Northern Borders (9 page)

“By the Jesus!” Show shouted, and took off after Hermie at a bandy-legged gait.

“You ought to take that kid to the woodshed, Preston,” my grandfather said to Mr. Hill. “That's a mean boy you've got there if I do say so.”

“He don't like elephants,” Mr. Hill said. “Neither do I. They're too damn big if you ask me.”

I reached out and touched Hannibal's side. His skin was dusty, and rougher than it looked.

 

“Come here, Austen,” my grandfather said when we were back in the cattle barn. He took a bill out of his shirt pocket. “Your work this summer was satisfactory. Here's your pay.”

He handed me the bill. To my astonished delight it was ten dollars. Ten whole dollars to spend at the fair. I was rich beyond my dreams.

“It's yours to do as you please with. You can husband it along or you can binge it away like a drunken lumberjack. I don't care which. I'll tell you just one thing. Keep your money safe. The midway's full of pickpockets. I worked for a traveling fair one summer when I was a kid and I know.”

Terrifically happy, I headed for the midway while my grandfather got ready to take his Ayrshires to the judging ring and rack up some ribbons against my grandmother. The grass was still wet, and the thick red and black wires snaking out to the rides from the humming generators glistened with dew in the early-morning sunshine. The food booths were still serving breakfast, and the air was laden with the sharp, exciting aromas of cooking bacon and sausage, strong coffee, gasoline fumes, and cigar smoke. Some of the rides were in full swing. The lilting calliope music led me to a huge old-fashioned carousel with a menagerie of carved wooden circus animals painted every color in the rainbow: pink zebras, orange hippos, blue giraffes, yellow-and-green tigers, and a bright red elephant, which I regarded with scorn now that I had seen and fed a peanut to Hannibal Rex, the real McCoy. There were pony rides, and little boats and cars on rails, but I wanted no part of these kiddie rides, either.

Farther down the midway, rough-looking roustabouts with iron bars and outsized wrenches were setting up the big-kid rides: the Octopus, with its long steel arms extended like a huge Tinkertoy construction; the blue-and-silver Tilt-a-whirl, slanted skyward like the deck of a ship in a storm. From somewhere nearby, the recorded music of a brass band blared out over the midway. The Ferris wheel
didn't have its seats fitted on yet but it looked as tall as my grandfather's barn. Just gazing up at it made my head swim, and I wondered if I'd have courage enough to ride it later on.

Here on the midway was where all the color and music and excitement of the fair seemed to be concentrated. There were games where you covered a red circle with three silver disks, threw a ball as soft as a pincushion at wooden Kewpie dolls, pitched dimes onto colored plates and glassware. There were shooting galleries, horse race games, basketball throws. A barker with a motorcycle hat and a black leather vest over a gargantuan bare belly urged me to try his hammer-and-bell, where you used a sledgehammer to drive an iron weight up to a bell for a cigar. I grinned and moved on down the midway.

A whistle blasted out nearby. “Step right up and give her a try, can't win nothing walking by.”

I turned and was startled to see that the man with the whistle had a big blue-and-yellow snake with a green head coiled around his naked upper body. It was a huge tropical snake. Some of the coils drooped down over the man's bare ribs and some were thrown over his shoulders. The snake's long neck spiraled down his arm. Suddenly its bright green head shot out at me and hissed loudly.

I jumped back and the man laughed. To my humiliation, I realized that it was not a snake at all, but an amazing tattoo following the contours of his body in the uncanny likeness of a snake. The thing's green head was tattooed on the back of the man's hand. Its split black tongue was represented by his darkly-inked middle and index fingers.

The strange individual with the snake tattoo laughed again, not pleasantly. He was standing in front of a baseball-throwing booth, where the idea was to knock down a pyramid of three brown milk bottles with one throw. “Come on, kid,” he said to me in a voice like a snake's hiss. “Give it a try. Knock 'em down, you get the clown.”

He pointed at a stuffed circus clown hanging over the front of the booth in a row with many other brightly-colored stuffed creatures. “Dime a throw and here we go,” he said, thrusting a baseball out toward me.

I stood stock-still, staring at the stuffed prizes. Next to the clown was a pink crocodile. What a treasure that crocodile would be for my grandmother. I imagined it in Egypt, next to the extinct Sphinx, imagined my grandmother looking at it with satisfaction, then looking approvingly at me.

“That's Lyle the Pink Crockingdile, kid,” the Snake Man hissed. “Want it? All you got to do is knock down the bottles. Dime a go.”

I hated to break my ten-dollar bill, but I had to have that crocodile for my grandmother. I held out the bill.

“Hey, we got a player,” the Snake Man said. He blew his whistle. “Take his money, Satan.” He whipped out his hand, and it was exactly as if a big green-headed snake was taking my money with its fangs. At the same time he made a hideous reptilian hiss through his teeth.

My ten-dollar bill disappeared. The barker tossed me the baseball. It felt punky compared to the one Rob and I played catch with in the dooryard at home, but I started to wind up the way Rob and my father had taught me.

“Hey, hey, we got a regular Babe Root here,” the Snake Man chanted, and gave a blast on the whistle just as I released the ball, which whizzed two feet over the top milk bottle, missing everything. “Got to hit 'em to knock 'em down, kid. Want your change?”

In the embarrassment of missing by a country mile, I'd started to walk off without my money. I turned back and the snake hand lashed out and slapped a handful of coins into my palm. I retreated fast, nearly dropping my money.

Immediately the whistle blasted out again and he was chanting, “Step right up, give her a whirl, win a panda for your pretty little girl.”

Already I knew that something was not right, though I was unsure what. The midway music roared in my ears. The noon sun seemed too bright, too hot. I looked at the money in my hand: three quarters, a dime, and a tarnished buffalo nickel.

I ran back to the baseball throw booth. “Mister,” I said. “Mister. You didn't give me the right change.”

“A dime a throw and it's a go,” the Snake Man chanted as though he hadn't heard me. “Hey, hey, hey.”

“You didn't give me the right change,” I repeated. “For my ten-dollar bill.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, kid,” the Snake Man said.

Again I wailed out something about change for my ten dollars. By now a crowd was gathering around us.

“Listen, bub,” the Snake Man said in a weary voice, “you give Satan here a one and Satan give you back ninety cents. Satan's honest as the day is long. Ain't you, you old devil?”

He held the snake-hand up to his head, and it nodded vigorously and let out an angry hiss in my direction.

Long and loud, the Snake Man blasted his whistle, as though to blast me from the face of the earth. I turned away, the tears starting now, and bumped smack into my grandfather. “What's all the ruckus about?” he growled.

Even as I poured out my story, I knew that my grandfather would get my money back for me. He would never let the Snake Man get away with this.

My grandfather stepped up to the baseball throw booth.

“Hey, Gramps, win a stuffed animal for old Grandma? Step right up—”

“This boy handed you a ten,” my grandfather said, cutting the Snake Man off. “I gave it to him not twenty minutes ago. You gave him change for a one.”

“Like hell he handed me a ten,” the Snake Man said. He reached for the money pouch on his big studded belt. He fanned a large number of bills out in his snake-head hand, like playing cards. There were a couple of dozen ones, a few fives, a two, and a twenty.

“See?” he said, holding the flapping handful of bills up to the crowd. “No tens. You find a ten, you can have it, Gramps. Otherwise, move along.”

“You'd best produce it,” my grandfather said. It did not sound like a threat. It sounded like a statement of fact.

“Look, Clyde,” the Snake Man said. “See this whistle? All I got to do is blow one long, two shorts, one long, and yell ‘Hey, rube!' There'll be twenty carnies here before you can fart twice. There ain't no ten dollars. Now shove along.”

“You go ahead and tootle your whistle,” my grandfather said. “I'll take the boy's correct change myself.”

As my grandfather reached toward the fanned-out bills, the barker jerked them back and blasted the S.O.S. signal on his whistle. “H
EY, RUBE
!” he yelled. “H
EY, RUBE!
”

Instantly other carnies up and down the midway took up the age-old war cry: “H
EY, RUBE
!” Within seconds the grassy aisle between the game booths and rides was swarming with men running toward us. The Snake Man continued to blast his whistle as they rushed up to his booth. Some carried short chains, others had iron bars. One man wielded a pipe wrench. He menaced with it like a short baseball bat.
He could kill somebody with that
, I thought.
He could kill my grandfather.

The barker held up the green snake-head like a rearing cobra. “Back off, Gramps,” he hissed. “Satan says back off or meet him in hell today.”

My grandfather looked around himself unhurriedly. I recognized a man with a stocking cap on his head from the Ferris wheel, and an eye-patch man from the dime toss. The hammer-and-bell man with the motorcycle cap and vest and the big belly had a blackjack.

My grandfather towered over most of the carnies by a head or more, but there must have been fifteen of them, all armed.

He shook his head slightly. “All right, gentlemen,” he said. “I could still maybe take two or three of you. I can't take a dozen of you.”

“This seems to be your lucky day, Gramps,” the Snake Man hissed. “Come back and play the game. You might win.”

My grandfather looked at him carefully. “All right,” he said. “I will.”

But the barker never heard him. “Step right up, give her a try,” he chanted, lashing Satan out at passersby and hissing as though my grandfather and I and my ten dollars were the furthest things from his mind.

I fought back my tears. In a matter of minutes, the best day of my life had turned into one of the worst. Everything about the midway now seemed to mock me. The brassy, carefree music, the delicious smells of fried food, the colors and the crowd and the
excitement. Everything was a cruel reminder of my carelessness and gullibility.

Back at the cattle barns the judges had been through with the awards. Four large shiny blue ribbons, one for each of our show Ayrshires, hung above our stalls. But my grandfather barely glanced at them. He'd fully expected to win the cattle judging division all along.

Not knowing what else to do, I wandered out of the barn and over to Horticultural Hall, where I found my black-clad grandmother standing off to one side of the exhibits, frowning at three women judges sampling the baked goods. She seemed as self-possessed and inscrutable here as in our farmhouse kitchen. How could the judges dream of not conferring blue ribbons upon her raspberry tarts, strawberry rhubarb pie, yeasty-smelling salt-rising bread? The stony and impassive stare of her friend the Great Sphinx himself could hardly have been more intimidating than her gaze.

“Well, Tut,” Gram said, “how many blue ribbons does your grandfather have? What's the tally thus far?”

“Four,” I said.

“Ah,” she said. “Only four?”

I nodded.

“Sample my miniature angel food cake, ladies,” my grandmother called out sharply to the cowed judges.

She glanced at me, her eyes watchful and appraising. “Winning is all, Tut. Remember that, now and later. Winning is all. Do you think failure of any kind ever once entered the mind of the great archaeologist Mr. Howard Carter? No, it did not. Achieving your goal, be it a blue ribbon or the discovery of a new tomb, is all.”

My grandmother moved off down the aisle after the triumvirate of timorous judges as they headed for the preserves section, having duly placed a blue ribbon on her miniature angel food cake. Penniless and defeated, I drifted back outside, unable to tell my grandmother how I had let myself be cheated.

Suddenly there was an unearthly shriek from the infield in front of the grandstand. It was followed immediately by another blast, even louder than the first.

I ran down across the racetrack toward the infield, where Hannibal was trumpeting steadily, his trunk lifted high above his head. I had never heard such a piercing, angry roar in my life. As I approached, the elephant reared up onto his hind legs, screaming to high heaven. Little Show was trying to get his hook over the animal's head to pull him down.

“Hut, hut, hut!” Show shouted.

The elephant dropped onto his front feet and reared right back up again. As he towered above us, I saw the crumpled figure of a man lying beside Show's truck. No, not a man. A boy. Hermie Hill!

Now Hannibal was dragging Show all over the lot. Show was swinging from his hook, being tossed from side to side like a doll. Again the elephant raised onto his hind legs, shaking Show off like a child. For a terrible moment, Hannibal was poised directly above Hermie. He let out a long furious blast and just as he was about to come down on his victim, my grandfather appeared from nowhere, scooped Hermie up and rushed him around the truck. It all happened so fast that for a few moments I didn't fully understand what I'd seen. The elephant gave one last inhuman cry. Then he dropped down onto all fours again and stood there quietly.

My grandfather had laid Hermie on the ground beside the Double-Jointed Woman, Mrs. Twist. Hermie was bleeding from the nose and moaning. “Fetch the ambulance, quick!” Gramp said.