Futile Efforts (45 page)

Her lips were white and going blue.
 
A crease between her eyes had deepened to where it appeared as if she'd been slashed by a razor.
 
I shouldn't have been so blatant about it, but I couldn't help myself.
 
I stared and inspected her, thinking it was some kind of a trick yet unable to figure out how it was done.
 
She'd been crying and salt streaks dusted her hair.

I could see it happening–lying back in the stirrups, weeping quietly, the tears trailing through her curls toward her ears.
 
Maybe it was for the best, but who the hell knew.
 
Her eyes were pink and puffy and some of the naiveté had been kicked to death there.
 
I still didn't complete believe it and pressed my palm to her trim belly.
 
I wanted confirmation.
 
We all did.

"Don't touch me," she said.

"What?"

"I don't want you to touch me anymore.
 
I know I said you could before but not now, all right?"

"Okay."

"Just keep your hands off me, got it?"

"Sure."

It wasn't a gaff.
 
She'd had an abortion somewhere inside the Works.
 
It had never shocked or surprised me before, but now it struck an aching chord because I was searching for my own son.
 
She was just a kid locked inside a shadow existence of eclipse and ephemera.

Symbols matter more than all your taxes.
 
Signs and portents can carry you further than your
sterno
-gulping grandfather.
 
I dropped my eyes and couldn't think of anything to say or do, so I turned aside.

Lester made a pretty good leap for a snake of his size.
 
He coiled and snapped up through the air.
 
I caught him in one hand and let him swing around on my wrist.
 
It was a sight that would've played out well in the
carny
.
 
The audience would've given a nice round of applause even if I didn't bite its head off.
 
I wasn't sure whether I should stop and hand him back to
Lala
or just keep going.
 
I hesitated for an instant and then walked along.

She followed me again, and when she began crying I held her while Lester twined around us both.
 
Megan's presence became very strong, and I could feel her in my arms for an instant, her cooling touch easing my seething mind.
 
Lala
sagged a bit.
 
The blood on her dress smeared against my knee.
 
The pungent odor brought death back into my watering mouth.

I used my thumbs to brush away her tears.
 
Lala
whispered something I didn't catch.
 
"What's that?"

"She wanted out."

A freeze started low in my bowels and continued growing until I couldn't feel my fingertips anymore.
 
We were out of the rut all right, and on our way.
 
"What do you mean?"

"The baby.
 
I wanted to get rid of her, but I couldn't stop her either.
 
I had to let her out."

"You did?"

"Yes.
 
It's what I needed to do, but more than that.
 
It's what this whole place here...everything, all of it around us, what it wanted her to do."

"I'm missing something,
Lala
–"

"You see, it should've been my choice, and that was stolen from me."

"Listen, I don't think I–"

"That's why...that's the reason, see?
 
If it was her decision, that would be fine, but I don't think it was.
 
And
he kept her
."

"Who?"

"The man in the Clinic.
 
The doctor, or whoever.
 
He took her and put her in a jar."

"Oh fuck."

"He never even asked me anything, to take a last look, he just carried her away."
 
Lala
trembled and turned an awful shade of green as her legs gave out.
 
I held her while she vomited twice, and though I tried to get her to lay down she wouldn't give in.
 
She was still spotting a little.
 
"He had no right to do that, the rotten bastard!
 
It's unfinished now.
 
I have to go back."

"I'll go with you."

She lifted her chin.
 
"You will?"

"
Sure,"I
told her.

But my smiled must've been something heinous to see.
 
She drew away.
 
So did Lester.

Now I knew where to find Nicodemus and Jonah.

14

A
nd I had been resurrected and lifted from my tomb.

Megan healed me.
 
She hauled me away from the geek life and gave me back my Talk.
 
She took God out of my divine voice and discovered enough of the man left to put back into it.
 
I learned to say what I'd always wanted to say.
 
I no longer acted simply as a vessel for some louder, larger Word.
 
She taught me to whisper in the cold night, and to whimper as well.

She danced the
cooch
dances across stained motel carpets and asked for criticism that might inspire her to do better.
 
It was actually an art form to her; that's what made it so exquisite and heartbreaking.

But I could only stare and grin like an idiot, or sometimes fall apart in the twirling light of her passion.
 
Her small hands rubbed the dead past out of my back.
 
Her lips entranced me when she sang along to Top 40 hits that would've made even a geek gag.
 
I followed her mouth the way the snakes had followed mine, tilting my head toward the jut of her tongue.
 
She returned my chatter and how she loved to gossip.
 
We never shut up for weeks on end.

When we hooked up with McKenna's Carnival, I had the gift once more.
 
I could size up a person's pain and haul them inside with a nod, a few carefully placed words or a glance into the
madball
.

Megan looked so beautiful while pregnant that McKenna didn't want to take her out of the dance tent even after she started putting on weight.
 
He still billed her as the star.
 
Megan would smile at me from across the midway and my enigmatic act would be shot to hell.
 
I'd be in the middle of a darkly cryptic reading, turning the tarot and gazing into the crystal ball, peering beyond the veil with the rubes on the edges of their seats, and suddenly the giddiness of our love would tickle me under the heart and I'd boil over with laughter.
 
I'd lay on the bed holding her belly close and dream of children in the moonlight.

It was a good life until Nicodemus found me and burned it all down.

I had the sense that I was losing years and losing ground.
 
"How old am I?" I whispered.

"How should I know?"
Lala
said.

"You're still a child," Jolly Nell told me.
 
"The congregation loves you.
 
There's still time to revel in your sanctity."

"Yes."

"You haven't even lifted a girl's skirt yet.
 
You're thirteen...no, twelve...and you haven't found the bottle yet.
 
They bring you their devotion.
 
You soothe the soul with your shrieking fits.
 
Your father is behind you, on the stage, proud and stately and satisfied."

"That's right."

"Are you doing okay?"
Lala
asked.
 
"You look sort of out of it.
 
You're scaring Lester."

"Sorry."

An August evening, cool with a storm on the horizon, the wind rising slightly and the crows pouring in.
 
The cotton candy machines hummed without rest.
 
I put in a few extra hours reading futures and gaping into the
madball
.
 
Megan had finally started to show too much for the dance numbers and I didn't want her exerting herself anyway.
 
She helped out under the food top and worked some of the concession stands when the crowds got thick.

But that night she was in our trailer on the far side of the lot, thinking up names for the kid.
 
I suppose all new parents fall into the pursuit of that, but with Megan it wasn't just a pastime.
 
She took it extremely seriously, just like the dancing.
 
She hadn't wanted to know the sex of our child but I did and she put up with the ultrasound for my benefit.
 
We were going to have a boy.

She had a lot of Irish in her and kept coming up with all this Celtic: Colin,
Eoghain
, Dylan,
Cormac
, O'Connell.
 
She stayed away from biblical names, which was fine with me.

I'd just turned over the Ten of Swords and the Hanging Man when the agony speared me through the kidneys.
 
I grunted and chewed my tongue.
 
The mark was an elderly lady around seventy years old and when my face blanched she figured I saw her death in the deck.

"Oh
lordy
,
lordy
!" she shouted.
 
"It's my colon, ain't it?
 
I knew that damn doctor done give me somethin' awful bad with his
probin
' black fingers!
 
I got cancer of the colon!"

"Lady–help, go get somebody–"

"We needs help for my colon!" she squawked, running in circles in front of the ten.
 
"The magic man says so!"

I smelled bacon.

No one knew where the fire had started, but the center sideshow tens went up immediately, followed by the bally platforms and canvas partitions of the milk bottle and ball game and squirt gun concessions.
 
The roustabouts labored in a frenzy to save what they could.

I worked the hose and bucket lines, but it was already way too late.
 
Most of the freaks were dead from the flames or smoke inhalation.
 
The pickled punks had boiled in their jars.

The arsonist had spread gallons of gasoline and alcohol around, possibly for hours, and no one had noticed a thing.
 
Herzburg
had tried to save two women from his audience, but by the time he made it out of the inferno and onto the midway he was a blazing pyre holding two molten corpses.
 
He lived for almost six hours, longer than any man should have been able to.
 
He'd been using vegetable oil in his hair to give it a shine, and when he went up he ignited as if he'd been dipped in phosphorus.

Finally he gave up the fight.
 
Perhaps the ghosts of Juba and Nell had talked him into slipping free from his immolated shell.
 
Even then, it would've taken some convincing.

When I got back to our trailer I found Megan on our bed.

She had a couple of Irish legend high fantasy novels out, as well as the Big Book of Baby names.
 
They'd been tossed onto the floor and stepped on.

Nicodemus hadn't used a skillet.
 
Instead, he took his time with a busted whiskey bottle.
 
I'd kicked it aside as I entered.

A Bible had been left open on her dead breast.

With her blood he'd circled the name Jonah, and the child was gone.

15

T
he flood was upon us, and I wanted to go with it.
 
I followed
Lala
to the Clinic where the walls and the floors and the ceilings demanded offerings.
 
Stone and dust also needed life and lineage.
 
We went deeper and deeper into the entrails of the Works, passing others who swept by like wraiths.