Weird Show

Before Marshall Jenkins made his home in the Weird Show, he had found other things. Sometimes the nasal small-town newspaper people would touch their pencils against their tongues and ask, "But what? What other things? What did you do before, Mr. Jenkins?"

"Other things," he would repeat, showing his teeth in a mirthless smile, and if the newspaper person were a woman, she might giggle. He had a way of creating unease on all sides. It was part of the act. Marsh had a soul to go with his liver, and a liver to go with his body -- a tall, thin, sallow body, obscurely ill, and as tight and secretive as a switchblade. The liver trickled bile into his heart. The heart pumped like that of a human being.

"Mr. Jenkins has had a varied career," little Suzanne would continue for him, following him with her eyes as he stalked out. Stalk is the word: too long a stride for his stiffened form, making too much of the gesture of walking. Solemnly Suzanne continued. "Mr. Jenkins likes to entertain people. Mr. Jenkins enjoys thrilling the folks and giving them what---"

"Suzanne! Suzanne! We're not unpacked yet."

And she ran to follow him. She would do anything for Marsh. She did. She was sawed in half nightly, twice on Saturdays, when he was Marshall the Great in most of the small towns of Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and as far down the Mississippi as St. Louis. They traveled to thousands of Saturday nights all over the midwest and mid-south in their made-over school bus, painted with gypsy gilt letters, Weird show Spook show Marshall the great.

"Ape show," said Will.

There was Will, a college student of acting, who did the work of controlling the lights and supplying macaroni. Will was a different young man almost every year, but Marshall always called him Will. He trained the young man to answer. He taught him how to soak and fling the noodles.

There was Suzanne, who was sawed in half. Suzanne was Marshall's girl, not his joy, just his girl, and she was always the same Suzanne.

And of course there was Marshall, who thought of new tricks and variations on old ones and had a knack for it. It didn't take too much of him. He reserved most of himself for some secret continuing duty which no one ever understood. The Spook Show needed just what he was willing to give it, which was about what every spook show takes, which is:

The theatre, called the Granada, or the Toledo or the Palace, would have been built during the boom of the late Twenties, when yellow stucco and false balconies spoke for fantastic luxury, and flickering stars in the ceiling twinkled for romance. Popcorn machines came later, but blended nicely with the Moorish decor. When Marsh went into action, the lights flickered out and the screaming began. Reflectors sent ghostly shadows leaping and prancing; the spook record sang out howls and screeches, and murderous strangling sounds; Will stood up on the balcony, throwing great handfuls of warm macaroni down onto the crowd, while Marsh cried, "Worms! Worms!"

The usual double horror movie set the mood, of course. One of the films was often an old-time serial, all 15 chapters spliced together. By the time Marsh began his act, the small-town nerves, frazzled by vampires, werewolves, pig-men, and Reds from Outer Space, were interacting powerfully with stomachs that withered under successive waves of assault by ginger ale and popcorn.

The kids loved it. A weedsprinkling of silent adults also sat isolated in the crowd, loving it. But mostly it was kids at the necking age for matinees or Owl Shows. They went steady until the girls' hems came down and the seams of the boys' clothes were drenched with protest. They exchanged tender promises amid a rain of macaroni until they thought they would die. "Oh Georgie," the girl would say, "you make me crazy but stop or I'll tell Mother."

"Stella, Stella honey."

"I'll tell her just as soon as I get home, I will. Hey! Look at the ape-man!"

And the hand of Georgie (or Sheldon or Red) traveled fast, but it wasn't Stella's fault, was it? She had a biological, scientific, purely educational interest in the gorilla prancing down the aisle. "Oh-ah-oh it's beautiful!" she gasped.

Georgie's hand was teaching her to express her feelings about apeness.

It was Marshall in the gorilla suit.

The kids necked, the popcorn flowed like wine, the cola flowed like popcorn; the happy crunch of teeth on candy and male mouth on female mouth set up a din of profit in the theatre-owners' delicate ears. They rubbed their hands contentedly and purred. They brought Weird show Spook show Marshall. The great back at six-month intervals. Marsh did nicely. Stella thought crazy, did crazy. The owners didn't even mind the necessity of hiring extra ushers to patrol the aisles, poking flashlights at the lovers only when vileness seemed imminent. Love with candy bought outside, not in the lobby, seemed vilest of all. But love with the Granada's Own Caramel Crackerjack or salty popcorn only made the owners tenderly murmur: "These kids! This crazy mixed-up generation! Well, at least we're winning them away from the TV...."

At a signal from Marsh, Will turned up the screabie-jeebie record to full pitch and Marsh ran up and down the aisles in his gorilla suit while the ushers played their lights on him. It was enough to scare a sensitive girl right out of her pants. Sometimes it did just that, but nobody ever claimed the five or six square inches of elastic nylon swept up from under the seats. Marsh in his gorilla suit was enough to weaken a moral, strong-minded girl so that her boyfriend could have one more good feel for the road -- which was what the moral, strong-minded girl wanted to be weakened for, too. If you don't know what you're doing, how can you be blamed?

Suzanne argued that it was part of their duty to help young America face life and stop twitching.

"What an idea!" said Will. "There must be another way to learn about life -- not that I'm complaining. It's a job, and I sure am learning."

Perhaps more than anyone, Marsh liked the work. After the ape-show section, he ran backstage, zipped himself out of the gorilla suit, and moved swiftly into the climax of his program. Originally he had used the conventional magic act -- "I Saw a Woman in Half Before Your Very Eyes" -- in which Suzanne curled up in a box with false feet protruding from one end. But that seemed out of keeping with his basic theme, and so he developed an unusual notion. Instead of sawing and then letting Suzanne do the classic unharmed leap out, he had her head protrude at one end and made her scream, twist, gurgle, and in general, vigorously complain while she died a red death, the red stuff supplied by genuine Heinz ketchup.

The neckers loved it. The theatre-owners loved it. Suzanne needed cough drops against an occasional hoarseness from overindulgence in shrieking, but Marsh relieved her of the task of helping him shout "Worms! Worms!" during the plague of macaroni.

This summer was one of their most successful seasons. Will Jonas, the chief assistant, had been on the job last summer also; he handled details with authority. Like a shrunken caravan crossing the laggard tail of the corn-stubble deserts of midwestern America, Will's slate-gray and dented little tin-can trailer followed the big made-over school bus which Suzanne and Marsh shared with the moth-eaten gorilla suit and other equipment. Will, who had been a graduate student in dramatics, told Suzanne with great solemnity that he believed this gave him more practical experience in acting than the fly-by-night stock productions of The Man Who Came to Dinner to which most of his friends were condemned. Suzanne listened and turned her great starved eyes all over his face. Will tried not to notice and mentioned that Marsh fascinated him. "As a person," he added. He believed that Marshall Jenkins was a man who eventually would come to accept that he was a gorilla, that the macaroni really became worms, Worms, Worms, that the horrors he imagined and played out with tricks were real. "Well, he is an artist -- more than an artist," he told Suzanne.

"Oh yes, more," said Suzanne.

"In college," Will began, but did not finish the sentence: I studied abnormal psychology.

"Sometimes he's difficult." It was as if she could read his thoughts after so many hot afternoons together, after so many coffees huddled over the counter of diners and the fans turning and turning while the flies circled warily, watching. Suzanne again turned her large, unblinking, quietly astonished eyes on Will. "I believe like he resents how your real name is Will." He loved to put down all the boys by making them answer to what he called them. "Will," she said. "Will."

Will laughed and patted Suzanne's cropped head. "You're a cute kid. Someday when I'm a big-time director or actor, you come to me. You look like a ballet dancer type; you know, Swan Lake."

"Tschaikovsky," she said. "I know cultural things, too."

"I'll saw you in half any day, Susie -- I know just the saw for you."

Suzanne's laughter rippled out, soft and heavy, as if this particular laugh had been waiting too long and the poor joke was merely a needed excuse. The colder Marsh grew toward her, the more she needed Will's jokes. She laughed slowly, until the tears came out of her eyes, tears of gratitude and loneliness. Her laughter did not yet have any joy in it. She was no longer so sure as she had once been that her daddy had raised her to be sawed in half by Marshall the Great. Marsh took her without pleasure. It had been that way for over two years now. He seemed to enjoy her most when they spun round a curve of a hillside road, and she was frightened and begged him to drive more slowly, and then sometimes abruptly he braked to a skidding stop and made her go back with him into the rear of the bus. And never thanked her for anything.

No pleasure.

Something secret in him, silent and unmoving, nothing more.

"He's no friend," she morosely confided in Will. "I wish, I wish -- Oh, he's no friend to any living person, not even himself!"

"Lonely for him," said Will.

"He cares for himself in terrible ways."

And she fell silent.

"You started to say you wish....You wish what?" Will asked, abruptly touched by this unhappy little creature, pretty face and small, tanned, rounded body (white showing when she stretched, when she moved, leaned), a hunger and straight aim for love deflected by Marsh for almost seven years now. Waste, waste. "What does a pretty girl wish?" he asked.

"Shush, you!" The smile retreated over tips of teeth. "I wish I'd never gotten into this," she said dully. "I had to be an artist the quick way. Because he said I was pretty and people would like to look at me. Stare is what they do, and think -- just like him. Dirtiness is what they think. I wish I'd stayed at work in a dime store like a nice girl. Maybe I could have even gone to college for a year, business school, you know, and met a sweet considerate fellow like you."

Will flushed. Looking away, he put his arm around the girl.

"I didn't mean anything by that," she said.

"But I do. I heard you. I've thought about you too, Sue-girl."

The soft, senseless, sweet little words were like pressing a button, for with them and with his gesture of pressing his arm about her shoulder, she flung herself sobbing into his arms. Loneliness and pity and less lofty feelings -- the health and the unsureness of a young man traveling and without women -- combined to do, very rapidly, what Will remembered now he had dreamed of in his trailer during the long, lonely, starlit nights parked behind Marshall the Great's bus. He kissed her lightly for an instant; then her lips parted and his mouth opened into hers; they clung to each other, they started fearfully away and stared. They stared and stared with that blank searching of two people who (continued on page 62)Weird Show(continued from page 18) know they have found something important which they do not yet understand. It was the middle of the dusty afternoon and they were backstage of the Alhambra in Jackson, Michigan. Marsh was up front tinkering with the lights.

"He'll hear us!"

"No, he's busy," she said with loathing, and said no more. She was trying to catch her breath.

"Oh, Suzanne!"

Abstracted, pushing him away, the girl suddenly had the face of a frowning, pouting, thoughtful child. Her lip was swollen. "You stay here," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"For a while. I'll go back to the trailer. I'll say I'm sleepy."

"I'll see you in 10 minutes," Will whispered.

"Soon," she said.

"Right away."

She turned away so that he could not see her face. She slipped by him. In a moment Will heard her sweet, slightly hoarse, little girl's voice conferring with Marsh. Then he heard her heels on the stone of the lobby, and out.

The 10 minutes were an agony. Like all agonies, they had to come to an end. Ten minutes later he possessed her, or at least he claimed her, and it was the miracle of his life. Her need was enormous; she had been deprived, mistreated, she had been stunned with contempt. It was as if her health had been driven beneath the surface to wait and had come up gasping with desire. She was lovely in gratitude. It was what he, like any young man, needed most of all in the first unsure days of early manhood.

They discussed going away together, but of course this was a ridiculous notion. She was older than Will; they had their loneliness and their desire in common, but they had heard that tenderness is not enough. They were obedient pupils to what they had heard, despite the violence they felt within themselves, and the tender violence which they had spent clashing against each other. He would follow his talent through school, and then to New York. She could do nothing but stay with Marsh. The thought of the Wills who might follow him (this would have to be his last summer in the Weird Show) maddened Will Jonas, put a snake of jealousy to slithering in his stomach; but he was possessed of some of the careful egotism of the actor -- he knew that the desperate clinging between Suzanne and him would not forever be enough. He wanted more. The dank, dusty, bricked-up streets of small towns made him need her -- but not for always. He would move fast in years to come. He would remember her with a pang, sweet and keen, but it would be a drag to try to take her with him. Or so he tried to decide.

"You're awfully sweet, you know," he told her, and that was the most he would say, although sometimes despite himself a groan of pleasure and gratitude seemed to promise her more, promise himself more. They would steal this summer -- it would be enough. Or so they promised themselves.

Suzanne was patient. Her skin grew pink and creamy; her short black hair had an electric vitality; she seemed once more the girl of 20 whom Marsh had met in a dime store seven years before, with a deep happy privacy within her, and the smell of her like crushed petals in Will's hands.

Marsh suspected nothing. He was deep in the manipulations of his act. He was considering buying a new gorilla suit. When the lights went out in the school bus, and Will lay hot, sleepless, brooding and alone, he had jealous fantasies. He heard the bugs crashing against the street lamp overhead. But the next day Suzanne would promise and promise him --"No, nothing, nothing, honey" -- and at last Will came to believe. Marsh was too far gone in the tribute he paid to his nuttiness, the controlled madness of the psychopath who could pretend to be a human being and flirt with the girl in the lobby who was dressed up as a nurse, standing near the smelling salts and the bottles filled with colored powders. By smiling he got a better rate. He picked up a nurse in each town. "He's not crazy," Will told Suzanne, "he's a high-type American businessman. It's just his business."

"Gorilla business."

"Monkey business," said Will, smiling.

August. The heat of a low-topped trailer. Release after boredom and a dusty job near the ceilings of theatres, in basements, and behind rotting curtains -- and only shrill pleasure to console them. Suzanne lay huddled in Will's arms on the bed in his trailer, parked in the lot behind the Carthage theatre in Grand Rapids. They had left Marsh shifting the lighting in the Carthage; he had an itch to play with lights. Fine. Excellent. And now Will was talking to Suzanne, not necessarily because he believed that she could understand, but because the long habit of love produces trust. He had to talk to someone; Suzanne was the only someone in his life, and she had a tenderness for him which is better than cleverness after all. "I'm fascinated by him," Will admitted. "He touches the nerve of the audience because he barely pretends it about magic. He likes the horror as much as they do. He believes. When you scream and he's sawing, I think he takes it each time---"

"He smiles sometimes," said Suzanne. "Mmm, my mouth is dry. I need some gum. No, I need you to kiss me."

He did.

"Now talk some more," Suzanne said. "I love to hear you talk. I don't have to hear what you say, I hear your voice talking to me, to your Suzanne. Now go ahead, talk."

He kissed her.

"Talk I said!"

He held her in their silent shared laughter. Then Will went on. "It's as if he resents being human. He. Notice how I say that? I don't use his name. I just say He, Him."

She sighed, stretched, yawned. She rubbed farewell against him. "Yes. Yes, but I better get dressed now, honey. It's about time for him to finish up in the theatre."

Him she says, Will thought.

He released the girl, but lay there himself, still figuring, as she moved about the room, retrieving panties, bra, the silky spume of their abrupt and untidy passion flecked throughout the small space of the trailer. "He feels right about the Weird Show. It's his home. He likes to throw the worms from the balcony. I think he'd rather it really were worms. Then he'd scream, Macaroni, Macaroni! and if he did it they would all scream with him. In his way he's an artist. He can do anything he wants." He shuddered. "Loony."

"You better pick yourself up, honey." She bent to kiss him, and put her cheek next to his shoulder, rubbing it against the tender fur of his chest.

"He shouldn't go too far that way. He's playing with things a man shouldn't know about. It's a risk. He's going out of control. Don't tickle, baby."

They were both mostly arranged again when there came a rattle at the door of the trailer. Suzanne opened. An enormous black-bellied gorilla stood bowing and grunting in the doorway. It entered, lurching, and brushed it claws against her face. It swayed back and forth through the trailer, knocking dishes off the table and shedding its sour animal smell. "Marsh!" said Will. "What the devil are you doing?"

"Marsh!" Suzanne cried.

"Worms, worms!" the muffled voice inside called out.

Suzanne, shivering, stroked the gorilla's head. She laughed. "Nice gorilla. I see you got your new gorilla suit, Marsh. It's swell. You wanted to try it out on us?"

Marsh stopped and slipped off the head. Inside he was perspiring fiercely, his thin hair pasted to the narrow skull, his sallow skin stretched tight and gleaming, (concluded overleaf)Weird Show(continued from page 62) the gray pouches of his eyes streaming with fine tears of sweat. "I thought you folks ought to see it first," he said. "They didn't give me much trade-in on the old one, but what can you do? Well, I'm off to the showers. You better get yourself some dinner -- it's getting on toward show time."

They watched him hobble into his bus, stripping off the costume as he went.

"Did he see? Did he hear?" Will hissed at Suzanne.

"Does he know?"

And they looked at each other and shook their heads. He could not have played jokes if he knew. He could not have been spying outside. No, it was not possible.

No, no. He did not suspect. Even Marsh would have some more human response than to frighten them with the gorilla suit. Even a psychopath has feeling. Only a total madman could have played this amiable joke on them after listening and spying on their lovemaking from outside the trailer where once Will's foot had rung out against the tight tin drum of a wall. He knew nothing, then.

The evening show went well. The theatre was filled, and the aisles crowded with standees. After the two movies, Vampire Attack and It, the great Weird Show went on -- bells, howls, darkness, shrieks, worms, gorilla, explosions. When he finished his last stint at throwing worms from the balcony, Will Jonas went outside for a smoke and some serious thinking about what lay ahead. Maybe he should take a chance and take Suzanne with him. Why not? Did a man have to plan every step of his life? And didn't Suzanne give what he really wanted, and wouldn't she forever look slender and lovely for him?

In the meantime, Marsh, dressed in the black tails which made him look taller than his six feet, with the light coming upon him from below as from an inner flame, did the perfunctory magic tricks which led to the main event. "I now, Marshall the Great, only and especially for you, Saw a Live Woman in Half. Stand up, Suzanne!"

Suzanne, in tights and fancy bra, leapt out from the wings and curtseyed. A roar of approval went up from the crowd. They knew what to expect. Marsh touched her with his magician's baton. She went into the box. He strapped and locked it securely. The crowd howled when he put a pillow under the head which stuck out at one end. He turned the box to show the audience all sides of it. Some who had seen the act before interrupted their necking to say, "Realistic, ain't it?" and returned to kissing work.

Marsh picked up the shark-toothed saw.

"And now," he said, and did not finish the sentence. He bent to the head lying with its eyes closed on the pillow, the body curled up in the box. He whispered to the head. "I know."

She began to scream even before she felt the vibration and crazy raw bite of the saw. It was working so high on the box that there was no place, nowhere, nothing for her writhing trapped body. The screams of terror and pain, the head twisting and contorted, the mouth open to bursting, these things gratified the marvelous nightmares of children. A thick red liquid trickled from the screaming mouth. The neckers hawed with nervous laughter. The saw played its shrill tune.

This was the best yet.

The best ever.

Outside on the deserted evening street, Will Jonas was smoking his cigarette, dreaming vaguely about the life together of two people who care, need, love.