Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

The cops arrested five novices that day and impounded the old school bus that they lived in. Behind its white curtains the bus was stacked with cases of canned goods intended for the good people of Hopkins. The police kept us there for a couple of days before they let us go.

Al hired two more cooks and some kitchen helpers, bought another kitchen truck, and relegated a couple of old tents to the followers for dining halls. He fumed, and Arty too was angry at having to spend the money to feed them all. Norval Sanderson took notes and collected clippings and asked questions.

Norval Sanderson was a curious man. He wanted to know everything. When he had exhausted all the Binewskis for the day, or was bored with the antics of the Admitted, he would stroll into the midway and continue his casually relentless examination of every event, phenomenon, skill, artifact, and personality that caught his eye. He wasn’t pushy. He was as patient and flexible as water on rock.

He was fascinated by popcorn machines and by the way cotton candy was spun. He charmed the redheads with his attentive interest in their uncountable chores and their extravagantly fascinating life stories. He was intrigued by the engines of the simp twisters and he plagued the mechanics with his probing about the drive lines and exhaust systems of the machines.

Sanderson engaged the customers in conversation and could discover astounding details about the truckers, lawyers, pea pickers, sea cooks, insurance peddlers, students, and factory workers who happened to be pitching coins at the ring toss or standing in line for the Roll-a-plane as he ambled by.

He never got tired of the midway. He scrupulously rode each of the simp twisters once when he first started haunting the show. After that he only watched them. But the games and the acts, the booths and the vendors didn’t get old for him. He turned the game managers into exuberant braggarts by inquiring about the details of their work and expressing amazement at their skills.

Al’s old front men told him how to find the district attorney or sheriff or mayor or police captain in each town who could be paid off with the proceeds of one fixed game, as a prophylactic against investigations of the roulette wheel and the baseball toss. They told him how to place posters, how to pry a license out of a reluctant bureaucrat, how to rent a site for a song, and all the comes and tells and scams of their craft.

The novices who handed out Arturan literature in the P.I.P. (Peace, Isolation, Purity) booths could count on being quizzed periodically about the reactions of passersby to each brochure or pamphlet.

The snack-stand vendors reported the flavors of Sno-kone or soda pop in vogue in a given locale and how the fashions varied geographically.

Sanderson watched practice sessions and rehearsals and then went to the shows to see the results. He knew the face and name and temperament of every cat Horst owned. He knew the blade capacity of each sword swallower and the octane rating of every fire eater. He knew the geek boys’ favorite philosophers and the brand of lotion that the tumblers rubbed on their aching joints before bed.

Whenever he could, he’d snag Horst or a Binewski to keep him company, to turn on the lights in the Haunted Gold Mine tunnel so he could see the springs and trip wires that triggered the sound tapes and the swooping skeletons or gaping corpses, or to walk him through the Chute describing the nature and origin of each glass-encased specimen. I myself have perched, embarrassed and bored, beside him in the stands of the variety tent, answering his endless questions as he gawked delightedly at Papa’s miniature circus, with its single ring and its dog act, jugglers, acrobatic clowns, and aerialists.

In the swallowers’ tent he watched gravely from the back and asked questions afterward.

When the Death Tower motorcyclists joined the Fabulon, he stuffed his ears with plastic foam so he could lean over the lip of the huge metal cylinder for hours, watching the riders gun their roaring machines against gravity.

He knew the twins’ repertoire by heart and could sing their most difficult and popular tune, “She Was a Salt-Hearted Barmaid,” with all its grace notes.

Of course he studied every delicate nuance of Arty’s show. He scouted the big tent well before Arty made his appearance for each session. Sanderson watched as the ten thousand places filled with the Admitted of varying status. The limbless lay on their bellies in the sawdust in front of the Holy Tank. The legless were behind them on the first slope of the risers. The bandages got ostentatiously thick further up where the ankle and knee crowd jostled each other. Beyond were the novices, all dressed in white and crushed close on the benches, waving their bandages proudly. Behind and above them in the highest bleachers were the unscathed newcomers, the curious, the scoffers, the occasional reporter, all antsy and jiggling to see Arturo the Aqua Man’s life-defying invitation to ultimate sanctity. Sanderson sketched charts of the hierarchy and wrote endlessly in his pocket-shaped notebooks.

But, of all the skims and grifts and skills and wonders of the Fabulon, Norval Sanderson’s particular favorite was a fairly new act housed in the smallish tent right next to Arty’s huge one. It was the least-spectacular turn the Fabulon had ever offered. Yet, though Sanderson would pump me or any other insider for details about the act and the actor, he didn’t want to meet the man himself or question him personally. “Some mysteries,” he’d drawl, “I’d like to preserve.” And I never resisted when Sanderson hailed me away from pumping septic tanks or counting tickets to join him in a scholarly viewing of “Mr. Ford’s luscious lariat.” I liked the Fly Roper, too.

His friends called him C. B. Ford. He was pot-bellied and bald and he tucked his pants into bright red, rose-stitched, pointy-toed cowboy boots with three-inch heels. There was a calm twinkle to his humor. He had quick hands and no interest at all in becoming an Arturan and tithing up his body parts. What he wanted, and what Arty gave him, was a permanent lease on the number 2 tent in the fairway. “Your big show and my little show,” he told Arty, “belong on the same card.”

His gift was his ability to bulldog and hogtie houseflies. He claimed to have learned it in the Shetland Islands, where the girls came thirty lonesome miles over the moors to drink nickel beer and see the flicks at the Coast Guard station. “But,” he laughed, “those girls were all set on getting to the States so you had to be careful with ’em. Nothing they’d like better than get knocked up by a Yank and have Papa herd him to the altar like one of their shit-dragging sheep.”

There isn’t much life in those dim latitudes, he would claim, but there were plenty of flies. And he learned the nature of flies from an old bosun who’d run away to sea from a meat-packing plant in Nebraska.

“Now the fly,” and he planted his heels and hooked out the silver tabs on his suspenders, “is not unlike the helicopter.” At this point his lariat would lift, whirling lazily, and begin to spin above his head in a convincing imitation of a fly’s orbit. “Your mother no doubt told you that you’d catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.… But we all know what flies really like best!” With his free hand he would reach over to the velvet-draped table and lift the domed silver lid off the shallow chafing dish. The candle beneath the dish would flutter slightly and the crowd would titter at the steaming pile of dung on its silver plate.

C. B. Ford was particular about the brand of shit he used. “Cow flop,” he once told me in confidence, “does not work well. It draws the flies just fine, but the folks in the audience can’t see it. It’s too runny and you can’t pile it so they can see it from the ground. It’s no good to me at all if it’s dry enough to stack. Dry I could pile it up like flapjacks halfway to the moon, but the flies don’t take much interest in it. Horse shit, of course, draws well if it’s just fresh, but it doesn’t have enough impact on the crowd. Somehow people accept horse shit. Nearly anybody would tell you that the smell is homey rather than bad. We want that bit of shock that you get with real shit shit. I won’t work with pig shit. Depends on what they’re eating but they can be loose as a cow and even when they’re firm that pig smell is too much for me. I hate it. So it comes down to either dog or human.”