Consumption (13 page)

Stepping inside the beer tent was like stepping into another world. John and Bunny were a few minutes early, but he didn't think Erma would mind if he beat her to a beer. After two and a half hours of Festival fun, he'd had enough of squirrel quilts and homemade jam stands to last him a lifetime. As soon as he parted the beer tent's flaps, John heaved a sigh of relief. He felt the temperature drop a solid twenty degrees from the heat outside. It was a good place to take a break from the sun, and the inside of the tent thrived with bodies. John's first thought was that it felt like what being inside a beehive must feel like, everybody pressed together, depositing their honey in the correct receptacles.

Because people here were, most assuredly, depositing their honey. In fact, that seemed to be what the entire event consisted of. Women, the very same prim ones he'd seen outside, sat on top of men's laps, tugging at their ties (many of the men, too, were exceptionally dressed) or, in stranger pairings, women in their sundresses sat on the laps of men in overalls and moved around to the music, a live polka band up front. The band wore matching lederhosen and green hats with red feathers.

These people were not at all what he would have expected for such a small town.

On the dance floor, bodies bounced together to the rhythm. Beer mugs were raised, toasts were made, and everywhere people imbibed…in life, in lust, in, he'd guess, love. It was a busy little hive.

“Where's the beer?” asked John.

Bunny seemed to loosen up as soon as the tent flaps closed behind them. “Come on,” she said, grabbing John's hand playfully. “Let's cut a rug.”

John allowed himself to be dragged through the crowd, realizing, as he did so, that the tent was actually a very big place, much bigger than what he'd taken it for at first. In the far corner, opposite the band, the beer station was set up. Two women dressed in circus garb of leotards and small pink tutus, like tightrope walkers, handed out the pints; their spangly spandex suits glittered silver and hugged every curve of their bodies. They also wore partial, brightly colored masks with feathers poking from the corners. Bunny bought two pints and handed him one, and John immediately took a swig of it. He grunted in surprise. “Good,” he said. “Real good!”

“I told you.” Bunny tilted her head back and John watched in amazement as she downed the entire pint, stopping only once to primly burp behind her hand. When she was finished, she slammed the cup down on top of a nearby speaker.

“People really get into this, don't they?” said John. He watched Bunny execute a perfect pirouette on the dance floor, where she'd managed to clear them a spot.

“Everybody here knows how to have a good time,” said Bunny. “Yes, that's true. It's because they had to work so hard to get here. Most of the rest of the year they're stuck slaving away to boring lives and boring spouses. None of this comes without cost, Johnny, dear.”

Johnny. He cringed at the title. No one had called him that since his mother. Back when he was fat. Back when she was shoving plate after plate of guilt down his throat.

“Johnny, Mommy made an extra chicken for you and Daddy. Come have a bite.”
Except Daddy wasn't there. Was never there
. “Johnny, have another piece of cake. Don't hurt Mommy's feelings. She made it special.”

“Johnny,” Bunny said. She grinned at him, and he saw that she had a smudge of lipstick across her teeth. He opened his mouth to tell her about it but stopped. Bunny closed her lips and when she opened them again, the lipstick was gone. “You're a good dancer,” she said.

He hadn't even realized he'd been dancing. The music, a beautiful polka (could polkas
be
beautiful? He hadn't thought so, but this one
was—breathtakingly
so, really), wove its way through the crowd, filling the few empty spaces between dancers and drinkers.

The pace of the music sped up, and their dancing sped up with it.

“It's been such a long time since I danced,” said Bunny, pulling John closer. The music swirled around his head, and John began to feel the beating of a headache.

“You all right, dear?” asked Bunny, and as she did so, John felt her hand slip from the top of his back to the small of it. The woman grinned at him as he looked up in surprise. This was weird. Very fucking weird. Was she coming on to him?

They spun faster across the dance floor. To the left, John saw four women gyrating together in front of a large, seated man. The man was dressed in jeans and a shirt without sleeves, while the women all wore formfitting circus outfits. The man looked stunned but completely pleased by all the attention.

At the next table, John saw what he would have assumed was the norm at the Festival: an overweight and disheveled woman in a tube top and tennis shoes. A man in a suit and tie was leaning down to talk to the tube-top woman, nearly falling on her. The man was handsome, young, and apparently well-to-do (and certainly not someone who should be found in small-town Montana), but far from seeming to enjoy the attention, the woman looked downright nervous. When she looked away from him for a second, she caught John's eye, and he could have sworn that he saw pleading in them, but then he and Bunny were spinning, moving away from the table.

His headache grew worse, and now thoughts—dark, unwelcome
thoughts—accompanied
it. The hospital. The slick of blood across Erma's gown.

Bunny's hand slipped onto his butt, and John pushed her away, stumbling. It felt like there wasn't any oxygen in here, like the entire tent was closing in on him. The women gyrating around the fat man in overalls were now, somehow, once again in front of him, and all turned to stare.

“Johnny? Something the matter?” Bunny asked.

“I can't.” John stumbled, the bad thoughts pushing against his brain. “I need a break.” He said, his mind fumbling for an excuse to leave. “I need to go check on Maxie.”

“But what about Patrick and Erma? They're meeting us here any minute.”

“I'll catch up with you guys later,” John mumbled, already stumbling toward the door. Finally, he was at the entrance, and he pushed the flaps open, sucking in the air.

“Meet us at the church!” Bunny called out after him. “Service starts in an hour. Don't be late!”

Outside, the fresh air acted immediately to sober him. John inhaled, the air hitting his lungs like a punch, exploding them, opening them up. He took a shaky step forward.

Around him, the Festival was still in progress, though wrapping up. A boy with a toy pistol and wearing a squirrel mask ran by him, pointing the gun at John as he did so.

“Bang, bang!” the kid said, and ran away. John took another deep breath and walked through the crowds and across the street. All the white tents had flags on top of them, each flag varying in color from those around it, and many of the workers in the tents, men and women serving up crafts and eats, were dressed in squirrel masks or circus uniforms. What had struck John as celebratory before now struck him as morbid. On their way to the beer tent, Bunny'd filled him in on the Festival's origin, on how a traveling circus in 1937 had accidentally set fire to the town, killing most of its residents.

How could the town celebrate those people, that circus, when the people of Cavus had been destroyed so gruesomely? Burned alive, some lost in the dark underground of the mines. Bunny'd said that Cavus had the Festival to keep the memory of the dead alive, and to promise to take care of the squirrels, who were considered good luck. Other than a single young girl, the performing circus squirrels had been the fire's only survivors and now flourished,
undomesticated,
in and around Cavus.

John walked past a tent selling plastic squirrel masks, and he saw the man behind that counter wore a large top hat and fake mustache like a ringmaster. His face was painted white. He looked up at John, and as he did so, John saw for an instant not a man, but a ghost. It was the ghost of the ringmaster, in the stolen flesh of this man. John shook his head and the image was gone.

He emerged on the other side of the last row of tents. Here were just houses and a few stragglers sucking on ice-cream cones, teens looking for a place to cuddle, a line of forgotten porta-potties. Bunny's house should be on the street just past this. The sun shone brightly, and the midsummer's heat beat down upon his shoulders. He walked hurriedly on, leaving the last of the people behind, the stale taste of beer still in his mouth.

He could see Bunny's house now, on the street up ahead, just about a football field's length away. There was a man, a woman, and a little girl near the house, walking toward him. The man and woman walked behind, holding hands, and the little girl sprinted ahead, sometimes skipping, sometimes just running. She must be about three or four, and she was cute as the devil, John saw as the people got closer.

The little girl, her hair all blond curls, was about twenty feet away from him, her parents still a ways behind her, when she looked up at him. Their eyes met, and John was struck with the beauty of her and his throat clenched. He offered the girl a smile.

At the same time, she began to run at him, her hands outstretched, and John saw the branch lying in the middle of the sidewalk.

It wasn't a big branch, just a stick really, shed from some tree or another, but it was enough to change the surface of the sidewalk. Enough to trip a little girl. John ran toward her, but it was too late. The girl's foot came down upon the branch and she went sprawling into the center of the sidewalk, her hands flailing wildly in an unsuccessful attempt to stop herself.

Behind her, the man and woman began to run, but John was closer and reached her first. She was crying when he picked her up.

“There, there. You poor thing. It's all right. Let me see.” The girl raised a palm to him, and John saw a small scratch across it, a burn from the pavement. Other than that, there was only a little cut at the end of her finger. A tiny drop of blood spilled from the cut, and, seeing it, the girl began to cry harder.

“It's all right. Here, I'll fix it.” Trembling, the girl held it toward him.

“Oww,” she said.

Gently, John took the finger in between his own hands, and the girl watched him with her big, serious eyes. Taking the tail end of his shirt, he wrapped the girl's finger in it, dabbing the blood away, then pulled the finger out again to show her. “There you go. All better.” He held the finger up to the light.

“Kiss it?” she asked, still looking at the appendage doubtfully.

He hesitated only a moment before raising the sweet little finger to his lips. The woman was yelling now, hurriedly approaching her daughter, and John didn't want to be considered a pervert. But she was only a tiny thing, and it wasn't fair that in this world the first thing someone might think about a man comforting a little girl with a kiss was that he would soon be kissing her elsewhere. John lifted the girl's plump pink finger to his lips and kissed it with an exaggerated smack. “Mmmmh!”

The girl giggled.

“Completely healed,” John proclaimed. There was a bit of wetness on his lip, and he licked it away, tasting iron.

“Sweetheart!” The woman, a pretty blonde herself, a very well-endowed woman, John noted, knelt beside her daughter, and pulled the girl close to her. “You okay?”

“I'm all better,” the girl said. “That man, he fixeded me.”

The mother laughed, then pulled the little girl in closer. “You gave your mommy quite a scare, clumsy-bones. You should be careful, running like that.”

The man who'd followed the woman stood at a distance behind the pair and waved at John as he looked up. “Hello.” The wave, nervous and apologetic all at once, told John more than anything that the man wasn't the little girl's father.

John stood and offered his hand. “John Scott.”

The man took it. “Sam. Pleased to meet you. Are you new here?”

“I'm visiting,” John said.

The woman scooped the little girl up and stood as well. “Thank you,” she said. “This kid just won't hold still. I can't half keep up with her.”

John saw that the woman was younger than he'd thought at first. She was pretty, too, although she wore too much makeup. She noticed him watching her and immediately jutted out a hip. It was done unthinkingly, and John guessed she must have grown up fast, used to men watching her. “We were heading to the Festival,” the man said.

“I just came from there,” said John. “Quite a lot of good stuff.”

The little girl who'd shyly buried her head into her mother's chest emerged at talk of the Festival. “Quirrel?” she said, looking from John to her mom. “We see the quirrel?”

“That's right, sugar. We're going to see the squirrels.” The woman's voice was low and sexy, softening on the
R
s. John thought of his student Mary, her head thrown back and calling his name. He immediately brushed the thought away, ashamed.

“It's nice to meet you all,” said John. “I've got to get going, but maybe I'll run into you later, at the dinner tonight. You guys going?”

“The Feast?” asked the woman. “Oh, yes. That's the best part. At least, that's what Sam here tells me. My little girl and I are visiting, too.”

The man nodded. “Can't be beat. I hear they're cooking up something extra special tonight. A cake ten stories tall, or something equally crazy. You never can tell what those women will get up to.”

For the briefest of seconds, John saw the man's eyes roll up and all the way back into his head. There was nothing but white left. John flinched.

“You all right?” the mother asked.

John looked up again, and the big blond man's eyes were brown and friendly as ever. “I'm fine,” John mumbled. “Just a bite.” He slapped at his arm. “Mosquito, I think.”

“You want to watch out for those,” the woman agreed. “They'll eat you alive.”

“Eat! Eat!” the little girl screamed, bouncing in her mother's arms.

“That's it for us,” the woman said. “When this one gets to going there's no shutting her up until I feed her.”

“Eat,” the little girl said again, meeting John's gaze. She smiled. “You too!” She pointed. “You!”

“Not now, sweetheart,” John said. “Although maybe I'll see you later tonight.” A cool breeze swept past him, and the smells of the Festival drifted over, spun sugar and fried batter, curling around them.

“Enjoy yourselves,” John said, waving bye to them.

“You too,” said the mother. “We'll try to save some room for the Feast!” They waved goodbye in return and began walking toward the tents, leaving John alone on the sidewalk.

In front of him, the stick over which the girl had tripped lay on the cement. From where he stood above it, the S-shaped wood took on the appearance of a snake, curled and ready to strike. John laughed. What a day. He was seeing shadows at every turn.

Bending down, he reached his hand out, meaning to pick up the stick. As he did so, a distinct whistle of sound escaped from it.

“Shssss.”

John's hand flew back up. Jesus! He looked down again, and yes, it really did appear to be a snake—what he'd originally taken for bark now looked like scales. Shedding scales, like a skin that was coming apart. And the wood wasn't really brown at all. It was crimson-colored. The shade of blood. The image of the little girl's cut finger flashed into John's mind, and he lifted the bottom of his shirt to see the smear of blood that it had left on the underside.

Slowly, as if in a trance, John stretched his hand out again and reached toward the snake-skinned stick. Closer. Closer. There was not another sound from it, if he'd ever even heard one in the first place. Then his hand closed around it, and
yes!
It was scales, most definitely scales, with the dry, slithery texture of a reptile—but the feeling passed, and it was only tree bark, most definitely tree bark. John lifted the stick and brought it to his face, and the wood of it was brown, and the bark was only bark, just sloughing off the branch, not scales breaking away. John raised his arm behind his head and threw the stick with all of his might, onto the green grass of the yard in front of him.

He waited, half expecting someone to come bursting from the house, a neat white two-story with windows cracked open and the porch painted red. No one came. Of course not. They'd be at the Festival with everyone else. Then John laughed. “You idiot,” he said aloud. “What would they come after you for anyhow? Throwing a stick?” He laughed again, but it sounded forced.

He lowered his head and continued on to Bunny's house, keeping his eyes firmly on the sidewalk as he went.

In a house that John Scott had passed, two girls stood in a bedroom examining an array of clothes.

“You're sure you're okay?”

“For goodness sake, Star, relax. I said I'm fine.”

“You were gone for, like, ever.”

“For the tenth time, I did a long run. Then I went to check out the Festival, okay? It didn't seem like you wanted to go. I'm sorry.”

“But you swear you feel better?”

“
Yes.
God.”

From outside, there was the sound of a dog barking, and Mabel stiffened. But when there was no following bark, she relaxed, combing the hair away from her face and pulling something from the rack in front of her.

“Wear this.” Mabel held out a dress she'd plucked from her mother's closet, laying it against Star's chest, then sat a pair of silver heels beside it. The dress must have been a special-occasions dress, or something left over from Mabel's mother's youth, because Star'd never seen the woman in anything close to this daring.

The fabric was a stretchy red material, and when Star pulled it over her head, it clung to every curve of her body. “I can't wear this, Mabel. I look like a prostitute!”

But Mabel wasn't listening to her. She'd already stepped into the bathroom to try on her own outfit, and when she emerged, Star could understand why in cartoons they showed men with their jaws dropping to the floor.

Mabel did not look like Mabel. She looked like a cross between some otherworldly creature and a supermodel. Star half expected smoke to start billowing around her friend like some freaky Jessica Rabbit cartoon.

“Where the
hell
did you get that?” Star asked.

“Found it lying around.”

Like hell,
Star thought. Star was no prude. In the past, she'd worn plenty of outfits that were meant to attract attention. But what Mabel was wearing, if you could still call her Mabel, went beyond anything Star would ever consider.

The top was composed of two black ties, knotted together around Mabel's neck and then somehow, with tape or sheer force of will, Star didn't know which, strapped strategically across Mabel's breasts, the ties crossing each other and then barely covering the nipples. The bottoms of the ties were tucked into a knee-length black skirt. Except that the entire front half of the skirt was ripped so that it ended just below Mabel's panty line.

“You look amazing, Mabel—I mean, really you do—but are you sure you want to wear that to church? Your mom's gonna flip.”

Mabel, the new Mabel, went around behind Star, and rubbed a comforting hand down Star's arm. Star saw that Mabel's fingernails, always chopped short so that she could help with the garden out back she loved so much, were long and painted an electric blue, the same color she'd used to create a smoked-out sheen around her eyes. Mabel curved her pointer finger and let the nail scratch gently, ticklingly, up Star's arm.

“I
want
to wear it, Star. Don't
you
want me to?”

An uncomfortable flutter began in Star's belly, and she pulled herself away. She was not about to even begin admitting what that flutter had been, that she had, at least momentarily, felt some kind of attraction toward her oldest and best friend. Although this woman in front of her did not
look
like her oldest and best friend. Regardless, things in her life were fucked-up enough already without this.

“Let's get going, huh? Unless you want to skip the Church Service. I don't mind. We can just grab a bite at the Feast.”

“Oh, no. We
have
to go to church.” Mabel shot Star a disapproving look. “Still, we've got a few minutes.” Mabel looked at Star, pinpointing her with those green eyes, which, circled in the smoky makeup, popped even more alarmingly against Mabel's pale skin. “Want something to drink?”

“Not unless it's liquor,” said Star, without any hope. Mabel never drank, and neither did her parents.

“What'll it be? Rum or vodka? I can even rustle us up some beer, if that floats your boat,” said Mabel. She spun around, admiring herself in the mirror.

“Really?” said Star. “Awesome. Why do you have liq—” She stopped. “Hey.” Star reached out toward Mabel, grabbing her arm and pausing her admiring spin. “Jesus, what's that?” On her chest, at the point where the two ties crossed, was a large mole. No, that wasn't right, not just large—fucking huge. The size of a quarter, at least. It wasn't flat either, but raised, and three coarse black hairs, very distinct, protruded from it.

“What the hell, Mabel? When did that happen? I think you'd better get that looked at, I—”

Mabel spun around and gave Star a cold, hard look. “Why don't you mind your own fucking business.” For a minute, the girls stood there, staring at each other, and then, looking like some kind of automated doll, Mabel smiled. “What did you say you wanted to drink again?”

“Let's go with vodka,” said Star, and when Mabel arrived with two glasses full of nothing but clear liquid, Star flung hers back in a single gulp.

There was no point thinking about any of it. No point asking questions, like why Mabel Joyce, Cavus's very own teetotaler president of Teens for Christ, was suddenly in possession of a fully stocked bar.

Star's life right now was a fucking mess. A real fucking mess. Her family was gone, her boyfriend was an unfaithful prick, and her best friend had turned into some kind of woman of the night who was maybe dying from cancer or something. And Star was here. There was nothing else for it. She held her empty glass out to Mabel. “More?”

Star thought of her father.

Of the woman's ring, and something else…

She would drink her way out of it. At least for tonight she would find some kind of peace, some kind of escape in the bottle. She raised the empty glass, still in her hand, to her lips and unexpectedly, and with all the force of a whirlwind, yearned for her father.

“Star?”

When she turned around, there was Mabel. She held a bottle of vodka in her hand, and this she held out toward Star. Star reached to take it then stopped. All around Mabel's mouth were flecks of a white, chalky substance.

“Jesus, Mabel, what have you…?”

But there was no need to go on. Clutched in Mabel's other hand, partially hidden behind her back, was one of Mrs. Joyce's wax candle cupcakes. Imprinted in its side were teeth marks where someone had taken a large, neat bite.

“Did you
eat
that?”

Mabel grinned. “They're delicious. Do you want one?” Mabel held the ruined candle out in front of her, an offering.

The empty glass slipped from Star's hand, and she felt a wave of nausea roll through her belly. She ran, unseeing, not hearing Mabel's protests, into the Joyces' bathroom, where she managed to slam and lock the door before falling to her knees and vomiting into the toilet.