William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

The passenger flyer picked up speed. In the club car a wrist shot from a tweed sleeve, revealing a wrist watch. Ten minutes’ delay! Confound it, the only way to travel was by plane.

Under the club car, squeezed into a forest of steel springs, axles, brake rods and wheels, a man lay hidden. As the rattler gained speed, Frederick Douglass Scott, son of a Baptist minister, grandson of a slave, shifted his position to get a better purchase as he rolled on toward the North and the fort with its double fence of charged wire.

Shoulders braced against the truck frame, feet against the opposite side, he balanced his body on an inch-thick brake rod which bent under him. Inches below, the roadbed raced by, switches clawing up at him as the car pounded past them. The truck hammered and bucked. A stream of glowing coals, thrown down by the engine, blew over him and he fought them with his free hand, beating at the smoldering denim, while the train thundered on; north, north, north.

A specter was haunting Grindle. It was a specter in overalls.

wears dark armor; beside his horse kneel priests and children and kings .

THE PITCHMAN rounded a corner, looking both ways down the main street for the cop, and then slid into the darkened vestibule of the bank building. If the rain held off he might get a break at that. The movie theater was about to let out; fellows would be coming out with their girls.

As the first of the crowd drifted past him he drew a handful of gaudy envelopes from a large pocket inside his coat and fanned them in his left hand so that the brightly printed zodiac circle and the symbols stood out, a different color for each sign.

He ran his free hand once over his hair and took a breath. His voice was hoarse; he couldn’t get it much above a whisper. “My friends if you’ll just step this way for a single moment you may find that you have taken a step which will add to your health happiness and prosperity for the rest of your lives…”

One couple stopped and he spoke directly to them. “I wonder if the young lady would mind telling me her birth date it costs you nothing folks because the first astrological chart this evening will be given away absolutely free of charge…”

The young fellow said, “Come on.” They walked on past. The goddamned townies.

Need a drink. Jesus, I’ve got to pitch. I got to unload five of them.

“Here you are folks everybody wants to know what the future holds in store come in a little closer folks and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do I’m going to give each and every one of you a personal reading get your astronomical forecast which shows your lucky numbers, days of the month and tells you how to determine the right person for you to marry whether you’ve got anybody in mind or not…”

They moved by him, some staring, some laughing, none stopping.

Hideous. Their faces suddenly became distorted, like caricatures of human faces. They seemed to be pushed out of shape. Some of them looked like animals, some like embryo chicks when you break an egg that is half incubated. Their heads bobbed on necks like stalks and he waited for their eyes to drop out and bounce on the sidewalk.

The pitchman started to laugh. It was a chuckle, bubbling up inside of him at first, and then it split open and he laughed, screaming and stamping his foot.

A crowd began to knot around him. He stopped laughing and forced out the words. “Here you are folks while they last.” The laugh was fighting inside of him, tearing at his throat. “A complete astrological reading giving your birthstones, lucky numbers.” The laugh was hammering to get out. It was like a dog tied to the leg of a workbench, fighting to get free of a rope. Here it came. “Whah, whah, whah, whah! Hooooooooooooo!”

He beat the handful of horoscopes against his thigh, leaning his other hand against the stone lintel of the vestibule. The crowd was giggling at him or with him, some wondering when he was going to stop suddenly and try to sell them something.

One woman said, “Isn’t it disgusting! And right in the doorway of the bank! It’s indecent.”

The pitchman heard her and this time he sat down limply on the marble steps, letting the horoscopes scatter around him, holding his belly as he laughed.

Something hit the crowd at its edge and mashed it forward and to each side. Then the blue legs moved in.

“I told you to beat it out of town.”

The face of the cop seemed a mile above him, as if it were looking over the rim of a well.

Same cop. Two-dollar fine and get out of town.

“Wheeeeeeee! Ho-ho. Hah. Officer… officer… whahhoooooooo!”

The hand that jerked him to his feet seemed to plunge out of the sky. “I told you to scram, bum. Now you going to walk down to the lockup or you going on a stretcher?”

A quick thrust and his hand was twisted halfway up his back; he was walking bent over to keep from getting his wrist broken. Through waves of laughter the world seeped in, coming in slices, as if the laughter split at the seams and showed a little raw and bloody reality before it closed up again.

“Where we going, officer? No, no, don’t tell me. Let me guess. Down cellar?”

“Shut up, bum. Keep walking or you’ll get your arm broke. I’ve got a good mind to work you over before we get down there.”

“But, officer, they’ve seen me once down there. They’ll get awfully tired of seeing me. They’ll think it ridiculous, me showing up there so often. Won’t they? Won’t they? Won’t they? You’ve got no rope around my neck. How can you be sure I won’t run? Wait for the moon-it’s coming out from under the rain pretty soon; any minute now. But you don’t understand that. Officer, wait…”

They had left the crowd and cut down a side street. To the left was an alley, dark, but with a light at the other end of it. The cop shifted his grip on the prisoner’s hand, letting go for a fraction of a second, and the pitchman spun free and began to run. He was sailing through air; he couldn’t feel his feet touching the stones. And behind him the heavy splat of shoes on cobbles. He raced toward the light at the end of the alley, but there was nothing to be afraid of. He had always been here, running down the alley and it didn’t matter; this was all there was any time, anywhere, just an alley and a light and the footsteps spanging on the cobbles but they never catch you, they never catch you, they never catch-A blow between his shoulders knocked him forward and he saw the stones, in the faint light ahead, coming up toward him, his own hands spread out, fingers bent a little on the left hand, thumbs at an eager angle, all spraddled out as if he were making shadows on a wall, of two roosters’ heads, the thumbs forming the beaks and the spread fingers the notches of the combs.

The nightstick had struck him, whirling through the space between the two men. It bounded off, hitting a brick wall with a clear, wooden ping as the cobbles met his hands and the jar of the fall snapped his neck back. He was on his hands and knees when the foot caught him in the ribs and sent him sprawling on his side.

The great oval face ducked out of sight. The cop had bent to pick up the nightstick and the top of his cap cut off the sight of the face, above its V of shirt and black tie. That was all you could see.

He heard the shattering crack of the nightstick across his shoulders before the pain fought its way down the clogged nerves and went off, spraying around inside his brain like a hose jet of hot steel. He heard his own breath pop out between his teeth and he drew his feet under him. He was halfway erect when the stick knocked the rest of the breath out of him, smashing against his ribs.