Craig Davidson - Rust and Bone - Stories

To my left the mouth of a narrow alleyway runs between the arena and the burnt-out building beside it. The brick of the building is charred and words are scratched into the blackness. In the alleyway’s dim light men ring an oildrum fire, passing a bottle of Mekong. They are laughing and I wonder at what. One reaches across the flames to touch another’s laughing face.

Fakery #17: The Reanimate Fly . An illusion popular among street-corner mountebanks. Purporting to spot an expired fly on the sidewalk, the “magician” will bet a passerby he can resurrect it from the dead. The cunning fraud sets the fly in his palm and launches into his “act,” muttering garbled incantations, rolling his eyeballs about, frantically flailing his limbs, other shameless hocuspokery. After a minute the fly stirs, then buzzes away. The deceit: the fly is placed in a freezer, whereupon the cold stuns it into a state of suspended animation. The crafty sod then drops it on the sidewalk and waits on a rube. The heat of his palm raises the fly’s internal temperature, bringing it miraculously back to life … or so it seems.

—Excerpted from Hexers, Charlatans, and Miracle Mongers: An Exposé, by Herbert T. Mallory, Sr.

[1]

ST. CATHARINES, ONTARIO. JUNE 5, 1979.

The Knights of Pythias’s seventy-third annual Spring Salubritorial was in full swing. Banquet tables littered with congealed puddles of gravy and beer bottles smirched with greasy fingerprints were pushed to the corners of Lodge #57, chairs lined in haphazard rows facing a raised stage. The membership of the fraternal brotherhood milled about in aimless, meandering circles, bumping into one another, shaking hands, exchanging trivialities about children, jobs, the day’s unseasonable fogginess.

Norman Greene, newly elected Grand Chancellor of the Judea chapter, stepped hesitantly onstage. Beneath a fall of snowdrop-white hair, a pair of tri-focal glasses sectioned Norman’s eyes into dull brown strata resembling ever-darkening layers of soil.

“Welcome, brothers.”

No one noticed Norm until Hal Stapleton spied him out of the corner of his eye and said, “Sit down—show’s about to start!”

The group seated themselves with giddy expectation. With their faces shadowed by the stage footlights, they resembled choirboys at midnight mass.

“Welcome, brothers,” Norman, used to repeating himself, repeated. “Without further ado, may I introduce Herbert T. Mallory— The Inimitable Cartouche! ”

A man materialized through folds of thick velour draped behind the stage. A tall figure, suave as a toreador, with strong sharp features and eyes of flawless emerald. His hair was sculpted back with mint brilliantine, face clean-shaven save a neatly clipped Mephistophelian Vandyke. Wearing a spotless tuxedo with a frilled olive cummerbund and polished wingtips, he opened an alligator-skin valise to remove a flattened black disk, transforming it into a top hat with a brisk flick of his wrist.

Sid Tuttle, more than slightly tipsy after four Harvey Wallbangers, elbowed Hal’s ample gut. “What’s this four-eyed fool spent our dues on?”

Two smaller figures stepped through the velour, a boy and a girl. The girl, a few years older than the boy, crossed the stage in lurching, timid steps on account of the high-heeled shoes she wore. Her taffeta dress was held up with thin spaghetti straps, arms clad in evening gloves that sagged off the ends of her fingertips like withered petals. The boy was a miniature version of the magician. Tall for his age and thin, he wore an immaculately tailored tuxedo with matching olive cummerbund; his chin sported a grease pencil Vandyke. The boy strutted about in a manner that might have been seen as arrogant had he been a few years older—instead, it was merely precocious.

“What’s all this?” Hal was baffled: last year, when he’d been in charge of the evening’s entertainment, he’d lined up an exotic dancer, Countess Carissa, who’d bounded out of a packing crate wearing tasseled pasties and a smile. She got those tassels spinning like the propellers on a Piper Cub, twirling them one way then back the other to upbeat boom-boom music. “Where’s the … the real entertainment?”

“You know what they say, Hal,” Norman mumbled. “Variety … ah—spice of life.”

The truth was slightly less philosophic: Norman’s wife—who’d gotten wind of the Countess’s performance last year—warned her husband that if she discovered an entertainer of similar ilk had taken the stage this year, well, he’d better buy a warm toque, because it’d be damn cold sleeping in the garage.

“This is a … travesty!” Sid Tuttle moaned. Sid’s wife, a stern Pythian sister, only let him out of the house once or twice a month— frittering away a precious evening on magic was sacrilege! He shook his bald head, which, being shiny and oddly planed, reflected thin blades of light like the facets of a poorly cut gemstone.

“Come on, Norm!” Hal’s fingers compassed his nipples in concentric spirals, a reminder of the Countess’s considerable charms. “This is a man’s night, not some kid’s birthday party!”

“Yeah,” a shrill voice piped up. “I want magic, I’ll watch Circus of the Stars! ”

“Oh, my god!” someone else sputtered. “What next—a pinata? Loot bags? ”

“He’d better be pulling a naked lady out of that hat!”

“Where’s my coat? I’m going home.”

“Silence!”

The magician’s assistants had erected various stage props: two chairs with a wooden board balanced on the backrests, three black cubes stacked one atop the other, a scarred tea chest.

“I find your communal behavior boorish,” the magician said. “How would you like it were I to arrive at your places of business and ridicule you?” He glared down upon the grumbling throng. “I am the Inimitable Cartouche. For the next hour I will dazzle you with feats that will cause you to disbelieve your own eyes.”

The Pythians settled into a state of muttering acquiescence. A few even looked mildly excited. A voice from the back asked, “What sorta tricks d’you do?”

“I’ll perform no tricks! You will be privy to acts of mystery and wonderment that will shake the very bedrock of your belief concerning the laws of nature and the spiritual realm.”

“Oh, that’ll do nicely,” the voice chirped.

While the Pythians had been bickering, Cartouche surreptitiously dipped his left hand into his pocket, rubbing palm and fingers with potassium permanganate. Next, he’d slipped his right hand behind his back, where the boy sprayed it with a fine mist of glycerine from a bottle stashed in his cummerbund. When the magician clapped his hands the chemicals reacted, sending twin cones of red fire up from his palms, while smaller tongues leapt off his fingertips.

“That was quite something,” Sid Tuttle had to admit.

“Smoke and mirrors,” Hal muttered.

Cartouche led the Pythians through a host of standard illusions with the air of a man scattering pearls before swine. First he levitated the boy, passing a Hula Hoop over and above his hovering form—the magician’s hand obscured the hoop’s missing portion, allowing it to pass around the black iron pipe supporting the board. Next he performed the Zigzag: after locking the girl in an upright rectangular box with sections cut out for her face, hands, and one foot, he thrust wedges of sheet metal through. Dislodging the middle section, he made it appear as though the girl were divided in three. Though bent nearly double to effect the illusion, the girl managed to smile gamely, wriggling her toes and waving the red silk hankies clutched in each hand.