Texas Summer (10 page)

“You could of got us killed,” said Harold.

“Are you crazy? I could of took him apart!”

“I ain’t talkin’ ’bout him — I’m talkin’ ’bout up on the wheel, the way you was swingin’ the chair like a dang maniac.”

“We done it before,” said Lawrence, looking surprised. “We done it last year. Remember?”

“Yeah, but not like that,” Harold insisted.

“Was you scared?” Lawrence wanted to know, leaning out to peer at him and grinning like a de-ment.

Now began another series of concession tents — these seemingly designed to catch the interest of the most simpleminded persons in attendance. The first was run by a man who sported a pencil mustache and a straw hat, both of the bygone style of the vaudeville stage. In each hand he held an ordinary rock, the size of a golf ball, and he would strike one against the other, punctuating his pitchman’s patter with the rifle-crack they made when he brought them together. Despite the rapid-fire delivery of his spiel, his face was without expression except for a quirky tic above the right corner of his mouth.

“Tell me something, boys” — his voice was a nasal singsong, speaking now directly to Harold and Lawrence as they approached — “when was the last time you had the extreme pleasure of breaking some of your momma’s Sunday dinner china? And didn’t it feel mighty good to break those Sunday dinner-plates into about a thousand pieces? You say you don’t know the feeling because you’ve never dared to do it? Well, I’ll tell you one thing, there aren’t many feelings that I would rate higher on the pleasure scale — oh maybe one or two, depending on your age, if you get my meaning, hee-hee-hee.” His laugh was grotesquely mechanical. “Yessir, I guess there’s really nothing to compare with the thrill of smashin’ those Sunday dinner-plates.”

“What the heck’s he talkin’ about?” demanded Big Lawrence.

“Danged if I know,” said Harold.

The pitchman was standing at a waist-high counter, and about twelve feet behind him was a structure just partly discernible because of a large cloth draped over it.

A small crowd had gathered, drawn by the indecipherable crack of the two rocks, and then held by the tic-face manner of the pitchman and the near hypnotic undulation of his patter.

“And now,” he went on, “you too can experience that wonderful thrill,” and he removed the cloth with a flourish. What was revealed looked like a big open china closet with dinner-plates on display, propped up vertically, facing the audience in rows of ten plates each.

Then, with considerable effort, the pitchman hefted a bushel basket to the counter — a basket filled with rocks like those he was holding.

“Two rocks for a nickel,” he announced, “and five for a dime.”

“Five!” said Lawrence, handing over a dime; he turned to Harold. “I always did wantta break some dang dinner-plates! Watch me go right down the whole line!”

He threw his first rock at the plate on the extreme left of the top shelf. He threw it as hard as he could, and it was wide.

“Throw at one in the middle,” advised Harold. “That way if you miss, you might hit one on either side of it.”

“Are you crazy?” demanded Lawrence. “I’m goin’ right down the line!” This time he threw with more control and shattered the plate he was aiming at. Although these “plates” were approximately the same size as ordinary dinnerware, they had been made of common red-dirt clay, indigenous to the region, and then dipped into a tub of whitewash. Lawrence proceeded to break three more in a row, but was dissatisfied with the dull crumpling sound they made when they broke.

“They ain’t real plates,” he complained to Harold, and then directly to the pitchman: “They’re nothin’ but ole Mex mud-plates!”

“Step aside, son,” said the pitchman, softly but with ambiguous menace, “and give some of these other good folks a chance to play.”

Several others were, indeed, trying to get to the basket of rocks, and Lawrence felt obliged to warn them. “They ain’t real plates,” he said again, but he was shouldered aside by a surge of farmhand types, mostly in their twenties, dressed in coveralls, their cheeks bulging with Red Man chaw.

Harold was also eager to get Lawrence moving. “Come on, dang it,” he kept saying, as he pulled on Lawrence’s arm, “let’s find somethin’ we can both do!”

Lawrence reluctantly let himself be towed along, but not without expressing his grievance: “I should’ve put my last rock right upside that A-hole’s head!”

Not far beyond the rock-throw concession was another uniquely primitive enterprise: a metal pipe, forty feet high and four inches in diameter, had been sunk in the ground just deep enough to keep it from falling over, then covered from top to bottom with crankcase grease. At the bottom of the pole, and surrounding it, were boards forming a box that was filled with hay. Completing the curious rig was a tall wooden ladder, braced against the pipe. For a ten-cent admission a person could climb the ladder and slide down the greased pipe into the bed of hay. The price included the use of a pair of plastic overalls to keep the grease off.

“Try the Big Pole Slide!” the barker shouted. “Try the Big Pole Slide for only a dime!” From the ground it looked extremely high, and the ladder a perilous ascent.

Lawrence frowned when, after a minute of staring, he understood its nature. “Look at that,” he said in disgust. “Only a moron would do anything that dumb!”

“What makes you say that?” asked Harold, but before Lawrence could attempt to explain, they were distracted by a puff of smoke overhead, accompanied by an unidentifiable noise — like the roar of a mechanical beast.

“Hey,” said Lawrence, suddenly wild-eyed. “Hear that? That means they’re openin’ the dang
freak show!
Come on!”

They ran in the direction of the smoke cloud and the curious sound, toward the very end of the midway, where there was a large tent, emblazoned with colorful cloth carnival-tableaux, the kind that resembled, and in many cases actually were, huge oil paintings, most of them cracked and amber with age. Each was meant to represent something inside the tent — and while their artistic styles seemed to vary, all the renditions had one thing in common: a flair for the melodramatic.

In front of the tent was a raised stage on which one of the “show-people” would occasionally appear, as a partial inducement to draw in the crowd — a group of about ten or so by the time Harold and Lawrence arrived. The strange roaring sound had been shut off, the smoke had cleared, and the barker was in full cry: “
Adrian, the Great Hermaphrodite!
” he kept shouting, gesturing toward a robed and hulking sad-eyed personage seated on the stage. “Is it man, or is it woman? You say, ‘Well, it is bound to be a man, because look at that beard!’ But, of course, it
could
be a false beard — so I’m just going to ask someone from the audience, anyone at all, to step up and take a very close look at this so-called beard — how about you, son?” he said, fixing Harold with a stare. “You have the face of an honest boy, just climb on up here, please.”

Harold was embarrassed, but Big Lawrence grinned crazily and said, “Go on, dang it,” and practically hoisted Harold onto the stage.

“Now then, son,” said the barker, “I want you to take a good close look at that beard! You touch it, you feel it, and you tell me and these people out here whether or not it’s real!”

“Just don’t pull it off!” taunted Lawrence from the crowd. “Haw!”

“No, you’re wrong, son,” said the barker to Lawrence. “He can pull it as much as he thinks necessary to prove that it’s real — and I’ll tell you one thing: some of it may come
out,
but it won’t come
off.
And that’s a fact.”

The “Great Hermaphrodite” turned his or her face up and to the side, so that Harold could examine the beard, which he did, aware mainly, however, of the heavy breathing of this very large person, and the strange, sad eyes, which Harold avoided looking into.

“It’s all right,” said the man/woman then in a voice so soft Harold could scarcely believe it came from this bearded hulk, “you can pull on it...”

But Harold could see that the beard was real — dark, thick, and curly like that of a Greek wrestler he had once seen.

“Yeah, it’s real all right,” he said, addressing his judgment to the barker, then to Lawrence and the others.

“Thank you, son,” said the barker. “Now I want you to do just one more thing for me — I want you to take your hand, place it on the Great Herm’s shoulder and pull down the robe.”

“What?” said Harold, not understanding.

“Go ahead, son,” said the barker, and the Great Herm took Harold’s hand into his own, placed it on the shoulder of the robe, and gently pushed it down.

The crowd made a small but audible gasp and one or two nervous laughs as the robe was lowered to expose a large bare breast.

“I doubt that anyone will question the authenticity of the female bosom you now see before your eyes...”

Harold thought that it was probably a real breast all right; it was big enough, but he was not sure it was the right shape. He had seen Lawrence’s sister’s breasts when they had stood on an apple crate outside her bathroom window, when she would take a shower; and once, which was the most important time, when she came in after being parked in front of the house for a long time necking with a date, and when she got into the bathroom she had taken off her blouse and brassiere and stood in front of the mirror right under the light, massaging her breasts and watching in the mirror while she did it. Lawrence had been embarrassed. “What the heck is she doing?” he had demanded, and made an excuse for them to stop watching. “I heard a door open,” he had said, which Harold knew wasn’t true.

But the best, the most memorable time had been when his cousin, Caddy, who was a year older, had been visiting them, and one night they had gotten ready for bed and were having a snack in the kitchen, sitting at the table and he had gotten up to get the milk and then, in pouring some for her, had looked down at the glass, but had seen not so much the glass as the gap in her pajama top and the perfect pear of her bare breast, and — most striking of all it seemed — the pink nipple thrusting out, surprising him with its size and prominence, almost as though it were a separate part of her.

This was very different; the nipple of the Great Herm was practically unnoticeable — in fact, he realized, not unlike his own.

“Thank you, son,” the barker said to him, “thank you for your assistance.” And as Harold climbed down, he said in a spirited tone: “Proof positive of the combined male and female nature of the Great Hermaphrodite! And there is more! More proof positive of the sexual duality of the Great Hermaphrodite! On the inside! You will see both male and female reproductive organs of the Great Hermaphrodite! It’s all on the inside!” He turned his attention to one of the illustrated banners and pointed with his cane. “See! On exhibit! Alice, the Alligator Girl!” The tableau showed a mermaid, with an alligator’s tail and legs, and with wild blond hair and blazing eyes.

“And see!” He pointed to a tableau of a well-dressed man standing in front of a mirror, wearing a featureless leather mask. “On the inside! James Pomeroy! ‘The Ugliest Man Alive’! James Pomeroy, whose face was so hideously disfigured in a train wreck seven years ago as to defy description! He has not yet undergone plastic surgery because of his pending lawsuit against the railway responsible for his monstrous appearance! So monstrous that he is compelled by law to wear a
mask
in public at all times! Ladies and gentlemen, inside the tent,
James Pomeroy will remove that mask!
And you will see the true horror of hideous facial disfiguration beyond your wildest dreams! And you will see Blue Thomas, the amazing six-legged mule from Missouri. Six legs, ladies and gentlemen, and a kick in every one of them!
And
on the inside! The original Colt forty-five pistol used by that notorious but beloved daughter of the Lone Star State, Bonnie Parker! A pistol with which she shot down seven lawmen in seven days! And you will see the world’s most dangerous reptiles!” He raised his cane in a flourish, pointing it to one of the more flamboyant tableaux behind them; it featured an elephant encircled by a gigantic snake, the elephant’s trunk upraised in a trumpeting cry of panic and rage. “The giant anaconda!” said the barker, “large enough to crush a full-grown elephant! You will see diamondback rattlesnakes, copperheads, cotton-mouth water moccasins, the Gila monster, and the deadly Egyptian adder!” He paused and his cane adroitly touched the shoulder of the grave impassive person still seated on the stage, and his voice became solemn: “And on the inside, ladies and gentlemen, the Great Hermaphrodite will remove all of her garments, to reveal a complete duality of sex in every — I repeat,
every
— detail! Because while she is
all woman,
she is also
all man...
if you get my meaning. And last, but by no means least, you will meet, you will touch, you will play with...a walking, talking
aboriginal!
Yes, a true aboriginal from the deepest jungles of Western Borneo! I am referring now to Mister Dan, that funny little old monkey man! Is he human, or is he of the simian species? This is a question anthropologists the world over have not been able to agree on. Decide for yourself, after you’ve seen Mister Dan, that funny little old monkey man! All on the inside! Get your tickets here, twenty-five cents, the fourth part of a one-dollar bill, please don’t crowd, folks...” As he took his place in the booth and started selling tickets, the machine producing the mechanical roar started up again.

“What’s making that dang noise?” Lawrence asked as he gave the barker a quarter.

“All on the inside, sonny.”

Inside, the tent was like a canvas hothouse — too small to accommodate the exhibits and the crowd of fifteen or twenty people who had filed in. Everyone was sweating profusely.

“Jesus H. Christ...,” complained Big Lawrence, wiping his brow, “it’s hotter than a nun’s poon in here! I can’t take much of this...”

Most of the space was occupied by stuffed and bottled reptiles. In the center, however, against one wall of the tent, was a platform about three feet high, and on it, sitting in a folding chair, large and silent, was the Great Hermaphrodite. The barker mounted the two steps and stood alongside.