A redhead went tripping by, red heels stabbing the dust. She looked at me. Her mouth opened to say something, but then she looked away and minced on.
I decided I would go down to where the swallowers were parked and talk to the Human Pin-Cushion. I’d been watching him for weeks. I was nursing this fantasy that maybe he would like to run away with me and join up with some other show, some simp-twister, spook-house show that wintered in Florida and took life easy. I could talk them in for the Pin Kid and do his cooking and his costumes, and run the light-and-sound board for his act. A young Pin-Cushion, just striking out on his own, could do worse than have me for a partner. And, if I worked hard, he’d let me sleep with my arms and legs wrapped around him all night. The Pin Kid seemed to like me too. He laughed at my jokes and actually came looking for me once when I was rubbing Arty down.
You’d think dwarfs and midgets would have drifted through the Fabulon all my life. It was actually, though accidentally, very rare for me to see anyone like me. We’d had the usual monkey girls and alligator guys and an endless migrating herd of fat folks and giants.
Mama often said that fat folks went out of style because every tenth ass on the street now was wider than the one in the tent. Folks could see it free on any block. Giants were also out of work owing, according to Mama, to basketball and the drugs they fed to babies to make them tall enough to play the game.
“It goes in streaks. But some things never go out of fashion.” Hunger artists, fat folks, giants, and dog acts come and go but real freaks never lose their appeal.
It so happened that the Pin Kid who had joined up with our current pack of swallowers was a hunchback. He had regular arms and legs and a great torch of red hair. He was fragile as a glass swan, fine-skinned with freckles, brown eyes, and a clear, honest face. His name was Vinnie Sweeney. He was only twenty years old and he’d been working for years with other acts, trying to save enough money to get his own tent and trailer.
From the journal of Norval Sanderson:
Lily is winking conspiratorially at me. She proceeds to dust and polish the lids and jars on the counter. The maggots appreciate it, no doubt. An old line comes to me: “Lovely you are, and kind to the tender young of ravening lions.”
She took a walk with Iphy today, she says. She seems to be ignoring the existence of what remains of Elly — doesn’t mention her at all. Is completely taken up with “my grandchild,” and its current protuberant form
.
“I swan!” says Lily, making me think of times past when she must have, in fact, swanned. Crystal Lil “swans to goodness” that Iphy’s child is twins and wouldn’t it be a miracle and a blessing if it was Siamese twins? She (Lily) says Iphy is far too big for a six-month pregnancy. Iphy says the only thing she wants is to see Arty. Lil asks if I will speak to Arty about it. “The boy’s so busy I don’t see him myself except across the camp or if I should peep in at showtime and catch his act.”
23. The Generalissimo’s Big Gun
From the files of Norval Sanderson:
(Iphigenia, pregnant, hugging the lobotomized Elly on the sofa in the twins’ van — conversation with N.S.)
“Oly has a boyfriend? Oly and the Pin Kid? How could she have time for that? She’s always with Arty
.
“I almost had a boyfriend, once. Elly would have let me. She thought it was O.K. She shut down when I talked to him. Whenever he came around, she’d cut her voltage way back and stay quiet. She wanted me to go ahead and love him
.
“He was just a geek. He was clean between his shows. Laundry, hospital corners on the sheets when he made his bunk up. He was a poor boy, he said, so he knew how to take care of himself. I thought how good it would be … like you’d be proud to clean and cook for a man who knew how to clean and cook. It would feel right taking care of a man who could take care of himself
.
“But he was a norm. At first I thought he was pretty even
though
he was a norm. But it grows on you. After a while it was his being such a norm that got to me, touched me.… I don’t know. Like colors or a spring tree against that kind of blue sky that pulls your heart out through your eyes. Pretty things will swarm you like that, like your heart was a hive of electric bees. He was like that, the geek boy. He made normal seem beautiful to me. And Elly said it was O.K. She wanted me to. So I did. I saw him and was happy. Then I wanted to talk to him and she let me. Then I couldn’t be happy unless I was near him, unless he was talking to me
.
“He laughed a lot and told silly jokes and was going away to college in the fall. He had such a wonderful time being the geek. And he had long, perfect teeth. The redheads called him a darling
.
“He started paying attention to me. He would come and find us and talk to me. Not to Elly but to me. He’d bring his lunch in a bag and sit by us. He’d wait outside in the morning and walk us to practice. But he talked just to me. He told me things about himself. Sweet, sad things. And Elly damped herself way down
.
“And a terrible thing happened. He seemed to forget about her. He forgot she was part of me. That was what we’d meant to happen. Elly was glad. She’d crow in bed at night. He touched me. He’d put his hand on my hair, gently. He took my hand. I saw it in his eyes, so I stopped it. Elly was mad. She bit me on the inside of my arm until we both cried. But she wanted to get me away from Arty. She didn’t care about the boy at all. She wanted me to love somebody else than Arty. You know Elly. She figured I was going to love somebody whether she liked it or not and she decided she could handle anybody but Arty. Arty is too much for her
.
“She was mad when I stopped. I couldn’t help it. It was a thing that cracked and spilled in my head. Elly understood but she was mad. I know better now. I’ll never let it happen again
.
“He started to love me, you see? He was so pure, like that leaf against the sky. I don’t mean he was naïve or innocent or a virgin or even a virtuous boy, though he was nice, but that he was purely, from tip to toe, from nose to tail, absolutely what he was. That was normal with a big
N.
That was what I loved. But when the look in his eye changed, I realized, if there’s one thing a healthy, beautiful, utterly normal boy does
not
do, it’s fall in love with half of a pair of Siamese twins
.
“That’s how I learned. It’s O.K. for me to love a norm like that. But if he comes to loving me it’s because I’ve twisted him and changed him. If he loves me he’s corrupted. I can’t love him anymore. I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt.”
(Arty — conversation with N.S.)
“There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-life devotees