ONE WEEK LATER IT WAS Halloween. As a lifelong entertainer, the Barker could not be ignorant of the holiday’s roots in dies parentales, the Roman festival of the dead, in particular the midnight rites of Feralia in which the malevolent deceased were exorcized.
The date was ideal for exorcising me as well.
So lightless was the October sky that it slid into night without notice. The moment I was assisted through the back door of the Gallery of Suffering, the Barker locked eyes with me and I knew. This was to be the final performance of the troublesome, underhanded, secretive, and astonishing—though not quite astonishing enough—Mr. Stick.
It surprised me that my first regret was that I would not be able to say farewell and good luck to Johnny. As was the Barker’s decree, the two of us had been kept apart since the morning our plot was uncovered, but from afar I had spied the bandages that sheathed his ribs as well as the sling that cradled his wrist. The Barker’s fabricated explanations began the night after the injuries and I heard them repeatedly as I queued up abaft the stage.
“This cherished child hurt a rib whilst chasing his beloved red ball over a hill, running slower than the next child by a power of ten. This same sprightly cub sprained his wrist shooting marbles with his chums—but how he wanted that golden aggie! Ladies and gentleman, I see your faces and we can, if you’d like, lament this child’s fractures and bruises. But I choose instead to celebrate them! Youth will not be repressed, no matter how unfortunate and twisted its form, and for this I give all thanks to Gød.”
The idiots clucked in appreciation.
“Oh, Little Johnny Grandpa? Look what Dr. Whistler has for you. I purchased it from a lad whose pockets were overstuffed with marbles. That’s right—it is the selfsame golden aggie! No, no, child, do not waste words thanking me. You glow with happiness and that is thanks enough.”
At least, thought I, as I was shoved on stage that Halloween night of 1899, I would not have to endure such lies much longer.
Ohioans proved themselves indulgent of the macabre holiday by amassing in unusual numbers. At least twenty-five pairs of eyes reflected our fiery stage lamps. This pleased the Barker. Their word-of-mouth would lend credence to the eulogy for Mr. Stick he would no doubt repeat as frequently as he bestowed the same golden aggie upon Little Johnny Grandpa night after night.
He was in rare voice, a baritone burr I’d not heard since my first months. I let it lull me. He spun his anecdotes with so much relish that he smacked his lips. He brandished the first of the needles as if it were a rabbit pulled from a magician’s hat while the Kitten Chorus hit every cue. He orchestrated like a conductor with the most resourceful of batons, alternating moods of scherzo and fugue; inserting commentary in both passionate glissandos and whispering nocturnes; sustaining impossible fermatas until the cliff-drop of his refrain of needles. The audience was his faithful, gasping chorale.
The music made me as delirious as any paying customer. We broke the one-hour mark, a staggering feat, and began eating into the time reserved for Pullman Larry’s sharpshooting show. In shadow against the side of the tent, I could make out the line of impatient ticket holders. They would have to wait. The final lance was slipped from the velvet casing. He held it up to the light. It was nigh time for the Barker to do what he had set forth that night to do.
The needle approached my eye. I felt it tickle my eyelashes. Then it became a dark wedge scribbling across the surface of my eyeball as it searched for a different entry point than usual, for this time the Barker meant to run my brain straight through, and afterward—who knew? Cremation? Burial? One way or the other I was finished.
The great, and possibly disappointing, surprise of that instant was how dearly I wished to live! Perhaps it was my desire for revenge upon the Barker, upon Luca Testa, upon Gød Himself, I do not know; or perhaps it was something Mr. Charles Darwin would have endorsed, a primordial slithering toward life, always life. Woe—I do not know! But in that climactic moment, the walls of fear (and dignity?) that I’d built about me collapsed and my mouth dropped open.
“Euri. Pides,” said I.
The Barker pulled back an inch. His expression was something new.
“Euripides.” This time I got the fifth-century tragedian’s name out in a single breath. My voice was raw and multi-octave, not unlike the groaning of five rows of wooden benches when each person upon them leans forward in unison—which is precisely what happened.
For a moment I was as fearful as a child who has lost his mother. The Barker offered no solace. His face was a soup, churning and changing. The Kitten Chorus grew fidgety at the change in program and hissed to be set free. With trepidation I scanned the crowd of Ohioans. Moths danced near open flames like lingering particles of my spoken words.
There was nothing to do but complete what I had begun. Johnny, my patient English teacher, was owed that much.
“‘No. One. Can con. Fidently say. That. He will. Still. Be living. Tomorrow.’”
With a snap, a moth perished in fire. A pair of tickets were dropped; you could hear the thin paper rustle past the lace hem of a dress. Not a single man or woman or child in Ohio, it seemed, had expected the final quote of the evening to come from the Subject.
Their stares drove me to panic. What was I doing in front of all of these good people? Yes, of course, finish the scene! I rose to wobbly knees and lifted a trembling hand in salute. It was the usual end to the usual act and it was to be met with the usual scattering of hand-claps.
Instead, this humble gesture was the coup de grâce of a performance of legend. Dozens of breaths expelled at once and the pandemonium began. Men of poise shouted “Bravo!” Women abandoned decorum by squealing. Applause lit somewhere stage right and in seconds consumed the entire tent. They were on their feet. They were stomping on the pews. Those in line outside began lifting the edge of the tent to see what was behind the bedlam. Children’s faces appeared first; being monkeys, they smiled and clapped in imitation and crawled inside, and then their parents, those non-paying trespassers, streamed after in chase, clueless as to what had occurred but nonetheless bewitched, tipping their hats to the Barker, and to me as well.
I backpedaled from it and stumbled; a hand shot out to steady me. I followed the wrist, elbow, and shoulder to find that my rescuer was none other than my enemy. His mouth made a horizontal line that his forehead mimicked. I do not know if he’d guessed that I’d suspected my intended fate that night, but he could not get rid of me now, not after I’d generated this reaction.
The Barker and his fellows scooted me offstage with their hands at my back, as if congratulating me on a job well done. Once behind the curtain, they drew away as if I were boiling with contagion. Pullman Larry stood close tapping his spurred boot, gazing pointedly at a pocket watch that told of the late hour. Mr. Hobby was there, too, chewing at his mustache, his forehead slick with perspiration, a pencil behind each ear. The Barker held out my elbow to his most trusted associate.
“Remove the needles and take him to his cage. Make haste; our dentist is truant.”
Hobby winced apologetically. “They demand another show.”
The Barker blinked. “They—they what?”
Hobby winced again.
“The folks in line. They wish for Mr. Stick to give a command performance.”
Pullman Larry crossed his arms. “This is cow shit.”
“Our first audience,” continued Hobby, “has cycled around to see him again.”
“To see that comatose feller?” sputtered Pullman. “Y’all are pullin’ my leg.”
The Barker glared at me. This was my fault. I had put him in this position of having to choose between loathing and money. Really, it was no choice at all.
“Fine. We shall perform again. Send out word.”
Pullman’s hands gripped the handles of his twin pistols.
“This is a danged outrage!”
“You’ll be paid per usual,” snarled the Barker.
“I been playin’ the final spot here for a coon’s age and I ain’t about to watch no dang voodoo doll take my place!”
“I make the decisions here,” said the Barker. “You’ll do well to remember that.”
Pullman cocked and uncocked his triggers.
“You pack too many folks in there and whatever the secret is to his little trick? Mark my words, it won’t last. Then you’ll come crawling back to me and we’ll see what percentage I accept then, won’t we?” He planted his cowboy hat. “Make more coin selling my Gød of Pain anyhow. More than you’ll ever see!”
With a flail of pink fringe he turned on his three-inch heels and was gone. In the resultant flap of tarp, I caught a glimpse of Johnny outside, his face slack with either shock or pride. When the flap closed, there was something about it, even then, that felt final.
The Barker massaged his closed eyes for a moment.
“See to it there is no chaos in our queue, Mr. Hobby. You there, boy. Come here. Remove these needles into this box.” He sighed and gave me the flat look of an infantryman ordered to fight alongside a despised rival. “Yet another stupendous show is upon us.”