by Cole Alpaugh
On Billy Wayne’s return trip, he marveled at how fast the island had been transformed. From the top of the rickety bridge, he looked out over the two large main tents and the collection of smaller ones being staked down. Away from the shadows of the casinos, the tents seemed huge, and Billy Wayne’s mind wandered to the wonderful and fiery speeches he’d give under the spotlights usually reserved for the ringmaster and performers. A nervous thrill ran through his body as he drove slowly down the gravel lane, careful not to spook the zonkey being pulled along behind the pretty young contortionist at the end of a thin nylon rope. The zonkey, as Billy Wayne had understood it, was the result of cross-breeding a zebra and a donkey. The resulting configuration was somehow easier to ride.
The contortionist, Amira Anne, stirred something deep inside Billy Wayne. He’d witnessed her act under the big tent back in the casino parking lot and found himself shamefully aroused. She was one of the performers who entertained the early ticket buyers. Billy Wayne had been perched in the second row of one of the three sets of bleachers when Amira had entered under a single spotlight to slow, sexy Middle Eastern music. She peeled off a full-length feather coat to reveal a glossy, skin-tight blue one-piece. Under the glaring light, Billy Wayne was able to see every curve and every niche of her wonderful body as she easily hoisted herself onto a platform in the middle of the ring.
Amira faced Billy Wayne as she lowered her chin to the wood base and stepped backwards over her own body, giving him and the small crowd a full-on view of her blue crotch. He adjusted his trousers to hide what his mother had called Satan’s Little Pink Snout as the contortionist got to her feet and brought one leg all the way behind her head. Oh, God, Billy Wayne sighed as she leaned forward to grab the handle on top of the metal bar. The girl lifted herself by one hand and did a split over her head, rotating slowly.
Billy Wayne nearly exploded, tiny lines of sweat running from below each uneven sideburn, hands shaking. He wasn’t able to look away from the girl and tried not to think about all the miserable chores and humiliation Momma had inflicted upon him after she’d caught him playing with Satan’s Little Pink Snout as he sat on the toilet when he was twelve.
Billy Wayne smiled out the car window at the pretty blond girl leading the zonkey down the road and was startled when she smiled and waved back.
“We got a tent all set up for ya, boss,” one of the ride mechanics told Billy Wayne, as he climbed out of his Dart with his two plastic bags full of pudding. “There’s a pretty nice cot that used to belong to Enzo. It kinda smells like piss, but it’s real comfy.”
“Thank you,” Billy Wayne said to the man whose hands and arms looked to have been stained black from years of grease and a lack of soap. “Oh, and would you please pass the word around that I’d like everyone to gather in the first main tent in an hour? I have a few things I’d like to say.”
“Yeah, sure ’nuff, boss.”
“Wait,” he called to the mechanic who’d already turned to work on this new duty. “Please let everyone know there will be vanilla pudding.”
Billy Wayne had now relegated a task and announced a magnanimous offering—the vanilla pudding—so he was feeling on top of the world as he went in search of the cook tent. There, he relegated another task, then went back to his new home, set up by the mechanic.
The round tent was red and yellow canvas, with twenty stakes around the perimeter, and a center pole that gave him a ceiling more than twice his height. At least four hay bales had been cut loose and spread around the mucky floor. The deep hay made it necessary to high step across to the cot, but he figured it would get trampled soon enough. With just the bed and one low wooden stool, the space seemed huge.
Billy Wayne hadn’t been to church in more than a dozen years, ever since his mother had gotten too fat to leave the house. And even then, keeping her company was the only reason he had gone. To Billy Wayne, it all sounded like guilt and anger. It was fire and brimstone speeches from an old man in a white collar and a pressed black shirt. But his opinion was only based on little snippets from the Methodist minister. Billy Wayne had perfected the art of falling asleep with his eyes half open, and the dimwitted look it projected wasn’t particularly unflattering to him; as a teenager and young adult, Billy Wayne spent most of his time appearing to be the imbecile son of the really fat woman. People tended to steer clear of the pair, and that was fine. Church went faster when you didn’t stand around talking afterward.
But behind those half-closed, imbecile eyes, Billy Wayne was laying out a plot. Years before stumbling across his How to Become a Cult Leader book, he’d watched a dark documentary about a cult living somewhere off in a jungle. The followers of this man were recruited through their faith in God but were then shown the real deal. That’s just how the narrator put it: “The Reverend hooked them with scripture and then they were shown the real deal.”
It gave Billy Wayne goose pimples.
The leader and his followers had committed mass suicide, so some of the details were sketchy and blanks had to be filled in. But the documentary producers had interviewed several people who had defected before things got out of hand. Suicide having been the ultimate fate of the cult leader distressed Billy Wayne when he first watched the show, but he knew in his heart of hearts it would never come to that with him. No matter how terrible and desperate things got, he was far and away too cowardly to kill himself. No way that was ever gonna happen.
The former members did their best to describe the cult leader’s motivations, as they saw them. Billy Wayne struggled to understand what must be the important parts, where cults were being compared to communism. The members talked about how there were no social classes, with no repression and common ownership of all property and possessions. Decisions on governing policies were made democratically and everyone had an equal vote, including the cult leader.
And there was the tricky part, Billy Wayne thought then and struggled with now. It was a conundrum even his How To book didn’t really have an easy answer for, and Billy Wayne craved easy answers. How could you be acknowledged as the leader in a society of equals? He suspected they must have covered it somewhere in the documentary, maybe during his trip to the toilet. He regretted not recording the show. He might have found the answer.
Billy Wayne had never led anything, not even the Pledge of Allegiance in homeroom, even though the teacher had all the kids take turns. Little Billy Wayne froze up each time he tried. Most of the class mocked him with giggling and cruel words, and the teacher finally let him off the hook and quietly skipped over his turns. The humiliation became one more reason Billy Wayne was more than happy to stop going to school and take care of his mother’s needs full-time.
Billy Wayne also felt a connection to the cult leader profiled in the show. He, too, had been ridiculed as a boy. Neighbors of the leader’s childhood home claimed he’d been caught starting fires and cutting the heads off cats. He then supposedly held elaborate backyard funerals, burying the little bodies in shallow graves. They’d called him a “weird little boy, bound for no good.” Billy Wayne figured the neighbors could have made it all up for the television cameras. Billy Wayne had also been accused by his own neighbors of starting fires, as well as trying to kill their dog. And while he did go through a stage of lighting small fires—didn’t every kid?—it was Billy Wayne’s mother who had wanted the yapping neighbor’s dog shut up once and for all. Billy Wayne truly believed he was just doing what his mom wanted when he fed the dog balled up pieces of hamburger with a bunch of fishhooks inside. The dog, though, just shit them out, which is how he ended up being accused. What kind of person pays that close attention to his dog’s turds, anyway?
Retrieving the How To book and a yellow legal pad from his car, Billy Wayne settled in on the urine-scented cot to scribble out his first benediction, while the vanilla pudding was being prepared in the cook’s tent. He was convinced his time had finally come. He and everyone around him were here for a purpose. Billy Wayne Hooduk’s hand w
as not steady, but his number two pencil wrote with a flourish.
Chapter 22
Jesper Springs didn’t give a flying rat’s ass whether or not there was some sort of God either up there in the clouds or yappin’ on some makeshift stage. Jesper’s life was centered around either bolting together ride parts or tearing tickets in half while waiting for the parts to loosen enough to be retightened. And he was too damn busy to wash the grease off his hands and arms seein’ they’d just grease right back up after drying off anyway.
After passing the word around about the boss wanting to give them a talkin’ to, Jesper took his place on one of the hay bales in the main tent, as had the forty or so other remaining performers and roustabouts. Getting the tents raised had taken priority, and the bleachers and other chairs were still strapped down on one of the big trucks. The hay bales were convenient because they were going to be used for mud control and mucking the animal shit.
Jesper Springs drew the extra twenty dollars a week mechanics pay, but he often considered himself a magician. His one magic act was making himself disappear whenever he wanted to be invisible. Sitting right there on the hay bale, in plain sight as anyone else, Jesper slowed down his breathing and sat very still. The only moving parts were his eyeballs, and he even made them work in slow motion. Jesper could feel himself fading; light coming in from the big tent flap started flowing right through his sinewy, grease-stained body.
Invisible time was peaceful time, to Jesper. No worries about someone storming up from behind yelling to go clean this up, or go fix that goddamn thing he hadn’t gotten around to fixing yesterday. Fact was, Jesper stopped hearing anything clearly when he went invisible. All the talking around him seemed far off, like his ear was pressed up in a tin can, or something. He didn’t much care what people said, anyway. People were always yapping and yapping, believing everything they were saying without ever saying anything.
Invisibility ought to be a high paid performing act, but Jesper knew there wasn’t much hope. How did you get even the dumbest of dumb, those people who slapped dollar bill after dollar bill on the counter to toss darts to win fifty cent toys, to pay not to see you? That was a tough one. Once he figured that one out, he’d start on his second great mystery, which was how to keep himself invisible inside the ladies shower at the YWCA.
Jesper’s hay bale was off to the side of the contortionist’s platform he and the other mechanic had set up for the Hooduk guy to use. Jesper eyed all the smudges he’d left on its nice white paint and then looked down at his hands, a little embarrassed. He’d stuck around for the vanilla pudding and hoped nobody saw all his fingerprints. Jesper sat even more still, made himself a little more invisible.
Out walked their new boss in a shirt and tie, looking like the cat’s meow until he had to struggle his lardy ass up onto the platform. Jesper hadn’t figured on maybe getting a step stool. That hot little contortionist broad sure didn’t need any help getting up on that thing, no sir.
The new boss said something to the other mechanic standing next to the tent flap, who then fetched the first of three big trays of plastic cups filled up with vanilla pudding. Boxes of plastic spoons were also passed around, and everyone in the tent, including the boss, dug in.
Being invisible and on the far side of the tent, Jesper was the last to get his cup and spoon, but the wait was sure worth it. Vanilla pudding might just be the best thing in the world, he thought, scooping thick yellow spoonfuls into his piehole. He slowed down to savor the rich flavor and remembered back to when his ma and pa were still livin’ back north of Chattanooga. His pa wasn’t allowed to drink on Christmas, and his ma used to mix up a big pot of vanilla pudding to go with the corn fritters and baked opossum. Jesper got a little misty thinking about those good days when everybody’s belly was full and pa wasn’t piss drunk, just wantin’ to slap you upside for nothin’.
Boss put his empty cup down and started talking about believing in only the things you could see. That wasn’t nothin’ hard to understand. Jesper had expected to be ignoring a lecture about not gettin’ caught knockin’ up any local girls. Or maybe he’d spout some of that fire and brimstone the travelin’ tent preachers dished out back north of Chattanooga. The boss had, after all, said he was God for shootin’ that homo’s tiger. Shit, Jesper thought to himself, I musta shot me a hundred coon; does that make me Mother fuckin’ Teresa?
“If you see me as your friend, then that’s exactly who I am,” Billy Wayne said. Jesper kind of liked that. The boss sure was nicer than those old Pisani pricks. Them cheap motherfuckers cheated him outta half his pay more than once for bein’ drunk and fallin’ asleep while running the tilt-a-whirl. Big fuckin’ deal; the kids got some extra time on the ride. And it was Jesper who had to clean the seats they puked up on anyway.
“If you see me as your father, then that’s exactly who I am,” the Boss said, and Jesper figured that was a bad thing to be tellin’ these people. Ain’t no way you should want people thinkin’ you’re just some lowdown child whoopin’ piece of shit. Jesper looked around the crowd of circus folk and felt sorry for the boss for sayin’ that. The boss don’t know circus folks.
“And if you see me as your God, then that’s exactly who I am,” Billy Wayne continued, and Jesper giggled. It weren’t no fire and brimstone, but somebody callin’ themselves God was a friggin’ hoot. Hey, God, Jesper thought, how’s ’bout you raise my Shelly Girl up from the dead? Send that truck driver who ran down my dog straight to Hell and bring her back all fixed up good as new. Ain’t no real God looking down on this world who would allow a man’s best friend run over like that. No way.
“We’ll be more than performers and workers. We have a chance to be a family and fill our souls with love and kindness,” Billy Wayne told his audience, but Jesper Springs had his head down in his greasy hands, sulking about his dead dog. He didn’t pay any attention to the rest of what the boss had to say. He just sat there invisible.
Chapter 23
The bear cut loose an enormous fart in her sleep, vibrating the metal frame of the Jeep.
“Wow.” Bagg turned the wheel out of the McDonald’s parking lot, back onto Route Nine headed north, trying his best to breathe the good outside air.
Bagg had used his cell phone to track down the reporter from his paper working on the fatal tiger attack in Atlantic City. The runaway bear in a tattered pink tutu, showing up on a golf course no more than ten miles away, had to be connected.
“The two men who died from the mauling were the owners of the whole shebang,” said the reporter, a veteran police beat reporter named Andy Cobb. He was now at his newsroom desk trying to gather background information on the circus and the deceased for a follow-up story. “Old guys named Pisani were brothers. Uh, Enzo and Donato, ages unknown, but they looked to be a hundred and twenty, maybe older. I haven’t found out what town they’re from, but all the plates are Sarasota County, Florida. The only name we have for the dead human cannonball so far is Enrique. The tiger was the other fatality.”
“What killed the tiger?”
“Guy named William Wayne Hooduk, age thirty, from up in Asbury Park. He was a registered guest at the casino hotel that owned the parking lot. He popped the big cat with a .38 Special,” Cobb said, the sounds of turning notebook pages in the background. “Pretty spectacular shot, if you ask me. One weird thing about the gun …”
“What’s that?”
“Hooduk claimed it was God’s .38 Special.”
“Hard to confirm that, I guess.”
“Oh, yeah, you’d think,” Cobb said. “But Hooduk also claims he is God.”
“Does God have a criminal record?”
“Just bullshit stuff. God has a history of setting small fires,” Cobb said. “Lots of probation and hand slapping. Looks like God mostly set garbage cans on fire.”
“Where are they now?”
“They beat it out of town. Cops took statements and told them to hit the bricks. They packed up in a big hurry and got outt
a Dodge. Cops didn’t say so, but I figure there’s a stack of warrants coming back on them, you know? It’s gotta be pretty typical for a traveling circus. Probably one of the reasons to run away and join the circus, am I right?”
“I suppose,” Bagg said. “You know which direction they headed?”
“North on Route Nine. They pretty much cleaned out an all-night doughnut shop in Smithville. Something like fifteen circus trucks pulled up to the drive-thru window, scaring the shit out of the two Indian girls working the late shift.”
“State Police looking for them?”
“Nah, not that I hear,” Cobb answered. “Not unless any felony warrants came back. The Atlantic City guys were more than happy to have them out of their hair. Imagine the hassle of what to do with all the animals?”
“Yeah,” Bagg said, and a big toothless yawn erupted over his shoulder as the bear squeezed herself down behind the back seat, seeming to settle into a deeper sleep. “You heard about the bear?”
“You went out on that, right? What happened?”
“I’m still working on it.” Bagg thought about the cop he’d just knocked unconscious and the felony warrants that might be out on him right now. “There weren’t any reports of a bear getting loose from the circus?”
“Nah. And the bear would’ve had to run down the Expressway to get anywhere near where they sent you. My guess is that it was probably a big black lab seen by someone who had just watched the circus story on the late news. Hey, you line anything up, yet? A new job, I mean.”
“No, I have a bunch of résumés out.” It was a lie. Bagg hadn’t bothered looking for a new job.
“Yeah, I can’t find shit, either. I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do. Hey, I gotta go. I got a call from Sarasota on the other line.”
“Good luck. You’re too good of a reporter not to get picked up by somebody.”