Katherine Dunn - Nightmare Carnival

“The Gallows Brothers Carnival, huh?” I said after I caught my breath. I would have said anything to break the spell. “I heard that name somewhere. Want to say a news story. Which means somebody got maimed or murdered. Wouldn’t be news otherwise.”

He grunted and hit me with a sidelong glance.

“So, uh, you know how to shoot a gun?” Maybe he meant the rifle rattling in the window rack behind our heads. A light-gauge shotgun, nothing fabulous. “And would you say you’re fast on your feet? On a scale from a chick in high heels to Carl Lewis sprinting from a lion.”

“I hate it when dudes ask me that. The line of inquiry seldom leads anywhere pleasant.”

“You dames have all had bad experiences.”

I laughed, low and nasty.

“Yeah, it’s weird. Can’t figure what the common denominator might be.”

He shut his mouth for a while, smarting. Guy like him, pain didn’t last long. A whack upside the head with a two-by-four was positive attention.

My thoughts went to a previous fling with another brutish loner type: a coyote hunter in eastern Washington. I hoped my luck was better this go-around. I hoped Beasley’s luck was better too.

“You’re not really a carnival roadie,” I said a few miles later. “You lack that particular something or other.”

“Well, I wouldn’t get on any of the rides.”

The Gallows Brothers Carnival had set up shop in a pasture a few miles outside of town. Unfortunately, I had missed the last show. The great machinery lay cold and silent and would soon be dismantled. Beasley lived in a modular at the end of a concourse of shuttered stalls, Tilt-a-Whirls, and tents. All very Beaver Cleaver 1950s. The night breeze swirled sawdust and the burned powder of exploded firecrackers.

A wolf howled from the north where the forest began.

Then we were inside Beasley’s shack, barring the door behind us. Down, down into the darkness we dove, to the bottom of a blue hole at the bottom of the earth. The wolf howled again. Its pack answered and the ponderosa pines closed ranks, as Beasley’s Herculean arms closed me in.

A hazy nightlight fumed at the foot of the bunk. Beasley, with a physique straight from a picture book of Norse gods, could’ve wrestled bears, looked as if he’d done so on occasion. Once Beasley and I got going he held back for fear of breaking me, the fool. I wanted to tell him it was only really good once it started to hurt, but I’d gone past the vanishing point and dissolved into another, primal self, the one that doesn’t speak English.

He performed as his swagger advertised, or close enough. Afterward, he lay slick and aglow, perfectly scarred. I asked him if he did any acting, because he radiated mucho charisma. He only smiled boyishly and took a swig from the bottle, took it in like water. I suspected his fate would be to die horribly of cirrhosis, or under the claws of a beast, and young, or to turn fifty and appear as if he’d gone face first into a wall, haggard as a kerosene-swilling bum. Probably the dying-young deal: I kept seeing a bleached skull when I caught him in my peripheral vision.

“Gimme some sweet, sweet nothings,” I said to keep him from nodding off and leaving me alone with my two a.m. thoughts, and alone with the howls in the wood.

“Look, doll, I’m a man of action. Sweet talk ain’t my bailiwick.”

“Your wick isn’t going into my bailey again if you don’t humor me.”

“As you say.” He cleared his throat. “How can you be sure you’re here?”

“What, think you were humping your pillow?”

“Sorry, Jess, you started this. Maybe all of it is a projection. Or a computer program. You’re a sexy algorithm looping for eternity.”

We shared a cigarette. Not my brand.

“Kinda smart for a dumb guy,” I said. What I knew of Beasley’s past derived from a few hours over pints — ex-army, ex-footballer, a hunter, a bodyguard, expert driver. Man-at-arms slash valet and satisfied with the role. College had served as a central hub for womanizing, boozing, and playing ball.

“No offense taken, or anything.” He even made petulance sound manly.

“Don’t get riled, handsome. Playing dumb is your protective coloration. It’s how you fool the predators. Most of us are fooled.”

“My protective coloration is a surly disposition and a buffalo gun that’d blast a hole through a concrete bunker.”

“Neither of those require smarts.” I squinted at a movie poster of Robby the Robot carrying unconscious Anne Francis against a backdrop of shooting stars, and another of Lon Chaney Jr. bursting the buttons of his natty white shirt as a devil moon blared through evergreen branches.

“Wait a second. Is that wolfsbane in the pot?”

“Jessica. you’re not a hologram, you’re a dream.” He kneaded my breast. “It had to be the right woman, but I hoped it would be a flake, a bumpkin. I was afraid you’d come here. Ever since I dreamt of you there’s been a dark spot floating in my mind. A mote.”

“Make sense, man!”

“Yeah, it’s wolfsbane.” He rolled away from me, the oldest trick in the book.

I woke to a little girl screaming her heart out, out in the darkness. Beasley gently clamped his hand over my mouth, his other arm wrapped around my waist. I wasn’t going anywhere unless I took extreme measures. Not so much of a turn-on in this context.

“It’s all right.” He spoke so softly, I almost didn’t catch it. “They say an elk screams like a child. Go back to sleep.”

A long time and a lot of silence passed before he let me go.

Oatmeal and kiwis for breakfast in the commissary. Beasley introduced me around to the early risers. Hey, everybody, this is Jessica Mace. She’s wandering the earth. Make her feel at home. Damned if I didn’t despite their clannishness. Free food is free food.

Strongman (actually a strongwoman , after a double take), bearded lady, wolf girl, Poindexter the Geek, the knife thrower, Ephandra the Contortionist, and Perkins and Luther — head carpenter and electrician respectively. The Gallows brothers, Benson and Robert, weren’t on hand. The proprietors had departed on a hush-hush mission, or so Beasley intimated when I asked to meet the gents.

Beasley’s request notwithstanding, I received the hairy eyeball from the company. Nobody said two words to me except for Earl, the Illustrated Man. Earl repeatedly inquired where oh where on my delectable body I might be inked. Answer: nowhere, jerk. I kind of hoped Beasley would bust his jaw too, but it didn’t happen. Several children lurked on the periphery. The oldest, an adolescent girl; the youngest, a grubby boy maybe a year or two out of diapers. They gawped at me from a safe distance, until their minder, a matronly lass named Rocky, swept them away with brisk efficiency.

After breakfast, Beasley escorted me on a tour of the environs. I tasted snow. A lot of the stuff covered the mountain peaks.

“This doesn’t jibe,” I said. “Are you hiding from the law, or what?”

We’d moseyed a distance from the encampment. He wore a battered Australian drover’s hat, light jacket, work pants, and lace-up boots. He also carried a big-ass hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. Double barrels, very serious.

“Whatever happens, don’t get scared.”

“Scared of what? And, too late.”

“Of nothing. I’m not on the lam, by the way. Vacation.” He knelt and traced flattened grass with his entire hand. We were surrounded by an ocean of it, tall and white, dying.

“How everybody spoke to you, you’ve been here a while.”

“Ten months next week.”

“Ten months! Sounds more and more like you’re on work release.”

He laughed. Nice white teeth. Considering the battered condition of his face, it was a small miracle he’d kept most of them.