“It ain’t far and I don’t want you getting ideas. The landlady of this dump has a face like a snapping turtle. We don’t want to start no trouble in this burg. We’ve had enough trouble with the wheels pretty near getting shut down for gambling. This is bluenose.”
They had left the tent and the darkened midway stretched out ahead of them, light still streaming from the cookhouse. “I’ll walk you over,” Stan said. There was a leaden feeling in his chest and he fought to throw it off. He laced his fingers in hers and she did not draw her hand away.
In the shadow of the first trees on the edge of the lot they stopped and kissed and Zeena clung to him. “Gosh, honey, I’ve missed you something awful. I guess I need more loving than I thought. But not in the room. That old battle-ax is on the prowl.”
Stan took her arm and started along the road. The moon had set. They passed a field on a little rise and then the road dipped between clay banks with fields above road level. “Let’s go up there,” Stan whispered.
They climbed the bank and spread their coats out on the grass.
Stan reached the Ten-in-One tent just before light. He crept into his bunk and was out like a shot. Then something was chirping in his ear and tugging at his shoulder. A voice like a fiddle’s E string was cutting through the layers of fatigue and the void which was in him from having emptied his nerves.
“Kid, wake up! Wake up, you big lump!” The shrill piping got louder.
Stan growled and opened his eyes. The tent was tawny gold with sun on the outside of it above him. The pestiferous force at his shoulder was Major Mosquito, his blond hair carefully dampened and brushed over his bulging baby forehead.
“Stan, get up! Pete’s dead!”
“What?”
Stan shot off the bunk and felt for his shoes. “What happened to him?”
“Just croaked-the stinking old rum-pot. Got into that bottle of wood alcohol Zeena keeps to burn the phoney questions. It was all gone or pretty near. And Pete’s dead as a herring. His mouth’s hanging open like the Mammoth Cave. Come on, take a look. I kicked him in the ribs a dozen times and he never moved. Come and look at him.”
Without speaking Stan laced up his shoes, carefully, correctly, taking great pains with them. He kept fighting back the thought that wouldn’t stay out of his mind. Then it broke over him like a thunder storm: They’ll hang me. They’ll hang me. They’ll hang me. Only I didn’t mean it. I only wanted to pass him out. I didn’t know it was wood- They’ll hang me. I didn’t mean it. They’ll-”
He leaped from the platform and pressed through the knot of show people around the seeress’s stage. Zeena stepped out and stood facing them, tall and straight and dry-eyed.
“He’s gone all right. He was a good guy and a swell trouper. I told him that alky was bad. Only last night I hid his bottle on him-” She stopped and suddenly ducked back through the curtains.
Stan turned and pushed through the crowd. He walked out of the tent into the early sun and kept on to the edge of the grounds where the telephone poles beside the road carried their looping strands off into the distance.
His foot clinked against something bright and he picked up a burned-out electric bulb which lay in the ashes of a long-dead fire. It was iridescent and smoky inside, dark as a crystal ball on a piece of black velvet. Stan kept it in his hand, looking for a rock or a fence post. His diaphragm seemed to be pressing up around his lungs and keeping him from drawing his breath. On one of the telephone poles was a streaked election poster, carrying the gaunt face of the candidate, white hair falling dankly over one eyebrow, lines of craft and rapacity around the mouth that the photographer couldn’t quite hide.
“Elect MACKINSEN for SHERIFF. HONEST-INCORRUPTIBLE-FEARLESS.”
Stan drew back his arm and let the bulb fly. “You son-of-a-bitch whoremonger!” Slowly, as if by the very intensity of his attention he had slowed down time itself, the bulb struck the printed face and shattered, the sparkling fragments sailing high in the air and glittering as they fell.
As if an abscess inside him had broken, Stan could breathe again and the knot of fear loosened. He could never fear again with the same agony. He knew it. It would never come again as bad as that. His mind, clear as the bright air around him, took over, and he began to think.
CARD IV
SINCE morning, Stan’s brain had been full of whirring wheels, grinding away at every possible answer. Where were you when he was over by the geek? On my platform, setting up my cot. What did you do then? Practiced a new move with cards. What move? Front-and-back-hand palm. Where did he go? Under the stage, I guess. You were watching him? Only that he didn’t go outside. Where were you when Zeena came back? At the entrance waiting for her…
Now the crowd was thinning out. Outside the stars had misted over and there was a flash of lightning behind the trees. At eleven Hoately stopped the bally. The last marks left and the inhabitants of the Ten-in-One smoked while they dressed. At last they gathered with sober faces around Hoately. Only Major Mosquito seemed unaffected. He started to whistle gaily, someone told him to pipe down.
When the last one was ready they filed out and got into cars. Stan rode with Hoately, the Major, Bruno, and Sailor Martin toward the center of town where the undertaker’s parlor was located.
“Lucky break the funeral happened on a slow night,” the Sailor said. No one answered him.
Then Major Mosquito chirruped, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” He spat. “Why do they have to crap it up with all that stuff? Why can’t they just shovel ’em under and let ’em start falling apart?”
“You shut up!” Bruno said thickly. “You talk too much for little fellow.”
“Go frig a rubber duck.”
“Tough on Zeena,” Bruno said to the others. “She is fine woman.”
Clem Hoately, driving with one hand carelessly on the wheel, said, “That rum-pot ain’t going to be missed by nobody. Not even Zeena after a while. But it makes you take a good think for yourself. I remember that guy when he was big stuff. I ain’t touched a drop in over a year now and I ain’t going to, either. Seen too much of it.”
“Who’s going to work the act with Zeena?” Stan asked after a time. “She going to change her act? She could handle the questions herself and work one ahead.”
Hoately scratched his head with his free hand. “That ain’t too good nowadays. She don’t have to change the act. You could work the undercover part. I’ll take the house collection. We’ll throw the Electric Girl between your spot and Zeena’s, give you time to slip in and get set.”
“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.
