Miss E. detached herself from the group, climbed into the front seat of the sedan, and started sorting through a paper bag full of clothes for clean and dirty.

The elevated man, flat on the back seat, waved his stump arms and strained his neck in the shade of his washed bandages hanging on the windows. "As you are!" shouted the elevated man. Arty nodded and his chair turned and moved on.

Doing his rounds, he calls this. It's a recent development, probably triggered by the Doc and her agitating. I followed him from tent to van to pickup trucks with mosquito nets and sleeping bags in back.

He scolded, sympathized, made peace, moved people from one job to another, from one campsite to a more peaceful spot. He talked to the cooks in the big mess tent to make sure a vegetarian menu was available for those who wanted it. He sent runners from his platoon of disciples to give orders or deliver messages. He spent a good three hours rolling around among the chinless ninnies, the whiners, the leeches, the simps, and the good people in his congregation. He ended up back at his own trailer looking very tired and young. I shoved his chair up the ramp to the deck and opened his door for him.

"So you have a strike on your hands," I said. He smiled going in and I followed him. He rolled straight to the desk and started pushing through papers. "I've got one rebel on my flippers," he grinned, "but I always knew she'd turn one day. I'm not all that put out."

"She's got you over a barrel if she won't cut anymore."

Arty looked at me with a flat smile. "I'm not such a fool as that. I've had her training her own replacement for years."

The sun pounded down and the dust drifted up, and after a while Mama's thin scat voice was far off. Iphy called to me: "I need to sit down."

She was hanging on to a thick, drooping stalk of vine when I got to her. I took the bucket and tucked myself under Elly. The lolling blank face rocked against my head as Iphy slowly turned. We made our way out of the brambles.

"On the gra.s.s would be fine," Iphy said. But I steered her around past Horst to the narrow shade beside the van. She sank down and pulled Elly's head over to lie on her shoulder.

"I'll just rest a little. Standing up in the sun ... "

Horst was wide awake, blinking and tapping his stick in the dust, pretending he'd never been asleep. I went back to find Mama.

Iphy braided Elly's hair so she wouldn't drool on it. Iphy with hands like angel wings, combing and polishing the long gleaming strands while Elly lay against her. Elly's head drooping forward on the too long, too thin neck, her face blinking emptily at the sofa cushions.

Iphy would wind the long braids into coiled black sh.e.l.ls and pin them over Elly's ears and then do her own. Then Iphy would turn the blank, soggy face toward her and sponge it carefully, brushing the eyebrows smooth and propping the lower jaw closed with one hand so that, for an instant, it looked like Elly. Until Iphy let go and the face fell down again.

Horst drove us to the meadow and parked the small van in the dust-white gra.s.s. Mama helped Iphy out and I handed around the plastic pails.

"You twins always have flying fingers," Mama was chattering. "Flying fingers, but Oly and I will do our part as best we're able."

Horst leaned against the b.u.mper with a stick in case we saw a snake, but he was soon asleep in the sun like one of his cats.

Mama stood against the dust-covered blackberry banks, reaching high into the rasping tangles of the thorns and humming. Iphy's fingers were not flying. With the arm supporting Elly she held the bucket against their swollen belly and reached out with her other hand, dutifully nipping off the warm, dark berries and ignoring the ragged red lines scratched on her arms and their legs by the thorns. She was careful with Elly, holding her away from the bush, staggering awkwardly, catching their bare ankles in the vines, working slowly. I plodded along, picking and getting sc.r.a.ped.

Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket.

"Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars."

The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and circled the wall of the pot slowly.

I leaned my hot arms on the table and said, "Iphy better not go tomorrow. She got tired today." I was smelling the berries and Mama's sweat, and watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees.

"Does them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them. Though Elly likes her jam."

"Elly doesn't like anything anymore."

The knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the pot.

"Mama, Elly isn't there anymore. Iphy's changed. Everything's changed. This whole berry business, cooking big meals that n.o.body comes for, birthday cakes for Arty. It's dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn't any family anymore, Mama."

Then she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and the purple-black juice sprayed across the table. She stared at me, terrified, her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran.

I went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That's the only time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserved it. I also knew that Mama was too far gone to understand why I deserved it. She'd swung that spoon in a tigerish reflex at blasphemy. But I believed that Arty had turned his back on us, that the twins were broken, that the Chick was lost, that Papa was weak and scared, that Mama was spinning fog, and that I was an adolescent crone sitting in the ruins, watching the beams crumble, and warming myself in the smoke from the funeral pyre. That was how I felt, and I wanted company. I hated Mama for refusing to see enough to be miserable with me. Maybe, too, enough of my child heart was still with me to think that if she would only open her eyes she could fix it all back up like a busted toy.

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 a.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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. 1 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 naive 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.

"Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull."

(Arturo in response to critics) "It's interesting that when these individuals choose - and it is their choice always - to endure voluntary amputations for their own personal benefit, society professes itself shocked and disapproving. Yet this same society respects the concept that any individual should risk total annihilation in war, subject to the judgment of any superior officer at all and for purposes ranging from a promotion for the lieutenant to higher profits for the bullet company. h.e.l.l, they don't just respect that idea, they flat expect it. And they'll shoot your a.s.s if you don't go along with it."

N.S.: If you could make it happen by snapping your fingers, wouldn't you want your whole family to be physically and mentally normal?

Oly: That's ridiculous! Each of us is unique. We are masterpieces. Why would I want us to change into a.s.sembly-line items? The only way you people can tell each other apart is by your clothes. (Miss Olympia begins to giggle and refuses to answer seriously to further questions.) Zephir McGurk's love life took place in his safari car with the khaki canvas shades pulled down all around. If surplus females arrived on Arty's doorstep, or if one didn't appeal to Arty (whose taste, when you come right down to it, was for standard pneumatic types with commercial grooming products), he would send her on to McGurk. Arty's line wasn't particularly imaginative. He would give her the old "If you would do mea great service, console my trusted lieutenant in his spartan dedication" routine.

It evidently worked often enough to keep McGurk healthy and even-tempered. McGurk was such a gent that n.o.body who went tap-tapping at his windshield in the dark after the midway was closed ever went screeching in fear or pain or shame through the camp before dawn. There were occasional exits like that from Arty's van, but the guards would catch them and calm them and give them hush money.

McGurk's little trysts were always discreet. He was never seen with female company and he was never late to work. We figured he escorted them to the gates and kissed their hands adieu before first light. Arty claimed that McGurk actually fed them to Horst's cats, but that was Arty. McGurk was silent on the subject and would not be baited.

Once, when I was in trouble and pacing the camp in the dark, I did hear something. But I had maggot brains that night and may have imagined half of it and misunderstood the rest.

I'd gone to cool my face on Grandpa's urn. I was lying on the hood of the generator truck with my face against the silver loving cup that held the old Binewski ashes and served as a hood ornament. Whoever drove the generator truck would always complain that the wind whistled through the urn's handles like a siren at any speed past thirty-five. Al just said, "Tough," and that was that.

On the hottest night Grandpa seemed to cool off before anything else. Leaning a cheek or my forehead against the urn felt like packing ice in my burning brain. So there I was, finished blubbering but still half loony, leaning my face on the urn, when I heard something. It came from McGurk's safari car, parked just ahead of me. I could have spit on his b.u.mper. It was a rough, strangled sound and I figured it must be McGurk's climax song. But it kept going on. It scared me. I thought someone was dying. I remembered what Arty said about McGurk's feeding his women to the cats, and I thought he was strangling somebody. Then I heard a word in his own voice. "Please," he said. Then the ropy, gurgling sound started again. He was crying. For a minute there was another voice, softer and smooth-quick. I couldn't tell what she was saying. Then McGurk again, desperate, almost shouting, "Don't you see? There'll be nothing left of you that I can get a grip on!" Then the soft woman's voice drifted monotonously among McGurk's ugly sobs. I got down and went away from there.

There were promotions scheduled for the next morning. Four women were due to "complete their liberation." All had abandoned their legs entirely and were left with arms only from the elbow up. They were ready to shed their arms at the shoulder. These liberations were supposed to take place between 8 and 11 A.M. Dr. Phyllis would spend the afternoon whittling on fingers and toes.

I figured McGurk's lady had to be one of those who were doing arms. I thought about going to the line outside the infirmary early to try to figure out which one it might be. I decided against it. I didn't want to know.

McGurk seemed the same as usual that day and every day afterward. That's why I say I may have misunderstood or imagined the whole thing.

Up on the roof of the van, Arty flopped in exhaustion. "Hey, oil me, Oly. Will you?"

It was scary to have him ask. I crouched over him, rubbing my fingertips into the knotted tension of his neck and shoulders.

"You're ugly, brother, and you've got rigor mortis from the nipples up."

His eyes closed and his face relaxed slightly.

"Silence, a.n.u.s," he responded ritually. He took a long, slow breath and held it before he spoke again. "I think Elly's coming back some, don't you?"

"She doesn't flop as much. Maybe not as limp as she was?"

"Yeah. I think she'll come back some. Not like before, though."

"Maybe Iphy's just learning to handle her better. Balance and support."

He shook his head against the mat, eyes clenched shut.

"No. She's coming back. Just takes time. She'll be able to help take care of the baby."

"Maybe. You know, Chick could help you sleep nights. You look about three hundred years old."

"Chick doesn't like me. I wouldn't want to tempt him."

"He's still sore about Elly."

"And other things. Another ch.o.r.e. He'll do it, though. And Papa's mad at me. He says we'll kill the whole outfit by hanging it all on one novelty act. That's what he's calling my show lately. A novelty act. He says my 'fans' will pa.s.s away when some new fad hits the air. Mama is mad too but she pretends not to be."

"You're a creep, I guess."

"Did you ever wish you were dead?"

"Not lately."

"Guess it's you and the Pin Kid, hunh?"

I stopped kneading his spine and looked at his shadowed profile. He looked like a sleeping hieroglyph against the blanket. I forced my thumbs to rotate so he wouldn't notice.

Down the line I could see Mama outside the Chute. She was folding a dust cloth and talking to someone still inside the door of the Chute. It was Iphy, walking out huge and awkward. Elly's head tucked into Iphy's throat, the cloth billowing around the frail legs beneath them, the belly balanced in front of them.

"I can see Iphy. She looks like an old car." Mama and Iphy tottered out of sight.

"The Pin Kid seems O.K. You could do worse. Do you reckon you'll leave?" His eyes were open now, his neck twisting to let the eyes touch me. His eyes were grey, very pale. I pinched his round, hard b.u.t.tock, slapped his back sharp and loud.

"Trash! Stuff it, Arty."

He closed his eyes again. "I'm gonna cut down to three shows a week. Sat.u.r.day, Sunday, Wednesday, eight P.M. Flat."

"Papa will flip."

"That'll give him his carnival back the rest of the time."

"Mama will think you've fallen to the vilest depths of leisure."

"Oly ... stick by me. How about it?"

His eyes were open again, looking straight at a fold of blanket in front of him. The big chain-link fence was below us on one side of the van. It stretched a long way and the Arturan camp sprawled out from it in a refugee confusion.

"I'm gonna stick a broom," I muttered grimly, "up your a.s.s, brother, and peddle you as an all-day sucker."

Ma.s.saging the twins on the sea-green carpet of their front room, crawling around on my knees to reach the peculiar juncture of the split spine, the small of their backs that was actually much wider, nearly two backs wide.

"Sorry I can't quite lie on my stomach."

"It's O.K., Iphy. Does that hurt?"

"Hurts good."

Elly stretched limply away from Iphy, folded oddly across Iphy's side.