Part 65 (1/2)

Off out of the arena, back into the movement.

And out into the very heart of the s.h.i.+ning motion.

Lars stopped fighting. He let his eyes see and his mind fill.

Last one there is a sissy and Father seated in a small car, b.u.mping the car into others and howling. First one to the trestle and the slow circling ferris wheel with the squealing dots.

_Just try and catch me, just try_ . . .

”Come now, Lars, we rest.”

The horror in the washroom and out again, feeding the Feeling, sending it along the spiral. The music bellowing and even in the little car in the blackness of the Fun House--movement there. Sudden lights on painted monsters, cotton bats squeaking along invisible wires.

And then-- _Here we go, folks, the experience of a lifetime. Yah yah hear! See 'em all--the Frog Man, Queenie the Fat Girl (three hundred pounds of feminine loveliness!), Marco the Flame-Eater, yah, yah, all inside, all inside_ . . - ”Come, Lars, after this we will go. But if it is like last time--you never saw anything like it. Funny looking crazy people. It's good, good.”

_And as a special attraction, ladies and gents, we have Jackie the Basket-case. No arms, no legs, but he writes and plays cards and shaves, right before your very eyes. Science gave him up as lost, but you'll see him now. Jackie, the Basket-Case. And the headless girl, who defies doctors throughout the universe! Nurses in attendance! Heah heah heah! Only ten cents, the tenth part of a dollar_.

Square canvas flags with strange pictures on them. A man with a sword in his mouth, a woman with an orange beard, a ferocious black man with feathers. And in front, high on the platform, a man with a striped s.h.i.+rt and a cane, hitting a pan.

”So, we go in.”

Lars said nothing. He listened to all the sounds and how they seemed like the swift rush of cold wind and rain across his face. His heart beat and his blood pounded against his temples.

_I'll beat you, Lars_ . . .

Lars felt his chair being pushed forward. Out of the sunlight and quickly into the dimly lighted interior, he could see nothing at first. Only what he had been seeing for hours.

There was the sudden quiet, for one thing. Nothing to see yet, but like dropping from a close, hot hay-loft to freshly watered earth. Damp and cool, like perhaps a grave.

The Feeling stopped growing for a moment as Lars focused his eyes. He wondered where all the people had gone, what had happened, if he were back in the silent unmoving room. The cold stillness and then the soft muttering of voices, strange and out of place.

”Here, Lars, don't you see?”

Mr. Nielson ran his hand though Lars' hair and touched his shoulder. The chair moved over ploughed ground.

”Papa, what--”

Mr. Nielson giggled no louder than the other people in the tent.”Ha ha! Look, boy, look at the woman!”

Lars saw the object that Father had called a woman. The product of mutant glands, a huge sitting thing with mountains of flesh. Flowering from the neck down the arms and looping over the elbows, dividing like a baby's skin at the hands; the thighs, cascading flesh and fat over the legs down to the feet.

And over all this, a metallic costume with purple sequins attached and short black hair, cut like a boy's.

”Have you ever seen anything so big, Lars!”

Lars looked from his wheelchair into the eyes of the fat lady and then quickly away from them.

Over the ground. Stopping.

The sign reading The Frog Man, and four people staring.

”Look! Ohhh!”

Shriveled limbs with life sticking to them. Shriveled, dried-up, twisted legs, bent grotesquely. And the young man with the pimples on his face crouching on these legs, leering. Every few moments, the legs moving and the small body hopping upwards.

Lars tried to shake his head. The Feeling started from where it had left off, but it traveled elsewhere now. It traveled from his mind to his eyes and from his eyes outward.

”Come, it will be late. We must see everything. Oh, look, have you ever seen such a crazy thing!”

Lars leaned his head forward painfully and looked.

The face of a very old man, but smooth along the creases and over the wrinkles. Wrinkled hands, thin hair. An old man standing three feet from the ground. But not merely small. Everything dwarfed. The false beard and the gnome's cap and the stretched-gauze wings.

The Feeling went into the eyes of the midget.

”There, over there! There was no such last time!”

Over the ground slowly, past the man with the pictures on his skin, the black creeping thing, the boy with the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, slowly past these, slowly so the Feeling could be fed and gathered.

And now, the Feeling reaching across the tent to the other side, reaching into the woman with seventeen toes, the boy with the ugly face, the alligator girl, the human chicken, reaching and bringing back, nursing, feeding, identifying. Identifying.