Buttercup (5 page)

***

Speed was his guide. The 1932 Hudson took a nosedive into the ravine, slamming into a tree. His forehead smacked the steering wheel. Impact gave him a nosebleed.

“Fuck!” he grunted, slinking down in the seat. “Fuck!”

Sheriff Tuck and his boys raced down Dixie, sirens wailing, several hanging off the back of pickups with shotguns in hand and a rope for his or Jelly’s neck. They hadn’t seen him veer off. At least he didn’t think they had. He slipped even lower. The steering column pressed into his chest.

His knees were cramped up under the dash. He pulled down the front of his cap over his bruised forehead; his breathing came out in short quick pants.

“Did we make it?” Jelly asked in a loud whisper.

“Shut your trap, Jelly!” Silvio barked.

Together they waited.

They listened.

Nothing.

Silvio inched up. He squinted hard to see through the thicket out to the road. “I’ll be damn. I think they’re gone.”

“Applesauce! They out there. Told you this was a deadman’s run.

We need to get the shine out of the trunk and buried before they double back.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Give it a sec.”

In truth, neither of them wanted to get out. Sheriff Tuck was no one to meddle with. And running shine through his county without the proper tariff guaranteed jail or worse. Problem with this rule was it didn’t apply to the Sheriff’s nephew. Silvio was tired of pennies on the jar. He was aiming for a bigger payday.

Silvio threw open his door. Jelly hissed a warning, but he went ahead and eased out from under the steering column. He landed knees first in the moist dirt and leaves. Half of him expected to look up and find the sheriff standing over him.

“Get out,” he said, rising and slapping his cap against his thigh, dusting off dirt and twigs. “Out, Jelly. Now!”

The back door to the Hudson pushed open. Jelly poked his head out like a shut-in child. Silvio looked around. He heard the sounds of laughter, and music, dings and bells. Walking around the banged up Hudson, he knocked tree branches from his face. “Hey, you hear that?”

Jelly arrived at his side, breathing through his nose, his large belly deflating then inflating. As a kid, he survived on jelly sandwiches and even now preferred them over a steak. “Think it’s a carnival. Heard one was near. Smell that? Roasted corn and apples.” His mouth watered. “We should go on down,” Silvio smirked.

“Huh? You bumped your head in there, Sil? We got to deal with the two crates of shine in the truck and the sheriff before the sun catch us.”

“Can’t get on the road now. They’ll sweep back. We push the car down there.” He pointed to the deepest dive in the ravine. “Take the shine with us. Carnies can probably give us a lift out. Perfect cover.”

“Carnie folk don’t help or take to strangers. You know that. No way they smuggle us. And that’s my pa’s Hudson. He’ll tan my hide.”

“You twenty or twelve?” Silvio frowned. “Besides, it’s smashed.

Engine’s busted. Look at it.”

They stared at the plumes of steam hissing from the front grill. The car was bent inward around a thick oak tree. “Jelly, we don’t know if we don’t try. You got a better idea?”

Jelly closed his eyes, his left cheek pulled inward as he sucked hard on the inside of his jaw. He was a preacher’s kid with the bad luck to be friends with Silvio. He was the only kid Silvio knew who had access to a car to run Dan Crichton’s hooch through this county. There was no turning back. Jelly shrugged his fat shoulders, and his belly flopped over his belt from under his shirt.

“Bad run is what it is. I told ya. I told ya.”

Silvio grinned. His blue eyes sparkled in the darkness. “Help me push the car out, and I promise to show you a good time.”

1932 Kentucky – A Hooch Dancer Named Buttercup

“You done gone and did it. Aint ya?”

Buttercup ran the zipper up the side of the dress, then down—up then down again. She grinned at how easy it was. She’d slip it off to her one good pair of garter stockings with no panties, just as Lady Joyce would. She’d done this before. She’d seen Lady Joyce do it too many times to count. It was going to be as easy as you please.

“Ya hear me talkin’ to ya?”

She didn’t bother to look back. “What you want, Trix?”

“I want to know why it is that I’ve been performin’ before you were off your mammy’s tit, and I ain’t never had me own peepshow? Only chance I get is when someone run-off. That’s fine, but Lady Joyce down for the night, and Tiny picks you?”

Buttercup turned on her. There was a simple answer to Trixie’s question. They could get a pig to stand upright and do the jig before they could sell one seat to see Trixie down to her skivvies. If she was pretty before, it washed away with her youth. Her refusal to bathe regularly and love for the hooch left her skin looking aged and saggy. Her breast drooped. Her lumpy butt cheeks drooped. Even her mouth drooped at the corners of her thin lips. She could barely cover her flaccid features with rouge. The Daisy twins told her that Trixie was thirty-four.
That was
ancient!!
Besides that, she looked more like one hundred and four with dirty feet and missing back teeth. The only reason Trixie was included was because Claudette run off and they needed a third girl. “Take it up with Tiny. I’m jus’ doin’ as I’m told.”

“Buttercup! You and Trix get out. Tiny calling,” Stan, the lot guy, yelled from outside the tent. Della swallowed her nervous tongue and quit with her taunts. It was show time.

***

“I say it’s a bad idea. That’s what I say,” Jelly went on. Silvio ignored him. He let his nose be the guide. Too many storm clouds had formed. He couldn’t see the moon. That was a good sign. A moon on a night like this would be a bad omen.

Silvio swatted and snapped branches out of his face before they cleared the forest. The lights of the Ferris wheel, sounds of laughter, and calls for townies to test their luck filled the air. That and the sweet smell of the open plain, mixed with the roasting treats, had the inner muscles lining his stomach twisting with pangs of hunger. He dropped his hands in the pockets of his knickers and walked the line with Jelly into the mix. Tents were up. Folks gathered. The crowd was mostly thin. That could be due to the late hour. Maybe it was because a storm was rolling in. Possibly the location hadn’t spread through the rest of the town. Those thoughts faded when he noticed the true reason why. The barker’s voice drew his attention first; the crowd of men circling made him stop in his tracks.

“You see that, Jelly?” he asked.

“Fortune? I can tell you boys need some.” A gypsy woman of ill refute stepped out of the shadowy opening of her tent. Jelly slowed to a stop, forcing Silvio to do so and look back.

“Jelly, let’s go.”

“Leave him with me. For a fifty-piece I’ll tell him everything he need,” she offered. Draped over her head was a dark blue and black scarf with a fringed edge that had tiny coins attached. Her raven dark hair matched the coal black eyes focused on them both. She tossed one end of the scarf over her shoulder, and gave them a secretive smile. The kind a cobra gives before he strikes.

Silvio had to shake the willies. Jelly could not. He stood there, transfixed and rooted to the spot. The gypsy stepped to a table outside of her tent and moved her hand over a stack of cards, fanning them out. Her black nails were long and pointed. She batted her lashes at Jelly. The top left corner of her mouth curled up with a tempting smirk.

“My Pa preached about these people. Sil, we… we should go from here,” Jelly stammered. “We should go now.”

“Sorry, toots. Take the con elsewhere. C’mon!” He snatched Jelly’s collar and pulled him away from the witch. Several tents had card games or shuffling shells, the usual carnie tricks. Nothing compared to the barker’s call.

“
Step right up fella's. Hey you! That's right, I'm talking to you. This you
want to hear!
Not another show better than this one, boys. You know it's the
trooth! Always the finest, the freshest pussy when Tiny’s Carnival comes to town.

Got a flower that’s ripe for the picking tonight. One night showing only…”

Silvio pushed his way into the crowd to get closer, dragging Jelly by the back of the neck.

“
They call her Buttercup, prettiest little flower you ever will see.”
The midget stumped his wooden cane on the podium.
“Dare any of you to find a
gal, colored or white, that gives you half as good! She’ll make it dandy, boys.

That’s Tiny’s promise!”

“We should go. What if someone finds the hooch we left,” Jelly whispered. Silvio’s eyes lifted to the flapping sign over the event tent. It whipped about by the stormy winds. He could smell rain and the bullshit the little man was selling. Still he was curious. Who was the gal they called Buttercup?

“Shut your trap, Jelly,” Silvio hissed, not wanting to seem like a sap around the other men. No one noticed Jelly’s whining. He fished in his pockets. He had ten dollars as a down payment on the run. Another twenty waited for him on delivery. He supposed he could spare a dollar for them to have a good time. “I think we going to see a show.”

Jelly stepped back instead of forward. He shook his head; the fat meat along his jaws began to jiggle along with his double chin. “My Pa won’t approve.”

“Jelly, boy, you need to loosen up. Your Pa, Sheriff Tuck, hell all of Jefferson County can kiss our ass! We got money and now we gots means.

Now we get us some Buttercup. She might even let you sniff it!” he chuckled.

Jelly paled.

Silvio hooked his arm around Jelly’s neck and yoked him forward, forcing him to walk at his side. They moved through the pinned back fold of the tent. The place was filled with others. Rickety foldout chairs offered a place to squat, but most men preferred to stand. If anything, they wanted to see who would replace Lady Joyce.

A tall Indian, with shoulders about a foot wide, collected coins in his hat. Silvio dropped in a folded bill. The Indian looked at it for a moment, and then his eyes flipped back up at him. Dark and mean, they narrowed on Silvio before he offered change. It wasn’t a look that Silvio took kindly. He knew a shake down. If he and Jelly were pegged as marks they would have an even harder time trying to tag on with the carnies out of the county. He pushed Jelly to the front, keeping an eye on the Indian who just stared after them.

“We shouldn’t,” Jelly protested. He stumbled awkwardly over his feet. Silvio forced him down in a seat.

“Take a load off. Either way, it’s coming out your half.” Silvio slapped him on the back and plopped down in the empty chair to his right along the front row. He’d seen a couple of girlie papers but not a real live show. It would be a good way to pass the time until Tuck and his men called off the hunt. But even more interesting was the money they collected at the door. He wondered about what a night’s take in a hoochie-coochie tent would bring. Just as quickly, he set aside the thought, though his pistol was down in his knickers pocket pressed into his thigh. Not even Jelly knew he carried it. He looked back for the Indian. There were two other men with him at the back of the tent, all staring. Things could get interesting.

The dwarf was lifted to the podium. He walked along with the aid of a gnarled wooden stick, eyeing the crowd.

“Where she at!” one fella yelled.

“Pussy better rain gumdrops for a damn quarter!” another threw out.

Silvio rocked back on the shaky legs of his chair. He chuckled. How special could some gal be in a dusty ole carnival like this, he wondered.

The dwarf favored them with a toothless smile. “Not gumdrops, fellas.

More like rose petals. The sweetest little flower you’ve ever seen. Not like the ones you got home waitin’ on ya, if’in you do.”

Tiny was his name. He gave a bow-legged waddle over to the phonograph player’s crank, winding it up. Out of the curtain came a scraggly looking woman. Some laughed. Others snickered. Silvio just frowned. The old hag in a dress, a size too big, danced the Charleston.

“Trixie, boys!” said the midget.

She was quite pathetic, panting, gyrating her hips at one man then the next. And when the clothes slipped off, Silvio wished he hadn’t chosen the front row. He noticed that Jelly kept his eyes down. He elbowed his friend in his fat belly. “Look at it. Hooch is right. Need an entire bottle to want some of that.”

Jelly shyly looked up. Trixie tried her best, coming out of her dress, her skin all wrinkly with moles. “Her teat’s look like Maxine’s…our cow,”

Jelly said.

Silvio let go a laugh. He laughed so hard he nearly fell back in his chair. Shaking his head, he decided it was a quarter well spent. And most there felt the same, laughing and pushing at each other as the poor creature gave it her best. Then she went for the stealer. It started with knee knocking, and hands pressed under armpits while her arms flapped in a chicken-like dance.

“You like that, boys?” the barker yelled out.

“Hell no!” several yelled back.

“If I wanted to see a dead chicken, I’d stayed back on the farm!” one man snorted. The others roared. Jelly finally laughed too. Silvio was glad to see him loosen up. The barker walked over to Trixie and gave her a pat on the backside to move it along. He waited for quiet. “Are you ready?”