To Make Death Love Us

To Edgar Allan
Poe

and the
Knight

in the
lighthouse

and to Pat
Lobrutto

who has a heart
as

big as Maxwell
Perkins.

Thank you, Jennie
Langdon

You 've done an
absolutely smashing

copyediting job!
Consider yourself

hugged from
afar.

 
To Make Death Love Us

He killed her
because she was naked.

It was innocent
murder.

The deaf-mute
Strong Man slept under the huge truck that transported the traveling sideshow. He'd seen the girl
before only hours ago in the company of two men. They had been quite some distance away when his
eyes discovered them. Even at that distance, Marco could tell by the way the girl moved rather
aimlessly around the two men lounging against the side of their pickup truck, that something was
seriously wrong with her.

There was something
vaguely familiar about that girl, too. Marco's brow wrinkled with thought as he struggled to
remember. He suspected it had something to do with Will Carney and if so, perhaps it meant
trouble.

The girl made
strange, birdlike gestures, almost hop­ping around in a human parody of some bird-mating rit­ual.
She had to be either mentally retarded or insane, thought Marco. The Strong Man being unable to
either hear or speak, and her lips too far away for him to read, heard none of the things she
yelled at the men. But from the way she carried herself, even at that distance Marco knew
something was terribly wrong with her. It made him uneasy.

Suddenly, she
lifted up her dress, pulling it up to her face. One of the men moved next to her, grabbed the
dress, pulled it back in place with a jerk, and then slapped
her across the face with such force that she nearly fell. She cowered at his
feet like a disciplined dog.

The Strong Man
shuddered. He withdrew back inside his tent. The cruelty of the world—ugly, unkind, and all too
human—oppressed him.

He sat down on the
bench before his barbells and weights. All the tents of the other members of the troupe were down
and put away in the truck. Marco knew he should tear down his tent, too, because dawn was not far
off and they had to be traveling when the sun came up if they were to make the next stop on time,
but he was suddenly too weary. It had been a long day and he thought to sleep in the tent where
he could stretch his huge bulk comfortably out at length. The narrow confines of the inside of
the truck made him a little claustrophobic, though the other freaks seemed to find it a cozy
enough nest.

The flap to his
tent was thrust aside and the girl came in, somewhat hesitantly. She stared at Marco, at his
thick muscular arms and huge chest.

There was madness
in her eyes and manner. Marco sighed and rose slowly to his feet. She stared at his
well-developed body with an intensity he found alarming. Marco, who had long ceased to be
bothered by the stares of onlookers, got nervous.

Her two brothers,
faces red with drink, burst into the tent behind her. That they were her brothers was
imme­diately obvious; there was no mistaking the family resem­blance, the same dark eyes, stark
features.

She spoke, or
rather ranted.

Marco looked away
from her face, away from her lips so as not to hear her with his eyes. Madness made him very
uneasy.

The two brothers
caught her by the arms and rather roughly dragged her out of the tent. Marco did nothing
to
interfere with her removal. The ease
with which they took her bespoke of long custom. Marco, curious, walked to the entrance of the
tent and watched her being carried off. They did not take her far.

Across the road
only, to a battered white pickup truck with two rifles mounted in a rack inside the cab in front
of the back window.

The two brothers
let down the tailgate and unceremo­niously dumped her on the bed of the truck. They seemed to be
threatening her. At any rate, the girl cowered, with­drawing to one corner.

The men dragged a
couple of bedrolls out of the truck's cab and pitched them on the ground.

It was obvious they
planned to spend the night here, too. Marco shrugged. It did not concern him, although plainly
the madness of the girl had upset him. He assumed her two brothers worked as set-up men, ride
assemblers for the second-rate carnival the sideshow had temporarily joined forces
with.

Marco flexed his
muscles uneasily, again withdrawing back inside the tent, closing the flap behind him. The show
was done for the day, everything packed away but his tent.

It was hot.
Stifling in the tent. Marco lay for hours on a narrow folding cot, adjusting his bulk
uncomfortably, sweat dripping from him. Without knowing why, the little episode with the mad girl
had upset him. There was a wrongness somewhere, a hint of some impending doom.

The sun was long
since down and Marco should be usleep but try as he might he could not get comfortable. The
coming of night seemed to oppress him. Sleep eluded him. The other freaks in the sideshow had
long since retired for the night. Marco gathered up his blankets and crawled under the huge truck
in which the rest of the I rcaks slept. There was something comforting in the presence of the
huge vehicle which was his home, of sorts, as it was for the other freaks in Will Carney's
traveling side­show. Besides, it was much cooler out here. Finally, it seemed sleep found
him.

In the dark of the
Southern night, a pair of strange eyes watched him as he slept.

The truck was a big
old International, the kind used for hauling furniture interstate. It wasn't the biggest of them
but it was big enough for the sideshow's purposes. The cab and engine were a part of the whole
rig and not separate like the new ones are.

There was a
crawlspace behind the driver's seat where a partner could sleep on overnight runs, and a window
above that. The window was there so movers could look back through to see if the load was riding
all right and served no other useful purpose. It couldn't be opened out or slid aside. The glass
was sandwiched for safety's sake.

The back was a big,
clamshell tailgate that opened up and ramped down. There was a smaller door in it so if anyone
had a mind to look around inside they wouldn't have to open up the whole thing.

On top was a
ventilator like a mushroom, about as big as a baby's washtub. There were no windows or openings
on the sides of the truck. Instead, a big poster was embla­zoned on both side panels, declaring
the identity and intentions of the people who traveled in her.

Bold letters at the
top said: WILL CARNEY’S TRAVELING
CAR-NEE-VAL.

The owner's
face—Will Carney himself, wearing a straw hat, smiling, his eyes painted to look warm and
friendly—took up a good half of the space on the poster. The rest of it was given over to highly
colored representa­tions of the rest of his troupe and what they were about.

Paulette the "HUMAN
PACHYDERM," also billed for the less schooled as the "FAT GIRL." Pepino the "RUBBER MAN." Colonel
John Thumb (he wanted to be billed as a general but everybody agreed that if he was going to
borrow the fame of P.T. Barnum's celebrated midget, he'd best be a lot more subtle about it).
Marco the "SI­LENT SAMSON"—who now lay under the truck begin­ning a dream that would end in
murder—and lastly, the oddest of all the freaks, beautiful Serena "THE MOON GIRL," an albino with
skin like milk, hair like weed floss, blind eyes, and a strange power within her that grew with
each passing day.

The poster had been
done by a cut-rate sign painter and was no work of art. It was scaling and peeling off in places
so that their faces looked leprous. Some underpainting showed through in spots. If somebody had
the mind to look real close, they could see that once the figure of Will Carney, the owner, had
had a hand that juggled six red balls and a legend that billed him as WILL CARNEY, THE GREATEST
JUGGLER IN THE SOUTH. Rare mod­esty.

Someone had crudely
painted out the hand and the legend with paint that did not match the rest of the
poster.

Marco was having a
dream. He saw the mad girl coming toward him on all fours. The moon was up, full and huge in the
sky like an obscene cue ball and he could see her clearly. She was quite mad. It was clear
now.

Mad and naked. Her
small, child's breasts were wholly revealed, held high as if in offering. She crawled in under
the truck after him. Her eyes rolled wildly in her head and her lips contorted soundlessly, the
cords in her throat bulging with effort.

He supposed in the
dream that she was screaming at him. Even in the dream there was no sound. Marco lay under the
truck, watching her coming up on him like a wild animal stalking its prey and he knew he would
wake
up before she reached him, for that
was the way of dreams. Her hands touched him, caressing his mighty chest. For a dream it was
terribly real.

It was such a
surprise, such a shock, that Marco reacted before he could think. His huge hands went against her
naked body and he shoved her away with all the strength in his corded arms. It was her nakedness
that frightened him the most. It made her madness all the more intolera­ble.

The night itself
was alive with noise, but Marco heard none of it. Car doors slammed, men shouted as they
stum­bled in the dark, cursing, running blindly in the dark toward the source of the
screams.

The girl was
propelled backward as if thrown by a cata­pult. Her body smashed, with a sickening thud, into a
utility pole a full fifteen feet from the back of the truck. Her head snapped back and she
slumped in a heap at the base of the pole. Blood spurted from her mouth and ears and her head
lolled sideways at an unnatural angle. Her neck had snapped like a twig. For a dream, Marco found
it all to be sickeningly real. He stirred, shuddered, waiting for the moment that would shake him
out of this night­mare.

A face seemed to
hover over him, intruding in this strange dream. It belonged to Will Carney, the owner of the
sideshow. He seemed to be shouting at Marco. An arm and hand reached out for him. As part of the
dream, it had no meaning to Marco.

Will shook his
shoulder roughly. In the distance, some­one turned their headlights on, and Marco could see the
mad girl's two brothers standing in the headlight's glare beside their pickup truck. They were
screaming, although Marco could not hear it. As one, they raced to the cab of their pickup and
yanked the rifles out of the rack in the back window. It all seemed very real, this
nightmare.

Will seemed to have
Marco very firmly by the shoulder now, dragging him out from under the truck—no mean feat in
itself, considering Marco's weight. No part of the dream faded. The girl still lay by the pole
like a broken doll.