“I should be going,” he said. “It was nice meeting you,” he added to Derry.
Derry nodded and turned his attention back to the waiting truck. As Joe and Star walked back toward the tents, Star said, “Derry has been with me since he was quite young. I took him in when his parents died.”
“It must have been hard on him,” Joe said.
“Hard?” asked Star. “In what way?”
“Growing up surrounded by freaks,” said Joe.
Star laughed. “Why would that be hard?” he said. “We’re all, as you say, freaks in one way or another, are we not? Even if it isn’t visible to the outside world.”
They’d reached Joe’s truck. Joe paused, his hand on the door. “I suppose in some ways that’s true,” he said. He looked at Star. “I’ll tell Harley to expect you and your people tomorrow noontime.”
“I look forward to it,” said Star, tipping his head.
Joe got into the truck, started it, and drove away. Without Star in the truck he felt more at ease. Yet still something was troubling him. And it wasn’t Star but Derry. He couldn’t get the young man’s image out of his mind. As he drove, he kept picturing the lines of Derry’s torso, the muscled skin streaked with dust and grease. He found himself imagining what it would be like to touch that skin, to feel it beneath the callused tips of his fingers.
“No,” he told himself. He shook his head, scattering the vision, and concentrated on the road before him. But again Derry’s face invaded his thoughts, and again Joe let himself feel the heat of the young man’s skin against his own.
He pulled the truck over, coming to a stop at the edge of a field, where a disinterested cow glanced up at him and immediately resumed its chewing. Joe gripped the steering wheel tightly, resting his forehead against it. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this. Not again. But even as he willed himself not to, he felt the telltale stirring in his belly.
Reluctantly, he let one hand fall between his legs. He felt the hardness there. His body was betraying him. Still keeping his eyes closed, he slid his hand beneath the waist of his pants, feeling hair and skin and heat. Pushing deeper, his fingers closed around his shaft, tugging it up and out.
He lay back against the seat, slowly stroking himself as he thought about Derry. He saw himself taking the other man in his arms, kissing him. He felt Derry’s tongue enter his mouth as he accepted the embrace.
Joe pulled his T-shirt up and unzipped his pants, freeing himself. He never once looked down as his cock stretched up along his belly, pressing itself against him. As his fist moved up and down the length of it, he told himself that it was Derry’s hand holding him, Derry’s fingers coaxing the pleasure from deep inside him.
He breathed in and smelled the scent of Derry’s skin, an intoxicating mixture of sweat and oil and sun. He ran his hands over the curve of Derry’s ass, allowed his fingers to dip inside and press against the warm center. Derry opened to him, taking his fingers into himself and moaning in Joe’s ear.
A cry of release escaped Joe’s throat as his stomach was splashed with a spray of wetness. His cock jumped in his hand once, twice, three times as his body tightened and the electric rush rippled through him. He squeezed himself, hard, wanting it to go on forever, but moments later it had subsided, and he was himself once more.
Now he did look down. The dark hair of his stomach was threaded with sticky whiteness. He lowered his shirt and wiped away the stains of his actions. Tucking himself back into his pants, he zipped up and started the truck. The cow, finished with its grazing, was looking at him accusingly. He avoided its gaze and turned the key. Ashamed, he pulled the truck back onto the road and headed for the safety of the carousel.
Chapter Three
They came in five trucks, each one pulling a long trailer painted black. The first to arrive was the one Derry had been working on the previous afternoon. He was driving it, and as he passed by Joe, he lifted his hand in greeting but didn’t smile. Joe nodded in return, watching the dust kicked up by the truck’s tires billowing in dirty clouds around his feet.
The caravan rattled and bounced to a clear area at the far end of the carnival grounds. There the trucks stopped, their motors shuddering to stillness. Joe watched as Derry opened the door of his truck and jumped to the ground. As his feet touched the earth, the doors of the other four trucks opened in unison, as if unlocked by the young man’s steps, and four nearly identical drivers emerged. Young men all of them, they stood silently beside their trucks, hands thrust into the pockets of the overalls they wore. Their dark eyes watched impassively as Derry approached Joe and Harley, who had left his office when word of the new arrivals had reached him.
“Where shall we set up?” Derry asked when he grew closer.
Harley nodded in the direction of the trucks. “There’s fine,” he said. “Joe will get some men to help you.”
“Don’t need any help,” answered Derry.
Turning around, he walked back to the trucks and the waiting men. At some wordless sign from him, they were set in motion, each going to the trailer pulled by his truck and unlocking a door set in the far side, away from the view of Joe, Harley, and the small crowd of carnival workers who had come to see the strangers.
“All them freaks are in those trailers?” Harley asked Joe.
Joe spit on the ground. “Unless Star keeps them in some magic box of his,” he said.
Harley grunted. It was a sound he made when he wasn’t sure someone was kidding him or not. “Well, you keep an eye on them for me. I’ve got work to do.”
Joe returned to his own work, leaving Derry and his crew to do as they would. If they didn’t want his help, he wasn’t going to offer more than once. They could come to him.
They didn’t. And the next time Joe went near their end of the grounds, several hours later, there were three large black tents set up. Over the entrance to one was a faded sign proclaiming, Tent of Wonders. The tents were connected, and Joe knew that somewhere at the side of the third tent was an exit. What lay in between the two doors, he’d glimpsed briefly during his visit to Star’s camp, and wanted to see no more of.
“Would you like to journey through before the crowds come?”
Joe glanced to the side and saw Star watching him. He was dressed as before, in his black suit and top hat, only now he leaned on a cane made of black wood and tipped with the silver head of a crow. He gestured at the opening of the tent.
Joe shook his head. “No time,” he said.
Mr. Star cocked his head and frowned. “No time for magic and wonder?” he said. “Have you forgotten what it is to be enchanted, to be a child once more? Were you afraid of the dark as a boy?”
The question took Joe by surprise. Why had Star asked it? What had it to do with anything? Yet he found himself answering.
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t. I liked the night.”
“Because it brought dreams,” Star said, his voice light as the wind. He walked closer to Joe until he was standing directly in front of him, looking into his face and smiling. “It took you away, the night. Wrapped you in its velvet arms and carried you somewhere wild. Where did it take you? Who were you in your dreams?”
Joe found his mind racing, filling with images, snatches of memory, half-remembered bits of song. “Sing a song of sixpence,” a boy’s voice cried out. “Olly, olly oxen free!” Who was calling? He recognized the voice, but before he could identify its owner, it disappeared.
“Who were you in your dreams?” Star’s voice came to him again, coaxing, gentle. “Think back.”
Joe closed his eyes. His head was spinning. He shook it forcefully, and the voices inside were silenced. When he opened his eyes, Star was looking at him curiously.
“I need to go,” said Joe. “The carousel.”
He left Star standing by the tent and hurried off. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but he felt a need to get away, away from the peculiar man and his tent of wonders. The carousel, as always, would be his place of r
efuge.
He stayed there as afternoon turned to evening, and the sky from yellow to pink to purple. The first stars came out, and with them the carnival goers. It was Friday, and the looming freedom of the next two days filled the people of the town with thoughts of happiness. It was happiness they badly needed, as the war had taken from them a great measure of their joy, their belief in life. The carnival gave some of it back, even if its promises melted like cotton sugar in the light of morning and left them feeling slightly sick. At least for the night, they were lifted high.
Joe stood at the controls of the carousel, a magician spinning gold and starlight from the gears and motors hidden beneath the ride’s painted facade. He took his passengers for a dizzying spin around and around, turning them for a handful of minutes into cowboys, princesses, lovers, and whatever else they wanted to be.
When the moon was nearly overhead, he decided to take a break. Handing control of the carousel over to one of the crew, he walked toward the midway. There he heard the sounds of the barkers enticing visitors to play their games and buy their wares. It was the sound of barking dogs mixed with the voices of a dozen preachers selling salvation. “Knock the bottles down and win a prize.” “Popcorn and peanuts, three cents a bag.” They were selling everything and nothing, and from the tone of their calls, Joe knew that they were succeeding mightily at it. Harley had been right: the town had been waiting for them.
He kept walking, coming to a stop only when he reached the perimeter of the carnival. At this crossing place between the golden world of the rides and the grayness of reality, a border had formed—a circle of torn ticket stubs, stained napkins, and the discarded remains of half-eaten sweets that were somehow swept to the very edges of the fairgrounds and surrounded it like a moat. It happened every night, this accumulation of worn-out glory. After years on the road, Joe had stopped feeling sad when he looked at the trashlands, had come to see them as he would the broken shell of a bird’s egg, the bits and pieces signifying that something inside had broken free and flown.
He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. The end glowed firefly bright in the shadows, and when he exhaled, the smoke curled up around his face and kept rising into the night sky. He guessed that it was somewhere around half past eleven. The carnival would close at midnight, what remained of the crowds gently shooed away by men trained in the art of putting dreams to bed. Then the world would go to sleep.
A woman’s laugh broke through his thoughts, and he turned to his left. There he saw a flash of light as a curtain opened against the dark and someone exited. He realized then that he was near the third of Star’s black tents and that what he saw was the most recent visitor to the Tent of Wonders. The man stood for a moment in the darkness, as if letting his eyes—or perhaps his mind—adjust to the world around him. Then he walked toward the lights, slowly at first and then faster, until he was almost running.
Joe stared at the blackness where he knew the door to be. What, he wondered, had the man seen inside? The few freaks he’d seen at the camp had been enough to make him uneasy; what other surprises awaited those who stepped inside Star’s house?
The tent flap opened again, and several young men tumbled out, laughing loudly. Their gaiety was overly bright, magnified beyond reason. Joe suspected it was a response to the knowledge that any day they could be called to war, to their deaths in lands they’d only heard of. Faced with this possibility, they demanded as much from every moment as it could give, wringing laughter from experiences that should quickly have been used up. At least, Joe thought, it would give them something to think about as they died.
The boys made their way back to the crowds. But as they broke into the electric light of the midway, one of them turned back. The others called to him, and he waved them on. Joe heard him tell them that he would catch up with them. Then he trotted back to the exit from which he and the others had recently emerged, and waited there, looking around nervously.
A moment later the flap opened, and a woman stepped outside. Joe could not see her features in the dark. She spoke something to the boy in a voice too low to be heard, then took his hand. Leading him, she walked into the shadows between the tents. Joe saw the boy swallowed up by the blackness.
From his years in the carny business, he knew there was only one reason a woman took a young man into the shadows of the tents. Although Joe begrudged no one a few minutes of pleasure, Harley had strict rules about whoring. It wouldn’t do to have one of the newcomers getting into trouble with the locals should word of her services get out. And young men always talked. Joe had seen more than one carnival tart with a blackened eye and torn dress after a randy eighteen-year-old, boasting to his friends, had revealed her. Moved by beer and lust, the young men of dusty towns frequently turned into ugly, violent things.
Joe dropped what was left of his cigarette and ground it into the dirt with his heel. He would have a word with the woman, gently suggest that if she wanted to maintain peace she would find another way to relieve the customers of a half-dollar. He had no love for the denizens of Star’s Tent of Wonders, but he wished no one ill. Besides, he didn’t want to hear Harley bitch about it later.
He found the space between the tents and peered between them. The woman and the young man were still walking hand in hand. He followed, and soon their voices became audible.
“Where are we going?” the boy asked nervously.
“Not much farther,” the woman replied. “Just back in here a ways.”
“This better be what you promised,” said the young man.
The woman laughed. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “It will be more than you ever imagined.”
Something about the woman’s voice was odd, raspy. She spoke as if she were underwater. Then she and her charge stepped into a patch of moonlight, and Joe faltered. Her face came into view: a horribly bloated thing. Her cheeks were impossibly round, her forehead domed. Her skin was all over slick with something, a moistness that shone wetly in the light.
She was obviously one of the many wonders contained in Star’s tent, although Joe couldn’t begin to imagine what her particular deformity was. It didn’t matter. Was the boy really going to make his pleasure with her? Joe wondered, a shiver of disgust moving over him. Was he going to press himself into her misshapen body, close his eyes and kiss her twisted mouth? Joe couldn’t even imagine the horror.
The pair slipped once more into darkness as they entered another circle of tents, these smaller than the larger three. It was, Joe realized, the encampment for the group. The girl, or whatever she was, was taking the boy to her private sleeping place.
“Here.” The pair stopped outside a tent that resembled all the others. “She’s in here.”
The boy looked at the tent. So, Joe thought, he wasn’t to lie with the girl after all. She was merely acting as an intercessor, a go-between for someone else. But who? Was it someone even more repulsive than she? What foul pleasure awaited the young man behind the tent’s door?
The boy looked from the tent to the girl, as if trying to decide whether to enter or not.
“Go on,” the girl said, coaxing him on. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I don’t know,” said the young man. “Fifty cents is a lot of money.”
“You already paid up, honey,” the girl said. “Now go on in and get what you paid for.”
The boy reached for the tent flaps. Slowly he drew one of them aside and peered in. A pale light poured from the opening, flickering against the blackness. The young man stepped forward as the girl placed a hand on his back and urged him into the tent.
In the moving light, Joe saw the boy’s expression change. He smiled broadly, like a child. Then he went into the tent, and the flap closed behind him, shutting away the light. The girl outside reached into the pocket of her dress, drew out her hand, and began to count the coins that lay on her palm. She giggled, the harshness of her laugh rough in the air.
The girl turned and skipped away into
the night. Joe almost followed her, but his business wasn’t with her; it was with the one who resided in the tent. He walked briskly to the flap and stood outside, listening for sounds from within.
At first he heard nothing. Then, faintly at first and growing louder, he heard the sound of someone humming. The tune initially seemed formless, a series of highs and lows sung in a woman’s soothing voice. Then the notes grew into words, and a tune emerged. It was a lullaby, one Joe had heard his own mother sing many times.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word…,” the woman sang. “Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”
He was puzzled. Who was singing, and why? If the boy had gone into the tent to find release in a harlot’s bosom, it was an odd sort of release indeed. Joe had expected to hear the moans and cries of lovemaking, not the quiet singing of a mother to an infant. But that was exactly what was coming from within the tent. The woman’s voice continued the song, telling the child of the diamond ring and horse and cart that would be his if only he would not cry.
Joe wanted to open the tent, but no longer for the purpose of interrupting a sinful act. He wanted to see the owner of the voice, to have her sing the words he heard to him. Suddenly he wanted more than anything to have the singer of the song hold him in her arms and rock him into the deepest sleep while her song filled his head.
Then, just as he was reaching for the black fold that would allow him entrance, the singing stopped. It was replaced instantly by silence so cold that Joe shuddered, as if an icy wind had swept across his naked skin. Fear flooded him, causing his mind to reel dizzily. He withdrew his hand and stood staring at the tent for a long, awful moment. And then, not knowing why, he turned and fled, running as quickly as he could from whatever had stilled the beautiful voice.
Chapter Four