Geek Love Part 15

As their seventeenth birthday rolled past, the twins were fogged in by some musty hormonal mist. They were goofy, aloof, and up to something. Their bickering graduated from intermittent to constant, but the dignity that they felt appropriate to full-fledged bleeders dictated that the running argument be carried on in whispers.

The twins' piano teacher, whom Lil had hired by mail, was the greasy Jonathan Tomaini, with his one s.h.i.+ny-a.s.sed suit and two pairs of slightly mismatched socks. He took frequent opportunities to explain how temporary this "post" was for him and how thrillingly adventurous it was for a concert performer and graduate of fine New York music academies, such as himself, to doss down on a cot in a trailer shared with twelve sweaty, spitting, cursing, chortling roustabouts who viewed him as one rung lower than last night's beer farts. He gushed at how brilliantly gifted the twins were - "a privilege to spend this brief hiatus in my career molding and influencing such talent."

The twins claimed - Elly loudly and Iphy with demure embarra.s.sment - that Tomaini never bathed, only was.h.i.+ng his hands up to the wrist and his face and neck as far down as his collar. He was, they said, no fun to share a piano stool with. He had things to teach them, though, and they endured the piano stool for hours every day..

Mama was slipping away from us. Her pill intake was up and her body was changing. Large bones came close to the surface as her woman-softness withered. Her eyes were giving her trouble, the focus softening and shortening. Her walk had changed from a melodic flirt to a gaunt, uncertain lurching with her hands extended in front of her, touching. She rattled in endless detail about our various infancies. She forgot things. She left jobs half done and didn't notice when someone else finished them for her. She cried easily and occasionally without knowing she was doing it. She slept.

Papa had taken to antacid tablets for his stomach. He carried half-consumed rolls in every pocket and chewed them constantly. He dithered for eighteen hours out of every twenty-four trying to lash his small winter crew into dealing with the flush of business brought on by Arty's increasingly specialized popularity. The veins in his forehead threatened a stroke while he supervised the production of the expensive and cla.s.sy "Ask Arturo" poster series. He was happy, though. The work rush let him forget that he wasn't the boss anymore.

New people kept cropping up and latching on. We were a road show and we lived with the ebb and trickle of faces who appeared, hired on, stayed for a few thousand miles and then, one day, were gone. We Binewskis kept to ourselves. Only the family stayed the same. Hanging out with the swallower's kids or making friends with the palm reader's daughter always ended in separation and forgetfulness. We were easy with strangers but never close.

Arty's growing flock, however, was different. I dreamed one night that Arty cried them into the world. They came out of his eyes as a green liquid that dripped to the ground making puddles. The puddles thickened and jelled into bodies that got up and hung around Arty.

But Dr. P. and the advance man and McGurk, and later Sanderson and the Bag Man and the nebbishes and simps who mooned and crooned around him, were all there because of Arty, no matter what other pretext they might claim. They all belonged to him.

The occasional television crews, doing thirty-second "Day at the Carnival" bits for the evening news, took a while to tumble to what was going on in the center tent. An hour after the first broadcast of a breathless on-the-spot reporter describing bandaged stumps in a wheelchair, the newspaper people started popping up.

After a few months reporters drove out to meet us on the road. Squads with cameras and notebooks and tape recorders waited for us on every new site as we tooled in and parked. A few towns canceled our licenses before we even arrived. The indignant slams just made Arty smile. "Those who want to know," he shrugged, "will still get the message."

It wasn't until one of the redheads brought a copy of Now to Arty's door one morning that we realized one of the loiterers in the journalistic pack was from that national news magazine. The guy in the lean tweeds had been puttering around the midway for weeks. The ticket peddlers all knew him because he'd flash his photo ID card and mutter, "Press," trying to slip into the shows without paying. "Press your pants," the redheads would say-a stock Binewski reply-and he'd laugh and pay up.

The Now story demonstrated his intentions clearly. The fur-chested Norval Sanderson, with his cynic's eye, bourbon voice, and discreet tailoring, was with us so he could expose the "ruthless egotism that was exploiting the nation's psychic undertow."

"Arturism was founded," wrote Sanderson, "on the greed and spite of a transcendental maggot named Arturo Binewski, who used his own genetic defects and the weakness of the unemployed and illiterate to create an insanely self-destructive following that fed his maniacal ego ... "

Within days, Arty, the clever boy, had turned the attack to his own purposes by distributing ninety-second tapes to every network proclaiming that he was, indeed, the Transcendental Maggot, and that his power to thrive in the decaying frenzy of the planet was available to all those who were willing to accept it.

Norval Sanderson had covered wars, treaties, executions, and inaugurations for two decades. He was sharp and he lacked awe for anything, from earthquakes to heads of state. He was clever. He spent days lounging coolly in the corners of Arty's life, and he published three explosively controversial interviews with Arty in as many weeks. Arty liked him.

What now remains of Sanderson's old spiral-bound notebooks, his collection of news clippings, and the transcripts of his interviews with the people of Binewski's Fabulon is wrapped in black plastic and locked in the trunk in my closet. I take it all out when I want to think back. His fast, meticulous script is fading from black to grey, and the paper is brittle in my hands, but I can still hear his lazy drawl with its built-in needle.

From the notes of Norval Sanderson: ... Suspected earlier that Arturo was being manipulated by someone, probably the father, Al Binewski. I saw Arty as a tool for some functional "norm" who was raking in the cash from the dowries. Spent three hours with Arty today and completely revised my opinion. Arty is in complete,control of the cult, of the carnival, of his parents, and apparently of his sisters and brother - though there may be some small spirit of resistance in the twins.

Arty is sporadically self-educated with wide lacunae in his information. National and international politics are outside his experience and reading. Munic.i.p.al power relations.h.i.+ps, however, are familiar tools to him. He has no real grasp of history - seems to have picked up drifts from his reading - but he is a gifted a.n.a.lyst of personality and motivation, and a complete manipulator. His knowledge of science is primitive. He relies on specialists in his staff to provide him with effective lighting, sound technology, etc. He is a skilled speaker on a one-to-one level as well as in the ma.s.s-rhetoric situation of his performances. He has a sharp awareness of personal problems in others ... professes no ethic or morality except avoidance of pain. Says his awareness is such that he feels the pain of others and is therefore required to alleviate it by offering the sanctuary ofArturism. Obvious horses.h.i.+t.

His power seems to come from a combination of techniques and personality traits. He seems to have no sympathy for anyone, but total empathy. He is enormously self-centered, proud, vain, disdainful of all who lack the good fortune to be him. This is so evident and so oddly convincing (one finds oneself thinking/agreeing that, yes, Arty is a special person and can't be judged by normal criteria) that when he turns his interest on an individual (on me) the object (me) suddenly feels elevated to his level (as in - yeah, me and Arty are too special and unique to be judged, etc.).

Just when you feel despicable, and that Arty's disdain is too great a burden to endure, he offers you the option of becoming his peer ...

June 14: Ticket count 11,724 for this show. Bleachers packed to the top of the tent. Arty in tremendous form - his voice booming through your very bones: "I want you to be like I am! I want you to become what I am! I want you to enjoy the fearlessness that I have! The courage that I have! And the compa.s.sion that I have! The love that I have! The all-encompa.s.sing mercy that I am!"

The "yes" sighs up from the crowd like a night wind and I myself nearly weep at being surrounded by pain. I become convinced, for an hour, that Arty is not injuring them but is allowing them to acknowledge the pain in their lives in order to escape from it. A man who had to be a Certified Public Accountant on my left - a big self-contained man in a decent suit and well-groomed beard. The wedding ring glinted on his fingers as his hands gripped his knees. He didn't shout when the others did. He was silent, focused on the tank and the venomous worm in it. During the "As I am" chorus he was frozen so rigidly that I glanced at his face. He was biting his lip and staring, unblinking, at the pale squirming thing down there in the green-lit water. He didn't move. But when I looked again, a trickle of blood was slipping down his chin into his beard and his lower lip was still caught in his teeth. There was a rollicking grandmother on my right, wailing and whomping throughout. Her easy tears didn't touch me at all. It was this thick-wallet with his gleaming, well-kept air who shook me up.

For hours afterward, wandering through the crowds in the midway, walking in the Admitted encampment, I am swept by the idea, almost believe that having all my limbs amputated will actually free me from the furious scourge of my days. The midway finally shut down at midnight and I recovered a little more sobriety as the lights clicked off. In the dark, at last, I went down the road a half mile to the Roamers Rest Tavern and contemplated my momentary conversion ruefully through the amber lens of Resa Innes's (proprietress) corrupt bourbon. I kept feeling a tremor in my s.h.i.+ns and thighs and spine, from the voice of that ruinous tadpole. I kept feeling the heat of solid thighs packed against me in that sweltering hour on the bleachers.

I had another pull at Mother Resa's treacle comfort and remembered the Vesuvius coverage ten years ago. We'd goaded the pilot of the big press chopper into getting us the goods. As we bucketed crazily in the hot drafts around the crater and cleared the lip with a gut-chewing swoop, old Sid Lyman dropped his beloved camera and fell to his knees on the steel deck. Praying. "Good Old" Sid, who cracked abysmal puns while shooting ma.s.s graves in Texas, while clicking away at the mutilated children on Cyprus, and while filming six years' worth of intimate war footage - jungle and desert. There was Sid, helpless as his precious equipment skittered out through the open door of the chopper. All Sid could do, aside from what obviously happened in his trousers, was gibber infant prayers as he stared out into that roaring pit of boiling stone.

What bothers me is my inability to recall whether I laughed at Sid. If I snickered then, over the crater, I've a hunch I'll pay for it. I asked the flatulent Resa for another tug at Aphrodite's bourbon teat and hoped, with absurd urgency, that I'd had the sense to bite my lip over Vesuvius.

This sheaf of news clippings was stapled into Norval's notebook: NIGHT OF CRIME.

AP: Santa Rosa, California A sudden crime wave broke out in this coastal city last night, with looting of one large supermarket and three smaller grocery stores. All the thefts took place in the three hours between 1 A.M. and 4 A.M., and Police Chief Warren Cosenti reports that foodstuffs were the only items taken.

Spokane, Was.h.i.+ngton Eight suspects were arrested inside McAffrey's Stop and Shop at 114 West Main by officers answering a burglar alarm from the convenience store at 2:30 A.M. The suspects, five males and three females, were apprehended while loading cardboard boxes with foodstuffs from the shelves. All eight were unarmed, dressed completely in white, and refused to make any statement to police. One man, evidently a spokesman for the group, handed police officers a note reading, "We have all taken vows of silence. Do what you will."

Reports that several, or perhaps all, of the suspects are missing one or more fingers or toes have not yet been confirmed.

Spokane, Was.h.i.+ngton County Coroner Jeff Johnson affirmed, in a press conference this morning, that all eight of the burglary suspects who committed suicide last Wednesday night in the city detention cells took cyanide.

None of the suicide victims has yet been identified, and neither police nor Johnson will comment on the rumors that all of the victims were missing digits from their hands or feet.

Velva, North Dakota: Police responding to a burglar alarm at 3 A.M. Monday found the big plate-gla.s.s window of the Velva Coop Supermarket shattered and whole shelves emptied of goods in what appears to be ...

This headline was cut from the Hopkins, Minnesota,Clarion : : GROCERY WAREHOUSE RANSACKED.

Police Suspect Carnival Link On a handbill circulated among Arturans and carnival staff, Norval Sanderson had underlined this pa.s.sage: ... To eliminate food shortages arising from the increased number of the Blessed, our Beloved Arturo has established a special kitchen truck and mess tent to serve three wholesome meals per day to each and every one of his followers. Novices who have not yet begun Shedding must obtain meal cards from their group leaders. Guests and visitors will be charged a nominal fee for meals ...

I laughed when I found this among Norval's notes. I remember the tizzy we were in when this handbill was written. I suppose we weren't far from Hopkins, Minnesota, because it was the Hopkins cops who were snooping around.

I was helping Lily pin up the hem on a new satin coat for Arty. We were in the kitchen of the van. Lily had her sewing machine on the table in the dining booth and Arty was sitting beside it on the table. I was chalking the hem and Lily had her mouth full of pins when the door jerked open and the twins stormed in with Chick.

"Cops," they said. The twin's faces had matching looks of thrilled horror. Chick nodded gravely. "Papa's angry. The cops want to talk to Arty."

Arty had been stretching up tall for his fitting and he sank back on his hips and got a pin in his rump. "Rar!" He jerked forward. Elly giggled, Iphy reached for him, and I fell off the bench. The radiophone buzzed and it was Al from the office. Chick was right. Papa was very angry.

That was the first we heard of the marauding that Arty's followers had been up to. It seems they were hungry. A lot of them didn't have any money left after turning everything over to Arty. Trailing around after him they had no way to earn any. But none of us had given any thought to how they would all eat. Some of them had been sneaking meals with the show crew but that infuriated the cooks. The midway staff would beat them up or, at the least, throw them out if they suspected who they were. The cooks had stuck up signs on the mess tent saying, "Midway Staff ONLY!"

The cops arrested five novices that day and impounded the old school bus that they lived in. Behind its white curtains the bus was stacked with cases of canned goods intended for the good people of Hopkins. The police kept us there for a couple of days before they let us go.

Al hired two more cooks and some kitchen helpers, bought another kitchen truck, and relegated a couple of old tents to the followers for dining halls. He fumed, and Arty too was angry at having to spend the money to feed them all. Norval Sanderson took notes and collected clippings and asked questions.

16.

The Fly Roper and the Transcendental Maggot

Norval Sanderson was a curious man. He wanted to know everything. When he had exhausted all the Binewskis for the day, or was bored with the antics of the Admitted, he would stroll into the midway and continue his casually relentless examination of every event, phenomenon, skill, artifact, and personality that caught his eye. He wasn't pushy. He was as patient and flexible as water on rock.

He was fascinated by popcorn machines and by the way cotton candy was spun. He charmed the redheads with his attentive interest in their uncountable ch.o.r.es and their extravagantly fascinating life stories. He was intrigued by the engines of the simp twisters and he plagued the mechanics with his probing about the drive lines and exhaust systems of the machines.

Sanderson engaged the customers in conversation and could discover astounding details about the truckers, lawyers, pea pickers, sea cooks, insurance peddlers, students, and factory workers who happened to be pitching coins at the ring toss or standing in line for the Roll-a-plane as he ambled by.

He never got tired of the midway. He scrupulously rode each of the simp twisters once when he first started haunting the show. After that he only watched them. But the games and the acts, the booths and the vendors didn't get old for him. He turned the game managers into exuberant braggarts by inquiring about the details of their work and expressing amazement at their skills.

Al's old front men told him how to find the district attorney or sheriff or mayor or police captain in each town who could be paid off with the proceeds of one fixed game, as a prophylactic against investigations of the roulette wheel and the baseball toss. They told him how to place posters, how to pry a license out of a reluctant bureaucrat, how to rent a site for a song, and all the comes and tells and scams of their craft.

The novices who handed out Arturan literature in the P.I.P. (Peace, Isolation, Purity) booths could count on being quizzed periodically about the reactions of pa.s.sersby to each brochure or pamphlet.

The snack-stand vendors reported the flavors of Sno-kone or soda pop in vogue in a given locale and how the fas.h.i.+ons varied geographically.

Sanderson watched practice sessions and rehearsals and then went to the shows to see the results. He knew the face and name and temperament of every cat Horst owned. He knew the blade capacity of each sword swallower and the octane rating of every fire eater. He knew the geek boys' favorite philosophers and the brand of lotion that the tumblers rubbed on their aching joints before bed.

Whenever he could, he'd snag Horst or a Binewski to keep him company, to turn on the lights in the Haunted Gold Mine tunnel so he could see the springs and trip wires that triggered the sound tapes and the swooping skeletons or gaping corpses, or to walk him through the Chute describing the nature and origin of each gla.s.s-encased specimen. I myseif have perched, embarra.s.sed and bored, beside him in the stands of the variety tent, answering his endless questions as he gawked delightedly at Papa's miniature circus, with its single ring and its dog act, jugglers, acrobatic clowns, and aerialists.

In the swallowers' tent he watched gravely from the back and asked questions afterward.

When the Death Tower motorcyclists joined the Fabulon, he stuffed his ears with plastic foam so he could lean over the lip of the huge metal cylinder for hours, watching the riders gun their roaring machines against gravity.

He knew the twins' repertoire by heart and could sing their most difficult and popular tune, "She Was a Salt-Hearted Barmaid," with all its grace notes.

Of course he studied every delicate nuance of Arty's show. He scouted the big tent well before Arty made his appearance for each session. Sanderson watched as the ten thousand places filled with the Admitted of varying status. The limbless lay on their bellies in the sawdust in front of the Holy Tank. The legless were behind them on the first slope of the risers. The bandages got ostentatiously thick further up where the ankle and knee crowd jostled each other. Beyond were the novices, all dressed in white and crushed close on the benches, waving their bandages proudly. Behind and above them in the highest bleachers were the unscathed newcomers, the curious, the scoffers, the occasional reporter, all antsy and jiggling to see Arturo the Aqua Man's life-defying invitation to ultimate sanct.i.ty. Sanderson sketched charts of the hierarchy and wrote endlessly in his pocket-shaped notebooks.

But, of all the skims and grifts and skills and wonders of the Fabulon, Norval Sanderson's particular favorite was a fairly new act housed in the smallish tent right next to Arty's huge one. It was the least-spectacular turn the Fabulon had ever offered. Yet, though Sanderson would pump me or any other insider for details about the act and the actor, he didn't want to meet the man himself or question him personally. "Some mysteries," he'd drawl, "I'd like to preserve." And I never resisted when Sanderson hailed me away from pumping septic tanks or counting tickets to join him in a scholarly viewing of "Mr. Ford's luscious lariat." I liked the Fly Roper, too.

His friends called him C. B. Ford. He was pot-bellied and bald and he tucked his pants into bright red, rose-st.i.tched, pointy-toed cowboy boots with three-inch heels. There was a calm twinkle to his humor. He had quick hands and no interest at all in becoming an Arturan and t.i.thing up his body parts. What he wanted, and what Arty gave him, was a permanent lease on the number 2 tent in the fairway. "Your big show and my little show," he told Arty, "belong on the same card."

His gift was his ability to bulldog and hogtie houseflies. He claimed to have learned it in the Shetland Islands, where the girls came thirty lonesome miles over the moors to drink nickel beer and see the flicks at the Coast Guard station. "But," he laughed, "those girls were all set on getting to the States so you had to be careful with 'em. Nothing they'd like better than get knocked up by a Yank and have Papa herd him to the altar like one of their s.h.i.+t-dragging sheep."

There isn't much life in those dim lat.i.tudes, he would claim, but there were plenty of flies. And he learned the nature of flies from an old bosun who'd run away to sea from a meat-packing plant in Nebraska.

"Now the fly," and he planted his heels and hooked out the silver tabs on his suspenders, "is not unlike the helicopter." At this point his lariat would lift, whirling lazily, and begin to spin above his head in a convincing imitation of a fly's...o...b..t. "Your mother no doubt told you that you'd catch more flies with honey than with vinegar ... But we all know what flies really like best!" With his free hand he would reach over to the velvet-draped table and lift the domed silver lid off the shallow chafing dish. The candle beneath the dish would flutter slightly and the crowd would t.i.tter at the steaming pile of dung on its silver plate.

C. B. Ford was particular about the brand of s.h.i.+t he used. "Cow flop," he once told me in confidence, "does not work well. It draws the flies just fine, but the folks in the audience can't see it. It's too runny and you can't pile it so they can see it from the ground. It's no good to me at all if it's dry enough to stack. Dry I could pile it up like flapjacks halfway to the moon, but the flies don't take much interest in it. Horse s.h.i.+t, of course, draws well if it's just fresh, but it doesn't have enough impact on the crowd. Somehow people accept horse s.h.i.+t. Nearly anybody would tell you that the smell is homey rather than bad. We want that bit of shock that you get with real s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t. I won't work with pig s.h.i.+t. Depends on what they're eating but they can be loose as a cow and even when they're firm that pig smell is too much for me. I hate it. So it comes down to either dog or human."

The rope's loop would hover over the chafing dish excitedly while the crowd subsided and C. B. Ford took up his b.u.mpkin professors.h.i.+p. His timing was good and his chatter didn't go over anybody's head. He'd play the rope and talk and it was never long before the flies came. "There's one now ... That's the advantage of fresh bait," he'd say. He had a screen cage full of flies - big bluebottles that were slow and easy to work with and easy for the crowd to see and hear. He had one of the boys behind the stage just crack the gate on that cage so the flies would come out in a slow drip. Five or six was all he wanted. And as soon as there were a couple of real flies buzzing that chafing dish, his rope would disappear and he'd get a long-haired girl up from the audience to giggle and a.s.sist him.

The first fly was always a big to-do. He'd jump all over the stage swiping wildly at the air, come within a frog hair of splatting his fist into the chafing dish a dozen times, get the girl volunteer to flap her arms to flush the little buzzers his way, and all the while talking his talk about the similarities and differences between Herefords and bluebottles until the audience was half-convinced that he was never going to catch the fly but was laughing anyway and jumpy as a drunk with a gla.s.s of milk waiting for him to smack a bare hand into that pile of warm dung.

Then, suddenly, he'd catch the fly and hold it, closed in his fist, up to the microphone so they could hear it buzz. Then he'd blow on his thumb knuckle and shout and shake his fist hard, "to make the fly dizzy," and then snap his wrist as he flung the fly down hard onto the table. "Now he's out for a second, but he's just stunned and we've got to act quickly before he regains consciousness."

Whirling on the long-haired girl and drawing small stork-shaped scissors, he would lift a strand of her hair, separate a lone thread, and snip it close to her skull before she had time to do more than squeak.

"We'll tie a slipknot here at one end and have this big fella hobbled in a jiffy."

The slipknot in the hair would slide over one of the stiffly splayed legs of the fly and tighten. With a quick flourish a little fluorescent paper sign was taped to the loose end of the hair. While the first fly was recovering its wits C. B. Ford would catch five more as easily as picking grapes and serve them the same way, a.s.suring his blus.h.i.+ng a.s.sistant that her hair was so thick and l.u.s.trous that she could spare six single threads for the taming of half a dozen wild beasts.

Inside three minutes a flock of confused flies was bobbling drunkenly through the air above the audience, trailing the tiny winking streamers that read "EAT AT JOE'S" and "HOME COOKING."

The crowd would flush out through the flaps in a good humor. Inevitably a group of young men would take it upon themselves to swat the burdened flies out of the air or smash them as they sagged down to rest. Also inevitable was the child who was indignant at having the flies killed and did his best to catch one alive to protect it, to take it home in a popcorn box and revere it for having experienced something altogether extraordinary in fly life.

After two months of following Arty around in a rented van, Norval Sanderson left us and took a leave of absence from his distinguished magazine. He went home to West Point, Georgia, as he explained, to see his aged mother and think. For weeks he combed her long, thin hair each night and sat drinking in the dark on the porch long after she went to bed. When Sanderson came back to the Fabulon, Arty claimed it was the cult that drew him. Lily was convinced that Sanderson was bent on writing Arty's biography, but I had a hunch that the Fly Roper was, in some odd way, part of the pull.

Norval caught up with us again outside Ogallala, Nebraska, and knocked on the door of Arty's van during breakfast. Arty left the straw bobbing in his orange juice to smile at Norval. I went on cutting up his ham.

Norval went to the stove and poured a cup of coffee, lifted it in salute to Arty, and then set it on the counter without sipping it. "I brought you something." His ironic rasp was as slow and cool as ever. He reached into the unusual bulge in his tweed jacket and pulled out a green gla.s.s pint jar crammed with something. "A token," he sneered, "of my profound respect." He set the jar on the table beside Arty's plate. The swollen thing inside pressed against the gla.s.s. It was thinly covered with short dark hairs. Norval grinned mischievously and loosened his slim lizard-skin belt. The flannel trousers slid down past loose silk shorts to his knees. "Excusing your presence, Miss Olympia," he mocked, and his thumbs pushed the elastic waistband down and twitched his starched s.h.i.+rttail aside to show the limp circ.u.mcised p.e.n.i.s dangling in front of a flat and ornately scarred crotch.

"The st.i.tches are almost completely dissolved now, but I'm still bow-legged," he complained.

Arty chuckled and nodded. "Don't think that gives you a head start on any other novice. You still have to go through the finger and toe basics before you'll get any credit for that grandstand play."

Sanderson hiked his pants back up, shaking his head with mock woe. "I cut off my b.a.l.l.s for the man and this is the thanks I get."

"We all have to start somewhere," Arty grinned, as I slipped a forkful of ham between his lips. Sanderson leaned on the stove drinking coffee and regaled us with an urbane description of his search for a surgeon willing to perform the task. "I ended up with an eighty-year-old veterinarian who was Grand Wheezar of his local KKK congregation. I told him that my mother had just confessed, on her deathbed, that she had gone down with a pecan picker and I was actually sired by an octoroon Catholic communist. The old gentleman agreed to do the job immediately. He pats me on the shoulder and says, 'Yer right, son, you'd fry in the eternal oil for pa.s.sing that much taint on to another generation.'"

Arty was still laughing when Sanderson went out to move his van into the Admitted camp. As the door closed Arty hooked a fin at the pint jar and slid it into staring range. He put his nose against the tinted gla.s.s, turned the jar for another view, and then sat back with a frown wrinkling his bare scalp.

"Goat? or calf?" He might have been asking the jar. "Maybe a colt or a big dog?"

I was sc.r.a.ping the plates and shaking my head, "You're as goofy as he is."

Arty gave me the look. "These are not Norval Sanderson's b.a.l.l.s."

That stopped me. I leaned to look at the crammed jar.

Arty tapped at the lid with his fin. "That network reporter who was here after the first Now story told me about it. Sanderson lost his b.a.l.l.s to a landmine in North Africa years ago. Fifteen years ago, maybe."

"Why didn't you call him on it?" My head was frozen.

"He figures I don't know anything. Probably put iodine or something on old scars to make them look fresh. It's kind of cute. Let's give him some rope and see what he's up to. And you keep your trap shut about it."

"You like him."

"He's entertaining."

Pa.s.sing himself off as a convert didn't seem to require that Norval develop anything you could rightly call reverence. He still sneered and took notes and interrogated anything with vocal cords. But he also came up with the idea for the Transcendental Maggot booth. Arty laughed and let him do it. The project earned Sanderson a modest income and kept him close to Arty. The booth was small but it had the place of pride at the pivot point between Arty's tent and the Fly Roper. The notion was simple and surprisingly popular. Sanderson collected amputated parts from Dr. Phyllis and cut them into small chunks, one chunk in each half-pint jar. His maggot farm was reliable and easy. He'd hang fingerless or toeless hands or feet up on hooks behind his trailer for a few days and pick out the worms as they hatched. He sold a lone maggot with its own lifetime supply of guaranteed sanctified feed for five dollars. The ones that graduated to flyhood before he could sell them went to the Fly Roper's wire cage on a dollar-a-dozen basis.

Whatever his intentions, Sanderson was with us to stay. He switched from tweed to twill. He talked casual business, regularly, with C. B. Ford. It took him two years just to shed four toes - two on each foot - but he conscientiously deposited each toe, as he dropped it, in its own jar with its own worm and sold it for the usual price.

17.

Popcorn Pimp

The twins were counting the miniature tomatoes in each other's salads at dinner one night when Papa announced that they were getting their own van, "like Arty's." Lily was horrified. They were too young at eighteen to live alone, she protested, even in a T-shape set-up with the family van and Arty's. The swallowers would sneak in and rape them and whatnot. The sword swallowers and the fire eaters were Lil's bogeymen at the time. She got hot thinking of the twins at the mercy of the swallowers.

"When they were tiny morsels, still trying to crawl away from each other and getting tangled up, I said, 'Blast the heart that takes them from me!'"

Iphy looked scared but Elly, cool and slow, said, "We'll take it. I know this is Arty's idea. He's got something in mind. But we'll take it anyway."