Ashes (10 page)

“He’s more human than you’ll ever be,” the Fat Lady says, without turning her head.

“Oh, yeah? Give us both a kiss and then tell me who loves you.” He has pulled a yellow ball from somewhere and tosses it back and forth between his feet. “Except you better kiss me first because you probably won’t have no lips left after him.”

“He would never hurt me,” she says. She smiles at me. “Would you?”

I try to think, try to make my mouth around the word. My throat. All my muscles are dumb, except for my tongue. I taste her perfume and sweat, the oil of her hair, the sex she had with someone.

Voices spill from the tent flap. The barker is back, this time with only four people. Juggles hops to his feet, balances on one leg while saluting the group, then dances away. He doesn’t like the barker.

“Hello, Princess Tiffany,” says the barker.

The Fat Lady grins, rises slowly, groans with the effort of lifting her own weight. I love all of her.

“For a limited time only, a special attraction,” shouts the barker in his money-making voice. “The world’s fattest woman and the bottomless Murdermouth, together again for the very first time.”

The Fat Lady waves her hand at him, smiles once more at me, then waddles toward the opening in the tent. She waits for a moment, obliterating the bright lights beyond the tent walls, then enters the clamor and madness of the crowd.

“Too bad,” says the barker. “A love for the ages.”

“Goddamn, I’d pay double to see that,” says one of the group.

“Quadruple,” says the barker. “Once for each chin.”

The group laughs, then falls silent as all eyes turn to me.

The barker beats on the cage with his stick. “Give them a show, freak.”

I eat the finger again. It is shredded now and bits of dirt and straw stick to the knuckle. Two of the people, a man and a woman, hug each other. The woman makes a sound like her stomach is bad. Another man, the one who would pay double, says, “Do they really eat people?”

“Faster than an alligator,” says my barker. “Why, this very one ingested my esteemed predecessor in three minutes flat. Nothing left but two pounds of bones and a shoe.”

“Doesn’t look like much to me,” says the man. “I wouldn’t be afraid to take him on.”

He calls to the man with him, who wobbles and smells of liquor and excrement. “What do you think? Ten-to-one odds.”

“Maynard, he’d munch your ass so fast you’d be screaming ‘Mommy’ before you knew what was going on,” says the wobbling man.

Maynard’s eyes narrow and he turns to the barker. “What do you say? I’ll give you a hundred bucks. Him and me, five minutes.”

My barker points the stick toward the tent ceiling. “Five minutes. In the cage with that thing?”

“I heard about these things,” says the man. “Don’t know if I believe it.”

My mouth tastes his courage and his fear. He is salt and meat and brains and kidneys. He is one of them. I love him.

He takes the stick from the barker and pokes me in the shoulder.

“That’s not sporting,” says the barker. He looks at the man and woman, who have gone pale and taken several steps toward the door.

Maynard rattles the stick against the bars and pokes me in the face. I hear a tearing sound. The woman screams and the man shouts beside her, then they run into the night. Organ notes trip across the sky, glittering wheels tilt, people laugh. The crowd is thinning for the night.

Maynard fishes in his pocket and pulls out some bills. “What do you say?”

“I don’t know if it’s legal,” says the barker.

“What do you care? Plenty more where he came from.” Maynard breathes heavily. I smell poison spilling from inside him.

“It ain’t like it’s murder,” says Maynard’s drunken companion.

The barker looks around, takes the bills. “After the crowd’s gone. Come back after midnight and meet me by the duck-hunting gallery.”

Maynard reaches the stick into the bars, rakes my disembodied finger out of the cage. He bends down and picks it up, sniffs it, and slides it into his pocket. “A little return on my investment,” he says.

The barker takes the stick from Maynard and wipes it clean on his trouser leg. “Show’s over, folks,” he yells, as if addressing a packed house.

“Midnight,” Maynard says to me. “Then it’s you and me, freak.”

The wobbly man giggles as they leave the tent. The barker waits by the door for a moment, then disappears. I look into the torchlight, watching the flames do their slow dance. I wonder what the fire tastes like.

The Fat Lady comes. She must have been hiding in the shadows again. She has changed her billowy costume for a large robe. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, her face barren of make-up.

She sees me. She knows I can understand her. “I heard what they said.”

I stick out my tongue. I can taste the torn place on my cheek. I grip the bars with my hands. Maybe tomorrow, I will eat my hands, then my arms. Then I can be like Juggles. Except you can’t dance when you’re dead.

Or maybe I will eat and eat when the barker brings me the bucket of chicken hearts. If I eat enough, I can be the World’s Fattest Murdermouth. I can be one of them. I will take money for the rides and pull the levers and sell cotton candy.

If I could get out of this cage, I would show her what I could do. I would prove my love. If I could talk, I would tell her.

The Fat Lady watches the tent flap. Somewhere a roadie is working on a piece of machinery, cursing in a foreign language. The smell of popcorn is no longer in the air. Now there is only cigarette smoke, cheap wine, leftover hot dogs. The big show is putting itself to bed for the night.

“They’re going to kill you,” she whispers.

I am already dead. I have tasted my own finger. I should be eating dirt instead. Once, I could feel the pounding of my heart.

“You don’t deserve this.” Her eyes are dark. “You’re not a freak.”

My barker says a freak is anybody that people will pay money to see.

My tongue presses against my teeth. I can almost remember. They put me in a cage before I died. I had a name.

The Fat Lady wraps her fingers around the metal catch. From somewhere she has produced a key. The lock falls open and she whips the chain free from the bars.

“They’re coming,” she says. “Hurry.”

I smell them before I see them. Maynard smells like Maynard, as if he is wearing his vital organs around his waist. The wobbling man reeks even worse of liquor. The barker has also been drinking. The three of them laugh like men swapping horses.

I taste the straw in the air, the diesel exhaust, the smoke from the torches, the cigarette that Juggles gave me, my dead finger, the cold gun in Maynard’s pocket, the money my barker has spent.

I taste and taste and taste and I am hungry.

“Hey, get away from there,” yells the barker. He holds a wine bottle in one hand.

The Fat Lady pulls on the bars. The front of the cage falls open. I can taste the dust.

“Run,” says the Fat Lady.

Running is like dancing. Maybe people will pay money to see me run.

“What the hell?” says Maynard.

I move forward, out of the cage. This is my tent. My name is on a sign outside. If I see the sign, I will know who I am. If I pay money, maybe I can see myself.

“This ain’t part of the deal,” says Maynard. He draws the gun from his pocket. The silver barrel shines in the firelight.

The Fat Lady turns and faces the three men.

“I swear, I didn’t know anything about this,” says the barker.

“Leave him alone,” says the Fat Lady.

Maynard waves the gun. “Get out of the way.”

This is my tent. I am the one they came to see. The Fat Lady blocks the way. I stare at her broad back, at the dark red robe, her long hair tumbling down her neck. She’s the only one who ever treated me like one of them.

I jump forward, push her. The gun roars, spits a flash of fire from its end. She cries out. The bullet cuts a cold hole in my chest.

I must die again, but at last she is in my arms.

If my mouth could do more than murder, it would say words.

I am sorry. I love you.

They take her bones when I am finished.

###

SUNG LI

There's a story behind every glass eye.

That's what Uncle Theodore says. He got his glass eye after a fight in the jungle. Said something called a "goop" got him with a piece of shrapnel. I asked him once and he told me that shrapnel was a jaggedy piece of metal. Anyway, he's the one who gave Sung Li to my Mom.

If it's true what he said about glass eyes, then Sung Li has two stories. Her eyes aren't really glass, but I like to pretend anyway. Maybe she'll let me tell you her other story, the one you don't know about yet. But maybe not, since all you want to do is talk about what happened last night.

Who's Sung Li? I already told that other police. But maybe they figured since you're a woman police, I'll tell the truth this time. So I'll tell you who Sung Li is, and maybe you'll believe me.

She's the
China
doll that lives on the second shelf in that little showcase on the top of the stairs. She usually just lays there. Daddy says that's what girls are supposed to do, anyway. Lay there and look pretty. At least that's what he always told me on Mom's library nights. And Mom says if you handle Sung Li, the value will go down.

Mom really loves that doll, maybe more than anything else in the showcase. Did you look yet? There's a silver tray that's got some writing on it under a picture of a sailboat. Up above that is an old book that's got cardboard poking through the corners and a little red ribbon tucked inside as a bookmark. There's some other things, too. Daddy's old bowling trophy, some dollars from where they don't know how to spell good, and that knife from
Mexico
that's made out of volcano stuff. But Sung Li is the main thing. All the rest is kind of placed around her like an afterthought.