Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

“What do you want?” Arty’s voice rose sharp and frail in the grey air. The twins stopped pushing, stood leaning against the steep slope. Iphy’s voice, pulling air awkwardly from the work, “You have to leave Chick alone, Arty.” And then Elly’s flat tone, “You have to realize that things can happen to you, too, Arty.”

“Stuff you. Both of you,” he snapped.

“All right.” Elly was pushing again. Iphy leaned into the slope, digging with her toes. The chair creaked on the rails. “Get me the fuck down!” Arty bellowed. “You’re dead, Elly Binewski. Your ass is fucking meat!” His huge voice floated thin on the air and all I could see was the edges of the wheels beyond the twins’ moving legs. They were at the dropoff point.

“It’s real, Arty,” Elly was whispering hoarsely. “Iphy couldn’t stop me and you know it.” Then Iphy, contradicting, “Oh, Arty, we would never really hurt you. Elly loves you. But you have to understand.”

“O.K. I give.” Arty was too quick. Elly knew him. “Not so easy, brother.”

From my paralyzed station on the rails I saw the Elly half straighten suddenly, erect, beside the hunched figure of Iphy. Her arms flew up, as though saluting a crowd. “Hang on!” shrieked Iphy, her hunched shoulders disappearing as the wheelchair slipped forward and dangled over the edge of the drop. Only Iphy’s long hands held it now.

“No! Uncle! I give!” wailed Arty.

From below and behind us came a horrified bellow, “Get the hell DOWN from there, you stupid little bastards!” It was the point guard, Papa’s Marine, gaping at us from the ground in shock.

Elly’s arms flipped down and she hunched beside Iphy, grabbing the back of the wheelchair again. “It’s all right,” hollered Elly. “We’re coming!”

Then one sneakered foot slid, slowly, down a few inches, then the other, moving toward me. I backed down jerkily, so relieved I could have puked, while the guard’s huge shoulders below us bobbed back and forth, his arms stretched out to catch us if we should fall, his voice rumbling that our old man would have his ass as well as his job if we dropped off that goddamn girder while he was on duty and he fucking well KNEW that we knew better, until we were all on the ground trundling along in our own sweat, peaceful and relaxed, nodding at the guard. Arty silent and Elly and Iphy smiling sweetly.

Arty made me take him to his stage and unbuckle his straps and leave him alone. He wouldn’t talk at all.

I was furious when I came out and saw the twins strolling off to rehearse with their sheet music. I stalked up to Elly and gave her my fiercest glare. “You tried to kill him.”

Iphy reached toward me, as if to give me a hug, “Oly, she didn’t tickle me or anything. She just let go.” Elly dragged her on, and snapped back at me, “You’re just Arty’s dog! He’d kill us all and you’d stand there holding his towel.” They sailed on.

Papa took some of Mama’s pills and slept that day and through the night that followed. The show closed at 9 P.M. and the camp shut down by 10. Even with my cupboard door shut I could hear the rattle and gasp of Papa snoring. It seemed pitiful. I couldn’t stand hearing it.

I crawled out in my flannel nightgown and went barefoot through the door and down the hard clay ruts past the dim grey vans and trailers. There were lights on in the redheads’ windows but I wanted Arty.

The guard at the back steps of his stage truck nodded as I went in. It was warm and humid in the dark. The heated water tank kept the backstage tropical.

Arty hollered, “Yes,” when I knocked. He was lying on the bed with the maroon satin bedspread, reading. I crawled up beside him.

“Who do you think it was,” I asked, “the guys who stuck up Papa?”

Arty squinted at me for a second. I was asking but I didn’t want to know. Maybe he decided to teach me a lesson.

“Remember last summer’s geek?” He pretended to be looking at his book.

“The yellow-haired boy from Dartmouth?”

“George. They were his fraternity brothers at college.”

I nodded. Arty tipped his head so he could scratch his nose with a flipper.

“The guy Chick moved. Was he hurt bad?”

Arty shook his head slightly. “Fractured skull. He’ll be all right. What bothers me is that they got Papa’s kick. That means they got paid twice.”

My head did a slow interior waltz and swooped back to the same word. Twice. So it was Arty who stole the money from the safe, or arranged it. Where would he get explosives? Or learn to use them? I stared at him as he lay against the maroon pillow. He had changed without my noticing. He was thicker. His neck was heavily muscled and set solidly into his heavy chest. Beneath the thin, sleeveless shirt his muscle was as defined as ever but larger, bulkier. Even the wrist joints of his flippers seemed strong. Where the three long toes of his hip fins bent to clutch the bedspread, I saw a curling fuzz of hair clouding the top of each knuckle. I stared. It was the only hair I had ever seen on his glass-clean body. I knew than that he’d gone outside and away from me. For the past few months I’d scarcely seen him. All the hours of every day he had been on his own — not just escaping the irritations of Chick and the twins and their rival stardom, but befriending the geek, talking to people I didn’t know, talking talk I hadn’t heard, making phone calls without me to dial for him.

I complained, “Taking the money was against the family. Scaring Papa was against the family.”

His eyes stayed closed but his head rolled impatiently on the pillow, “Not in the long run.”

I couldn’t understand that. The angry, weak sounds of Papa’s story, the way those tinhorn brats had stampeded him, Papa the Brawl Buster, Al the Boss, the Ringmaster, Papa the Handsomest Man. I felt robbed. My champion was revealed as a scam and I was embarrassed at all the years I’d let myself feel that Papa was any protection at all. It was Arty’s fault.

I opened my mouth to blame Arty, to yell. But there was something odd about him. He was curling slowly onto his side, tighter and smaller. His face was stony except for a puckering twitch beside the long, pale ovals of his closed eyes. A tear squeezed out from under one lid and disappeared immediately into the creasing flesh. It was years since I’d seen Arty cry, not since he abandoned tantrums and went over to the cool, hard image he admired. But it might not have been a tear. His eyes opened and stared past me.

“Elly,” he said. “I’d kill her but the cunt would take Iphy with her out of spite. And Chick! Can’t anybody but me see what he is? What he’ll do to us? He’ll end up smashing this whole family like an egg if we’re not careful.” His eyes swiveled at me in a queer begging gesture.

“You’re jealous,” I sneered. “You want to be the only star!”

He threw himself back on the pillow. On any other face his expression would have said despair and resignation. “Yeah, you too, I know. He’s cute. Almost like a norm. And he’s innocent. As innocent as an earthquake.

“Papa gave all those solemn orders of secrecy when he was born but it’s Papa who brags and puts Chick on jobs outside where people can see him moving things. There’s nobody on the lot that doesn’t know! They come on in Pittsburgh, quit in Tallahassee, and tell all their friends and the lady next to them on the bus. How long, Oly? How long before the Feds are tucking us all behind barbed wire in the interests of national security?” He’s leaning over, glaring at me, shouting.

“Oh, Arty.” It came out soft from my throat. Tired. “You’re just making excuses.”

Now he grew angry, rigidly upright, balanced on his hip flippers and quivering. “Hey! Did you ever think maybe I deserve what I get? Hey? Elly is nothing. She couldn’t get a job in a B-bar playing that plinka-plinka crap. All she’s got is Iphy. Papa gave it to them on a platter.