Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

“These guys were crazy young. The kind that show up in the spring to hire on and swear they’ll stay forever but they speak good English and their teeth are straight and you know they’ll go back to college in September but you hire them anyhow, even though they make stupid mistakes and wallop their own feet with the mallets, and every other year or so one of them decides to unionize the ride jocks and tries to go out on strike. But they work hard and they’re lively and they keep the redheads sparkling.”

Papa took a deep breath and stopped. Horst grunted encouragingly around his pipe stem, and Mama got up to refill the lemonade glasses. Papa sipped and sighed.

“I was six kinds of jerk-off not to take you with me, Horst. These guys amble through the door looking like college kids and one of them has a handgun that looks like the CO 2pistols we used to use on the neighborhood cats. He levels this thing at me and I’m sitting there like a geeked capon, my mouth flopped open, and Chick crunching carrots beside me. The one with the gun starts some ‘Hey, Mr. B.’ kind of street snot, and one of the others goes into the bathroom and turns the water on in the tub, hard. The third guy takes the transmitter out of my hand and rips the mike cord out of my shirt and walks me over to the wall to splay out so he can feel me down.

“The other guy comes in, the guy in the red sweats from the casino, and Chick turns up the TV volume. I guess he couldn’t hear with all the fuss. And I’m still spread out, hands on the wall, looking over my shoulder. The one little asshole has a hand in the small of my back to keep me there and the punk in red nods and goes to the bathroom door and the water quits and he and the guy from in there come out and he nods at Chick.

“This guy in red has a little popgun and he leans on the wall near me while the other fucker picks up Chick, just like that, and I turn around yelling and the other two grab me and slam me against the wall. That’s when Chick noticed there was something wrong. He yelped and they covered his mouth. This one bastard loops a belt over my elbows behind my back and cranks it tight, and the other cocksucker crams a pair of my own socks in my mouth while he holds the popgun to my head. They shove me over to the bathroom door and the guy in red gives an order, and the guy holding Chick puts him into the full bathtub, clothes and all. There’s a rag tied around Chick’s mouth and …”

Papa stopped to gulp lemonade and then sop the sweat from his nose and forehead and cheeks. Mama is frozen, staring at him.

“So Chick’s up to his neck with his eyes bulging at me over the gag and the guy in red leans close to me and says, ‘Now, Mr. B., this is just to let you know how very sincere this message is,’ and he tells me to keep out of the gambling joints. That I’m treading on staked turf and I should go home and be nice. Then the creeping little reptile says, ‘Now we’re going to show you how it could be if you didn’t understand us.’ And he nods and the guy who’s clamped onto Chick starts pushing him under. Chick is looking at me and kicking and splashing and I jump, and I don’t know what happened. I must have bumped the guy because he fell over the tub and bounced off the wall. Chick went to the bottom and the bastards were clubbing and clawing me.

“Next thing, I’m sitting in the tub yanking Chick out of the water while one fucker leans over me with a wet gun. His two buddies are worried over the guy on the floor, the one who pushed Chick under. He’s out cold and there’s blood running out of his ears and nose. They haul him out through the door and the one with the gun backs out after them. Last thing he says is, ‘Take it to heart, Mr. B. No betting games. Not here. Not anywhere.’

“The bastards got my kick, too. Found it in my socks. Didn’t even bother with my wallet. They knew I wouldn’t call the cops. Chick cried all night.”

Papa closed his eyes and smoothed both big arms around the now sleeping Chick. Mama’s voice was hoarse and puzzled. “Chick wasn’t afraid of them?”

Papa didn’t answer. I watched Arty, who was staring at the ceiling in ferocious concentration. I knew it as though I’d been there. Chick had cried, not because he was afraid, but because he’d moved the guy and hurt him, cracked him against the wall.

Mama sent us all out so Papa could nap.

• • •

It was an iron-grey morning with a low sky. By the time I pulled a sweater over my head, Elly and Iphy had Arty strapped into his chair and were pushing him down the row behind the midway, talking at him. I ran to catch up. Elly was demanding, in a hard voice, “How did you do that to them, Arty? I know you did it. I want to know how.” Arty wagged his head in denial. Iphy leaned forward, touching Arty’s neck gently. “Arty, the Chick looked terrible. And Papa. Why do you hate the Chick? You mustn’t …” Elly slapped Iphy’s hand back.

Catching up, I grabbed an arm of the chair and trotted along as it trundled down the dirt track. “It’s not Arty’s fault,” I protested.

Elly snorted at me, pushing the chair faster. Iphy shook her head mournfully, “You don’t know, Oly.”

“For shit’s sake!” Arty snapped. “Oly, call Papa. Go get Papa!”

“Don’t you dare bother Papa now,” Elly drilled at me. I hopped along beside them in dithering bewilderment. Arty stretched his chin toward the chair’s motor-control stick, but Elly’s hand whipped to his shoulder and yanked him sharply back, holding him. “Just sit still. We’re taking you for a ride.”

“Morning, kids!” hollered the point guard. “Morning,” chirped Elly. The show was sluggish in stirring this morning. It might rain and the redheads were yawning in their wagons.

“Take me to my stage,” Arty ordered, his eyes flicking at me.

“This way, Elly, Iphy,” I pointed, trotting back a few steps to lead the way. Elly pressed her lips and walked faster in her own direction with Iphy, sadly determined, pushing beside her. When I caught up again they were on the rear ramp of the deserted Mad Mouse roller coaster. Arty twisted in his straps to glare at the twins. “You stupid shits!” he snarled.

Elly grinned. “Are you scared, Arty?”

“Elly, don’t,” I wailed. “Iphy, don’t let her.”

The wheels of Arty’s chair were on the rails that the Mouse cars rode. Elly and Iphy, planting their white sneakers on the ties between the rails, bent their backs and pushed as the chair slid up the tracks, climbing the steep slope.

The Mouse cars hooked onto a chain-driven winch that ground its way up the center of this slope and brought them to the highest dropoff point, where gravity would carry them and their whooping, screaming cargo down through steep-banked turns with the customers’ hands glommed sweating onto the safety bars.

“Please, Elly!” I hollered as the damp earth dropped away beneath me. I couldn’t stand up on the tracks, but crept upward on all fours, shaking as I stared down past the black oiled chain with its heavy prongs to the flattened grass and mud below. I imagined the twins’ sneakers above me, slipping, tripping, tangling, and the twins crumpling to the rails and losing their grip on the chair, which — in my slow-motion mind — tipped backward over the big rear wheels, toppling over the sprawling twins and slamming down at the wrong angle so that its aluminum frame with its hogtied cargo went shuddering down the now thirty-five, now forty, now forty-five feet to the clanging smash of the mud.

“Arty?” I yelled, with my fists frozen to the rails.

Elly’s hiss sizzled down at me, “Shut up.”

I crouched and stared up the rails at the broad pumping hips and thin legs straining into their sneakers. They were very close to the top.