Hot Night in the City

'Now you listen to me, ma'am, and don't you dare argue with me!' he said, shaking his finger at her. 'There is nothing in this world that could make me accept a slice of that apple pie; not after eating your delicious sandwiches without properly earning them. But there is something I would accept, but only after telling you that here comes what you might call the sting. What I will accept—and the only thing I'll accept—is your permission for me to stand here for a minute and get my fill of that splendid aroma of cinnamon and apple all steaming and fresh from the oven. There is nothing in this whole wide world that so brings back memories of my beloved Maudie.' And he leaned towards the smell coming from the open kitchen window, his eyes closed and a sweet smile on his lips as he sort of hung on the air by his nose.

Unwilling to intrude upon his silent memories, the widow turned her pitying eyes towards me, so I set my milk down again, put my hand to my chest, and smiled sort of thinly.

Ten minutes later, we were walking up the tracks, Dirty-Shirt Red carefully carrying half a pie wrapped in a newspaper, and the dog following along, criss-crossing close behind our heels. 'You trip me and make me smash this pie, Hugo,' Dirty-Shirt warned him, 'and you'll get my boot so far up your ass you'll be able to taste the leather!'

As soon as we were out of sight of the widow's farm, Dirty-Shirt shied the dog back home with chucks of ballast, then we continued along, quickly falling into the not-quite-a-full-step gait of the tie walker.

I could tell he was pretty pleased with himself. Me, I felt ashamed, and I told him so. 'It wouldn't of done us any harm to stack that lady's wood for her.'

'Harm's ass. Harm don't come into it. It's a matter of principle. The dumbest mark in the world can earn a sandwich. But to score one without working... that takes a carnie. And the sign of your top-flight carnie was the way I scored those toppings.'

'Toppings?'

'That's 'Bo for desserts and sweet things, the stuff you top up on. Your ordinary run-of-the-mill carnie would of been content with just the sandwiches, particularly as she'd just about recognized me from the last time I came through and scored off'n her. I hope you noticed how when I conned that old mark out of the apple pie, I had the sass and grit to advertise the sting right out front, telling her I was about to do her down. Now that's as sweet as it gets, kid. That's the juiciest part of any scam.'

'I don't see that it takes all that much grit to tell her you're stinging her when she doesn't even know what a sting is.'

'There's no end of things you don't see, kid.'

'Maybe so, but it seems real low to do down a nice old lady like that.'

He stopped in his tracks and looked down at me with a deep frown. 'That wasn't a nice old lady. That was a mark. And marks aren't old or young, or nice or nasty, or male or female. They're just marks, and they've got to be treated like marks. If you can't manage that, then there's no hope of you ever becoming a true carnie.'

'But I admire her kindness to strangers.'

'You what?'

'I admire it,' I repeated, sort of pugnaciously because I'd just learned the real meaning of 'admire' and I wasn't completely sure I had it right. Where I'd come from, people said 'admire' to mean 'like', as in: I'd sure admire to go to the movies tonight, Ma.

'You admire a dumb mark? And yet you're thinking about becoming a carnie?

'Yeah, but—'

'Yeah but's ass! If you're so cut up about scoring off that mark, then you don't have to eat your share of these toppings.' He scrambled down from the raised track and sat in the shade of a tree, where he opened his newspaper bundle.

Between us, we got that pie down pretty quickly, then we continued along the tracks for a couple of hours before we came to a little tank town that I thought was called Marksville until I realized that carnies call all towns Bumpkinburg or Hicksville or Rubetown, or some such. We left the tracks and took the road because anyone seen walking the tracks was assumed to be a hobo, and in some towns you'd do ten days or two weeks in the local hoosegow on a vag charge, and they'd work you as free labor, digging drainage ditches or patching up roads from dawn to dark. When things got real bad, especially in winter, men would sometimes walk right into town along the tracks, and even do a little panhandling on the main street, hoping to get picked up by the local badges so they'd have something to eat and somewhere warm to stay, even if it was only for two weeks. But lots of times, the law would be on to that scam, and they'd just run you out of town after giving you a going over with an ax handle to make sure you didn't come back any too soon.

Dirty-Shirt Red and I were sauntering down the main street, still heading north, when this big shiny black Packard passed us and pulled up in front of the town bank. The driver jumped out and opened the back door, and this real well-dressed man stepped out and went into the bank, after saying a word or two to people who took off their hats and smiled and bobbed with pleasure at his attention.

'Man, look at that,' I said. 'Owning a bankful of money, and having everybody sniffing up to you? I do believe I could get used to that sort of life.'

'Not me,' snapped Dirty-Shirt.

'You're telling me you wouldn't change places with that man and his fancy suit and big car and everybody bobbing and grinning at you like that? Get out of here.'

'Not for anything in the world. Why, I'd sooner look down and discover I was pissing blood than be that man. And you know why?'

'No, why?'

'Because for all his high-toned ways, he ain't nothing but a mark.'

'Oh, come on!'

'I'm not shitting ya, kid. He's a mark. I've played this town, and I've scored on him.'

'You scored on him?'

'You better believe it. Seven, maybe eight years ago, David Meeker's United International Shows played through this rinky-dink, one-dog town. I was running a merchandise wheel with a painted G that prevented the marks from winning more'n the odd Genuine 100% Celluloid Betty Boop Kewpie doll or one of those Original Beeno-Bingo Lap Blankets made from half a yard of gaudy material that stretched like toffee and would explode into flame if you set a match to it. Well, your high-and-mighty banker comes along with a couple of other yokel dignitaries, sort of slumming with the trash to show he was a regular guy, and he sees that I'm flashing hams. Southern Delight Honey Cured Slo-Smoked Virginia Hams, they were, wrapped up in fancy gold paper. 'I think our cook could do wonders with one of those hams,' he says to one of his ritzy pals. Now of course, there wasn't really any ham inside that wrapping, because we'd been flashing those same hams for half a dozen years and they'd long ago gone all green and slippery from the heat and been replaced with sawdust wrapped up in ham-shaped packages, but that didn't matter because the mark didn't have a snowball in hell's chance of winning enough points to buy one. (We didn't give money because gambling's illegal almost everywhere down here in Dixieville. We only gave out U-Redeem-M High-Value Premium Purchase Points the mark could use to 'buy' whatever it was your game was flashing. Well, your spiffy banker slaps his dime down on the counter and I give him a spin. And what do you know? He immediately racks up almost enough Premium Purchase Points to win his ham... almost, but not quite. So I explained to him how all he needed was to hit a five and a nine, or any product or multiple thereof, but not exceeding the optimal total, nor totally discounting the cube roots and the more significant fractional variations. Well, he stares at me for a minute, then he draws himself up and says, 'I'm a banker. Numbers are my business, and I'm not one bit bamboozled by your claptrap about cube roots and fractions.' Well, I smiles at him and says, 'You know, sir, as soon as you stepped up to my wheel I could tell that you were a man of mathematical inclinations and arithmetical propensities, so there's no use my trying to pull the wool over your baby blues. Let me be straight with you because in the long run honesty is the best policy. I use that patter—which mathematicians like you and me know perfectly well is nothing but a narcotic tangle of mystifying sounds—in order to tempt the passerby to stay with the game until he wins himself a ham, as the law of averages insists that he must, sooner or later. And why do I do that? Because, sir, I want him to win. I want him to win because I want other people on the midway to see him walking along with one of my Southern Delight Honey Cured Slo-Smoked Virginia Hams under his arm and a self-satisfied smile on his face, and that'll make them envious and bring them running to my place of business to plop down their dimes and win themselves a ham. And that's how I make my living. As you