Nightmare Alley (9 page)

“Suits me.”

He said it, Stan kept repeating. It wasn’t my idea. The Major and Bruno heard him. He said it.

The street was empty and the light from the funeral parlor made a golden wedge on the sidewalk. Behind them the other car drew up. Old Maguire, the Ten-in-One’s ticket seller and grinder, got out, then Molly; then Joe Plasky swung himself out on his hands and crossed the sidewalk. He reminded Stan of a frog, moving deliberately.

Zeena met them at the door. She was wearing a new black outfit, a dress with enormous flowers worked on it in jet. “Come on in, folks. I—I got Pete all laid out handsome. I just phoned a reverend and he’s coming over. I thought it was nicer to get a reverend if we could, even if Pete wasn’t no church man.”

They went inside. Joe Plasky fumbled in his pocket and held an envelope up to Zeena. “The boys chipped in for a stone, Zeena. They knew you didn’t need the dough but they wanted to do something. I wrote the Billboard this afternoon. They’ll carry a box. I just said, ‘Mourned by his many friends in show business.”’

She bent down and kissed him. “That’s—that’s damn sweet of you all. I guess we better get into the chapel. This looks like the reverend coming.”

They took their places on folding chairs. The clergyman was a meek, dull little old man, looking sleepy. Embarrassed, too, Stan figured. As if carny folks were not quite human—like they had all left their pants off only he was too polite to let on he noticed.

He put on his glasses. “… we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken …”

Stan, sitting beside Zeena, tried to concentrate on the words and guess what the reverend was going to say next. Anything to keep from thinking. It’s not my fault he’s dead. I didn’t mean to kill him. I killed him. There it starts again and all day I wasn’t feeling anything and I thought I’d lost it.

“Lord, let me know my end, and the number of my days; that I may be certified how long I have to live …”

Pete never knew his end. Pete died happy. I did him a favor. He had been dying for years. He was afraid of living and he was trying to ease himself out only I had to go and kill him. I didn’t kill him. He killed himself. Sooner or later he would have taken a chance on that wood alky. I only helped him a little. Christ, will I have to think about this damn thing the rest of my life?

Stan slowly turned his head and looked at the others. Molly was sitting with the Major between her and Bruno. In the back row Clem Hoately had his eyes shut. Joe Plasky’s face held the shadow of a smile that was too deeply cut into it ever to vanish completely. It was the sort of smile Lazarus must have had afterwards, Stan thought. Sailor Martin had one eye closed.

The sight of the Sailor rushed Stan back to normal. He had done that a hundred times himself, sitting beside his father on the hard pew, watching his mother in a white surplice there in the choir stall with the other ladies. There’s a blind spot in your eye and if you shut one eye and then let the gaze of the other travel in a straight line to one side of the preacher’s head there will be a point where his head seems to disappear and he seems to be standing there preaching without any head.

Stan looked at Zeena beside him. Her mind was far away somewhere. The reverend speeded up.

“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death …”

Behind them Major Mosquito heaved a sharp sigh and wriggled, the chair creaking. Bruno said, “Shoosh!”

When they got to the Lord’s Prayer Stan found his voice with relief. Zeena must hear it. If she heard it she couldn’t suspect him of having anything to do with— Stan lowered his voice and the words came automatically. She mustn’t ever think—and yet she had looked at him sharp when he had said Pete was hanging around the geek. She mustn’t think. Only he mustn’t overplay it. God damn it, this was the time for misdirection if ever there was one. “…
for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever and ever
.”

“Amen.”

The undertaker was silently brisk. He removed the coffin lid and set it noiselessly behind the casket. Zeena brought her handkerchief up to her face and turned away. They formed a line and passed by.

Clem Hoately came first, his furrowed face showing nothing. Then Bruno, holding Major Mosquito on his forearm so he could look down and see. Molly came next and Sailor Martin fell in behind her, moving close. Then old Maguire, his cap crushed in his hand. Joe Plasky hopped across the floor, pushing one of the folding chairs. When it came his turn to view the remains he moved the chair into place by the head of the coffin and swung himself up on the seat. He looked down and the smile was still around the corners of his eyes although his mouth was sober. Without thinking he made the sign of the cross.

Stan swallowed hard. It was his turn and there was no way of getting out of it. Joe had hopped to the floor and pushed the chair against the wall; Stan shoved both hands deep into his pockets and approached the casket. He had never seen a corpse; the skin of his scalp prickled at the thought.

He drew his breath and forced himself to look.

It seemed at first like a wax figure in a dress suit. One hand rested easily on the white waistcoat, the other was by the side. It held a round, clear glass ball. The face was rosy—the undertaker had filled out the drawn cheeks and painted the skin until it glowed with a waxen counterfeit of life. But there was something else that hit Stan like a blow between the ribs. Carefully fashioned of crêpe hair and stuck to the chin was a lifelike, neatly trimmed, little black beard.

“For the last demonstration Mamzelle Electra will perform a feat never attempted since Ben Franklin harnessed the lightning with his kite string. Holding the two filaments of a carbon arc light, she will allow the death-dealing current to pass through her body….”

Stan quietly slipped into the compartment below the stage of Zeena, the Woman Who Knows. It no longer smelled of whisky. Stan had installed a piece of canvas as a ground sheet and had cut ventilation scrolls in the sides of the boxlike little room. Over the bridge table and on three sides of it he had erected a cardboard shield so he could open the envelopes and copy the questions on the pad by the light of a flashlight.

The rustle of feet surging around the stage outside, then Zeena’s voice in her opening spiel. Stan took a bundle of dummy questions—blank cards in small envelopes—and stood by the window where Hoately would pass behind the curtains.

They parted at the side of the stage; Hoately’s hand appeared. Quickly Stan took the collected questions and placed the dummy batch in the hand which vanished upward. Stan heard the creak of feet on the boards above him. He sat down at the table, switched on the shaded flashlight bulb, squared up the pack of envelopes and cut the ends from them with one snip of the scissors. Moving quickly, he shook out the cards and arranged them before him on the table.

Question: “Where is my son?” Handwriting old-fashioned. Woman over sixty, he judged. A good one to open with—the signature was clear and spelled out in full—Mrs. Anna Briggs Sharpley. Stan looked for two more complete names. One was signed to a wiseacre question which he put aside. He reached for the black crayon and the pad, wrote, “Where son?” printed the name swiftly but plainly, and held the pad up to the hole in the stage at Zeena’s feet.

“I get the impression of the initial
S
. Is there a Mrs. Sharpley?”

Stan found himself listening to the answers as if they held a revelation.

“You think of your boy as still a little fellow, the way you knew him when he used to come asking you for a piece of bread with sugar on it….”

Where the hell did Zeena get all that stuff from? She was no more telepathic than that kid, Molly, was electricity proof. The Electric Chair act was gaffed like everything in the carny. But Zeena—

“My dear lady, you must remember that he’s a man grown now and probably has children of his own to worry about. You want him to write to you. Isn’t that so?”

It was uncanny how Zeena could fish out things just by watching the person’s face. Stan got a sudden thrust of cold fear. Of all the people in the world for him to hide anything from, it had to be a mind reader. He laughed a little in spite of his anxiety. But there was something which pulled him toward Zeena more strongly than his fear that she would find out and make him a murderer. How do you get to know so much that you can tell people what they are thinking about just by looking at them? Maybe you had to be born with the gift.

“Is Clarissa here? Clarissa, hold up your hand. That’s a good girl. Now Clarissa wants to know if the young fellow she’s been going around with is the right one for her to marry. Well, Clarissa, I may disappoint you but I have to speak the truth. You wouldn’t want me to tell you no fibs. I don’t think this boy is the one for you to marry. Mind, he may be and I don’t doubt that he’s a mighty fine young man. But something tells me that when the right young fellow comes along you won’t ask me, you won’t ask anybody—you’ll just up and marry him.”

That question had come up before and Zeena nearly always answered it the same way. The thought struck Stan that it was not genius after all. Zeena knew people. But people were a lot alike. What you told one you could tell nine out of ten. And there was one out of five that would believe everything you told them and would say yes to anything when you asked them if it was correct because they were the kind of marks that can’t say no. Good God, Zeena is working for peanuts! Somewhere in this racket there is a gold mine!

Stan picked up another card and wrote on the pad: “Advise important domestic step, Emma.” By God, if she can answer that one she must be a mind reader. He held it up to the trap and listened.

Zeena pattered on for a moment, thinking to herself and then her voice lifted and her heel knocked gently. Stan took down the pad and knew that this would be the blow-off question and he could relax. After this one she would go into the pitch.

“I have time for just one more question. And this is a question that I’m not going to ask anybody to acknowledge. There’s a lady here whose first name begins with
E
. I’m not going to tell her full name because it’s a very personal question. But I’m going to ask Emma to think about what she is trying to tell me mentally.”

Stan switched off the flashlight, crept out of the understage compartment and tiptoed up the stairs behind the side curtains. Parting them carefully with his fingers he placed his eye to the crack. The marks’ faces were a mass of pale circles below him. But at the mention of the name “Emma” he saw one face—a pale, haggard woman who looked forty but might be thirty. The lips parted and the eyes answered for an instant. Then the lips were pressed tight in resignation.

Zeena lowered her voice. “Emma, you have a serious problem. And it concerns somebody very near and dear to you. Or somebody who used to be very near and dear, isn’t that right?” Stan saw the woman’s head nod involuntarily.

“You are contemplating a serious step—whether to leave this person. And I think he’s your husband.” The woman bit her under lip. Her eyes grew moist quickly. That kind cries at the drop of a hat, Stan thought. If only she had a million bucks instead of a greasy quarter.

“Now there are two lines of vibration working about this problem. One of them concerns another woman.” The tension left the woman’s face and a sullen frown of disappointment drew over it. Zeena changed her tack. “But now the impressions get stronger and I can see that while there may have been some woman in the past, right now the problem is something else. I see cards … playing cards falling on a table … but no, it isn’t your husband who’s playing. It’s the place … I get it now, clear as daylight. It’s the back room of a saloon.”

A sob came from the woman, and people twisted their heads this way and that; but Emma was watching the seeress, unmindful of the others.

“My dear friend, you have a mighty heavy cross to bear. I know all about it and don’t you think I don’t. But the step that confronts you now is a problem with a good many sides. If your husband was running around with other women and didn’t love you that would be one thing. But I get a very strong impression that he does love you—in spite of everything. Oh, I know he acts nasty-mean sometimes but you just ask yourself if any of the blame is yours. Because here’s one thing you must never forget: a man drinks because he’s unhappy. Isn’t anything about liquor that makes a man bad. A man that’s happy can take a drink with the boys on Saturday night and come home with his pay safe in his pocket. But when a man’s miserable about something he takes a drink to forget it and one isn’t enough and he takes another snort and pretty soon the week’s pay is all gone and he gets home and sobers up and then his wife starts in on him and he’s more miserable than he was before and then his first thought is to go get drunk again and it runs around and around in a circle.” Zeena had forgotten the other customers, she had forgotten the pitch. She was talking out of herself. The marks knew it and were hanging on every word, fascinated.

“Before you take that step,” she went on, suddenly coming back to the show, “you want to be sure that you’ve done all you can to make that man happy. Maybe you can’t learn what’s bothering him. Maybe he don’t quite know himself. But try to find it. Because if you leave him you’ll have to find some way to take care of yourself and the kids anyhow. Well, why not start in tonight? If he comes home drunk put him to bed. Try talking to him friendly. When a man’s drunk he’s a lot like a kid. Well, treat him like a son and don’t go jumping on him. Tomorrow morning let him know that you understand and mother him up a little. Because if that man loves you—” Zeena paused for breath and then rushed on. “If that man loves you it don’t matter whether he makes a living or not. It don’t matter if he stays sober or not. If you’ve got a man that really loves you, you hang on to him like grim death for better or worse.” There was a catch in her voice and for a long moment silence hung in the air over the waiting crowd. “Hang on—because you’ll never regret it as much as you’ll regret sending him away and now folks if you really want to know how the stars affect your life you don’t have to pay five dollars or even one dollar I have here a set of astrological readings all worked out for each and every one of you let me know your date of birth and you get a forecast of future events complete with character reading, vocational guidance, lucky numbers.…”