“We going to look for your relatives now?” I said.
Jane sighed. “About that. We don’t really have any relatives here in East Texas.”
“We don’t?” Tony said.
“No, we don’t,” Jane said. “I made that up.”
“That ain’t right, Jane,” said Tony. “I knew that, I’d have stayed with that nice lady.”
“I wanted us to all go together,” Jane said. “I wanted there to be a place we were going.”
“That’s pretty low, Jane,” I said.
“I know,” Jane said. “I’m pretty low.”
“You’re the worst sister ever,” Tony said.
“I’m sure someone can find someone worse,” Jane said, “but certainly I’ll be getting no rewards for my sisterly manners.”
I stopped at a store between Lindale and Tyler with a Coca-Cola machine out front. Jane gave me three nickels, and I used them to get us each a Coca-Cola. We sat on the curb and drank them. Across the street, we could see a billboard with Strangler’s name on it. This one also had his picture, same one that was on the side of his trailer.
“They probably been all over East Texas looking for him,” I said, “and Strangler has been out of town. But a carnival ain’t hard to follow. Might as well be a brass band. If they’re going to catch up with him, this would be the place.”
“If they’re smart,” Jane said, “they haven’t been following him at all. They know the carnival is going to come through this area eventually, so all they got to do is hole up and wait, and it’s all over but the dirt in the face.” She took a big swig of her Coca-Cola. “Dang it,” she said. “We ought to go back and talk to him again. Get him to run or go to the cops. We can’t just leave him, and us knowing what’s going to happen. We got to convince him.”
“Well, we got carnival tickets,” Tony said.
45
It was nighttime when we got to the carnival, and it was shiny with lights and metal rides reflecting light. It was so bright you couldn’t see the sky. The air was thick with the smells of hot dogs, cotton candy, and popcorn.
We hadn’t no more than given our tickets and gone inside, when we saw Bad Tiger and Timmy. They didn’t see us. They were across the way, walking. They both looked rough, like they hadn’t changed their clothes in days. They each had a growth of beard, and they had a slump to their walk, like their feet hurt and their souls were no fresher.
Even though I’d been half expecting them to show up, my jaw still dropped. On some level, I think I figured they’d given it all up and we’d never see them again. Or that there wasn’t any chance of us showing up at the same time. But there they were.
They were wandering between gaming stands and stacks of cheap teddy bear prizes. We saw them walk in front of the freak show tent with crude paintings of freaks on the sides, bearded women and pinheads and wolf boys and so on. Barkers were beckoning to them, calling out to “Come and give it a try.” They didn’t break stride. Like us, they were on a mission.
They were going in the opposite direction of Strangler’s trailer, which meant they were using guesswork. After a moment, they passed out of our sight.
I caught Jane’s shoulder, and she said, “Yeah, I saw them.”
Tony said, “I can run around to Strangler’s trailer. I can warn him.”
“You’re nothing but a kid,” Jane said.
“Yeah,” Tony said, “but I’m a kid that can run fast.”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he was gone.
We waited there, nervous as long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs. Time went by and the rides circled and swung and dipped and rose, and people yelled and screamed as they did. The carnival ride we were standing next to vibrated like a drunk man about to fall down.
After enough time passed to have planted a crop, harvested it, and sold it on the edge of the street, we saw Tony running toward us. He was all sweated up and he was gasping for air. He stopped in front of us, bent over, and held his side.
“Run all the way there,” he said, “and run all the way back.”
“We can figure that,” Jane said. “What about Strangler?”
“He wasn’t there.”
“Dang it,” Jane said.
And then we heard over a loudspeaker, “Come one, come all! Strangler Nugowski will take on anyone! Prize money twenty-five dollars green American. Come one, come all! Take on Strangler and prove yourself a man! Come one, come all!”
“Oh great,” Jane said. “Bad Tiger and Timmy might as well be wolves and Strangler a pork chop.”
We went swiftly toward the voice that kept repeating the challenge. We finally ended up in a crowd around a boxing ring raised above the ground maybe five feet. There were steps that led up to it, and right then we saw Strangler jerk off his sweatshirt and go up the steps, like any man going off to work. Some people in the crowd cheered, some booed. He tossed the sweatshirt out of the ring and onto the ground.
Pushing through the crowd, we got yelled at, and threatened, and Jane even got pinched. She slapped a man so hard on the side of the head he went to his knees. He looked up at her like such a thing had never occurred to him.
“Keep your hands to yourself, simpleton,” she said, and then we were moving again.
When we finally nudged and shoved our way up to the front of the ring, a man was already in there with Strangler. We tried to get Strangler’s attention, but with the way the crowd was hooting and calling, our words got pushed down by the noise. We might as well have been using sign language.
The man in the ring was as big as Strangler, and younger. He came at Strangler, and Strangler jabbed him with a left, and the man went back a step. Strangler dove and grabbed the man’s legs and hit him in the stomach with his head and took him down. When the man hit the mat, he hit so hard I was a little sick to my stomach. In the next moment, Strangler had the man by the ankle with both hands and had a leg thrown over the man’s knee.
The man actually yelled “Uncle!”
Strangler let him go and stood up. The man got up. The referee took hold of Strangler’s hand, preparing to raise it.
The man was supposed to be through, but he decided to throw a low blow at Strangler. The shot caught him in the groin. Strangler, unlike Timmy when Jane kicked him, took the blow and turned his head and looked at the man in a way that made me feel as if the world had just turned dark. Strangler jerked free of the ref, grabbed the man around the waist, and ran with him until he hit the ropes with the man’s back. He squeezed like he was trying to get grease out of a tube, and the man passed out.
Strangler just dropped him. A couple of men on the sidelines pulled the unconscious tough guy through the ropes and took him away.
Strangler called out, “Next.”
We got on the steps that led up to the ring, hoping to get close enough to yell out to Strangler that the gangsters were there and looking for him, but the referee yelled for us to get down.
Strangler looked and saw us.
“They’re here,” I said, loud as I could.
Strangler let what I said hang in the air before he mouthed, “Don’t matter.”
Another man entered the ring, and Strangler went back to it. This guy was burly and only wearing pants and a T-shirt. He was a little bit more work for Strangler, but I think the truth was Strangler was giving the crowd a show. The last one had been too easy. The two of them flopped this way, and then they flopped the other way, and it all ended with the challenger pinned to the floor with Strangler’s knee in his neck.
After three more challengers lost to Strangler, it was over. No one else wanted to step into the ring.
I looked this way and that for Bad Tiger and Timmy but didn’t see them.