Nightmare Alley (2 page)

The nightmare alley into which William Lindsay Gresham leads us is not one of moral depravity, for the nicety of morality has nothing to do with it.

Gresham’s novel is a tale of many things: the folly of faith and the cunning of those who peddle it; alcoholism and the destructive terror of delirium tremens; the playing deck of fate, which allots its death-bound destines without rhyme and without reason. What it is not is a tale of crime and punishment, sin and retribution. To see it as such is to misread it. What we consider to be crime and sin pervade this alley, but the punishment and retribution here seem more the wages of life itself.

“It was the dark alley, all over again,” Stan tells himself in
Nightmare Alley
. “Ever since he was a kid Stan had had the dream. He was running down a dark alley, the buildings vacant and menacing on either side. Far down at the end of it a light burned, but there was something behind him, close behind him, getting closer until he woke up trembling and never reached the light.” Stan reflects of his marks, of everyone: “They have it too—a nightmare alley.” Yes, as Stan—that is to say, Gresham—observes elsewhere, fear is the key to human nature.

And Stan and Gresham were indeed one. There is a bizarre letter, frayed and torn, preserved in the collection of the Wade Center of Wheaton College, written by Gresham in 1959, when the end was near. In it he wrote: “Stan is the author.”

Upon its publication, in September 1946,
Nightmare Alley
was an acclaimed and successful novel, and a damned and banned one. For thirty years after the first edition of 1946, every edition remained corrupt and censored. To use but one example, instead of “society dames with the clap, bankers that take it up the ass,” readers encountered “society dames with a dose, bankers that have fishy eyes.”

Within little more than a decade, it was all but forgotten. Sixteen autumns later, in September 1962, Gresham’s body was found, self-killed, in a hotel room off Times Square. He has just turned fifty-three a few weeks before. In his possession were business cards that read:

And so the alley, and the running, and the light beyond reach came to an end—for the man who wrote of that alley, if not for us who read of it.

—N
ICK
T
OSCHES

Nightmare Alley

To

J
OY
DAVIDMAN

S
TAN
C
ARLISLE
stood well back from the entrance of the canvas enclosure, under the blaze of a naked light bulb, and watched the geek.

This geek was a thin man who wore a suit of long underwear dyed chocolate brown. The wig was black and looked like a mop, and the brown greasepaint on the emaciated face was streaked and smeared with the heat and rubbed off around the mouth.

At present the geek was leaning against the wall of the pen, while around him a few—pathetically few—snakes lay in loose coils, feeling the hot summer night and sullenly uneasy in the glare. One slim little king snake was trying to climb up the wall of the enclosure and was falling back.

Stan liked snakes; the disgust he felt was for them, at their having to be penned up with such a specimen of man. Outside the talker was working up to his climax. Stan turned his neat blond head toward the entrance.

“… where did he come from? God only knows. He was found on an uninhabited island five hundred miles off the coast of Florida. My friends, in this enclosure you will see one of the unexplained mysteries of the universe. Is he man or is he beast? You will see him living in his natural habitat among the most venomous rep-tiles that the world provides. Why, he fondles those serpents as a mother would fondle her babes. He neither eats nor drinks but lives entirely on the atmosphere. And we’re going to feed him one more time! There will be a slight additional charge for this attraction but it’s not a dollar, it’s not a quarter—it’s a cold, thin dime, ten pennies, two nickels, the tenth part of a dollar. Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

Stan shifted over to the rear of the canvas pen.

The geek scrabbled under a burlap bag and found something. There was the wheet of a cork being drawn and a couple of rattling swallows and a gasp.

The “marks” surged in—young fellows in straw hats with their coats over their arms, here and there a fat woman with beady eyes. Why does that kind always have beady eyes, Stan wondered. The gaunt woman with the anemic little girl who had been promised she would see everything in the show. The drunk. It was like a kaleidoscope—the design always changing, the particles always the same.

Clem Hoately, owner of the Ten-in-One show and its lecturer, made his way through the crowd. He fished a flask of water from his pocket, took a swig to rinse his throat, and spat it on the ground. Then he mounted the step. His voice was suddenly low and conversational, and it seemed to sober the audience.

“Folks, I must ask ya to remember that this exhibit is being presented solely in the interests of science and education. This creature which you see before ya …”

A woman looked down and for the first time spied the little king snake, still frantically trying to climb out of the pit. She drew in her breath shrilly between her teeth.

“… this creature has been examined by the foremost scientists of Europe and America and pronounced a man. That is to say: he has two arms, two legs, a head and a body, like a man. But under that head of hair there is the brain of a beast. See how he feels more at home with the rep-tiles of the jungle than with humankind.”

The geek had picked up a black snake, holding it close behind the head so it couldn’t snap at him, and was rocking it in his arms like a baby, muttering sounds.

The talker waited while the crowd rubbered.

“You may well ask how he associates with poisonous serpents without harm. Why, my friends, their poison has no effect whatsoever upon him. But if he were to sink his teeth in my hand nothing on God’s green earth could save me.”

The geek gave a growl, blinking stupidly up into the light from the bare bulb. Stan noticed that at one corner of his mouth there was a glint from a gold tooth.

“But now, ladies and gentlemen, when I told you that this creature was more beast than man I was not asking you to take my word for it. Stan—” He turned to the young man, whose brilliant blue eyes had not a trace of revelation in them. “Stan, we’re going to feed him one more time for this audience alone. Hand me the basket.”

Stanton Carlisle reached down, gripped a small covered market basket by the handle, and boosted it over the heads of the crowd. They fell back, jamming and pushing. Clem Hoately, the talker, laughed with a touch of weariness. “It’s all right, folks; nothing you haven’t seen before. No, I reckon you all know what this is.” From the basket he drew a half-grown leghorn pullet, complaining. Then he held it up so they could see it. With one hand he motioned for silence.

The necks craned down.

The geek had leaned forward on all fours, his mouth hanging open vacantly. Suddenly the talker threw the pullet into the pit with a whirl of feathers.

The geek moved toward it, shaking his black cotton mop of wig. He grabbed for the chicken, but it spread its stumpy wings in a frenzy of self-preservation and dodged. He crawled after it.

For the first time the paint-smeared face of the geek showed some life. His bloodshot eyes were nearly closed. Stan saw his lips shape words without sound. The words were, “You son of a bitch.”

Gently the youth eased himself out of the crowd, which was straining, looking down. He walked stiffly around to the entrance, his hands in his pockets.

From the pit came a panicky clucking and cackling and the crowd drew its breath. The drunk beat his grimy straw hat on the rail. “Get ’at ole shicken, boy! Go get ’at ole shicken!”

Then a woman screamed and began to leap up and down jerkily; the crowd moaned in an old language, pressing their bodies tighter against the board walls of the pit and stretching. The cackling had been cut off short, and there was a click of teeth and a grunt of someone working hard.

Stan shoved his hands deeper in his pockets. He moved through the flap entrance back into the main ring of the Ten-in-One show, crossed it to the gate and stood looking out on the carnival midway. When his hands came from his pockets one of them held a shiny half-dollar. He reached for it with his other hand and it vanished. Then with a secret, inner smile of contempt and triumph, he felt along the edge of his white flannel trousers and produced the coin.

Against the summer night the ferris wheel lights winked with the gaiety of rhinestones, the calliope’s blast sounded as if the very steam pipes were tired.

“Christ a-mighty, it’s hot, huh, kid?”

Clem Hoately, the talker, stood beside Stan, wiping the sweat from the band of his panama with a handkerchief. “Say, Stan, run over and get me a bottle of lemon soda from the juice joint. Here’s a dime; get yourself one too.”

When Stan came back with the cold bottles, Hoately tilted his gratefully. “Jesus, my throat’s sore as a bull’s ass in fly time.”

Stan drank the pop slowly. “Mr. Hoately?”

“Yeah, what?”

“How do you ever get a guy to geek? Or is this the only one? I mean, is a guy born that way—liking to bite the heads off chickens?”

Clem slowly closed one eye. “Let me tell you something, kid. In the carny you don’t ask nothing. And you’ll get told no lies.”

“Okay. But did you just happen to find this fellow—doing—doing this somewhere behind a barn, and work up the act?”

Clem pushed back his hat. “I like you, kid. I like you a lot. And just for that I’m going to give you a treat. I’m
not
going to give you a boot in the ass, get it? That’s the treat.”

Stan grinned, his cool, bright blue eyes never leaving the older man’s face. Suddenly Hoately dropped his voice.

“Just because I’m your pal I ain’t going to crap you up. You want to know where geeks came from. Well, listen—you don’t find ’em. You
make
’em.”

He let this sink in, but Stanton Carlisle never moved a muscle. “Okay. But how?”