The Man in the Tree (16 page)

In the following week he accepted an invitation to a dinner party in
the Fat Lady's trailer. Logan Forster, her husband, a beaming little
man with a black mustache, cooked spaghetti in a huge pot and served
it with a garlicky sauce. Irma and her husband were there, and Wilcox
and the Lizard Man, and Ducklin in his baseball cap. Most of them sat
on cushions on the floor; Betty Ann was in her wheelchair, and Logan
insisted that Gene take the loveseat. The Forsters were from Australia,
and Betty Ann, it turned out, had an astonishing repertoire of bawdy
songs, performed in an innocent little-girl voice.
Afterward Irma's quiet husband volunteered to help Logan with the
cleanup; Irma sat beside Gene on the loveseat and they began talking
about sword-swallowing.
"How did you ever learn to do it?" Gene asked.
"The Human Pincushion taught me -- Jim Simons. That was three seasons
ago. He was with the show till last year, then he went to Texas. I just
wanted to learn, and he taught me. The only hard part is, you have to
learn to keep from gagging when the sword goes past your glottis, right
here, where you swallow. That took me two months, but then the rest was
easy. You just bend your head back to make a straight line with your
mouth and your throat, and then drop the sword down easy, a little bit
at a time, until you feel it touch the bottom of your stomach. That's
the part I don't like." She studied him for a moment. "I suppose you've
heard about giants and sword-swallowers," she said, "but don't take it
too seriously."
"Giants and sword-swallowers?" Gene replied. "No, what do you mean?"
"You really don't know? Well, that's okay too. Maybe we'd better keep
it that way."
Gene discovered that Ed Parlow, the Lizard Man, liked to play Scrabble;
they played two or three times a week, behind the freak tent while they
waited to go on, with an alarm clock to remind them if they got too
absorbed in the game.
Parlow seemed extraordinarily well read, although from a casual remark
he had made Gene gathered that he had had no schooling beyond the sixth
grade. One evening in Gene's trailer, they were talking about a book
Parlow had lent him, "The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren," by Iona
and Peter Opie.
"It may bethat kids that age haven't had time to develop a super-ego,"
Parlow said, "but I think the main thing is that they haven't got the
formal power structure that grownups have. They have to sort themselves
out somehow, and they do it through force partly, and partly through
mockery -- if they make you cry, they win."
"I was too big for the seats in school," Gene said. "I had to sit with
my feet in the aisle, and they called me Feet."
"They called me Fish-skin," said Parlow apologetically. "One day. two
kids caught me going home from school and whitewashed me."
"Whitewashed you ?"
"That's right, there was a can of whitewash in somebody's basement --
they took me down there, pulled my shirt off and painted me. My mother
was crying when she washed it off. It was irritating stuff -- my skin
was pretty raw for a week or so. My father was furious -- he went to the
kids' parents and the principal, It didn't do any good, of course. Kids
have an instinct about anybody who's visibly different. It may be a
Darwinian trait, to weed out anybody who's too far from the norm."
"There's no cure for this?"
Parlow shook his head. "No. I had all kinds of doctors when I was a kid.
You see, it's genetic, or at least -- they call it 'heredofamilial,'
which I take to mean they think it's genetic but they can't prove it. It
runs in families, anyway. My father had it on his elbows and knees. As
Ambrose Bierce said, the best thing is not to be born."
After a moment he reached across the table and touched Gene's arm
lightly. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded," he said with a
smile. "If I had the chance to go back and say, 'No, I don't want
to be born,' I wouldn't. There are so many people worse off than I
am. Brain-damaged kids, just living vegetables -- that's awful. I've got
all my faculties, such as they are; I can read, I can think. I'm alive,
I can move around, I don't have a whole lot of pain. And you can't say
this isn't a cushy job."
"What would you have done if things had been different?"
"I've thought about that. I would have gone to college, of course, and
probably I would have majored in philosophy. And I suppose by now I'd
be teaching philosophy somewhere. Well, as a matter of fact, a friend
of mine is a philosophy professor in Asheville -- I see him every year or
so when we come through there. He hasn't got tenure, and he's got a wife
and three kids, and a house -- you know, keeping up with the Joneses. I
don't think he respects his students, he doesn't really enjoy what he's
doing, and at the same time he's terribly afraid of losing his job.
"I think about him, and his class schedules and meetings and so on. He
wears these tweed jackets with patches on the elbows, and he smokes a
pipe, but how much time does he have to think about philosophy? I think
I've read more than he has. It's funny to say that, but it's true. I
always take a carton of books with me, and from October to March I have
nothing to do but read. Would I change places with him? I don't know."
One morning in early May, someone rapped on the trailer door. Gene opened
it; there stood Irma, dressed in a terrycloth robe.
"Hi there," she said. "Listen, is your plumbing okay?"
"Plumbing? Yes, why?"
"Well, my shower's on the fritz. Would you mind?"
"Mind?"
"lf I took a shower."
"Oh. No, of course not -- come on in."
She brushed past him with a whiff of fragrance, something flowery, but too
faint to identify. "Don't get too near me," she said over her shoulder,
"I probably stink like a goat."
"No, you smell good."
She gave him a smile and turned to inspect the trailer. "Hey, this is
nice. You had it all done over inside, didn't you?"
"Yes, pretty much."
She glanced up at the unmade bed, then mounted the two steps to the
rear section. "Oh, the shower's new, too!" she said as she opened the
door. "Oh, this is terrific." She took a yellow plastic cap out of the
pocket of her robe.
"Here's a towel," Gene said.
"Keep it for me. Here." She slipped out of her robe, handed it to him
and walked with a flash of pale buttocks into the shower stall. The door
closed; after a moment the pump started and he heard the water hissing
on the metal floor.
Gene put the towel and the terry-cloth robe on the counter. He took
off his own dressing gown. His throat was dry; he could feel his heart
beating. He opened the shower door and stepped in.
Irma glanced at him with one eye; the other was covered by
soapsuds. "Well, hello," she said.
Gene took the soap from her and began to lather her smooth back. Presently
he put the soap down and rubbed the lather with his hands over her breasts
and belly. She leaned her head back against his breastbone. Her hip came
against him, but he twisted away.
"What's the matter?" she asked, and looked down. "Oh. My gosh, he's a
big one, isn't he?" She turned around in his arms. "Now I'll do you."
Her hands were gentle. When they were both rinsed, she turned off the
water, opened the door, stepped out, and picked up the towel. As soon as
he came through the doorway, she began to dry him. Gene reached over her
head to the cabinet, got another towel. Their efforts interfered with
each other, and she began to laugh. He followed her down the steps and
up again to the front of the trailer.
"Do you know why I like you?" she asked between kisses. They were in
bed together; she was curled up against him, and his hand was on her
breasts. "Because you make me feel small."
"You are small."
"No, I'm
enormous
, I'm five nine and a half. If I wear heels, I'm
almost six feet tall. But you make me feel petite. You're so big." Her
finger traveled slowly down the length of his erect penis. "Too big for
my lady Jane."
"Your what?"
"Didn't you ever read "Lady Chatterley's Lover"? That's what she called
her thing. I think it's nicer than 'cunt' or 'muff.' And this is your
John Thomas, and he must be ten inches long."
Gene tried to get closer to her, but she held him away. "Get up a minute,
honey. Please. Just for a minute, all right?"
Angry and confused, he got out of bed. "Stay there," Irma said. She
squirmed around on her back until her head hung over the edge. "Now
I'm going to show you about sword-swallowers and giants, honey. Come
on. Don't worry, it's all right. Come on."
Chapter Fourteen
Armed with his letter of recommendation from the mayor of Dog River,
Tom Cooley went to Amherst, Massachusetts, and got a job on the police
force. He chose the east because he was convinced the kid had gone that
way. A deer might double back to avoid pursuit, but not a kid. He wouldn't
go in the same direction twice, and, he wouldn't go back to places where
he had almost been trapped. He would go east.
Cooley had no illusions about his chances of finding him there. Young as
he was, the kid would be smart enough to know that Cooley had tracked him
down in San Francisco by going to art schools, and he wouldn't be caught
that way again. Cooley had another idea, and he was willing to wait.
It was funny how the thing had grown on him. In the beginning it had just
been a thing about evening the score, like when somebody cheats you at
cards and takes your money, you don't let them get away with that, you
get even and more than even. Only later had he begun to realize that Gene
Anderson was really the devil. What kind of a kid could kill his son,
throw him out a window, and then live in the woods all by himself for
two years, and grow up to be a giant? That wasn't natural; it wasn't
even human.
Cooley liked Amherst well enough, and he found some congenial friends,
including an ex-Marine named Jacobs whose hobby was incendiary and
explosive devices. In 1957 he married a widow who had a half-interest
in a bar and grill, and moved into her house on Third Street. After six
months they began to quarrel frequently, and in 1959 they were divorced.
Cooley was disciplined in the same year for drinking on duty, owing to
an unfortunate falling-out with his superior. In 1960 he left the Amherst
police force and moved to Pittsburgh, where he went to work for an armored
car company. The work was undemanding and the pay was fair. In 1962 he
began using his vacation time to visit circuses and carnivals in the east.
His reasoning was simple: if the kid kept on growing at the same rate, by
the time he was twenty he would be nearly eight feet tall. He wouldn't be
able to get an ordinary job anywhere; he couldn't even join the army.
Sooner or later he would turn up in a sideshow.
Cooley struck up acquaintances with circus people whenever he got a
chance, and discovered that the bible of the industry was a magazine
called "Amusement Business," published in Nashville. He subscribed to it,
and read every issue from cover to cover.
Through the summer the carnival worked its way into Ohio and Indiana,
turned north briefly into Wisconsin, then back into Ohio again, and from
there to Pennsylvania and Maryland, then southward down the coast through
New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and so back to Florida. There
were tearful good-byes, and the women kissed Gene. "See you next season,"
they all said.
Gene went back to his A-frame on Lake Brantley. At first he liked
the solitude and freedom, the time to think. He finished a large wood
carving and several smaller pieces; he made a few tentative experiments
in poetry. But the winter was long; when the end of March came, he went
back to the carnival with a sense of relief.
Some of the old faces were missing, and there were some new ones, even
in the sideshow. The Fat Lady was gone; she had had a stroke during the
winter. In her place there was a young juggler, a wiry dark-skinned man
named Ray Hartz. He joined Irma in the bally, where he did a spectacular
act with five whirling daggers. He could not use knives in the tent,
where he worked so close to the marks, but he juggled apples, oranges,
milk bottles. "He won't stay long," Wilcox predicted, "but he'll do to
fill in until Ducklin can find another Fat Lady, or a morphodite."
Early in the season Hartz began teaching Irma to juggle; she picked it
up readily, and within a few weeks they were practicing together in the
back yard between performances, disturbing Gene's Scrabble games with
Ed Parlow. Irma's husband, Ted LeFever, looked more and more tired every
time Gene saw him; he was running the candy-apple stand all by himself.
One evening in Gene's trailer, Wilcox showed him what he called "the grift."
"All this more or less stopped about nineteen forty-eight, when carnivals
became respectable, but I've run into oldtimers who used to do it. The
classic way is with three walnut shells and a pea, like this." He showed
Gene the "pea" -- a little dark sphere of rubber. He put it under one
of the shells and began to move them back and forth, changing their
positions rapidly. "The idea is, I bet you a dollar you can't tell me
which shell the pea's under. Where is it now?"
Gene pointed to the shell in the middle. Wilcox lifted it. "Right,
and you've won a dollar. Care to try again?"
Next time Gene picked the wrong shell. "Bad luck, you've got to watch
closer. Now don't take your eye off the shell with the pea." Gene picked
the wrong one again.
"You see how it goes," Wilcox said. "You let the mark win just often
enough to keep him enthusiastic, and he always thinks if he pays more
attention he'll win next time. Then you begin doubling the bet, and so
on, and a good grifter can take all his money away. You see, the pea
is compressible: you can squirt it out under the shell and palm it,
like this." He showed Gene the pea between his fingers.
"Then you squirt it back in under another shell the same way, and the
mark never sees it because you do it so fast."
"So 'the grift' is another word for cheating?"
"Sure. In the old days, the idea was to separate the mark from his money,
never mind how. Game of chance, pick his pocket, anything. You had to pay
off the law, of course, and so it was really a sort of vicious cycle, I
mean, without the grift you couldn't make the payments."