romany cartomancers. A set of symbols handed down from remote antiquity, preserving in their enigmatic form the ancient wisdom through the ages.”

  “What d’you do with ’em? Tell fortunes?” The gravel voice had lost its hostility.

  “I receive impressions. You have two children. Is that correct?”

  The fat man nodded. “Christ knows, I had once. If that bitch hasn’t let ’em kill themselves while she was out whoring around.”

  “Your third wife?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Wait a minute. How’d you know I was a three-time loser?”

  “I drew the impressions from your mind, my friend, using the cards of the Tarot as a concentrative. Now, if you wish me to continue, I shall be glad to. The fee will be twenty-five cents, or its equivalent in merchandise.”

  The hobo scratched his scalp. “Okay, bud. Go ahead.” He threw a quarter beside the cards and Stan picked it up. Five shots. Gathering the cards he shuffled them, having the fat man cut them with his left hand.

  “You see, the first to appear is the Hermit. An old man, leaning on a staff, follows a star that burns in his lantern. That is your quest—your journey through life, always seeking something just out of your reach. Once it was wealth. It became the love of women. Next, you sought security—for yourself and others. But misfortune descended on you. Things inside you began to tear in opposite directions. And you would have five or six drinks before you took the train home at night. Isn’t that right?”

  The glowering, dark face nodded.

  “The Hermit is the card of the Search. The Search for the Answer.”

  “Come again, bud.” The fat man’s tone was subdued and hopeless. “What brains I ever had was knocked loose by yard dicks years ago.”

  Stan closed his eyes. “Man comes into the world a blind, groping mite. He knows hunger and the fear of noise and of falling. His life is spent in flight—flight from hunger and from the thunderbolt of destiny. From his moment of birth he begins to fall through the whistling air of Time: down, down into a chasm of darkness …”

  The hobo stood up cautiously and edged around the fire. He watched the cartomancer warily. Nuts can blow their tops easy —and this one still held a can of hot coffee.

  The Great Stanton spoke aloud to himself. The jolt of whisky had loosened his stomach and drawn it out from his backbone. Now he rambled; with a foolish, drunken joy he let his tongue ride, saying whatever it wanted to say. He could sit back and rest and let his tongue do the work. Why beat my brains out reading for a bum that was probably too crooked and phoney even for the advertising racket? The tongue does the work. Good old tongue, man’s best friend—and woman’s second best. What the hell am I talking about?

  “… we come like a breath of wind over the fields of morning. We go like a lamp flame caught by a blast from a darkened window. In between we journey from table to table, from bottle to bottle, from bed to bed. We suck, we chew, we swallow, we lick, we try to mash life into us like an am-am-amoeba God damn it! Somebody lets us loose like a toad out of a matchbox and we jump and jump and jump and the guy always behind us, and when he gets tired he stomps us to death and our guts squirt out on each side of the boot of All Merciful Providence. The son-of-a-bitch!”

  The world
began to spin and he opened his eyes to keep his balance. The fat man wasn’t listening. He was standing with his back to the fire, throwing pebbles at something beyond the circle of light.

  When he turned around he said, “A goddamned, mangy, flea-bitten abortion of a dog was trying to horn in on our fire. The stinking abomination. I hate ’em! They come up to you, smelling, groveling, please-kick-my-ass-mister. I hate ’em! They slaver all over you. You rub ’em behind the ears and they practically come in your face out of gratitude.”

  Stanton Carlisle said, “My friend, at some time a dog did you an injury. I think the dog was not yours but that it belonged to another—to a woman.”

  The bo, moving agily with the grace of an athlete gone fat, was standing beside him now, fists working, the knuckles rippling as he spoke. “Sure it was a dog—a toadying, cringing, vomit-eating, goddamned abortion of a dog! Sure he belonged to a woman, you crazy bastard! And the dog was me!”

  They held the pose like figures in a tableau. Only the firelight moved, jumping and flickering on the weeds and on the two faces, the pudgy one dark and tormented, the gaunt face of the blond hobo a blank.

  There was a whining scuffle from the bank overhead and both men turned. An emaciated dog slid down and tremblingly approached the warmth, tail flattened between his haunches, eyes rolling.

  Stan chirped between his teeth. “Come here, boy. Here. Over here by me.”

  The dog bounded toward him, yelping with delight at the sound of a friendly voice. He had almost reached Stan when the squat hobo drew back his foot. The kick lifted the animal, squirming and squealing, into the air; it fell, legs spraddled, in the middle of the fire, screamed, and shot away into the dark, trailing sparks from singed fur.

  Stan swept the coffee in a curve; it glistened in the firelight, a muddy arc, and caught the fat man in the eyes. He stumbled back, wiping his sleeve across them. Then he lowered his head, resting his jowl on his left shoulder and stepping in with a rocking motion, left fist forward, right hand half open, ready to defend his face. In a soft, cultured voice he said, “Get your hands up, brother. You are in for a very unpleasant three minutes. I’ll play with you that long and then send you off to dreamland.”

  The Rev. Carlisle had doubled in the middle, as if taken by a violent stomach cramp. He moaned, bending over, and the fat man dropped his guard an inch. It was low enough.

  When Stan sprang he carried a thick faggot from the fire and with one lunge caught the hobo with its burning point just below the breast bone. The man went down limply and heavily, like a dummy stuffed with sand.

  Stan watched him gape, fighting for breath. Then he smashed the torch into the open mouth, feeling the teeth crush under it.

  The alcohol was draining out of his mind. He was alone and cold, under an immensity of sky—naked as a slug, as a tadpole. And the shadow of the crushing foot seemed to move closer. Stan began to run.

  Far away, up on the drag, he heard the hoot of a whistle and he ran faster, staggering, a stitch in his side. Oh, Jesus—the Tarot. I left it by the fire. One more signpost pointing to the Rev. Carlisle.

  A freight was slowing. He ran, his breath scorching, looking ahead, through the dark, for obstructions on the line. An iron step came whipping by him and he reached for it, but it tore from his fingers. The job was picking up speed.

  A wide-open boxcar door slid up to him and he leaped.

  Then, with the scalding panic rushing over him, he knew that he had missed and was swinging under.

  A hand from the car gripped his shoulder and held him, half inside the car and half out, while under his feet the earth flew past.

  The freight high-balled along.

  CARD XVIII

  Time

  One foot on earth and one on water, an angel pours eternity from cup to cup.

  IN THE parking lot the Maryland sun beat down, flashing from rows of windshields, from chromium handles and the smooth curves of enameled mudguards.

  Cincinnati Burns eased the battered convertible into line while Molly, standing out on the gravel, shouted, “Cut her left, honey. More left.”

  He drew out the ignition key and it was suddenly snatched from his hand and hurled out between the cars. Cincy said, “You little devil! You’re mighty sassy. Ain’t you? Ain’t you?” He boosted the child high in the air while it screamed with joy.

  Molly came running up. “Let me hold him, Cincy, while you get the key.” He passed the baby to her and it grabbed a damp handkerchief from the gambler’s coat pocket and waved it triumphantly.

  “Come on, precious. Let’s let Daddy get the key. Hey, quit kicking me in the tummy.”

  The big man set the boy on his shoulder, handing Molly his hat for safekeeping, and they headed for the grandstand. The gambler shifted the baby and looked at the stop watch on his wrist. “Plenty of time, kitten. The third race is our spot.”

  They stopped to buy paper cups of raspberry sherbet and Cincinnati whispered suddenly, “You hold the bambino, Molly. There’s Dewey from St. Louis.”

  Treading softly, he approached from the rear and squatted down behind a glum, lantern-jawed man in a seersucker suit. Cincy took a pack of matches and holding his thick fingers, knuckles covered with red hair, as delicately as if he were threading a needle, he stuck a match between Dewey’s shoe sole and the upper. Lighting the match, he sneaked back a few steps and then strolled over to where his wife and son were watching from behind the refreshment stand.

  When the match burned down the long-faced horse player shot into the air as if hoisted by a rope and began smacking at his foot.

  Molly, Cincy, and young Dennis, peeking around the corner of the stand, began to shout in unison. Molly dropped her cup of sherbet, and Dennis Burns, seeing it fall, threw his after it gleefully.

  “Hey, what goes on?” Cincy rattled change in his pocket and said, “You go on. I’ll catch up to ye’s.”

  When he joined them he held four cups of sherbet. “Here, kids—one to suck on and one to drop. Dewey is sure a sucker for the hotfoot. This must be a thousand times somebody gives him the hotfoot. It’s a dozen times, at least, that I give him the hotfoot myself. Let’s get up in the stand, kitten. I’ll get you organized and then I’ve got to get the roll down on that hay-burner in the third; he shouldn’t drop dead, kennahurra. You wouldn’t know that, that’s Gaelic. If he breaks a leg we’re going to have to talk fast back at that fleabag. What the hell, it’s time we was pulling out of that trap anyhow. Every time I wake up in the morning and get a glim full of that wallpaper I feel like I ought to slip you five bucks.”

  CARD XIX

  The Wheel of Fortune

  spins past Angel, Eagle, Lion, and Bull.

  STAN lay on the splintery boards, feeling the vibration against his elbows, smelling the acrid odor of machine oil rising from the planks. The freight thundered along, gaining speed.

  The hands drew him further in and then slid under his armpits and helped him to sit up. “You all right, son? You sure come near swinging yourself into Kingdom Come.” The voice was soft and friendly.

  Now they were passing the outskirts of a town, lonely street lamps sending bars of light winking through the door. The man who had dragged him in was a Negro, dressed in denim overalls and a denim work coat. Above the bib of the overalls a white shirt was visible in the shadows. His smile was the only part of his face Stan could see.

  Getting to his feet he braced himself against the sway of the car under him and worked his fingers and arms, easing the strain out of them. “Thanks, pal. It was too dark for me to put on any speed myself—couldn’t see what was ahead of me on the drag.”

  “It’s tough, dark night like this. You can’t see the grab-irons. You can’t hardly see nothing. How about a smoke?”

  Stan felt a bag of tobacco pressed into his hand. He twisted himself a cigarette and they shared the match. The Negro was a young fellow, slim, with smooth, handsome features and close-cropped hair.

  Stan drew in smoke and let
it dribble from his nose. Then he began to shake, for the steady pound of the wheels under him brought back the stab of that hopeless, desperate fear, “This is it,” and he trembled harder.

  “You cold, mister? Or you got a fever?”

  “Just shaken up. I thought I was going to hand in my checks.”

  Their cigarettes perfumed the darkness. Outside the rising moon rode with them, dipping beyond treetops.

  “You a working stiff, mister, or just on the road?”

  “On the road.”

  “Plenty fellows likes it that way. Seem like I’d rather work than knock myself out hustling.”

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  “Any kind. Porter work, handyman. I run a freight elevator once. I can drive pretty good. Biggest old truck you can find, I’ll drive her. I’ve shipped out: cook’s helper and dishwasher. I can chop cotton. Reckon there ain’t anything you can’t do, you set your mind on it.”

  “Bound north?”

  “New Jersey. Going to try and get me a job at Grindle’s. What I hear, they taking on men. Taking on colored.”

  Stan braced his back against the closed door on the other side of the car and drew a final puff from the cigarette, sending the butt flipping through the open door, trailing sparks.

  Grindle. Grindle. Grindle. To drown out the chatter of the wheels he said, “Why are they hiring guys all of a sudden? Business must be picking up.”

  The youth laughed a little. “Business staying right where she is. They hiring because they done a whole mess of firing a while back. They hiring all colored, this new bunch, what I hear.”