William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

“You cold, mister? Or you got a fever?”

“Just shaken up. I thought I was going to hand in my checks.”

Their cigarettes perfumed the darkness. Outside the rising moon rode with them, dipping beyond treetops.

“You a working stiff, mister, or just on the road?”

“On the road.”

“Plenty fellows likes it that way. Seem like I’d rather work than knock myself out hustling.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Any kind. Porter work, handyman. I run a freight elevator once. I can drive pretty good. Biggest old truck you can find, I’ll drive her. I’ve shipped out: cook’s helper and dishwasher. I can chop cotton. Reckon there ain’t anything you can’t do, you set your mind on it.”

“Bound north?”

“New Jersey. Going to try and get me a job at Grindle’s. What I hear, they taking on men. Taking on colored.”

Stan braced his back against the closed door on the other side of the car and drew a final puff from the cigarette, sending the butt flipping through the open door, trailing sparks.

Grindle. Grindle. Grindle. To drown out the chatter of the wheels he said, “Why are they hiring guys all of a sudden? Business must be picking up.”

The youth laughed a little. “Business staying right where she is. They hiring because they done a whole mess of firing a while back. They hiring all colored, this new bunch, what I hear.”

“What’s the idea of that?” Tame lawyers, tame psychologists, tame muscle-men. Bastards.

“What you s’pose? They get all the colored boys in there, and then they stir up the white boys, and pretty soon they all messing around with each other and forget all about long hours and short pay.”

Stan was only half listening. He crawled into the corner next to the Negro and sat down, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Hey, bud, you wouldn’t happen to have a drink in your pocket, would you?”

“Hell, no. All I got is four bits and this bag of makings. Traveling fast and light.”

Four bits. Ten shots of nickel whisky.

The Great Stanton ran his hands over his hair.

“My friend, I owe you a great debt for saving my life.”

“You don’t owe me nothing, mister. What you expect me to do? Let you slide under and make hamburg steak out of yourself? You forget all about it.”

Stan swallowed the cottony saliva in his mouth and tried again. “My friend, my ancestors were Scotch, and the Scotch are known to possess a strange faculty. It used to be called second sight. Out of gratitude, I want to tell you what I see in the future about your life. I may be able to save you many trials and misfortunes.”

His companion chuckled. “You better save that second sight. Get it to tell you when you going to miss nailing a freight.”

“Ah, but you see, my friend, it led me to the very car where I would find assistance. I knew you were in this car and would help me.”

“Mister, you ought to play the races and get rich.”

“Tell me this-I get a decided impression that you have a scar on one knee. Isn’t that so?”

The boy laughed again. “Sure, I got scars on both my knees. I got scars on my ass, too. Anybody got scars all over him, he ever done any work. I been working since I could walk. I was pulling bugs off potato plants, time I quit messing my britches.”

Stan took a deep breath. He couldn’t let this wisenheimer townie crawl all over him.

“My dear friend, how often in your life, when things looked bad, have you thought of committing suicide?”

“Man, you sure got it bad. Everybody think they like to die sometime-only they always wants to be hanging around afterwards, watching all the moaning and grieving they folks going to do, seeing them laid out dead. They don’t want to die. They just want folks to do a little crying and hollering over ’em. I was working on a road gang once and the captain like to knock me clean out of my skin. He keep busting me alongside the head whether I raise any hell or not-just for fun. But I didn’t want to kill myself. I wanted to get loose. And I got loose, and here I am-sitting here. But that captain get his brains mashed out with a shovel a couple months later by a big crazy fellow, worked right next to me on the chain. Now that captain’s dead and I ain’t mourning.”

A fear without a form or a name was squirming inside Stanton Carlisle. Death and stories of death or brutality burrowed under his skin like ticks and set up an infection that worked through him to his brain and festered in it.

He forced his mind back to the reading. “Let me tell you this, friend: I see your future unrolling like thread from a spool. The pattern of your days ahead. I see men-a crowd of men-threatening you, asking questions. But I see another man, older than yourself, who will do you a good turn.”

The Negro stood up and then squatted on his haunches to absorb the vibration of the car. “Mister, you must of been a fortuneteller sometime. You talk just like ’em. Why don’t you relax yourself? You last a lot longer, I’m telling you.”

The white hobo jumped to his feet and lurched over to the open door, bracing his hand against the wall of the car and staring out across the countryside. They roared over a concrete bridge; a river flashed golden in the moonlight and was gone.

“You better stand back a little, son. You go grabbing scenery that way and somebody spot you if we pass a jerk stop. They phone on ahead, and when she slow down you got the bulls standing there with oak towels in their hands, all ready to rub you down.”

Stan turned savagely. “Listen, kid, you got everything figured out so close. What sense does it all make? What sort of God would put us here in this goddamned, stinking slaughterhouse of a world? Some guy that likes to tear the wings off flies? What use is there in living and starving and fighting the next guy for a full belly? It’s a nut house. And the biggest loonies are at the top.”

The Negro’s voice was softer. “Now you talking, brother. You let all that crap alone and come over here and talk. We got a long run ahead of us and ain’t no use trying to crap each other up.”

Dully Stan left the doorway and crumpled into the corner. He wanted to shout out, to cry, to feel Lilith’s mouth again, her breasts against him. Oh, Jesus, there I go. God damn her, the lying, double-crossing bitch. They’re all alike. But Molly, the dumb little tomato. Quickly he wanted her. Then disgust mounted-she would leech on to him and drain the life out of him. Dull, oh, Christ, and stupid. Oh, Jesus… Mother. Mark Humphries, God damn his soul to hell, the thieving bastard. Mother… the picnic…

The Negro was speaking again and the words filtered through. “…take on like that. Why don’t you tell me what you moaning about? You never going to see me again. Don’t make no difference to me what you done. I mind my own business. But you’ll feel better a hundred per cent, get it off your mind.”

The prying bastard. Let me alone… He heard his own voice say, “Stars. Millions of them. Space, reaching out into nothing. No end to it. The rotten, senseless, useless life we get jerked into and jerked out of, and it’s nothing but whoring and filth from start to finish.”

“What’s the matter with having a little poontang? Nothing dirty about that, ’cept in a crib you likely get crabs or a dose. Ain’t anything dirty about it unless you feels dirty in your mind. Gal start whoring so as to get loose from cotton-chopping or standing on their feet ten, eleven hours. You can’t blame no gal for laying it on the line for money. On her back she can rest.”

Stan’s torrent of despair had dried up. For a second he could draw breath-the weight seemed to have been lifted from his chest.