“Fear!”
“Nameless dread!”
“Sleepless nights!”
Dr Alexander Potter sweeps his arm out dramatically, muffling a cough with the back of his other hand. “My friends, these are merely a few of the sundry maladies that plague the human condition. I, too – I, myself! – before discovering the healing powers of this amazing elixir, which I now hold in my hand, was afflicted with these very same troubles. Yes, the very same. Many was the night that I lay sleepless, restless, friendless even, such was the severity of my illness. Yes, friendless, I say because, like many a man, I turned to liquor – corn and mash – to ease my sorrows.”
He looks over the listless crowd below him, tucks another cough down into his shoulder in the guise of rubbing rain off his beard. The miserable, wet weather has settled into his lungs again. There are maybe thirty people standing in front of his garishly painted wagon, the sides of which proclaim in bold, colorful letters:
DR POTTER’S MEDICINE SHOW
Wonders of Nature
Illusions & Musical Delights
Medical Miracles
THE CHOCK-A-SAW SAGWA TONIC
Cures Complaints of Mind & Body
Low Price
VITAL FOR HEALTH
The small crowd has drizzle running off their hats and bonnets, the steady rain pooling in puddles underfoot. To a person, they look poor, dirty, and wrung out, or at least give a convincing imitation thereof. A bent-backed farmer grimly digs inside his hairy ear with a finger, while his bug-eyed, nervous children clutch at his scrawny wife’s skirts. Two dispirited prostitutes huddle together under a ratty parasol; one has a worse cough than Alexander, even, a viscous tubercular rattle that he can hear from forty feet away. To Alexander’s eyes, this pitiful excuse for a town looks as if a stronger rain than this one would wash it apart and sweep it away, all the way down to the Columbia. Perhaps for the best, he thinks. It’s like many of the towns they pass through, really. But, still, even with the rain coming down, there the people stand, wet and shivering, to see the entertainment. However shabby it may be.
“Now,” he continues, “now, I don’t begrudge any man a sip of liquor, should he feel the need. I, my friends, though, I was not a sipper, but a gulper. When at my whiskey I was a fighting man, quarrelsome and quick to fists – you know the type, I’m sure – and this rascality of mine drove those friends of which I speak right from me, like the Gadarene spirits, though I myself was the swine, if you understand my meaning.”
He continues his patter, tossing the words out to fall on uninterested ears. “But fear, I say: fear and sleepless nights, fighting and ill spirits brought on by whiskey. Why, you may ask? Why? Friends, I will tell you, so hear me well, I beg of you. These crippling maladies of the mind and spirit are mere artifacts of the maladies of the body! Artifacts! It is God’s own truth.” Alexander holds in another cough as he continues troweling on the bullshit that comprises his pitch.
“Complaints of the bowels! Headaches! Catarrh! Agues and fevers! Rheumatism, bleeding gums, lassitude and the jaundice! Good people, these are maladies of the body that, once cured, will perk the spirit of a man or a woman, a child or a grandfather. The healthy man sleeps like a baby at night, worn out from honest labors.”
Honest labors! he thinks.
“A woman, rosy cheeked in wellness, suffers not from black moods, but gathers her family unto her loving arms, of an evening.”
The molly rattles another wet cough, raises a stained handkerchief to her lips to spit.
“Friends,” Alexander continues, raising his arms as if in benediction, “I, myself, I was once a wretched, sickly man, racked by pains and fevers, sodden with drink, sleepless and pitiful. And now, look at me: I will not see sixty again and yet I am the very picture of health.” He chokes down another cough. “I have the vitality and strength of a man half my age, I tell you. Why, I would wrestle any young buck among you, right this moment, as Greek Herakles did Antaeus, if I did not fear for the cleanliness of my fine suit.” He pauses for laughter that is stillborn.
“Hurry it up, old man,” a voice shouts from the crowd.
Alexander knows that the townies are merely biding their time until the other acts start. He’ll be lucky if he sells two bottles of the elixir to these poor fools. He smiles as best he can, though, raises the bottle of Dr Hedwith’s Chock-a-saw Sagwa Tonic like a monstrance.
“My friends, I hold in my hand the secret of my robust health, the very elixir that healed me body and spirit, a mere tablespoon at a time. Such was my amazement at its efficacy that I closed up my own medical practice so that I might go out and share its powers with the citizens of this fair country, one town at a time. Now, as a medical doctor, I had some small talent; I say that with no false modesty. But Dr Morrison Hedwith, the creator of this amazing product, is a man of genius, a true visionary.” Alexander grits his teeth around his smile, swallowing something sour. “The good doctor is a man of science and learning, a master of the chemical arts after long study in the most prestigious universities of Europe. Taking that peerless knowledge, he spent years with the Red Savages of the Wyoming territories – and points eastward – learning the secrets of their medicine men, their shamans, knowledge forbidden to any white man before.”
He pauses dramatically. One man in the crowd is determinedly picking his nose and the molly continues to cough. “The Chock-a-saw Sagwa Tonic I hold in my hand contains a secret mixture of natural roots, herbs, and berries, a mysterious and powerful preparation of the Red Indians, which the good doctor has fortified and potentiated using a patented electro-chemical induction process, which binds these natural ingredients to a variety of rare minerals, creating a vital tonic that contains everything needed for robust good health.” In reality, the stuff is mostly cheap grain alcohol, laudanum, dandelion shoots, and tobacco for color.
Alexander opens the bottle and pours a generous measure into a large spoon, which he then ladles into his mouth. Swallowing, trying to ignore the taste, he works to keep his gorge down and his smile up. Behind the small crowd he can see fat Lyman Rhoades watching him, arms crossed, tapping his fingers along one elbow. Lyman cocks an eyebrow at him and smiles a sharp smile that makes Alexander’s stomach tighten further.
“You there, son,” Alexander calls out, pointing at a thin, spotty boy in the crowd, gangling and red-haired, with a wisp of gingery moustache that seems more the idea of a moustache than the thing itself.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Come on up here, lad.” When Ridley mounts the step to the wagon box, Alexander puts an arm around him. “You seem a strong young man.”
“Yes, sir?”
Alexander reaches down, picks up a heavy iron bar from the wagon bed. Leaning forward, he hands it to a large, surly man in the front row of the crowd. “Sir, feel that bar there, if you would. It’s heavy iron, is it not? Could you bend that bar, sir?”
The man narrows his eyes, gives the bar a halfhearted push. “Nah,” he mutters, handing it back, wiping his hands on his stained overalls.
Alexander gives the iron to Ridley. “You, son, how about you? Go on, give it a try.” Ridley hunkers down and squeezes, gritting his teeth and groaning elaborately.
“Not too much,” Alexander murmurs under his breath.
With a gasp, Ridley lets up. “Gosh, sir, no way could I bend that.” He hands the bar back to Alexander, at the same time stepping off the open end of the wagon with one foot, almost falling. As he flails his arms, kicking at the step and drawing the crowd’s eye, Alexander quickly switches the bar with the soft lead fake hidden behind him. Ridley regains his balance with help and then takes the new bar while Alexander pours a shot of the tonic into his spoon, cautioning him about the step as he hands it over. Trying not to wince, Ridley gulps it down. “Why, it tastes good!”
“Now, just wait a moment, son. Do you feel it? Can you feel the revitalizing electro-medicinal atoms spreading through your system, after mere seconds? Tell me that you don’t.”
All Ridley feels is incipient nausea. “Gosh, sir, I think I do!”
“Now son, you are too young to know the perils of whiskey, but instead of enervating you as does liquor, this tonic is energizing you, as we speak, binding to your blood and organs and infusing them with a boost of health. Try that bar, now. Go on, try it! See if you can’t bend it.”
“I don’t know, sir.” Ridley hefts the bar doubtfully. “It’s awful thick.”
“Go on, son! You have the Chock-a-saw Sagwa in you now!”
Furrowing his brow, leaning over, Ridley goes through the motions of bending the soft lead bar, overdoing the dramatics per usual, to Alexander’s eye. As a shill, the boy leaves much to be desired, but he’s learning. Alexander doesn’t kid himself that any but the dimmest in the crowd will be convinced by their foolery. Some random stranger that no one knows, picked from the tip to demonstrate the healing powers of the patent medicine? Of course it’s a plant. It’s an expected part of the act, though; routine theatrics, nothing more. Alexander is required to be a showman as much as a salesman. Most who choose to spend their two dollars on the tonic would be buying it for the alcohol and opium it contains anyway, although some hopefuls would be curious to see if it’s any more effective than Killmer’s Swamp Root or Brandreth’s Vegetable Universal, both as useless – but less dangerous – than the Sagwa.
Ridley has the bar bent into a U. Red-faced and gasping, he cries, “I did it! This tonic is a miracle!”
Biting off another cough behind his teeth, Alexander smiles at the crowd, opening the cash box.
Later, near sunset, Alexander walks around the tents of the show. The rain has let up only slightly and the sky is darkening, the clouds heavy and sullen overhead. From the main tent he can hear Mercy singing L’amour est un Oiseau Rebelle to the wheezing of her battered, tuneless accordion, the chords gasping out around bent reeds, staggering in and out of time because the old Pancotti is too big for her to easily play. Lyman will no doubt find some takers for Mercy, after the show, in the small tent he pompously styles Le Palais de Eros: she’s pretty, French, and sings like a nightingale, representing quite an upgrade from the haggard, consumptive girls already working the horizontal trade in this town.
Lyman, in his robed guise as Lymandostro the Magnificent, Master of Illusions, is sitting on a stump behind a wagon, listening to his wife sing. He gives Alexander that knife of a smile again, rubbing a meaty thumb and forefinger together. Alexander ignores him, passing on to the other side of the main tent, thinking, as he always does, that a magician shouldn’t be fat.
A few feet away, Oliver is standing outside Ah Fan’s fortunetelling tent, cupping a cigarette in his palm. A leopardskin robe is pulled around his broad shoulders; under the robe he wears very little, even in the wet chill. Oliver squints at the townies milling about, on the lookout for trouble. The Black Hercules is big enough that he doesn’t fear much danger directed at himself, but feeling against the Chinese still runs hot at times, particularly when the yokels get bored and restless and have some liquor in them. Ah Fan’s tent glows with lamplight and smells of the incense he burns to seem more mysterious. Their last fortuneteller, the ill-fated, blind Colonel Batts, had read from a similar script to Ah Fan but, because Fan is a Celestial, he somehow seems more legitimate to the rubes. Or at least he’s more successful, judging from the amount of money he brings in. Mystery and legitimacy don’t preclude trouble when a drunken townie looks to raise some hell, though, so Oliver has taken to standing guard near Ah Fan’s tent after his own strongman show is done.
Alexander stands beside the Black Hercules, rolling a cigarette of his own and accepting a light. Drawing the smoke into his lungs makes him start coughing again, so he opens a bottle of the Sagwa that he keeps in his pocket, grimacing as he swallows. The opium in it will help his cough at least.
“You using that stuff too much,” Oliver says, nodding at the bottle. “You’ll wind up like Fan.”
Alexander looks up at the big man, shaking his head while trying to scrape the taste of the stuff from his tongue with his front teeth.
“You think it can’t get worse?” Oliver asks.
Alexander just shrugs, drawing on his cigarette again. “How was the show?”
“Same shit, man. Same shit. Shoulder’s still a bit sore.”
“You should take some Sagwa for that.”
“Shit, old man.”
Alexander smiles, and then becomes serious. “Lyman say anything to you?” It will happen two nights from now, one way or another. Lyman’s work. Their own, if they’re lucky. He wishes Pascal were here, although he’s not sure what else the Frenchman could do that he hasn’t already. It’s on me, now, Alexander thinks. This is the best chance they’re likely to get. Unconsciously, he touches his pocket.
“Naw.” Oliver closes his eyes, sighing. “Not yet.” There’s a pause. Oliver looks around, lowers his voice to the barest of whispers. “Are you sure about this, Alex?”
“Of course I’m not fucking sure. But…” He trails off, shaking his head. “Listen, you want to back out? I can do it all myself, you know. Really. You don’t have to get involved.” He doesn’t mean it like that, it’s just the truth, but Oliver glares at him for a moment, anyway, before looking away to scan the crowd for trouble again.
They’re quiet for a time, smoking and watching the drizzle run down the tents. A woman comes out of Ah Fan’s tent, pulling her shawl closer around her head. It’s the coughing molly. She starts, caught off-guard, before regaining her composure. “Now that’s a big buck,” she says, running her eyes over Oliver appraisingly. She turns to Alexander. “You come see me, medicine man, you won’t be sorry.” Her insincere smile turns into another cough and she turns away, walking off through the rain, handkerchief to her mouth.
“Be sure to try the Chock-a-saw Sagwa Tonic for that cough, madam!” Alexander calls after her. The tent flap opens and Ah Fan leans out, fiddling with his queue. His eyes are rheumy and his nose is running. Alexander can tell that he needs a pipe. “Go on, then, Fan. There’s no one waiting.” The flap closes again.
Alexander pulls out his pocket watch and checks the time. Mercy is done singing and Lyman’s show will be starting soon. He wants to check on the others before he has to go to the main tent and hawk the Sagwa again. He’d only unloaded a few bottles the first time around but, later in the evening, the festive atmosphere will hopefully contribute to better sales. There are also the other bottles that needed selling – or giving – but he just hadn’t had the heart to do that yet.
“Be seeing you, son,” he says to Oliver. “Watch yourself.”
“Always do.”
The special tent is set away from the others, the flap chained shut. Unlike the rest, with their bright, brassy colors, this one is simple black oiled canvas. Even in daylight it somehow seems ominous but, now, the sun failing, it draws the gloom even more. This tent won’t be opened until well after nightfall. Lyman will be pitching the rubes on its delights, wonders and horrors to be seen only after dark. Some things shouldn’t see the light of day, Alexander thinks, not for the first time. He fishes the key out of his pocket and opens the lock, pulling the flap aside enough to step through. There’s a movement at the back.
“It’s just me,” Alexander says, lighting the candle that he knows will be on the barrel to the side of the door. He breathes in the oily, dusty smell, overlaid with something organic and foul. “How are they?”
“Quiet.” Ridley steps into the candlelight. “Pretty much just sleeping, although Rula was doing some moaning earlier. She quieted back down a while ago.” He pauses. “So how’d I do? Today I mean, with the act.”
Alexander checks a sigh. “Kid, you’re getting better but you’re still overdoing it. You need to dial it down some. It’s too obvious.” He can see the boy deflate. Really, Alexander doesn’t even want Ridley with them, at all, but he keeps making excuses to be shucked of him. Having the boy around as a general dogsbody and part-time shill is fine, but he wants him gone before Lyman takes an interest. “You’re getting better, though,” he adds. He knows he shouldn’t encourage him, but he hates seeing him mope.
Ridley brightens. “I’ll keep working on it, Dr Potter. You bet.”
Alexander claps him on the shoulder as he walks past, raising the candle to the first cage. Bascom the Halfhead is sleeping, curled around the ragged doll he keeps with him at all times. Every so often he twitches with some dream. In the next cage is Holly Long-Eye, her stalks drawn in and closed. She’s rocking back and forth on the stumps of her legs, humming to herself.
Rula is in the last cage, her eyes open and empty. She has no real mouth to speak of but can make a range of noises in her throat and, from the sound, Alexander can tell she’s crying again. He opens the cage door and puts his hand inside, patting her shapeless mass, resting his palm gently on her, trying to convey something with simple human contact. Her crying stops for a moment and one blue eye briefly regains focus, staring at him helplessly before fading out again.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Alexander closes his eyes and breathes out, gathering himself, and then shuts and locks the cage again. He turns to Ridley. “Now, you get the gaffs all set up and those bottles wiped and clean. Doesn’t do any good if no one can see inside, does it? But not too clean, of course. Keep some mystery. Then make sure that those three get fed and don’t you tease them any. Just feed them and get them ready. I’ll be back here a bit later and you be gone by then, all right? Check in with Oliver and see if he needs help with anything. And stay away from the townies. Got it?” He knows that it isn’t necessary to tell Ridley all this, that the boy knows his job by now, but it helps him to focus his own mind on something other than Rula and the others and what will happen, two nights from now. What could happen.
“Yes, sir.”
He claps him on the shoulder again. “All right, then.” Alexander leaves the tent, looping the chain, and walks back through the rain. He reaches into his jacket for the bottle of Sagwa and takes another sip. When he replaces it, Alexander feels the bony press of the thing in his pocket. A finger, wrapped in a handkerchief that’s stiff with dried blood. The message, hidden in a lesson.
He looks up. It’s almost full dark now.