For the next three days straight, the caravan rolled at top speed, at first on a road, passing small dilapidated farms and one-horse towns, and then on a packed dirt path that cut through the sandy remains of what had once been pasture. The sky was blue, but you’d hardly know it as the dust blew up around everything, choking the air and blocking the sun. Myself and I had to wear kerchiefs around our mouths and noses and something to protect the eyes from the blowing grit. I opted for goggles and my other me settled for an old wide-brimmed hat pulled low. The hours dragged tediously on as we passed through the desolation. Late on the third afternoon, when the caravan came to a halt somewhere in the far-flung dry heart of America, the clowns were informed by Hibbler that there would be no more driving. The fleas needed to perform.
The trailers were gathered into a half circle as the night came on and then lit by lanterns and torches. There was no paying public for a hundred miles in any direction. We performers were to be the audience. There wasn’t any choice. We gathered on folding chairs, forming a half circle around Hibbler and a small, makeshift stage for the fleas. The old man wore his graduation gown instead of his tuxedo and top hat. He stood before us, weaving to and fro, with an insipid smile on his face. When the crowd quieted down, he lifted the graduation robe over his head and dropped it on the ground. One more horror to add to the onslaught: a completely naked Hibbler stood before us.
There were audible groans from the crowd and someone in a most pitiful voice whispered, “No more.” As if those words were the cue, the old man’s entire body was covered instantly by fleas. It happened so fast, I thought it was a trick of shadows from the torchlight. But no, every inch of him, instantly. His screams were muffled by the minions filling his mouth. They remained latched to Hibbler, pulsating en masse with the rhythm of feeding. And then as quickly, they were gone. His corpse remained standing for a moment — snow white, shriveled, sucked dry — before collapsing in upon itself. We gasped and rose to our feet, standing there stunned, wondering what would come next. It took no more than a moment for us to realize — this was to be the end of the road for Ichbon’s Caravan of Splendors. The fleas had somehow detected the unspoken treachery against them.
They struck again, covering in an eyeblink the slouching form of Hector, the Geek, making a mummy of him in less time than it took him to bite off a chicken head. As he fell away, they settled on the juggler and his apprentice. The Three Miserable Clowns stepped forward then, brandishing jars full of gasoline. They doused the writhing, flea-draped forms, and then the most miserable of them all flicked his lit cigarette at them. The sudden explosion knocked me off my feet. The next thing I knew, I was helping me up and we were running away from the caravan into the night. Ahead, it was pitch black and behind, I saw flames engulfing the trailers, bodies strewn on the ground, and a man’s form made of fleas, tipping his hat to me and waving.
I ran at top speed like I never had nor ever would again, and when I finally stopped to catch my breath, at least a mile from the burning caravan, my other me admonished me. “Up, you laggard,” he bellowed. “They can suck you dry, but I want to live. Get moving.” I pulled myself together and took off again. I wandered over dunes and across barren fields. When the wind finally died down and the sky cleared enough to let the moonlight through, I found an abandoned house, one whole side up to the roof covered in sand. Smaller dunes surrounded the entrance. Exhausted, I pried open the door, pushing a foot of sand away. Inside, there were two rooms. One was full to the ceiling with sand. The other was clear and had a rocking chair by a window that still offered a partial view of moonlight on the waste.
The next day, I awoke in the rocker to the roar of a black blizzard moving across the prairie. The approaching sound, like a locomotive, woke me. I ran outside to see it coming in the distance. Dust two miles high, rolling toward me, a massive brown cloud one might mistake for a mountain range. I’d survived the caravan and now I was to be buried alive. I told myself I would stand my ground, but the sand that was pushed ahead of it in the wind stung me everywhere, and I thought of fleas biting me. Before I turned and ran for the house, I saw it as Arvet had described: the face of Satan coalescing in the roiling dust — horns and snake eyes and maw open, hungry as a flea. I got inside and shut the door behind me just when it hit. Huddling in the corner of the clear room, I took off my jacket and threw it over my faces. The air grew thick with dust and the noise outside was deafening.
That night, after Satan had passed, I dug out. On my march back to civilization the following morning, I came upon the carnival half-buried in sand and tumbleweeds. I saw the drained corpses of my colleagues, even those of the Three Miserable Clowns. No sign of the fleas, though, as if the dust storm had sent them back into hibernation. I broke into Hibbler’s trailer and took the cash from the cash box — considerable, given the success of the flea shows. I managed to get one of the trucks going and drove down to Liberal, Kansas, where I eventually settled. I was surprised folks there accepted me for what I was, but then my having two faces was the least of their problems in those years.
I never spoke about the fate of the caravan, yet I often pictured it out there on the plain, covered over with blowing sand. A couple years later, I was volunteering for the Red Cross in one of their makeshift hospitals, treating those laid low by the dust plague, when I came upon a female patient brought in after a blizzard, close to death’s door. It was Maybell, the Rubber Lady. She was in a bad way, wheezing up clouds of dust, her chest rattling like a hamper of broken china. She remembered, called me Janus, and smiled. In the evenings, when the ward was quiet, I sat by her bedside and we reminisced about the show and Ichbon and the appearance of the minions. She told me she’d escaped being drained because her flesh was too elastic. That got me thinking and I said to her, “That’s the one thing I always wanted to know. Why they allowed me to escape.”
“I know,” said Maybell, barely able to speak. She motioned for me to draw closer, and I leaned in. “Hibbler told me it was that face on the back of your head. They felt some kind of kinship for it.”
I wasn’t sure whether to thank her for that, but my other me did.
SWAN SONG AND THEN SOME
by Dennis Danvers
Alexandra’s explaining her act to me. “It’s only when I know I’m going to die that I can sing that song, hear the changes, hit the notes, and hold them. I can’t explain it. Maybe there are certain emotions only set free at the time of death, some silenced anguish finally given voice. I don’t know. It just wells up inside me. Whatever it is, it’s not a trick, Orlando. I die. I can’t sing the song otherwise.”
Basically, she sings a few songs well enough for a beautiful woman in a seedy carnival, swinging back and forth on a line like a hypnotist’s watch, then she’s hoisted to the top of our tiny big top that sat mostly empty until Alexandra came along. Her final song begins as she ascends, the most incredible a cappella performance you’ve ever heard, sung in what may or may not be a language, like an aria from another planet, intricate and moving — you can’t help becoming lost in it even though you’ve been told she is going to drop to her death at the song’s end — when she hits a crystalline sustained note of such heartbreaking beauty the crowd gasps. I’ve never heard it fail. Every soul in that tent is riveted to her voice as sure as Jesus was nailed to the cross. She holds the note still as she plummets, until it’s cut short in full voice by the sound of her body smacking onto tarmac, sometimes concrete, sometimes earth. We take whatever parking lot we can. We can’t afford to be choosy. Just when everyone who hasn’t heard what happens next has jammed every 911 switchboard for miles around, she springs, well, staggers to her feet and finishes the note, not quite as crystalline, not quite as beautiful, then bows and lurches to her trailer where nobody better come near for a couple of hours or so. She emerges looking as she looks now, so beautiful you want to believe anything she says, but in my case, wanting to know the trick.