Dreaming Jewels (8 page)

Human affairs refuse to be simple… human goals refuse to be clear. Zena’s task was a dedication, yet her aims were speckled and splotched with surmise and ignorance, and the burden was heavy…

The rain drove viciously against the trailer in one morning’s dark hours, and there was an October chill in the August air. The rain spattered and hissed like the churning turmoil she sensed so often in the Maneater’s mind. Around her was the carnival. It was around her memories too, for more years than she liked to count. The carnival was a world, a good world, but it exacted a bitter payment for giving her a place to belong. The very fact that she belonged meant a stream of goggling eyes and pointing fingers:
You’re different. You’re different.

Freak!

She turned restlessly. Movies and love-songs, novels and plays… here was a woman—they called her dainty, too—who could cross a room in five strides instead of fifteen, who could envelop a doorknob in one
small
hand. She stepped up into trains instead of clambering like a little animal, and used restaurant forks without having to distort her mouth.

And they were loved, these women. They were loved, and they had choice. Their problems of choice were subtle ones, easy ones—differences between men which were so insignificant they really couldn’t matter. They didn’t have to look at a man and think first, first of all before anything else,
What will it mean to him that I’m a freak?

She was little, little in so many ways. Little and stupid. The one thing she had been able to love, she had put into deadly jeopardy. She had done what she could, but there was no way of knowing if it was right.

She began to cry, silently.

Horty couldn’t have heard her, but he was there. He slid into bed beside her. She gasped, and for a moment could not release her breath from her pounding throat. Then she took his shoulders, turned him away from her. She pressed her breasts against his warm back, crossed her arms over his chest. She drew him close, close, until she heard breath hissing from his nostrils. They lay still, curled, nested together like two spoons.

“Don’t move, Horty. Don’t say anything.”

They were quiet for a long time.

She wanted to talk. She wanted to tell him of her loneliness, her hunger. Four times she pursed her lips to speak, and could not, and tears wet his shoulder instead. He lay quiet, warm and with her—just a child, but so much
with
her.

She dried his shoulder with the sheet, and put her arms around him again. And gradually, the violence of her feeling left her, and the all but cruel pressure of her arms relaxed.

At last she said two things that seemed to mean the pressures she felt. For her swollen breasts, her aching loins, she said, “I love you, Horty. I love you.”

And later, for her hunger, she said, “I wish I was big, Horty. I want to be big…”

Then she was free to release him, to turn over, to sleep. When she awoke in the dripping half-light, she was alone.

He had not spoken, he had not moved. But he had given her more than any human being had ever given her in her whole life.

“Z
EE
…”

“Mmm?”

“Had a talk with the Maneater today while they were setting up our tent.”

“What’d he say?”

“Just small-talk. He said the rubes like our act. Guess that’s as near as he can get to saying he likes it himself.”

“He doesn’t,” said Zena with certainty. “Anything else?”

“Well—no, Zee. Nothing.”

“Horty, darling. You just don’t know how to lie.”

He laughed. “Well, it’ll be all right, Zee.”

There was a silence. Then, “I think you’d better tell me, Horty.”

“Don’t you think I can handle it?”

She turned over to face him across the trailer. “No.”

She waited. Although it was pitch black, she knew Horty was biting his lower lip, tossing his head.

“He asked to see my hand.”

She sat bolt upright in her bunk. “He didn’t!”

“I told him it didn’t give me any trouble. Gosh—when was it that he fixed it? Nine years ago? Ten?”

“Did you show it to him?”

“Cool down, Zee! No, I didn’t. I said I had to fix some costumes, and got away. But he called after me and said to come to his lab before ten tomorrow. I’m just trying to think of some way to duck it.”

“I was afraid of this,” she said, her voice shaking. She put her arms around her knees, resting her chin on them.

“It’ll be all right, Zee,” said Horty sleepily. “I’ll think of something. Maybe he’ll forget.”

“He won’t forget. He has a mind like an adding machine. He won’t attach any importance to it until you don’t show up; then, look out!”

“Well, s’pose I do show it to him.”

“I’ve told you and told you, Horty, you must
never
do that!”

“All right, all right.—Why?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“You know I do.”

She did not answer, but sat rigidly, in thought. Horty dozed off.

Later—probably two hours later—he was awakened by Zena’s hand on his shoulder. She was crouched on the floor by his bunk. “Wake up, Horty. Wake up!”

“Wuh?”

“Listen to me, Horty. You remember all you’ve told
me—please
wake up!—remember, about Kay, and all?”

“Oh, sure.”

“What was it you were going to do, some day?”

“You mean about going back there and seeing Kay again, and getting even with that old Armand?”

“That’s right. Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”

“Well, sure.” He yawned and closed his eyes. She shook him again. “I mean now, Horty. Tonight. Right now.”

“Tonight? Right now?”

“Get up, Horty. Get dressed. I mean it.”

He sat up blearily. “Zee… it’s night time!”

“Get dressed,” she said between her teeth. “Hop to it, Kiddo. You can’t be a baby all your life.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and shivered away the last smoky edges of sleep. “Zee!” he cried. “Go away? You mean, leave here? Leave the carnival and Havana and—and you?”

“That’s right. Get dressed, Horty.”

“But—where will I go?” He reached for his clothes. “What will I do? I don’t know anybody out there!”

“You know where we are? It’s only fifty miles to the town you came from. That’s as near as we’ll get this year. Anyway, you’ve been here too long,” she added, her voice suddenly gentle. “You should have left before—a year ago, two years, maybe.” She handed him a clean blouse.

“But why do I have to?” he asked pitiably.

“Call it a hunch, though it isn’t really. You wouldn’t get through that appointment with the Maneater tomorrow. You’ve got to get out of here and stay out.”

“I can’t go!” he said, childishly protesting even as he obeyed her. “What are you going to tell the Maneater?”

“You had a telegram from your cousin, or some such thing. Leave it to me. You won’t ever have to worry about it.”

“Not ever—can’t I ever come back?”

“If you ever see the Maneater again, you turn and run. Hide. Do anything, but never let him near you as long as you live.”

“What about you, Zee? I’ll never see you again!” He zipped up the side of a grey pleated skirt and held still for Zee’s deft application of eyebrow pencil.

“Yes you will,” she said softly. “Some day. Some way. Write to me and tell me where you are.”

“Write to you? Suppose the Maneater should get my letter? Would that be all right?”

“It would not.” She sat down, casting a woman’s absent, accurate appraisal over Horty. “Write to Havana. A penny postcard. Don’t sign it. Pick it out on a typewriter. Advertise something—hats or haircuts, or some such. Put your return address on it but transpose each pair of numbers. Will you remember that?”

“I’ll remember,” said Horty vaguely.

“I know you will. You never forget anything. You know what you’re going to learn now, Horty?”

“What?”

“You’re going to learn to
use
what you know. You’re just a child now. If you were anyone else, I’d say you were a case of arrested development. But all the books we’ve read and studied… you remember your anatomy, Horty? And the physiology?”

“Sure, and the science and history and music and all that. Zee, what am I going to do out there? I got nobody to tell me anything!”

“You’ll have to tell yourself now.”

“I don’t know what to do
first!”
he wailed.

“Honey, honey…” She came to him and kissed his forehead and the tip of his nose. “You walk out to the highway, see? And stay out of sight. Go down the road about a quarter of a mile and flag a bus. Don’t ride in anything else but a bus. When you get to town wait at the station until about nine o’clock in the morning and then find yourself a room in a rooming house. A quiet one on a small street. Don’t spend too much money. Get yourself a job as soon as you can. You better be a boy, so the Maneater won’t know where to look.”

“Am I going to grow?” he asked, voicing the professional fear of all midgets.

“Maybe. That depends. Don’t go looking for Kay and that Armand creature until you’re ready for it.”

“How will I know when I’m ready?”

“You’ll know. Got your bankbook? Keep on banking by mail, the way you always have. Got enough money? Good. You’ll be all right, Horty. Don’t ask anyone for anything. Don’t tell anyone anything. Do things for yourself, or do without.”

“I don’t—belong out there,” he muttered.

“I know. You will, though; just the way you came to belong here. You’ll see.”

Moving gracefully and easily on high heels, Horty went to the door. “Well, good-by, Zee. I—I wish I—Couldn’t you come with me?”

She shook her glossy dark head. “I wouldn’t dare, Kiddo. I’m the only human being the Maneater talks to—really talks to. And I’ve—got to watch what he’s doing.”

“Oh.” He never asked what he should not ask. Childish, helpless, implicitly obedient, the exact, functional product of his environment, he gave her a frightened smile and turned to the door. “Good bye, honey,” she whispered, smiling.

When he had gone she sank down on his bunk and cried. She cried all night. It was not until the next morning that she remembered Junky’s jeweled eyes.

A
DOZEN YEARS HAD PASSED
since Kay Hallowell had seen, from the back window, Horty Bluett climb into a brilliantly painted truck, one misty night. Those years had not treated the Hallowells kindly. They had moved into a smaller house, and then into an apartment, where her mother died. Her father had hung on for a while longer, and then had joined his wife, and Kay, at nineteen, left college in her junior year and went to work to help her brother through pre-medical school.

She was a cool blonde, careful and steady, with eyes like twilight. She carried a great deal on her shoulders, and she kept them squared. Inwardly she was afraid to be frightened, afraid to be impressionable, to be swayed, to be moved, so that outwardly she wore carefully constructed poise. She had a job to do; she had to get ahead herself so that she could help Bobby through the arduous process of becoming a doctor. She had to keep her self-respect, which meant decent housing and decent clothes. Maybe some day she could relax and have fun, but not now. Not tomorrow or next week. Just some day. Now, when she went out to dance, or to a show, she could only enjoy herself cautiously, up to the point where late hours, or a strong new interest, or even enjoyment itself, might interfere with her job. And this was a great pity, for she had a deep and brimming reservoir of laughter.

“Good morning, Judge.” How she hated that man, with his twitching nostrils and his limp white hands. Her boss, T. Spinney Hartford, of Benson, Hartford and Hartford, was a nice enough man but he certainly hobnobbed with some specimens. Oh well; that’s the law business. “Mr. Hartford will be with you in a moment. Please sit down, Judge.”

Not there, Wet-Eyes! Oh dear, right next to her desk. Well, he always did.

She flashed him a meaningless smile and went to the filing cabinets across the room before he could start that part weak, part bewildering line of his. She hated the waste of time; there was nothing she needed from the files. But she couldn’t sit there and ignore him, and she knew he wouldn’t shout across the office at her; he preferred the technique described by Thorne Smith as “a voice as low as his intentions.”

She felt his moist gaze on her back, on her hips, rolling up and down the seams of her stockings, and she had an attack of gooseflesh that all but itched. This wouldn’t do. Maybe short range would be better; perhaps she could parry what she couldn’t screen. She returned to her desk, gave him the same lipped smile, and pulled out her typewriter, swinging it up on its smooth countersprung swivels. She ran in some letterhead and began to type busily.

“Miss Hallowell.”

She typed.

“Miss Hallowell.” He reached and took her wrist. “Please don’t be so very busy. We have such a brief moment together.”

She let her hands fall into her lap—one of them, at least. She let the other hang unresisting in the Judge’s limp white clasp until he let it go. She folded her hands and looked at them. That voice! If she looked up she was sure she would see a trickle of drool on his chin. “Yes, Judge?”

“Do you enjoy it here?”

“Yes. Mr. Hartford is very kind.”

“A most agreeable man. Most agreeable.” He waited until Kay felt so stupid, sitting there staring at her hands, that she had to raise her face. Then he said, “You plan to stay here for quite a while, then.”

“I don’t see why—that is, I’d like to.”

“The best-laid plans…” he murmured. Now, what was that? A threat to her job? What did this slavering stuffed-shirt have to do with her job?
“Mr. Hartford is a most agreeable man.”
Oh. Oh dear. Mr. Hartford was a lawyer, and frequently had cases in Surrogate. Some of those were hairline decisions on which a lot depended.
“Most agreeable.”
Of course Mr. Hartford was an agreeable man. He had a living to make.

Kay waited for the next gambit. It came.

“You really won’t have to work here more than two more years, as I understand it.”

“Wh—why? Oh. How did you know about that?”