Hunter (9780698158504) Read online

  He strode off across the muddy field, and Lance had to struggle to keep up; the wheels of his motorbike kept getting bogged down.

  “For cryin’ out loud,” Jerry said eventually. He pointed off to the side. “Leave your bike there, kid. No one ’round here’s got the time to steal it.”

  When Lance returned to Jerry, the man was speaking to a slim, attractive young woman who was dressed as a belly dancer. “It’s your own fault, Tina,” Jerry told her. “It’s your bottle, you knew how much was in it. It’ll take a good fifteen minutes to get into town, twice that to get back ’cause you’ll be hitting rush hour. That’s cutting it too close.”

  Lance saw that Tina was holding something furry in her right hand.

  “Tina here’s the bearded lady,” Jerry explained to Lance. “Only, the glue she uses to stick it on has run out. See, that’s the sort of thing we have to cope with here. Every day, it’s another dumb problem.”

  The girl looked disgusted. “It’s not my fault. Packo uses the same kind of glue to keep his wig on, and he ran out yesterday so he asked to borrow mine. I didn’t know he’d use all of it!” Then she looked at Lance. “Who’re you?”

  “Hunter Washington,” Lance said. “I’m looking for a job.”

  “That’s your bike over there? I’ll give you five bucks if you can ride into town and get me a bottle of spirit gum and get back here in thirty minutes.”

  “All right,” Lance said. “What sort of store would I get it in?”

  “There’s a joke shop on the main street. They sell costumes and wigs and stuff. If they don’t have spirit gum, get liquid latex. Shouldn’t cost more than ten bucks. Don’t tell them why you want it. If they ask, say that your mom’s an elementary school teacher. Something like that.”

  Lance nodded. “OK. But I don’t have ten bucks to spare right now.”

  “You don’t even have ten dollars?”

  “Much of my financial portfolio is tied up in land deals overseas,” Lance said.

  “If I give you the money first, how do I know you won’t just ride off and never come back?”

  “Because I need a job more than I need your five dollars.”

  “Collateral,” Jerry said.

  The girl nodded. “Yeah, collateral. Leave something with me so I know you’ll come back.”

  “The only thing I have that’s worth anything is my bike, and I need that. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “I’m already trusting you not to tell anyone that the bearded lady is a fake. . . . But OK. I’ll risk it. Don’t let me down.”

  As Lance rode out of the field in which the carnival was being set up, he realized that he was being tested. If he came back with the glue—and whatever change was left over from the twenty-dollar bill Tina had produced from somewhere within the tiny folds of her skimpy costume—then he’d pass and, hopefully, be given a job.

  • • •

  Lance steered his bike back through the gates of the field, slowly maneuvered around a group of clowns who were clustered near a hot-dog stand, and left the bike next to a line of trailers.

  He found Jerry lying on his back in the mud beneath a battered car.

  “You came back,” Jerry said. “Had a feeling you would.” He rolled onto his side and pointed back past Lance. “Tina’s stall is back that way. You can’t miss it. Give her the glue and help her with whatever she needs, then come back tomorrow morning. Early. Might have some work for you then.”

  Tina’s stall was little more than three wooden sides covered with a canvas roof, with a few brightly colored scarves draped over the walls and a tentlike flap for a door. Lance found her sitting at a tiny wooden table, leaning close to a small mirror as she applied her makeup.

  “Got your spirit gum,” Lance said. “It was nine dollars forty-nine, including tax.” He held up the small plastic bottle. “Hope this is the right one.”

  “That’s the one. What’s your name again?”

  “Hunter. Hunter Washington.”

  “All right, Hunter-Hunter, give me a hand with this, will you?”

  “OK.” Lance placed the bottle of gum on the table and paused. “With what, exactly?”

  “The beard. It has to look natural. You can’t just stick it all on in one go. You have to do it a little bit at a time, in layers.” She opened a drawer in the table and pulled out a bundle of photographs torn from magazine pages. “Find the one of Jeff Bridges.”

  Lance flipped through the photos: They were all of men with impressive beards. “There’s two here of Bridges.”

  “The younger one. A gray beard just wouldn’t work.” Finally, Tina sat back and blinked at her reflection a couple of times, then turned to face Lance. “How do I look?”

  “Uh, fine. Wouldn’t it be easier to put the beard on first?”

  “I usually do. Today I don’t have the time. We’ve got about forty minutes until the punters start filing in.”

  “Punters?”

  “Customers,” Tina explained.

  Lance watched as she applied a line of spirit gum under her jaw and began to slowly build up layers of fake hair. The whole process took almost twenty minutes. She didn’t seem to need Lance’s help, other than to occasionally ask him how it looked.

  When she was done, she smothered her beard in translucent powder—“It helps dry the glue and keep the shine off”—and then spent another ten minutes combing it and running a hair dryer over it.

  “Well?”

  “Looks good,” Lance said. “I mean, it looks real. OK, I have to ask . . . How did you end up doing this for a living?”

  “I have a degree in art history.”

  Lance shrugged. “And . . . ?”

  She began to put away her makeup. “How many jobs do you think that qualifies me for?”

  “I’ve no idea. But I’m guessing the answer is not many.”

  “Exactly.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Change?”

  Lance fished her change out of his pocket. “Nine forty-nine from twenty comes to ten fifty-one. And you said you’d give me five.”

  “So I did.” She looked at him for a few seconds, peered into his eyes as she moved a little from side to side. “You have an honest face. How’d you like to make that five bucks into ten?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Deal. What do I have to do?”

  • • •

  The carnival was in full swing by eight o’clock that evening. The field was packed with visitors from the surrounding towns, and the bearded lady’s stall proved to be fairly popular.

  Lance’s job was to hang around near the stall, and when it looked like business was slacking off, he would wander in, wait for a few seconds, then emerge looking amazed.

  He would stop a group of passersby and point back to the stall. “That . . . Whoa, I thought she was going to be a fake or something, but that is freaky!” Then he would shudder, as though very unsettled by what he’d seen.

  Many of the stalls had someone outside collecting money, but Tina generally worked alone. Painted on the canvas door was a sign reading Free Entry! and below that in smaller letters, Donations Gratefully Accepted!

  “It’s a simple trick,” she’d told him. “We used to charge a dollar for people to get in and check me out, but that wasn’t working. A bearded lady sideshow isn’t a big deal anymore. So we switched to the tip jar. Now we get ten times as many people coming in, and most of them will give at least a couple of quarters; some donate a dollar or more.”

  Toward the end of the evening, when the stall was crowded, Lance came in and stood at the back for a few moments, listening to Tina answer the same questions she’d been answering all night.

  A few people put dollar bills or small amounts of change into her jar, and as the rest began to move on, Lance called out, “It
’s a fake!”

  He ignored Tina staring at him as he pushed past the small crowd. He reached over her table and grabbed hold of the beard, whispering, “Play along!”

  Tina shouted, “Get off!” and struggled to break free. She slapped at his hand as he pretended to tug at the beard.

  Lance paused, and stepped back, looking embarrassed. “OK, it’s not a fake. But I thought—”

  Tina swung her fist at his jaw, a real punch that caused him to stagger back into the crowd. “How dare you! That’s assault—I should have you arrested!”

  Shortly afterward, as the carnival was closing for the night, Tina counted out the money in her jar. “One hundred and ten dollars and forty cents.”

  Lance was sitting on the edge of her table, still rubbing his jaw. “You didn’t have to really hit me!”

  “Of course I did. A fake beard and a fake punch? They’d have been looking for their money back.”

  “Yeah, all one hundred and ten dollars of it. Man, I can’t believe they were so cheap!”

  “Cheap? This was my best night ever!”

  Lance stood up and looked at the pile of crumpled dollar bills. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.” She counted out fifteen dollars and handed it to him. “Even with your cut, this was a good night. So, Hunter-Hunter, are you sticking around? We make a good team.”

  “It’s just the one Hunter. I have to come back tomorrow morning to see Jerry. He said he might have some work for me.”

  “I’ll talk to him for you. And Morty. They must like you, if they didn’t throw you out immediately. What skills do you have?”

  Lance thought about that. He was reluctant to tell Tina that he was a pretty good pickpocket, that he could open most locks without a key, and that he knew how to scam people at card games. “I don’t know.”

  “We always need outside talkers. You know what that is?”

  “The guy who shouts stuff like ‘Step right up! Step right up!’ and ‘Come and see the amazing bearded lady!’ That kind of thing?”

  “Yeah. No one wants to do it because that puts you in the limelight. Nearly everyone’s got more than one job, so you don’t want the public to get to know your face too well.”

  “I’m not sure that’s for me. I don’t want the public to get to know my face at all.”

  “You on the run or something?” She inclined her head toward the stall’s door.

  Lance followed her out into the darkness. “Not really. Just keeping a low profile.”

  “Where are you staying tonight?”

  “As usual, I’ve no idea. I’ve got a sleeping bag on the back of the bike. I usually just find a quiet field or a bunch of trees. What do you guys do?”

  “I’ll show you the boneyard.” Tina led him to a large campfire on the far side of the field. A couple of dozen men and women were sitting around it on folding chairs or wooden stools.

  Tina tapped Lance’s arm and pointed off to the side. “Honeypot’s over there—that’s the bathroom—if you need it. See you tomorrow?” She wandered away.

  Lance spotted the foreman, Jerry, talking to a well-muscled, half-naked man who was completely covered in tattoos and piercings. Jerry saw him and waved him over.

  “It’s Hunter, right? Heard about you shilling for Tina. Good work. Any scratch?” asked Jerry.

  “Money? Yeah, she paid me,” Lance nodded.

  “Good. This is Nigel, our resident geek.”

  The tattooed man nodded and said, “’Sup, greenie?” and took a large bite out of his hot dog.

  “You come back tomorrow morning—early—and Nigel will sort you out with some work,” Jerry said. “Can’t guarantee more than a couple of days, though, depending on how things go. We’re tearing down first thing Monday morning. If you work out, and you don’t mess up too much, you can stick with us. But no promises.”

  Lance nodded again. “Cool, thanks.”

  Nigel said, “I gotta ask you, kid . . . How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Nigel’s piercings glinted in the flickering campfire light as he got to his feet. “OK. Great. And in human years, that comes to . . . ?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Uh-huh. Are you wanted by the cops?”

  “No.”

  “Sure? Never been arrested?”

  “Nope.” To himself, Lance added, not in this universe.

  “How are you with a hammer and nails?” Nigel took another bite from his hot dog.

  “I did a semester of woodshop in school.”

  “A whole semester?” Nigel grinned, displaying a full set of metal teeth, then, much louder, said, “Hey fellas, we got a master carpenter here! Did a whole semester of woodshop!”

  There was a chorus of laughs and cheers from the other carnies, and someone shouted, “He can build a kennel for you, Nige!”

  Nigel shouted back, “It’d still be better than that rust heap you call a truck, Packo!” To Lance, he said, “I shouldn’t upset him—he’s my ride into town in the morning. But you gotta be able to take a ribbing, kid. You’re not sensitive, are you?”

  “No, I can take it. And dish it out too.”

  “Yeah, well, better to get to know everyone before you do that. How long do you think you can stick with us? Because we’ve had it up to here with forty-milers.”

  “What’s a forty-miler?”

  “Guys like you who don’t stick around long, or don’t want to travel too far. Every year we go all over the southern states. Start here in New Mexico, then we hit Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, then north into Tennessee and we work our way west into Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas again, and we end up back here and start again. You think you’re up for that?”

  That’s exactly why I’m here, Lance said to himself. Traveling with the carnival, he’d be able to explore the southern states and earn a living at the same time. Somewhere along the way, he was sure, he’d find some clue that would lead him to Slaughter. Aloud, he said, “Sure. I’ve already traveled from New York to Oregon, a lot of it on foot. I can do it.”

  “And you’re sure you’re not wanted by the cops? If you are, that’s cool and we can deal with it, but you have to tell us now. If we find out you’re lying . . . it won’t be pleasant.”

  Lance hesitated. “I’m not lying about that.”

  “All right, then. Come see me at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. You’re late, you’re out. No excuses.” He extended his hand, and Lance shook it.

  “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  “Don’t let us down, kid.”

  “HOW LONG IS EVERYONE GOING TO KEEP CALLING ME NEWBIE?” Lance asked Masatoshi, the carnival’s resident knife thrower.

  Masatoshi shrugged, tossed a knife from one hand to the other, then in one quick motion, threw it at Lance’s head. It thudded into the wood an inch away from Lance’s right ear.

  “Could be years. They only stopped calling me Newbie when Tina joined. Now shut up and keep still.” Masatoshi was twenty-five years old, with a shaved head, a long Vandyke beard, and twin gold earrings. He had an extremely slim—though well-defined—build and always performed shirtless, wearing only loose-fitting silk pants with a sash around his waist in which he kept his knives.

  He selected another knife, spun it in his left hand, balanced the point on the tip of his index finger, then tossed it into the air, caught it, and threw it—the knife slammed into the wood right in the middle of the inch-wide gap between Lance’s ear and the first knife. “How’s that?”

  “Close,” Lance said.

  Masatoshi pulled off his blindfold and said, “Hmm. Could maybe get another one in there. . . .”

  “Yeah, well, don’t. Want to switch?”

  “Sure.”

  Lance pulled the knives out of the board and climbed down from the target area. I
t was a low podium with a large circular wooden backboard painted with a knife-scarred target. The board could spin about its center and featured hand-grips and foot-straps, but for the blind-throwing part of the act Masatoshi made sure that it was fixed in place.

  He walked to the line Masatoshi had drawn in the dirt.

  Lance had removed his shirt before practice, and his upper body was streaked with sweat and dust. The first time Masatoshi had seen him bare-chested, he’d said, “You need a tattoo, dude. Big one, I think, on your back. A Chinese dragon, snaking from your neck down to the base of your spine. When we get to Louisiana, I know a girl who can do it for you. It’ll cost about a thousand bucks, though.”

  Lance had replied, “Yeah, that’s never going to happen. I haven’t got a thousand bucks, and the last thing I want is a great big tattoo that’ll make it easier for people to identify me in a police lineup.”

  He practiced juggling with the knives while Masatoshi readied himself at the target. Masatoshi had been training Lance for months before he risked standing at the target, and even now he wouldn’t allow Lance to throw from a distance greater than fifteen feet, and never permitted him to use the blindfold.

  “When you’re ready . . .”

  Lance threw the first knife. It spun through the air and hit the board six inches to the left of Masatoshi’s hip.

  “Again, same spot.”

  “I don’t know. . . . If I hit the first knife it’ll bounce off at a weird angle.”

  “Just do it, Hunter!”

  He threw—the knife embedded itself a couple of inches above the first.

  “That’s where you were aiming?” Masatoshi asked.

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Pretty much isn’t good enough. You’ve got to be accurate to within half an inch with every single throw. Now try to put the next one between them.”

  The knives had long, streaming tassels attached to the handles, which made them easier to see during a show, and also helped ensure that their spin would flatten out and they’d hit the target blade-first. The first time he used them, Lance had been surprised to find that the knives weren’t nearly as sharp as they looked; they only had to be pointed at the tip and heavy enough to stick into the backboard. But they were highly polished to catch the light, which encouraged the punters to assume that they were sharp. Lance knew from experience that being hit with one of the throwing knives was more likely to bruise the skin than pierce it. But it still hurt.