William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

It was somebody else’s voice. “Officer… oh, Jesus… I ain’t done nothing… gimme a break… oh, Jesus…”

“I’ll give ye a break. I’ll break every bone in your head, you stinking crumb. You as’d for it. Now you’re gonna get it.”

The stick landed again and the pain was white and incandescent this time as it slowly slid up his spine toward the brain on top.

The world came back and Stanton Carlisle, his mind sharpened to a point, saw where he was. He saw the lift of the cop’s upper lip, revealing a gold crown. And in the faint light, behind him now, he noticed that the cop needed a shave. He was not over forty; but his hair and the beard beginning to sprout over the jowls were pearly. Like fungus on a corpse. At that instant pain from the blow across his buttocks reached his mind and a thousand tumblers fell into place; a door swung open.

Stan closed in, clamping one hand on the cop’s lapel. His other hand crossed it, under the jowls, seizing the opposite lapel in its fist. Then, twisting sideways to protect his groin, Stanton began to squeeze. He heard the nightstick drop and felt the big hands tearing at his forearms, but the harder they pulled the tighter his fists dug into the throat. The day-old beard was like sandpaper on the backs of his hands.

Stan felt the wall of the alley jar against his shoulder, felt his feet leave the ground and the dark weight fall on him; but the only life in him now was pouring out through his hands and wrists.

The mountain on him wasn’t moving. It was resting. Stan got one foot free and rolled both of them over so he was on top. The massive body was perfectly still. He tightened the choke still more, until his knuckles felt as if they would burst, and he began to tap the cop’s head against the cobbles. Rap. Rap. Rap. He liked the sound. Faster.

Then his hands let go of themselves and he stood up, the hands falling to his sides. They wouldn’t work any more, wouldn’t obey him.

A bundle of astro-readings had fallen out and lay scattered on the stones, but he couldn’t pick them up. He walked, very straight and precise, toward the light at the other end of the alley. Everything was sharp and clear now and he didn’t even need a drink any more.

The freights would be risky. He might try the baggage rack of a long-haul bus, under the tarpaulin. He had traveled there once before.

Nothing more to bother about. For the cop was dead.

I can kill him again. I can kill him again. Any time he starts after me I can keep killing him. He’s mine. My own personal corpse.

They’ll bury him, just like you bury a stiff, clotted handkerchief.

I can kill him again.

But he won’t come again. He’s a dead pigeon.

I can kill him again.

But he’s dead from a bum ticker.

I can kill him.

A rose-crowned woman closes a lion’s jaws with her bare hands .

IN THE evening light a tall figure, gaunt, with matted yellow hair, leaned over the top fence rail, watching a man and woman planting corn. The woman thrust a hoe handle into the earth and the man, who seemed to have no legs, hopped along on his hands, dropping grains of corn into the hills and smoothing the earth over them.

“Wait a minute, Joe. There’s somebody wants us.”

The big woman strode over plowed ground, pulling off her gloves. “I’m sorry, bud, but we ain’t got nothing in the icebox to give you for a lump. And I ain’t got time now to fix you a sit-down. You wait till I get my pocketbook from the house and I’ll let you have four bits. There’s a lunch wagon down the road.” She stopped and caught her breath, then said hoarsely, “Glory be, it’s Stan Carlisle!” Over her shoulder she called, “Joe! Joe! Come here this minute!”

The hobo was leaning on the fence, letting it carry his weight. “Hi, Zeena. Saw your ad-magazine.”

The man drew near them, hopping along on his hands. His legs, twisted into a knot out of the way, were hidden by a burlap sack which he had drawn over them and tied around his waist. He swung up and sat looking at Stan silently, smiling as Lazarus must have smiled, newly risen. But his eyes were wary.

Zeena pushed back her straw hat and recovered her voice. “Stanton Carlisle, I swore if I ever set eyes on you again I’d sure give you a piece of my mind. Why, that child was pretty near out of her head, time she got to the carny. Everybody there thought she was touched, way she’d stumble around. I had her working the sword-box layout and she could just about step in and out of it, she was that bad. You sure done yourself proud by that girl, I must say. Oh, you was going to be mighty biggety- make a star out of her and everything. Well, you got there. But what good did it ever do her? Don’t think I’ve ever forgot it.” Her voice faltered and she sniffed, rubbing the back of a work-glove across her nose. “And what do you do but end up putting that kid, that sweet kid, on the turf-same as any two-bit pimp. It ain’t any fault of yours that the kid pulled out of it so good. Oh, no. I hope she’s forgot every idea she ever had about you. It ain’t your fault she’s married now to a grand guy and’s got the cutest little kid of her own you ever laid eyes on. Oh, no, you done your best to land that girl in a crib house.”

She stopped for breath, then went on in a different tone, “Oh, for God’s sake, Stan, come in the house and let me fry you a slice of ham. You look like you ain’t had a meal in a week.”

The hobo wasn’t listening. His knees had sagged; his chin scraped the fence rail and then he sank in a heap, like a scarecrow lifted from its pole.

Zeena dropped her gloves and began to climb the fence. “Joe, go down and hold the gate open. Stan’s passed out. We got to get him in the house.”

She lifted the emaciated body easily in her arms and carried it, legs dangling, toward the cottage.

Morning sun struck through the dotted curtains of the kitchen, falling on the golden hair of a man at the table, busy shoveling ham and eggs into his mouth. He stopped chewing and took a swallow of coffee.

“… that skull buster was known all the way up and down the line. He beat two old stiffs to death in the basement of the jug last year. I knew when he got me up that alley that the curtain was going down.”

Zeena turned from the stove with a skillet in one hand and a cake turner in the other. “Take it easy, Stan. Here’s some more eggs. I reckon you got room for ’em.” She filled his plate again.

Near the door Joe Plasky sat on a cushion, sorting mail into piles by states. It came in bundles; the mailman left it in a small barrel out on the road. On the barrel was painted: “ZEENA- PLASKY.” They had outgrown an R.F.D. box long ago.

“He started working me over with the club.” Stan paused with a forkful of egg in the air, looking at Joe. “So I let him have it. I clamped the nami juji on him and hung on. He went out for good.”

Zeena stopped, holding the cake turner. She said, “Oh, my God.” Then her eyes moved to Joe Plasky, who went on calmly sorting mail.

Joe said, “If it happened the way you tell it, kid, it was him or you. That Jap choke is a killer, all right. But you’re a hot man, Stan. You’ve got to move quiet. And fast.”

Zeena shook herself. “Well, he ain’t moving till we get him fed up some. The boy was starved. Have some more coffee, Stan. But, Joe, what’s he going to do? We can’t-”

Joe smiled a little wider but his eyes were dark and turned inward, thinking. Finally he said, “They got your prints up there?”