Ace Atkins - Infamous

Kathryn shrugged. She lit a cigarette. They walked down the wide avenues hugging the lakefront. Signs pointing to every corner of the earth. LONDON. PEKING. DARKEST AFRICA.

“I bet she’s at the Enchanted Isle.”

“She doesn’t go for that kids’ stuff,” she said. “Told me she wanted to see where they made the beer.”

“Bavaria,” George said. “Heigh-ho, the gang’s all here. Let’s have pretzels, let’s have beer.”

The streets were fat with people, most of the men in crisp white shirts without ties and women in flowered dresses and straw hats, pouring past George and Kathryn, who walked in the opposite way, crowd pushing around them like water around a river stone.

“Did you call?”

“Hell, yes, I called,” he said. “What do you think took so long?”

“I figured the temple has a nice toilet.”

“Some fella keeps telling me that Joe will call me back. Said they’re working on getting us a car. Forged papers, all that stuff.”

“And then what, George?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“We leave the country?”

“This country doesn’t want us anymore,” he said. “Maybe Mexico. Maybe Cuba. Maybe Memphis.”

“Memphis?” Kathryn asked. “Are you kidding?”

“I’m tired,” he said. “Let’s get a drink.”

“WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?” DOC WHITE ASKED. “I’VE WALKED from one end of this damn Fair to the other twice and my feet done swoled up.”

“Let’s take a seat.”

Jones and White followed a crowd into a bigmouthed amphitheater, where some kind of spectacle was about to begin. This Fair wasn’t short on spectacles, Jones and White not being able to walk ten feet without some carny barker trying to lure them into some forbidden land, exotic culture, or a temple built to some damn company. He’d never seen a church as large as the worship halls they’d built to General Motors, Plymouth, and Hudson. Firestone and Goodyear. He took a seat by Doc White and pulled out some money for a boy selling Coca-Colas from a crate hung ’round his neck.

“The cable was sent from the Fair,” Jones said.

“That was two days ago, and Kelly ain’t that goddamn stupid,” White said, taking off his Stetson for a moment and running a forearm across his brow. “There’s no tellin’, and we’re wasting time.”

“Did you buy your wife somethin’?”

“Got ’er a souvenir spoon. You?”

“Bracelet,” Jones said, reaching into the pocket of his linen suit and finding a sterling silver band stamped with different exhibits from the Fair.

“Kelly ain’t here.”

“Today I seen things I never even considered,” Jones said. “Sixteen midgets emerged from a Chevrolet. A colored boy made a puppet whistle and dance. Belly dancers, sword swallowers. I walked the canals of Holland, the streets of Paris, and journeyed deep into China. A man even asked me if I wanted to meet someone named Freida Fred, an individual he noted was born with equipment of both sexes.”

“Did you see it?”

“Hell, no, I didn’t see it.”

“Well, lookee there,” White said, pointing up to the sky, a silver dirigible floating out across Lake Michigan, the city of Chicago spouting from the ground in steel and concrete to the north.

“Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.”

“What’s that?” White asked.

“Words written over the gates of the Fair.”

“I just noticed the belly dancers and that fella dressed as Mickey Mouse.”

The loudspeakers crackled to life and announced that the show was a journey through the history of transportation, showing some poor man dressed in goatskins walking an oxcart, followed by racing Roman chariots and some conquistadores on horseback. The announcer seemed to get real excited about traveling the west in a stagecoach. An old Wells Fargo wagon rambled on out of the gate, chased by some banditos on horseback, bandannas over their faces, shooting up guns to the sky the way bandits did in movies but never did in real life ’cause they wouldn’t waste a bullet. Doc sipped a Coca-Cola and leaned on his bony knees, signaling another boy for a sack of peanuts.

He shelled the peanuts and absently watched. He’d seen that show before.

The stage stopped and the bandits circled, a woman in a frilly dress and ankle boots, pushed out on the dirt, screaming when her pocketbook was snatched. The gates opened again, tinny, silly music came from the loudspeaker, and there was some stupid son of a bitch riding a white horse.

“You come at ’em straight like that, riding high, and you’ll be shot clean off your saddle,” White said, nodding to himself. “Who doesn’t know that?”

TO GET TO THE STREETS OF PARIS, YOU HAD TO ENTER THROUGH a phony steamship that adjoined the display of baby incubators featuring REAL LIVE BABIES. Kathryn had a hell of a hard time prying George away, him pressing his drunk self against the glass and waving at the little babies behind their own glass, just trying to get some sleep after being born into this nuts world and now having to deal with crowds of monkeys pointing and staring at them. She finally got George by promising him a cold beer in the steamship’s lounge, and soon they sat up on the top deck of this boat built for land, George sipping on his Budweiser, looking out across Lake Michigan with a self-satisfied smile.

“That little girl’s gonna be a hellcat when we send her packing.”

“She’s fine,” George said. “A good girl.”

“She thinks every day with the Kellys is the goddamn Fair.”

“Hasn’t it been?”

“She didn’t have to drive from Biloxi to Fort Worth in a jalopy truck looking for you.”

“I told you I’d be back.”

“You told Ma Coleman you’d be in Mississippi.”

“I wrote the word Mississippi .”

“Which meant for me to drive to Mississippi, knowing you’d be in Biloxi hunting up that lifeguard gal.”

“If I was trying to scare up some tail, why’d I tell you where I’d be?” George widened his eyes and pointed at Kathryn with his free finger. “We hit the road tomorrow. Lay low in Memphis and then head back to Ma’s farm for the dough. Maybe Cuba. Cuba’s looking good.”

“A real cakewalk. I’m sure the G will open the cattle gate for us.”

“You want some more of my beer?”

“I have champagne.”

Kathryn lay back in her seat and crossed her legs. She’d bought a new burgundy dress for the fall, with a square neckline and bloused sleeves at her elbows. She tilted a smart ladies’ fedora into her eyes.

“Remember that bootlegger in Tulsa who used to cut apple juice with grain alcohol and call it an ‘Oklahoma cocktail’?” he asked.

“It hurt to pee.”

“Good times.”

“Sure.”

“You remember stealing Little Stevie Anderson’s bulldog after you packed up to leave him?”

“Of course.”

“What happened to that bulldog?”

“I think you sold it to that bartender in Muskogee.”

“We’ll be fine in Memphis,” George said. “Don’t you worry about a thing. Ole Lang will take care of us. When his sister and I busted up, he couldn’t have been more than twelve. I had to be the one to tell him, him looking to me as a father, I think, on account of what happened to Mr. Ramsey and all. He didn’t speak to Geneva for a year after that, blaming the bust on her and not the moonshine I was running. He’s a good egg, Lang. You’ll like him. He doesn’t know I’m George Kelly. You’ll have to call me Barnes.”

“You want to see your boys, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Figured, the way you were looking at those babies.”

“I was looking at the babies ’cause I like babies. What kind of fool doesn’t like babies? That’s like a man who doesn’t enjoy a cold beer. Sister, I missed real beer.”