Rob Thurman - All Seeing Eye

“That so?” I took a rubber band from the pocket of my black jeans and pulled my hair back. There was barely enough to make the stubbiest of tails, but I was getting there. I’d pierced my other ear to go with it. Small gold hoops and a hokey billowing black shirt completed the look. There weren’t many red-haired gypsies out there, in real life or the movies, but I gave it my best shot. “What’s Lilly say about you listening to gossip?”

“My mom is the one who told me.” The lip was out in full force, pouting and sullen.

Lilly was one to know and tell every little thing going on at the carnival. Gossip with a side of grocery-bought cheesecake. Overly sweet with a rabidly red strawberry topping, you would eat it anyway to please Lilly. Gossip being her only vice, she was a nice woman, and she loved Abby. Took care of Abby, would never let anyone hurt her. Never. Good intentions only went so far in this world. It was the actions behind them that mattered. Yeah, a nice lady. The nicest. She would’ve been a mother figure to me if I’d let her. I wouldn’t.

Couldn’t.

I sat down opposite Abby and fell into a now old and established habit. I reached for the cards. The thin silk gloves slid with comforting grace over the surface of the slick cardboard. Shuffling them from hand to hand with a skill more suited to a blackjack dealer than a psychic, I exhaled, then shrugged. “Nothing is forever, Amazing. You’re old enough to know that.” It was a bitch of a thing to say, whether it was true or not, and I didn’t have any excuse for having said it. I dropped the cards back onto the table and with a feeling of acid self-disgust started to apologize, “Ah, hell, I’m s-”

I didn’t get any further than that before small bony fingers cut me off with a sharply painful pinch to my forearm. Luckily, I was wearing long sleeves, and she hadn’t touched bare flesh, or I’d have had more than a pinch to deal with. Ignoring my yelp and glare, she ordered angrily, “You’re being mean. Stop being mean.”

I rubbed the abused flesh of my arm through the cloth. “Okay, okay. I was saying I was sorry before you tried to rip off a piece of me as a souvenir. Jesus.”

She leaned back in the chair with thin arms folded tightly across her nonexistent chest. “You know what you are, Jackson Lee? An asshole,” she said triumphantly, so obviously proud of her daring that I had to smother a grin. “A big, flaming a-hole. Just ask anybody.”

“Is that so?” I said with careful gravity. “Makes me wonder why you’re hanging out here, then, Miss Amazing. By the way…” I checked my watch. “It’s time for your first show. You better get out of here, or there won’t be any cheesecake for you tonight.” As far as I could tell, that was the worst punishment Abby had faced in her short life, and that included the time she’d turned the poodle trainer’s entire curly pack loose. The vicious little ankle biters had spent hours terrorizing the entire carnival until they’d been cornered after they took the Dog Boy down. Ten tiny sets of furry hips humping against both of his legs, Artie had never quite been the same. For that escapade, Abby had been sent to bed an hour early. With a big piece of cheesecake.

Shaking my head, I repeated, “Go on, Amazing. Be nice to your parents; they’re damn nice to you.”

She slid out of the chair and rocked back and forth on her heels. “Will you…” Chewing her lip, she scowled and tried again. “Will you write me?”

It would’ve been easier to lie, kinder, too, like I had done to that kid Charlie at Cane Lake, but I didn’t. My entire childhood had been a house of cards built of lies. I was tired of it. I wasn’t going to build my own house of the same. “I don’t know.” The flash of utter hurt in her eyes was a harsh kick, to the head, to the stomach, to the balls. It didn’t matter. It was still painful as hell. “I’ll try,” I amended. “I can’t make promises, though, Amazing. I’m…” I was what? An outsider deep down? Someone better off alone? A psychological study that would have a grad student pissing his pants in joy? A screwed-up son of a bitch who already had sisters, one dead and one lost, and didn’t want to take that risk again? I didn’t have a clue. But I did know I couldn’t make promises I didn’t have the inner resources to keep. “I’m not much of a letter writer,” I finished with a faint curl of my lips. “But I’ll give it my best shot, Amazing. For you.” She wasn’t Charlie, not old enough to know that sometimes things don’t work out. After a few months, she would forget me, anyway, mostly. She’d find a boyfriend or discover some new hobby besides a messed-up psychic. She would pass the way of all sisters, one way or the other. I could write a letter or two until then. It wouldn’t kill me.

“You’d better. You’d better write.” She moved toward the tent flap and slipped through, trailing hair and unicorn tail behind her. A split second later, she stuck her head back in and said, “Oh, I almost forgot. I hate you.” And then she was gone.

I returned to the cards. They didn’t talk to me; they never would. I wished the same could be said about other things. “So long, Amazing,” I murmured, the comforting flow of a solitaire game dealt out before me. “I’m sorry, but I have plans.” I did, too. Plans for a house that didn’t smell of booze and cabbage. Plans for money and independence. Plans for a life where I could walk down the street and not automatically be labeled white trash. Plans where I was somebody. A big fish in a small pond, it didn’t matter. I would be somebody. I would be Jackson Lee, the All Seeing Eye.

Not the redheaded bastard from down Rooster Pike way. Not the boy with thrift-store clothes and the homegrown haircut. Not the kid with the occasional black eye and the smart mouth. No, I was done being that kid. I was going to change that for good. I had plans, all right.

I never thought that Abby did, too.

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Someone really on top of their shit had said that once. Some said it was the great con artist of his or any time, P. T. Barnum. Others said it was one of his competitors who coined the phrase. Not that it mattered. What mattered was the message, the inner truth of the words. There’s a sucker born every minute. It was staggering in its simplicity, heart-stopping in its beauty. It was also a personal mantra, my nightly prayer. Picture it, if you will. Me, on my knees beside my bed, hands clasped earnestly as I asked for nothing more than people as dumb as a box of hair to chase me down the street and throw money at me. More angelic a picture you couldn’t find.

Of course, it was a nice image but not strictly true. I didn’t have to beg. Sliding green out of sweaty palms came naturally to me, an instinct so strong I probably popped out of the womb with it. Lifted the doctor’s wallet before he had the chance to slap my ass. Outright stealing and unabashed conning were long behind me, though. The tricks I’d picked up in a state-sponsored home for the tragically unadoptable and the permanently screwed had gotten me through some hard times, but I’d moved on to other things. That long-gone carnival had taught me a better way, a safer way.

I was the real deal now. I genuinely earned the money I made. If people chose to pay me more money than they had, hey, whose fault was that? If they used what I gave them as an uncertain prop to a shaky life, that wasn’t my lookout. My product was solid for what it was-I never lied to a client. If they took it to be something else, took me to be something more than I was, all I could do was lean back and rake it in. I never claimed to be a saint. What you did with what I gave you wasn’t my concern.