Hob Broun - Odditorium

“Right then. We’ll stop by my house and I’ll throw some things together.”

“No hurry. We’ll have lunch and a couple of drinks first and you can tell me about your husband.”

“Forget I ever mentioned him.”

“If you like. But let’s have lunch first anyway.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll change my mind?”

Christo just whistled through his teeth.

Parking in the shade, Tildy tossed the car keys in the ashtray.

“Wait here for me. I’ll be right out.”

“Have you decided what to say to him?”

“Not really.”

“Just don’t tell the truth. It’s poor form.”

It was stuffy inside the house, choked, even with the windows open. The furniture seemed shabby, unfamiliar; she felt, moving quickly and uneasily across the hard floor, that with a slight adjustment in the tuning of this signal she could be in the home of a friend she had not seen in years, who had called out of the blue to invite her over.

Karl stood with his back against the far wall eating peanut butter out of the jar.

“Where have you been all day? Car trouble?”

“No, everything’s fine.” She leaned against him, running her hand back and forth across his shoulders. “I ran into someone, we got to talking. You know.”

“I went outside this afternoon,” he boasted. “Walked up to Keyeses’ and back, saw a blacksnake sunnin’ himself in the road.”

She shook her head, declining the gob of peanut butter he offered on the end of his finger. “I can’t stay.”

“What about dinner? Thought we might go out someplace. Had a cravin’ for fried chicken and some cream gravy since I got out of bed. Dunno why.”

Tildy saw that she would have to jolt him, and wasn’t quite up to it. Despite his self-destructive history, the stubborn drag of his missteps and disabilities — or perhaps because of them — she was very loyal to her husband.

She pushed it out all at once. “I need some free time, Karl. This friend I ran into today, we’re going up to New York for a while to look into some things. I left some money with R.C. down at the store so you don’t have to worry about groceries and stuff. We’ll keep in touch by phone and if …”

He flung his arms around her, still holding the jar of peanut butter which she felt hard against the small of her back as he squeezed. “You’re leavin’ me, ain’t you.”

“Don’t dramatize. It’s just a trip, no more.” She broke away from his cramping, disconsolate hold. “It’s no different than if I were back on tour, like Sparn had booked a few dates in the Northeast. You see?”

“No. You goin’ off with someone else, that’s no job. And I need you here.”

“I won’t be long.”

“If you’d only stay, I’ll straighten up and fly right. Promise.”

She fixed her mouth on his and slicked her tongue over his lips, tasting something thin and bitter. “I have to go get organized now. He’s waiting for me outside.”

“You didn’t say it was no man.”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Don’t do it, baby. Not now. S’like leavin’ me out in the desert to burn up with no canteen … I’m set to fall in pieces, I can feel it comin’ on. You got a responsibility for that.”

But she was gone. From where he stood he could see her moving about the bedroom, reaching, leaning. She is slipping in and out. Slippery. Like a bar of soap, he thought. The harder you squeeze, the greater the odds it will fly away from you.

“Didn’t always treat me this way,” he said, but quietly so she wouldn’t hear. “You used to stick by me in the old days.”

Leaning inside the closet, the wrinkled white bedsheet that curtained it pushed over one shoulder and falling down her back like a bridal train, Tildy worked through the tangle of hangers one by one. Nothing much appealed. What were they wearing these days in the Big City?

“I wasn’t planning to get bogged down in this,” she murmured.

Taking her diaphragm from its bed of cornstarch, Tildy held it up to the light to check for tears or pinholes. Fine white powder fell on the sleeves of her jacket. Noises from the front room. Two distinct voices, not just Karl talking back to the teevee set. She hurried out, found them sitting opposite one another drinking beer.

“We’re getting acquainted,” Christo said, saluting her with his dripping can.

“Didn’t I tell you to wait outside?”

“I seem to remember something like that.”

“I had reasons for saying it, damn you.”

“Curiosity got the best of me.”

“Can’t see why you wouldn’t want us to meet.” Karl, suddenly casual, almost smug, sucked foam off his lips. “We gettin’ along fine.”

“Sure,” Tildy snapped. “You’ll cozy up to anyone who brings a six-pack in here.”

“Some temper.”

“Oh yeah. Had that short fuse ever since I knowed her.”

“When was that?” Christo slid forward in his chair, one foot jittering up and down at the termination of a crossed leg. “I always like to hear about how couples first met. That’s real Americana to me.”

“You can both go straight to hell.” Tildy threw her jacket in a corner and returned to her packing, but left the door open so she could listen.

“Seems a lot longer ago than it really was. You know how the time can just seem to leak away on you.”

“Sieve city. I know what you mean.”

“Okay. So I was with this outfit movin’ through farm country up there — Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, so on. I was on the crew put up the rides and broke ’em down. There’s some good rakeoff on that job, too, ’cause them rides, they design ’em to bounce the suckers all over and shake the money right out their pockets. We used to find all kinds of stuff, rings, watches, fountain pens … Say, you mind? I must’ve got too much sun today ’cause I sure am dry.”

“Help yourself.”

Karl unzipped a fresh beer, gargled some down. “Anyhow, Tildy. She joined up with us halfway through as a kootch dancer and, man, could she swing it. Make the hairs on your neck stand right up. July heat wave, we played a weekend in some town full of Polacks and what have you, they decided to throw a polka contest, offered a two-hundred-dollar first prize as bait. Naturally they needed some shills in there and me and Tildy got throwed together for it. Now I got a couple of heavy feet, but with her I was spinning around like a feather in the wind, just as sweet and smooth as could be and we copped that first prize. After that I followed her everywhere, carryin’ my big hammer and all.” Patting the dome at his beltline. “I was in good shape back then, didn’t have this beer keg here and I could do hundreds of fingertip push-ups. Oh yeah, I wasn’t gonna let that girl get away from me. Like she was my fairy godmother or somethin’, like she could give me wings to fly.”

Christo, reaching out for a comradely slap at his arm, said, “That young love, it just breaks your heart, doesn’t it?”

Karl shrugged uncertainly. “We weren’t that young. Got married in August in Saginaw with all the carnies there and wasn’t that a show. Wish we had some pictures.”

“It was Huron.” Tildy’s voice came cold and tolling from the far end of the house. “And if your dancing had been any better, or I hadn’t been so bewildered, it would never have happened.”

Karl was doing a few clumsy polka steps, his thumb pressed over the trowel-shaped opening in the can to keep the beer inside, a look of slowly thickening dismay on his face. By the time he sat down, that hatchet face had grown dim again, the small ritual elapsed, the spirit flown from his body with no reminder.

“I done a lot of things on the circuit, a lot of things, but I never put on no damn caveman suit and bit the heads offa snakes. There’s some men will turn you low and rotten with half a chance, but I got my protection. I got my protection and I hold on.”