"My left arm moved."

"Not that! that! Didn't you feel it when we shook hands and I planted the fishhook in your shirtsleeve?" Didn't you feel it when we shook hands and I planted the fishhook in your shirtsleeve?"

"You were talking about the spirits being angry. Something touched my sleeve. My arm flew up."

"Christ, kiddo, it's a good thing you're too small and I had to throw you back. Otherwise I'd fry you for lunch. Something touched your sleeve! Yeah, right. My nickel fishhook and my ten-pound line! You were rigged as a puppet, Pinnoch! You were struck as a pompano."

"There's nothing there."

"Jesus! You don't know beans about good manners, do you? When people shake hands h.e.l.lo they usually shake hands good-by."

"That's when you took it out."

Bone rolled his eyes and raised his hands in the air. "Curses, foiled again," he said mildly.

It was always their mildness which was feigned. All they demanded of him was pure doubt, unrelenting skepticism. It was as if by exposing the five-cent fishhooks and ten-pound lines that were nearly always the simple solutions-they shunned the elaborate, were unreconciled to the complicated; if a seance couldn't be conducted by a spiritualist and one a.s.sistant it was not a clean operation-to what were only tricks, hammering at him with explanation, clarification, cracked code and truth, they were free to contemplate mystery, the wonderful, all the elegant hush-hush of the riddle world.

They were childless of course, or their children were grown, gone, and that may have had something to do with their att.i.tude toward him, but even George, grateful as he was for their attention, understood that at bottom their feelings were neutral, they did not care for him--not in that way. He was no surrogate.

"No," Professor G. D. Ashmore told him, "you're no surrogate. You're it, the real thing. You know why we beat at you with our greenroom shoptalk and regale you with our wholesale-to-the-trade secrets?"

"Because you trust me?"

"Trust you? Why would we want to trust you? You're a kid. What are you, eleven, eleven and a half? You're a kid. You walk on the gra.s.s. You fish out of season. You're a kid, you're nasty to cats. You break a window you say it was an accident. You're a kid, you play hooky, you mock the deformed. Why would anyone trust a kid?"

"Then why?"

"You're going to be twelve soon. You're going to have to make up your mind, George. You're going to have to choose."

"Choose what?"

"Leave me alone, don't bother me. I don't talk turkey with kids."

This was before he'd seen his sister.

His instruction continued.

"In street clothes, I seem ordinary as a fourth for bridge. Pour yourself some lemonade, dear," Madam Grace Treasury called from behind the dark, heavy curtain that served as a part.i.tion between her seance room and her parlor. "Pour some for me.

"I could be someone shopping, who does dishes, makes beds. In elevators, crowded buses, in all the rush hours, men, women too, find my bearing undistinguished, so like their own that we are almost interchangeable. They can scarcely see me, make me out. It is not prurience or avidity or pa.s.sion which knocks men against women, which grinds their backs into our busts or makes them lean, close as ballroom dancers, along the cant of our thighs and hips. It is that reflexive indifference to flesh, feature, organ, skin, which sprawls mankind, which, beyond a certain age but implicit at any age, potbellies posture and un-sealegs gait. It is, I think, gravity which opens our mouths like the imbecile's and mutualizes our bodies and s.e.xes in those elevators and buses, permitting touch touch, skin skin, body body, the coalescing rhomboids and circles of our let-be geometrics like some backward parthenogenesis.

"I have no person, I mean. Few people do. Otherwise we should arrange ourselves, even in buses, even in rush hour, like chessmen on boards before play begins. Otherwise-were I beautiful, were I hideous-I should, even in the most crowded elevator, be given that same jagged fringe of elbow room and breathing s.p.a.ce, like a nimbus of limelight, that is granted to drunks and royalty and people felled by their bodies collapsed in the street."

She came into the room. She was dressed in a sort of robe, dense and ma.s.sy as a habit, larger than he'd ever seen her, taller, her face, even her hands fuller.

George saw her strange make-up, her blue face powder, her black lipstick, her face blocked off in queer colors, like the hues of a wound or hidden organs suddenly visible. She seemed immense in her turban, her big seance dress.

"Thank you for pouring the lemonade, dear. My," she said, taking a window seat in the bright parlor, "it's just so hot. hot. Sometimes I think it isn't any special favor to us to have all this Florida sunshine. Oh, I know they envy us up North and it is a comfort in the winter, but, gracious, it does get hot, and we don't get the cooling breezes that folks can at least hope for in other parts of the country. That's one of the reasons I bought such a large Frigidaire. So I'd always have plenty of ice cubes for my lemonade. When it's hot like this, I like it cold enough to hurt my teeth. Sometimes I think it isn't any special favor to us to have all this Florida sunshine. Oh, I know they envy us up North and it is a comfort in the winter, but, gracious, it does get hot, and we don't get the cooling breezes that folks can at least hope for in other parts of the country. That's one of the reasons I bought such a large Frigidaire. So I'd always have plenty of ice cubes for my lemonade. When it's hot like this, I like it cold enough to hurt my teeth.

"Will you listen to me nattering on about lemonade and there you've gone and poured me a gla.s.s I haven't even made a move to taste. The ice is probably all melted now. Well, no matter, I like the taste almost as much as I do the chill."

She crossed the room, moving behind the small coffee table on which the pitcher and lemonade gla.s.ses had been set down and lowered herself beside him on the sofa. He felt the cushions and springs compress as if air and all tension had been squeezed from them, himself suddenly angled toward her, his stiffened body bracing, like some cartoon animal unsuccessfully resisting momentum.

"May I have my gla.s.s of lemonade?" she asked.

She seemed less than inches off, her body glowing with its presence and weight and power.

"Give me the lemonade," she said. "I've already asked you once."

He picked the drink up from the table and held it out to her. She made no move to take it from him.

"The lemonade," she repeated. He pushed his hand closer, but felt reined, checked, doing some strange balancing act of the level ground, some odd, squeezed constraint like a resisted fart.

"Set it down," she commanded. "Do I look like a woman who drinks lemonade? Stop that whimpering." She handed him a tissue.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Rush hour," she said. "My askew totemics."

"It's the black lipstick, your blue face powder."

She didn't answer.

"It's the dress," he said, "it's the turban."

She said nothing.

"It's my good posture," she said softly. "It's my sealegs. It's my specific gravity and unsprawled essence."

"You scared me," George said.

"Ah," said Madam Grace Treasury.

He was a bit scared of all of them.

Even of Professor John Sunshine, psychic historian and Ca.s.sadaga buff, who lectured him on the subjects of Ca.s.sadaga, midgets, freaks, and what Sunshine called "the marked race of Romany."

"The development of Ca.s.sadaga and the establishment of the circus's winter quarters in De Land were almost attendant," he said. "You could have had the other without the one but not the one without the other. It's almost as if the town were founded on some debased bedrock of declined, vitiate genes, as if blemish and the sapped heart were to the origins of Ca.s.sadaga what a fresh water supply and the proximity of a railroad were to the development of Chicago, say.

"We don't know either the significance of the name or how the area came to have it in the first place, but in all probability it goes back to that marked race of Romany, that same hampered, degraded, clipped-wing brood which was the town's reason for being. Perhaps a curse or threat, some gypsy-hissed snarl or deterrent. Perhaps even an ultimatum, some sinister dun, the soul's dark invoice. So even if I don't have the literal translation-this would be slang, you see, idiom, some word or words fugitive (Ca.s.sadaga. Cas (Ca.s.sadaga. Cas sa sa daga! Ca.s.sa! da Ga!) daga! Ca.s.sa! da Ga!) even to that touring company of the fugitive, double-talk to the ensemble, the swarthy old-timers and pierce-lobed regulars, slang, patter, argot, cant-I have the metaphorical one: some busted negotiation between buyer and seller. Maybe not even language finally, maybe only furious extemporized sound, the clicks and spirants, dentals and velars of Romany rage. Ca.s.sadaga! Ca even to that touring company of the fugitive, double-talk to the ensemble, the swarthy old-timers and pierce-lobed regulars, slang, patter, argot, cant-I have the metaphorical one: some busted negotiation between buyer and seller. Maybe not even language finally, maybe only furious extemporized sound, the clicks and spirants, dentals and velars of Romany rage. Ca.s.sadaga! Ca ssad ssad a ga! c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo! a ga! c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo!

"Nor do we understand why, if the founding of Ca.s.sadaga and the founding of the circus's winter quarters in De Land were practically collaborate, Ca.s.sadaga would be fifteen miles from De Land. We may speculate, of course.

"The mark of the marked race of Romany is to a large extent self-inflicted. They are an aloof, self-exiled, stand-offish people, wanderers who carry their ghetto with them, who move through the world like refugees, as if whatever they may have left in any direction in which they are not immediately traveling is either already burning or contagious. Ca.s.sadaga wouldn't have been Ca.s.sadaga then. Whatever it was that happened between the gypsy girl and the gadge gadge wouldn't have happened yet. It would have been a clearing, a place to put the caravan down, at once far enough off from De Land and close enough in, situated nearby the wouldn't have happened yet. It would have been a clearing, a place to put the caravan down, at once far enough off from De Land and close enough in, situated nearby the gadge gadge money and opportunity which would have been the marked race of Romany's equivalent of fresh water and the proximate railroad. money and opportunity which would have been the marked race of Romany's equivalent of fresh water and the proximate railroad.

"Of course course they fraternized with the stiffs and roustabouts. It wouldn't even have been fraternization in the strict sense of the term, the stiffs and roustabouts-my G.o.d, even the tumblers, acrobats and flyers; even the clowns, wire walkers and animal trainers themselves-barely a step up the evolutionary ladder from the marked race of Romany." they fraternized with the stiffs and roustabouts. It wouldn't even have been fraternization in the strict sense of the term, the stiffs and roustabouts-my G.o.d, even the tumblers, acrobats and flyers; even the clowns, wire walkers and animal trainers themselves-barely a step up the evolutionary ladder from the marked race of Romany."

He looked at George with his intense eyes, examining him as he spoke. He didn't miss a beat. He didn't miss anything, and the boy felt Sunshine's hot scrutiny and wondered if perhaps something shameful weren't happening on the surface of his skin. Sunshine might have been a G-man, George suspect currency.

"Have you seen them? When you go into De Land with your father or to school, do you take a good look at them? Not just giving them the once-over for ringlets or swarthy skin, for holes in their ears or a garlic in their mouth-hair can be combed straight or hidden under a cap, skin can bleach out in winter quarters; holes fall in on themselves and a clove can be covered by a tongue, though most of them don't bother-but really looked looked at them, at their foreigners' cheekbones like subcutaneous wales or some dead giveaway marked Romany spoor of indefinite half-life, at their scars and tattoos like marked trees or a vulgar postage? Have you looked in their eyes or smelled the smoke on their skin? (It gets into their pores. They can never get rid of it.) Have you seen their bunkhouses? The floors have great wooden wheels under them and the wheels are buried in the ground. You didn't look at them, you look at them next time." at them, at their foreigners' cheekbones like subcutaneous wales or some dead giveaway marked Romany spoor of indefinite half-life, at their scars and tattoos like marked trees or a vulgar postage? Have you looked in their eyes or smelled the smoke on their skin? (It gets into their pores. They can never get rid of it.) Have you seen their bunkhouses? The floors have great wooden wheels under them and the wheels are buried in the ground. You didn't look at them, you look at them next time."

All the while looking at George-who hadn't seen his sister yet but had recently had from his father a bit of the story of the first George Mills-examining him as he'd advised George to examine the roustabouts and circus performers. (And when, George wondered, will I be brave enough to look at another human being the way this strange man is looking at me?) "Of course course they fraternized. h.e.l.l, maybe it wasn't even fraternization, maybe it was just family reunion. But remember what they were there for, too. Marked race of Romany or no, cousins or no, these roustabouts and artistes were just so much they fraternized. h.e.l.l, maybe it wasn't even fraternization, maybe it was just family reunion. But remember what they were there for, too. Marked race of Romany or no, cousins or no, these roustabouts and artistes were just so much gadge gadge gold to the gypsies. (And maybe that's why you don't find rings in a roustabout's ear. Because the gypsies stole them!) They sold them their daughters' virginity, or its appearance, its raw chicken skin prosthetic equivalency, its family secret recipe cosmetic blood, or sold them to the roustabouts anyway, the artistes having daughters of their own, their own merchandise, and gambled with them, the artistes, too, and told their fortunes and worked spells against their enemies for money, and something which was even of more importance and real value to them, to the artistes, not the roustabouts, than anything else. They sold them magic. gold to the gypsies. (And maybe that's why you don't find rings in a roustabout's ear. Because the gypsies stole them!) They sold them their daughters' virginity, or its appearance, its raw chicken skin prosthetic equivalency, its family secret recipe cosmetic blood, or sold them to the roustabouts anyway, the artistes having daughters of their own, their own merchandise, and gambled with them, the artistes, too, and told their fortunes and worked spells against their enemies for money, and something which was even of more importance and real value to them, to the artistes, not the roustabouts, than anything else. They sold them magic.

"The marked race of Romany sold the circus people their talent. They sold them magic balance. Before the gypsies came in from Ca.s.sadaga, the wire walkers were merely skilled, trained, vaguely equilibriumally inclined, say. Afterward, they were surefooted as mules, as cats and mountain goats, with a gift for recovery and balance like a bubble in a level. There was inner ear in the soles of their feet. They could walk up a tree as casually as you climb stairs.

"They sold strength to the acrobats, infusing their legs and arms with the force of bombs, selling them flexibility, endurance, the tractables of great apes, a lung capacity that was operatic. The pyramids they did now were Cheopsic, Pharaonic. They could hang by a pinkie or stand on their hair.

"And height to the flyers, loft and lift, the tucks, spins and gainers of birds, the timing of salmon.

"And sold to the animal trainers, the lion tamers and bear and elephant handlers, the equerry and equestriennes, a Doolittle knowledge of the beastly heart, some Braille brute feel for fauna that was not so much mastery as plain hard bargaining, actual clausal, contractual negotiation, some stipulate Done! Shake! binding agreement, and the locked cage like a union shop! Selling them not magic courage, because you can't buy courage, but a gift for magic enterprise, magic haggle-the bull market, the bear-faerie quid pro quo, the tiger's leap through a fiery hoop knocked down for red meat, the bears and horses humbled for a sweet, extra straw. Selling them not courage but courage's opposite--risklessness: that watered cement and short-cut materiel of the soul which permitted the purchaser never even ever to need courage again, so that each time he walked into the cage or raised the now entirely ornamental whip in the center ring as the panthers fled past in lively lockstep dressage, it was with the knowledge-his and and the animals'-that the fix was in. (Maybe the animals'-that the fix was in. (Maybe that's that's what 'Ca.s.sadaga' means. Perhaps it's only Gypsy for 'Do this trick and I'll leave you alone.') what 'Ca.s.sadaga' means. Perhaps it's only Gypsy for 'Do this trick and I'll leave you alone.') "And even something for the clowns. The marked race of Romany sold the clowns mark, the putty projections, high relief like Nepal on a map, some magic dispensation for the malleable, lending their faces and heads a talent for perspective--for protuberance, salience, jut and cavity, some easy canvas character in the skin itself which permitted their faces to shine like chameleon, to glow in primary colors like a waved flag.

"(Selling all of them the same thing finally, even the earthbound, giftless roustabouts on whom they turned loose their supposit.i.tious virgins, dealing in the one legitimate, renewable resource they had going for them, their heritage you could say. I mean their sticky-ringlet swarth and smoked-game stink, their forest-scarred skin and bad breath. Their animality I mean.)"

Why's he telling me all this? George wondered. How does this show me the tricks of the trade or help prepare me to choose whatever it is I'm supposed to choose?

"Because we're no better," Professor Sunshine said. "If we think we are we're only kidding our--" He broke off. He reached over and grabbed the boy's hand and pulled it toward his face. George thought he was going to kiss it, but the man only gathered it in and held it there. His nostrils flared and relaxed. He's sniffing me, George thought, and wanted to cry. "You're not from around here," Sunshine said. He released George's hand. "Where do you come from? I forget."

"I came from Milwaukee with my parents."

"Gypsies have parents," he said. "There are gypsies in Wisconsin," he said slyly.

"We're English," the boy said, and thought: We're English. Father says Millses go back to before the Norman Conquest. Then he remembered what his father had lately been hinting was their doom: never to rise, never to break free of their cla.s.s, marked as Cain-my G.o.d! he thought, marked!-forever to toil, wander, luckless as roustabout.

Professor Sunshine smiled, no longer looking at George. Some of the edge had come out of his voice. He spoke, George thought, as his teacher sometimes did when she was telling them about some place in the world that neither she nor anyone else in the cla.s.s would ever see. "The psychics came only after the gypsies had already cleared off, but, like the marked race of Romany itself, settled in Ca.s.sadaga. They showed little interest in the roustabouts or circus performers and, except for the occasional seance or consultation, had almost nothing to do with them. From the first their attention and interest, to the extent that they were drawn to the circus at all, was focused on the personnel from the side show.

"Not the fire eaters or sword swallowers, not the geeks-they had geeks then-or any of the rest of those who had trained their appet.i.tes or reamed pa.s.sages in their throats and bellies to bank their snacks. They were just more athletes. Not even the fat ladies or giants. Bulk couldn't be feigned but it could be cultivated. You could grow a fat lady as you grow a rose. And height, though unintentional, was merely excessive, the stockpiling of what otherwise was not only a normal but even an attractive quality.

"No, the brotherhood was attracted to monsters. It sought out bogy, ogre, eyesore, sport--all those unfortunates whose busted bodies were the evidence that they came directly from the pinched hand of G.o.d Himself. It wanted the alligator woman and the dog-faced boy, the pinhead and the Cyclops, the Siamese twins and the hermaphrodite. It wanted people with extra thumbs, too many toes. Too many? There could never be be enough! enough!

"They were from up North. I don't know how the paranormals found out about Ca.s.sadaga. Perhaps they read the trades. They'd have done that. They do it today. What we do, our gifts, has never been that far removed from show business. My colleagues would not only have kept up with the trends but followed the gates too--of vaudeville, mud show, circus, nightclub and novelty acts. They'd have read all about it when the circus came to De Land to set up permanent winter quarters. Or maybe it wasn't the trades. Maybe they just used their talents for divination, telepathy, second sight, all their occult, mystic jungle telegraph.

"There was a sort of gold rush. Ca.s.sadaga became a kind of boom town, some Sutter's Mill of the extraordinary. I have some of their early correspondence with the freaks, though most didn't bother to write; they just came. It's very strange stuff. Even the envelopes are strange. Well, they would be, wouldn't they? They had no addresses for them. Christ, they didn't even have their names!

" 'To the young fourteen-year-old-girl,' they would write on the front of the envelope above the De Land destination, 'with the gray hair and withered body of an old woman.' 'For the man,' they'd write, 'born with sores.' 'The lady with green blood.' 'Personal!' they'd write.

"The letters themselves were always elaborate concoctions of sympathy, b.u.t.tressed with the writer's credentials and followed by a request for an interview with a view to the misfit's throwing his lot in with the writer's. They couldn't expect to be paid much of course, at least at first, but if the spiritualist was correct in his a.s.sumptions about the unfortunate lusus naturae lusus naturae-spiritualists were wonderfully euphemistic with these freaks and death's heads-then perhaps they could get to the bottom of things together, and settle once and for all the nagging, age-old question 'Why me?' "

Why me? George Mills thought.

"You'd be wrong if you a.s.sumed my paranormal friends sought the freaks out just to juice up their failing acts, that they were in it simply for the money. Well, you'd be partly wrong.

"Because they really did did believe that the body's disgrace, that cleft blood and blighted flesh and faulted bones brittle as toothpick-there was one fellow, the Gla.s.s-Boned Man, who would permit children to shatter his fingers for a dollar; you could hear the snap as his bone fragmented; there wasn't much to it; the bones in his arms and hands were fragile as Saltines; the sound was real, but it was an ever depleting resource; the bones became smaller and smaller chips; after a while all you could hear was the m.u.f.fled grinding of sand-were the outward, visible signs of inner psychic energies. These were your real McCoy Cains, your truly marked. Marked and marked down, too--discounted, slashed from the human race itself, whom chipped genes and bombed biology had doomed. Such things count. There's compensation. Surely that centered eye of the Cyclops wore a honed vision, and the ping-pong ball brain of the pinhead felt what it couldn't know. believe that the body's disgrace, that cleft blood and blighted flesh and faulted bones brittle as toothpick-there was one fellow, the Gla.s.s-Boned Man, who would permit children to shatter his fingers for a dollar; you could hear the snap as his bone fragmented; there wasn't much to it; the bones in his arms and hands were fragile as Saltines; the sound was real, but it was an ever depleting resource; the bones became smaller and smaller chips; after a while all you could hear was the m.u.f.fled grinding of sand-were the outward, visible signs of inner psychic energies. These were your real McCoy Cains, your truly marked. Marked and marked down, too--discounted, slashed from the human race itself, whom chipped genes and bombed biology had doomed. Such things count. There's compensation. Surely that centered eye of the Cyclops wore a honed vision, and the ping-pong ball brain of the pinhead felt what it couldn't know.

"Superst.i.tion? Medieval? Just one more way of rubbing luck like paint off a hunchback? All right. Maybe. Even probably. But they put them through it, our forefathers did, and went through it themselves, too. It was almost as if they had to test them out, to prove to themselves that the dogfaced boys and the pinheads, that the alligator girls and gla.s.s-boned guys hadn't any more real psychic powers than a dollar's worth of loose change before they ever dared to use them in the act or teach them the scam.

"Because there really is such a thing as hypnotism and these folks, the paranormals in all their infinite varieties, were past masters of the art. They had some some sessions, believe me. sessions, believe me.

" 'Where do you come from?'

" 'Hartford.'

" 'No, before that. I'm going to take you back to the time of the womb. What do you see?'

" 'p.u.s.s.y.'

" 'You're no longer in the womb. This is before conception now. I've set you down on the astral plane among the primary emanations. Describe what it's like.'

" 'I command you to describe the dematerialized world.'

" 'Ain't no worsteds, ain't no wools. Ain't no cotton, ain't no silk.'

" 'At the count of three you'll wake up refreshed.'

"Sure they were disappointed. So were the dwarfs. (There were dwarfs now, they'd gone over to dwarfs, had graduated downward in birth defect, some unevolutionary, pulled-horns subst.i.tute that covered over the scabs and open sores and inside-out arrangements of ordinary physiological disfigurement.) You'd have been disappointed yourself. The desire and pursuit of the mysterious is a lifelong life. The occult is a hard taskmaster. Like mathematics or physics or astronomy or any other science. Like painting or music or sculpture or any other art.

"So of course they were disappointed. But a little relieved, too, not to have ready to hand a key to the astonishing secret of life, its nagging riddle: 'Why me?' Because people, G.o.d bless them, are terrified of the strange. It may be that you've seen a man in a bear suit. On the street, say, or at a game between halves. You know that the man is a man, the costume a costume. But when he comes to you you to dance, you pull back, you shy. You're pulling back now. Has such a thing happened?" to dance, you pull back, you shy. You're pulling back now. Has such a thing happened?"

He thought of Madam Grace Treasury's bruised cosmetics.

"How much more effective when the costume is shriveled skin, limbs that don't size, a dubious s.e.x? Power is only amok scale, the gauges off true and the needle in red. Send in the dwarf."

George looked up but there was only Professor Sunshine, talking to himself.

" 'How far can you expect to go in the circus on your little legs?'

" 'Go ahead, I heard it all. Go ahead, I'll help you out. I sleep in a crib, I eat in a high chair. I got a dong the size of a safety pin and I bite my wrists when the Campfire Girls come to town. Go ahead, I heard it already. I have a tiny appet.i.te. If the thermometer reads 98.6 I'm running a fever. If I work hard, someday I can make it in the small time. I'm a little late for an appointment.'

" 'isn't it humil-'

" '-iating for me when some broad picks me up and puts me on her lap? Nah, I got high hopes. Go ahead.'

" 'You can read my mind. Evidently you have second sight.'

" 'Nah, I'm shortsighted.'

"Because they were runt realistic. All wrong, you'd suppose, for our founders' purposes. But think about it. Who would have been better? My G.o.d, some somebody had to be in control. Somebody had to hold in check those airy fairy elements of our fathers' style. Who'd be better with their sideshow hearts and their eye for a mark than those little rationalists?

"And wasn't it just good sound show business after all to make it appear that the dummy was in control and not the ventriloquist? Wasn't that as much a part of the program as an intermission? You don't horse around with what works. So all that was left was to teach him the fundamentals, show him what had already been shown to the phony red Indian, that marked man whose time had gone, and the n.i.g.g.e.r slave and gypsy before him, him, and let the midget take it from there. (They were midgets now, dwarfs being still too deformed for the public taste, something too bandy and buckled in their being, their botched, b.i.t.c.hed bodies; you don't want to scare the customers half to death, you know, and a midget was just a little scaled-down man; a midget was almost cute, but still tight enough to the terror, close enough, enough nicked by it to leave its mark.) and let the midget take it from there. (They were midgets now, dwarfs being still too deformed for the public taste, something too bandy and buckled in their being, their botched, b.i.t.c.hed bodies; you don't want to scare the customers half to death, you know, and a midget was just a little scaled-down man; a midget was almost cute, but still tight enough to the terror, close enough, enough nicked by it to leave its mark.) " 'I can give you fifteen weeks back to back between Thanksgiving and the middle of March. Circus goes out again in April, but I got to have some time off before rehearsals start up that last week in March. Oh yeah, I don't know if you're Christian or not, Reverend, but Christmas week's mine.'

" 'Christmas week?'

" 'I take the Mrs and the kids to their grandma's in Memphis Christmas week.'

" 'The Mrs? Their grandma's?'

" 'The Mrs, yeah. The little woman. The little ones, sure. Their grandma in Memphis. Right, the little old lady.'