'What if I come up with another gimmick?'
'I don't want your freaks, period.'
'Okay, if they got to go, that's it. Maybe I can come up with something else.'
'Come up with what? We open tomorrow.'
'Lemme think about it, okay?'
'Sure, you think about it, Bateman, but I don't want to see those freaks in the morning.'
'I'll give them the word.'
'Good.'
Moskowitz returned his full attention to the solitaire game. Styles levered himself out from the confining seat and left the trailer.
Breaking the news to his people — like most old-time carnies, Styles would never call them freaks — did not go too badly, all things considered. Collosus shook his hand, thanked him for a year of work, and said he'd have no problem getting a dishwasher job in some joint. They liked to have a big guy who could come out from the back if the bouncer got into it with somebody tougher than he could handle. Collosus was no fighter, but he was big and looked mean, and that was enough to discourage a lot of mouthy punks.
Torcho said little when Bateman gave him the bad news. He merely belched and chewed his Maalox tablets. He guessed maybe he could go back to his wife in Bakersfield if she had kicked out the 12-string guitar player she'd been shacking with.
With Rosa it had been tougher. Tears had welled in her great brown eyes and rolled down into her inadequate moustache. Bateman took her aside and slipped her enough for her bus fare back to Flagstaff, where she had parked the kids with a sister. It was the best he could do.
Now, walking in the late afternoon on the hill above Silverdale, Styles missed all of them. In his years as a showman he had seen a couple of thousand people come and go. He could never get used to it. They were his family. And in his heart he knew, once somebody left the carnival, you never saw them again. It was like they died.
Speaking of which, unless he could come up with some fast spiel for Moskowitz by tomorrow morning, Bateman Styles would himself be leaving the carnival. When he'd made the pitch in Moskowitz's trailer he had some half-ass idea about selling the midget on a flashy new idea. The trouble was, he didn't have one. All the ideas were used up.
Bateman stopped frequently to rest as he walked. The hills were steeper than they used to be. And it was hard for a man to catch his breath at this altitude.
He sat on a rock and looked at the view. Silverdale might not be much shakes as a town, but you couldn't buy the view for a million dollars. To the east, flat and parched, stretched Death Valley. It shaded delicately from gold to chocolate brown. To the west, just beyond the Inyo foothills, stood big-shouldered Mount Whitney.
His contemplation of the scenery was interrupted by a sound very close to him. Not quite a sob, and not quite a growl, but a little of each. Bateman stood up and looked behind the rock he had been sitting on.
There on the ground lay a boy, or young man, his body twisted into an unnatural position. He was huddled there, his face away from Styles, his limbs twisting and jerking as though yanked by invisible wires. It was the boy who was making the sob-growl sounds.
Styles's first thought was that the kid was having an epileptic seizure. He had once worked with a high-diver who was an epileptic. They all figured some day Carlo would throw a fit while he was up on the tower looking down at the tub. Sure enough, one day he did. Carlo's last dive was by far his most spectacular.
Bateman knew you were supposed to keep an epileptic from swallowing his tongue. He leaned down and tried to roll the young man over on to his back. Then he saw the face, and forgot all about epileptic seizures.
Ten minutes later the young man was looking reasonably normal. All muddy and soaked with sweat, but not a bad-looking kid. Styles leaned against the rock smoking an unfiltered Camel.
'Hi' said the showman.
The boy said nothing.
'You got a name?'
'M-Malcolm.'
'Mind telling me how you do that, Malcolm?'
'Do what?'
'Make yourself go all hairy and fierce looking like you just did.'
Malcolm stared at Bateman Styles. He was silent for a minute as he seemed to make up his mind about something. Finally he said, 'I don't do it on purpose. It just… happens. Sometimes I can control it.'
'Anything special that makes it happen?'
'When something makes me feel really sad. Or really mad. Then… things happen to me.'
'No kidding. What makes you mad, Malcolm?'
'I don't know. Lots of things.'
'How about being in a cage with people standing around looking at you, pointing, saying things about you.'
The moment he said 'cage' Styles knew he'd hit it. The boy's eyes deepened to a dangerous shade of green, and his lips pulled away from his teeth like an animal. Then he got hold of himself.
'Yeah,' Malcolm said. 'That would make me mad.' Bateman Styles drew in deeply on his cigarette, coughed, and said, 'You want a job?'
Chapter Nineteen
Bateman Styles leaned back from the fold-down table and lit up a Camel. He coughed. He watched as the boy Malcolm shovelled in the beans and sausage he had heated on the small butane stove. It looked like his grocery bill was going to go up fast, but if the kid could manage that trick he saw today, he'd soon pay for it.
'That was good, Mr Styles,' Malcolm said when at last his plate was empty. 'Thanks.'
' Sure it was enough.'
'Well
'It'll have to be,' Styles said quickly, 'until I can get to the store.'
'I wish I could help pay,' Malcolm said.
'You will, my boy, you will,' Styles said. 'However, before we start making permanent arrangements, we'd better go see the boss about taking you on.'
'You're not going to ask me to, you know, do it for him, are you?'
'Not if you don't want to, my boy. That act's our bread and butter, and there's no use giving it away, not even to the boss.'
'It isn't that I don't want to, Mr Styles, it's just that I can't, like, make it happen just any time.'
'I get the picture, lad. You need the stimulus. Anger, despair, some powerful emotion. We'll work that out. By the way, 'Mr Styles' makes me nervous. Call me Bate.'
Malcolm grinned shyly and nodded.
'What we need now is a name for you.'
'I have a name.'
'No, no, no. Malcolm definitely does not fill the bill. We need something to draw in the marks. Something to whet the people's appetites for what they are about to see. Like Torcho, the Fire Eater.'
'I don't eat fire.'
'I know that, boy. I was merely using it as an example. As a matter of fact, it didn't do much for Torcho either.' Styles was silent for a long minute. He closed his eyes, lay his head back, pursed his lips and passed a hand over the wisps of grey hair that remained on his scalp. Suddenly his eyes popped open. He smiled broadly, showing brown-stained teeth.
'I've got it. Wolf Boy. Grolo the Wolf Boy.' He waited for a reaction.
Malcolm frowned.
