Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

It may seem odd that I have no idea what town we were in, but when the show was alive and functioning — especially at night — it felt like the whole world and it always looked the same no matter where we were. In the daylight we might notice that we were in Coeur d’Alene or Poughkeepsie, but at night all we knew was us.

The Bag Man had scribbled and handed us pages for an hour and a half or so. I stood beside Arty, taking each sheet and holding it up for him to read, reading over his shoulder, then adding the sheet to the pile that grew up on the console table. Arty was silent, waiting, reading patiently. Occasionally the Bag Man would pause while we read a certain page, watching anxiously to see if we understood. When Arty nodded at him he would go back to the furious scribbling. Sometimes the print was so hurried that it was hard to read. Once Arty read the page out loud and asked the Bag Man if that was what it said. The Bag Man gurgled and bobbed gingerly and went on writing. Twice Arty asked questions that the Bag Man answered on paper. I had never seen Arty so patient for so long with one norm. Finally the Bag Man stopped writing and sat back. He watched us read the final page. It said, “I keep my mother’s garden and watch TV.”

Arty edged around in his chair and took a sip from his straw.

“Well,” he said finally, “what can we do for you?”

The Bag Man hunched forward and wrote. The page said, “Let me stay with you. Work for you. Take care of you.”

Arty stared at the page for a long time. Then he looked at the Bag Man. “Take off your veil,” he said. The Bag Man hesitated. His hands jigged hysterically in his lap. Then they rose to his head. He lifted off the cap. The veil was tied on. He pulled at a cord and the veil fell down over the front of his shirt. Arty looked. I looked. It was pretty bad. There were a couple of patches of hair growing on one side of his head. The one live eye swiveled and jerked over us nervously. The rest was raw insides bubbling through plastic. Arty sighed.

“You’ll have to learn to type. This handwriting business doesn’t cut it. We’ll get you a machine.”

“We didn’t go to his trial?” I tried to remember but nothing came. The last hard picture I had was the lady at the reception desk staring at us as Al carried us out the door of the emergency ward. Arty slumped against his throne and stared moodily at Chick. Chick was lying flat on the floor watching an almost invisible green thread weave intricate patterns in the air three feet above his nose.

“No,” Arty finally grunted. He straightened and looked at me curiously. “You must have been asleep when the guy from the prosecutor’s office came.”

“I don’t remember.”

“We were hightailing it for Yakima. Al cancelled all the shows between Coos Bay — where it happened — and Yakima. He wanted to get far away from that parking lot and everything connected with it. We were still in the thirty-eight footer, remember. No add-on sections in those days. We pulled in at one of the big rest areas, still on the Oregon side, to wait for the caravan to catch up with us. They were strung out for fifty miles, Al was going so fast. Lil was nervous and jumping up to look at all of us every five minutes.”

“This was just before I was born, right?” Chick rolled his eyes toward Arty and the green thread straightened into an arrow.

“A matter of days,” said Arty. “There were only a half-dozen rigs with us and Al was working the radio on the others, giving out our location, when an official car pulled into the rest area and the guy got out. A tidy beard and a three-piece suit. He took a look at the line and tucked a clipboard under his arm and headed straight for us.

“Al was sitting in the pilot’s seat watching him. He just said the one word, ‘Police,’ and Lily and I clammed up. The twins were asleep and I guess you were too, Oly. Al got up and let the guy in when he knocked. He sat down but he couldn’t get comfortable with me there, across from him in the booth. Al offered him coffee and the guy refused. He stuck to his papers. He was in a hurry to leave. He wanted us to come back and testify at the trial. Al refused. The guy left. Al started talking guns and security systems. Not long after Chick was born, the guard routine started. The whole thing made Al paranoid as hell. And Lil was dipshit, naturally. I learned a lot from it myself.”

Arty watched the green thread tie itself in knots in the air and then slither out into a limp line. “I thought I told you to get rid of that bastardly mold,” he muttered.

“I will.” Chick lay quite still and the thread became a small transparent bubble. “It’s nice stuff, though. Comfortable, peaceful. I like it.”

From the notes of Norval Sanderson:

Arturo Establishes the Aristocracy of Conspicuous Absences and Superfluous Presences:

“Consider the bound feet of the Mandarin maiden … and the Manchu scholar who jams his hands into lacquered boxes so his fingernails grow like curling death. Even the Mexican welder sports one long polished nail on his smallest finger which declares to the world, ‘My life allows superfluity.’ I have this whole finger to spare, unnecessary to my labor and unscathed by it!”

—

Arturo Binewski to N.S

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Impressions:

Fortunato — aka Chick (origin of nickname?), 10-year-old male child — blond, blue eyes. Totally normal physique of the tall, thin variety. Withdrawn, introverted. Very shy except with family. Occasionally referred to as “Normal Binewski” by Arturo

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The youngest of the Binewski children, Fortunato evidently serves as chore boy and workhorse for the others. He is generally depreciated for his lack of abnormality and has been made to feel dramatically inferior to his “more gifted” siblings. A reversal of the position a deformed child occupies in a normal family. The boy spends most of his time tagging after Dr. Phyllis, the cult surgeon

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The doctor, being a normally formed person, may provide nonjudgmental affection lacking in the boy’s family. The Binewskis and all the show folk in general seem to avoid the subject of Fortunato. He is, perhaps, an embarrassment

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Why Only Red-Haired Women Work in the Midway of Binewski’s Fabulon

Note: Male crew members — members of acts, booth tenders, mechanics, etc., are not required to conform to any dress or appearance code. Non-show wives and other female relatives traveling with the show, but not appearing in any way, are not required to meet an appearance code

.—

ALL

female performers and workers directly involved in the Fabulon operation — whether snake dancing or selling popcorn — are required to have red hair of a particular bright, though apparently (or possibly) natural shade. Dyeing hair or wearing a wig of the appropriate shade satisfies the requirements as long as the individual agrees never to appear in public without the wig, etc. The only exceptions are the Binewski females themselves — Crystal Lil, platinum blonde; Siamese twins, Electra and Iphigenia, black hair; Olympia the dwarf, hairless, wears caps of various kinds

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Reasons given by those questioned:

Al Binewski: “Just a visual consistency, like a uniform. Kind of cheerful look that holds the show together. Customers can tell a show employee by their hair color.”

Crystal Lil: “Al always had a kindness for that color hair. His mother had red hair. And in a crowd we can pick out our girls easily.”

Olympia: “They always had red hair. I don’t know why.”