A Choir of Ill Children (24 page)

“I’ve never heard of it before,” I say.

“You ain’t from the bottoms.”

“I got sick last year on that damn whirligig,” Darr declares. “Thing’s all rusted to shit with a gearbox that sounds like it’s packed with dirt. It was sorta fun before the getting sick part.”

Clay the conjure boy, easy rider with uneasy eyes, holds my gaze tirelessly. He’s barely sweating in the heat but the ropy veins stand out along his forearms and neck as he poles us along. He seems to be reading signs everywhere he looks—in each mound we pass, along every gator’s back, and in each line of my face.

I smile and say, “Let’s go.”

D
OZENS OF SKIFFS FLOAT IN THE SHALLOWS, SOME
tied to decaying docks, other fastened to branches of water elm or simply landed in the weeds. Drifting slowly in an eddy leading to a heap of bull grass, low out on a sandbank, we bump against the tiny island of morass. The titi shakes and waves as we go by. Clay swings the skiff in that direction and comes up to the tussock on the opposite side so we don’t have to get our feet wet. The music is distant but loud, and Darr begins tapping his boot and humming along. Banjos, harmonicas, and jug pipes carry on the rigid breeze. Clay is wary, taking everything in but rejecting its face value.

Lottie Mae’s veneer is good but not perfect. From the corner of my eye I see her sexy pout occasionally droop with a quivering bottom lip. She’s terrified. I scare the hell out of her but it’s something more too.

I turn and tell her, “Don’t worry.”

The lip stiffens, her smile broadens. Body heat is turned up high and I try not to gulp air. I don’t mind playing along and letting her spring whatever snare she’s designed, but I want to see this goddamn carnival first.

“I’m not worried,” she says. Darr grins like a mental deficient and Clay holds the front of the skiff flawlessly while we step out. He continues watching, searching—perhaps for the same answers I am.

“This what you were after?” he asks.

“I’m supposed to meet a geek here,” I say.

“I thought you didn’t know about the carnival.”

“I didn’t realize it was here tonight.”

“So why meet the geek?”

“He’s got something important to tell me.”

“How do you know that?”

“My best friend Drabs Bibbler mentioned it before the Holy Spirit took him away for good.”

“I see.”

Just saying it brings the rage kicking back into my guts. For the first time I believe Drabs’s many tongues with true resolution. I hope he’s here, if he’s not already dead, so that I can beg his forgiveness for never doing a good enough job in defending him from God.

I know many of the folk as they wander by. I’m an anomaly here, but that’s normal enough. I get smiles and offers of shine. There’s Sap Duffy and Tab Ferris over there getting ready to draw knives over a fat woman whose thighs look like they might go on a rampage without her. Hert Plumb and Gussy Hocker are both chewing on fried frogs’ legs that really belong to firebelly toads. Lonnie Dawson has a mouthful of jerky that’s been cured for so long it might belong to the donkey that carried Jesus over the palm leaves.

It’s not a carnival in any real sense of the word and hardly even qualifies as a festivity. This must be what it’s like here when they’re having one of their swamp weddings or revivals out in the bog. The folk are bored and restless but perhaps not as much so as usual. Almost none of them are daring enough to get onto the squealing, rusted rides. The clowns can only be picked out by their poorly painted features and shabby wigs. They wear the same clothes and boots as anybody else and they don’t know how to juggle their little orange balls worth a shit.

Still, there is cotton candy and plenty of gator wrestling, ball throw, and ring toss, and the occasional sprinkles of laughter. Small tents have been set up and are selling hot dogs, pretzels, and chicken wings. Trailers, trucks, and semi cabs are lined up around the rides: they’ve got a five-horse merry-go-round, salt and pepper chugalug shakers, the whirligig, and a small Ferris wheel that’s maybe twice the height of a man. Darr was right. The gearboxes screech.

Somewhere nearby there’s target shooting going on. Sounds like they’re using .30–06. ammo, plugging anything crawling around on the embankments.

Darr finds himself some moonshine and offers it around. “Here, have a tap.”

Lottie Mae is about to take a sip when I grab the mason jar from her and take a whiff. I pour a small amount of the shine into the metal lid. I flick my lighter and set the alcohol on fire, watching it burn. A solid orange flame flickers and pops.

“Dump it out,” I tell him.

“Why? I just paid six bits for that.”

“Good shine burns a low blue flame. This shit’s been distilled through a car radiator.”

Frowning, Darr takes a long swig and grins. “Nothing wrong with this. I’ve drank worse in prison. My pa used to make pruno out of raisins and rubbing alcohol, let it ferment in the toilet. He was a sterno drinker and I wound up with a taste for it too myself. Compared to that this shine is like two-hundred-year-old brandy. Besides, it’s a party. You’re supposed to get fucked up.”

We walk along for a while and I buy Lottie Mae some cotton candy. She’s compelled to take it even though she doesn’t seem to want it, or else she just doesn’t want it from me. There’s an odd but prevalent sense that we’re on a chaperoned date that adds another element to everything we say and do. I almost enjoy it in a way.

After playing some ring toss and knocking down a few milk jugs with softballs, we wander around for another few minutes while I search for my brothers, Drabs, and the geek.

“Where’s the sideshow?” I ask.

“Doesn’t look like they have one,” Clay says.

If they call this a carnival then there has to be a freak show, and the Holy Spirit has never lied to Drabs before. I keep my eyes open and so does Clay. Darr is getting pretty stewed and he’s eaten five hot dogs already. He’s got to heave pretty soon, I think, and I wonder what Clay will read in the vomit.

I spot a kid who’s maybe ten years old, laughing his little ass off and carrying a water snake by the tail. It’s a bizarre, ugly sound and it catches my attention. The boy slips through some mimosa leaves and heads behind one of the trailers. I follow.

“Where are you going?” Lottie Mae asks.

There’s a crowd back there forming a circle. Sap Duffy and Tab Ferris are still pissed off about the fat woman, but they’re interested enough to put it on hold for a while.

I press my way through.

The geek rests in a mudhole surrounded by filthy straw while folks pitch pennies and toss snakes at him. Dogs snap and bark at him. He’s lost both legs just above the knee and his left arm is gone at the shoulder. His beard is tangled with briars and there are open sores on his neck where he’s rubbed himself raw in the sewage of the bayou.

He sucks at a jug of shine that wouldn’t just burn a bright orange if you lit it, that booze would simply detonate. It’s probably three-quarters radiator fluid.

Snakes land in his lap and he bites their heads off without fanfare. It means no more to him than chomping into a hamburger. No one in the audience gasps or claps or cares much at all. Half of them have handled serpents in church, and they’ve been bitten or done the biting many times before. This isn’t freakish or overly entertaining, but at least it’s something to do.

Darr says, “Toss him two bits. I remember this guy from last year. He’ll chew the head off anything. I’m not even sure if he takes all the money. Just enough to keep him in booze and he leaves the rest in the dirt.”

“Leave me with him.” My voice isn’t entirely mine. It comes from far away and is brimming with subdued insanity. It whisks by and keeps on going.

“Pardon me?”

“You heard.”

Darr isn’t used to shine and it’s made him a touch more belligerent. Violence wavers in his eyes. Maybe he wishes we had swords or sabers to duel with, just for the fun of it.

“I don’t believe I liked the way you said that.”

“I don’t believe I care much.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Go away.”

Lottie Mae knows me well enough by now to begin plucking at Darr’s arm, trying to draw him away. The seductive sex kitten is gone and I’m glad for it, I like her a lot better without the act. Clay cocks his head, curious about these unfolding events, wondering how they fit together and how they’ll play out. Darr grins like he’s got chicken bones jammed in his teeth.

I wait for it and it doesn’t take him long. He throws a looping roundhouse right that’s on target but way too slow. He hates fencing, he says, but really that’s all we’ve been doing since we’ve met. I duck under his shot and keep going, dipping low until I’m at his boot. I draw the knife and hit the button, listening to the nice heady click of the blade popping open. I slash him in exactly the same place as before, right at the beginning of his middle strip of hair. Blood pours into his eyes and he roars with laughter. He trembles and his stomach rumbles and Lottie Mae and Clay drag him off into the brush, where he throws up all his hot dogs and beer and shine. He doesn’t want a fight, just some action. I know the feeling.

The geek looks up.

“Hello, Dad,” I whisper.

H
IS FAILURES LED HIM INTO THE HEART OF THE MILL
, where he’d even failed to kill himself.

He doesn’t recognize me. He lives inside his own etherized brain now. I spin in the silt and slime frothing beneath him as I get down on one knee and search his eyes, hoping to find some hint of the man he’d once been. There isn’t any.

Folks are still tossing coins, vipers, chicken innards, and dog shit. I pick up a cottonmouth snake, bite a chunk out of its tail and spit it back at them. It does the job and gets their attention.

I say, “That’s enough for now. Get away from here.”

Reactions range from melancholy to animosity, and I wait for somebody else to try something. They’ve all seen what’s gone on between me and Darr, and I’m surprised to find that I’m still holding on to the switchblade. Faces begin to turn away. Sap Duffy and Tab Ferris get back to clobbering each other over the fat woman’s unsightly thighs again. The kids start in on their cotton candy. A few of them collect the pennies left in the mud. There’s no reason to waste good money if the geek’s not going to eat shit.

Starving dogs nose at him, licking up the chicken parts. I shove them aside but they snarl and get right back on him until I grab a stick and start prodding them away. I notice that their rumps are covered with boot prints.

My father is unrecognizable but I still get the feeling they knew who he was and were just enjoying the hell out of the fact. I scan the area and know that Maggie’s nearby. She’s been with him since that day he leaped into the machinery of the mill, and she’s taken care of him as best as she could.

What kind of luck, determination, will, or love has saved him? He must’ve dragged himself free or been pulled out from the twisting, grinding, shrieking cogs and belts only to achieve this self-made fate. Christ, he must be laughing down there, deep down in his basal ganglia.

I grab him by the collar, lift and shake him. I yank him close until we’re nose to nose. He weighs nothing, and I know that if I toss him in the air he’ll just float away.

“Wake up,” I tell him. “Dad. It’s me. It’s Thomas.”

My name—which is his name—sounds strange and foreign to me, as if it should not be said aloud in his presence. He doesn’t stir but his hand reaches out for his bottle. He doesn’t even know that he’s no longer on the ground. I slap him, trying to get him to focus on me, but if there’s any spark of my old man left in there it’s already run for cover.

Driven wild by his human needs, his lust for Maggie, and his own guilt, incapable of stopping himself even after my mother found out, he was still compelled by his jealousy when Mama started stepping out. He couldn’t bear the realization that she had become another juke joint swamp rat whore because of him.

“Look at me, Dad.”

There’s no reason for me to kill him if he doesn’t know it’s me doing it.

My father had discovered me that day sleeping near the corpse of a strangled boy. Did he think I’d done it? He must’ve hidden Johnny Jonstone’s body and later on come back to retrieve it. My God, but why put the kid up in the attic? Why not kick him into the river? Instead he’d wrapped Johnny in plastic and laid him in the trunk where his forefathers had laid all of their secrets as well. Was he doing it to protect me or only to punish himself? And how many times had he gone up there over the years and stared at that dried-out mummified boy?

And there, behind the palms, I see my dad’s boots jutting out, same as the night I was hit by lightning.

It’s the dog kicker.

I part the leaves and Maggie stands there in my father’s shoes, filled with her own frenzy. I, who am her husband before the eyes of heaven, didn’t ever really want her. But my father did.

No wonder she kicks dogs. She not only protects me but also guards my dad. She has become his legs now, driving off the hounds that lap at his neck, but her anger can’t be contained by the bayou. Every dog in Potts County is an evil reminder of what he’s become.

“Where are my brothers?” I ask her.

She smiles and begins to laugh as she moves, in spasms, directly into my arms. Before I can hold her to me, and let loose with all that I want and all that I hate, she prances backward out of my father’s boots and vanishes into the scrub.

My father raises his eyes. Drabs said he’d talk to me for the price of a pint of moonshine. I toss six bits at the stumps of his legs.

“So, what do you have to say?”

His failures, defeats and nearsightedness have driven him to this, as mine have also brought me here. He had no other choice, which means that his love, and mine too, added to the killing of him.

In some ways he’s better off than I am. His tongue slithers between his broken black teeth and swollen blue lips. He opens his mouth and begins laughing weakly, and hearing that hideous sound is like listening to a choir of ill children.