Geek Love Part 18

"I always liked the cattle smells, hay and milk and dung. We knew the place by the flies. And there was a crowd.

"That dentist had ten little boys in a white-voice choir. Very sweet and eerie. Remind me to let you listen to the twins' tapes when they were doing white voice. The transition was hard on them, getting the tremolo after their blood flowed. They're still good but their mature voices just don't have the purity and control that their white voices did. Arty can still white voice if he wants to, but Oly never did have a white time. I swear that child cried for t.i.tty in a full-throated contralto. Chick still has a pure little white voice. Sometimes I pa.s.s where he's sitting or hear him in his shower and I think for a moment that he's still a toddler and I should go make sure he isn't drinking ammonia or something. Isn't it odd that the girls should lose their white voice and both the boys can still use it? Sometimes I say to Al, 'Why is that ... ?'

"Oh no, Arty didn't sing at the dentist. It was the choir and a few witnesses. Older folks, big jolly men with guts over their belts standing up next to the dentist showing big gold smiles. It seems G.o.d doesn't use porcelain or amalgam or fancy plastic. He fills strictly with gold. And some big old farm women who should have known better.

"The dentist was down in the auction pit with his microphone. Nice-looking man. White hair and spectacles and a quiet suit. He had a wonderful voice. We stayed in the aisle in the back because of Arty's chair, which was good because it gave us a better view than if we'd been up on the bleachers. The dentist was asking questions. 'Do you believe G.o.d can heal?' and the crowd was nice and they liked him and they said, 'Yes,' a big yes. 'Do you believe G.o.d can heal YOU?' and they said, 'Yes.' 'Do you believe G.o.d can fill teeth?' And when the dentist asked, 'Do you believe G.o.d can fill YOUR teeth?' we all said yes to be courteous. It was fun that it was somebody else's show and we could just go along like paying customers for once.

"Then everybody was praying wild with their mouths open and their hands waving. The dentist had a good backup line that it might not happen at that very moment. It might take a couple of days or even weeks. Still there were plenty of folks whooping right away that their big hole was filling up with gold. They were bouncing around looking in each others mouths and blessing Jesus. There was no folderol about getting new teeth. G.o.d was a decent dentist. He'd give you a well-fitted denture but he wouldn't grow you a whole new set.

"We laughed all the way back to our lot but, actually, I never did have any more tooth pain. Eventually all my teeth went and this set of plates does me well. But I never had any pain. Arty would ask me about it and we'd laugh but he seemed to think about it. He had Oly letter a little card that he taped on his wall. The thing read, 'The only liars bigger than the quack are the quack's patients.' Arty used to just keep me in st.i.tches. Eleven years old he was then."

Arturo to N.S.: "Why? You're asking me why? You tell me, Mac! I'm not really in a position to know. You are. Me, I have suspicions. I suspect people are suckers for a p.r.i.c.k. I suspect folks just naturally go belly-up for a sn.o.b. Folks figure if a guy acts like he's King Tut and everybody else is donkey s.h.i.t, he must be an aristocrat."

Arturo to N.S.: "Consider the whole thing as occupational therapy. Power as cottage industry for the mad. The shepherd is slave to the sheep. A gardener is in thrall to his carrots. Only a lunatic would want to be president. These lunatics are created deliberately by those who wish to be presided over. You've seen it a thousand times. We create a leader by locating one in the crowd who is standing up. This may well be because there are no chairs or because his knees are fused by arthritis. It doesn't matter. We designate this victim as a 'stand-up guy' by the simple expedient of sitting down around him."

ARTURISM: A quasi-religious cult making no representations of a G.o.d or G.o.ds, and having nothing to say about life after death. The cult represents itself as offering earthly sanctuary from the aggravations of life. Small chalked graffiti, said to be the work of the Admitted, are found in many locations after the Binewski carnival has pa.s.sed through. The phrase "Peace, Isolation, Purity" (or sometimes initials P.I.P.) seems to be the slogan. Many commercial posters distributed in advance of the show read, "Arturo knows, All Pain, All Shame, and the Remedy!"

A fee, called a dowry, is required for entering the novice stage. The sum varies depending on the novice's resources but the minimum seems to be around $5,000. Novices are required to serve for at least three months and sometimes as long as a year as workers for the cult. Typists, bookkeepers, and organizers are given longer work periods than laborers. One of the most important tasks of the work period is serving and caring for cult members who have already had major portions of their limbs amputated.

The Admitted must furnish their own travel and living arrangements. All that is offered in return for the dowry is free access to Arturo the Aqua Man's shows, and the surgical amputations performed by the Arturan medical staff. Since the medical staff travels with the carnival, the Admitted must follow the carnival.

The camp of the Admitted is separated from the carnival camp by a portable electric fence and a series of manned sentry posts.

The administration is loosely conducted in a large camper perched on the back of a pickup truck.

The medical facilities consist of a well-equipped surgery in a large truck trailer with its own power supply. Two large truck trailers are equipped with monitoring devices and furnished as post-op recovery rooms. Each trailer has ten beds. A smaller eight.

Physically weak, deteriorating bed infirmary trailer is always parked near the doctors mobile living van, which houses an examining room.

Only one surgeon on the staff, reportedly aided by a skilled anesthesiologist. Am currently trying to locate credentials and licensing for the surgeon, a woman who goes by the name of Dr. Phyllis.

Most nursing ch.o.r.es, feeding, bathing, linen changes, bedpan provision, etc., are performed by novices in the order.

"The more people we exclude, the more people will want to join. That's what exclusive means."

- Arturo to N.S.

INELIGIBLE FOR ADMISSION GROUNDS.

Convicted Felons Already freaks Mentally Deranged or r.e.t.a.r.ded Unable to make informed decision Under Age 21 (later 25) Unable to make informed decision Over Age 65 Already freaks Chronically Ill Already freaks Congenitally Deformed Already freaks Accidentally Mutilated Already freaks Also excluded, unconditionally, are any who can't provide minimum dowry.

Judgments of degree of deformity that prevents admission are made by administrative staff. Borderline or ambiguous cases (correctable by cosmetic surgery, etc.) may be appealed by applicant for judgment by Arturo, whose decision is final.

ADMITTED WHO BECOME INELIGIBLE FOR FURTHER PROGRESS:.

Mentally Impaired Unable to make informed decision Chronically Ill Already freak - poor surgical risk Deteriorating Physically Weak Already freak - poor surgical risk REST HOMES: Theoretically all the Admitted end up at the Arturan rest homes. Administration claims two in existence with plans for twenty more.

Those who become ineligible for progress are sent there quicker but are pitied for having lost access to P.I.P. Those who complete progress (are reduced to head and torso) go to the rest homes with full honors-living, no doubt, the lives of gold-plated pumpkins: bathed, fed, and wheeled around by servants.

Questions: Check death rate (seems unlikely they'd want a thirty-year-old to live out the allotted twoscore more while being supported by the organization). Life expectancy?

Numbers of Admitted vs. applicants? Recidivism rates?

Attended Policy Meeting: Arty in his office, listening on intercom to conference in the administrative camper. He interjects an occasional remark-hits a b.u.t.ton that lights a red bulb in the conference camper. All talk stops in antic.i.p.ation of HIS voice. Arty, meanwhile, laughing, mimicking the committee members cruelly, with me as his audience. He is constantly informing me that he takes none of it seriously.

The debate is over glands. Should mammaries and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es be included in progress? (Should they be amputated?) And if so, at what stage of progress, as a final liberating gesture or as preliminary preparation ... ?

Different committee members present arguments, pro and con, then Arty decides.

Today's conclusion-glands should be included in progress. Order to be taken under advis.e.m.e.nt by Arturo-decision to be handed down later.

Case of Admitted #264: Logon M., thirty-four years old, has t.i.thed smallest fingers on each hand. Personal history: Second son of moderately successful insurance salesman and a nurse, raised in Kansas town, pop. 850. Midwestern University and Chicago. Master's degree in social work. Six years as welfare case worker, no advancement. Three years as juvenile counselor. Two children. Wife (now living in Grand Rapids with kids) has filed for divorce.

Arturan Administrator Theta Moore says Logon M. was rational when admitted but has slipped during progress.

Logan M. lives in a seven-year-old Chevrolet sedan, leases wheelchair. Appears daily at 9 A.M. in show camp with big plastic bag full of day-old bread, used and discarded burger buns, pie crusts, etc. He goes to the cat wagon, parks in front of the screen, and spends an hour or more watching the tigers, leopards, and lions. He scatters the pastry leavings on the ground in front of the cat cage.

Logan M. no longer communicates verbally except to sing - in a cracked falsetto - "Up to the Land of Kitties!" repeatedly.

CASE DISPOSITION: Arturo says Logan M. will go to the Missouri Arturan rest home (Camp #2 near Independence) and will be denied further progress because, Arty says, "He's off his nut."

Conscious decision making is a requisite for progress.

Arturo Binewski, in conversation with N. Sanderson: ".. if they hang around in groups and avoid outsiders it's not my doing. People generally stick with those who agree with them, anyway.

" ... Isolation is a standard cult technique but I don't use it. It's standard procedure to get the poor b.u.g.g.e.rs in a low moment, hustle them off to the boonies, and surround them with a strong-arm/soft-spiel combo. How could I do that? I'm a traveling show! Do I seal them into trains and add cars as I make converts? Colonies or communes or reservations are expensive and hard to manage. I've got a weird civil service-style bureaucracy taking hold as it is, and it's a pain in the a.s.s. I don't mind being lord of all I survey but I don't want to have to work at it. It just wouldn't be practical.

"As it is, I don't need all that c.r.a.p. For what I've got to say, the more exposure the folks have to the outside world, the better. Feed 'em newspapers, TV, world reports. Tell 'em about terrorist attacks, ma.s.s murders, disease, divorce, crooked politicians, pollution, war and rumors of war! Then go ahead and tell 'em that only fools and half-wits join my outfit. The first half of the news cancels out that particular message. Let the relatives and lovers loose on 'em. All they can stand. Because it's the world that drives them to me. You news guys are my allies. Those soggy wives and cheating husbands and nagging, nutso parents are my best friends.

"Didn't you, yourself, turn your back on the whole caboodle? Say the h.e.l.l with it, and walk away? Truth is, I don't need tricks and traps and brainwashing because I'm giving the poor sorry sons-ab.i.t.c.hes what they crave more than air.

"See, there's a difference between advertisin and proselytisin , Norval honey. All I have to do is let 'em know I'm here and what I stock-corrective surgery! And cheap at the price!"

Arturo Binewski, in conversation with N. Sanderson: " ... No. No children. My minimum age limit is twenty-one and I'm thinking about raising it to twenty-five very soon. Once in a while we get some maniac who wants his nine-year-old son or his four-year-old daughter enrolled. No indeed. Not my meat.

"Figure it this way. You will anyhow. You been hanging around politics long enough. I was brought up in a country that claims you're innocent until you're proven guilty. We protect children because they have not yet proven themselves to be hamstrung s.h.i.t-holes. Cranted, the odds are lousy that they'll turn out any other way but it's been known to happen. Isn't that how you figure it? Seeing how you think I'm punishing all these folks anyway?

"But here, I'll tell you another way to look at it too, just for fun. I figure a kid doesn't choose. They don't know enough to choose between chocolate and strawberry, much less between life and limblessness. Say, just for argument's sake, that I'm really serious in my own mind about what I offer. Just say I really think this is a sanctuary. Well, the whole deal depends on choice. I want people who know what life has to offer and choose to turn their backs on it. I want no virgins unless they're sixty years old. I want no peach-cheeked babes who may be down tonight but will have a whole new att.i.tude after their morning bowel movement. I want the losers who know they're losers. I want those who have a choice of tortures and pick me.

"I counted up the converts two nights ago and we've got a Fully Blessed roll of 750 in three years and another 5,000 who have worked past their first ten digits. You got to figure there's something going on here. We've got something the folks want."

20.

The Fix Unfixed

Dr. Phyllis had been working all morning. Arty had given out promotion certificates like cookies all week long. The novices were singing in the hospital trailers, where they watched over the ones who had been promoted that day. Arty was sunbathing on the roof of our van and I sat beside him watching the gentle stir of the midway waking. The awnings were pumped out. The lights all went on at once. The redheads were everywhere, starting the popcorn machines, blowing up balloons at the helium tank, leaning into the greasy vitals of the Mongoose & Cobra ride to make sure the music was synchronized with the lashing of the chairs that the norms would jounce in. The gates were open and the first townies were gawking in at the booths.

On the other side of us, the show camp spread. A line of delicate laundry tossed transparent frills from one of the trailers that housed the redheads.

Far down at the end, where the Arturan camp began, was Doc P.'s white van near the infirmary. All morning there had been a line at the infirmary door as the promoted waited, with their certificates of advancement rubber-stamped in blue ink, for their turn with the Doc. The line was finally gone.

Arty saw her before I did and made a flapping fart-sound out of his lips. He was on his belly with his head lifted. I swiveled to look along his line of sight. Dr. Phyllis was marching toward us. She had a straight alley ahead of her and her eyes were fixed on us. Arty ducked his head and lay flat. I watched the cloth of her mask suck in and out against her mouth as she strode along.

"She knows you're up here," I muttered spitefully. Arty rested one cheek on his blanket and glared at me. She was beside the van now.

Arty sighed. "Send the elevator for her."

I scuttled for the small platform and stood on it. "Coming, doctor!" I called. I waved at Arty as I pushed the descent b.u.t.ton.

I hopped off into the dust and Doc P. stepped onto the platform. I tried to look up her white uniform skirt as she went up. I couldn't see past the murk at her knees. Her voice started before the platform stopped.

"Arturo, it's crucial that you reconsider this totally inefficient method! Do you know how many individual digits I did today? Forty-seven!"

I went off for a stroll. There was a clear division between the Fabulon camp and the followers. The show rigs were all tight, tidy, and workable. The followers had strange outfits: pup tents, pickups with campers, tiny trailers that folded out into tents on wheels, several station wagons with bedding and bandages in back, decrepit cars, a converted icecream wagon, a bread truck, a pair of ancient Harley-Davidson motorcycles with sidecars. One of the sidecars was shaped like a wooden shoe and the other like a submarine. They belonged to a pair of hard-nosed old thugs, who slept in their sidecars and insisted on having the tattooed skin peeled off their arms and legs as they were removed. They tanned the tattoos and kept them in sc.r.a.pbooks in their saddlebags. Arty said privately that they would never have joined if they hadn't been old and afflicted with the chickens.h.i.ts about riding hard in big groups. They stuck together and helped each other, scaring off the fawning novices who wanted to suck up to them. Arty was bitter because they were more loyal to each other than to him and because they'd spent a wad on having their cycles converted to tongue-and-jaw controls before they showed up asking for salvation. He was suspicious of them for thinking that far ahead.

I was leaning on a dusty car listening to the soft song from the hospital trailers when the door of the infirmary opened and Norval Sanderson stepped down with a bundle wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. He closed the door behind him and was sauntering coolly away when Horst appeared from behind another van. The big cat man's eyes squinted as he saw Sanderson. "Well, I swan there, Norval," hollered Horst. Sanderson eased to a halt and turned graciously. "Looks," said Horst in a companionable tone, "like you've got yourself a tidy-sized chunk of something!"

"Horst, my fine fellow!" cried Sanderson, his fastidiously creased shirt and trousers emphasizing the delicate demonstration of pleased surprise. "I was just thinking of looking you up for a soothing session over the checkerboard!" Sanderson lifted a pint bottle of bourbon from a rear pocket and offered it. Horst walked all the way around Sanderson slowly, eyeing the plastic-wrapped bundle. Then he stopped beside the reporter and took the bottle. Sanderson was calm and genial. "Checkers, hunh?" said Horst, uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the cap. "Outdoors, perhaps," said Sanderson, "where I can sit upwind of you."

Horst slanted a blue glance at Sanderson and tilted the bottle to his lips. "Aah," he sighed, and handed the bottle back. "Now it seems to me that there's some question as to who sits upwind." Sanderson tipped the bottle, courteously neglecting to wipe the neck on his sleeve. "By my thinking," mused Horst, "a poacher outstinks a cat man any day, and if you've got anything less than a whole thigh in that bundle, I'm a pig's a.s.s."

Sanderson raised his eyebrows in mock surprise above the angled bottle. He swallowed and looked solemnly over Horst's lanky frame.

"It is an offense, sir," said Sanderson, "to justice, to reason, and to the tender female who brought you forth and nurtured you to your present stature, to even consider that you might bear any resemblance to a porcine posterior." Sanderson nodded gravely at the bottle, shifted the bundle under his arm and took another swig.

"That's my opinion," said Horst. "But look here, I thought we had an understanding that you could make do with the bony bits. You get all the fingers and toes anyway."

Sanderson's shoulders lifted in helpless resignation. "You have me at a loss. What can I say? Laziness, my dear Horst, will be my downfall."

They strolled out of earshot as Sanderson handed Horst the bottle and the bundle. Horst tucked one under his arm and the other against his teeth as they disappeared behind a van.

This was their standing argument. Horst wanted the big chunks for his cats. Sanderson had promised to leave the arms and legs and be content with hands and feet, which were more plentiful anyway. Sanderson hung the bits up on the outside of his van for his maggot crop. It was, he claimed, easier to whack a big chunk onto a single hook than to painstakingly string up a shish kebab of small pieces. Horst would carefully explain that hands and feet were useless to him. "Nothing's surer than my cats would choke on all those little bones. But they'll collect worms just fine."

Sanderson countered with mild reminiscences of domestic cats stripping fish spines.

Sitting in the dark next to our van on a summer night with the midway roar muted a little way off, Mama was almost invisible in her folding chair. Her hair caught the glow and sometimes a scratch of light hit her long legs as she shifted, folding one leg over the other. It was the after-supper lull, with the ch.o.r.es done and the last shows of the night causing the big tents to glow and billow with the crowds breath.

I had ushered in Arty's crowd, collected the tickets from the booth, and could sit, waiting for the tent walls to spangle in the rainbow finale of Arty's act. That was my cue to run for the stage exit and help him out of the tank. Mama, after all her years as duenna to the twins' act, had semi-retired. The redheads helped the twins with costumes. Jonathan Tomaini supervised the props. Mama sat outdoors in good weather, crossing and recrossing her legs.

Beside Mama, in my own folding chair, with my feet sticking straight out in front of me, I thought about my innards. Just a few months before I'd had no idea whether my reproductive equipment worked. There was no evidence. But that week I had become a full-fledged bleeder and was still absorbed by this first change in myself that I had ever noticed. The click and buzz of my synapses kept making the same connection. If you can change, you can also end. Death had always been a theory to me. Now I knew. The terror hurt good and I nursed it and played it like a loose tooth.

"No mosquitoes," murmured Mama. "A blessing."

"A creep!" The shout was from Elly somewhere in the dark.

"Creep! Creep! Creep!"

"Please, just leave us alone," pleaded Iphy. "We're quite all right alone."

"Stay away from us! Don't follow us! Don't wait for us! We don't need your help and we don't want it!" The twins came fast around the end of the van and headed for the low deck that joined the three Binewski units. Behind them, shuffling steadily, wheezing and gurgling, came the stooped figure of the Bag Man.

"Mama, tell him to leave us alone!" The twins swooped past us to their door. The light spilled out of their trailer in a wedge and then disappeared as they slammed inside. The Bag Man's big shadow stopped in front of Mama, hauling in noisy wet air and bobbing in place. The veiled head bent toward the twins' van.

Mama tipped back to look up at the dim hulk. Her hand slipped out to touch my arm. "Does he understand English?" she whispered. I grunted and she leaned back. Her silver-cloud head nodding slowly in the murk. The Bag Man took in a bale of air and let it out in what might have been a sigh. He lurched over to the deck and sat down with a grunt. He looked ready for a long wait.

Beyond the dark backs of the booths the Ferris wheel started turning. Its flashing bulbs threw a pulse of light over Mama's face. She stared at the wheel.

"That Bag Man," she murmured. "He seems so familiar. I'll remember soon."

Arty had laid down the law on the Bag Man. No one but Arty himself and I were to know that the Bag Man was the shootist from that long-ago parking-lot incident. Chick knew the Bag Man was scary, but Chick was resigned to being scared as well as uninformed. As far as anyone else knew, the Bag Man was just another one of Arty's followers.

I was not amazed. It seemed unremarkable that if you failed to murder someone you should become that persons guardian slave. The Bag Man worshiped Arty. Arty did not worship the Bag Man but he made an effort to keep the big lump busy and feeling useful.

I wasn't jealous of the Bag Man even though he took over some of my ch.o.r.es and magnified them. I had been the usual guard in the security room while Arty entertained. The Bag Man set up his residence there. Where I had fidgeted, cramped, sweating resentfully onto the idiot gun, the Bag Man sat on a flimsy cot staring raptly through the mirror gla.s.s hour after hour. As long as Arty was in the room. When Arty went out, the Bag Man trailed after him, looming and snorking like some asthmatic mastiff hypnotized by his master's scent. He waited behind the tank during Arty's show. He lumbered after Arty's electric cart on the way to and from the stage. Where Arty went, there was the Bag Man. When he wasn't looming he dusted and vacuumed, took out trash, emptied waste tanks, and left the more intimate service to me.

I still served Arty's food, took care of his clothes, acted as ma.s.seuse and towel brigade for the shows. Arty could give orders to the Bag Man but he could talk to me.

One day in late spring Arty had tried interrogating me: "What are the twins up to? Why are they so stuck-up lately?"

Arty lay on the rubbing bench, eyes folded to slits watching my face as I pummeled lotion into his ribs and belly.

"I don't know. Maybe they figure you're busy." I avoided his eyes, concentrating on the rope of muscle above his pelvis.

"I am busy. Are they taking advantage?"

"Don't ask me. I'm busy, too. Roll over."

He flopped onto his belly and I poured lotion down the deep ditch of spine between his banks of muscle.

"Their gates have been good this year."

"Not like yours. You're breaking three-ring records every week."

"They're getting the slops and doing good business. Have they changed their act?"

"Iphy says they're dancing less, and they do play one of their own songs."

"What are they up to?" His head is cranked up to glare at me.

"Don't twist like that! You'll tighten up on that side!" I could feel the Bag Man's eyes on me from behind the mirror. I started work on Arty's neck and he let the subject drop.

He could have made me tell if he'd pushed. Instead, he sicced the Bag Man on the twins.