One morning in early May, someone rapped on the trailer door. Gene opened it; there stood Irma, dressed in a terrycloth robe.
"Hi there," she said. "Listen, is your plumbing okay?"
"Plumbing? Yes, why?"
"Well, my shower's on the fritz. Would you mind?"
"Mind?"
"If I took a shower."
"Oh. No, of course not -- come on in."
She brushed past him with a whiff of fragrance, something flowery, but too faint to identify. "Don't get too near me," she said over her shoulder, "I probably stink like a goat."
"No, you smell good."
She gave him a smile and turned to inspect the trailer. "Hey, this is nice. You had it all done over inside, didn't you?"
"Yes, pretty much."
She glanced up at the unmade bed, then mounted the two steps to the rear section. "Oh, the shower's new, too!" she said as she opened the door. "Oh, this is terrific." She took a yellow plastic cap out of the pocket of her robe.
"Here's a towel," Gene said.
"Keep it for me. Here." She slipped out of her robe, handed it to him and walked with a flash of pale buttocks into the shower stall. The door closed; after a moment the pump started and he heard the water hissing on the metal floor.
Gene put the towel and the terry-cloth robe on the counter. He took off his own dressing gown. His throat was dry; he could feel his heart beating. He opened the shower door and stepped in.
Irma glanced at him with one eye; the other was covered by soapsuds. "Well, hello," she said.
Gene took the soap from her and began to lather her smooth back. Presently he put the soap down and rubbed the lather with his hands over her breasts and belly. She leaned her head back against his breastbone. Her hip came against him, but he twisted away.
"What's the matter?" she asked, and looked down. "Oh. My gosh, he's a big one, isn't he?" She turned around in his arms. "Now I'll do you."
Her hands were gentle. When they were both rinsed, she turned off the water, opened the door, stepped out, and picked up the towel. As soon as he came through the doorway, she began to dry him. Gene reached over her head to the cabinet, got another towel. Their efforts interfered with each other, and she began to laugh. He followed her down the steps and up again to the front of the trailer.
"Do you know why I like you?" she asked between kisses. They were in bed together; she was curled up against him, and his hand was on her breasts. "Because you make me feel small."
"You are small."
"No, I'm enormous, I'm five nine and a half. If I wear heels, I'm almost six feet tall. But you make me feel petite. You're so big." Her finger traveled slowly down the length of his erect penis. "Too big for my lady Jane."
"Your what?"
"Didn't you ever read "Lady Chatterley's Lover"? That's what she called her thing. I think it's nicer than 'cunt' or 'muff.' And this is your John Thomas, and he must be ten inches long."
Gene tried to get closer to her, but she held him away. "Get up a minute, honey. Please. Just for a minute, all right?"
Angry and confused, he got out of bed. "Stay there," Irma said. She squirmed around on her back until her head hung over the edge. "Now I'm going to show you about sword-swallowers and giants, honey. Come on. Don't worry, it's all right. Come on."
Chapter Fourteen
Armed with his letter of recommendation from the mayor of Dog River, Tom Cooley went to Amherst, Massachusetts, and got a job on the police force. He chose the east because he was convinced the kid had gone that way. A deer might double back to avoid pursuit, but not a kid. He wouldn't go in the same direction twice, and, he wouldn't go back to places where he had almost been trapped. He would go east.
Cooley had no illusions about his chances of finding him there. Young as he was, the kid would be smart enough to know that Cooley had tracked him down in San Francisco by going to art schools, and he wouldn't be caught that way again. Cooley had another idea, and he was willing to wait.
It was funny how the thing had grown on him. In the beginning it had just been a thing about evening the score, like when somebody cheats you at cards and takes your money, you don't let them get away with that, you get even and more than even. Only later had he begun to realize that Gene Anderson was really the devil. What kind of a kid could kill his son, throw him out a window, and then live in the woods all by himself for two years, and grow up to be a giant? That wasn't natural; it wasn't even human.
Cooley liked Amherst well enough, and he found some congenial friends, including an ex-Marine named Jacobs whose hobby was incendiary and explosive devices. In 1957 he married a widow who had a half-interest in a bar and grill, and moved into her house on Third Street. After six months they began to quarrel frequently, and in 1959 they were divorced. Cooley was disciplined in the same year for drinking on duty, owing to an unfortunate falling-out with his superior. In 1960 he left the Amherst police force and moved to Pittsburgh, where he went to work for an armored car company. The work was undemanding and the pay was fair. In 1962 he began using his vacation time to visit circuses and carnivals in the east.
His reasoning was simple: if the kid kept on growing at the same rate, by the time he was twenty he would be nearly eight feet tall. He wouldn't be able to get an ordinary job anywhere; he couldn't even join the army. Sooner or later he would turn up in a sideshow.
Cooley struck up acquaintances with circus people whenever he got a chance, and discovered that the bible of the industry was a magazine called "Amusement Business," published in Nashville. He subscribed to it, and read every issue from cover to cover.
Through the summer the carnival worked its way into Ohio and Indiana, turned north briefly into Wisconsin, then back into Ohio again, and from there to Pennsylvania and Maryland, then southward down the coast through New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and so back to Florida. There were tearful good-byes, and the women kissed Gene. "See you next season," they all said.
Gene went back to his A-frame on Lake Brantley. At first he liked the solitude and freedom, the time to think. He finished a large wood carving and several smaller pieces; he made a few tentative experiments in poetry. But the winter was long; when the end of March came, he went back to the carnival with a sense of relief.
Some of the old faces were missing, and there were some new ones, even in the sideshow. The Fat Lady was gone; she had had a stroke during the winter. In her place there was a young juggler, a wiry dark-skinned man named Ray Hartz. He joined Irma in the bally, where he did a spectacular act with five whirling daggers. He could not use knives in the tent, where he worked so close to the marks, but he juggled apples, oranges, milk bottles. "He won't stay long," Wilcox predicted, "but he'll do to fill in until Ducklin can find another Fat Lady, or a morphodite."
Early in the season Hartz began teaching Irma to juggle; she picked it up readily, and within a few weeks they were practicing together in the back yard between performances, disturbing Gene's Scrabble games with Ed Parlow. Irma's husband, Ted LeFever, looked more and more tired every time Gene saw him; he was running the candy-apple stand all by himself.
One evening in Gene's trailer, Wilcox showed him what he called "the grift."
"All this more or less stopped about nineteen forty-eight, when carnivals became respectable, but I've run into oldtimers who used to do it. The classic way is with three walnut shells and a pea, like this." He showed Gene the "pea" -- a little dark sphere of rubber. He put it under one of the shells and began to move them back and forth, changing their positions rapidly. "The idea is, I bet you a dollar you can't tell me which shell the pea's under. Where is it now?"