Carnival Country

By Austin Harmon

Rumor has it the boy can't feel pain. His name's Clemens, and there's a sideshow bounty on his head.

Come and see America's history of white supremacy through the lens of a traveling carnival in the 1920's.

Carnival Country is selling tickets to America's past, present and - worst of all - future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543998566

Book preview

Thirty-Eight

the first part – 1918

Chapter One

A Mouthful of Smoke

Her body wasn’t enough anymore. He had to be violent just to stay hard and knot her hair up between his fingers and ask afterwards if she was going to comb it out straight again. She grabbed at his wrist when he pressed on the back of her head. Her lip reared up against the side of the tree. Her yellow teeth scraped the bark. It tasted like salt. When she twisted away, she left behind a cursive letter of spit. The start of a word she never said, the start of a story she never told, about how much she hated her husband. Maybe because he already knew, she tried to think about words from the books she used to read as a girl. Words she’d learned so as not speak like her father spoke or, years later, like her husband spoke. When Adeline twisted around to face him, watch him snarl while he came, she hated herself instead, for enjoying it, and moaned into his ear until he understood.

He collapsed back into the leaves and the dirt. She kept her back to him. They both preferred that position. Her pants were pulled down just far enough to expose her crotch from behind. She pulled them back up just as soon as he pulled out because she hated the way the wind blew against the wet left behind. He jacked his pants up past his waist, always quick to hide himself from his wife. They’d already spent years considering each other and no longer had the patience for it.

In silence, she watched her husband put his boots on last. She never knew why he took his boots off to have sex when he left the rest of his clothes on. He spat into the dark and smiled through his beard for how the horses jostled at the sound. His teeth were crowded, cracked from too many barnyard beat-downs, but his face could ring out a smile that bespoke a better man. A man who, after the fight, the handshake, the rounds he bought for everyone, didn’t follow any of them home to find out how many more of their knuckles he could break with his face.

They called him Buster Sue.

Up the road, not a half mile down from where they fucked against a tree, sat a shack all falling over itself. Cobwebs held it together. They kept their horses out of sight because, as Buster Sue put it, Only outlaws ride horses anymore.

You’ll wait here, Adeline said. She slung a satchel over her shoulder and climbed off her horse.

I’ll just wait here, Buster Sue agreed.

The muddy yard was rift with tire tracks and livestock tread. Adeline lit a lantern, held the palm of light above her head. Buster Sue slumped in his saddle while she postured across the mud. In the dark, the shack appeared to be the shape darkness took on when revealed by a flame. She tried the door handle first. Locked. To wake the people inside, she kicked at the base of the door with her steel-toed boot. When given a closed door to work behind, Adeline preferred to project herself as an imposing figure, let her boot rattle the door, let her slender neck and gracious smile confuse whomever answered. She enjoyed watching their stiff shoulders slope into their chests. Their fists counted their fingers. In that way, she claimed her leverage.

She kicked the door again, again, until she heard the man who lived in the shack cross the front room. His feet slapped against the hardwood. He cursed the hour. He cursed his own exhaustion.

Marlon Cobb opened the door. His black hair shone with tight, silver curls, like he’d lost a handful of springs. He had a lantern jaw that moved back and forth as though he were chewing on his own teeth. His long johns were spotted with grease and dust and soot. Bare foot. He had a knuckle shoved against his eye to try and dig out the sleep, maybe fill the socket. For all his grit, Adeline watched him go slack around his eyes and jowls at the sight of her. She could never ask for respect - or at least, she’d never receive it. Instead, Adeline showed men who they needed her to be, then showed them what she needed them to see. She slept best inside that duality.

Mr. Cobb? Marlon Cobb? Adeline had to ask, though she knew him well. She’d watched him cut firewood, plow the field, ignore his wife. She’d watched him for days, until Buster Sue could verify that of all the sharecroppers working in the county, Marlon Cobb had the son who bled but never screamed.

Jus’ Marlon. Who’s you?

Whenever she negotiated, Adeline’s face became as deep and stagnant as the barrel of a gun. Mr. Cobb, I was told of a business proposition at your residence. I do believe that proposition is yours. I’ve come to make an offer most bold, dark as it is. I only press for your benefit. You’ll hear no better offer this night or any other, of that I can attest.

Marlon Cobb squinted past her lantern, at the two horses in the road. He couldn’t make out the figure disguised by the darkness: a bearded man he almost recognized from a week before, when Buster Sue came to that same ranch looking for work.

Looking for Marlon Cobb, who had a reputation for failing both his family and the landowner’s crop in equal measure.

His wife, Sally Cobb, who bore the brunt of her husband’s reputation without ever being allowed a reputation of her own.

Their son Clemens, who bled but never screamed.

Marlon Cobb felt a worm of sweat trail down the inside of his bicep. His armpits were soiled. He couldn’t explain why, but he longed for the shotgun that he’d sold a few months before, the comforting weight of something heavy and destructive.

Dark as it is, he said. I got a family sleeping’ here.

Certainly, I don’t know these roads as well as you and yours, sir. I’ve come quite a way, and perhaps confused my route. Farmlands have a habit of resembling each other, don’t you think?

Marlon Cobb didn’t know how to respond. The empty spaces that Adeline left behind were the kind quiet men weren’t comfortable filling. He scratched his forehead with his thumb, Ya said, uh - I gotta proposition, now?

And I have an offer for you. She extended a hand into the doorway, Perhaps we can discuss it further inside?

I don’t…take to solicitors none.

Am I too late, Mr. Cobb? You see, I was told to bring two hundred dollars to this residence before morning. I hope that you’re still accepting offers…

There’s… Marlon Cobb stammered, looked over his shoulder as though to remind himself of what he had and what it meant, Mine are… they’re sleepin’ inside. My family is.

Then perhaps we should keep our voices down.

Buster Sue watched Adeline talk her way into the man’s shack. His wife nothing but a twisting knife and Marlon Cobb just a pile of hands trying to keep the blood from spilling out.

The shack was barren but for the rocking chair in the corner of the room. The walls were only decorated with knots and dust. There were dishes stacked beside the basin, as they had no sink. The light from Adeline’s lantern could only discern the soft edge of a woman, Sally Cobb, standing in the hallway. Her arms were crossed. Her features seemed to lilt in opposite directions, like her face planned to eventually split in two. She wore a long-sleeved nightgown that kept her modest down to her feet. Only a year had passed since she and her husband were tenant farmers. Another plot of land they hadn’t owned but that they somehow managed to lose, anyway. Like the one before that. She wore the baggage in her face, in the basement of her eyes, where she stored everything she’d ever sacrificed to make her and her son and her husband’s way in the world.

Mrs. Cobb, I presume, Adeline said. She hadn’t expected Sally Cobb to be in the room when she met with her husband. I apologize for my tactless display at the door.

When she stepped forward, hovered the lantern light ever closer to the hallway, Adeline noticed that Sally Cobb stood in front of a closed door. Adeline could tell from Marlon Cobb’s discomfort that Sally Cobb knew when and how to wield herself, and though Sally Cobb appeared to be the kind of woman who always kept her door shut, mothers are transparent in their weakness.

I do hope, Adeline continued, that I have not woken the boy child.

Who are you? Sally Cobb asked.

Says I got a, uh, a proposition, Marlon Cobb stammered.

Well, Adeline said, I’m a cash offer, ma’am. Nothing more.

How do you know anything ‘bout my boy?

I’m afraid he pertains.

Without even realizing, Sally Cobb had crossed the room. Her arms were still folded. The bedroom door was still closed. I think you should state your business. Dis is my house. Dis is my husband’s house. You can’t juss’ -

Shack, Adeline corrected.

‘Scuse me?

You used to have a house, Adeline said. You were a tenant farmer. Like most tenants, I presume you hoped to one day own the land you rented. But you lost that house, you lost that land, and now you live in the borrowed grace of your employer, as a laboring sharecropper who sweats for a portion, at best. That is, until your husband is fired from this position as well, in which case it will be a different shack. In a different county. On a different farm.

Silence. Adeline let it resonate, though only for a moment. The proud can’t be shown their own shame for too long lest they learn to defy and reclaim themselves.

Forgive me. I don’t mean to condemn. I come with an offer. A simple contract. Financial in nature. I can attest to that more than I can attest to my manners.

Marlon Cobb spoke first, Financial what now?

The contract, he means. What is dat ‘bout a contract? What is dat? Sally Cobb asked.

Outside, Buster Sue split an apple between himself and the horses. He listened to the woods. The crickets. The wind. He preferred those whispers and creaks to the sounds of his wife’s manipulation. Just as Adeline chose her words from a vocabulary that she’d taught herself, Buster Sue only worked in context, when sophisticated language came up lacking. She turned to Buster Sue in those moments and he finished the negotiation with his fists. That night, Adeline asked him to wait with the horses. She’d heard stories about Clemens before anyone on the carnival circuit, or so she presumed. It meant there wasn’t a sideshow bounty on the boy’s head. Without a threat of interference from the kind of men who often filled such bounties, or so she presumed, Adeline felt, at long last, like a woman in control.

Buster Sue realized not long after they left the carnival that Adeline only needed him when she drank.

That night, her mouth looked like a scar, which meant she was sober and could form the words necessary for a negotiation.

He tossed the apple core into the woods. Never heard it hit the ground. He squinted to see if a figure there among the trees had caught it, concerned that the Merry-Andrews were watching, as tall and still as the trees themselves. The clowns. The savages. If Clemens were a carnival circuit bounty, if they’d come to fulfill that bounty, he and Adeline were already dead.

Well, come on if you’re comin’, he said to himself, and to the trees, which weren’t listening.

Buster Sue untied a second lantern from his horse’s saddle. Adeline complained the whole ride over that they had no need for two lanterns. He agreed, but insisted nonetheless, and while she negotiated inside, he walked around to the back of the shack. For its crooked demeanor, the shack probably shrunk when it rained and twisted deeper into shapelessness when the sun rose the next morning. Behind the shack, Buster Sue caught the flash of a boy in the window beside the back door. He had to have been propped up on his tiptoes just to see over the sill. A candle’s light cupped the side of the boy’s face. Clemens. His hair just as short as his father’s, his eyes just as wide around and just as sad as the world. He had ears like seashells sticking out of the sand. Buster Sue waved at Clemens, who ducked behind the sill.

In that small way, perhaps Clemens could protect himself from the stranger he’d seen in the backyard and the stranger he’d heard in the front room.

Her voice warbled like a singing saw.

Mr. and Mrs. Cobb, Adeline began. There is no shortage of sharecroppers in this country…

Marlon Cobb sat in the rocking chair he’d built himself. The armrests were a different length. Its back and forth clunky. There were knots along both curves that he hadn’t sanded down.

Sally Cobb kept her arms crossed. Her left arm had begun to fall asleep, but her older sister once taught her that looking strong is more important than feeling strong.

And you, Mr. Cobb, are no longer a young and able man, Adeline continued. Evidence the hair, the eyes, the sickle’s curve of your back…

Marlon Cobb cleared his throat, Ya said…ya said I got a proposition? He still couldn’t make sense of her visit, even after knuckling the sleep out of his eyes. Sally Cobb presumed that Marlon Cobb had made a drunken fool of himself in town again, wagered their livelihood on the likelihood that his son wouldn’t notice if someone stuck a hat pin through his cheek. He’d done it before. Sally Cobb recalled the two drunks laughing behind their dirty hands in the middle of the night, how they scattered when she walked in with the lantern, Clemens sitting up in bed but still half-asleep, blood on his fingers and on his face.

Though Marlon Cobb always won the bet, she never let him accept the money.

Adeline leaned forward, May I ask what became of your tenant farm, Mr. Cobb?

Marlon Cobb took a breath, Livestock got sick. Put ‘em down, and da crops din’t come in right. Slew of things, see. Rotten slew of ‘em.

Do you like what you do? She asked.

I’m good at it.

As good as the next man?

Who is you to come in here and call him expendable? Sally Cobb asked. That his providin’ ain’t no kind of providin’? A hand and a – a mouth. I’ssa farm. I’ss honest work.

Excuse me, Adeline said. She removed the contract from her satchel and made sure, in doing so, that Marlon Cobb saw the money piled at the bottom.

Wha’ss dat ya -? Marlon Cobb began, only for Adeline to interrupt him.

I work for A-Travelin’ Babylon, she began, a carnival that runs along the southern hide of the country. A spectacle, you see. Of that I can attest. I extend an invitation to you both. To come and see. There’s a wheel designed to let you touch the bottom of the sky, then bring some back down with you. And the -

A carnival, Sally Cobb interrupted, leaning against the wall behind her husband. Her hands cushioned her hips. She noticed only then just how much Adeline’s face resembled a skull.

Dat contract, i’ss for a carny show? Marlon Cobb asked. He leaned forward in his rocking chair, Dat’s what you brung dat money for? You want my boy in a carny show?

My son, Sally Cobb said. Well…my son ain’t for sale. Come in here - it ain’t what’s done!

Marlon Cobb took the contract. Instead of reading it, he chewed on his tongue, This paper here. How much, was it you said at the - ?

Marlon!

Sally, let the lady talk, for - come on now. Let her talk! Will ya just - !

Sally Cobb snatched the contract out of his hands. She stooped to read it by Adeline’s lantern light.

Ya can’t read, what’re ya doing?

Quiet, Marlon! Sally Cobb said. If she could read, she would’ve known legalese to be inscrutable by design.

Like I was sayin’, Marlon Cobb said, I was askin’. How much does a contract like dis one pay out? Marlon Cobb pushed and prodded the loose skin of his jowls in consideration. Sally Cobb knew the mannerism well. They’d been married long enough to base upon the body what the mouth omitted and resent the movement accordingly.

As it says there, for the agreed upon sum of one hundred dollars -

Thought you says two? Marlon Cobb asked.

- thereupon, the talent - that is, your son - is contracted into A-Travelin’ Babylon for a term no less than one year. At this point the contract expires. Once the contract has expired, it may be renegotiated, under new terms, or terminated outright. When that time comes, the agreed upon sum is yours to keep. Only after the contract is signed can the agreed upon sum be transferred. Once the contract is signed, and the talent presented, will the sum be transferred. Your boy won’t have another chance to travel the country like this. We’re a family at A-Travelin’ Babylon, of that I can attest, she concluded, realizing how often she’d used the word ‘attest’ that night.

Clemens had his ear pressed against the bedroom door. He heard the singing saw. He heard his father, who spoke from the bottom of his belly. He heard his mother, her voice like a glass being filled with water. Though, he couldn’t quite discern their conversation.

Your son is a special boy, Adeline said, reminding herself not to use the word ‘attest.’ A boy like him draws. That’s a term we use to describe the audience who’ll pay to -

How ya know him to even come here in da middle o’ da night? Sally Cobb asked, her eyes casting Marlon Cobb aside.

My boy’s special, Marlon Cobb muttered to himself, like a father who’d never thought much of his son.

Only the lantern’s flame made a sound. Burning. The sound of time passing. The sound of Adeline rescinding her offer.

Sally Cobb cleared her throat and said, Can my husband and I get a moment?

Adeline almost let her skull show through her smile, Of course, Mrs. Cobb. Of course. I’ll be right outside the door, there.

When Clemens heard the woman who sounded like a singing saw leave the shack, he blew out the candle’s flame, hobbled across the room and climbed back into bed. He shared the bed with his parents. With his mother and his father on either side of him, Clemens had for years been a barricade between them, an excuse that they used to justify their distance. He hated that distance. Just as he hated the dark and the sound of Adeline’s steel-toed boot breaking the door down.

Sally Cobb slipped into the room after Adeline left. Her feet crept quiet across the floor, as though she didn’t belong in her own bedroom. Sometimes, she spoke to Clemens in a whisper. Maybe she didn’t want Marlon to hear - sitting in his rocking chair, trying to fall asleep anywhere but in his bed, beside his family. Maybe she didn’t want the shack itself to hear.

Mama, Clemens said, trying to tell her about the strange man in the backyard.

Clemens, I need ya to listen, okay? Listen good wid both ears. I need ya to hide.

Mama…

I need ya to hide for me, Clemens. Unduh da bed, okay? Unduh da bed, come on. N’ keep quiet. No mattuh whatcha hear, ya hear?

Clemens’ fear often shaped the world around him. To an only child, fear feels like a sibling that no one else ever acknowledges. When his mother’s voice trembled, or his fathers, he listened. He climbed down onto the floor. He had to lean forward onto his stomach and slide his leg under the bed first. A year after being kicked by a horse, rather than a joint, his knee was just a fistful of scar tissue. It couldn’t bend. Once his leg slipped under the bed, his body followed behind it.

The lesson he learned from drawing too near the horse extended to the world around. He learned to withdraw from it. Lest it lash out. He preferred hiding beneath the bed to laying between his parents, inside of a distance that, if anything, he needed one of them to reach across.

She whispered again, Stay here, okay baby? I need ya to say ‘okay’ when y’understand.

Okay, he whispered.

Adeline stood on the porch and stared up at the night sky and imagined how it might feel to be lost. She still wanted to believe that she had her own reasons to leave the carnival. Even a year later. She’d grown tired of Horowitz, her boss. She’d grown tired of negotiating lots and cracking towns on the carnival’s behalf. In fact, she left the carnival because Buster Sue had asked her to leave the carnival, though she never admitted it to herself. She never admitted it to Buster Sue, either.

She chewed on her tongue and remembered that, for all the ways she’d trained it to feign elegance, it was still trapped inside of her jaws.

Shadows from the lantern Adeline had left inside splashed across the walls. Sally Cobb and Marlon Cobb both watched the flame, like it burnt down to an answer they needed but didn’t have.

Da Mexicans comin’ down. Took most of da work I found befo’ Mr. Deacon put us up. Ya saw how, he said, choosing not to detail his own complicity in losing a few of those job opportunities. And we got dese war gardens, he calls ‘em, sure, but for how much longuh der gon’ be a war, Sally?

After she told Clemens to hide, Sally Cobb sat down where Adeline had been, across from her husband. Marlon Cobb twisted in his rocking chair.

Sally…listen to me now, Sally.

No.

Hear me out, now.

I will not, she said.

Mr. Deacon, he ain’t take too kindly to me none! Not right off da start of it. Not even now, for dat matter. Dis money could be what we need to start up on our own again.

On our own?

Sally, Marlon Cobb said. She watched his eyes dart back and forth across the room, in feverish thought. He looked like a man become beast and man again without memory or concern for the surrounding bloodshed. That boy can’t help with nothin’. You don’t trust he won’t up n’ kill his’self. I don’t trust he won’t up n’ kill his’self.

Sally Cobb closed her eyes to keep from agreeing with her husband.

Ya can ride again, he said, a suggestion that scraped the bottom of their marriage. Tell me y’ain’t wanted to? She gon’ give us da money for it. N’ we got enough left ovuh to buy da land for it, too!

Years ago, when they were still tenant farmers, her husband bought her a horse from the landlord with money taken out of their pay. Sally Cobb couldn’t mount it without being reminded that, like the land, like their tools, like the shoes on their feet and the clothes on their backs, the horse didn’t belong to her. The same horse that broke its leg and kicked her son in the knee when he tried to help it back up.

Sometimes, she dreamt that she was a horse, wild up until the day she died rather than the day she married.

Sometimes, she imagined kicking her husband in the knee.

She crossed the room to crouch down beside Marlon Cobb. Instead of breaking his knee, she took his hand in hers, kissed between his knuckles in earnest, and said, If you give this woman my son, I’ll leave. Ya hear me, Marlon? You take my son from me and I will leave ya here with ya’self.

And she let go of his hand and she pressed her nightgown against her stomach and she waited for Adeline to walk back inside.

Marlon Cobb knew that she meant it. As a husband, he’d been cruel to his wife. As a father, he’d been cruel to his son. But as a bachelor, he only knew how to be cruel to himself.

From under the bed, Clemens couldn’t hear his mother fight for him, or his father, who valued him less than a few hundred dollars. He didn’t hear his mother dismiss Adeline, but he heard his father let her back inside. He didn’t hear the terms of the contract, but he heard the lack of civility with which it was discussed. He never heard just what his father said to Adeline, but he heard Marlon Cobb stand, the floorboards groan beneath him, his bulk and height leveraged to persuade Adeline to leave.

He heard Adeline break the lantern across his father’s face.

He heard his mother scream.

In a paw of light and a mouthful of smoke, with shards of glass and hot oil in his eyes, Marlon Cobb fell into the darkness that engulfed the front room. Clemens heard the glass splinter across the ground. His mother ran from it. Through it. Into the bedroom. The door pounded against the wall of the shack. Footsteps. Fast. Naked slaps against the hardwood. Her heavy breathing dragged her across the room, over top of the bed, toward the back door. Her own terror chased her out of the room. She threw the back door open. A glimpse of her heel twisting against the back step. Gone. She left Clemens hiding under the bed. He heard her footsteps splash across the mud and what sounded almost like a scream, almost like a gasp.

Gone.

The door creaked shut behind her.

He heard a groan from the front room. His father’s groan. His father groaned through the holes in his face.

And someone in the backyard spat.

A struck match.

The backdoor opened with a squeal. Clemens had seen his mother’s bare feet running out of the room, but saw a pair of boots walk back in. Buster Sue’s lantern almost reached under the bed and exposed Clemens’ hiding spot. His boots had thick rolls of fresh mud piled around the soles. Clemens waited for his mother to follow the man inside. He waited. Instead, the man’s boots scuffed to a stop beside the bed and maybe his mother had escaped.

Adeline called from the front room, That you?

Still got your lantern, do ya? Buster Sue asked, having heard it shatter from the backyard.

Adeline didn’t respond. She put her boot on Marlon Cobb’s throat and imagined how it might feel to crush her husband’s throat.

Say, whatcha call it this time? Buster Sue asked.

A-Travelin’ Babylon, she called.

Clemens listened to his father die without realizing. He heard the front door open and the front door close and he thought his father had walked away with a few hundred dollars in lieu of a son.

A-Travelin’ Babylon, Buster Sue repeated. I like how that sounds… Since even before they were married, Adeline came up with different names for the carnival that only existed in her head. Buster Sue always encouraged her. He, too, imagined versions of himself that didn’t exist. He sometimes imagined himself as a father and laughed when he told Adeline about his and his children’s misadventures. Of course, she never encouraged him like he encouraged her. So long as the carnival stayed in her head, he could abide by that. She’d scoff and he’d laugh to keep from feeling lonely, look away to keep from watching her drink another drop of moonshine.

Buster Sue sat down on the edge of the bed. The wood slats under the mattress buckled, bellied down and brushed the top of Clemens’ head. Clemens wasn’t sure he’d survive the man’s weight.

Boy, the man called out, do an old man a young man’s favor, huh? Oblige me coming out yourself so’s I don’t have to get down on my hands and knees.

Clemens tried not to blink.

You slide on out it’ll be clean, boy. If I have to come under and get you, it’s gon’ be filthy.

Clemens listened for the lie in Buster Sue’s voice. He used to listen for the same lie in his father’s voice. Whenever his father tried to bend Clemens’ leg at the knee, where it hardened with scar tissue. Whenever his father called him a disappointment for how it refused to give. As with his father’s voice, there was no lie in Buster Sue’s voice. It almost comforted Clemens, so he twisted out from under the bed, sliding his stiff leg out last. His shin cracked against the wood frame hard enough for Buster Sue to wince. Clemens didn’t seem to notice.

Much obliged, Buster Sue said. Anyhow. You like games? You want to play a game with me?

Buster Sue held out the lantern for Clemens to take. He held in front of him with both hands. His father would’ve set that lantern on the ground before he ever let Clemens hold it. Buster Sue put one hand on the boy’s shoulder and with the other he covered the boy’s eyes. Pretend you a boat, boy. I’ll be your captain. We’re just gon’ walk out the back door, here. Careful how you step and I won’t let you trip over nothin’. Go on.

Step over step, Clemens made his way across the room. Buster Sue held the back door open by reaching over Clemens’ head. In that way, the man led the boy past the corpse of his mother. Her body, slumped on its side in the mud. In the moonlight, she appeared to be the same color as the blood trickling out of her stomach. Buster Sue led Clemens around the shack and kept his hand over Clemens’ eyes until neither of them could see Sally Cobb’s body.

Buster Sue gave him a pat on the back, Alright, then. Done good. Good sailin’. He pulled the lantern out of Clemens’ hand, Where yer shoes?

Clemens motioned to the porch. Buster Sue found Clemens’ shoes beside Marlon Cobb’s boots, all four of them flush at the heel.

Shoes are good. Gon’ need shoes. Gotta take care of ya feet.

Buster Sue carried the shoes back to Clemens and they walked over to where Adeline stood at the edge of the road. The horses bucked behind her and Clemens hesitated. He stepped back into Buster Sue’s leg, reminded of how it felt to watch his mother ride off and wonder whether she’d come back. When the horse broke its leg and fell onto its side, Clemens had wanted to help it for his mother’s sake. He wanted to help her escape. He didn’t want to lie awake at night and listen to her weep and wonder if it was his fault.

I’ll tell ya straight, Buster Sue said, bending over to whisper in his ear. I hope the things we heard about ya’s true.

He pushed Clemens the rest of the way. Adeline crouched down to watch him tremble ever closer. His stilted gait sufficed as a curiosity, though not a curiosity worth ten cents, worth dressing the family up and hauling them down to the lot and pay the price for a ticket. To one day run her own carnival, she needed the rumors to be true, as well.

You remember hurting your leg? she asked.

Clemens kept quiet, just like his mother had asked.

Do you remember breaking your leg?

Clemens nodded.

And did it hurt when it broke?

He nodded again.

Hold out your hand, she said. Clemens held out his hand. She slipped a blackjack out of her boot. The same shape of a tongue removed from the throat. He couldn’t discern a use for it, not until she slapped it against the back of his hand. Buster Sue winced, yet again. He’d received a thrashing before. The piano strings that ran across his hand had been tuned to dissonance, the keys broken. Even if the rumors were true, even if Clemens couldn’t feel pain, he was still a child. His teeth hadn’t fallen out yet and he still saw the world for what it could be. When Adeline stared into his eyes, all she saw were questions, imploring her with a furrowed brow. Clemens used to ask his mother the same question when she’d look him over every day for open wounds. Bones he hadn’t realized were broken. Knees he hadn’t realized were skinned down to the cap. Once, he’d stepped on a loose length of barbed wire and ran all across the field with it stuck in his heel, bloody and screaming, as though it were chasing him. In trying to describe how pain felt to a child who couldn’t feel pain, Clemens’ mother described every scrape and every scratch as death itself. In that way, he learned to fear life. He screamed when his mother’s broom fell on the floor with a startling snap. He cried out when his father smashed his own thumb with a hammer. He wept at the way thunder beat against the roof, as though the world were falling down around him. When Adeline slapped the back of his hand, Clemens didn’t know whether to scream and hope his mother might come running, look his body over for bruises and blood. Or maybe remain still and stoic, like his father always taught him, pretend that, because he couldn’t feel the pain, his heart couldn’t break. He looked over his shoulder, as though for direction, but only saw Buster Sue holding his shoes.

Clemens started to cry. He waited for his mother to come kiss the welt forming on the back of his hand. He called out for her. He called out for his father to come slap him across the face, teach him, one last time, how to be ashamed of himself.

Buster Sue shook his head. Ada…what are we doin’?

And Adeline answered them both when she cracked Clemens across the face with her blackjack.

He couldn’t feel the sting that groped along his skull. It found purchase in his eye socket. He couldn’t feel the blown bulbs of his nerve endings. The lights went out. The shock of it silenced him. He couldn’t negotiate the embers drifting across his vision. He looked past them. Past them.

He saw the horses in the road.

He wondered if the horses in the road could take him home.

Adeline smiled. Have you ever been to the carnival?

Chapter Two

The Drowning Man

When he told his daughter that only oceans made waves, she frowned, looked out across the surface of the lake, and wondered aloud why there were any differences at all. Somewhere between the terminology and her imagination lay a lake with the disposition of an ocean. He never knew how to answer such questions. His wife might’ve known, if she hadn’t left. Instead, he sat on the shore and his daughter sat on the beach and in silence they grew apart.

Years later, he was still the same hairless man he’d always been, with the same stomach hanging over the same board shorts, sinking to the bottom of the same lake he and his daughter had visited that day. He let the bubbles out of his lungs until he could feel the sand against his back. Those were the rules. His daughter had designed the game in her mother’s absence. She and Horowitz took turns sinking to the bottom of the lake while the other counted aloud how long they could hold their breath. The tradition began as a way to cope with each other. Horowitz hadn’t been to the lake since his daughter ran away. For the first time since his wife left, he held his breath underwater and thought about something other than drowning.

He could almost see the waves passing across the surface of his daughter’s imagination. He could almost hear his daughter keeping count from the shore, out loud, so he knew how long he’d been holding his breath. It took five seconds, six, before he realized they were gunshots. He swallowed a mouthful of bubbles and swam to the surface. No firefight. No carnival rivalry come to its bloody conclusion. No one at the lake but him and his associate, a man made of sinew and gristle named Scurvy.

Scurvy called out to Horowitz, Bird shat on your vest, boss!

What?

Bird! The birds? Scurvy said, pointing to the birds in the sky with his revolver. Shat on your vest, boss.

As though in response to the alopecia that left Horowitz hairless, Scurvy insisted on his comb over, even though it only served to accentuate his oversized forehead. He had eyes that withdrew in fear from his eyebrows. Scurvy has Horowitz’s clothes draped over his shoulder and used them to polish his revolver. For all the pride he took in his revolvers, he couldn’t steady a target between the iron sights with any consistency. He managed to miss both the birds and the sky. Horowitz sometimes wondered why he paid Scurvy at all, only to remember, in those moment that, if nothing else, Scurvy was being paid to jump into that lake and keep Horowitz from drowning.

Did you wipe it off? Horowitz asked, wading toward the shore.

After he noticed the bird droppings, it took Scurvy a few minutes to start shooting at the birds. He needed that long to stop laughing.

Nah, he said.

Sopping and shining, Horowitz wobbled over. He tried to scrape the droppings off his vest and flick the excess into the grass, but a residue remained, slashed across the breast.

Give me your jacket, he said.

Boss?

Horowitz pulled the towel off Scurvy’s shoulder and patted himself down, Your jacket. Your jacket, take it off.

Scurvy objected by rolling his tongue around in his mouth. Horowitz pulled his board shorts down, revealed a crotch shrunk with cold. Scurvy looked away and removed his jacket. He slept in that jacket. He fondled in it, fucked in it, and the jacket looked altogether like he bunched it up and chewed on it, as well. When Horowitz put it on, the sleeves choked his forearms. The buttons threatened to break off before he could fix them across his gut. He felt through every pocket, out of suspicion for a coat that belonged to a man like Scurvy. In the right-side pocket he found a handful of melted chocolate. Up to his knuckles in it. When he pulled his hand out the chocolate webbed across his fingers. He smelt it, to be certain, and just looked over the dripping down his hand to Scurvy, who looked away.

What is this? Horowitz asked. What is this in your pockets?

Candy, boss.

Looks like you took a shit in your own pocket, don’t it?

Your shit looks like that? Scurvy asked. Mine don’t. All that caramel in it. Mine don’t look like that.

He washed his hand off in the lake. The lake he’d always remember, instead of as the ocean where he reunited with his runaway daughter, as the place she missed out on seeing her father shat upon - twice.

Ruby Lou.

She had a head that burned down her back with strokes of curling red hair. An endless, looping knot. Though not her given name, she’d only answered to the name Ruby Lou since the age of eleven. A combination of her mother’s name, Luanne, and the color of her hair, a nickname that the roustabouts had given her. She’d given herself the name when her mother left. Luanne woke up that day to find wrinkles on her face she couldn’t account for and a daughter who looked too much like her. Four years after that, just fifteen years old, Ruby Lou ran away, as well, with nothing but a coat, the one pair of shoes that weren’t falling apart and a thumb to hold out against the long, empty road. She’d spent far too many nights putting herself to sleep with stories of why her mother left. She turned out just the same, of course.

Without the women in his family, he’d lost all the patience he ever had for the women in his employ. Maybe that’s why Adeline left, he thought. Maybe the Salcido Sisters were planning to leave, as well. They were conjoined, Mexican twins who bickered in both English and Spanish and Horowitz could only stand them because, in many ways, he’d helped raise them. Him and the rest of the carnies. That left Low-Lie. The Bearded Lady. Known for being low-down and a liar, she always threatened to shave her beard off. Horowitz had every reason to throw her out; she had every reason to leave. While he swam in the lake, Low-Lie hung upside down from an unfinished Ferris wheel. Adeline started the tradition of hanging carnies upside down years ago. Though watching someone dangle always left Horowitz nauseated, he continued the tradition on, because it felt necessary.

To find his daughter, at least.

I suppose we oughta cut her down? Horowitz said. The wind pulsed against the water deep inside his ears.

Oh, Scurvy said, I forgot about her. Yeah. Up over end, like that. Eyes’ll pop on out, much longer.

Horowitz thought to himself that, after he cut Low-Lie down, he may very well hang Scurvy up in her place.

The road led out of town or into town, depending on no one’s perspective, as no one seemed to venture in either direction. The Striped-Tent Show sprawled out alongside the road in dismantled pieces, like a butchered beast. Horowitz imagined his employees working through the night in order to open in the morning. They were scattered between tents in various states of skeleton and tarpaulin, scaffolding climbed up and down, each of them bitten in the ankle by the maze of stakes in the ground. The performers were making sure that their hand-painted promotional signs weren’t scratched during assembly or crushed at the corners any more than they’d always been. The artist renderings, after all, were what sold the tickets. The carnies themselves had too many crushed corners to compare.

In fact, the carnies were all gathered beneath Low-Lie, who still hung upside down from the unfinished Ferris wheel.

Scurvy cupped his hands to shout across the distance, She dead yet?!

The rope had been tied raw around her ankles, and up between her legs, to circle her hips and knot her hands behind her back. The ropes had torn her white skin apart. Gravity had folded her black beard down in front of her face. Her blouse, along with her breasts, bunched together in folds against her chin. Her neck through to her forehead became the muted pink of a beaten face nearly healed, from the upside down of her. She could feel her insides sliding through the sieve of her ribcage, funneling down her throat, until a sound slap across the face might split her head apart, leave it all to gush out through the hole.

The carnies were watching when Low-Lie started to convulse. Spit crawled past her lip and down her eyelid. The Salcido Sisters screamed at different frequencies. Montgomery ran toward Horowitz, shouting, Think she dyin’ right now, boss! She spittin’ and shakin’ all over!

Montgomery’s brother, Chester, called her a liar.

Cut her down! Horowitz shouted, faster than both Scurvy and Montgomery on his way through the woods.

She fakin’! Chester called.

Cut her the damn hell down!

Horowitz pushed through the crowd, toward the sound of laughter. Low-Lie, still hanging from the unfinished Ferris wheel, knew that her smile looked like a frown to anyone watching. She laughed regardless.

Oh, Weetzy! I knew you care about me! She said, her Italian accent as thick as her laugh.

Tried tellin’ ya… Chester said. Fakin’ it. And really, if ya lookin’ for a lynchin’, boss, she the wrong way up and the wrong color to boot.

Years ago, Chester had dodged the draft and he’d taken his younger brother with him. The two of them were working as sharecroppers in San Antonio when the Striped-Tent Show passed through. Chester boasted about his work ethic and Montgomery about his experience. They helped the roustabouts disassemble the carnival just to prove themselves. Years later, Montgomery was still underage and Chester sometimes fell asleep behind the wheel, but they never stole and they never worked for anything other than a hard bed and a cold meal.

Montgomery slicked his hair back with a comb that he kept in his back pocket. He thought it made him look older. Sorry, boss.

Low-Lie’s laughter filled her face with all the blood left in her heart.

Might just let you die next time, Horowitz said, always optimistic that violence would expedite a lesson, always disappointed.

Gazing out past her beard, Low-Lie said, I don’t dink so. Like none of it mattered. Like her ankles weren’t bleeding from the rope wrapped around them. She’d grown as accustomed to seeing the carnival upside down as right side up.

The carnies and the roustabouts had scattered back to their assembly, by then.

How’s it feel hanging this long? Scurvy asked.

Hmm, she said. You’re all covered up in, eh, stars. So many stars!

Horowitz had his back to Low-Lie. He couldn’t stand how the veins in her head bulged like branches.

Ask her, Horowitz said. Adeline used to know how to speak for the man; Scurvy bemoaned the very expectation.

You heard the boss, Scurvy said. You know where Ruby’s gone or don’tcha?

I like Ruby lots! You know I like her lots! She just, she just up n’ left everyone, Weetzy!

He sucked his teeth at the shortening and the accenting of his name. She’d given him the nickname once as a lark. If he hadn’t sucked his teeth when he heard it, she never would’ve called him Weetzy again.

He turned to Chester and Montgomery, Fellas could use some help assembling. Four more hands, that much faster.

Chester laughed, wiped his nose, said, Sure thing, boss. He pushed Montgomery toward the unfinished carousel.

Low-Lie, Scurvy said, leaving Horowitz an opening.

You said you could guess why Ruby left, Horowitz said, still maintaining his distance. That you would’ve helped her if you’d gotten the chance.

No, I meant nutteeng, Low-Lie said. I meant nutteeng. No. Nutteeng. Scurvy. He’d ‘ave more to say than I. ‘is eyes, eh, dey wander, see? Dey wander all over. You know dees. And I like Ruby, as I said, as I said before. Please, Weetzy.

Everyone knew Scurvy to be the kind of man who laid his hands where mothers and fathers knew they didn’t belong. At the accusation, Scurvy just shuffled his feet in the dirt. He never hid his lust from anyone. He always assumed he’d be able to take down as many mothers and fathers as came after him, as many as he could. He’d rather die to that angry mob than plead his innocence to Horowitz. Had Scurvy touched Ruby Lou, he’d still have strands of red hair coming out of his mouth. For Horowitz, it acted as reminder that he never again wanted Scurvy to speak on his behalf.

Horowitz crouched down in front of Low-Lie, lifting her beard up out of her face. The spit from her fake convulsions had dried on her forehead. The reflective streak down her cheek like a tear from the frown of her smile. He said, Where’s my daughter, Low?

My name ees Esmeralda, she lied, as she often did.

Horowitz let her beard fall back down over her face.

Cut her down, he said, and Scurvy obliged. He took no care in breaking her fall. Still tied together, she fell stiff across the ground like a twisting animal that can’t bend along its spine. While he cut the ropes loose from between her ankles and her wrists, Low-Lie muttered something in Italian. She did it with a smile. That’s how everyone knew they were being insulted.

Scurvy watched Low-Lie dust off her skinned knees and elbows, the wounds wrapped around her ankles and her wrists. Something about a woman bleeding always struck Scurvy right at the bottom of his belly, made him adjust himself. When Low-Lie removed her blouse to beat the dust off against the base of the Ferris wheel, Scurvy looked away. She’d always been too much of a woman for him. Too comfortable with her size. He preferred bodies wound around youth to those sapped by womanhood. Low-Lie noticed him look away. She often fell out of her outfits in Scurvy’s presence, just to watch him scoff and study the horizon.

Say Weetzy, she called, before retiring to her wagon, have you a comb I could use? Der are knots in my beard!

Scurvy laughed into a cough. He cleared his throat to stifle the reaction.

Horowitz watched Scurvy gather the rope. The roustabouts were already climbing up the side of the Ferris wheel. Montgomery among them. Had he left Low-Lie upside down, spilling out onto the ground, it might’ve been the sacrifice Horowitz needed to move on.

Instead, he scolded the Salcido Sisters for pestering Montgomery.

Their mother had sold the Salcido Sisters to the Striped-Tent Show a few years ago, hours before the Texas Rangers deported her back to Guadalajara. They were the daughters of the Striped-Tent Show. Their foreheads were melded into a single, uniform stump, and they leaned into each other in order to stand on their respective two feet. Four thick braids dangled off the back of their shared head like the limbs of a dead thing. The wrinkles of their brow cascaded off each other’s emotional state – one twin’s raised eyebrows rendered the other’s furrowed, one’s surprise the other’s concern. It prompted verbosity on each sister’s part, lest they be misunderstood through confusion of countenance. As soon as Montgomery arrived, they’d been enamored with his youth and the slick of his hair. For Montgomery, they shone with reflective smiles, two hearts pining out of the same body. For everyone else, including each other, they shone with reflective frowns.

Monty!

Hey, Monty! Hey!

Look, Monty. My braids!

Do you like?

Never seen so many damn braids on the same head! Montgomery said. He’d been the sideshow bally for a few months, by then. As one of the attractions in the ten-cent tent, the Salcido Sisters listened to him shout over the crowds as though he did it just for them.

After Horowitz scolded them, the Salcido Sisters ran back to their wagon like a horse galloping sideways. They were hobbled by their permanent lean into each other, the company they couldn’t escape.

Horowitz had been waiting years for his rival, Brannigan, to steal them away.

The Striped-Tent Show had been laid out like a horseshoe, designed to drain patrons along its bend with rides and concessions, shows scandalous and shocking, feats dazzling and dangerous. Horowitz walked up the left leg and around to the right. The bulk of the tents were laid out flat in their allotted spaces. Scaffolding marked their location. An early onslaught of grease carts and prize games and carousels fed into Strom the Strongman’s stage show. Behind him, the Ferris wheel was being assembled at the crest of the midway’s bend. Behind that, the sideshow, known to the carnies as the ten-in-one or the ten-cent tent. While it still cost ten cents, there were only two attractions, those days. Three, according to the Salcido Sisters, who always made certain they were thought of as individuals. Regardless, he couldn’t bring himself to change Mackey Mae’s painted advertisements, just as he couldn’t change his approach to acquiring talent. Unlike competing carnivals, Horowitz never took out sideshow bounties. He preferred to negotiate with desperate people and convince them of their natural talent to stand out in a crowd. He taught Adeline everything he knew and she told him that no amount of negotiation could compete with Brannigan’s sideshow bounties. No amount of money could compete with the Merry-Andrews. He agreed with her, though, Horowitz lacked the heart to steal children from their parents. Rather than filling the ten-cent tent with sideshow bounties, Adeline left. Buster Sue left with her. Even the girly show, where women danced in nothing but pasties, panties and pumps, couldn’t draw an audience. His brothel couldn’t even draw a crowd of married men.

He could already tell that the Ferris wheel would break down again, just like at the last show. Maybe, like at the last show, by the time any of the patrons realized that it stopped spinning, they’d have come too far to turn around. For any promotion, blue sky was real estate, same as any lot of land. His direct and nearest competitor, Brannigan, who ran the Big-Top Tent, always had a Ferris wheel that lit up the dark like a city balanced on its edge. Horowitz could almost always see it from his lot. A bright, unblinking eye on the other side of town.

He tried to keep the anxiety buried underneath his missing daughter.

Most mornings, in most lots, Horowitz waited for the Merry-Andrews to come and burn his carnival to the ground. He’d already soaked every attraction in gasoline.

Scurvy passed, grumbling about his jacket, the chocolates he’d kept in his pocket, which he would’ve turned inside out and sucked on in order to satisfy the ache in his tooth.

Low-Lie stood in the doorway of her wagon. She combed her beard. The same ritual always prefaced opening day - one thousand strokes, and a long night’s sleep.

Horowitz studied his palm. His hairless knuckles. In the middle of the carnival being shaped and assembled, he wondered why his grandfather had bequeathed it to him. He hadn’t earned it. He’d even tried to throw it away. Back then, he lacked the wherewithal to hire a woman with hair glued to her chin. Before his grandfather died, his grandfather sold the tarpaulin and let the competition buy out every contract in order to settle old debts. In many ways, Horowitz only married Luanne because she had connections that he could leverage into rebuilding the Striped-Tent Show. Her being gentile made no difference to Horowitz and fit well into his father’s pre-conceptions, having never let Horowitz forget about his alopecia, that he couldn’t keep peas, that he didn’t deserve a bar mitzvah. His father warned him that the carnival only appealed to those without identity. It sounded to Horowitz like an invitation, until rivalry left him feeling abandoned by the circuit. When his wife left, he realized that he couldn’t blame Ruby Lou for it. In his father’s absence, all of his failures felt like his own. He became the kind of man who stopped in a crowd and stared down at his hands. He became the kind of man who could no longer catch his breath.

Boss?

A voice interrupted his panic.

Boss? A Polish accent hollowed out the word. Strom, the strongman, put his hand on Horowitz’s shoulder. When Horowitz looked up at him, Strom had a smile pounded across his face like the iron band around a beer keg. Above that, a three-finger mustache and a nose smaller than either of his beady eyes combined. Strom had a face punched young; the features sucked in around the impact.

Strom. You’re helping the, uh…you’re helping ‘em set-up some, right? Horowitz asked. He coughed into his fist, to clear his head.

Of course, boss, Strom said, But. Someone come to see you.

Ruby? Horowitz asked.

Strom looked away, shook his head, No. Sorry, no. Ad-uhline. I show her to your, uh…wagon but she say she wait in the Snout.

The Snout had led the carnival procession during every jump for years - from city to city, lot to lot. Used to be, when Horowitz first started touring the circuit, when local acts were booked in each town, Horowitz dealt with business in the Snout. It looked far more elegant than any of the wagons it dragged through the dirt.

Back then, Adeline still worked for him.

She called his name out from the cab like an old acquaintance might, different from how his employees said it.

Horowitz climbed into the driver’s seat without a passing glance. She drank from the flask she kept on one side of her hip; she used to joke that maybe she should drink from the gun she kept on the other side of her hip. They took a moment to remember how it felt to sit together. The last time they sat together, Adeline had asked Horowitz to let her and Buster Sue and Scurvy steal back the talent that Brannigan had stolen from him. She offered to find the Merry-Andrews, a group of men who worked for Brannigan that some people didn’t believe in. Adeline among them. Horowitz swore that he’d seen them. The clowns. They were dark and they were covered in blood and greasepaint, just like the stories. According to the dead they left behind, the Merry-Andrews fulfilled all of Brannigan’s sideshow bounties. Though, Horowitz feared reprisal. He’d never gamble Adeline and Buster Sue and Scurvy against such a savage myth. He’d rather be a failure than a victim. A few days later, Adeline had left. A few months after that, Ruby Lou had left.

Should we just drive away? Horowitz asked.

To the next city? She asked.

The next lot, at least, he said.

Adeline watched Strom through the window. He’s added some muscle, she said.

Well, he don’t like lookin’ lackluster to a woman. Or he don’t care so much. I do.

She told Horowitz that his jacket didn’t seem to fit. He nodded, gave her a blank smile, said he’d been too busy to change. He looked down at her hand, the ring on her finger, a worn piece of metal. He said he never thought of her as that kind of woman. The marrying type.

Neither did I, Adeline said. She and Buster Sue married years ago. She only started wearing a ring after they left the carnival. To convince herself, maybe, that she’d made the right decision.

You’ll be pleased to know that Low-Lie is still an asshole, Horowitz said.

What’s she done now? Adeline laughed.

What’s she done? Threatened to shave her beard, which she won’t. Cause she always threatens that first. Said, too, said she was going to lead a mutiny. A carnival mutiny, she said. Like they’re all some yellow dogs gettin’ company script or something. About what you’d expect. Then she said something about…something about Ruby and so I did your favorite, if you recall. Hung her upside down for the afternoon.

What happened to Ruby? Adeline asked.

Horowitz scratched his head, didn’t want to bring it up. Shouldn’t have.

They weren’t friends, they were carnies – he just swallowed what she’d managed to throw up. Anyway, he said. Anyway. What do you want, Adeline? Horowitz had taught her the machinations of an argument. She’d never bested him before, if only because he used guilt to undermine her threats.

Your sideshow business is dead, she began. "It’s a stronger distraction considering you still call it the ten-in-one. Even though there’s