Loon Lake Read Free Page B

small towns of old mills, I was moved along by the constable but a shade more gently. I didn’t feel like a tramp when I asked for work. I even had a certain distinction. We were like birds or insects, pestilential, when we buzzed or flocked in great numbers, but one sole specimen could be tolerated with a certain scientific interest. Sometimes I washed dishes for a meal. Sometimes I stole my food. Sometimes I found a day’s work at some farm.
    Then in one town, walking down the main street in a manner that suggested I had someplace to go, I saw coming out of the drugstore three midgets and a heavyset dwarf who huddled over them like their father. They took their quick little steps down the street, all talking at the same time, the muscular torso of the dwarf jolting from side to side with each step. I followed them. Even when they noticed me following them I followed them. They led me to the edge of town. In a grass lot between two stands of trees was the Hearn Bros. carnival, a traveling show of tattered brown tents, old trucks, kiddy rides and paint-peeled wagons. I heard the growl of a big cat.
    Ah, what I felt standing there in the sun! A broken-down carnival—a few acts, a few rides and a contingent of freaks. But the sight of it made me a boy again. I was going backward. Those ridiculous bickering midgets had called up my love for tiny things, my great unslaked child’s thirst for tiny things, as if I had never held enough toys that were small to my small hand. Holy shit a carnival! I knew it was for me as sure as I knew my own face in the mirror.
    I hung around. I made myself useful. They were still putting it together. I helped lay the wooden track for the kiddy cars. I heaved-ho the tent ropes, I set the corral poles for the pony ride. There were three or four tired stiffs doing these things. I recognized them for what they were, everyone of them had a pint of wine in his pocket, they were no problem at all. I thought the Hearn Bros. were lucky to have me.
    But nothing happened. Nobody paid attention. At dusk the generator was cranked, and the power went on with a thump. The string lights glowed, the Victrola band music came out of the loudspeakers, the Wheel of Fortune went ratatat-tat, and I saw how money was made from the poor. They drifted in, appearing starved and sucked dry, but holding in their palms the nickels and dimes that would give them a view of Wolf Woman, Lizard Man, the Living Oyster, the Fingerling Family and in fact the whole Hearn Bros. bestiary of human virtue and excellence.
    The clear favorite was Fanny the Fat Lady. She sat on a scale that was like a porch swing. Over her head a big red arrow attested to six hundred and eight pounds. Someone doubted that. She responded with an emphatic sigh and the arrow fluctuated wildly, going as high as nine hundred. This made people laugh. She was dressed in a short jumper with a big collar and a bow in her hair, just like Shirley Temple. Her dyed red hair was set in waves over her small skull. The other freaks did routines or sold souvenirs and pamphlets of their life stories. Not the Fat Lady. She only sat and suffered herself to be gazed on, her slathered legs crossed at the ankles. I couldn’t stop looking at her. Finally I caught her attention, and her little painted mouth widened like the wings of a butterfly as if it were basking on some pulpy extragalactic flower. The folds of her chins rising in cups of delicate hue, her blue eyes setting like moons behind her cheeks, she smiled at me and unsmiled, smiled and unsmiled, sitting there with each arm resting on the base of a plump hand supported by a knee that was like the cap of an exotic giant white mushroom.
    I realized she was slow-witted. Behind her and off to the side was a woman who was keeping an eye out, maybe a relative, a mother, an aunt. This woman looked at me with the alert eyes of the carney.
    And as I went about I saw those eyes everywhere behind the show, alert carney eyes on the