This Side of Jordan Read online

  Another cold gust of wind shook the wagon. Fiddling with her sagging eyelash, Betty Boop squeaked, “You’re all set now, though, ain’t you, honey?”

  Kaiser Wilhelm smiled. “Sure I am.”

  “You bet he is,” said Emperor Nero. “That’s the Kaiser you’re talking to.”

  Sir Lancelot puffed on his cigar as the Keystone Kops shared a bottle of wine and a plate of meat sandwiches brought over from the cookhouse. Billy the Kid played with his six-guns. Josephine stroked the dwarf’s hand while the farm boy listened to the piping of the steam calliope near the Big Top and tried not to get sick all over himself.

  The wagon door opened to the cold draft and Alvin saw a grimy fellow wearing a tattered brown derby stick his head inside. He growled at the Keystone Kops, “The boss wants to see y’all over to the office, and he don’t mean maybe.” He pointed a finger at Emperor Nero. “That means you, pipsqueak.” Then he slammed the door and left.

  Nero wiped his mouth. “Ain’t Johnny a scream?”

  “Aw, raspberries,” said Billy The Kid, getting to his feet. “Let’s shove off.”

  Wind hissed through the upper branches of the old sycamore trees that flanked the boardinghouse where Alvin lay sweating under a ratty wool blanket in the dark. A side window was raised to the night air and a lilac scent of damp gardens carried past the storm screen. Ragged shadows from the streetlights below fluttered across the walls and ceiling. A hound dog tied to an iron stake in the lot next door barked off and on at ghostly intruders. The boardinghouse felt dead and empty.

  Drumming his fingers on the iron bedpost, the dwarf rested under the sheets in his own bed, stripped to his union suit. It was hours past midnight. When the farm boy came back from the showgrounds, he had hoped to find Clare working at the front desk, but the light was out in the office and nobody answered when he called for her, and he went up to bed feeling feverish and lonesome. Meanwhile, the dwarf was full of stories from his night at the circus. He admitted running off to the showgrounds after the street parade. At North Street, he explained, a lion had escaped from its wagon cage and gone on a rampage through a widow’s tomato patch until it was subdued by a pair of animal trainers in Pith helmets. One of Laswell’s funnymen was horribly mauled trying to protect a crowd of children and had to be driven to a hospital in the next county. According to the dwarf, it was the most exciting thing he had ever seen—until he crossed paths with Josephine behind the Big Top.

  “I introduced myself to her by the corner of the snake house where I was struck dumb by Cupid’s arrow. I’d never been in love before. Isn’t that remarkable? Auntie always cautioned me against passion, warning that my heart was born frail, susceptible to poisons of many sorts. Well, she needn’t have worried. I feel lighter than air.”

  “I seen Chester at the circus tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  Alvin rolled over in bed, shrugging off part of the blanket. The sheets beneath him were damp with sweat. “He was talking to one of them clowns. I don’t know what for.”

  “They’ve traveled ten thousand miles this year,” said the dwarf, shoving back his own covers. The bedsprings squeaked as he kicked at his blanket. “Josephine says she once performed with a royal Hungarian wire walker and rode in a gilded wagon that had its own sink and phonograph and marble tub from Savannah. That was years ago, of course, but did you know Mister Laswell still pays three hundred a week for many of the sideshow acts, more for the Big Top? It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Why, I believe a fellow could do a lot worse for himself than joining a circus.”

  Falling leaves blown free by the cold wind pattered the boardinghouse roof like autumn rain. Alvin stared at the dark ceiling. Whenever he worried, his fever worsened. He thought about how far ten thousand miles was from home. He listened to the draft at the storm screen and the dusty leaves falling and the barking dog next door. The dwarf ruffled his sheets and sneezed. Alvin coughed into his pillow. He told Rascal, “You shouldn’ta gone there till dark.”

  “I found help.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “We needn’t be afraid now. While you were napping, my dear Josephine introduced me to the King of Lilliput who was quite gracious in showing me about the circus. You have no idea how many friends we’ve made here. I told them everything.”

  “Chester’ll shoot you in the head.”

  The dwarf sat up in bed, casting his own odd shadow on the pale wallpaper behind him. He leveled his voice. “We were not made that we might live as brutes.”

  “I ain’t fooling,” Alvin warned.

  “He has no hope who never had a fear.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Down on the front sidewalk below, a man whistled tunelessly walking Third Street toward the railyard. The dwarf sipped from the water glass he kept beside his bed. Once finished, he told Alvin, “You see, I’m done with Hadleyville forever. Auntie can keep my inheritance if she wishes. It is immaterial with me now. When Josephine was a tiny girl, her mother knew a witch who lived in a peach orchard just outside of town. She dallied with divination and brewed magic potions in her root cellar that amended one’s stars in the heavens. Although Josephine was still no bigger than a cabbage at her thirteenth birthday, she was invited by Alice Roosevelt to dance a minuet on a tea table at Sagamore Hill for the President himself. Do you believe in destiny?”

  A cold gust shook the storm screens. His fevered skin chilled by the draft, Alvin replied, “I believe it’s a long walk home even if you don’t get shot.”

  “I have faith in society.” The dwarf leaned over onto his pillow. “We’ve never been alone. We’ve just imagined we were. When my mother gave birth to me, she intended that I belong to the world, not squander half my life hidden away from it. Auntie was cruel to tell those lies. I trusted her to know what was best for me and I was deceived. Tonight at the circus, Josephine and the King of Lilliput helped me discover a solution to the riddle of freedom. Would you care to hear it?”

  The farm boy listened to the wind and thought about the wild pinewoods on the farm in Illinois, a distant call, indeed.

  “’Tis true that we are in great danger,” said the dwarf. “The greater therefore should our courage be.”

  “Don’t joke me. I ain’t in the mood.”

  The storm-shutters on the veranda downstairs rattled harshly as the dwarf told the farm boy, “Listen here: trust me, and I promise you that after tomorrow night, we won’t have a worry in the world.”

  Morning light filled the lobby when Alvin came downstairs for breakfast. The dwarf had risen early and gone out on his own. All the windows in the lower boardinghouse were flung open to the morning air to let out the stink of turpentine fumes from the painters working on the second floor. The farm boy rang at the desk for Clare and another girl came out of the office and told him Clare would not be in until noon, so Alvin reluctantly left the boardinghouse and went downtown to eat. Trucks and automobiles rumbled along Third Street. The clouds were patchy now and blue sky shown through, warmer than yesterday. Alvin found a half-empty lunchroom two blocks from Main and bought himself hotcakes and ham and scrambled eggs and two cups of fresh coffee. He hadn’t eaten much more than popcorn at the circus and woke with his fever gone but his stomach growling. The fainting spell he had suffered at the circus frightened him greatly. He knew he was sicker than last month and worried that sooner or later a relapse of his consumption might send him to the grave if he didn’t watch out. He imagined the dwarf was back at the circus, honeying up his little sweetheart. Maybe he was busy working up a show of his own. Alvin had never seen so many half-pints at one place before in his entire life. The idea of them traveling around together wisecracking and putting on circus shows everyday didn’t seem all that peculiar to him now after sitting in their wagon for an hour. He supposed it wasn’t all that bad a life. The fact that a fellow doesn’t come up much past another fellow’s belt buckle shouldn’t mean he doesn’t deserve the best of what there is to be had.

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sp; When he finished with breakfast, the farm boy strolled around downtown for an hour or so, looking in store windows. The sidewalks were less crowded than yesterday and the trolley wasn’t operating. A fresh bounce in his step from a full stomach, Alvin crossed the street to the jewelers where he bought a new wristwatch and stuck it in his pocket. Then he walked back to the boardinghouse. The painters were sitting out on the veranda drinking coffee and talking. One of them had a morning edition of the Icarian Mercury-Gazette spread apart on his lap and was reading a story to the others. A prominent businessman named Theodore Bowen had been robbed and badly beaten last night in his house on Cobb Avenue. His son had reported the matter to the police. Nobody had been arrested and no further details concerning the man’s condition had been offered to the newspaper. When the farm boy came up the steps, the painters stepped back to let him by. He nodded and passed into the cool lobby. Behind him, the painter with the newspaper on his lap muttered a crude obscenity regarding circus people. Alvin checked at the desk for news of Clare again and received the same answer: she would be in for work at noon. A cabinet clock in the office chimed once. He went upstairs to wash his face. In the third floor hallway, the farm boy listened to Virgil Platt reciting more Bible verses. Through the floor vents he thought he heard a woman performing “Beautiful Dreamer” a capella in a room somewhere downstairs. Maybe it was only the radio. A noisy delivery truck roared past the boardinghouse in the direction of the railyard. Alvin unlocked his room and went inside and found Chester standing by the raised window overlooking Third Street.

  “Hiya, kid.”

  He had on the same charcoal-gray waistline suit and fedora from last night at circus. His face was drawn and tired. He held a white handkerchief to his mouth, dabbing a sore on his upper lip. The odor of turpentine had wafted up into the room through the vents, spoiling the sweet garden scent from the morning yard. Alvin smelled a trace of liquor, too.

  “Sorry about this dump,” Chester said, taking off his hat. He set it on one of the spindle chairs. His voice was cold and hoarse. “Spud’s not the square shooter he used to be. When I knew him on the North Side before Prohibition, he drove a taxicab and wouldn’t make a play on your sister for anything in the world. No cards or booze or dirty work with those switchboard girls, either. He led a clean life back then.”

  “I ain’t got a sister,” Alvin lied, trying to be funny. He was sick of Chester treating him like a hick. Besides, talking back didn’t seem so risky anymore. They were all going to jail soon enough.

  Shouts from the painters on the veranda to someone across the street echoed in the boardinghouse. Alvin closed the door behind him and sat on the dwarf’s bed.

  “I hear you boys were really whooping it up at the circus last night,” Chester said, as he took out a cigarette and lit it. “Shooting the works.”

  He walked over to the sink and ran water over the smoldering match, washing it down the drain.

  The bedsprings squeaked as the farm boy leaned forward. “You didn’t leave off a message for us to pull out of going, did you? Nobody told us nothing about it, if you did.”

  Chester had a look in the closet. He nudged the dwarf’s suitcase with his foot. “Hallie downstairs says you had a date to go out with her friend Clare last night.”

  The farm boy studied his shoe leather.

  “Well, what’s it all about?” Chester tapped hot ash off into the sink. “Is she sweet on you?”

  “She says it’s nobody’s business.”

  Chester smiled. “I suppose that’s so.”

  Alvin got up off the bed for a look outdoors. He wondered if Chester had in mind to call on her, too. “I ain’t stuck on her or nothing. We talked about having a picnic this afternoon.”

  Chester exhaled smoke from his cigarette. “Did you meet her crowd? That’ll tell you more about a girl than the hat she wears.”

  The farm boy coughed, then shook his head. “I ain’t seen nobody yet but her.”

  Chester walked back over to the raised window. “It’s a swell circus, isn’t it?”

  “We hardly seen half of it. There was a baby under the bleachers that wanted to go home with her. We missed the lions.”

  Chester laughed. “How’s that again?”

  Alvin kicked at the baseboard, and coughed again. “It was all a lot of nonsense.”

  “What a mob, though, eh? Why, I’ll bet you Laswell was raking in the dough last night.”

  His expression blank, Chester watched a loaded fruit truck rumble by. The painters had gone back inside to work. A faint breeze rippled through the tall leafy honey locust next door.

  The farm boy spoke up. “I seen a fellow without no arms or legs light his own cigar.”

  “He stood out, did he?”

  “There was others, too. A fat lady with a flock of tattoos on her bosom and a monkey that played ‘John Brown’s Body’ on a xylophone. Then they had a fellow from Indiana with a extra leg that kicked a football and danced a funny jig for us.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  The farm boy went over to examine the dwarf’s water glass. There was a little puddle on the nightstand. He asked, “Did you hear about that fellow that got hisself knocked around last night?”

  Chester blew smoke through the storm screen. “Sure I did. It was in the morning paper. That’s rotten luck.”

  The farm boy rolled the water glass over in his hands. He was scared, but too sick anymore to worry about it. “You didn’t have nothing to do about that, did you?”

  “Are you asking if it was me that cracked him on the head and broke open his safe?” He chuckled. “I heard the cops found a clown wig under his desk and one of those phony red rubber clown noses in the backyard.”

  “So they think somebody from the circus did it?”

  Chester nodded. “Sure, unless it’s a frame-up.”

  “That’d work.”

  “Not for us. Brings too many cops to the circus, poking around, keeping their eyes peeled for any sort of funny business.”

  “I seen you talking with one of them clowns at the circus.”

  Chester snuffed out the cigarette on the worn rim of the window frame. He looked weary to Alvin, impatient. “Him? Fellow’s name is Lester. He used to work in the Union Stock Yards before the War. He knew my pop from Market Street.”

  “Oh.”

  “Says he’s finished with Laswell. Hates his guts. Wants to help us stick him up for a cut of the profit. Claims Laswell hasn’t been to a bank since the show in Kirksville and Lester knows where he keeps the strong-box. The box office closes at midnight, so that’s when Laswell collects the kale and stashes it. Well, tonight we’ll be doing the collecting for him. Easy as pie.”

  “I don’t know I’d trust a fellow I just met like that.”

  Chester walked back over to the toilet and flicked the burnt cigarette butt into the porcelain bowl and flushed. Then he washed his hands under the sink faucet and dried them on a rosy hand towel. When he finished, he told the farm boy, “My pop had the right dope about that. He didn’t trust anybody he didn’t owe. Lester’s no brick, but he won’t have the guts to pull out and he knows if he squeals he’ll get what’s coming to him. The fact is, you don’t have to trust ’em if you know how to sell your stuff.”

  Chester wandered across the room and looked out to the house next door whose small attic window was propped open with a stick. A white fabric of some sort flapped across the shadowed frame like a ghost in the morning draft. The farm boy heard the boardinghouse telephone ring downstairs. Heavy footsteps tromped on the woodplank veranda. Somebody shouted.

  Chester came away from the window with a bright smile. He told the farm boy, “I got a date to go out myself tonight, some gypsy dame who was giving me the once-over by the monkey show. I’d had a fair uplift already, but what a doll! I told her I’d drop over about ten. What I’ll do is dope out the whole plan this afternoon and meet you at the ticket gate by half past nine. Get me?”

  The farm boy nodd
ed.

  Chester looked him straight in the eye. “We’re all set now?”

  “Sure.”

  He broke a faint smile. “It’s a cinch we’ll knock it over. Tell the midget to pack his bags after supper.”

  Alvin nodded again. “All right.”

  Chester took his hat off the spindle chair. He had one more peek out over Third Street. As he left the room, he told the farm boy, “Our breaks is coming, kid.”