The carnie had wised her early, but not prevented her from being an American girl who would think, Are you happy? What do you want? Where are you going? Why?
“What do you see, Bud? You’re not talking to me. In the water. That green stuff moving around like that, it—”
Stupid and caught, not looking into the silver-green mass, thick with heat and growth, I could think only to answer with a question: “Did you see much of Grack?”
“When? What?”
“Did he talk to you after I left?”
“Who?”
“Grack! Listen to me, Joy.”
“Why weren’t you listening to me?” She straightened up to defy me, stretching to raise first her fierce small white teeth and then her tiny nose with its long narrow nostrils flaring back, and then, on tiptoe, the eyes black and level with mine. “What would he have so special to tell me, Bud? I’m nothing but a carnie brat, a kid to him, a former baby of somebody else’s—”
“Well, he might have said about me.”
“Ah!”
In a movement of rapid impatience she stepped back to the edge of the pool and began pulling off her tennis shoes. Then she stripped the shirt and girl-clothes beneath the shirt, shaking herself free. She was angry and laughing and wild; she showed something pretty to taunt me. She unpinned and stepped out of her skirt and kicked it onto a bush with one touch of her toe and pulled off the rest and stood there a moment, just laughing, just mocking me and my nakedness of curiosity. She knew that I could see her and that I was drunk with seeing her.
“How did you happen to grow up so fast?”
“Just happened, I guess, Bud.” And there was the beginning of a confidence until, still caught, unfree yet, I said:
“Grack used to—”
“You want to go swimming or you want to talk about Grack?” She waited. I started to undress, slowly, and she had pity and jumped, her head splitting the algae at the surface, burrowing a hole in the green fur, her fierce small animal’s face blowing water and gasping. I undressed, scattered my clothes, jumped in. The water was chill. Backed up from some underground stream which emerged here and then hid itself again, it circulated heavily and powerfully beneath the overgrown green surface. The stream below pulled at our legs, and I had the sense that we could let ourselves be guided by it into chill, green, underworld regions. Dog-paddling, cautiously making a trail in the algae, I watched Joy turn, puff, laugh, her teeth bared and her head black and dripping with the wild curls over her forehead and about her ears. She opened her mouth, tongue daring, and then she disappeared beneath the water and I turned to look but felt instead the slim animal swiftness of her speeding between my legs. Dared, I kicked; back she turned, and I tried to clasp her between my knees, a shiver of voluptuousness taking me as her hands thrust me away. She came up sputtering and laughing. “Wait!” I said. “My turn!”
She dog-paddled and I dove beneath the surface, opening my eyes but seeing first the violent green sparkle of water striking the eye, then only a kaleidoscope dazzle of eyeball music. I knew where and how she was. I found her and, turning sideways, put my head between her legs, my teeth at her thigh, thrusting them apart; but then she tightened swiftly and her long legs were wrapped about my shoulders, persevering and squeezing as if to have done with me by drowning. The violence startled me; I was taken by panic even in play and rolled over, blowing bubbles and reaching with my hands. She held still and more tightly. I dove deeper, carrying her, dragging her under, and then wrestled loose and we clung to each other, embracing with bursting lungs, dim and caught without breath and flying like minnows in dizziness and fright. I felt the long wet coolness of her body even in my despair of breath. At the surface where the night air struck us, she broke away and swam the three or four strokes to the edge of the pond.
She scrambled out, shivering. She ran back and forth to dry and warm herself. I understood her sudden violent shyness, timid myself, and sad as a wet dog I climbed up at the other steep and slippery side of the pool. I shook, rubbed, and slapped myself for warmth, my back to her. Then I turned and she was pulling on clothes. She gave me just the glimpse of her girl’s fur and heavy flesh in the starlight beneath those arms of Southern pine. I did not move to her. I put thoughts of Grack and Bossman between us, and they vanished then like smoke, but I did not turn to her anyway. I did not try to touch her more.
We walked back now, stumbling on the narrow path, tired with chill and restraint, our wet hair plastered to our skulls and our breathing hard and hoarse, tired. We talked. I told her again that she had grown up. She told me that I had grown up.
“Me?”
“You’ve become a man.”
“It’s only been a few months. How could I change?”
“Then you’re not a man, because you weren’t. But you are.”
“What do you think, Joy? You want me to change from the way I was because I had me a few troubles?”
“Yes.”
“You think that makes boys men and girls women—just trouble? It takes joy, too.”
She shook her head at the joke about her name. I did not intend it, but it seemed right for laughing. She was pleased. “You tell me I’ve changed,” she said. “So did you, then, and I can tell you. You better see Bossman tonight. He’ll wonder why you didn’t come to settle with him straight off.”
Pauline was rinsing her mouth with salt and soda and spitting it out like plaster at the flap of her mittcamp when we returned. She said she had finished dinner already; she was preserving her teeth and her babygirl breath. Maybe Pauline, that expert fortuneteller, sees all knows all, had guessed that we would miss the evening meal and that was why she had put forward the tea and cookies with such motherly stubbornness. She glanced with heavy eyebrows at our hands because they were not touching. I was already looking ahead to my negotiations with Owner Stan. On my way I realized a funny thing—the coffee and the cigarette which I had taken from Pauline were fine things in life. I thought of my coffee with Andy, the marko hitchhiker, and realized that I too liked it without cream or sugar except when scared of starving. The tang of smoke and the dark bitterness of coffee took their sense from being taken with ease.
And they needed Joy. It was the swimming; it was pleasure; it was the way she judged, considered, worried, and decided. Joy made the sawdust fume of the carnival evening beautiful to me. I had not even noticed that this was being done, but only that now the slow bulb-strung turning of the Ferris wheel against the sky pleased me. I thought this just before I recalled: Joy’s legs gripped me! “Come back and tell me what Stan says,” she asked shyly, and I promised and intended to honor this first responsibility to her.
“I will.”
“Be hard on him, Bud.”
“I will.”
And now I would see Stan and sit down to his table if he were eating. I would get what I wanted from him, which was not to play touch, and he would have to give it to me no matter what he felt about my friend Grack. Stan could never talk away the desire which comes of decision and a will to be good for Joy.
15. Count you to win and I win
THE countstore was my business, but I haven’t been overeager to talk business here. Now, on the way toward Bossman Stan’s winks and yawns, I should tell how a countstore gets after a mark. Okay.
It’s a nice yellow summer evening; you have the itch of gain; you come up to the stand with your woman pinching your arm. You want to try your luck. You roll the marbles, and each one falls into a numbered hole. The numbers are summed by me, very fast, “Two and six is eight and three is eleven and ten is twenty-one and five is twenty-five and—” If you reach a winning sum, you will be invited to carry away one of the genuine Indian blankets, the Winchester rifle, the electric grandfather’s clock, or maybe fifty dollars in U. S. of A. cash for your two bits of risk. It depends. And with some numbers you may get two prizes—the ones with stars on them. Easy? Just roll the marbles into the holes.
The winning numbers may be 1, 4, 9,
25, 105, 179, and so on. You are all suspicious. All right, step right up, try it just for kicks. Now I count up your total, as above, finishing by: “Twenty-one and five is twenty-five and you win, sir! Congratulations! A nice new Indian blanket, straight from the reservation! Ooops, I’m sorry, so sorry, oh dear, but you didn’t bet that time. It was just practice, so too bad. Would you like to try for real?”
The trouble is that twenty-one and five is not twenty-five, but you never thought to quarrel with a man who says that you have won. You did not think to notice with all the brawl of the shills and the joy of the fairground and your girl pinching your arm and squeaking with pleasure and my felicitations and languishing look at the Indian blanket—the one I would have been out. You want to win, why argue? Why see?
But of course when it’s for real we count more carefully. And somehow the combination is seldom right. You can’t very well have a 1 or a 4 when there are five marbles and each hole has a value. Somehow the numbers of the marbles and the numbers which win never come together, or they meet so rarely that the Indian blanket factory can go out on strike forever without worrying me and all I have to do is air the one I have and keep moth flakes in its folds.
Some men with a pocketful of quarters and that encouraging girl on the arm just love to keep on trying. If they lose too much, what the hell, we make them happy. We count them into the Indian blanket before they quit. Scores up to three hundred dollars happen: it’s the nuttiness of the mark and his fist in his palm, Almost made it that time! I’ve scored over two hundred myself once on a Saturday night.
Or the babydoll for a friendly souvenir.
Or a pincushion at least if all they’ve lost is twenty or thirty bucks.
A mother says to her kids while they watch Pa at work on the marbles: “Don’t tell me you don’t like Francis. I’ll spank you on the rear. You do like Francis.”
“Mommy?”
Pa is busy getting 16, just one away from the Winchester, or 164, just a few away from the bathroom scales.
“Mommy!”
“What?”
“I don’t like Francis.” The kids brought after dark always end up bawling. “I don’t like Bonnie, either.” Mommy whacks and baby yells. Pa is too busy to notice. He needs a bathroom scales. He needs a Winchester.
“Man alive,” I growl, “you’re sure getting close, sir.” I shake my head and put out my hand with the marbles again. His hand comes forward before he knows it. “My luck is really running against me today,” I complain to him. “Already give away two blankets and a shotgun, yes, it’s terrible. Well, you got to treat the client right so’s he’ll tell other folks about you, so I’ll just take it like a man.”
The countstore is so simple and so sweet that it’s easy to love. You just have to talk nice and talk fast and be good at reverse arithmetic. It has to be nice-sounding arithmetic on the trial runs. You need a shill for friend, of course, when the crowd is only watching, to count him into a winning score and load him up with camping equipment that he can carry through the marks in their mouth-open admiration.
And all the time the kid rubs dirt into his eyes and bawls, “I don’t don’t don’t like Francis.” When Pa gets him home, trying to figure out how it all happened, the click of the marbles still rattling in his ears, he will give the kid a licking to remember. And tomorrow I’ll be forty-five miles up in the hills, squeezing the larcenous hearts five and twenty-one times to make twenty-five.
Now render unto Stan Stan’s.
Bossman was winking at dough and yawning at finance and counting his money on a cardtable when I peeked between the slats of Venetian blinds at his trailer window. He wore a cigarillo between his teeth, a black onyx ring like a lump of coal slipping up and down his pinky finger, and a baby revolver to keep the little stack of fives from blowing away. There was no wind. His trailer shining outside, messed with chromium and paint, always fresh under Simonize, announced the Wide World and Tuscaloosa Too Shows, Stanley Chick, Onr., and inside the onr.’s place was pretty, too, with its no-woman tidiness. Every pinup on the wall had a thumbtack in each corner, and each thumbtack was covered for insurance with a square half-inch of adhesive. Oh it was lovely. He had even been careful to clear a place about his money so that it would not wander in the breeze (which did not exist) among the socks, collars, copies of Billboard, and proofs of handbills. A couple of his favorite bills were posted on the wall: Come one! Come all! Every cent to charity! Our Lady of St. Aloyisius! American Legion Post #104! Firemen of Montgomery, Ala.! Try some Vitamin F—it’s FUN!
Stan’s way was to make his trailer blaze with the Christmas tree lights he strung over it, so that everyone would know when he counted his money. It was a celebrational thing to do; I respected him for his piety before the dollar. Casanopopolous and the Bossman both shared this vanity, this awe, this socialized buck. Casanopopolous ironed out the wrinkled bills in public, on a board, wearing an apron; Bossman just lit up, but it was the same thing. One of the nice carnie habits is to carry a big wad and pad it with tissue paper if you have to. To tish your money is no stranger than for a girl to tish her boobies, is it? All right.
Stan had a safe riveted to the floor of his trailer. He was a skinny hard little man with an overgrown Adam’s apple and a blond mustache that you only saw for sure when he licked it over his lips and sucked at the hairs, a flat-headed carnie boss with pale blue eyes flush with his cheeks, thin sandy hair combed and looped across his scalp, ears like handlebars—he looked like a quartermaster sergeant in the Free Ukrainian Army, if there is such a thing and if it has quartermasters. Full of admiration in the head, he got to be a boss because he saved his money. His tie was in a huge knot over the wiry Adam’s apple. He blinked at me when I pushed my way in: “What say, Bud?”
“I’m back, Bossman.”
He winked, and then his jaw cracked with his deep, sick, palate-snapping yawn. The confidential boredom was a part of his art, but it was also his life. He did not touch either the money or the revolver. “What you been doing?”
“I ain’t been with it, Stan.”
“What you been pushing?”
“Just now? Been talking with Pauline at her mittcamp. Been seeing Joy.”
He hardly moved, but I saw Stan the baby now, held down by straps, struggling, red-faced, flailing, fisting, twisting, and unable to budge. But he only winked and yawned, reduced to these twitches of passion, saying: “What you planning on your mind?”
“You need me on a countstore, Bossman.”
“I don’t think so, Bud.”
“Yes, you think so, Stan.”
He stacked his bills and put the revolver back on top. He sighed and said, “What made you talk to Joy all afternoon?”
“She’s a friend, a kid like me—”
“Sweet kid,” he said. “You’re older’n her, Bud. I’m not that much older’n her, being still a man. I don’t think we really need you so much now, Bud. You ran out on us once. Your friend Grack left us in a bad way.”
I sat down on a chromium kitchen stool without being asked. I played my thumb against a match end to give it something to do. “I told you I was going, Stan. I didn’t run out. It ain’t my fault what Grack took it in his head. I wasn’t even around. A first-cream countstore would be good for the whole show, bring some fun to the show, not to mention your cut. They tell me it’s dead.”
“Unh.” Grunting, his Adam’s apple bobbing and the wide nostrils working: “Joy say there’s no fun in it for her?”
“I’ll be ready to set up in two days. You got the stuff for me.”
He drew heavily in his snout and played the nostrils with two fingers. “I ain’t denying you’re a good talker, a good grifter for a kid.” He smiled painfully and showed the tips of teeth. “That what Joy told you about Stan’s Show, that no fun for her, that Joy?”
Even Steven, he wanted an answer. Well, I would see. “You got any ideas about why Grack did it?” I asked without bringing a word to his hard, wet, jealous sound,
Joy.
He shook his head angrily. “No, no, we was almost friends,”—and impatiently. His feelings were hurt. “No, Grack stayed with me longer’n anybody. We almost got to be what-you-call-em pals.”
Okay, Stan, I’m sorry for you, too. But I said: “Listen, you been carrying the setup, Stan. You been looking for a flat store man. I’ll set up in two days if I have to use adhesive to stick it together. I’ll even do some painting myself, you supply the paint. I got ambition since I left the show, Stan. It’s good for a boy to learn the facts of life.” He nodded. Now it was time to say something nice to Bossman. First the mean and hard, then the nice, that’s the way for a Bossman: “I’m almost glad to see you, Stan. Your face looks almost good to me. You ought to take vitamin pills, your skin is yellow. I had the jaundice once myself.”
Never mind that sympathy, never mind that nice, his hands in-and-out stacking work with the money told me. The busy nose and the yawning never stopped. He asked without looking at me: “Joy been complaining about the fun in this show?” I watched with my mouth open for the yawn and the tic of wink that followed. Complicity, boredom—these were the meaning of his life. Slyness, dead with it—poor Stan! His winking eyes were those of a fox; his foxy muzzle reached open for the snare. “Joy thinks she’s a sweet kid, okay, I say she is, but she ain’t got no right to complain.”
I laughed and touched the stack of singles. “Listen, Stan, neither Grack nor Joy is our business now. I want a countstore, you need a countstore, we’re playing new dates: let’s get decided. Later we’ll cut up a jackpot.”
Man Who Was Not With It Page 11