The Beet Fields (12 page)

She had long blond hair and was wearing ä T-shirt that revealed her “full-figured bust development, “as they put it in the lingerie sections of the mail-order catalogs that the boy and several million other boys frequently read alone, and long legs below an impossibly tight pair of short-shorts.

Her eyes swept over the boy as if he didn't exist. She had been sleeping—her eyes showed it and her tousled hair—and she clearly did not know that the boy knew Taylor or that he worked for him, just as the boy did not know who she was; he just knew she was beautiful, blond and glamorous and he froze with the Coke halfway to his mouth and stared at her.

As befitting royalty she continued to ignore the boy.

“Give me some coffee,” she said to the man behind the counter. “I can't get my damn eyes open.”

She swore professionally, cleanly, the way a gunfighter draws and shoots, and the boy loved her from that instant. Her looks made her alluring, her swearing made her worldly; he was gone. He would have killed for her.

She took the paper cup and drank half the steaming coffee as if it had been iced. She paused to take a breath, drank the rest of the coffee, threw the cup in a barrel near the counter and walked past the boy, artfully brushing her breast against his arm on the way by.

“Close your mouth,” she said without looking at him. “You'll step on your friggin' tongue.”

He slammed his mouth shut and watched her walk away on her shower clogs, her hips rolling easily; and the man behind the food counter laughed.

“That's Ruby,” he said. “She goes with Taylor.”

“Oh.” He watched her walk past the Tilt-A-Whirl where Taylor was working and turn off to the right where he could see some small aluminum camper trailers parked. Watched her walk the whole way. Watched her hips and legs
and
the short-shorts the entire way. “Oh…”

T
HE BOY LEARNED TO USE THE TILT-A-WHIRL'S
clutch to whip the cars around, which emptied change from the pockets of the farmers. The best day he had he stripped almost eleven dollars. Taylor was fair and let him keep half of what he stripped and he paid the boy every Friday so the boy always had money to spend on endless hamburgers and Cokes. Never money to save. Never money to own as he'd owned it before the deputy took it away from him. But plenty to spend on his new life. His carny life.

The boy had become a carbon copy of Taylor. He wore his dirty Levi's low, with no underwear,
and with a white T-shirt tucked in and sleeves rolled up to hold a package of Camels without filters, which he could flick-light with a Zippo lighter, and his hair slicked back with Brylcreem to make an almost-controlled ducktail. And he had the look. The hard carny look that said everyone was a sucker or a farmer or both, said everybody was merely something to scorn. Even though the boy did not truly believe it he still had the look.

He had learned much in a short time. How to watch women so he seemed to know something about them, though he didn't. How to talk of them in an appraising way though he was not more knowledgeable than Bobby, who knew nothing and spoke so well he seemed an expert. The boy had learned so much and become so confident that he had become almost completely ignorant and had ceased to know new things and he might have gone on learning more and more and becoming more and more ignorant forever.

Except for Ruby.

He'd been with the carnival a month before he saw her naked.

They had moved three times, a different town
in North Dakota, every weekend, and when they moved Taylor and Bobby worked the boy nearly to death. They had to break down the ride, Bobby's geek tent and setup, which doubled later as Ruby's kootch tent and dance platform. All this was loaded on the flatbed truck—and done at virtually a dead run because there was never enough time between shows—and they would drive like hell to get to the new town. Grafton, Hamilton, Minot—a blur of farmers in new overalls and white shirts and women in crisp new cotton dresses.

Taylor and Ruby always rode together in a pickup pulling the camper trailer and Bobby and the boy rode in the flatbed. Since Bobby spent all his time talking and drinking Four Roses from the endless supply beneath the seat the boy only rested now and then and the upshot of all this frantic work and travel was that he never really got to watch Ruby.

She didn't help with work but would stay in her litde trailer until they were packed and ready to leave. Then she would get in Taylor's truck cab. When they were set up and working the boy would look over at her on the stand in front of
her tent before she drew the farmers inside, trying to get a glimpse. But she was always dressed in the short-shorts and T-shirt—although when parading on the platform she replaced her shower clogs with high-heeled pumps.

“The shoes get her buns up nice, don't they?” Bobby once said to the boy, who thought it was wrong to speak of her that way because he loved her.

Then there came a night when she had trouble getting a crowd. It was in a town in South Dakota and they had been there four nights. Usually when Ruby started parading and Bobby barked for her—he cranked up what he called “the hootchy-kootchy rhythms“—men and especially boys would stop whatever they had been doing and gather to watch. But this was the fourth night and everybody who was going to watch her already had. Only two men—both old—had stopped.

Taylor and the boy were by the Tilt-A-Whirl and he pushed at the boy's shoulder.

“Get your butt over there and shill for her,” he said. “We ain't made beans in this town.”

He often shilled for Bobby on the geek setup
but he didn't think Taylor wanted him to see Ruby,

“You mean just outside?” he asked, holding his breath. “Or on the inside too?”

“Whatever it takes to get the sons of bitches to spend money—move.”

So the boy went to the front of Ruby's stage and looked up at her arid Ruby looked down at hint and Bobby started the scratchy phonograph with the whiny belly-dance music.

Later, when he was a man, and old, it was hard for him to look back and remember how pretty or not pretty Ruby really was. By then there had been others, and a life, in between. But he knew on that night, that first night, on that night it was not possible for Ruby to be anything but beautiful.

The music whined and scratched and Bobby pitched:

“She comes from the Orient where she was the queen of a sultan's harem—she knows all the secrets of love.
…”

And the boy went out into the carnival grounds and found men in small groups and led them back the way he did when he shilled for the
geek show, though he did not want to leave, even for a moment. Because he
believed
Bobby.

The boy watched her move back and forth on the stage, her pumps clicking in time to the music, her tight short-shorts barely containing the ripple of her, her breasts straining against the thin T-shirt as he had read about breasts straining in every Mickey Spillane book, read and reread until phrases like that were memorized from the worn pages handed from boy to boy, back when he had a home.

She was, simply, everything.

Not just everything about sex or love or lust or carnal knowledge or throbbing or straining or penetrating or moistness or any of the other intense, unbelievably focused thoughts that dominated his life.

She was everything.

Then, on that soft summer night while the boy stood and looked up at her moving to the scratchy kootch phonograph music coming from the crude PA she was just everything.

There was not another thing then in the boy's life. Not one. All thoughts, all hopes and desires and dreams and prayers, were for Ruby; life was
for Ruby, death for Ruby, his heart, his soul, for Ruby.

And she smiled at him.

Not just a carny smile—or he did not see it as such—not a smile over him or around him or through him but she looked into his eyes and smiled.

“You're going to rip your pants, kid,” she said, and he looked down to where she pointed and was mortified to see the bulge.

“I'm s-s-sorry,” he stammered, but she ground and bumped her hips and laughed softly.

“It's no big thing—and I
do
mean it.”

No more men had arrived by this time, and since it was apparent that nobody else was going to stop, Ruby shrugged her shoulders and breasts and turned off the platform and wriggled back through the canvas curtain to begin the process of fleecing the men of their money.

The procedure was lengthy and complicated. The boy had never seen it
bn%
had heard Bobby talking about it with other carnies, bragging about Ruby because he said she was the best he'd ever seen.

“She hooks them like trout,” Bobby said.
“Shows a little of this and a little of that and the poor bastards are broke before they know it—she pu-u-ulls the money out of them.”

It was a matter of finesse.

Men had already paid Bobby to go into the tent itself—a dollar each. With the promise, the hot promise, the hot-night-carnival promise they would see more, would see all. The boy had followed them in.

And inside the tent the world changed. Once in, once that far into Ruby's world, they were gone.

Bobby played the scratchy music and Ruby took things off but slowly, so slowly, pulling the T-shirt up an inch at a time, one … inch… at… a … time … until suddenly there they were.

Her breasts.

But not really. Not really and truly because she wore a gauze kind of bra beneath the blouse and you couldn't quite see anything. It was like looking through smoke, though by this time it didn't matter to the boy.

But if they wanted more, if they wanted to see the breasts, there was only one way to do it.

More money.

Bobby circulated with an old felt hat.

“Come on—the girl's got to live. Another half a rock to see 'em.”

And he would plead and cajole, his voice a song, a siren. A fifty-cent piece here, a quarter there, bits of money to see bits of Ruby until finally, almost finally, she stood naked.

Except…

Except for a G-string, a small piece of cloth over her pubic area.

Which, of course, the boy thought of as “it“ “It“ was right there and he wanted to see all of her but he felt wrong staring and would look away and back, down and back at “it,” and back…

Right…
there.

Under the litde cloth.

There “it“ was…

For more money.

They could see “it“ for just another dollar each. Everybody paid.

Of course the boy didn't have to pay except that by this time he was so caught up in what Ruby was doing that he actually reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a dollar and handed it to Bobby. Bobby looked at him like he was crazy but
took the dollar and smiled and said, “Sure, kid— your money works.”

The boy had a quick thought, a flash of wonder at Bobby—how could he do this, work with her every day, see her naked every day, watch her and hear her and smell her? How could he do that and not go insane?

But it passed quickly.

Bobby started the needle on the scratchy record again. Ruby started moving and the boy was transported.

Bobby, the other men in the tent, the canvas walls, the pitifol music—everything was gone once more.

Only Ruby.

Only “it.”

She danced four or five litde steps, did some small gyrations and hooked a thumb in her G-string and pulled it down her leg.

An inch, another inch, until the hair showed, a corner of hair curly and damp-looking in the pale light from the single bulb hanging from the top of the tent.

Another inch, then a snap and the G-string was gone.

“It“ was there.

All of “it.”

The boy didn't know how long he went without breathing. Jialf a minute, a lifetime; perhaps he'd never breathe the same, quite the same again, forever.

“All right, boys, that's it.” Bobby's hoarse voice cut in. “The show's over.”

Grumbling, the old men snorted and swore and rubbed themselves but Bobby was strict and, when they left, he followed them out of the tent

The boy was transfixed. Frozen. Ruby stood there for a moment, totally nude, facing him—or rather, with her up on the small platform, “it“ faced him. She was totally unself-conscious, relaxed. She took a cigarette from a stool at the back of the stage, lit it, stared at the boy.

He realized he was staring at her, holding his breath, and he exhaled, inhaled, shook all over and forced himself to turn and leave.

“Wait a minute.”

Her voice was flat but lifted at the end-—not in question so much as speculation.

“How old are you, kid?”

He had turned away and he looked back.
“Eighteen.” He lied easily but she snorted and blew smoke out of her nose.

“More likely sixteen, if that.”

She paused again, eyeing the boy slowly.

“Why do you want to know?”

She ignored the question, smiled. “Why don't you come by the trailer in about ten minutes?”

They were alone and so remote had she become, so unattainable, that the boy looked at her and said, “Why?”

“If I have to tell you, don't come.” She turned to leave the stage.