Chris Abani - The Secret History of Las Vegas

The midget boxing matches. Ferocious fighters. I wouldn’t want to tangle with them. Anyway, that’s what they did, but since the show only comes on at midnight, they didn’t need to make it back here until ten. For the rest of the time they were just gone.

Gone where, Salazar asked.

Just gone.

You’re not very good at giving alibis, are you, Salazar said.

I wasn’t aware that’s what I was supposed to be doing.

Sunil saw where that line of conversation was going and headed off the argument quickly. What do you know of their early life? Before they joined the carnival. Do you know what caused their mutation?

Everyone in the carnival is mutated in some way, Fred said, and we all come from within one hundred miles of each other.

Ah, Sunil said. Downwinders?

Yes, Fred said.

What the fuck are downwinders, Salazar asked. Some cult of farty mutants?

Downwinders are people adversely affected by the nuclear tests in Nevada because they lived downwind from the test sites, Sunil said. The wind literally blew the radiation through their farms, ranches, and towns, infecting them with radiation poisoning.

Of course, as soon as we began to complain, the government did everything they could to hush it up, Fred said.

I’m still not sure I’m buying this Mulder and Scully crap about the government and nuclear tests that can harm its own people, Salazar said. I mean, this is America, for fuck’s sake.

That’s partly how it works, Sunil said. The clinical term is cognitive dissonance, and trust me, a whole country can be infected with it.

So you’re telling me that radiation sickness from one bomb set off in Nevada in the fifties infected thousands of people, Salazar said. Give me a fucking break.

We aren’t talking about one bomb from the fifties. I don’t think you fully appreciate how extensive the testing is. Most of the current nuclear tests are conducted at five-thousand-foot depths right by the water aquifers that give this entire area its water — I mean, all the civilian populations, Indian reservations, farms, all of it, except the military base, which has its water brought in, to this day. This is the water most of us grew up drinking, bathing in, and watering our crops and livestock with. So you can imagine, Fred said.

The scale of it is staggering, Sunil said.

I still can’t believe the government would knowingly go along with this, Salazar said.

People magazine ran an article on the 1956 classic film The Conqueror that was filmed on location near St. George, Utah. Between 1956 and 1980, ninety-one members of the cast and crew came down with cancers, including Susan Hayward and John Wayne, Sunil said.

Which side are you on, Doc, Salazar said to Sunil. To Fred he said: Look, our nuclear power is part of what makes this country great.

As long as you don’t have to pay for it, Fred said. I grew up in a town within the danger zone. I remember seeing a mushroom cloud. I was playing in an abandoned mine with some other kids when we felt this wall of hot sand blow through the tunnel. We rushed for the exits. We’d been told not to look at the explosion because the intense light would make you blind. But I had to look, I just had to, and it was beautiful, the colors were unlike anything I’d ever seen before or since.

You shouldn’t have been playing in an abandoned mine. Where were your parents?

Fuck you, Detective.

Thank you for being so honest with us, Sunil began.

But?

He wanted to say, But I feel like you aren’t telling me the entire truth. I feel like you are holding something back. Instead he said, But nothing. I was wondering if you ever met Selah.

Yes, when I was twelve. My father used to run this carnival before me. He was deeply religious and he believed it was his divine mission to take care of the deformed, so wherever we traveled we tracked down locals with deformities and offered them a life of dignity with the carnival.

So your father took Fire and Water from Selah, Sunil asked.

Yes. She was in a bad way. She was dying of leukemia. She’d been exposed to radiation from an explosion, seen the cloud from within three miles of its epicenter.

So that’s why Water says she’s a tree? The mushroom cloud reminds him of a tree.

No, Fred said. The day after my father met Selah, we went to her cabin as agreed to collect the twins and put her in a hospice. We found the boys crying under a bristlecone tree a little up the trail from their house. It seemed Selah had hanged herself early that morning.

It was dark with the exception of one lamp on a table that cast a dim pool of light on the floor. In the gloom it seemed brighter than it really was. Water sat in a chair near the lamp, reading a copy of GQ, wondering if there would ever be a Hugo Boss suit or Dolce & Gabbana sweater designed with conjoined twins in mind. Beside him, under his caul, Fire snored.

The door was flung open and Brewster strode in, flicking the overhead fluorescent light on, bathing the room in harsh radiation.

Am I disturbing, he asked, and sat on the edge of the bed.

A very nervous nurse flitted by his elbow. They are Dr. Singh’s patients, he said. We should call him to come in before you ask them any more questions.

Brewster’s look shut him up.

Water put down the magazine. Fire shifted about under Water’s robe.

Why even bother reading a magazine like that, Brewster asked. Do you think with the right disguise you can fit in?

A completely blind chameleon still takes on the colors of its environment, Water said.

Is that what you are, a chameleon?

Water was silent.

I asked you a question, Brewster said. I’m not as soft as Dr. Singh, so answer me.

A vexillologist is an expert in the history of flags, Water said.

I know this is just an act you’re putting on, Brewster snarled.

Pope Pius II wrote an erotic book, Historia de duobus amantibus, in 1444, Water said.

I know you’re really the one in control here, Brewster said. I’ve seen your MRIs.

Michael Jackson holds the rights to the South Carolina state anthem, Water said.

Don’t play this game with me, Brewster said.

Black bears are not always black. They can be brown, cinnamon, yellow, and even white.

Do you know that I have the power to keep you here indefinitely?

A dog can hear frequencies that a human ear cannot, Water said.

And then before Brewster could speak again, Water began rocking and repeating facts, rapid-fire, leaving no room for Brewster to speak:

The infinity sign is called a lemniscate.

Take your height and divide by eight, that’s how tall your head is.

Pittsburgh is the only city where all major sports teams have the same colors: black and gold.

It is illegal to own a red car in Shanghai.

Zipporah was the wife of Moses.

Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy.

A baby eel is called an elver; a baby oyster is called a spot.

Paper bags are outlawed in grocery stores in Afghanistan. They believe paper is sacred.

Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark.

Shut up, shut up! Brewster said.

He was interrupted by the sound of Fire’s caul snapping open.

What the fuck is going on, he asked.

George W. Bush is related to every U.S. president from George Washington to Barack Obama, Water said. Barack and W are eleventh cousins.

Enough, Brewster said.

As soon as Dr. Singh comes in, I will be lodging a formal complaint, Fire said.

With that, he retreated under the caul, snapping it closed.

It’s just a matter of time, Brewster said, then you’re all mine.

From the small street off Fremont, the lights were close enough to touch. The sound of piped music was loud enough to make conversation hard, not that the group of boys, girls, men, and women strolling the short street was interested in talking. Even though prostitution was illegal in Las Vegas, the police never really bothered the workers there. They were pretty good at policing themselves, and at keeping drugs and violence, which was bad for business, out of their area.