Authors: Theodore Sturgeon
“Uh-Hi! Yes.”
“We’re going to grab a bite. Come on.”
Horty rose stiffly to his knees. He said, “I haven’t got any money.”
“Hell with that,” said the fat boy. “Come on.”
He put a firm hand under Horty’s armpit as he climbed down. A jukebox throbbed behind the grinding sound of a gasoline pump, and their feet crunched pleasantly on cinders. “What’s your name?” Horty asked.
“They call me Havana,” said the fat boy. “I never been there. It’s the cigars.”
“My name’s Horty Bluett.”
“We’ll change that.”
The driver and the two girls were waiting for them by the door of a diner. Horty hardly had a chance to look at them before they all crowded through and lined up at the counter. Horty sat between the driver and the silver-haired girl. The other one, the one with dark ropes of braided hair took the next stool, and Havana, the fat-boy, sat at the end.
Horty looked first at the driver—looked, stared, and dragged his eyes away in the same tense moment. The driver’s sagging skin was indeed a grey-green, dry, loose, leather-rough. He had pouches under his eyes, which were red and inflamed-looking, and his underlip drooped to show long white lower incisors.
The backs of his hands showed the same loose sage-green skin, though his fingers were normal. They were long and the nails were exquisitely manicured.
“That’s Solum,” said Havana, leaning forward over the counter and talking across the two girls. “He’s the Alligator-Skinned Man, an’ the ugliest human in captivity.” He must have sensed Horty’s thought that Solum might resent this designation, for he added, “He’s deef. He don’t know what goes on.”
“I’m Bunny,” said the girl next to him. She was plump—not fat like Havana, but round—butter-ball round, skin-tight round. Her flesh was flesh colored and blood-colored—all pink with no yellow about it. Her hair was as white as cotton, but glossy, and her eyes were the extraordinary ruby of a white rabbit’s. She had a little midge of a voice and an all but ultrasonic giggle, which she used now. She stood barely as high as his shoulder, though they sat at the same height. She was out of proportion only in this one fact of the long torso and the short legs. “An’ this is Zena.”
Horty turned his gaze full on her and gulped. She was the most beautiful little work of art he had ever seen in his life. Her dark hair shone, and her eyes shone too, and her head planed from temple to cheek, curved from cheek to chin, softly and smoothly. Her skin was tanned over a deep, fresh glow like the pink shadows between the petals of a rose. The lipstick she chose was dark, nearly a brown red; that and the dark skin made the whites of her eyes like beacons. She wore a dress with a wide collar that lay back on her shoulders, and a neckline that dropped almost to her waist. That neckline told Horty for the very first time that these kids, Havana and Bunny and Zena, weren’t kids at all. Bunny was girl-curved, puppy-fat curved, the way even a four-year-old girl—or boy—might be. But Zena had breasts, real, taut, firm, separate breasts. He looked at them and then at the three small faces, as if the faces he had seen before had disappeared and were replaced by new ones. Havana’s studied, self-assured speech and his cigars were his badges of maturity, and albino Bunny would certainly show some such emblem in a minute.
“I won’t tell you his name,” said Havana. “He’s fixin’ to get a new one, as of now. Right, kid?”
“Well,” said Horty, still struggling with the strange shifting of estimated place these people had made within him, “Well, I guess so.”
“He’s cute,” said Bunny. “You know that, kid?” She uttered her almost inaudible giggle. “You’re cute.”
Horty found himself looking at Zena’s breasts again and his cheeks flamed. “Don’t rib him,” said Zena.
It was the first time she had spoken… One of the earliest things Horty could remember was a cattail stalk he had seen lying on the bank of a tidal creek. He was only a toddler then, and the dark-brown sausage of the cat-tail fastened to its dry yellow stem had seemed a hard and brittle thing. He had, without picking it up, run his fingers down its length, and the fact that it was not dried wood, but velvet, was a thrilling shock. He had such a shock now, hearing Zena’s voice for the first time.
The short-order man, a pasty-faced youth with a tired mouth and laugh-wrinkles around his eyes and nostrils, lounged up to them. He apparently felt no surprise at seeing the midgets or the hideous green-skinned Solum. “Hi, Havana. You folks setting up around here?”
“Not fer six weeks or so. We’re down Eltonville way. We’ll milk the State Fair and work back. Comin’ in with a load o’ props. Cheeseburger fer the glamor-puss there. What’s yer pleasure, ladies?”
“Scrambled on rye toast,” said Bunny.
Zena said, “Fry some bacon until it’s almost burned—”
“—an’ crumble it over some peanut-butter on whole wheat. I remember, princess,” grinned the cook. “What say, Havana?”
“Steak. You too, huh?” he asked Horty. “Nup—he can’t cut it. Ground sirloin, an’ I’ll shoot you if you bread it. Peas an’ mashed.”
The cook made a circle of his thumb and forefinger and went to get the order.
Horty asked, timidly, “Are you with a circus?”
“Carny,” said Havana.
Zena smiled at his expression. It made his head swim. “That’s a carnival. You know. Does your hand hurt?”
“Not much.”
“That kills me,” Havana exploded. “Y’oughta see it.” He drew his right hand across his left fingers and made a motion like crumbling crackers. “Man.”
“We’ll get that fixed up. What are we going to call you?” asked Bunny.
“Let’s figure out what he’s going to do first,” said Havana. “We got to make the Maneater happy.”
“About those ants,” said Bunny, “would you eat slugs and grasshoppers, and that?” She asked him straight out, and this time she did not giggle.
“No!” said Horty, simultaneously with Havana’s “I already asked him that. That’s out, Bunny. The Maneater don’t like to use a geek anyway.”
Regretfully, Bunny said, “No carny ever had a midge that would geek. It would be a card.”
“What’s a geek?” asked Horty.
“He wants to know what’s a geek.”
“Nothing very nice,” said Zena. “It’s a man who eats all sorts of nasty things, and bites the heads off live chickens and rabbits.”
Horty said, “I don’t think I’d like doing that,” so soberly that the three midgets burst into a shrill explosion of laughter. Horty looked at them all, one by one, and sensed that they laughed with, not at him, and so he laughed too. Again he felt that inward surge of warmth. These folk made everything so easy. They seemed to understand that he could be a little different from other folks, and it was all right. Havana had apparently told them all about him, and they were eager to help.
“I told you,” said Havana, “he sings like an angel. Never heard anything like it. Wait’ll you hear.”
“You play anything?” asked Bunny. “Zena, could you teach him guitar?”
“Not with that left hand,” said Havana.
“Stop
it!” Zena cried. “Just when did you people decide he was going to work with us?”
Havana opened his mouth helplessly. Bunny said, “Oh—I thought…” and Horty stared at Zena. Were they trying to give and take away all at the same time?
“Oh, kiddo, don’t look at me like that,” said Zena. “You’ll tear me apart…” Again, in spite of his distress, he could all but feel her voice with fingertips. She said, “I’d do anything in the world for you, child. But—it would have to be something good. I don’t know that this would be good.”
“Sure it’d be good,” scoffed Havana. “Where’s he gonna eat? Who’s gonna take him in? Listen, after what he’s been through he deserves a break. What’s the matter with it, Zee? The Maneater?”
“I can handle the Maneater,” she said. Somehow, Horty sensed that in that casual remark was the thing about Zena that made the others await her decision. “Look, Havana,” she said, “what happens to a kid his age makes him what he will be when he grows up. Carny’s all right for us. It’s home to us. It’s the one place where we can be what we are and like it. What would it be for him, growing up in it? That’s no life for a kid.”
“You talk as if there was nothing in a carnival but midges and freaks.”
“In a way that’s so,” she murmured. “I’m sorry,” she added. “I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t think straight tonight. There’s something…” She shook herself. “I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Bunny and Havana looked at each other. Havana shrugged helplessly. And Horty couldn’t help himself. His eyes felt hot, and he said “Gee.”
“Oh, Kid, don’t.”
“Hey!” barked Havana. “Grab him! He’s fainting!”
Horty’s face was suddenly pale and twisted with pain. Zena slid off her stool and put her arm around him. “Sick, honey? Your hand?”
Gasping, Horty shook his head. “Junky,” he whispered, and grunted as if his windpipe were being squeezed. He pointed with his bandaged hand toward the door. “Truck,” he rasped. “In—Junky—oh, truck!”
The midgets looked at one another, and then Havana leaped from his stool and, running to Solum, punched his arm. He made quick motions, pointing outside, turning an imaginary steering wheel, beckoning toward the door.
Moving with astonishing speed, the big man slipped to the door and was gone, the others following. Solum was at the truck almost before the midgets and Horty were outside. He bounded catlike past the cab, throwing a quick glance into it, and in two more jumps was at the tail gate and inside. There were a couple of thumps and Solum emerged, the tattered figure of a man dangling from his parti-colored hands. The tramp was struggling, but when the brilliant golden light fell on Solum’s face, he uttered a scratchy ululation which must have been clearly audible a quarter of a mile away. Solum dropped him on to the cinders; he landed heavily on his back and lay there writhing and terrified, fighting to get wind back into his shocked lungs.
Havana threw away his cigar stub and pounced on the prone figure, roughly going through the pockets. He said something unprintable and then, “Look here—our new soupspoons and four compacts and a lipstick and—why, you little sneak,” he snarled at the man, who was not large but was nearly three times his size. The man twitched as if he would throw Havana off him; Solum immediately leaned down and raked a large hand across his face. The man screamed again, and this time did surge up and send Havana flying; not, however, to attack, but to run sobbing and slobbering with fear from the gaunt Solum. He disappeared into the darkness across the highway with Solum at his heels.
Horty went to the tailgate. He said, timidly, to Havana, “Would you look for my package?”
“That ol’ paper bag? Sure.” Havana swung up on the tailgate, reappeared a moment later with the bag, and handed it to Horty.
Armand had broken Junky very thoroughly, breaking the jack-in-the-box’s head away from the rest of the toy, flattening it until all that Horty could salvage was the face. But now the ruin was complete.
“Gee,” said Horty. “Junky. He’s all busted.” He drew out the two pieces of the hideous face. The nose was crushed to a coarse powder of papier-mâché, and the face was cracked in two, a large piece and a small piece. There was an eye in each, glittering. “Gee,” Horty said again, trying to fit them together with one hand.
Havana, busy gathering up the loot, said over his shoulder, “’Sa damn shame, kid. The guy must’ve put his knee on it while he was goin’ through our stuff.” He tossed the odd collection of purchases into the cab of the truck while Horty wrapped Junky up again. “Let’s go back inside. Our order’ll be up.”
“What about Solum?” asked Horty.
“He’ll be along.”
Horty was conscious, abruptly, that Zena’s deep eyes were fixed on him. He almost spoke to her, didn’t know what to say, flushed in embarrassment, and led the way into the restaurant. Zena sat beside him this time. She leaned across him for the salt, and whispered, “How did you know someone was in the truck?”
Horty settled his paper bag in his lap, and saw her eyes on it as he did so. “Oh,” she said; and then in quite a different tone, slowly, “Oh-h.” He had no answer to her question, but he knew, suddenly, that he would not need one. Not now.
“How’d you know there was someone out there?” demanded Havana, busy with a catsup bottle.
Horty began to speak, but Zena interrupted. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said suddenly. “I think carny can do the kid more good than harm. It’s better than making his way on the outside.”
“Well now.” Havana put down the bottle and beamed. Bunny clapped her hands.
“Good,
Zee! I knew you’d see it.”
Havana added, “So did I. I… see somp’n else, too.” He pointed.
“Coffee urn?” said Bunny stupidly. “Toaster?”
“The mirror, stoopid. Will you look?” He leaned close to Horty and put an arm around his head, drawing his and Zena’s faces together. The reflections looked back at them—small faces, both brown, both deep-eyed, oval, dark-haired. If Horty were wearing lipstick and braids, his face would have been different from hers—but very little.
“Your long-lost brother!” breathed Bunny.
“My cousin—and I mean a
girl
cousin,” said Zena. “Look—there are two bunks in my end of the wagon… stop that cackling, Bunny; I’m old enough to be his mother and besides—oh, shut up. No; this is the perfect way to do it. The Maneater never has to know who he is. It’s up to you two.”
“We won’t say anything,” said Havana.
Solum kept on eating.
Horty asked, “Who’s the Maneater?”
“The boss,” said Bunny. “He used to be a doctor. He’ll fix up your hand.”
Zena’s eyes looked at something that was not in the room. “He hates people,” she said. “All people.”
Horty was startled. This was the first indication among these odd folk that there might be something to be afraid of. Zena, understanding, touched his arm. “Don’t be afraid. His hating won’t hurt you.”
T
HEY REACHED THE CARNIVAL
in the dark part of the morning, when the distant hills had just begun to separate themselves from the paling sky.
To Horty it was all thrilling and mysterious. Not only had he met these people, but there was also the excitement and mystery ahead, and the way of starting it, the game he must play, the lines he must never forget. And now, at dawn, the carnival itself. The wide dim street, paved with wood shavings, seemed faintly luminous between the rows of stands and bally-platforms. Here a dark neon tube made ghosts of random light rays from the growing dawn; there one of the rides stretched hungry arms upward in bony silhouette. There were sounds, sleepy, restless, alien sounds; and the place smelled of damp earth, popcorn, perspiration, and sweet exotic manures.