Dummy

WHEN I MET GRANT, HE RAN A MODERN version of a sideshow and performed in bars and small concert venues around the province. His troupe of six was performing in a large club on Bloor Street in Toronto, and the place was packed.

For two years, I spent a lot of time with Grant. We would get together for coffee or meals, which were mostly on me. Occasionally, we would go to magic shows or live music performances put on by people Grant knew. My world seemed to expand greatly. Through Grant I met musicians and performance artists. I met a man who had run a travelling circus for several decades. I met an advocate of extreme body modification who was polite and soft-spoken and looked like a banker. Under his clothes, I was informed later, he’d had things done to himself that I was assured I did not want to see. I met a young woman who told me how being suspended in mid-air by shark hooks pierced through her back was therapeutic and relaxing. I took all this in, wide-eyed and naive as a child. It didn’t take long before I was hooked in my own way.

But, as time went on, Grant’s audiences dwindled. He was playing in much smaller venues that were maybe half full, and his troupe was reduced to him and one assistant.

“It’s because these other pricks have come along and copied me,” Grant said. “Their shows are garbage. They have no class. And they stole my tricks.”

He was right that competition had emerged. A handful of similar companies were putting on shows. Some were using the same routines that he did, though most of the acts had been around for years and were not his to begin with.

That aside, everything he said about his competitors was true. I went to see a couple of the other shows, and they were crude. The patter was sexual, the volunteers from the audience were insulted and abused, and the audiences loved it. While Grant’s show was not a family event, to his credit he never swore on stage or made vulgar comments. That was probably part of his slow and steady decline.

In several cases, the performers in these new troupes had worked previously for Grant. This was an affront that wounded him deeply. “I taught them everything,” he said, “and this is how they repay me.”

One day, Grant decided to shut down the stage show and return to something he’d done successfully in his youth. He went on the road for the summer with the large carnival circuit that made its way across Canada, playing all the major fairs and exhibitions.

He took the Wonder Wagon with him. This was a trailer converted into a tiny museum. It was the kind of show known in carnival parlance as a grind: customers entered at the front and walked along a passage the length of the vehicle. On their left was a row of oddities. There was a stuffed two-headed calf, which was real, if slightly moth eaten. There was the ossified body of The Giant Rat of Sumatra, ostensibly caught by a world-famous hunter more than a century before, but actually manufactured in Grant’s workshop in 1996. There was also the footprint of a Sasquatch, embedded in a tabletop size slab of dried river mud, and what purported to be the desiccated corpse of a real angel. The public ate it up.

The item in the tent that drew the most attention, and the most gasps of astonishment, however, was Otto the Homicidal Dummy. Otto was a standard ventriloquist’s dummy, about three feet high, with the necessary mechanisms for the ventriloquist to operate his mouth and eyes. Grant had painted Otto in a way that made him look crazed indeed, with piercing yellow eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth. His hands were unusually detailed for a dummy’s, with fingers that curved like talons, ending in sharpened nails.

A calligraphed legend on a large show card told Otto’s story. He had been found on the workbench of a puppet maker whose body lay on the floor, a chisel embedded in his neck. As part of the puppet maker’s estate, Otto was sold to a ventriloquist who used him for only a matter of weeks. For unknown reasons, the ventriloquist put Otto in a trunk. Then, one day, the ventriloquist was found brutally murdered in his dressing room, the trunk lid open, and Otto sitting in a chair, splattered with blood and grinning madly. Two more murders followed before Otto’s true nature was realized, and now he sat here, wrapped in heavy chains secured with a large padlock, where he could no longer do any harm.

Even though I knew that everything about Otto was fake, when I visited the Wonder Wagon one afternoon in late summer and saw him seated on his wooden chair, staring coldly out at the world, I felt uneasy.

“He’s really creepy,” I said to Grant.

“Of course he is,” Grant said. “After all, he’s killed at least four people.”

It wasn’t just me who felt creeped out by Otto. There was frequently a bottleneck of gawkers in the narrow passageway in front of Otto’s display. He looked for all the world as if he was about to speak. If he did, I wondered whether he would hurl insults or wheedle for his release.

I knew that Grant was making very good money. I had seen the swarms lining up to enter the Wonder Wagon at the CNE the year before. Now, Grant figured that if he added a second attraction, and they sat side-by-side on the lot, he could make more than twice as much.

“It’s going to be a big moneymaker,” he assured me. “A real mermaid.”

“Real?” I laughed.

“As real as they come,” he said. “I’m taking a Living Mermaid out on the circuit. I’ve got my spots booked here, Edmonton, Regina, the whole way, and now I just need to get the display built.”

I did not know it at the time, but the Living Mermaid illusion was old, tried and true. But then I thought that Grant was onto something new and unique. It was only later that I realized that none of his ideas was original. He just had a flair for repackaging them in a faux-Victorian, steampunk style.

Grant went to the bank to get a loan. I couldn’t imagine how it sounded when he asked the bank loan officer for money to build a home for a real live mermaid, but he was turned down cold. Aside from the unusual nature of the request, Grant ran his business in an unprofessional way. He had not filed a tax return in more than a decade, so he had no proof of income. He had nothing to put up as collateral. The bank was not interested in his collection of sideshow memorabilia.

“Those bastards,” Grant said. “They won’t give me a penny. You know me. I have no credit card, no mortgage. I don’t owe any money so I can’t borrow any money. What a bullshit system. They’re so petty and small minded. This is going to be a great moneymaker. All I need is three grand. They’re ruining me. Assholes.”

The details of how it came to be don’t matter, but the upshot was that I loaned Grant the money to get the Living Mermaid finished. The deal was simple. He’d pay me back as soon as possible from the proceeds. I’d seen how people flocked to the Wonder Wagon. Repayment should take him no time at all. We shook hands and then we went for lunch, for which I paid.

Grant invited me to the apartment he shared with his girlfriend Zoe, and that’s when I first saw the Living Mermaid. It didn’t look like much, just a large plywood box on top of which sat a clear glass bowl filled with what appeared to be water, like a goldfish bowl waiting for a fish.

Grant sat on a chair hacking at a piece of wood with a hunting knife. Curled shavings lay on the floor by his feet. “Well,” he asked, “what do you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s, um, a little plain.”

“You have no vision,” Grant said. “You have no faith. Zoe, let’s see the magic.”

She went around behind the box and ducked below the top of it. She vanished from sight for a few moments, and then she appeared again, as if shrunken and floating in the bowl.

“Shut your mouth and wave to her,” Grant said. Obediently, I raised my right hand and moved it slightly from side to side. From inside the bowl, Zoe smiled and waved back.

“Jesus,” I said as Zoe left the bowl and re-emerged from behind the box. “That’s fantastic. How do you do that?”

“Well first,” Grant said, “you go to the South Seas and you get yourself a mermaid. Then you hire somebody to build you a display for it. Then you take it on the road. If you have the money.”

Then came the new pitch.

“Here’s the situation, buddy,” he said. “I need to take the Mermaid on the road with me in three weeks. They’re expecting her in Winnipeg on the thirtieth. They’re expecting her in Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, everywhere. And this --” he pointed at the unadorned box, “-- is as close to finished as I’m able to get it.”

“How’s that?”

“There’s still a whole bunch of finishing that needs to be done. Structural stuff that I can’t do but the guy who built it for me can.”

“So why not ask him to do it?”

“I did, but he wants money.” Grant said this as if it was an unreasonable request.

“So pay him. What happened to all the dough I loaned you?”

“That’s long gone,” he said with a wave of his hand.

“Well this thing is going to make a fortune.” I could imagine the people lining up and going back again and again. I could imagine the children dragging their parents along multiple times. “Can’t you pay him at the end of the season, or send him money from the road?”

“That’s money I don’t have yet. And Mike wants it now. Besides, do you know how much it costs me up front to get out on the road every year? Without having to pay for a new attraction?” I had no idea but Grant did not bother waiting for me to tell him so. “It takes more than I’ve got. I need to get the car tuned up. I need the Wonder Wagon fixed up. I need cash for gas, for meals, for motels. I have to pay the girls for their time.” He shook his head in exasperation.

“And I have to buy mermaid food. Do you know how much mermaid food costs these days?” He said it with a straight face that he held for some time. “Look, I just need a bit more. Just to get the thing done and get it to Winnipeg. Then the money’s going to pour in and I’ll be able to pay you back in no time.”

I glanced at the empty goldfish bowl and pictured Zoe in a mermaid’s tale floating languidly in the water. “How much more?” I asked.

“First off, I need a grand for Mike to finish the thing. Plus two grand for the vehicles.” The list went on from there, the figure ending up being more than I’d hoped, but I didn’t want to back out. It was important to me to be the guy who had made the mermaid happen. “Okay,” I said, sighing more heavily than I intended. “I’ll bring that tomorrow.”

“Excellent,” he said. “If you were a chick, I’d name the mermaid after you.”

As it was, he named the mermaid Nerissa. “It means from the sea,” he said. “I found it on Wikipedia.”

Once we’d agreed on terms, I asked, “Is that thing you’re whittling part of the Mermaid?”

He held up the stick, about two feet long, and becoming pointed at the end that he was carving. “This is the other thing I was telling you about.”

“Which?” Grant had told me many stories.

“The genuine sixteenth century vampire killing kit. This is part of it.”

When he had first mentioned that the kit was being added to the show, I half believed it was true. Grant spoke of improbable things with a showman’s intensity, so that those listening often got caught up in the fervour, and rational thought left their heads.

It annoyed me that I felt disappointment at this revelation, given that Grant’s original story could not possibly have been true.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m putting it in the wagon next to Otto.” He gave me no more details, just chuckled and kept whittling. Occasionally, he would stop, hold the stake up for inspection, and then continue to work. He tested the point with his fingertip and shook his head. I left him honing the sharp end.

Two weeks later, the Living Mermaid attraction was completed, and the car and trailer pronounced roadworthy. Grant and Zoe sat in the front seat. Angela, who was travelling with them as the alternate mermaid, climbed in the back. As Grant pulled away from the curb he stuck his head out the window and yelled at me, “See you in Regina.” Then he swerved into his lane and rattled towards the highway.

Mike, who lived nearby, was standing a few feet away from me. I was surprised to see him watching the departure. “It’s nice of you to see them off,” I said.

He laughed. “I just wanted to check if he’d head in the right direction.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s dumb as a post,” Mike said. “He told me where he was heading and asked me if that was west or not.” He shook his head.

I felt protective of Grant, now that we were partners. “Well,” I said, “at least you got your thousand dollars.”

“Thousand?” he laughed. “Bastard gave me five hundred.”

Pioneer Days in Regina was like every other fair I had ever been to. There were the expected midway rides, games that were almost impossible to win, live music from bands that would never make it, agricultural displays that only the entrants cared about. It was the standard line up. I found Grant and the Living Mermaid at the far end of the midway, right next to his Wonder Wagon.

I stood across the lot and surveyed Grant’s empire. With lurid images twelve feet high, the banners outside the wagon promoted the attractions on display inside. All the creatures were presented wild-eyed and maniacal. The only one that would not disappoint was Otto.

The Living Mermaid was in a tent a few yards west of the wagon. Grant had painted a spectacular banner that proclaimed “Nerissa, the Living Mermaid” and showed her swimming with tropical fish among coral reefs. By Grant’s standards, it was only slightly hyperbolic.

“Welcome to show business,” Grant said as I approached. “You all ready for the razzle dazzle?”

First, he showed me the Living Mermaid’s tent. The set-up was much more impressive than it had been in Grant’s place. The box was draped in sea green cloth painted with fish and disproportionately large seahorses. In the background was a vague mermaid-like figure. Two small spotlights suspended from the top of the tent threw glowing highlights on the surface of the bowl. Mike had explained to me that the bowl contained mineral oil rather than water. Although they looked much the same to the audience, the oil was a much better reflective surface. Two carefully positioned mirrors inside the box directed the mermaid’s image onto the oil.

What the audience saw, from several feet away, behind a thigh-high cordon of gold braid, looked like a mermaid, tail and all, floating placidly underwater. Conversely, the mermaid could see the patrons and would wave and blow the occasional kiss.

People loved the illusion. Children squealed in delight. Teenagers scoffed at the falseness of it, even though they could not figure out how it was done and often went back again and again. Adults usually took it good-naturedly. No one seemed to mind that they’d been tricked.

But sometimes visitors would get carried away. “I’ve had people making out,” Angela told me later, “and a bunch of guys showing me their junk.” She shook her head. “Maybe they think that because the mermaid is small, they’ll look big.”

Grant laughed at things like that. He didn’t care what the customers did as long as they paid. “They’re rubes,” he said. “They’re meal tickets. They’re stupid enough to give me their money.”

After the mermaid, Grant gave me the rest of the tour. Behind the scenes, the carnival was far from dazzling. He showed me the cookhouse, which was a much-repaired tent that had spent years soaking up the odours of French fries, gravy, and tobacco smoke. He showed me the communal showers, which made the bottoms of my feet start to itch. He showed me the backs of the game booths, held together with duct tape and clumsy stitches.

Everything felt run down, worn out, and patched up. That included the people who worked there. He introduced me to his friends on the lot. Most of them were only halfway into a summer full of eighteen-hour days, rowdy locals, unpredictable weather, and too little sleep.

There was George, who had run a photo booth on carnival lots for decades. There was Walter, who operated an Over/Under booth, and had two disturbingly realistic eyes tattooed on the back of his bald head. And there was Karl, who sat behind the Bust-a-Balloon game, inflating replacement targets. As we passed by, several other carnies gave Grant looks that ranged from casual indifference to outright hostility. He didn’t seem to notice. He smiled broadly and strutted by, eyes fixed on what lay ahead.

Grant took me to Doc Graham’s Coffee Café, where the doc sold overpriced hot drinks. We took the cups that I paid for to one of the plastic tables behind the stand and sat under a tree. It was one of the few shady spots on the midway.

“What do you think?” Grant asked me. “How’s carny life?”

“So far so good.”

“It’s the life, that’s for sure.”

I took a sip and asked, “How does this show usually do for you? Good crowds?” I was looking out over the midway so I could not see Grant’s face. There was a pause.

“You never know,” he said quietly. “It’s a crapshoot.” He stood up and looked at his watch. “Shit,” he said, “I have to go relieve Zoe.”

The way the set-up was supposed to work was that Zoe and Angela would take turns as the mermaid. Being crammed inside the box took a toll on them. Their muscles would cramp. It was hot, and the air was bad. After about an hour, they would have to change up. Then, Grant closed the attraction, opened the door at the back of the box, and let one mermaid slither out and the other one take her place.

While they alternated in the fish bowl, Grant was supposed to be out front taking tickets, rotating shifts with a local kid. That didn’t last long. Grant was not happy with the kid’s demeanour. I’m not sure what the problem was. Maybe he looked the wrong way at Zoe, but I think it was more likely that Grant realized that he didn’t actually have to pay anyone else if he made his existing staff do double duty.

Most of the time, it didn’t work out as planned. Grant would come up with some errand that he had to run, or someone he needed to see, and disappear for hours on end. From the time the fair opened at eleven in the morning until it closed at one the next morning, Angela and Zoe worked more or less non-stop.

There was only one mermaid tail and one wig, and as the day went on they became increasingly soaked with sweat. Neither Zoe nor Angela was thrilled about having to put on the drenched costume, and it took longer each time. This annoyed Grant. He would check his watch and scowl and mutter. Once, when Angela came out of the tent, he said, “Took you long enough. Do you know how many customers I had to turn away?”

“Yeah? Well you try putting on that shit in a hurry.” She stormed off.

“Hey,” Grant yelled after her, “you have to take tickets.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

There was nothing he could do. Without Angela, there was only half a show. He turned and looked at me. “Take tickets for a minute, will you? There’s something I need to do.”

I didn’t bother asking him about getting paid. I just picked up the scanner.

Grant was gone for three hours. His frequent absences had been a problem through the entire run. Zoe never complained much but Angela did enough for both of them. She told me that he was always going off to do something or other, never coming back when he was supposed to, never explaining, never apologizing. Once he was gone so long that Zoe was stuck in the box for almost four hours and came out too dizzy and sick to do anything else for the rest of the day. For a while, Angela thought that Zoe might have heatstroke, but by the next morning she was back waving to the crowd.

“He is such a cheap fucker,” Angela said to me one morning over coffee.

“So why don’t you pack up and leave?”

She shrugged. She had walked on broken glass and eaten bugs in Grant’s stage show, and that did not necessarily open up a wealth of employment opportunities. “I dunno. What else am I going to do? Go home and work at Timmy’s?”

In his spare time, Grant kept working on the vampire killing kit. I had never watched him work on an attraction before and was struck by how meticulous he was. He would paint and repaint, not happy with how old the various elements looked. He carved half a dozen different stakes. He would lay them out side by side and study them from various angles to determine which one looked the most genuine and made the greatest impact. He checked the look of each item in different lighting, going into the wagon before the fair opened.

I went in with him twice as he stood staring into the space he planned to use for the display. He would say nothing, then would hold out each of the various stakes and turn them around, pointing left, pointing right, up or down. Once, with a grunt of disdain, he tossed one onto the floor and abruptly turned and walked outside.

One morning he said to me, “I need to go downtown and run an errand. Let’s grab a cab.”

We got in the back of the car, and Grant said, “Hey, how are you today --” he looked at the cabbie’s ID “-- Ahmed?”

“I’m fine, sir, fine. How are you?”

“Just great, thanks.”

“Where would you like to go?”

“You need to tell us,” Grant said, and I saw Ahmed glance into the rearview to see if he was being had.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I need to get a satchel,” Grant said. He was gesturing with his hands but I don’t think Ahmed could see.

“A satchel?”

“Yeah, you know, like a doctor’s bag. An old one. Leather. You know, that opens from the top. A black one. Do you know any places that sell old things like that?”

Ahmed, it turned out, knew several places. The first one we went to had something that was close. While Ahmed waited in the cab with the metre running, Grant gave the satchel his usual careful scrutiny, then said, “This might do. I’ll take it.” He turned to me. It’s for the vampire kit. “Can you put it on your card and I’ll pay you back?” And I knew what kind of day it was going to be.

In the end, we went to six different places to look for doctor’s bags and found three that had possibilities. I paid for all of them. We also stopped at a western wear place because Grant got the notion that he wanted a cowboy shirt.

When we pulled up out front, he said to Ahmed, “Can you turn the engine off and leave the meter going?”

“Yes, Grant.” By that point we were all on a first name basis.

“Great, come on in.” We went inside and Grant looked around with enthusiasm, though he tried nothing on. Ahmed seemed to enjoy himself as well. I was the only one who bought a shirt.

When Ahmed dropped us back at the fair, I had my card out before Grant could mention it. I really did not want to hear him ask. We’d been gone for hours, and the fare was steep. I added a good tip because it wasn’t Ahmed’s fault. He thanked us profusely and drove away.

“So what now?” I asked.

Grant handed me the satchels. “Take these to the wagon,” he said. “There’s something I have to do.”

Out of the blue, four days into the run, the local kid whom Grant had hired to take tickets at the Wonder Wagon quit. He’d been offered a better job at the Birthday Game. There was an unwritten rule about not poaching other people’s employees. Grant told me he was going to complain to the guys who ran the Birthday booth but he never did. I’d seen those guys, and I didn’t blame him.

“I got a problem now that dickhead has bailed,” he said. “The girls are getting on my ass about wanting some time off. And I’m busy. I got things to do. I can’t always plan my day for their convenience, so they can just hang out while I’m taking tickets. Look, if I could put on that mermaid get up and crawl into the box, I would, but that’s not possible. One of them has to be in there, and the other one has to be taking tickets. I got the wagon to run and I can’t be two places at once.”

He stopped for breath, and I said, “So what are you saying?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m asking you to take tickets, scan wrist bands, do like that for an hour or two so I can give Zoe a break.”

I liked Zoe and figured she could probably use some time. “Sure, I can do that,” I said. “You don’t even have to pay me.”

Grant looked startled. “Good,” he said, “because I had no intention of paying you. You’re doing this as a favour for a pal.”

Taking tickets was a boring job, but it was also eye opening. I got a much better idea of how many people were going through the attraction every hour. Some had cardboard tickets that I put in a small metal box, but most had prepaid one-price wristbands with barcodes on them. I scanned each band as it was presented to me. A record of each one was kept on a database in the fair office. Grant then would be paid a percentage of the wristband cost for every entry.

People were streaming in to see both the Wonder Wagon and the Living Mermaid. Grant must have been making money hand over fist. No wonder he was so confident about being able to pay me back quickly.

On my second shift, everything was going well until the scanner broke. I was uncertain about what to do and the waiting people were impatient. I phoned Grant but he did not answer. Leaving a voicemail, I made an executive decision and simply let people in, keeping a count of everyone with a wristband. This seemed to be working well until Grant arrived.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

I held up the scanner. “It just stopped working.”

He took it from me roughly. “Well why are these people going in?”

“I had to make a call,” I said. “I’m keeping track.”

He looked at me fiercely. “Well that’s no fucking good. I won’t get paid for people who aren’t scanned in.”

“So what was I supposed to do?”

“Shut it down until I get this fixed.” He waved the scanner at me.

“What about people who have tickets?”

“Fuck them,” he said.

“Really?” I decided not to bother explaining to him that it was better to let some folks in free who might come back again and who were quite likely to tell their friends to visit. “It’s your show,” I said.

“Yeah, it is.” He turned to the people waiting in line. “We’re closed for awhile due to technical difficulties. Come back later. Half an hour and we should be good.” As the crowd started to drift away he turned to me and said, “No one goes in until I get back.”

It took him more than an hour, during which time I sat on the steps of the wagon and refused entry to everyone except those with cardboard tickets. After all, I still needed Grant to have some money coming in.

“Those idiots,” he said as he handed me the new scanner. “Stupid, stupid idiots.” He muttered off along the midway.

At least once a day, the scanner would quit working, and Grant would have to go and get a replacement, which would pack it in the following day. I asked around at a couple of the other attractions and no one else seemed to have that problem.

Still, people continued to line up for both attractions. On tickets alone, Grant must have been making a packet. That was why I was surprised when, halfway through the run, he gave me the word.

He was still working on the vampire killing kit behind the trailer. He was making another stake.

“This kit come with two stakes?” I asked.

“Naw. I tossed the other one. It didn’t look right. Not old enough. Not creepy enough.” He held up the new one, looked at it from several angles, then went on carving. “I have some bad news for you,” he said, not taking his eyes off the knife.

“How so?”

“They changed my deal.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I went into the office this afternoon to get that fucking scanner replaced they told me that our old deal is off and they’re cutting my take in half.”

I was startled by this unexpected news. “They can’t do that. You have a contract.”

“I have a contract but they have lots of money. They figure I’ll take it or leave the fair. Leaving is going to be worse. I’ll be stuck out here with no money, and no chance of making any, and a shit load of expenses to get all my stuff home.” He wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was fixed on the wood shavings curling away from the increasingly sharp stake. “I can’t afford a lawyer, so I’m stuck. They don’t care, the bastards. They want all the independents like me out anyway. They want the whole lot to be nothing but games and attractions that they own themselves.” He held up the stake and studied the point carefully. “With no independents, all the money stays in their pockets. The cheap bastards.”

I knew what the answer was going to be, but I had to ask anyway. “What about my money?”

He shrugged. “I’m not going to have it as fast as we thought. It may not be until next year when I get hooked up with a show that pays me what I’m worth. Sorry about that.” In his eyes I could read no remorse. “I’m getting sick and tired of people going out of their way to screw me.” Then he turned his attention from me to the stake.

I went to find somewhere quiet so I could think things through. My head was spinning. I went behind the row of games, watching the crowds thronging the midway in the gaps between the tents. I ran into Karl. He was sitting behind his booth, blowing up balloons with a hand pump. He put them into a large mesh bag, ready to be passed to Vince, the operator, who stood out front talking the marks in. Karl spent twelve hours a day blowing up balloons. They were attached to the board at the back of the booth, and a steady stream of suckers put down five bucks to get three darts and the chance to win a cheap and useless prize.

Every morning, Karl and Vince covered the board with balloons, a very few of them hiding small bits of paper on which coloured stars were printed. When a customer got lucky and popped a balloon that revealed a star, they won a prize.

I sat with Karl and listened to the thud of darts striking the backboard, the laughter and groans of the dart throwers and their friends, and the occasional bang and shrieks of joy and amazement when a balloon was hit.

That was Karl’s day: blowing up balloons and having them popped by strangers. He was sanguine about it. “It’s kind of an apt metaphor for life, wouldn’t you say? It’s pretty meaningless, as jobs go. But at least it’s obviously meaningless, not pretending like it matters.”

“I guess so,” I said. “At least you’re giving people hope that maybe the next throw will hit a star.”

“Maybe. But anybody who puts money into one of these sucker-traps is a fool.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

Angela found me the next morning sitting with a cup of coffee. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

“Just thinking about money stuff.”

She stared at me, waiting for more.

“Grant told me about the new deal with the carnival.”

“What new deal?”

“That they cut your percentage way back and that if he wants to leave the show he’s welcome to. But, if he stays on, it’s for a lower percentage.”

Angela laughed. “That’s news to me, and I bet it’s crap.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He owes you money, right? He’s probably trying to get out of paying you back. Betcha anything.”

I had seen Grant bend the truth many times when it came to expanding the scope of his success and the variety of his accomplishments. On a few occasions, I’d also suspected that what he said about other people and how they had mistreated him or stolen his ideas may not have accurately reflected reality. But I’d never imagined that he’d lie to me about money.

“No,” I said, “I can’t believe he’d do that.”

“Of course he would. How long have you known him? Have you not been paying attention?” She looked at me like I was an idiot. “There’s another reason he doesn’t want to pay you back, beyond just overall cheapness.”

“What’s that?”

“He wants to buy a guillotine.”

“What?”

“It’s an old illusion some guy in Red Deer is selling.”

“Red Deer?”

“Some place like that. It’s a great big thing.” She mimed the large dimensions. “Looks real. The blade comes down like a son of a bitch. Apparently, it’s real impressive.”

“And he’s buying this?”

“Yeah. For next season.” She ran a finger across her throat. “He wants to cut my head off ten times a day. Mine and Zoe’s. That’s where your money’s going.”

I thought about this for several seconds, trying to take it in. “Where is he now? Do you know?”

“In the wagon, I think.” She checked the time on her phone. “I have to get back to work.”

Grant was not at the wagon, nor at the Living Mermaid. Neither of the kids that Grant had finally hired to take tickets had seen him in hours. I started walking the lot looking, but it was very crowded and there was no sign of him.

When I came to George’s Class-E-Photo booth, I decided that it was good that Grant was nowhere around. I needed time to calm down and think everything through. I also realized that I needed a second opinion.

George took sepia-tinged images of people wearing cheap western garb. There seemed a limitless desire among fairgoers to look like gunfighters, dudes, or dancehall girls.

George had been travelling with carnivals for decades. He crossed Canada every summer and then headed down to the States for a few months. Somehow he had saved enough money to buy a house in Toronto and a winter home in Florida. He never seemed to mind the long hours and the extended periods away from home.

“The customers make it, man,” he told me. “I get people who’ve come here as kids every year and then they come back with their kids. I’m part of their family histories. I love that.”

His photos weren’t cheap, and they were somewhat tacky, and he would take two shots maximum and let people pick the one they wanted, but everyone seemed thrilled with the results, and no one complained about the price. At the end of every day, George had a large wad of cash, the only form of payment he took.

“I got it good,” he said. “I get paid for the photos, and then I hand the company its cut. I’m way better off than guys like Grant, who have to wait to get their share.” All the Crown and Anchor concessions and the other gambling games worked the same way. The operators scooped up coins all day long, paying out in winnings a fraction of what was gathered up with each spin of the wheel. They had people who spent all day in the back rolling coins so they could be taken to the bank. It was hard to imagine the cumulative weight of that money from all those operators, over the course of a ten-day fair.

“Speaking of money,” I asked him, “I heard a rumour that the company has changed the deal with the independents. Is that true?”

“News to me,” George said. “Mine hasn’t changed.” He didn’t ask me who’d shared the news with me, but he probably made an assumption.

“The word I got was that the company was passing on a smaller cut of wristbands.”

George shrugged. “Whoever told you that was lying. This is a carnival, man. It’s all about lies.”

When I got back to the Wonder Wagon, the ticket taker pointed towards the back. “He’s in there,” she said.

There was a narrow space running the length of the wagon, behind the displays. That’s where Grant loaded all the gear for his attractions while he was travelling and, once he was set up on the lot and the space was empty, he and Zoe slept in there. It was hot and airless and smelled bad, but it was free.

I banged on the door, and Grant opened it, looking annoyed.

Before he could speak, I asked, “So what’s this about a guillotine?”

Grant looked startled. He climbed out of the wagon and glanced from side to side as if searching for the person who had told me. Then he turned his gaze back to me and smiled. “Yeah, I was going to tell you about that. It’s a great opportunity. It’ll be a great attraction next year. Even bigger than Nerissa, ’cause it’ll have violence. Heads lopped off all day long. People love that kind of shit.”

“Yeah, but what about my money? I need that back. You said it was for the summer only.”

“Don’t worry. Don’t worry about your money. It’s all going to work out.” He was backing away as he said it. “Anyway, I got to go to the office. I gotta tell ’em about the guillotine. They’re going to get so excited about that and how much money it’s going to bring in, they’ll reinstate my deal for sure.” He was far enough away by then that he was almost yelling and people were turning to stare. Then, with a wave of his hand, he turned his back on me.

Karl was blowing up balloons and drinking beer.

“You heard anything about the bosses changing Vince’s deal?”

He was mid-inflation and shook his head. “I don’t understand the question,” he said as he tied off the balloon.

I explained what I had been told by Grant. “I’ve heard nothing, but then nobody tells me much anyway. You want a beer?” He took one for me, dripping water, from a cooler full of melting ice.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Karl was inflating another balloon and signaled for me to hold on for a second. When he could, he said, “You need leverage.”

“I got nothing.”

“No, but you can make yourself some. Take something. Figure out what he needs, and what he’ll pay for, take it, trade it, and go the fuck home.”

This had not occurred to me. “Take what, for instance?”

“Hey, don’t ask me to do all the work for you.”

“What if he gets rough?” I’d never been much of a fighter.

“Grant? Don’t worry. He’s got no balls. Besides, if he lays any tough-guy shit on you, you’ll have no trouble finding a dozen dudes on the lot who really are tough, who’d take him apart for you. They’d love to. They just need an excuse. Grant’s such an asshole. Everybody sees that except you.”

I had to wait until the fair shut down for the night. Grant had gone off with Zoe and Angela to walk around the lot and to check under the roller coasters for ground scores, stuff that had fallen out of people’s pockets when they were turned upside down. I watched them go and, when I thought they were far enough away, I went into the wagon.

In the dim light, it took some time to unfasten Otto from the chair. All the while, he was staring at me with his creepy, painted eyes. I picked him up and studied his face closely. Now that I was holding him, he looked garish but not as scary as before. I was turning to leave when Grant came in, the vampire stake in his hand. He was obviously startled to see me. I held Otto by his ankles behind me.

“What are you doing here?” Grant asked.

“Just looking around,” I stammered. “Why are you here?”

“Working on this.” He held up the stake. Then he noticed Otto and pointed the stake at him. “What do you think you’re doing with him?”

“I’m taking him with me. You can have him back when I get my money.”

Grant laughed. “Put him down.”

“Just pay me what you owe me, and I’ll give him back.”

“There is no money. I told you they changed my deal. There’s going to be barely enough cash for gas to get to Edmonton.”

“That’s not what I heard.” Grant pointed the stake at me and took a step forward. I swung Otto as hard as I could. There wasn’t enough room to do it sideways so I had to come down from the top, and Otto’s head smashed against Grant’s nose. Otto wasn’t heavy enough to do much damage, but the blow stunned Grant. He stopped, shook his head, and looked at me in surprise. Then he took another step towards me. I swung a second time, and Otto hit him again. Grant took a couple of involuntary steps backward. He was in a rage.

“Put him down!” he roared. “He’s mine! Put him down and get the hell out. This is my wagon. My show.”

“What about my money? You owe me that money!”

Grant glared at me, gesticulating with the stake. “Fuck you and your fucking money! You’re not going to get any money. That was an investment. There were no guarantees. I don’t owe you a fucking penny! And what the fuck right do you have to go around telling everbody on the lot about my business?”

That pulled me up short. I realized that I was screwed. I had a handshake deal with someone whose word meant nothing. No paperwork. No witnesses to the agreement. And if I walked out holding this goddamn dummy I wouldn’t get a hundred yards. He’d have the cops on me. I’d have to give Otto back. I’d have a lot of explaining to do. Things would just get even worse, and I didn’t need that. I looked Otto in his grinning, wooden face, but there was no help there.

I turned my back on Grant and headed for the exit. “Where are you going?” he yelled. “Put that dummy down! Give me Otto back!”

It took Grant a while to move, but when he did, he did so quickly. I could hear his steps behind me, breaking into a run.

I was almost to the door when I tossed Otto backwards as hard as I could, grunting, “Goddamn,” through teeth gritted so tightly my jaw hurt.

The clatter and thump of Otto hitting the floor was overlaid by the thudding of Grant’s heavy footsteps, a sudden cry of surprise, and another, louder sound, as if he had stumbled and fallen. But by then I was outside. I didn’t turn around. The evening was clear and cool. The air smelled fine.

I stood at the bottom of the Wonder Wagon’s steps and looked at the stars. I took slow, deep breaths until I felt myself relax. Then I began to wonder why Grant had not followed me. It wasn’t like him to be so quiet. It wouldn’t take that long to put Otto back on his chair.

I decided that there was no option but to talk with Grant again, make a rational argument. Hoping that he had calmed down as much as I had, I went back into the wagon.

Grant was lying in front of Otto’s empty display. The stake was jammed into his throat. Otto was on the floor between Grant’s feet. There was a lot of blood but no movement.

“Grant?” I said, though it was clear he could not answer. My stomach turned over, and my knees buckled. I turned and ran from the wagon, shocked and nauseous.

I was sitting on the steps with my head in my hands when Zoe and Angela returned.

“Have you seen Grant?” Zoe asked.

I pointed into the wagon with my thumb. She started to move past me.

“Don’t go in there,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s bad.” I was trembling now. “Otto did it again.” At first I thought the sound I was making was laughter, but then I realized it was something else.