Vampires Don't Sparkle! (6 page)

“This is exciting!” she said, her feet crossed and wriggling, her eyes trained out the windshield. “Mama said I’d never get away from home, said I might as well get used to working at the Hilltop Motel like she does. But look at me! Heading out to see the country with you.”

Peter grunted, then glanced at the rearview to make sure the trailer would make it around a particularly sharp mountain curve.

“Where will we stop?” Kelly asked. “Where do you plan on setting up today?”

“I know places when I see them. It just happens.”

“Oh, that’s fun.” She nodded happily, and then picked up some of the fast food trash on the floor at her feet, balled it up, and stuck it into a half-empty bag. She was a tidy one, Peter’s daughter. “I’m glad you agreed to let me come along. We can get to know each other like real family. Great, huh? Thanks. Dad!”

“Don’t call me Dad.”

She frowned, looking a little hurt. “What, then?”

“Just Peter.”

“All right. Peter.”

“Shush now. I have to pay attention to the road.”

“Okay. Will do.”

She was so damned agreeable.

As it was, Peter hated the idea of Kelly tagging along. And he hadn’t planned on stopping in Dillyville but he knew that Carol, Kelly’s mother, still had the hots for him after all this time, and he was in need of a little something warm and wet besides his own spit-slicked hand. Carol had obliged – and she did have a most comfortable bed – then was pissed, as he expected, when he refused to take her out to breakfast the next morning.

But Kelly, who hadn’t seen Peter since she was ten, had followed him out of the apartment to the Suburban, asking sweetly to come along, offering to cook and telling him she had nearly $700 she could get out of the bank on their way out of town. So, of course, he couldn’t exactly turn her down. And now, not quite a day’s travel with her, he’d already spent her down to $587. Gas. Chips. A case of beer. Motor oil. A new-for-him coat and pair of boots from a Salvation Army store in Big Stone Gap. Kelly didn’t seem to mind.

In fact, she didn’t seem to mind any of Peter’s requirements and restrictions.

“When I got the radio on, no talking,” he’d ordered when she first climbed into the vehicle with her sleeping bag and pillow. “I want to listen to a game or a preacher or music or weather, you be quiet, you hear me?”

Kelly had nodded.

“And I sleep in the middle seat where it got more room. There’s no room in the back-back ‘cause of the cookin’ gear.”

“No motel?”

“Of course not. I ain’t made of money,”

“Okay.”

“So you get the front seat. You’re short and small but you’ll fit. Just adjust the steering wheel up as far as it’ll go. And don’t ever get out in the middle of the night ‘cause it’ll disturb me. I need my sleep.”

“Okay.”

He’d started the engine and pulled away from the apartment complex as Carol, on the walkway in her terry robe and dog-chewed slippers, had shaken her middle finger and shouted “Asshole!”

A few miles out of town, he’d said, “There’s one part of the circus you are to stay away from, never open up, never even try to get a peek.”

Kelly had glanced at him. “What’s that?”

Peter continued. “I know you’re scared of snakes, Kelly. Always were. I don’t know much about you now, but I do know that.”

“Yeah.”

“The last display in the trailer, the Darkton Circus Mystery, is a snake. A big snake, largest one you’d ever see. Under no circumstances are you to mess with that display. You are never to try to get in there to have a look at it. I don’t need you having nightmares or begging me to take you home before I’m ready to go back through Tennessee. You understand?”

She’d nodded solemnly. “Okay.”

And so they continued on into the wilds of mountainous southwest Virginia, seeking a venue both isolated and peculiar, talking rarely, Peter trying his best not to fart in the Suburban but unable to alter his habits, and Kelly, when talking was allowed, telling him about her life since he’d missed most of it.

She was a plain girl, thoughtful, and sensitive. She was used to being poor, she told him, used to being ignored, used to working as a companion for an old woman with dementia in the evenings and a maid at the motel during the day, and used to giving most of her money to her Mama to help pay the bills. She knew Peter was disappointed that Kelly had not been a boy, because he’d wanted a son to give the circus to when Peter was too old to travel. She didn’t think he’d pass it on to her because she was a girl and that wasn’t how the family did things, but said she hoped he’d reconsider.

“I could do good with a circus,” she said as they rumbled along a narrow valley between two mountains awash with October red. “You could teach me how it works, how I can be part of it, you think?”

“Huh.”

“Maybe?”

“Shush now.”

They rode in silence another few miles. Then Kelly said, “Mama doesn’t like you much. But I think she just doesn’t understand why you are like you are. I kept telling her she must have loved you once, and she that she still should even if you aren’t together. And you’re my father, so of course
I
love you.”

This hit him like a pocketknife to the neck. “Don’t say that again.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just wrong, is all.”

So she didn’t say that again.

Peter found the spot he’d watched for, a flat, thistle- and vine-covered acre off the road three miles from the nearest town, nestled between a creek and a sheer rise covered in kudzu and granite outcroppings. Peter could stay here until someone came and kicked him off. He figured he’d get at least two good nights’ worth of ticket sales.

While Kelly set up the Coleman stove and got a stew cooking, Peter prepared for the evening show.

One side of the travel trailer was covered with the colorful headlines and artwork. This is the side that Peter always parked facing the road, facing traffic. The other side, which Peter always situated facing away from where customers would park their cars and trucks, was divided into sections with 3’ x 4’ doors that unlatched and folded down, revealing the displays inside each compartment. The first section had two little capuchin monkeys that, on command, dealt a deck of cards on the floor then picked them up and put them down as if in a game. The monkeys were getting up there in age, bought from a pet store in Maryland, and Peter just hoped they could make it through another season. The second section held three chickens that, when Peter turned on his CD player, would scratch on a brightly colored spot on the floor while a little silver, faceted ball spun overhead, mimicking a disco. In the third section, mirrors and lights made it seem as if a pig (a taxidermied pig that had died a number of years ago) disappeared except for his floating snout. All this was ordinary carnival fare.

But the last section of the trailer was different. It did not have a pull-down panel to reveal what was inside the compartment but rather an actual door, a door with a lock opened by one of the keys Peter on a string tied around his neck. The windowless room inside was big enough to hold four to six customers, and two cages, one small, one large, one covered in a towel, the other in a large, blue velvet curtain. In the little cage were stray pets Peter collected along country roads or stole out of farmhouse yards when it was clear the owners were not home. He taped their mouths shut to keep them quiet. It wasn’t as if they would starve to death like that; they never lived that long.

In the big cage was the Darkton Circus Mystery, Peter’s joy, his terror, and his inheritance. While chickens, monkeys, and pigs died and were replaced or stuffed, this display lived on. It brought Peter respect. It caused others to fear him. The money was minimal but that was because to keep the show to himself he had to maintain a low profile. If he went to a big city with this treasure, it would be broadcast, highlighted, and then swept out from under him like everything else of value was when people with big money caught wind of something they wanted.

Peter hauled the canvas tent out from the rear of the Suburban, unrolled it, and hoisted it up into place against the back side of the trailer where the displays were located. It was hard work but he was used to doing it alone. In fact, he enjoyed the sweat and burn the work created. It reminded him that he wasn’t dead yet, in spite of the years that had been piling up. And so when Kelly offered her help, he declined and told her to just stick with the cooking and if she got bored, she could listen to the radio.

When the tent was propped and pegged and roped nearly all around, Kelly peeked around the edge of the trailer to tell him dinner was ready.

She stared at the tent as Peter wiped his hands on his coat.

“Why a tent?”

“People come to see the shows,” Peter said. “With the tent, only those who pay can see the displays as I reveal them one at a time.”

Kelly nodded, then shivered. “I suppose that snake in the last display scares them mighty bad, doesn’t it?”

Peter nodded.

“It must be a mighty big snake. Is it ten feet long? Fifteen?”

“No talking about it, Kelly.”

“Twenty feet long?”

“Leave it be.”

“The sign says nobody can talk about it once they see it or they’ll die. Is that true?”

Peter glared at her. “I said enough. We’ll eat now.”

“Okay, sorry.” As they moved on to dinner, he noted Kelly glancing over her shoulder, fear flickering across her features. He would have to make sure things stayed that way. No way in hell could he let her know the truth.

-----

Kelly agreed to serve as the ticket taker; she was happy to do it. As quiet as she most often was, she knew how to deflect the advances of drunkards and slicks. Her mother had had her share of such boyfriends, all puffed up and oiled down, and Kelly had long ago devised a way to make them shudder and turn away. She would loll her head and slobber a little, and the men would jump back a good three feet and move on.

So there she sat at a little card table outside the tent with a roll of tickets and a metal cash box, smiling at the customers who seemed harmless and letting her head wobble and the spittle drool a bit for those who had ill-intent brewing at the corners of their eyes. And so they all left her alone, giving her their dollars, taking their tickets, and moving out of the night-shadows and into the tent-shadows.

Peter stood by the tent, nodding and smiling at the customers, then at last entered and pulled the flap down, sealing them all within. Kelly sat outside at her table, batting away the gnats and listening as Peter, in a surprisingly strong, commanding voice, explained each of the first three exhibits to the groans and complaints of the customers. Several stormed out, pausing at Kelly’s table to demand their money back. But Kelly gave them the cock-headed drool and they turned and went on. The rest stayed, however, charmed by Peter’s promise of what was in the last section of the trailer, the big Mystery, even though they’d have to fork over another ten dollars each.

At last, Kelly could hear the trailer door scraping open, the customers stepping into the trailer and causing it to rock on its shocks. The door creaked shut. After a long pause and some more thumping around, she heard the customers wail in fear. Their words were muffled but clearly terrified. Peter said something low, ominous. In another few minutes the customers were pressing out through the tent flap, clutching their hats, glancing around furtively, fearfully. Even those with ruddy complexions looked paler, their eyes pinched and their brows drawn. They stalked away, not speaking to one another, climbed into the various vehicles, and took off into the night.

Then, over the sound of late season crickets and owls in the trees by the river, Kelly thought she heard a low growl within the trailer, a heavy, guttural sound that made the hairs on her arms stand up. And she heard Peter say, “Shut up, you!”

A moment later Peter exited the tent, mopping his brow, pushing a loose strand of hair back form his forehead. He stared at Kelly as if he’d forgotten she was there. Then his lip hitched. “You got the money?” She held up the cash box.

He took it, shook it, then held it like it was a baby. She wondered for the briefest moment if he ever held her as a baby. Probably not.

“That’s good,” he said. “Now you go on back to the Suburban, go to sleep. I’ve got business, got to lock up.” He pulled a cluster of keys out from his shirt, keys that hung around his neck on a string. “And you got any peein’ need to be done, you do it before you get to sleep. As I said, no getting up in the middle of the night.”

Kelly nodded, and then before she could stop herself, said, “Those men must be scared of snakes, too. I can’t imagine how awful that snake must be.”

Peter pointed a finger at Kelly. “Yeah, it’s damn awful.”

“And loud. I heard it make noise. A growling sound. Like a dog or bear. Gave me goosebumps.”

“No more about the snake! Don’t never speak of it again, you hear me? Or I’ll leave you on the side of the road.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t.”

“All right, then.”

“I don’t want you angry at me.”

“Then don’t make me angry.”