had a square meal for three days or a bath for a week; and he might be forced to play in a stubble field to a thin trickle of rubes from East Yokelburg; but he was still a carnie, and he knew that the lowest carnie was the superior of the richest, most successful mark. Well just consider: Did you ever see a carnie play a bucket game? Or bet on a G'd wheel? Or go double-or-nothing on a roll-down? Or lose his last five-spot on three-card monty? Of course not! But marks do it all the time. All the time! What was the Crash of '29 but a bunch of marks losing their asses on some fancy-assed version of the bucket game? Eh? Well, there you are.
The difference between the mark and the carnie is as simple as it is profound. No matter how bad things get, the carnie is 'with it'. While, no matter how rich or famous or powerful the mark may become, he isn't 'with it', and couldn't be, and will never be. End of story.
I first learned about the essential superiority of the carnie over the mark from an old-timer who called himself Dirty-Shirt Red—not that he was redheaded or that his shirt was more than ordinarily dirty. I was thirteen, and I'd run away from a correctional home they'd put me into as punishment for running away from the foster home they'd put me into for running away from home. I was walking the railroad ties north when I overtook Dirty-Shirt Red, who had left the Bumpkinburg where he'd wintered over, pearl-diving in a greasy spoon, and was planning to snag the Jonah J. Jones Greater Shows as it made its swing west from the red dirt country of western Tennessee. As I overtook him, I put my head down and picked up my pace so as to pass him with no more than a grunt and a quick nod because kids on the drift soon learn to give wide berth to old men. But he laughed and said something funny, and I could tell right off that he wasn't that kind, so we fell into step and started talking. He told me he knew the country we were passing through like the palm of his hand because he'd played it with carnivals more times than a tall yellow sow's got teats. I asked him what he did in the carnival.
'Everything and anything, kid, and a bunch of other stuff, too. In my golden youth, I was a ten-in-one. You know what that is?'
I didn't.
'A ten-in-one is a one-man sideshow, a real boon for a small carnival trying to make believe it's worth going to. Oh, I could do it all. I could eat a little fire, swallow some sword, walk barefoot up your ladder of razor-sharp Cossack sabres, and juggle flaming torches while recounting the shocking mating rituals of the Fiji Islanders in word and gesture (men only, and not until midnight, to avoid inflaming young imaginations—I'm sure you understand, gentlemen). I could do magic, sleight of hand, and prestidigitation while reading the Declaration of Independence off a pinhead where it was engraved in letters so small that the marks I sold the pins to couldn't even see it—but I assured them they they'd be able to read it word for word when they got home and put the pin under a magnifying glass. (That's a last-night-in-town sort of sting, kid. You want to give them a whole year to cool off before they see you again.) Oh yeah, I did the whole scam. 'Course, I'm a little old for all that now, but I'm still worth my bed, brew, and beans. I can run a jenny, front a bottle shop, tell fortunes, belly a wheel, and sell my share of candy- candy-apple with your caramel-caramel-corn. I am what you call your genuine all-round carnie, born and bred, taught and trained, guaranteed not to rust, bust, corrode, or explode. The only original patented version. Beware of imitations.'
Well, one thing was sure: he could talk. And, impressionable kid that I was, I'd have given anything to have that swinging, chanting, gabble of his: talk that was meant, not to inform, but to numb and mystify. I didn't know it, but from that moment on, I was a carnie at heart. And maybe Dirty-Shirt Red recognized this because when we had gone on for a couple of hours with that tiring not-quite-a-full-stride pace of men walking on railroad ties, he turned to me and said, 'Jeet?'
'What?'
' 'Jeet' is Carnie for, have you eaten. It's the way carnies greet one another, because the state of your stomach is what matters most when you've been on the drift. So one carnie says to another, Jeet? And the other says, no or yes, whichever's the case, then he goes on with his meeting-people patter, too proud to make a point of being hungry and broke, but knowing that if he says, no, the other carnie'll rustle him up some grub first thing. So, Jeet, kid?'
'Not today, no, sir.'
'That's
'No, and I sure could use a couple of those eggs you're frying on that sidewalk.'
Dirty-Shirt Red laughed. 'You're all right, kid. You got some sass in your ass, and that's what it takes in this world, where there're only two kinds of people, the carnies and the marks: them that takes, and them that gets took. Well, you'll be glad to hear that there's an easy mark of a widow lady at a farm up the line a bit. She ought to be good for a meal, if she hasn't curled up and died, or been dragged off to the loony bin, or done some other thing that would render her unheedful of the needs of her fellowman.'
After about an hour, a dirt road bent in from the east and ran alongside the railroad until it came to the gate of a small farm: just an unpainted house and barn and a couple of sagging outbuildings. Dirty-Shirt Red stopped and wiped out the sweat band of his battered old hat. Then he pointed at one of the creosote-smelling telegraph poles that followed the tracks. 'See there?'
Someone had scratched the pole with a big X and put a small x between the top arms of the big one. 'Know what that means, kid?'
I didn't.
'That's a 'bo sign meaning this place is a soft touch. The little x at the top says you can get grub here. If it'd been at the bottom, that woulda meant you could sleep in the barn or somewhere. You're going to have to learn a little 'bo, if you want to follow the carnivals, 'cause life ain't always cherries and cream. Sometimes it's just the pits and the curds, and that's when you might have to live like a 'bo for a little while.'
'A 'bo?'
'A hobo.'
'Oh.'
'So!' He took up a sharp piece of crushed stone from the ballast and gouged three deep lines through the X, then underneath he scratched what looked like a stubby arrowhead. 'There! Now let's go see what the widow's got for us, kid!'
As we walked up the dusty road to the gate, I asked what his scratching on the pole was all about.
'Those lines passing through the X tell passing 'bo's that things have changed and this is no longer an easy touch. The blast sign—the thing that looks sort of like a backwards arrowhead?—that means that someone here has a shotgun and uses it.'
I stopped in my tracks.
'No sweat, kid! This widow lady is a born-again, lifelong do-gooder from deepest Dogoodville. She wouldn't know one end of a shotgun from the other.'
'Yeah, but—'
'I scratched that stuff over the 'bo sign to put them off the track. This great republic of ours is in a depression, in case you hadn't noticed, kid. The last thing a fella needs is competition for handouts.'
'Yeah, but—'
'Yeah but's ass. Now you and me know about a soft touch that others don't know about. That puts us one up. A good carnie is always one up, 'cause if you ain't one up, kid, you're one down. Now when we get there, you just smile. Don't say a word. I'll size things up and play our cards; you just follow suit. And above all, don't help me! Last thing I need is some kid trumping my aces. You got a hat in your bindle?'
'I got an old cap.'
'Put it on.'
'But it's hot!'
'I ain't running no debating society here. Just do what I say.'
I pulled my cap out of my bindle and crammed it onto my head, muttering, 'I don't see why I gotta put my cap on.'
'You gotta put it on so's you can take it off!' he told me, stressing each word like he was talking to a dimwit. 'Women like kids who are nice and polite. Especially widow ladies. Now, let's go.'
