Madball (6 page)

The other difference between her body and a man's was even more puzzling and it was the other way around; Miss Trixie's G-string was so small and fitted against her so tightly that he could see she was different there too, that she didn't have what men had there, and he wondered if all women were like Miss Trixie there and if so what they did when they went to the doniker, and he'd wanted to ask Miss Trixie about it.

He'd forgotten all about it until now, staring up at Miss Trixie on the platform, he remembered and started wondering again about the mystery of women.

He wondered how he could find out about such things, who he could ask who might tell him. And suddenly it came to him where he could find out and without even having to ask anybody and it was so simple that Sammy wondered why he'd never thought of it before.

Because he remembered now the word sex. He'd heard people use it and he didn't know exactly what it meant but he did know that it had something to do with women and their bodies. And the unborn show was named Mystery of Sex, wasn't it? And didn't Mr. King, the talker for the show, say that the mystery of sex was explained inside, everything about it, the naked truth. And Sammy knew what naked meant, it meant without any clothes on at all, not even a bra or a G-string. Why, if he went in that show he could learn everything, and why couldn't he go in tonight, why couldn't he? He still had three dimes left out of his fifty cents and the unborn show
-
what did unborn mean? Well, he'd find that out too
- cost only one dime so he could have two more cotton candies and still go to the show.

His second cotton candy was finished now, though, so he went back to the booth and waited until the Cotton Candy Lady wasn't busy and then bought his third one from her. She smiled at him and made it a bigger one than usual. She said, "Sammy, if everybody loved cotton candy like you do, I'd be rich." And she pushed back his dime. "This one's on the house, Sammy, if you go get me a san'wich. I'm starvin'."

She gave him a quarter. "Hamburger. Tell him don't skimp the mustard."

When Sammy came back with it for her his cotton candy was gone again and he wanted to buy another. But she laughed and gave him that one for free too. So he still had three dimes.

He'd been wanting to use one of them for something and for a while he couldn't remember what and just wandered down the midway. Then he heard Mr. King talking in front of the unborn show and he remembered.

"... see everything, boys, I mean everything, the sex mystery exposed, red hot, sex in the raw, everything explained, plain down to earth unadorned, right before your very eyes, now it can be told, what papa did to mama, one dime only one dime, come and see for yourselves, the mystery of sex, only a dime, continuous ..." Sammy dropped the paper cone that had held his fourth cotton candy, stepped up to the ticket box and put a dime on the counter. Mr. King reached for the dime, then looked at Sammy. He pushed the dime back.

He said, "Hell, kid, you're with it. You don't got to pay. Just walk on in."

Sammy said, "Thanks, Mr. King," and started around the ticket box. But then Mr. King said, "Wait a minute," and he stopped.

Mr. King said, "Listen, Sammy
-
your name's Sammy, ain't it?"

Sammy nodded.

"Well, Sammy, I just thought. You don't want to go in there now. Burt's got some marks in there and you might queer his pitch on the books, see?"

Sammy didn't see, but he knew it meant he couldn't go in now. He said, "But sometime can I go in, Mr. King?"

"Sure, Sammy. Tell you when. Come around early afternoon some time just when we're opening and there ain't any biz yet. Then go in and stay as long as you want. Or hell, come before we're open if you just want to look around. Just so you don't touch nothing. But kid, there's nothing in there you'd want to see. Just pickled punks."

"What are pickled punks, Mr. King?"

"Fetuses. Babies that never got born. Dead and pickled in jars and what you want to see them for anyway?"

"I don't want to look at no babies, Mr. King. But I want to see what you said, I mean about what sex is and naked and things like that."

Mr. King shook his head slowly and sadly. "Believe you me, Sammy, if you're starting that far behind scratch you won't learn a damn thing in there; it'd just confuse the hell out of you. Listen, you really mean you don't know anything about sex?"

"No, Mr. King."

"I'll be damned. But take my word for it, Sammy, this isn't where to find out. And for that matter I ain't the guy to tell you, because you ought to be showed and not told. Get a dame to show you sometime."

"Show me what, Mr. King?"

"The most wonderful thing on earth, Sammy. And you sure look old enough to be showed."

"Would any woman show me? Do you think Miss Trixie would?"

Mr. King chuckled. "I don't know about any woman, kid, you'd better be careful who you ask. But I guess Trixie would, for enough money. But that's the catch, kid, that dame's money hungry. You can get it better and-" He looked at Sammy again. "Well, maybe not for free but cheaper'n Trixie'd take you for."

Then a group of people started by and Mr. King didn't look at Sammy any more; he was looking at the people and talking into the microphone. "This way, boys, this way to the sex show, and only a dime to see ... "

And Sammy wandered off. Still with three thin dimes he went back and spent one of them for his fifth cotton candy, and the model show was ballying again and Miss Trixie was on the platform and he watched her some more. Wondering what the most wonderful thing on earth was and how much money he'd have to have for her to show it to him.

Certainly, from the way Mr. King had spoken, it would be more than the two dimes he had left. Probably it meant paper money, folding money, and Sammy had never had a piece of paper money in his life, ever. Not of his own, anyway; sometimes when he was sent on an errand he was given paper money to buy something and brought back change from it. Maybe if he saved all the money, the hard money, people gave him once in a while for doing errands until he got a lot of it, a whole handful of it, somebody would give him paper money for it. But that didn't seem likely. People gave you hard money in change out of folding money but why should they give you paper money for hard money?

No, it just didn't seem likely that he'd ever have folding money, not unless he stole it. And Jesse had told him not to steal. Jesse had said, "There ain't nuttin' wrong with stealing, kid, if you can get away with it. But you're too Goddam dumb to know what yuh can get away with and what yuh can't. So lay off or yuh'll get in trouble. Get me?" And Sammy always tried to do what Jesse told him because Jesse fed him and took care of him so he could never get paper money by stealing it.

He finished his cotton candy and, although he still had two more dimes left, he didn't seem to want any more of it just then. And Trixie had gone inside the model show top because they weren't ballying any more. The show must be going on inside now and he wished he could go inside and see it because he wondered just how they posed in there and what they did, but he remembered Jesse had told him never to go in there. And anyway maybe his two dimes wouldn't be enough.

He wandered the midway again and because he might as well do something with his two dimes he rode twice on the merry-go-round, which next to cotton candy was his favorite way of spending money people gave him for doing errands, although he rode the merry-go-round only if he'd had all the cotton candy he wanted or if the Cotton Candy Lady wasn't in her booth.

After that he didn't have any more money to worry about and he just wandered. On the midway for a while and then around behind the tops. Back where the trailers and the trucks and the living tops were. He wanted to find someone to talk to but everybody must have been busy on the midway because he couldn't find anybody.

There was a light on, though, in one of the trailers. Mr. Evans's trailer. He knocked on the door and when there wasn't any answer he tried the knob and it wasn't locked, so he went in. Mr. Evans wouldn't care and Mr. Evans always had magazines with pictures in them and he'd already let Sammy look at pictures in those magazines so he wouldn't care if Sammy looked at them again.

But there weren't any magazines lying out in sight so they must be in one of the cabinets built into the wall of the trailer. He opened a cabinet door at random and it was the right cabinet the first time. The magazines were there.

He took them over to the table and sat looking at them for a while, at the pictures of strange places and people doing strange things. Some of the pictures were interesting but most of them weren't. When he had looked at pictures long enough and found himself getting restless he wanted to put the magazines away but now he couldn't remember exactly which cabinet he'd opened and found them in. He should have left it open, but he'd closed it again. It could have been any one of several.

But he'd know it because it would be empty; there'd been nothing in it except the magazines and he'd taken
th
e whole stack of them out.

The first cabinet he tried wasn't the right one. It had clothes and linens in it. The second he tried was a smaller one; he should have realized it was too small and the wrong shape to hold the stack of magazines lying flat but he'd opened it before that occurred to him. And he saw that there were books in it, about a dozen books of different shapes and sizes, some of them looking expensive and fancy, others paper bound and dog-eared. Sammy wondered if there were pictures in the books. He couldn't remember ever having happened to look for pictures in a book and there might be. He pulled out the biggest and most expensive looking of the books.

The pictures in the book were different from pictures in magazines. The first one he turned to was a picture of a man and a woman both naked and in a strange position. Strange, anyway, to Sammy. And he turned pages and saw more pictures, lots of pictures, and they were all different and some of them pretty complicated but most of them were pictures of a man and woman naked together. Sammy took the book over to the table and began to study the pictures carefully, because he knew that this was the answer to what he'd been wondering about.

He studied the pictures and found within himself a growing excitement, a kind of excitement he hadn't known existed. It made him feel funny, looking at those pictures. Some of the pictures were puzzling because it seemed there was more than one thing a man and a woman could do together but in most of the pictures they were doing the same thing in slightly different ways and that one thing at least was
cl
ear to him.

This was it, this was the show he'd come to see, here's where he saw it, male and female naked and unadorned, the mystery of sex, right before his eyes, the naked truth, and not even for one thin dime but for free, doctors and nurses and Sammy admitted free, continuous performance and stay as long as you like, educational, plain down to earth unadorned, what papa did to mama, educational, now going on, here's where you see it all.

Sammy stayed long enough to look at all the pictures in all the books
-
although some of the books didn't have any pictures, just printing, so he didn't waste time on them, and pictures in some of the books that did have pictures were just pictures of naked women instead of men and women both in the same picture, and those weren't as interesting.

But there was one picture of a naked woman that he looked at for quite a while because she looked a lot like Miss Trixie. She had the same kind of real black hair and the same shaped face and her breasts were shaped almost exactly the way he remembered Miss Trixie's were. He thought that was the prettiest picture in the book and he looked at it for a long time pretending it really was Miss Trixie and he thought that maybe if he ever got any money, any folding money, she wouldn't charge him so much to try some of those things because now he already knew what to do, she wouldn't have to show him.

When he left he put the books back very carefully in the compartment where he'd found them. He knew that he'd like to look at those books again sometime, the ones that had pictures in them, and if Mr. Evans found out Sammy had looked at them he might tell Sammy not to look at them again, but if Mr. Evans didn't know he couldn't tell Sammy not to.

Sammy was glad, when he finally went to the sleeping top, to find that Jesse was sound asleep and snoring. He got under the covers very quietly and carefully so Jesse wouldn't wake up, and Jesse didn't.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DR. MAGUS AWOKE TO MISERY and the sound of rain on canvas. His first coherent thought was of wind and of whether he'd better get out and double-stake or grapevine, but the canvas sidewalls of the mitt camp hung limp and lifeless and there was no sound of stakes being driven elsewhere on the lot. His watch told him it was ten o'clock in the morning and his aching head told him there was no use in trying to go back to sleep.

Slowly his mind began to work through the fog, to pick up the threads of living. I am Dr. Magus, mentalist, working my own mitt camp. It is Wednesday. Wednesday of the second last week of the season. Now in Bloomfield. One more week after this one. Something important happened yesterday. What? Oh, yes, Mack Irby was killed, only it was night before last instead of yesterday. And Maybelle spent the rest of the night with me. Rain sounds like an all-day rain. Mud. Not much chance we'll open today. But I'd better get up. This hangover and headache are hell and won't start to go away until I make myself get up and force myself to take a drink of dog hair and to eat some breakfast. My God, did I leave myself a drink?