Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

The dust puffed up behind me as I ran. I hoped it would settle on her white uniform. I wished she wasn’t wearing the mask so she would breathe my dust and cough. But she never came out without the mask over her nose and mouth. The white cap was always pulled down tight over her forehead and completely covered her hair. In between were the big thick spectacles. She was completely protected. She didn’t speak to me, and she kept up with me easily, walking fast.

Chick was leaning on the arm of Arty’s chair as we came up. The two of them were watching something in the dust.

I heard Arty say, “Push them together.” Chick’s head nodded and a small grey snake rose a foot into the air, suspended from its middle like a shoestring, and then dropped back into the dust.

“They’re not paying attention,” said Arty.

“Good morning,” said Dr. Phyllis in her high, perfect voice. The snake and a horned toad rose quickly and flew away together into the desert. Chick hid his head against Arty’s chest.

“Doctor!” said Arty. “Take a look at this horse.”

She walked stiffly past me, her hands folded in front of her crotch. “I am not,” she said calmly, “a veterinarian.”

Arty jabbed his chin into Chick’s wheat-colored hair. “Scat!” he snapped. The child jumped away from the chair and turned to run. When he saw me, he reached out his soft hand and ran up to me.

“Let’s go see what Mama’s putting in the birthday cake,” I said. He smiled and we climbed into the van.

Chick sat on the counter, still except when his mouth opened to receive the gobbets of chocolate frosting that would occasionally lift from the bowl that Lil was dipping from. “Stop it, Chick,” Lil would murmur. And he would smile sweet chocolate at her, and the curl that dropped in front of her ear would stretch out in a soft caress over her cheek and then spring back. I crouched on the floor with my hump against the cupboard door and watched Arty and Dr. Phyllis through the open door.

Her white skirt was stretched tight over her thick legs and square hips. She was pushing her hands deep into her front pockets and rocking on her wedge heels. She gazed through the fence at the decrepit horse. Arty leaned back in his chair and looked up at her, smiling. I couldn’t hear what they said.

A brown blob danced in front of my nose. I opened my mouth. It dipped, circled in the air, and zipped onto my tongue. Frosting.

“Thanks, Chicky,” I mumbled. My cap slid forward onto my nose and then back to its original position. Dr. Phyllis leaned an elbow on the top board of the fence and turned her mask and spectacles toward Arty. She propped a white-gloved hand on her hip and nodded. I licked the last of the frosting out of my teeth and let it trickle down my throat.

“I wonder where the twins are,” said Lil. The cake was beautiful. Lil had cut it into the shape of two hearts that interlocked.

I gave the word to Horst and he went right away. He took a pair of musclemen along to help pull the little trailer. I sat on the step of the cat van, smelling the Bengals and waiting for Papa. There were a few cars moving on the distant street now. A barbershop had its door open and a curtain of red and white fly strips hung limp. The guards were drinking from big Thermoses at the end of the lot. It felt odd to be parked without the gates and the booths and the tops going up around me.

After a while Dr. Phyllis marched by, followed by Horst and the two bullies pulling the covered trailer. She had them park it next to her big van. Then she went inside her van. Horst came to me slowly. He dropped heavily onto the step beside me. “Horse thieving now!” he said.

“Papa will find its owner and pay for it.” The men were grunting and cussing inside the little trailer. The old horse would not get up.

“I wouldn’t feed that critter to an alley cat. Grey meat and little of it.”

One of the young men jumped out and stood at the tailgate to pull. With his hands wrapped in the dung-fouled tail he crouched and crab-walked backward. The pale, gaunt flanks hove into view. The flabby hooves and rear legs fell out onto the ground. The blond man inside the trailer was pushing from the other end. The horse rolled out and lay on the ground. Its head flopped down on the end of the long neck and lay still. The white flapping nostrils flared and drooped. The blond man hopped out of the trailer with a rope hackamore and fitted it onto the limp head. He clipped a rope to the chin ring and ran it to the axle of Dr. Phyllis’s van.

The guards were moving slightly, standing up, putting their Thermoses behind their stools. A big man crossed the street and walked across the rutted stubble of the lot. Papa. The two guards walked halfway to the vans with him and then went back to their posts. Papa came on. He looked angry.

Burkburnett had forbidden our opening on Sunday. We’d have to wait until the following day. Al was pissed off. He was cursing the cowardly advance man who had done a bunk the first time he ran into a snag. “Missing Friday and Saturday in Wichita Falls — and having to open on the slowest day of the week in a town that couldn’t buy a week’s worth of toilet paper for the crew!”

I told Papa what Arty wanted. Al groused but then went off to look for the owner of the horse.

At lunchtime, Lil realized she hadn’t seen the twins since breakfast. She flew into a panic and went jittering around on her high red heels with her hands clutching her own shoulders. She teetered from guard post to guard post questioning the big blank-faced men. “Ain’t seen ’em, ma’am. Couldn’t miss ’em if they’d come this way.” And they’d switch their chaws and wobble their eyes anxiously as she skittered away, hoping that the little freaks hadn’t slipped by them while they were swapping lies about hot nights in Baton Rouge.

Papa was somewhere talking to a man about a horse and I trailed after Mama piping, “Maybe so,” and “Ah, they’re all right!” and “Maybe they’re buried in the meat yard, shall I get some shovels?” in my most reassuring way as she burbled through her Mom’s-All-Purpose-Adjustable-List-of-Horrors that might have happened whenever a child is out of sight. Lil had got to the finger-twisting stage and all the red-haired girls turned out to look. We opened all the empty boxcars on the rail siding and examined all the padlocks on the big sliding doors to the packing plant and were on our way back through the camp line, stopping at every van, trailer, and truck camper. The whole show was on hold because Papa hadn’t given the set-up order yet, and Arty was occupied with something else.

Mama decided the twins were having a nap in their own room and we were on our way to look when I noticed the sky. It was a vague milky sheet. Far off at the dull edge of the plain, a blood-red line lay between the earth and the sky. As I watched, the red thickened to a bar and then a band, climbing the sky.

Arty and Chick were next to Dr. P.’s van at the end of the line. Dr. P. herself, arms cocked to plant her white gloves on her white hips, stood in front of Arty’s chair nodding her mummy-wrapped head. Chick looked like he was hiding behind Arty’s chair.

The wind was picking up. It riffled Chick’s hair and pushed Dr. P.’s skirt flat against her legs. Off to the side the old horse lifted its head on a curved and quivering neck, scrabbling at the earth with its mushy front hooves, trying to get grip enough to heave itself upright.

Horst trotted by me with the two guys who had moved the horse. I started to run. I could see Dr. P. opening her van door and waving for Chick to go in. Chick looked at her but both his hands were fastened to the arm of Arty’s chair. Arty’s chin was jerking toward the door and the doctor. Arty was telling Chick to go with her.