Katherine Dunn: Nightmare Carnival

The big top was packed out for the evening’s performance, the stalls and star backs and blue stringers overflowing. Kiddies squeezed together on straw spread out in front of the general admission seats and still they pressed up clear to the hay bale rings. But it seemed both spectators and performers knew this was not an ordinary evening, the rangy cheering and laughter bordering on thin hysteria. From inside her exhibition booth in the sideshow top, Mae tried to relax, sheathed in her tight costume and going through her routine every time the curtain was pulled back to admit another lot of slack-jawed gawpers, clacking her hands together and waving her feet about in absurd parody of a lobster. She had never expected empathy or pity, long immune to the gasps of horror, nervous giggles, even the occasional lewd proposition made more to impress mates than in expectation of success. But this crowd was subdued, predatory, their eyes small and mean as they stared and sneered, bought a souvenir penny postcard, and left.

Outside, the calliope rattled through its repertoire of screamer music, band organs cranking out paper roll tunes for the carnival rides. Kiddies and women and even men shrieked in delight and fear and excitement. Candy butchers hawked popcorn, cotton candy, toffee apples, and pink lemonade while grinders reeled through their repetitive ballyhoos, right this way folks you can’t afford to miss this absolutely petrifying freak of nature, half price for the next five minutes only, be astounded, amazed, and thrilled, once seen, never forgotten .

It was a relief when Max, tattoos hidden by his oversized bathrobe, finally left the pit where he did his strongman act, and came to get her. The noise of the crowd swelled in the blowoff as they were herded down the midway and out of the circus lot, then evaporated, leaving the twilight air to be filled instead with cicada chittering. She draped her arms around Max’s neck like a sleepy child as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the dressing top. Once she’d changed out of the lobster costume into more comfortable clothes, he carried her across the eerily quiet midway to the back yard, past the pole wagons, the main cookhouse tent, the spec floats behind the horse tops empty and deserted. The gorilla rustled in his bed of hay and newspapers, “The World’s Most Terrifying Beast!” emblazoned in red and gilt over his cage, drew a torn broadsheet over his head, and curled back to sleep, snoring softly. Flags snapped atop the top poles, a horse nickered, mosquitoes whined in the humid heat. The entire company had gathered in the dressing top, kerosene lanterns flickering shadow puppets on the sidewalls.

Kleininger had already scrubbed off the clown makeup while Schmidt’s whiteface had smeared into the crags and lines of his face, his eyes old and weary. What little muted conversation there was died away as the Bishop walked into the top, still dressed in his velvet vest and tails, glass diamonds in his buttons glittering. One of the rousties quickly fetched a folding chair. The Bishop smiled wanly in thanks as he sat down heavily. He still had the ringmaster’s whip coiled in one hand, dangling between his knees as he rested elbows on his thighs, head hanging. The Bishop sighed, then looked up.

“The mayor of this fine town took a good deal of pleasure in informing me he’s sent telegrams down the wire. Every town between here and the West Coast knows we have a killer elephant. They’re threatening to ban the circus altogether if we don’t get rid of her.”

Mae’s heart sank. “But she’s not. ” she said, so softly she was nearly inaudible. In the hushed tent, a hundred eyes turned toward her, waiting. “That man. Who died. He threw a lit cigar in her mouth, it wasn’t her fault.”

“Doesn’t matter, she has to go.”

“If another circus won’t take her, we can find a zoo who will, can’t we?” For a little man, Schmidt had a remarkably deep voice, his German accent slight.

A few faces brightened with hope, quickly dashed. “If it were one of us, it would be different,” the Bishop said, shaking his head. “We know the life. But she’s killed an outsider. The mayor told me the preacher’s got the townsfolk so riled up they’re planning to drag an old cannon from the Civil War memorial up here tomorrow to shoot her.”

One of the spec girls burst out into loud sobs, clapped a hand over her mouth, and ran out of the tent.

“You can’t just let them kill her,” Mae said, and felt Max’s hand settle on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mae. I have to think of the entire company, not just one elephant. You’ve seen these people — they’re out for blood, and they’re dead set on getting it, too. If it isn’t Madelaine, who will they go after instead? How about our coloreds, strung up on light poles the way they did in Dumuth?”

The boys in the minstrel band looked impassive, but Eileen squeezed her eyes shut, shaking so hard Kleininger stood up and awkwardly put his arm around her and stared at his bare feet as she crumpled against him.

“You sideshow freaks? Maybe all of us? This entire crazy town is standing between us and the circus train; they’re not letting us go until they get their pound of flesh. This isn’t a discussion about if she has to die. The only thing to decide is how .”

No one spoke for a long time. Then North said, “Can’t shoot her. We don’t have anything big enough to do the job proper.” His lips compressed into a hard line. “And I won’t do it, no.”

“I don’t have enough potassium cyanide to poison her,” the Bishop said.

“She’s too smart for that anyway,” North said. “After today, she’s going to be damned skittish about what goes in her mouth.”

“Jumbo was killed by a locomotive,” one of the rousties said. “Maybe get two railcars goin’ from opposite ends, sort of squash her in the middle?”

The men around him looked sick. The Bishop winced. “Can’t be sure she’d set still in place long enough, too big a risk if she spooked and broke free.”

“I saw Thomas Edison electrocute an elephant at Coney Island some years back,” Eric said, then dropped his gaze as well, as if ashamed to be part of the conspiracy.

The Bishop snorted with contempt. “There’s not enough electricity in this piece-of-shit town and I’m not using our gennies for that.” He glanced at Mae, embarrassed by his profanity in front of women. “Begging your pardon.” He stood up. “These podunk white-trash hillbillies want a lynching. So we’ll give them a lynching. We hang her.”

Even Theresa, who normally had a face carved from stone, closed her eyes, tears running black mascara like molasses.

“The railroad has a one-hundred-ton derrick car in their rail yard they use to load lumber onto freight cars, strong enough to hold her.” The Bishop’s demeanor had hardened, businesslike. “We’ll do one last show tomorrow, then get the whole town away to the loading yard to watch her hang while the rest of you ready the haul. She weighs five tons; it’ll be over quick enough. So I want those trains loaded for the jump like your lives depend on it. Because they do .”

The roustabouts and riggers and canvas men nodded.

The Bishop’s face was bloodless with repressed fury. “All of you. We take this clem town for everything. Cheat ’em, ding ’em, gaff every game, clutch every ride, fleece every damned one of them. I don’t care what it takes, don’t leave them a dime, not a nickel, not two fucking pennies to rub together. We burn the lot, understood?”

This time, the Bishop didn’t apologize for his profanity, jammed his top hat onto his head, and stalked from the tent.

It was the grimmest, and shortest, show they’d ever played, the barrists going through their trapeze and tightrope routine like mechanical automatons, not even bothering with bows to acknowledge the applause. North had the zebras pull the big cats through the ring in their cages, making a show of snapping his whip, tugging on tails to get the beasts to snarl and roar and paw the bars more in uncertainty than ferocity before trotting them back out of the big top without opening a single cage. The clowns and dogs rolled in so quickly behind him the specs didn’t realize they were getting shortchanged, not that it seemed to matter. It wasn’t the circus they’d come to see. The four elephants didn’t even perform, the Bishop having them walk with Madelaine down to the derrick car, trunk to tail in single file, to keep her company.