New Canadian Noir

by Claude Lalumiere

  Clive Whitworth had watched the tent peaks and the high rides slowly poke up over the town’s modest skyline from his classroom window. The anticipation became unbearable as the weekdays dragged on, and Clive earned himself three separate detentions for ignoring his lessons in favour of gazing out the window. Such punishment had no effect on him or his carnival daydream. He only saw the extra half-hours of after-school incarcerations as an opportunity to observe the distant construction from the slightly different vantage point offered by the windows of the detention room.

  Although many of the other children in the school felt the same eager expectation for the weekend event, their interest was not aligned with Clive’s. The fact was, Clive didn’t particularly care for most of the spectacles that constituted a proper fairground. The rides made him sick, the candy floss gave him a bellyache. He didn’t like clowns, and he cared even less for animals. What Clive liked was a challenge.

  The school week dragged to its merciful end. It was late in the school year, and, with the carnival in town, only a few of the most joyless teachers bothered to assign homework. None of them expected any of it to be done by Monday. No one would be wasting a single moment struggling through algebra problems when there was so much fun to be had.

  After a fitful night of sleep, Clive was up early. He could barely be convinced to finish his breakfast. Only the threat of withholding his allotment of fair money could keep him seated through his final bite of waffle and last strip of bacon. Once the go-ahead was finally issued by his parents, Clive threw on a light jacket and leapt from the front porch, dashing to the outskirts of town without ever stopping for breath or slowing his pace. He arrived at the wooden placard gates of the carnival in eight minutes flat, beating his previous record by three.

  The set-up was nearly identical to the previous spring’s. Tickets for the rides and the shows could be purchased at a centrally located booth. Some shows cost one ticket, others two. The same went for the rides. The merry-go-round and the Ferris wheel, the tilt-a-whirl and the pirate ship were all placed in their designated spots, spaced apart by the tents with the dancing dogs and the horse that could count. One strip along the border of the fairgrounds, stretching all the way from the funhouse to the haunted house, was where the carney booths were. Set in rows and forming an alleyway for games of chance and skill, they were ready to entrap anyone who dared navigate the gauntlet. Tickets wouldn’t buy you a chance to win a stuffed toy here. Only cold hard cash could buy you a game.

  The lineup at the ticket booth was long and slow. Clive didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in tickets and didn’t plan to purchase a single one. He was there for the games alley.

  Clive considered himself a master of the games. He was undefeatable at the ring toss, always on target with a dart, air rifle, or water pistol, and never failed to knock down a pyramid of cans with his three-ball allotment. Back home, stashed in a trunk in his closet, was his bounty from previous years. Plush pets, velvet posters, and plastic doohickeys of all sorts attested to his undeniable skill. He could have filled his entire room a dozen times over if his mother let him keep all the giant stuffed animals he’d won from the upper echelon of prizes. But they took up far too much space, and Clive had to admit they were garish, cheaply made, and filled with who-knows-what. One by one, he’d given them all up as they were pressed into service as gifts for birthdays and baby showers. He preferred to pore over his more compact collection of victories, often harder won. The prizes were all worthless junk, Clive was well aware, but to him they were worth far more than money. They were testaments to his skill, well honed through years of off-season practice.

  Come carnival time, Clive would descend on the games alley and clean up. He would systematically travel from booth to booth, winning prizes, upgrading to bigger and better trophies, giving lesser ones away to friends who inevitably passed by on their way to the next ride or circus act. He wouldn’t be satisfied until the carneys had all barred him from their individual booths for winning too much. That, to Clive, was the ultimate achievement, the one true prize he was really after. He’d made a clean sweep two years in a row now, banned for life from every single games booth. The lifetime ban was meaningless. The carneys never remembered him from year to year. They toured too many towns, saw too many faces. And Clive was still a growing boy. He hardly looked like the same kid who’d mopped the floor with them last year, or the year before.

  Clive strolled the alley, checking out the games, watching the usual variety of unskilled marks lose their money as they missed their targets, failed to pop a balloon, or bounced a ball off the rim of what always seemed to be an undersized non-regulation basketball hoop. The suckers. Clive had long ago figured out how all the games were rigged. He had also figured out how this gave him an advantage, showing him the path to victory time and again. The carneys always seemed to know how to win at their own games when they demonstrated to passersby how easy they were. Through observation and training, Clive had determined what sort of counter-intuitive backspin to give his ball throws, what sort of flick of the wrist could vastly improve his odds of landing a ring around a bottle neck, and where to aim an air rifle that had purposely had its sights miscalibrated. Practicing at home with some of his own roughly recreated challenges, he had vastly improved his skills and had solved some of the trickiest deceits.

  The games were his to dominate. Clive’s only question was where to begin.

  Are you smarter than The World’s Smartest Chicken?

  This question was asked in bold red paint on an arched sign over a wheeled cart. On one side of the cart was a three-by-three grid of lights randomly flashing Xs and Os. On the other was a glass cage that held a disinterested-looking white chicken. The only other prominent feature on the cart was a coin slot, yawning open, eager to be fed. Clive had never seen anything like it before. Not at this fair, not anywhere. It was a confusing, alien addition to the landscape he’d memorized over the course of his gaming adventures.

  One of the carneys selling three dart-throws at a wall of balloons observed Clive’s long, thoughtful contemplation of the new attraction that had joined the alley this season. The carney was old, grizzled. Clive guessed he was a long-time veteran of the carnival and at least half a dozen just like it in years gone by. He probably knew a million ways to fleece the public out of the contents of their wallet, a dollar at a time if he could, a nickel at a time if he had to.

  “Give it a go, son. It won’t bite,” he encouraged.

  “How does it work?” Clive asked.

  “It’s tic-tac-toe. You know how tic-tac-toe works, don’t ya?”

  “Of course I do. But does the chicken?”

  “Sure it does. Says it’s The World’s Smartest Chicken, don’t it? You pop a dime in the machine and you play a game. If you beat it, well then, congratulations. If you tie it, then I guess you’re only as smart as a chicken. And if you lose… Well, I wouldn’t go telling anyone I’d lost a game of tic-tac-toe to a chicken, that’s fer sure.”

  Clive’s eyes fixed on the chicken behind the window. It didn’t look any different from any other chicken he’d ever laid eyes on in his life.

  Almost unconsciously, Clive’s hand slipped into his pants pocket and jingled the change nestled at the bottom. When he realized what he was doing, he removed his hand, only to find he’d come up with a single dime. This wasn’t on his agenda, this uncharted attraction. Clive had a carefully calculated plan of attack. He knew which booths to hit first, which to hit last, and how long it would take him to work his way up to the top prize at each one. But this – this thing – stood in his way. There was no prize to be won, beyond the simple self-satisfaction of victory. Nevertheless, it stood as a barrier between him and his weekend loot. To ignore it, to circumvent it, would be to leave a challenge unanswered.

  He reached forward, slowly, deliberately, and pushed the dime into the coin slot. It rattled and clunked its way through the inner workings of the mechanism before landing in the coin
bin at the bottom. The light board reset itself and the flashing Xs and Os vanished for the commencement of a new game. Inside the chicken’s glass booth, a small trapdoor painted with the words THINKING BOOTH popped open on one of the walls. The chicken immediately rose to its feet, toddled over to the booth, and began pecking at the space hidden away behind the door. In response, a bold red X lit up on the board in the upper-left corner.

  Clive saw that each square of the light board had a button so the human player could respond with his own move. He pushed the one next to the centre square, claiming it with a blue O.

  Again the chicken pecked at its thinking-booth and another X appeared, this one in the bottom right. Clive countered with an O in the bottom left. The chicken knew enough to block him with an X in the upper right.

  Only at this moment did Clive realize he’d made a rookie error. Even little kids playing tic-tac-toe with crayons on bits of scrap paper in kindergarten knew better. You always play the corners in tic-tac-toe. It’s not a sure way to win, but it’s the only sure way not to lose. He’d left the chicken with two possible winning moves, and he could only block one of them.

  Reluctantly, Clive chose one of his two blocks. With only one available move to win, the chicken seized it. The line of red Xs flashed victoriously, informing Clive he had lost. To his shame, he’d figured that out two moves ago. The question was, how did the chicken know?

  “Tough break, kid,” said the carney, who barely mustered enough politeness to keep from laughing out loud. “Like I said, that’s one smart chicken.”

  Clive didn’t respond, merely fumed. There was no recourse but to dig into his pocket for another dime. To prove a point, he ran through a second match, quickly this time, playing the corners like he knew he should have from the start. The chicken once again played flawlessly, but with Clive responding to each move correctly the game finished in a mathematically certain tie. Clive wasn’t able to defeat the chicken, but at least he’d proved he could hold it to a draw – world’s smartest or not.

  Clive turned back to the carney, prepared to flash him a cocky grin. But the carney had already turned his attention to another mark – a teenage boy with a girl at his side he was eager to impress. There might have been as much as ten dollars to be made off him before he let the teen walk away with a fifty-cent teddy bear to give to the girl. That was much more pressing business than goading some kid into losing a couple of dimes to a chicken.

  With no more audience to prove himself to, Clive nearly walked away to get on with his day. But one nagging question picked at his ego. He’d battled The World’s Smartest Chicken to a draw, but could he defeat it? Against his better judgment, Clive dug for a third dime to feed into the coin slot.

  And so the day went. Clive stood there as the sun crawled across the sky and the shadows grew long, pumping nickels and dimes into the coin slot, matching wits with a chicken and coming up short each time. Dissatisfied with tie after tie, Clive attempted a variety of strategies to unnerve the chicken and throw it off its game. He tried any number of nonsense moves in order to confuse and bamboozle his opponent. Each ploy failed. The chicken displayed nerves of steel and kept to its purely logical game plan. The more outrageous and unpredictable Clive tried to be on the game board, the more losses he managed to rack up, until his tie-loss ratio versus his chicken nemesis started to become very embarrassing indeed.

  When the announcement came over the PA speakers that the carnival was now closed for the day and customers needed to clear the grounds, Clive was dismayed to find he’d gone through his entire bankroll without a single win to his name.

  Back home, Clive picked at his dinner, hardly eating anything, not really hungry anyway. When asked if he had fun at the carnival that day, he mumbled something grumpy and indistinct and then excused himself for an early bedtime.

  After dark, once the rest of the house was asleep, Clive made the rounds. There remained another whole day to bounce back and salvage the season, but he needed to replenish his ammunition. Silently he raided his father’s billfold, his mother’s change purse, and his little sister’s penny jar. He knew the theft would not go undiscovered for long, but the consequences were something he’d deal with once the chicken was defeated and he was free to move forward with his original agenda to crush all the other games in the alley. There was still time if he moved quickly. A good night’s sleep and a fresh start with a fresh perspective was all he needed. He’d come at the chicken hard in the first few minutes of the Sunday opening, catch it unawares before it had a chance to get up to speed, and then move on to a more deserving challenge.

  Clive was absent at breakfast the next morning. It was the only way to be sure he was first through the gate the moment the carnival reopened for the day. He was at the chicken stand moments later, before any of the carneys had even assumed their positions in their game booths. He had to wait an additional ten minutes until someone came around to plug the cart into an extension that ran to one of the fairground’s generators. Clive killed the time by staring coldly at his opponent, trying to rattle the chicken as it stared back with one profiled eye.

  Once power was restored, Clive was lightning-quick with his first coin. His money from the day before had all been removed overnight, and he could hear his first dime rolling on its rim once it dropped into the empty change bucket inside the machine. He was five dimes into the rematch before anyone else stepped foot in the arcade strip. Clive played fast and decisively, hoping a sudden rapid assault of matches would afford him the advantage. Once again, Clive’s strategy proved futile. A night’s sleep had not improved his performance, and an early start had not thrown the chicken off its game.

  After his late-night thievery, Clive had started day two with even more cash in his pockets. He went through it all twice as fast as he had previously and was bankrupt by noon. He spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the fairgrounds, hitting up any school friends he could find for spare change. He was able to borrow a few coins here and there. Close friends were willing to advance him as much as a dollar at a time. All of it was fed to the chicken in short order. Still hours away from the carnival calling it quits for the weekend, Clive was destitute. Word of his desperate fundraising had spread and no more loans were forthcoming. Even old pals turned their backs on him and hid, ducking behind thick queues of people, or losing themselves in the Hall of Mirrors, rather than get tapped by Clive again.

  Any other year, even short on cash, Clive would have lingered and watched the rides and listened to the screams and laughter. But there was no joy left in it. He couldn’t even bring himself to return one final time to the games in order to watch the unskilled lose their money at challenges he himself had mastered. Not with that damn superior chicken standing there, looking down on him from inside its glass box, all-seeing and all-knowing – at least in regards to anything tic-tac-toe related.

  “Where were you this morning?” his mother wanted to know upon his return. When Clive didn’t come down for breakfast, she had been every bit as worried as doting motherhood required her to be. But she knew exactly where her son had been – the only place he could have been – and had not called around or made inquiries of the neighbours.

  “I wanted to get an early start,” Clive shrugged.

  “There’s money missing. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yeah,” admitted Clive, and braced for the third degree, the disappointment, the punishment.

  Sent to bed without supper, grounded for weeks, Clive felt the sting of defeat weigh on him more heavily than any loss he’d ever experienced in his softball league or at a spelling bee. This was a loss that mattered, that haunted him. Sleep would not come, and he felt certain a peaceful slumber would never be his again until he purged this loss from his troubled mind. Slipping out of bed after the rest of the house was down for the night, pulling his clothes back on, Clive knew the hour was very late, but there was still time to catch the carnival before it skipped town. He had to face the chicken one fin
al time.

  Clive was not stupid so much as stubborn. He couldn’t let things lie, not where they were. Winning was no longer on his mind. The sole focus of his every thought now was revenge. It would be quick and easy as killings went. He could picture his hands around the chicken’s throat, squeezing tight, choking off its air supply, crushing bones, snapping its arrogant neck.

  Would his midnight act of murder be investigated, traced back to him? Would charges be laid, prison time served? It was, after all, only a chicken. But this was The World’s Smartest Chicken. Surely there would be a reckoning for such a special animal. Clive supposed it would depend on just how brilliant the chicken was – if tic-tac-toe was its sole talent, or if it offered more to the world. It had been undeniably brilliant anticipating Clive’s every move so far. Did the chicken foresee this one as well? Would it raise an alarm, clucking and screeching for salvation before Clive could sneak up on it and commit the deed? Clive considered all this, but recognized he’d spent the better part of two days second-guessing himself into this position. Best now to simply act, swiftly and brutally and with a violence no chicken could hope to match.

  When he arrived at the fairgrounds, the tents were already flat on the ground and folded up. The staff was hard at work, tearing down all the temporary structures and packing the clapboards and canvas away in trailers that would be hitched to trucks and rolled to the next town in a matter of hours. The rides were still standing, steel skeletons, dark and imposing by moonlight. The power was out, the cables were being collected and spooled, and it was too dangerous to dismantle the big attractions in the dark. They wouldn’t be torn down until morning, once all the lighter, more basic elements were out of the way and on the road.

  The carnival workers toiled by flashlight and battery-operated lanterns. There was ample illumination for them to see what they were doing, but it was easy for one boy to slip by them unseen if he kept to the shadows. Clive’s memory of the carnival layout helped him find his way in the dark without tripping over anything and calling attention to himself. It was a simple matter to find the games alley. The booths were empty now. Without their colourful prizes, blinking lights, bottles, or balloons, they looked uniformly nondescript. The only stand in the strip that remained unique was the chicken’s cart. The silhouette of its wagon-wheel spokes and the transparent glass cage stood out in the dim light that filtered through the grounds from the opposite end of the fair.