This Side of Jordan Read online

  “No.”

  Chester smiled, then took a drag off the cigarette and exhaled into the cold breeze. “I guess good ol’ Spud thought he could fry the fat out of us once we tipped over the joint, like he’d nabbed us jaywalking and was going to blow off to our mommies. I don’t mind sharing the gravy train, but we haven’t been dough-heavy all summer and everyone knows it. When I offered to kick in a third and he wouldn’t give, I figured it was time to knock off the song and dance and tell him the bad news. He made a lousy choice. I’m letting you and Lester divvy up his cut.”

  The farm boy’s limbs went numb. “You killed Spud?”

  “He was a menace to my peace of mind. Now he’s out of the game. Soon as we’re through here tonight, I want you and the midget to get your bags and beat it out of that flea trap. I’ll be waiting for you in a motor over on Ash Street. Just don’t shout it to the world when you’re leaving. Get me?”

  Alvin felt petrified. “Sure.” Chester flashed a grin. “I tell you, kid, this circus is the softest touch I’ve ever seen. When the tents close at midnight, Lester’ll kick in the box, and we’ll take our split and do a Houdini. Laswell won’t know up from down.”

  “Nope.”

  “All I need you to do is keep an eye on his trailer for me until I do the honors with my little hotsy. She’s expecting me any minute now and a smart fellow doesn’t keep a sexy dame waiting. Just keep track of the comings and goings at Laswell’s trailer so nothing queers the deal before we pop him.”

  “Which one’s his?” Alvin asked, utterly confused about his role in all this. Did Lester know about him and the dwarf?

  “Did you see those old firewagons back of the Big Top?”

  Alvin nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Well, Laswell’s trailer is right behind them. It’s painted up orange and blue top to bottom like a French whore, with a crocodile eating a naked Chinaman on the side. You can’t miss it.”

  “All right.”

  “Just keep your eyes peeled for anything fishy going on there. Think you can handle that?”

  “Sure.”

  Chester took a drag off his cigarette. “Where’s the midget?”

  The farm boy shrugged. “Fooling around somewhere, I suppose.”

  “All right, well, just make sure you two are there when it’s time to bug out. I’d hate to leave you behind. If the cops get hold of you, they’ll break your guts before breakfast and pretty soon they’ll turn on the heat for me, and that’d make us both a couple of very unhappy fellows.”

  “Don’t worry,” Alvin said, scared to death now. “We’ll be there.”

  “I believe you. Just be on time.” Chester took another puff off his cigarette, then flicked it away and went into the circus. Alvin waited a couple of minutes, then followed through the main gate. Sawdust blew everywhere in the cold wind. Confetti spun up out of Clown Alley as a piping steam fiddle played a rambunctious melody. Alvin crossed the showgrounds toward the Big Top, oblivious to the costumed apes on camelback, golden-horned satyrs trailing black-eyed hermaphrodites, the glint of ancient wares in a makeshift Pantechnicon. All he could think about was whether or not his disease would kill him before Chester did. He guessed now that he ought to have gone back to the sanitarium, after all. Truth was, Doc Hartley had always been kind to him. It wasn’t his fault Alvin had a relapse. Lots of folks did. Some got better and others died. That was just how life played out. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Not like the deliberate killings of Rosa Jean and her daddy, that bank clerk at Stantonsburg, the preacher at Allenville, and that poor kid he and Rascal buried in the muddy stall last month. Now Spud, too. How many others as well? For shame, for shame! Frenchy would tell Alvin he was caught between a shit and a sweat, all for having crossed the river with Chester that night. Frenchy also used to say there’s no use in sticking your neck out till you know what the score is, but Alvin hadn’t paid any notice to that and now he was on the run with a cruel stonehearted killer who would likely shoot him over a hamburger roll.

  When Alvin reached the Big Top, he felt two jumps ahead of a fit. His legs were wobbly and his head was swimming. He was afraid if he sat down he wouldn’t get back up again. Inside, the three-ring circus was at mid-performance. Trumpeters announced the arrival of Egyptian war chariots and a side-saddled Persian princess. Exotic birds fluttered across the smoke. High above the strutting ringmaster, diminutive elves and fairies mingled in an aerial ballet, while outside, the tent barker roared again to a swelling crowd, “STEP RIGHT UP! STEP RIGHT UP! NOW UNDER THE BIG TOP! ROPEWALKERS AND COSSACKS! LIONS AND UNICORNS! KINGS AND QUEENS! COME ONE! COME ALL! STEP RIGHT UP! STEP RIGHT UP!

  A tiny hand tugged at the farm boy’s right sleeve.

  Turning about, Alvin found the diminutive Emperor Nero just behind him, white toga splotched with burgundy wine stains, laurel wreath tipped slightly askew.

  Suppressing a burp, the clown midget told the farm boy, “Your presence is requested at the wagon of Mademoiselle Estralada.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s dreadfully important.”

  “I ain’t supposed to go nowhere but here. I got an appointment I can’t pull out of.”

  “It’s been called off.”

  Alvin frowned. “Says who?”

  “Says I, but it ain’t just my opinion. Let’s go.”

  Another harsh gust kicked up, further soiling Emperor Nero’s white toga with grime. A pair of African elephants wailed under the Big Top. Circus cannons thundered.

  Emperor Nero whistled to Alvin from beside the ticket booth. “What in thunder are you waiting for? You’re not afraid, are you?”

  The farm boy walked closer. In fact, he was quite a bit afraid. “Maybe. I ain’t seen nobody put one over on him yet.”

  Emperor Nero sneered. “Aw, there’s nothing to it! We’ll fix that big stiff, all right. You just wait. If he starts any trouble, I tell you, I used to be pretty handy myself. What do you say?”

  The farm boy shrugged. Why not? Any choice he made now was the same as another. Besides, he had already taken plenty of orders from Chester and what good had it done him?

  Banners flapped loudly in the wind. A fresh crowd of towners lined up at the ticket booth. On the other side, Emperor Nero stepped back to let Alvin pass, and then kicked the bottom of the booth to draw the barker’s attention. “Say, hatchet-face, what’s the dope? I hear you got bitched by Little Flora last night. Ain’t that a shame?”

  The fellow handed out a pair of tickets, refusing to look at the circus midget. “You ought to scram before I push your face in.”

  Emperor Nero gave the ticket booth another hard kick. “She says getting familiar with you scared the life half out of her.”

  Someone in the crowd heard that and laughed aloud.

  The fellow threw aside the ticket punch and slid off his stool. “Say, who do you think you are, shooting off your head? I’ll poke you in the nose!”

  Emperor Nero put up his fists. “Oh, you want to rough it up a bit, do you? Why, that’d be swell by me. I’ll be laughing myself sick in nothing flat.”

  The barker started away from the ticket booth. “You’ll start squealing when you get what’s coming to you. Just stay right there. I’ll fix you, you little pop.”

  “Aw, go sit on a tack, Nellie!” Emperor Nero kicked a cloud of dust up toward the barker, then ran past the farm boy, shouting, “Come on, kid, let’s beat it!”

  The midget rushed off through the scattered crowds, Alvin hurrying right behind him. People in line at the soda pop concession laughed as they went by. More rockets fizzed and boomed and schoolchildren ran toward the sparkling lights of the ringing carousel. Emperor Nero led Alvin between twin tents of the giraffe-necked Negresses, Zira and Lot, and a snaggle-toothed sorceress named Fatima who wore smoke-dark glasses and blew green fire off her fingertips at passersby. A stink of trained pigs and filthy pony punks overwhelmed the warm roasted peanuts and popcorn as the farm boy chased Emperor Nero behind the cage
wagons where a lion tamer in safari suit and Pith helmet smoked a fat cigar and recited his spiel for a later performance while the jungle cats paced and growled amid swarms of black flies.

  Crawling under a rope line behind the museum wagons and elephant tubs, Emperor Nero chortled, “Oh, that companion of yours is a very wicked fellow.”

  “Huh?”

  “I tell you, he’s got all the angles.”

  The farm boy banged his foot on a tent stake next to the Apple Family’s dog and pony show. He heard drum taps inside the tent and a clash of cymbals. Emperor Nero crossed a narrow alley of manure and sawdust toward a painted gypsy wagon parked beneath a leafy cottonwood tree at the north boundary of the showgrounds. Lilac bushes curled under the rear iron wheels. Oil lamps glowed behind linen shades within. On the wagon steps, Josephine sat beside Chief Crazy Horse, and Alvin thought he saw a couple more circus midgets lurking in the shadows by the fenceline. The carved front door was shut.

  “You’re late,” said Crazy Horse, getting up. His great feathered war bonnet drooped onto the wooden step above him.

  “You’re darned right I am!” Emperor Nero replied, fixing his laurel wreath. “That big horse Johnny Mills tried to kill me back there. Ain’t it so, kid?” The farm boy nodded. “Sure it is.”

  Tiny Josephine spoke up, “Mademoiselle Estralada invited the gangster to call on her at half past the hour. Merlin says they’re still with Billy the Kid and a bottle of Scotch behind the Big Top. What if he figures out it’s a stall to get him pickled? Just thinking about it gives me the cold shivers. I believe this is very dangerous.”

  “Aw, you’re imagining things,” said Chief Crazy Horse. “We’re all set now, ain’t we? What’s the trouble?” He straightened his war bonnet. “We’ll put it over, all right. Don’t you worry.”

  “I ain’t following any of this,” Alvin remarked, more nervous by the minute now. Going back on Chester scared the hell out of him. He coughed as the wind gusted. “What’s it all about?”

  “Beg your pardon, dear?” said Josephine, smoothing her blue satin gown as she rose from the wagon step. Her tiny feet were pinched into gold satin mules with silver nightingales painted on the toes.

  “Well, nobody’s told me nothing yet,” the farm boy growled. “Chester ain’t no dumbbell. Try to cross him, he’ll shoot the whole lot of us in the head.”

  “Maybe so,” said Chief Crazy Horse, “but we can’t poop out on a pal. Why, if you fellows don’t do nothing, sooner or later you’re both liable to get pinched, and Ol’ Sparkie’ll be the finish of that.”

  Josephine added, “I wouldn’t see my little sweetheart hurt for anything in the world.”

  “Oh, he’s got a marvelous plan,” said Emperor Nero, knotting the wine-stained toga into his fist. “I just know we’ll knock it over.”

  Chief Crazy Horse told Alvin, “Don’t forget, kid, these thicknecks ain’t so tough they can’t get remunerated like the rest of us.”

  Alvin saw a pair of Keystone Kops crawl out from beneath the painted wagon. One of them with an oddly familiar babyface gave him a grand stage salute. When Alvin waved back, the midget blew lightly on his police whistle and chased after his partner through the thick sumac and prickly ash that cluttered the fenceline.

  Kaiser Wilhelm hurried out from the alleyway behind the cage wagons, waving his tiny arms. “They’re coming! They’re coming!” The spiked helmet fell off the Kaiser’s head into the dirt and he stooped to pick it up.

  Josephine stole a quick look at her gold watch pendant. “Oh, dear! It’s time!”

  “I tell you, we’ll panic ’em,” Chief Crazy Horse told Alvin, jumping down off the wagon steps. “Just you wait and see.”

  Emperor Nero grabbed the farm boy by the sleeve. “Come on, kid. The show’s starting.”

  “Where’re we going?”

  “The best damned seat in the house,” he said, shoving Alvin underneath the painted wagon where the farm boy saw a trapdoor hanging open. “Go on, climb in.”

  “What?”

  Emperor Nero gave Alvin a stiff kick in the pants. “Make it snappy!”

  “Ain’t you coming, too?”

  “Nope, I got to shove off. The gypsy ain’t so liberal with the rest of us.”

  The farm boy crawled next to the trap door and had a peek up into the shadowy interior of the gypsy wagon. “There ain’t room enough!”

  Alvin looked behind him and saw the circus midget had already gone. Scared of Chester finding him where he didn’t belong, he reached through the opening, grabbed for a handhold, and pulled himself upward into the dark. As he rolled clear, someone jerked the trap door closed.

  A match flared briefly, illuminating the dwarf who giggled and blew the match out again.

  “What the hell is this?” the farm boy grunted, shifting his knees to get comfortable. It was so dark he couldn’t tell up from down. He smelled a peppery odor of incense and burning kerosene, and when he leaned backward he felt the brush of clothes hanging on a rack behind him.

  “Shhh! We’re in a costume closet,” Rascal murmured. “Will you please be quiet? They’ll be here any minute.”

  “Well, I can’t see nothing. It’s dark as pitch.”

  “Shhh!” The dwarf crept forward and slid open a thin foot-wide rectangular slot in the closet wall that revealed the wagon’s lamp-lit interior. “Here,” he whispered, “have a look.”

  Peeking through the narrow slot, Alvin saw a cozy boudoir draped in paisley textiles and bamboo like a Turkish harem, a pillow-heaped divan, Chinese lilies in cut glass flower vases, hand mirrors and Japanese fans on a tea table, muslin curtained windows, and a beaded portière concealing the front of the wagon.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” the dwarf remarked. “Why, I could easily imagine myself—”

  “Shhh!”

  Alvin heard voices from the wagon steps, an iron key turning in the door lock. He shrank back from the slot as the floorboards trembled under the heavy footfall. The dwarf shoved by for a look.

  Chester Burke spoke as the door swung shut. “Go ahead, sweetheart, argue me out of it.”

  The farm boy pushed the dwarf away from the slot as Mademoiselle Estralada slipped through the beaded portière, her blue glass-crystal earrings and silver bracelets jingling. She was dressed head to foot in shiny indigo and gold silk sashes, her skin coffee-brown, eyes brighter than wet pearls. She spoke to Chester while unlocking the bottom drawer of a teak cabinet. “I just knew you were thirsty.”

  “Maybe I should get a haircut instead.” Chester lit a cigarette as he came into the boudoir. “I ought to cut out getting drunk, start leading a clean life, and all that.”

  “It’s not healthy to deny oneself pleasure,” the gypsy remarked, reaching down into the cabinet. Alvin watched her draw out a pale blue decanter of ice water and a pair of tall heavy fluted glasses. “I’ve always believed intoxications to be borrowed dreams.”

  Chester exhaled a plume of smoke. “Sweetheart, I can see you and me are going to get on swell together. What do you say we take a hootch bottle and go hire a car for a joyride, just the two of us?”

  “Oh, there’s no need to go anywhere,” the gypsy said, sliding open a drawer in the upper cabinet for a china saucer and a pair of silver vented spoons. “I’m sure I have everything you could ever want right here in this wagon.”

  “Oh yeah?” Chester cracked a grin.

  “Be contented with thy present fortune,” said Mademoiselle Estralada as she opened a tiny porcelain bowl atop the cabinet. “Constancy on thy part will meet a due return.” She placed a handful of sugar lumps on the china saucer with the vented spoons. Alvin muffled a cough with his sleeve, and the dwarf dug an elbow angrily into his ribs. It was stifling in the closet and Alvin wasn’t sure how long he could remain crowded into there without getting sick.

  “Say, didn’t I hop into my best suit to date you up tonight?” Chester asked, picking up a scratched glass daguerreotype in a faded green plush frame. He exa
mined it intently for a few moments. “I tell you, I’m a dandy fine fellow, once you get to know me.”

  Mademoiselle Estralada smiled. “You’re a very pretty man.”

  Chester replaced the daguerreotype, and tapped ash into a silver ashtray. “Well, it’s not all that often I get taken in hand by a sweet peach like you, too. Maybe tomorrow night you’ll let me blow you to dinner, what do you say?”

  “Why, that would be wonderful.” Among the stuffed satin pillows on the divan were beaded pincushions embroidered with fancy chenille and pearls. Mademoiselle Estralada made room among these for Chester. “I hope this is comfortable.”

  “Oh, sure it is.” He brought the ashtray with him as he sat down, then eased back onto one of the stuffed pillows. “It’s swell.”

  Wiping sweat from his forehead, Alvin watched the gypsy take a round wicker basket from behind the divan and draw out a cloudy green bottle which she placed on the teak cabinet with the water decanter and fluted glasses, the vented spoons and sugar lumps.

  Chester had a drag off his cigarette. “What’re we drinking, honey?”

  Mademoiselle Estralada smiled. “La Fée Verte.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  She showed him the bottle whose label read Pernod Fils -60°.

  “I’ll be damned, that’s 120 proof.”

  “Too strong for you?”

  “Hell no, I’ve been drinking alcorub all week. I’ll be all right. I’m full of pep. You like this hightoned liquor, do you?”

  The gypsy smiled again. “Avec les Fleurs, avec les Femmes, avec L’Absinthe, avec le Feu, on peut se divertir un peu, jouer son rôle en quelque drame.”

  Chester laughed. “Gee, I ain’t parley-voo’d fran-say with a dame since the war.” He tapped his cigarette over the ashtray.

  “Oh, were you in France?” the gypsy asked, pulling the cork from the bottle of Swiss absinthe.

  “Me and ‘Black Jack’ Pershing himself at Saint-Mihiel with the Austrian 88’s.” Chester sung, “It’s the wrong way to tickle Mary, it’s the wrong place to go.”