You there, greenie? Open up!! Come on, now! I need you!!
Thank goodness. Get some clothes on and come with me. Now. Come on, there’s not a moment to lose. I’ll fill you in on the way to the other bunkhouse.
Look, here’s what happened. About an hour ago, Murphy rounds me up along with Charlie and takes us out to one of the far parking lots – well away from the midway or the carnival – in one of the trucks, and dumps us out onto the lawn. From there we couldn’t even see the lights from the living lot. There’s no one around at all, it doesn’t feel like the world exists any more except for the three of us out there on the crushed grass and weeds the townies park on.
I don’t know what Murphy had said to Charlie before he got me there, but it must have been plenty. Charlie’s eyes were red and his face pale. Whatever he was going through wasn’t very pleasant.
Murphy spared nothing, ‘It’s time young Tony hears the truth, Charlie,’ he started out. ‘He needs to understand and know the real reasons why the two of you are here.’
‘I know the reason why,’ I interrupted, feeling angry. ‘It’s because Charlie drinks too much and can’t run things on his own.’
If Murphy seemed shocked by what I’d just said, Charlie didn’t. He seemed to know it was coming. ‘No,’ he started in on me, ‘the problem is that you think you can run everything by yourself – but you can’t! You’re just a kid and you have no idea what I have to go through!’
‘I know that you drink way too much and you don’t have any reason to,’ I yelled at him. ‘You just do it so you don’t have to look at me.’
‘That’s a lie,’ Charlie hissed back at me. Then his face changed, like he’d remembered something. ‘I started drinking because of what happened to your mother,’ Charlie said to me. ‘You just got the fallout from it.’ He went to get a drink from a bottle he’d hidden in his jacket, but Murphy slapped it out of his hands.
‘Tell him the whole thing, Charlie,’ Murphy said with a harshness in his voice I hadn’t heard before.
‘He’s too young,’ my father started to say, but Murphy interrupted.
‘He’s old enough to start drinking, brother.’ My pops looks stunned for a moment, so Murphy continues. ‘Yeah, that’s right. He’s on the same path you took yourself. The one I’ve been trying to get you off. And what do you think he’s gonna find once he gets on it? He’s a man, now, whether you want to admit it or not. It’s time he knows the truth.’
I look at each of them in turn. ‘The truth about what?’ I asked.
Murphy waited for Charlie to say something, and when Charlie didn’t, he started in, ‘There was an accident, see…’
‘Let me tell it,’ Charlie interrupted. ‘Tony, I’ve never told you this, but it is important for you to understand. Your mother’s death…’ he stopped for a moment, as if to catch his breath. ‘Your mother’s death,’ he began again, ‘was an accident, just like I always told you. But… but, it was an accident that I caused.’
He took another shaky breath, but seeing that Murphy and I were not going to interrupt him, he continued. ‘Your mother and I were having a fight. A horrible, terrible fight. And it was during this fight that your mother died. But it was an accident, Tony! I swear to you…’
But now I interrupted him. ‘What was this fight about?’ I asked, unbelieving. ‘What could possibly have pushed you that far?’
‘Because we found out that Frank had been…’ Charlie started, then stopped. He grabbed his head in his hands for a moment like it would explode, then he burst out, ‘We found out that Frank had been… sexual with you, Tony.’
I could’ve died right then. Just laid down and died.
‘We know Frank from before, Tony,’ Murphy started in. ‘He used to be with the outfit… a bunch of years ago, when your da was just starting out.’
Charlie held up his hand to stop Murphy from talking more. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he reached out with both hands to me and started talking quickly.
‘We had just figured out what had happened, and were trying to decide what to do. How to handle it. We were in the middle of nowhere, just yelling and screaming at each other,’ he said. ‘Not because we were angry at each other, but because we were beside ourselves about you! We were standing at the top of this embankment overlooking these railroad tracks.’ Charlie’s eyes watered as he remembered. ‘I had a hold of your mother by her arms and was yelling at her, shaking her… It was so wrong, but I was just so violent in those days when I was upset. Murphy was running over to where we were. I didn’t see that he was coming, but I saw your mother look at someone behind me and so I swung around ready to fight. I don’t know what happened – but somehow I ended up throwing your mother to get her out of the way. Throwing her so hard that she fell down the embankment. She hit her head on the steel tracks. She was dead by the time I got down to her.’
Murphy spoke, then, while Charlie cried wordlessly. ‘I saw her fall, too; there was nothing we could do. I knew it wasn’t your da’s fault, that it was an accident. And I made up my mind right there and then that I would stick by him and his story, even though we were afraid the law would think otherwise. When the police arrived, we told them she had just gone out walking, and when she hadn’t come back we had gone out looking and found her like that. They didn’t really care enough to make much of an investigation. But it was enough to worry us for a bit.’
Charlie was crying into his hands now, not looking at me. Murphy stood a bit away and, after a moment of thought, began telling me more. ‘Your father’s heart broke that day,’ he continued. ‘He’s never been the same since. And not just for the death of the woman that he loved so much, the light of his life who believed in him and his love of the show and the road… but almost more so for what had happened to his son. Running the show had consumed him, had blinded him to what he should have seen happening to you. That’s really when his drinking started.’
‘I’m so sorry, Tony, that it happened to you,’ Charlie sobbed. ‘So, so sorry!’
‘How could you let it?’ I yelled at Charlie now, not letting him touch me. I was reeling from finding out all of this. My father was involved in my mother’s death, and Frank had molested me. It was too much all in one go. Charlie fell to his knees again, his face in his hands. ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’ I asked him.
Murphy stepped in, his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. ‘Do you really think he didn’t?’ he demanded, spitting angrily. ‘For God’s sake, your father was set to murder the man right then and there. Your mother, Lord knows she wanted him dead, too. But she was the clearer thinking one of the two. She wanted us to call the sheriff and get the local law on him. That’s what the two of them were fighting about. It’s how this horrible thing happened.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ I asked. ‘Go to the cops, I mean, when you found out?’
‘Because we’re carnies, you damned fool,’ Murphy barked back. ‘We don’t get to go to the police like citizens do. You think they care about us? They don’t – and especially not back in those days.’ His tone softened a bit, but still held a hint of steel. ‘And for something like… that. We have something of our own code here, you know,’ he continued. ‘We have a way of handling our own. And, trust me, that was the plan – but then this horrible accident happened with your mother, and then there was an inquest from the law… and by the time we were free and clear to put our hands on him, Frank was gone.’
I sat down, then, all the strength gone from my legs. I wanted to crawl into the ground rather than towards Charlie. ‘Why didn’t you say anything when he showed up on the lot after Sam’s accident?’ I asked. ‘Why did you hire him?’
‘Dammit, Tony,’ Charlie burst out, ‘I didn’t hire him – you did!’ He wiped his face off, continuing, ‘Frank had already come up to me when we landed on the lot – he told me he had seen everything that happened between your mother and I, and that he knew I was responsible. And that he was going to go to the cops. He’d been in that town for a while, and he was probably a troublemaker there, too. But he’d been around them, those people, so his word would probably carry more weight than my word or Murphy’s with the law. Especially considering what had actually happened. And there were just too many unanswered questions in the first place.’
‘He showed up on the lot demanding I pay him to keep quiet,’ Charlie continued, ‘and I told him to bugger off. Then he was threatening to cause trouble at the show. It was blackmail, of course, but I figured he was bluffing and I was ready to call him on it. Then Sam gets that jolt…’
‘Probably something Frank set up to happen,’ interrupted Murphy. ‘He always was a wily one. It could just as easily have been me, or you, Charlie, or even you, Tony, who got zapped that day.’
Charlie nodded and continued, ‘And that’s when Frank made his play. Like I said, I was going to call him on it, not caring what he said to anyone at that point, but then you step up and make the move to hire him.’ Charlie took a breath, like he was embarrassed by the thought of what had happened. ‘I thought of saying something, but having you there… seeing you talk to him… it was all too much. I just plain lost my nerve.’
‘And once a part of the show, thanks to you,’ Murphy said, ‘Frank made good on his threats. He started demanding money from your da. Threatening to injure more people with the show if Charlie didn’t pay up.’
‘Still holding the threat of going to the police over my head, too,’ Charlie said. ‘It was just a rock, a hard place, and a fate worse than death.’
‘Why didn’t you fight him, Pops?’ I asked Charlie.
Charlie hung his head a little shamefacedly, then, saying, ‘I just couldn’t. All the memories of your mother – and you – it was just easier to pay up. And when I finally started bucking him a bit – getting ready to give him the boot, and police be damned – that’s when your accident happened. I couldn’t take another risk after that.’
Now it was my turn to be quiet. I guess I realised that my fire-breathing accident hadn’t been because of Charlie’s mistake, or mine, but because Frank was trying to get at Charlie through me. It was right then that I finally started realising what Charlie had been going through.
‘I never wanted anything to happen to you, son,’ Charlie was crying again. He reached for me blindly through his tears. ‘I should have told you. I should have told you,’ he repeated. ‘But I just wanted to protect you.’
‘But you didn’t protect me from him in the first place,’ is what I said to him then, the bitterness heavy in my voice. Suddenly, Murphy stepped up and slapped me across the mouth. He had never struck me in all the years he’d been with us – never.
‘You watch yourself,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘If any of us had had any idea about what he had been doing…’ He left the threat unfinished. ‘And ever since this bastard came on board, again, your father and I have been trying to figure out what to do. A way to get rid of him.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me what had happened,’ I demanded from Charlie, beginning to cry a bit myself. ‘Not just about Mum, but about Frank… and me… How could you not tell me?’
Charlie reached for me again… I guess to try and comfort me. But I wouldn’t let it happen.
‘I just thought you were so young,’ he explained, ‘I figured you wouldn’t remember. I hoped and I prayed you wouldn’t remember.’ He began to sob, again. ‘But I saw it in you. I saw that it had left its marks in you, Tony. Everything about the way you act just says it all to anyone who can read the signs. I tried to deny it, but I’m the one who studied psychology. I’m the one who’s supposed to know and understand this stuff. And I knew, and I understood it… and I still tried to deny it.’ Charlie’s tears were coming even harder now. ‘I’m sorry.’
I looked at the two of them for a moment. Then I turned around and started to run for the lot.
‘Where are you going?’ I heard Murphy yelling after me.
I turned, only for a moment, to see Murphy trying to pull Charlie up to his feet. My pops looked more broken and defeated than I had ever seen before – but I wouldn’t let myself stop. Not even for a moment.
‘I’m going to find out the truth,’ I yelled back at them. ‘And I’m not going to stop until I get it straight from him… No matter what it takes!’
And then I ran all the way here to get you, greenie. Now I want you to come over here with me… I’m going to call out Frank. I’m going to get the truth. And I’m going to do something about it all. Stick close to me, son – it’s time I set some things right.