Pages Torn From a Travel Journal (5 page)

I thought it gentlemanly
not
to point out that said conflict was actuated by
Southern
aggression, my being a “Yankee” as far as his concern went. “Presumably via the failure of sufficient crop-rotation cycles,” I offered. “Had they rotated between cotton and soya, the soil would still possess vitality.”

Nate made a confused smirk. “They throw the county fair here, too, and some other hootenannies’n things,” the noun in terminus being articulated as “thangs.”

I’m fairly certain that the bus driver, as he inclined forward to squint at the vast tract of land, rubbed his crotch. “I en’t seein’ me no curnervul heer, feller ” but just then, the remaining edge of woodline broke to show us a dusk-tinged panorama whose epicenter existed as a virtual
efflorescence
of multicoloured light. It seemed that a colossal living fireball throbbed amid the barren field.

“There it ‘tis, buddy!” Nate wailed. “The whores are a-waitin’!”

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-YUH!” added the driver. “Ee-yuh, ee-yuh, ee-yuh, ee-yuh, ee-yuh, ee-yuh!”

Seven–that’s right–
seven
“ee-yuhs!” I could not have sighed with more decisive despondency.

A single rutted road bisected the expansive field, a linearly perfect lane leading directly to this blossom of illumination. Closer, the blossom queerly increased in size, & gave up details previously diffused by distance: spiring towers with blinking pinnacles, garlands of flashing orbs, a gargantuan ferris wheel turning like a landed star; an aura glowed about the entire goliath of activity–and sound as well, gun-fire-like laughter, gleeful screams in the wake of soaring roller coasters, & colliding, gladsome melodies from a plentitude of pipe organs. The awesome sight carried with it the very acme of festiveness.

My own awe widened my eyes as our approach slowed; truly, the carnival stretched immense, claiming dozens of acres. Nate stopped the truck in a common area awry with all-manner of motors; and after properly parking, we were off.

I nearly shuddered from the sheer
immensity
of the enterprise. At the entrance–a wooden archway painted with scenes of frivolity–we stood in a lengthy line; I used this time to look up at the dizzying erections of rails, girders, tracks, & coruscating lights to realize that this travelling show tinied the few my past had shown me. Its border was formed by the show’s transport trucks & personnel trailers, every 10 yards or so by large, cross-armed ruffians in meretricious garb, functioning as sentinels to insure that none infiltrate the carnival without rendering payment. While in wait, I contemplated the incalculable
toil
of an effort such as this: the sheer manpower of transport, the logistics, disassembling & then erecting all of
this;
it occurred to me, too, how
unqualified
I would be in a such a troupe.

Soon that painted archway admitted us maw-like, whereupon Nate provided our tickets, & it was a happy pandemonium into which we were then disgorged. “Why not we look fer them whores lickety-split, don’t’cha think?” Nate’s reprobate question turned more of the wonderful English language into carnage.

The bus driver replied with enthusiastic, “Ee-YUH!” & once again rubbed his crotch.

“‘Specially that purdy blondie with hands fer feet’n no teeth. Can you
imagine
the suck-job she kin lay on us?”

“I believe I’ll embark first on a reconnoiter of my own,” I explained, “for surely in my inexperience, my tagging along would present a burden to your own motives. We’ll meet up shortly–”

The bus driver looked agog. “Yew meen yew en’t got no interest in creamin’ up no dutty curny hoo-ers?”

Any response at all was nearly beyond possibility; however, I managed, “Perhaps in a short while, gentlemen.”

“Come on now,” Nate urged the driver. “Let’s up’n find us that blondie!” & with that the 2 parted, but not before I was able to hear an adjunctive comment under his breath, “What’n tarnations’s wrong with that there fella?”

“Durn’t knew. Guess he’s a qwee-uh-boy.”

Nate strode off, chuckling. “Yee-ip! Bet that guy’s had more blammed
dick
up his ass than I’ve had shit!”

Indeed.

Their own decadent laughter followed them as they edged into the crowd, ostensibly in search of the maladapted woman in the advertisement poster.

I turned to face a copiousness of activity. Amid “barkers,” jugglers, dwarfs, stilted walkers, & petite gymnasts executing cartwheels before all, most of the crowd was fed at once into a wide lane that formed a clough betwixt everything, the carnival’s main artery. Observation was my major intent (plus that candied apple) but so large was the crowd that I felt oppressed in spite of my desire to be here. With timidity, I took a single diffident step when—

“Sir, Sir?” a lithe voice made inquest from behind, & then a finger tapped my back.

I turned, startled. “Yes?”

Standing just behind me was a young blond woman-girl with deep Adriatic-blue eyes & a face whose sheer beauty shone like a beacon. Quite short, she stood, not much more than 5 feet; it only was after catching her arresting countenance that I noticed she stood on wooden crutches.

Her voice flowed like some aural honey. “First time at a carnival, Sir?”

“Why, um, no, though I suppose one might suspect that–I feel a bit out of place–”

“I think so,” she chirped. “Mostly just red-necks here, and you’re definitely not that!”

No,
but
red-necks
DID
bring
me
here,
thought I with an inner smile. “I’ve been present at a few carnivals in the dim past, meager compared to this, however. And I did enjoy cotton candy once on Coney Island.”

“Oh, we have that here–”

“And candied apples as well, I hope?”

“Of course!” she shrilled, eyes abeam at me.

At once I was enchanted, so enchanted in fact that my normally superior powers of deductive reasoning failed to make the most immediate coincidental observation. Her smile at me had slipped a trifle too high, revealing an absence of
teeth.
This could be no other than what the tall man’s poster promised: Bliss, the Girl with Hands for Feet.

Recovering from the fruition, I immediately asked, “Might you direct me to its proper vendor, Miss? I’d be most obliged.”

“About three-quarters down the midway”—she pointed into the crowd-stuffed passage—“on your left. I’d take you there myself, but I’m on poke-swiper watch.”

“Pardon me?” I stretched the words.

She giggled, a becharming (and even–I’ll own here–
erotic
) utterance. “That’s why I called you, Sir. Your poke–you know–your wallet? Never carry it in your back pants pocket. Always in front instead.”

A shock-reflex shot my hand back, where my billfold nearly hung halfway out of said pocket. “Poke-swipers” must be parlance for pick-pockets. How incognizant of me! I immediately enacted her counsel. “I cannot convey enough gratitude, Miss. The purity of your honestness could not be more axiomatic.”

She giggled again. “My name’s Bliss,” she announced what I secretly already knew; with only a minimal difficulty, she extended a gracile, white hand whilst the pad of one crutch remained crooked into the joist of her arm & shoulder.

When I shook it I could’ve melted at its softness. My throat quivered. “I’m Howard.”

She sighed as if in relief. “Howard–it’s so good to meet someone smart and nice for a change! My
goodness!
”

“I’m flattered, Bliss,” I replied, suspecting I’d blushed. “And what a delight it is to meet
you,
” but then a strange despair fell over me, for I knew that once I departed for the candied-apple stand . . .

I would no longer be in her propinquity.

“I wish I could go with you, but . . . like I said”–and then she slumped on her wooden props.

“Of course, your employment here as a ‘poke-swiper,’” I said, “demands your presence.”

She nodded, losing half the smile.

I almost yelped when a massive hand landed softly on my shoulder. At once, I recognized the eloquent giant who spoke in fascinating antiquation: the poster-hanger.

“Fine esquire, be sartain of ye delight by my witness of thy coming into acquaintanceship with our loyal sarvant, Bliss.”

“The delight is exclusively mine, Sir,” I assured him.

“It is with a heart most complimented that I behold thee now, for trusting mine assurance of ye credulity of O’Slaughnassey’s Travelling Show.”

“My expectations are exceeded multitudinously, for your endeavor here is far more complete than any I’ve seen or imagined”–shrieks in the wake of a soaring roller-coaster shot my glance upward. “It’s an astonishingly commendable show, indeed–and I’m most in debt to you for your generosity.”

The titan man bowed hugely.

“And,” I continued on a shocking impulse, “I am now
twice-fold
in debt, for my being here at your gracious invitation has bestowed upon me this opportunity”–I paused & looked directly into Bliss’s deep-sea eyes–“to meet Bliss.”

Now it was Bliss who blushed. The compliment seemed to have taken her aback, after which she seemed to blunder a response, “My friend here, Howard, was asking how to get to the candy apple stand.”

Akin to magic, several 5-cent tickets appeared at the tips of the smiling giant’s fingers; they were offered, then, to me. “Of this small token, excellent Sar, I beg thee to accept with all my gratefulness”–for the second time today, the generosity of this virtual goliath left me in an ebullient shock; however that shock would strike thrice when he supplied, “And it is Bliss who shalt accompany thee to ye sweet fruit which calls thy desire.”

Bliss rose on her crutches. “Oh, thank you, Septimus!” she squealed.

Septimus!
I thought. A great name from the earliest Colonial days! I’d have to use it.

The giant–Septimus–took Bliss’s place as sentinel. Nothing could’ve made me more ecstatic, & in diction nearly as articulate as his, I rained more thanks, & Bliss & I were on our course–into the peopled turmoil of the “midway.”

This woman-child struck me as one of the most graceful bearing, even on her regrettable crutches.
Crippled angel,
I thought in foggy muse. Suddenly my misgivings of the surly–indeed, the
red-neck
—throng dissolved as thin frost against morning sun. The soap-scent off Bliss’s hair left me absolutely drunk with fascination & attraction; thus far, I hadn’t even let my gaze stray past her shoulders, yet our crowd-wending now allowed me the ungentlemanly chance to pursue cursory examination. A fluffy white-cotton gown adhered with perfection against her the feminine curvatures; & it would be understatement to declare that her bosom thrust forward in abundance & an absolute lack of defect. This woman’s presence left me in a thrall I could only describe as libidinally unrelenting; it is a fact, too, that I’d never been so densely
taken
by a woman, so psychically
arrested
.

The midway, as it’s called, struck me as a dual-flowing river of chatty, malodorous humanity: a churning, bustling domdaniel leading to recesses unknown. We moved along with its course, myself nearly unaware of the closeness of so sullied a crowd. Prefatorial conversation commenced without delay: first my own provenance, then hers, though of myself I mentioned only that I was an antiquary & one having an interest in genealogy, the cosmological sciences, & a “devotee” of weird fiction. I did not reveal my entire name (not that any familiarity would likely strike her), nor that I had accrued a professional publishing history. Of herself, I learned that she’d been born but 19 years afore in the state of Maryland & a military town called Parole, “Where the Army prison used to be,” she’d said. Her father had been in the Army, & had even been deployed to the mystery-shrouded province of Shannxi in exotic China.

“What,” I asked, “prompted you into carnival life?”

She glided so effortlessly along on her crutches that scarcely a hitch was noticeable. “My husband
owns
the carnival. He has for years, and he’s been really successful, even with the bad things in the economy.”

“I may presume, then, that your surname is O’Slaughnassey?”

“That’s right. I’d introduce you to my husband, but . . . ” Whatever remained of her sentence dissipated like vapor, & her ever-present smile did as well.

The delay of cognizance shocked me.
Wait!
came my self-exclamation.
Her
husband
is
the
travelling
show’s
possessor
and
presumably
its
topmost
hierarch . . .