Robert Alter - Carny kill

"How did you happen to be there?" Billie asked me.

"I spent the night in Tarzan's hut," I told her. "But damned if Jane ever showed up. I think Cheeta did, though."

I glanced back at the looming, joined trees. Then I looked again. There was something monkey- or ape-like away up there in the midbranches. It stood out against the sky like a fly caught in a web.

"Look," I said. "Am I seeing things?"

She looked up over her shoulder and smiled.

"It's Terry Orme. He's Cheeta."

I said, "Huh?"

"He's a midget," Billie explained. "Rob Cochrane hired him to dress up in an apesuit and make like Cheeta. Until you get real close to him you'd swear it was an ape. The suit is a work of art and Terry acts more ape than human. I mean he can really climb."

I thought about it for a moment.

"Does he sleep up there at night?" I asked.

"Uh-huh. Funny little guy. He shies away from people."

Then I hadn't dreamed up Cheeta last night. I looked back at the tree again. The little apeman was still hanging there in the sky, staring down at the employees and at the boat that contained the employees' dead boss. He reminded me of Quasimodo brooding over the stupid populace of Paris from the high, gargoyled ramparts of Notre Dame.

We strolled through Pioneer Town and without people around the place was like an old frontier ghost town, only it was in better shape than most ghost towns. I liked it that way. I could do without the people. I put my arm through Billie's arm. We hadn't said anything for a while.

We strolled down to a manmade lake complete with ducks and gliding swans. An island with real pine trees was out in the middle of it and an old- fashioned highpooped schooner was moored alongside the island. A big sign over the dock on the mainland said TREASURE ISLAND. The ticket-seller's stand was a window set in the side of a small old English structure that looked like a seaman's tavern. The warped signboard over the door said ADMIRAL BENBOW TEAROOM.

My interest perked up.

"Does that ship happen to be called the Hispaniola?" I asked.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"I'm a nut on _Treasure Island_. It was the first book I ever read and for year nothing could convince me that a better book had ever been written. Let's go over, huh?"

Billie gave me a funny little look.

"I'm beginning to understand you for the first time,Thax," she said. "And I think I like you better for it."

"Me? What do you understand about me now that you didn't understand yesterday?"

"That your pseudo-tough don't-give-a-damn manner is an act. You're just a big-boned man who never quite grew up."

"Sure," I said. "Me and Peter Pan. That's how come I ended up in Neverland."

I didn't want to talk about the side of me that had never grown up. Embarrassed by being caught out, I guess. But it was true, in a way. Ever since I was a kid it has amazed me how most people in this godawful world think there is enough in their puny little mundane lives that they don't have to enhance it by escaping the brown-drab boredom of the present through books.

Life was a monotonous pain in the ass to me. And so were most of the people who comprised that life. Give me a good book by Kenneth Roberts or Walter D. Edmonds or Nordhoff and Hall and I can get to hell away from it. From the people too. I was a Then person. I didn't belong to the Now people.

What worried me right at that moment was the feeling that Billie was in the Nows' camp.

A school of rowboats was tied to the dock for the marks to rent and I handed Billie into one of them and shoved off and shipped the oar. She was still watching me with that funny little look.

"Cut it out," I said. "Every one of us is a nut some way or another."

"But you're a very special kind of nut, Thax. Because you don't fit in."

"Sure I do. Well enough to get by on."

Billie looked at the green duck-dirtied water overboard.

"Do you know what I was willing to do to get my first job in a carny?" she said. Her voice was very quiet.

"Cut it out."

"The owner was a Greek. A very fat, greasy Greek of fifty."

"I said cut it out."

She looked at me.

"But I wanted the job-a start-that bad," she said.

"All right," I said and I was goddam mad about it. "Now you've told me how you had to lay with a sweaty Greek who was old enough to be your grandpa in order to get your start. So now you're happy."

"I didn't say I was happy."

"Well it doesn't really matter, does it?"

She sighed. "That's my whole point. That's what you said yesterday when I said I hoped you'd get this job. It didn't really matter. That's the exact difference between us. It does matter."

"How?" I wanted to know. "Look. A hundred years from now there's going to be another poor mixed up sonofabitch just like me bumbling around on this earth. What am I going to mean to him then-or to anybody or anything?"

"I don't give a damn about a hundred years from now or ten thousand years!" she said urgently. "We're here now. You and I. It's our turn. And they're never going to give us a second shot at it."

I said nothing. I rowed the boat.

"Don't you see?" she said. "We've got to make the most of it. They start our kind out with nothing and if we slob around saying it doesn't really matter, then that's what we end up with. Nothing. Nowhere. I can't settle for that."

I beached the boat on Treasure Island and I got out and gave her a hand out. Then, as long as I had ahold of her and there was nobody else around and because I still didn't know what to say, I started to pull her in to me.

"No, Thax," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not sure yet. And I'm getting to an age where I've got to be sure."

"Because you're afraid of wasting your time on a bum huh?"

"Something like that," she said levelly. "And right, say it. I'm a bitch. A stupid little bitch with a dollar sign for a brain."

"I don't believe that any more than you do."

"Well," she said, "I don't like myself much when I talk like that, but sometimes I have to remind myself that I have a dream."

"Of what?"

"Of a better way to live. A very much better way."

I started to say it didn't really matter, but I didn't. I drew her in and I kissed her and her response was good but I didn't make with the hungry hands. I let her go.

She didn't say anything for a moment. She didn't look at me. Then she said, "We'd better get back."

I didn't like the idea at all but unless I resorted to rape what could I do? I said, "All right."

We didn't talk as I rowed us back to the dock.

The luckboy who had sicked Eddy the pickpocket on me last night was strolling by the Admiral Benbow when we arrived at the dock. He grinned at me and called:

"How was it on the island?"

"The same as it is anywhere." I wasn't in the mood for fun and games and I guess it showed in my face or in my voice.

"Don't," Billie said to me. "Jerry's all right."

The lawyer-looking thief called Jerry laughed.

"That's what all the girls say," he said and winked at me. "Jerry's all right."

I had to smile. He was a friend of mine.

"I'll bet they do. How are things law-wise?"

"Booming. Simply booming. They've set up a sort of half assed police station in the Okefenokee Arcade and the usual interrogation of anybody and everybody is well underway. I get it they'd like for you to show up for a minute or two." Jerry grinned again.

"Just the facts, mam. Just the grisly routine facts."

Billie looked up at me.

"Should I go with you, Thax?"

"Uh-uh. Why get involved? Go get ready for your show." I turned back to Jerry.

"The law going to let us open?"

"Sure. Everything but the Swamp Ride. Lieutenant Ferris, the dick in charge, was set to hold us closed. But Madame Cee came along and changed his mind for him." Jerry didn't wink again.