To Make Death Love Us (4 page)

There was no
comfort there either.

It was early
morning when the carnival hit the crossroad collection of shacks, general store, cafe, and gas
station—a small place without even a name to be remembered.

The entire troupe
was bone-weary from traveling all night and the emptiness in their bellies. Paulette com­plained
the most.

She'll be
complaining one hell of a lot more, Will thought, when I tell her there's no money for breakfast
and she'll have to eat out of cans for her meal. The few bucks they'd scraped up in the last town
of any size had gone for gas and oil. Not all of it. The rest had gone into the pocket of a
gambler in a roadside tavern. The gambler had smiled wider and his hands had moved faster than
Will's.

Of course, they
both had been cheating and everybody knew it, but the gambler had been a much better cheater.
Will might have got some of it back as he had done in the past, except that Marco was off asleep
somewhere and the town sharpie had a lot of his heavyset, red-necked friends hanging
around.

So now it was "Dead
Broke in a Morning Crossroads and Hope for a Penny."

As soon as the
truck pulled to a stop, Paulette hurried off as fast as she could waddle to relieve herself.
Serena, the Moon Child, followed more slowly.

Marco went off to
look for any heavy, manual-labor
chores
that could buy a loaf of bread and top off the gas tank. Colonel John, the Midget, went along
with the Strong Man to speak for him.

Will and Pepino,
the Rubber Man, went into the cafe. The screen door, which was holed through and kept out only
the most stupid of flies, slammed shut behind them.

Christ, Will
thought, I'd never ask for another thing if I just never had to hear another goddamn screen door
slam shut on another empty morning.

They each took a
seat on the cracked leatherette stools and Will reached over for a well-stained menu. He
fin­gered it in a thoughtful way.

"What'11 it be?"
the counterman asked without enthusi­asm.

"Can I tell you the
truth?" Will said, and he smiled the way he did when he wanted something.

The counterman
swatted a fly, smashing it on the greasy counter top. He scraped the bloody mess off the surface
of the counter with the edge of the flyswatter.

Will looked up from
the menu, the beguiling smile still in place. "Can I tell you the truth?"

"I already know
it," the counterman finally admitted, chewing on a bedraggled toothpick.

Will frowned.
"Well, then, that is perfectly marvelous. Maybe I could ask you to join up with us." It was not a
serious offer.

"Nah. I get a full
belly right where I am. Not like some folks."

The man looked at
Will with little pig eyes, waiting for the inevitable story, waiting but not particularly
inter­ested. He'd heard them all anyway, every con in the book.

Will touched Pepino
on his back. "You ever see any­thing the like of this? Show him a little something,
Pepino."

The Rubber Man
seemed to melt where he sat, arms
becoming liquid, his limbs curling in the most extraordi­nary way, setting the stool
spinning beneath him.

"Tell him not to
break the goddamn seat," the counter­man said.

"Now what's that
worth?" Will asked.

"Not a goddamn
thing."

"Show him another
trick, Pepino." Will's smile was wearing a trifle thin.

"Shove your tricks.
They won't buy you nothing here," said the counterman, folding his arms across his
chest.

The man looked up
at the banging sound of the screen door and his mouth fell open about halfway to his belly
button.

"Godamighty!" He
was staring at Paulette in the door­way. It was a double door. Even so, she was making it an
effort to squeeze through. "Jesus H. Particular Christ! I thought my Aunt Hattie was fat but I
never seen the like of that one."

Paulette made it
through the door and moved over to the soft-drink case. It was the only thing in the room big
enough for her to sit down on.

Will tugged at his
chin thoughtfully. Almost shyly he said, "Now what's that worth to you."

The man, however,
wasn't listening. He was staring with no lessening wonder at Serena. She stood in the doorway,
framed there in the morning light, looking like something that had escaped from the land of
dwarves, trolls, and fairies.

"She looks like a
big . . . like a big, white rabbit!" breathed the man. The flyswatter dropped from his
hand.

He glanced back to
Paulette who, with incredible nim-bleness for one her size, hoisted herself up on the soft-drink
case and smiled ecstatically, as though she could feel the coolness beneath her through her
bloomers.

"Are you over by
the gentleman who is talking, Will?"

Serena said in her
honeyed voice. It was not really a ques­tion. She already knew.

"I'm here, darling.
Come along. There's nothing in be­tween."

Serena walked
hesitantly across the floor, unafraid but careful.

"Godamighty!" the
man said again.

It wasn't bad
enough that Serena had been born an albino, with no pigment in her skin and hair. Not curse
enough to be born with moon-pale eyes and gone blind to boot. The real horror was that nature had
given her a beautiful face. It had given her a long, graceful neck, like a column of shimmering
talc, and gave her a pair of breasts like white downy peaches and arms that were so
graceful—along with the perfectly formed hands at the ends of them it—made you want to weep.
Because that's where it all stopped. From the hips down, her legs were stunted, misshapen, and
thin as rails. The little baby shoes she wore on her feet made it all seem the more horrible,
somehow.

"Now, what's that
worth to you, you cold-hearted son of a bitch?" Will said in the softest of voices, so that the
man couldn't really hear it all. He said it in a way that blamed the man for Serena and what she
was.

Serena came over to
the counter and sat down grace­fully upon a stool. The counterman stared at her some more and
then looked at Will. The counterman hadn't been born yesterday. His eyes grew hard as
marbles.

"You got some money
to pay for breakfast? No? Then get the hell out of my place," said the man, returning to himself
and to what he was.

"Oh, it's yours, is
it. Mighty lucky man. Pretty well set up, you are. Other people," said Will pointedly, "are not
so lucky. See here, I'll make you a bargain."

"Both parties have
to have something to make a bar­gain."

Will handed Serena
the menu.

"This poor girl
can't see. She's blind as a stone. You don't believe it? Test her any way you want to. Light a
match and poke it in her eye. Go on. Go on," urged Will.

The man shook his
head.

"Then if you
believe me, I'm going to show you a most wondrous thing. You think this poor creature's been put
upon by the Lord? Well, she has, that's clear enough. But He gave her a gift for the mistake He
made in the fashion of her. The tips of her beautiful fingers."

The man looked down
at Serena's hands and beautiful they were.

"The tips of her
beautiful fingers are so sensitive that she can read print with them. Not raised print like they
make for the blind. No sir, not those little dots. No sir. Common old print of the page.
Newspaper, book, or this menu she holds in her hand. Now the bargain's this," and here Will came
alive with new energy, for this was what he was all about. "If she can read the menu with only
the tips of her beautiful fingers, will you stand six poor wayfar­ers to a decent
meal?"

"Six? Six of you?"
echoed the man stupidly.

Colonel John the
Midget walked in with Marco the Strong Man. There was a frown on his face.

"Nobody out back in
the garage," said the Midget.

"That's all right,
Colonel John," Will said. "This lucky man here owns the whole kit and kaboodle, I'll just
bet."

The counterman was
looking at the Midget now, though the Colonel was far less a wonder, almost a com­monplace, after
what he had seen so far.

"Will you do it,
friend?" said Will, his voice like honey as It poured from his tongue. "And besides, we'll do
what chores we can around here until noon. Paulette and Serena do marvelous needlework. Marco—the
Strong Man there—and me can do some heavy cleaning up, and the Colonel, small as he is, can lend
a hand. What say, friend, would you see this wonder or no?"

The man nodded
dumbly. "Have her read it."

Serena ran her
fingers over the menu, hesitating here and there over a grease stain or a bit of dried mustard.
Then, in a clear, sweet voice, she read off without mis­takes the man's refreshment list to
him.

The counterman
nodded again, like a stupid puppet with a broken head string. His eyes were wide with
un­comprehending wonder.

"All right then,
I'll feed you, but first I got to get the kids up to see this. Hell, it's like having our own
damned pri­vate circus."

He pulled his apron
off and disappeared through the swinging door alongside the grill, and they could hear him
rousing his young ones in an excited, festive voice.

Will Carney smiled
all around to let his charges know that he'd taken care of them once again.

The truck shuddered
as some loose rock peppered it from above and Will like to wet himself.

"Save us, damn it!
Save us!" He half laughed because he thought he heard someone ask "Why?" Now that was a question
wasn't it? "Why?"

"In the name of the
Juggler," he whispered to himself.

The counterman had
come back and started slapping bacon and eggs on the griddle. He kept glancing wonder­ing glances
back at one and all. Now that he was paying for them, he wanted to enjoy all of the sight of them
that he could.

Then the swinging
door opened and three sleepy girls, dressed in the shifts they slept in, came stumbling into
the
café. Did they pull up short! They
were dumbfounded and opened their mouths just like their daddy did, the better perhaps to catch
unwary flies.

Will's own mouth
dropped an inch before he laid on his best grin.

One of the brute's
daughters, late in her teens, was as pretty as sin and just as willing. She caught Will's secret
grin, meant only for her, and the wanting behind it. She batted her eyes and flicked her little
tongue out to wet her lips suggestively.

She smiled back in
such a way that Will knew he had only to figure the place and the privacy. Oh yes, how good days
did sometimes follow bad.

And deadly nights,
peaceful ones as well.

Serena the blind
albino lived a secret life inside herself. Inside, in that strange and fragile dream house that
was her mind, she was a being of great and seldom-used power. This great power came to her
unasked, caught her quite by surprise. At first, it was only a dream. But, like all dreams, it
contained the idea of death.

It was a power that
never came to her in any other fashion than as a dream, yet it grew, taking on a life— almost a
reality—of its own.

And it was a
powerful dream, a gentle dream, an under­standing dream, and, sometimes when she willed it, a
fatal one. Yes. Fatal. For with it, this gentlest of all gentle creatures had killed and would
kill again, that was a certainty. For what was power if it was not meant to be used.

Blind, loving
Serena made a strange executioner.

The first death she
dreamed into being was more an act of kindness than murder, even if it was her own
father.

Serena was born in
Baltimore, Maryland, once called the City of White Steps because it had been the special pride of
the good housewives in the old town to sweep and scrub with soap and brush the stone porches,
side­walks, and even the cobblestone streets. She was raised in one of the better
neighborhoods.

Lace curtains
enhanced the tall windows of the row houses built in another and better age. Each house had
trees—carefully ringed with white-painted, wrought-iron cages—planted opposite the front door.
The doors them­selves were freshly painted each year and were rich with shining brass. The houses
were many-roomed, elegantly appointed, and clustered together in an architectural ring of
beauty—a haven for the well-to-do—beseiged, sur­rounded on all sides by zones of vice and human
misery.

The black ghetto
engulfed this fading world of yes­terday's elegance. Not all at once, but gradually, with each
passing year. Indirectly, this slow transition abetted the death of Serena's father.

With the passage of
time, the cobblestones were tarred over to make better surfaces for the automobile. The horses
and carriages that had once thundered down the streets were gone. With the coming of war upon
war, the wrought-iron cages and gates were torn up in patriotic zeal and offered for
scrap.