And so The Revels were royally begun at the fairgrounds that evening, the citizens of Seldom milling about like Les Misérables in the costumes of French chambermaids, urchins, revolutionaries, streetwalkers, and Parisian apaches, with one lone Mahatma Gandhi unsure of his history.
Mademoiselle Clairvaux wore a powdered white turban of a wig and an ornate Marie Antoinette dress whose architecture pinched her waist like an hourglass and made her still-youthful chest resemble melons riding on a shelf. She was given the job of cutting the ribbon at the weedy entrance to the carnival rides, and of announcing onstage what image a horrible mime was trying to convey: “Here he is trapped inside a box. See? He is feeling the many sides with his hands.” “And now a wind is blowing him. We see it is very strong. Oh, he’s lost his hat.”
And then Pierre was forced to go up on stage in his silly leotards, crushed velvet pantaloons, and wig of a thousand ringlets, acting the part of the Sun King and shouting out the faulty French on a scroll that intended to detail how Bernard LeBoeuf chanced upon the area while trapping mink and thought he’d seldom encountered such pretty country. Owen shot a cannon into a cornfield as soon as Pierre concluded, and the wildly applauding Seldomites heaved their bonnets rouges high into the air, shouted a mysterious phrase they seemed to think was French, and then immediately commenced their Kiss-a-Pig Contest. (Won again by Chester Hartley, an old bachelor who raised barrows and gilts on a farm just east of Three Pillows.)
As king of The Revels Pierre was called upon to fire the starter’s pistol that initiated the demolition derby, and he watched in stunned wonder as twelve cars peeled out in reverse, swerving to crash tail-first into each other, their trunk lids flying up and nodding, their mufflers and chassis scouring the earth, their wadded fenders floundering uselessly, until only Bert Slaughterbeck’s new Buick was still running and he squirmed out the driver’s side window and held his arms high in victory before he looked at his wrecked and steaming car somewhat quizzically, as if the consequences of the competition were something he had not completely thought through.
Meanwhile Natalie threw the switch that electrified the carnival’s lighting, which was yellow in order to discourage a hundred varieties of whining insect, and she delivered queenly waves to the shrieking children on rides that were called the Zipper, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Upsy-Daisy, the Scared Rabbit. She was then permitted to go back to Mrs. Christiansen’s rooming house, where she changed into a white sundress and affectionately sniffed her yellow King’s Ransom rose as she watched with interest the video of Gigi with Marvyl and Owen’s Aunt Opal.
A house north and across the street, Dick joined Owen and Pierre for chicken wings and Falstaff beer and their viewing of Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Ben Johnson, and Owen’s friend Slim Pickens in a Western called One-Eyed Jacks. The Sun King had shed his wig, Cardinal Richelieu his scarlet biretta, and Owen found the good manners to hide the bulge of his codpiece with his untucked peasant shirt, but otherwise the three were still in their hose and regalia, which gave their viewing of the Western a certain incongruity. Pierre slumped on the sofa with jet lag, but he had never seen the movie and found himself riveted. Owen was less so. He asked, “You sure you wouldn’t rather catch Hobson’s Choice? Or Witness for the Prosecution? I’m in a Charles Laughton mood tonight.”
No one answered him.
“Ruggles of Red Gap then,” Owen said. “Winsome comedy where Laughton is delightful as an English butler won in a poker game.”
Still no answer.
“Elvis then. Harum Scarum? The Trouble with Girls?”
On the screen, an outlaw played by Ben Johnson taunted the outlaw played by Marlon Brando in a saloon poker game, saying, “How about some of your cash there, Romeo?”
Owen finished a chicken wing and tossed it into a rapidly filling Husker wastebasket. Still unsatisfied, he got another, defeated it with just a few chews, and grinned with red barbeque sauce on his lips. “Hey, this chicken tastes just like frog,” he joked.
Cardinal Richelieu cautioned, “Are you remembering your houseguest?”
Owen was shocked at his own rudeness. “No insult intended, Pete.”
Pierre stared in uninsulted puzzlement, then returned to the movie. Ben Johnson was saying, “Well, maybe the boy’s all petered out from playin’ on the beach with that little jumpin’ bean.”
Owen got on his belly to find a tipped-over beer bottle underneath his La-Z-Boy, and in One-Eyed Jacks an outraged Marlon Brando jolted up from the poker table, yelling, “Get up, you scum-sucking pig!”
Dick said, “Talking to you, Owen.”
Owen took a final gloomy swig from the beer he found as Brando upset the saloon’s poker table with a crash. Owen was horrified. “We’re outta beer, boys.”
Neither Dick nor Pierre made a move, such things being beneath their station. Owen struggled his heft up. “Don’t move a muscle,” he told the friends who hadn’t. “I’m the host. I’ll go get more.” And then he executed an Elvis move in his wide-bodied way, holding the Falstaff bottle as if it were a mike as he exited to the kitchen. “Thank ya’ll ver’ much, thank ya.” And then he went outside, yelling, “Owen has left the building!”
Watching Pierre in an assaying way, Dick straightened his prelate’s soutane at his thighs and crossed his redstockinged ankles. “You been enjoying your trip through America’s spacious skies and amber waves of grain?”
Pierre regally answered, “No.”
“Seems to me I’d be pretty happy traipsing just about anywhere with such a pleasant companion.”
Pierre shrugged. “Perhaps, but only if he lets me pick out ze wines.”
“Wasn’t talking about Owen,” said Dick. “I was talking about Mademoiselle Clairvaux.”
“Oh,” Pierre said. “Her.”
They watched One-Eyed Jacks. Brando was saying, “You got right on the edge. You mention her once more and I’m gonna tear your arms out.”
Dick asked, “You two on the permanent outs?”
“What does it means, this ‘outs’?”
“In other words, you got a future together?”
Pierre fell into a crotchety mood, as was his wont. “She is my past,” he said. His fingers made antlers beside his head and he fluttered them wildly. “She is the craziness in my brains. She is so frus-trating and difficult and full of idiotic ideas.”
“Well, maybe it’s good you’re taking a vacation from each other.”
Owen sashayed back inside just then, cold beer cans weighting down the pockets of a blue Hawaiian shirt he’d changed into and on his skull a leafy headdress with Falstaff beer cans hung over each ear and plastic tubes feeding the liquid into his mouth when he sucked them. Owen grinned. “Brew Hawaii!”
Pierre arfed like a seal as Owen had instructed him to, and Owen tossed him a frosty one.
And Dick said, “I can see how Natalie must offend your delicate sensibilities.”