Harlan Ellison - Approaching Oblivion - Road Signs On the Treadmill Toward Tomorrow

We spent a great deal of time together. I bought him a copy of a pulp magazine called Startling Stories, and read him a story about a space pirate who captures a man and his wife and offers the man the choice of opening one of two large boxes-in one is the man's wife, with twelve hours of air to breathe, in the other is a terrible alien fungus that will eat him alive. Little Gus sat on the edge of the big hole he'd dug, out in the empty lots, dangling his feet, and listening. His forehead was furrowed as he listened to the marvels of Jack Williamson's “Twelve Hours To Live,” there on the edge of the “fort” he'd built.

We discussed the radio programs Gus heard every day: Tennessee Jed, Captain Midnight, Jack Armstrong, Superman, Don Winslow of the Navy. And the nighttime programs: I Love a Mystery, Suspense, The Adventures of Sam Spade. And the Sunday programs: The Shadow, Quiet, Please, The Molle Mystery Theater.

We became good friends. He had told his mother and father about “MI. Rosenthal,” who was his friend, but they'd spanked him for the Startling Stories, because they thought he'd stolen it. So he stopped telling them about me. That was all right; it made the bond between us stronger.

One afternoon we went down behind the Colony Lumber Company, through the woods and the weeds to the old condemned pond. Gus told me he used to go swimming there, and fishing sometimes, for a black oily fish with whiskers. I told him it was a catfish. He liked that. Liked to know the names of things. I told him that was called nomenclature, and he laughed to know there was a name for knowing names.

We sat on the piled logs rotting beside the black mirror water, and Gus asked me to tell him what it was like where I lived, and where I'd been, and what I'd done, and everything.

“I ran away from home when I was thirteen, Gus.”

“Wasn't you happy there?”

“Well, yes and no. They loved me, my mother and father. They really did. They just didn't understand what I was all about.”

There was a pain on my neck. I touched a fingertip to the place. It was a boil beginning to grow. I hadn't had a boil in years, many years, not since I was a…

“What's the matter, MI. Rosenthal?”

“Nothing, Gus. Well, anyhow, I ran away, and joined a carny.”

“Huh?”

“A carnival. The Tri-State Shows. We moved through Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, even Kansas…”

“Boy! A carnival! Just like in Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks with the Circus? I really cried when Toby Tyler's monkey got killed, that was the worst part of it, did you do stuff like that when you were with the circus?”

“Carnival.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh. Did'ja?”

“Something like that. I carried water for the animals sometimes, although we only had a few of those, and mostly in the freak show. But usually what I did was clean up, and carry food to the performers in their tops-”

“What's that?”

“That's where they sleep, in rigged tarpaulins. You know, tarps.”

“Oh. Yeah, I know. Go on, huh.”

The rash was all the way up to my shoulder now. It itched like hell, and when I'd gone to the drug store to get an aerosol spray to relieve it, so it wouldn't spread, I had only to see those round wooden display tables with their glass centers, under which were bottles of Teel tooth liquid, Tangee Red-Red lipstick and nylons with a seam down the back, to know the druggist wouldn't even know what I meant by Bactine or Liquid Band-Aid.

“Well, along about K.C. the carny got busted because there were too many moll dips and cannons and paperhangers in the tip….” I waited, his eyes growing huge.

“What's all thaaat mean, Mr. Rosenthal?!?”

“Ah-ha! Fine carny stiff you'd make. You don't even know the lingo.”

“Please, Mr. Rosenthal, please tell me!”

“Well, K.C. is Kansas City, Missouri…when it isn't Kansas City, Kansas. Except, really, on the other side of the river is Weston. And busted means thrown in jail, and…”

“You were in jail?”

“Sure was, little Gus. But let me tell you now, Cannons are pickpockets and moll dips are lady pickpockets, and paper-hangers are fellows who write bad checks. And a tip is a group.”

“So what happened, what happened?”

“One of these bad guys, one of these cannons, you see, picked the pocket of an assistant district attorney, and we all got thrown in jail. And after a while everyone was released on bail, except me and the Greek. Me, because I wouldn't tell them who I was, because I didn't want to go home, and the Greek, because a carny can find a wetbrain in any town to play Greek.”

“What's a Greek, huh?”

The Greek was a sixty-year-old alcoholic. So sunk in his own endless drunkenness that he was almost a zombie… a wetbrain. He was billed as The Thing and he lived in a portable pit they carried around, and he bit the heads off snakes and ate live chickens and slept in his own dung. And all for a bottle of gin every day. They locked me in the drunk tank with him. The smell. The smell of sour liquor, oozing with sweat out of his pores, it made me sick, it was a smell I could never forget. And the third day, he went crazy. They wouldn't fix him with gin, and he went crazy. He climbed the bars of the big free-standing drunk tank in the middle of the lockup, and he banged his head against the bars and ceiling where they met, till he fell back and lay there, breathing raggedly, stinking of that terrible smell, his face like a pound of raw meat.

The pain in my stomach was worse now. I took Gus back to Harmon Drive, and let him go home.

My weight had dropped to just over a hundred and ten. My clothes didn't fit. The acne and boils were worse. I smelled of witch hazel. Gus was getting more anti-social.

I realized what was happening.

I was alien in my own past. If I stayed much longer, God only knew what would happen to little Gus…but certainly I would waste away. Perhaps just vanish. Then… would Gus's future cease to exist, too? I had no way of knowing; but my choice was obvious. I had to return.

And couldn't! I was happier here than I'd ever been before. The bigotry and violence Gus had known before I came to him had ceased. They knew he was being watched over. But Gus was becoming more erratic. He was shoplifting toy soldiers and comic books from the Kresge's and constantly defying his parents. It was turning bad. I had to go back.

I told him on a Saturday. We had gone to see a Lash La Rue western and Val Lewton's “The Cat People” at the Lake Theater. When we came back I parked the car on Mentor Avenue, and we went walking in the big, cool, dark woods that fronted Mentor where it met Harmon Drive.

“Mr. Rosenthal,” Gus said. He looked upset.

“Yes, Gus?”

“I gotta problem, sir.”

“What's that, Gus?” My head ached. It was a steady needle of pressure above the right eye.

“My mother's gonna send me to a military school.”

I remembered. Oh, God, I thought. It had been terrible. Precisely the thing not to do to a child like Gus.

“They said it was 'cause I was rambunctious. They said they were gonna send me there for a year or two. Mr. Rosenthal…don't let'm send me there. I din't mean to be bad. I just wanted to be around you.”

My heart slammed inside me. Again. Then again. “Gus, I have to go away.”

He stared at me. I heard a soft whimper.

“Take me with you, Mr. Rosenthal. Please. I want to see Galveston. We can drive a dynamite truck in North Carolina. We can go to Matawatchan, Ontario, Canada and work topping trees, we can sail on boats, Mr. Rosenthal!”

“Gus…”

“We can work the carny, Mr. Rosenthal. We can pick peanuts and oranges all across the country. We can hitchhike to San Francisco and ride the cable cars. We can ride the boxcars, Mr. Rosenthal…I promise I'll keep my legs inside an' not dangle 'em. I remember what you said about the doors slamming when they hook'm up. I'll keep my legs inside, honest I will…”