The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel (6 page)

A stout bar across the entrance, a quintet of
crows perched on the weathered black wood, facing the road, every
few minutes fluffing feathers, stretching wings, pecking at drying
strings of red meat draped over the barrier.

Hammering inside, the whine of a saw.

Sun bright, heat strong, no one to take tickets
because no one had come and no one would come, though there was no
sign on the arch that declared the fair closed; later, much later,
but for now just the crows.

And from somewhere inside, the soft quiet sound
of a young woman laughing.

He stood on the front walk, hands first in his
hip pockets, then on his hips, then clasped, clenched, back in his
pockets, tangled behind his back, shredding blades of grass,
adjusting his belt. He didn’t know what to do and so did and said
nothing as a uniformed woman knelt beside the porch steps and
scraped something into a clear plastic bag. It was the fifth time
she’d done it. Maybe the sixth. He’d lost count. And he had stopped
trying to talk to her because all he had received thus far for his
efforts had been grunts and a maddeningly professional, don’t
worry-about-it smile.

She said her name was Trudy. Officer Iverson.
Fair hair in a thick braid at the back of her head, a minimum of
makeup, not much of a figure though he’d fought not to wince when
she’d shaken his hand.

A footstep behind him, but he didn’t turn. If it
was one more goddamn neighbor asking one more damn fool question,
he would scream; he would tear off someone’s head; he would print
up flyers and pass them around so they’d leave him the hell alone
while his land died around him.

The footstep passed on.

Iverson rose, dusted her knees, tucked the bag
into a pocket of her tunic. “That should do it.”

He waited.

She glanced around, shaking her head helplessly.
“Tell you the truth, Mr. Bethune, I haven’t the slightest idea what
this is all about.”

“Well, it has to be some kind of poison,” he
insisted, as he had when she’d first arrived, not ten minutes after
he’d called the station. “Things — plants, I mean — just don’t die
like that, not that fast, not practically overnight, for god’s
sake.” He looked for sympathy; she gave him a shrug. “Somebody did
it. It didn’t happen by itself.”

Lips pulled, almost a smile. “We’ll let you know
as soon as we can.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. We’ll call.”

Hands waved impotently. “And what am I supposed
to do now?”

She passed him, paused, bowed her head for a
moment before patting the place where the bag had disappeared. “Mr.
Bethune, all I can say is, don’t try to plant anything new in any
of those places until we can find out what was used to destroy your
flowers.” Her tone told him she didn’t think this was a police
matter at all; his expression told her that this many plants cost
one hell of a lot of money, which postmen don’t have to throw
around, in case she hadn’t noticed. “Give us a call on Monday
—”

“Monday!”

“— and maybe we’ll have your answer. Take it
easy.” A last look. “Good thing nobody’s pet was around.”

Right, he thought; it’s only a damn flower,
hell, at least it’s not a dog, god forbid.

After she disappeared around the corner, he went
inside and sat in the kitchen until he couldn’t stand it anymore,
walked through every room until he wanted to scream, grabbed his
wallet from the dresser and walked to the Brass Ring just after it
opened. Molly wasn’t on duty yet, and for that he was grateful. He
didn’t think he could stand her commiseration, her sad smiles, or
her off-the-cuff psychology lectures.

He drank slowly until supper, walked extra
carefully across the street to the Luncheonette, had a sandwich and
strong coffee, waited until he was sure he wouldn’t fall, then
returned to the bar.

Drank while he listened to Oxley explain to a
newcomer the finer points of playing darts without putting a hole
or two in one’s foot.

Stared at the walls, the ceiling, swiveled
around and looked out at the street. But the faces passing by were
indistinct, grey, and he turned away to watch the bartender wipe
off the tables.

He blinked several times, quite slowly, and
tried to release his breath, suddenly caught in his lungs.

“Hey,” he said quietly to the glass in his
hand.

and he’s a creep, a so-called man who talks
to stupid goddamn flowers

“Hey.”

nothing but goddamn weeds

In order to keep from bolting, and screaming, he
placed money and glass on the bar with exaggerated deliberation,
waved his usual farewell and strolled outside, where he leaned
immediately and heavily against the wall when the sun blared in his
eyes and set a painfully slow dervish working in his head. Not
good. This wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do at all. He had to be sober when
he . . . no, maybe he wouldn’t go to the police. To Iverson the
Iron Bitch, who would most likely tell him that words don’t mean
much when they’re grumbled in a bar, and they certainly weren’t a
threat.

How the hell, Mr. Bethune, do you threaten a
rose?

He swallowed, rubbed his mouth, and coughed into
a fist. People on the sidewalk glanced at him, or ignored him, but
none of them stopped to ask what was wrong.

He chuckled to himself — he was practically
invisible. The postman is drunk, folks, so pretend he’s not there.
What the hell, that should be easy, they do it when he’s sober.

He swallowed again and held his breath, released
it in spurts, and pushed away from the building, heading south,
heading home where he could dig out the telephone book and see
where Hobbs lived. He doubted she had flowers. He doubted she even
had a yard. She probably stayed in a boardinghouse and bossed the
landlady around.

He made it as far as the corner of his block
before he had to stop and prop a shoulder against a lamppost. Deep
breaths. Swallowing. Walking once more, not quite straight, not
quite staggering, glancing at the houses he passed, knowing that
the woman in there has trouble with her medical bills, the family
over there subscribes to nine magazines and two out-of-state
newspapers, the unmarried couple in the place across from his
receives letters from France at least twice a month. He knew them,
he thought as he turned to look back the way he had come; he knew
them all and knew them well and didn’t know them at all unless he
had an envelope in his hand.

“Oh god,” he said. “Oh god.”

He bypassed his front door, went around the side
into the shade.

The roses were dead, petals strewn on the
ground, fluttering in a breeze as if trying to crawl to the
grass.

He dropped to his knees, hands weak on his
thighs, counting the bushes, reaching out and grabbing a stem,
snatching his hand back and staring dumbly at the blood bubbles
welling in his palm. There was no pain. Just the blood. He sucked
at the punctures while he looked up at the house and saw, below one
window beneath the eaves, a long blister of white paint pulling
away from the wood. Higher, and there was another, just under the
gutter, a section of which had somehow worked loose from its
bracket.

This wasn’t right.

This couldn’t be happening.

But he was too befuddled to think straight and
so didn’t try. He crawled instead on all fours into the backyard,
shook his head once at the spectacle he was and shoved himself
grunting to his feet, climbed the stoop, banged open the kitchen
door and tripped over the threshold as he went in.

He hung on to the nearest counter and lowered
his head until it cleared. Cold shower. What he needed a long,
cold, stinging shower, a gallon or two of hot coffee, clean clothes
and some food — in that order. After that, he’d hunt down Norma and
. . . he rubbed his eyes, his temples, decided he would cross that
bridge when he came to it. As it was, unless he sobered up, he’d
probably kill himself first.

A laugh.

He began to strip as he headed for the
bathroom.

“. . . waltz ’cross the floor,” he sang, badly
and loudly and not giving a damn, “with the girl he adored . .
.”

Right, he thought; right!

She wanted to see him tonight.

How the hell could he have forgotten? A
beautiful young woman had made a date with him, and it had
completely slipped his mind. And there, he scolded himself, is the
reason, you jackass, why you’re not rich, why you don’t have a love
life, why you ain’t never going to be more than a carrier all your
life — you don’t believe the good things even when they drop on
your thick, fat skull. Jackass is right. You got to be clobbered
with a two-by-four before anyone can get your attention.

All right. Well, she had his attention now.

Yard called while he was eating: “Heard you tied
one on this afternoon, m’friend.”

“Nigel has a big mouth.”

A television shouted the evening news in the
background,

Until someone else shouted to turn the damn
thing down.

Casey grinned, took another bite of his
steak.

“So, hey,” Yard said, “you okay?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“Sort of.” An intentionally loud sigh. “So look;
the family’s going to the Travelers tonight, rumor saying it being
the last and all. You want to come along? Be glad to have you. I
need someone to tell me what the tricks are.”

“Very funny.”

“Maybe we’ll bump into the teacher.”

Casey looked at the back door and saw a rose
petal on the floor, curled, a baby’s fist. “Dead,” he said
quietly.

“What? She is?”

“My garden, Yard. The last one.”

“Oh Jesus.”

“I got home and all the roses were dead. And are
you ready for this? Even the paint’s starting to come off the walls
outside.”

“Can’t be. We worked for three days, that
paint’s on there for life.”

“It’s coming off, Yard. I swear it, it’s coming
off.”

“We’ll check it tomorrow. First thing. Some damp
might have gotten underneath it.”

“Sure. Okay.”

“So look, Case, are you coming —”

“Hey, Yard?”

“What?”

“Do you know what a penny tune is?”

“Never heard of it. You sure you’re still not a
little in a bag there?”

Casey hung up, gathered his plates and dropped
them in the sink. Then he picked up the petal and dropped it into
the trashcan. The wall clock — hands and numerals in the belly of a
crowing rooster — told him it was already past seven. An hour to
kill before the sun went down, then a check in the mirror to be
sure he was still human, and off to the fair.

The telephone rang.

Christ, he thought as he slapped up the
receiver; nobody calls for two weeks, then everybody calls.

It was Tina.

“Listen,” she said, speaking rapidly, her voice
nervous, “Norma and I are going to the carnival tonight and we
thought maybe you’d like to come with us? I mean, she’s feeling
pretty bad about what she said the other day, she wants to make it
up to you, buy you a hot dog or something? I thought maybe if you
were going . . .”

Waltz ’cross the floor.

“Damn, Tina,” he said, “I’m really sorry but I
already have . . . that is, I’m already meeting someone.”

“Oh.” Silence, but not long. “Well, hey, that’s
fine, that’s great. Anybody we know?”

He felt suddenly awkward, almost defensive. “No,
I don’t think so.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, maybe we’ll see you there,
okay?”

“Sure. Probably.”

“And Casey,” she said, “Norma really is
sorry.”

Waltz ’cross the floor, all the roses are
dead.

“I doubt it, Tina,” he said flatly, and hung
up.

She was there.

The midway was crowded, all the concessions
busy, but he saw her the moment he stepped into the oval. She was
on the Octopus, alone, hair yanked and tossed by the ride’s private
wind. He stood back and watched her, grinning, waving once when she
spotted him and raised her hands in a boxer’s victory salute. For a
moment he didn’t want her to come down, and didn’t watch her until
she’d reached the top of each arc. She was among the stars; she was
a star; she was, he thought with an abrupt tightening across his
chest, his own star, nameless and distant no matter how close she
came to touching the ground.

A woman walked by, a rose in her hair.

The roses are dead.

His brow broke sweat in warm running beads, and
when the strawberry blonde was momentarily lost to view, he tried
to spot Tina and the poisoning bitch in the crowd, whose faces were
frozen in manic grins and widened eyes. And in failing, failed to
notice that the Octopus had lowered its arms until he looked back
and couldn’t find her.

Damn, he thought in near panic, and raised
himself on his toes. But he was too short to look over heads and so
forced himself to wait, half praying, half fearful, sagging at last
when she broke around a man following his paunch around the
track.

He grinned.

She smiled, leaned over and kissed his
cheek.

“Corri,” she whispered, hands holding his
shoulders, his own hands fluttering, not knowing where to go.
“Corri Pilgrim.”

His mouth opened; she closed it with a
finger.

“You wanted to know my name,” she reminded him,
slipped an arm around his waist and nudged him into moving.

“Oh.” His own arm and her waist; she didn’t pull
away. “You the boss’s daughter or something?”

“We’re all Pilgrims here.”

He stared.

She winked. “That’s supposed to be a joke.”

“Oh.” She felt soft, hot without discomfort, hip
against hip. “Oh.”

Clockwise around the oval.

“You don’t feel right, Casey,” she said, head
tilting and quickly touching his cheek. “Are you sad?”

“Not anymore.”

A shy glance at the ground. “But you were?”