It was a lot different now. But hell, what wasn't? Bateman himself had been slowing down steadily for several years. He didn't have a lot of time left, but he always said he wanted to go out running a pitch somewhere. Only suckers die broke in bed.
He reached Jackie's trailer and banged on the aluminum door.
"It's open," piped a squeaky voice from inside.
Bateman entered. Jackie Moskowitz sat on a bench at a fold-down table playing solitaire. He brought himself up to table level by sitting on two copies of the Los Angeles Yellow Pages. He did not look up immediately.
Bateman remembered Jackie from the days when he was Major Tiny, an ill-tempered midget with Gallagher's Greater Shows. That was in the fifties. It was a phase out time for carnivals, and just as well for Major Tiny, whose faulty pituitary gland unexpectedly betrayed him. In a period of less than a year he grew to four feet eleven. Not a big man in the outside world, but laughably tall for a midget.
Luckily for him, Jackie had saved his money and was able to buy a piece of the Gallagher's show when he got too big to work. It had since declined steadily until the ragtag collection of grifters, kids, and burnouts that made up Samson was all he had left.
"What's up, Jackie?" Bateman said, squeezing his paunch into the narrow space behind the table across from Jackie.
"I gotta cut back," said the little man.
"Oh?" Styles braced himself for the bad news.
"Your show's gotta go."
"Why mine?"
"Because it's the weakest in the whole shebang. I carried you last year for old times' sake. I was ready to do it again, but I got to lookin' at the bills, and I can't hack it."
"My tent's better than the kootch show," Bateman protested. "Those bimbos couldn't give a hard-on to a Mexican sailor. Or what about the Wheel of Fortune? Umbach's got his foot on the pedal so heavy it raises smoke when he stops the thing. Even the yokels aren't going for that."
"Forget it, Bateman," squeaked the little owner. "You're gone."
"Why me? Just give me a reason."
"Okay. That bunch of so-called freaks you carry around wouldn't get a second look at a Kiwanis convention. Your giant, what is he, six-seven?"
"Six-eight-and-a-half," Styles protested.
"Some giant. The yokels can see kids bigger than that at any high school basketball game. And your bearded lady - you call that a beard?"
"You would if you kissed her."
"God forbid. That five o'clock shadow don't impress anybody, not even when she darkens it up with pencil shavings."
"She's got three kids."
"That don't make her no freak."
"I mean, how's she going to take care of them?"
"That ain't my problem. Let her do shave cream commercials. And your sorry fire-eater - what's he call himself, Torcho?"
"Flamo."
"It's always one or the other. Do you know how old his shtick is? I mean, blowing lighter fluid out of your mouth went out with handlebar mustaches."
"Handlebars are back."
"Don't confuse the issue."
"So my people aren't exactly New Wave. What of it? Most of the carnival is things that's been around for years. Nostalgia, that's what brings the folks in."
"Well, in your case it ain't bringing enough of 'em in. You and your freaks are out, Bateman. Sorry, but that's the way it is. In another year I'll most likely be out, too. You and me, we're the tail end of this business."
Styles seemed to crumble where he was wedged into the small seating space. He stared blankly down at the worn cards laid out before Moskowitz.
"Can't you give me a week?"
"No way. Everything's too tight. Hell, Bateman, you can probably collect more on Social Security than you make traveling with a tin can outfit like this. You're sure as hell old enough for it."
"They tell me that to collect any of that you have to show you put some in over the years."
"No bull? How chicken shit."
"What if I come up with another gimmick?"
"I don't want your freaks, period."
"Okay, if they got to go, that's it. Maybe I can come up with something else."
"Come up with what? We open tomorrow."
"Lemme think about it, okay?"
"Sure, you think about it, Bateman, but I don't want to see those freaks in the morning."
"I'll give them the word."
"Good."
Moskowitz returned his full attention to the solitaire game. Styles levered himself out from the confining seat and left the trailer.
Breaking the news to his people - like most old-time carnies, Styles would never call them freaks - did not go too badly, all things considered. Colossus shook his hand, thanked him for a year of work, and said he'd have no problem getting a dishwasher job in some joint. They liked to have a big guy who could come out from the back if the bouncer got into it with somebody tougher than he could handle. Colossus was no fighter, but he was big and looked mean, and that was enough to discourage a lot of mouthy punks.
Flamo said little when Bateman gave him the bad news. He merely belched and chewed his Maalox tablets. He guessed maybe he could go back to his wife in Bakersfield if she had kicked out the twelve-string guitar player she'd been shacking with.
With Rosa it had been tougher. Tears had welled in her great brown eyes and rolled clown into her inadequate mustache. Bateman took her aside and slipped her enough for bus fare back to Flagstaff, where she had parked the kids with a sister. It was the best he could do.
Now, walking in the late afternoon on the hill above Silverdale, Styles missed all of them. In his years as a showman he had seen a couple thousand people come and go. He could never get used to it. They were his family. And in his heart he knew, once somebody left the carnival, you never saw them again. It was like they died.
Speaking of which, unless he could come up with some fast spiel for Moskowitz by tomorrow morning, Bateman Styles would himself be leaving the carnival. When he'd made the pitch in Moskowitz's trailer he had some half-ass idea about setting the midget on a flashy new idea. The trouble was, he didn't have one. All the ideas were used up.
Bateman stopped frequently to rest as he walked. The hills were steeper than they used to be. And it was hard for a man to catch his breath at this altitude.
He sat on a rock and looked at the view. Silverdale might not be much shakes as a town, but you couldn't buy the view for a million dollars. To the east, flat and parched, stretched Death Valley. It shaded delicately from gold to chocolate brown. To the west, just beyond the Inyo foothills, stood big-shouldered Mount Whitney.
His contemplation of the scenery was interrupted by a sound very close to him. Not quite a sob and not quite a growl, but a little of each Bateman stood up and looked behind the rock he had been sitting on.
There on the ground lay a boy, or young man, his body twisted into an unnatural position. He was huddled there, his face away from Styles, his limbs twisting and jerking as though yanked by invisible wires. It was the boy who was making the sob-growl sounds.
Styles' first thought was that the kid was having an epileptic seizure. He had once worked with a high-diver who was an epileptic. They all figured someday Carlo would throw a fit while he was up on the tower, looking down at the tub. Sure enough, one day he did. Carlo's last dive was by far his most spectacular.
Bateman knew you were supposed to keep an epileptic from swallowing his tongue. He leaned down and tried to roll the young man over onto his back. Then he saw the face, and forgot all about epileptic seizures.