Rusted creaks and bent hinges. A tilt-o-wheel’s arrived this year and the miles long line winds down the dusty boulevards between hastily assembled huts of mid-Americana couture… Filled with crass salesmen selling this fried Oreo and that chance at a prize and the whole thing STINKS and everybody loves it under the soft glow of controlled electric lighting.
It’s 1972 at the Odessa country carnival… It may as well have been another planet.
He’s drinking skunked beer like it’s the last beer on earth. Downing it before the taste sets in and reminds him of the less than adequate refrigerator it came from. It’s lukewarm. He doesn’t mind enough to call out the gypsy barkeep hold up in the plywood den containing the sputtering mule of a generator that keeps this whole operation running. That barkeep is kicking the thing and the Christmas lights adorning the walls flicker back to life with a blast of black smoke and the smell of gasoline reeking up the place and the curses flow from the barkeep like water.
He pays for his drink and walks out of the hut into the fray.
Crowds of thrumming Texans move in drawling waves through the carnival. There’s music that sounds like a jack-in-the-box about to pop and it’s playing loud enough to almost overcome the cheering jeers of the throbbing mob. It smells like reefer and racism. Southern belles in their best daisy duke impersonation are draped over every hairy arm flexing against tug-of-war games and hammers coming down to strike a bell into dinging like it’s the most important thing on earth. Every man is an armed and dangerous lone-ranger cowboy, with their six shooters and their denim button-downs and their boots and their ten-gallon hats and beer guts.
He fit’s in just enough not to draw the radicals.
Boots and blue jeans and a buckle with a star and an untucked, flannel-checkered, short sleeve button down in red and black that’s unbuttoned at the top two. He’s built like a brick s**t house at 6 foot 5 and all of 300 pounds with those broad shoulders and a thick chest and corded arms. A lumberjacked lion in this treeless dust town… Ponytailed and bearded with his mane of auburn hair… He hears the whisperings of hippy in spite of the airborne tattoo emblazoned on his left forearm, but they never come above a whisper as he makes his way through the crowd like some mighty ship through a frozen sea.
He’s Eli again, or was. Doesn’t bother with the last name since the first was enough to get him through the door with his paper ticket and his tattoo and his drawl… He’s not really planning on making this thing a long term endeavor. He knows exactly where to go tonight… Feels it reaching out to him across the carnival. Hears it calling to him. It’s in the music first. A low and gently pulsating beat that drums up beneath some distant clavichord recording. Then it’s in the smell of incense burning from inside the fortune-tellers tent. Then it’s her fingers curling around tarot cards and a crystal ball and she’s scrying at the world… Making it tell her the false fortunes of some poor unfortunate soul.
It’s the Cant and only those with ears to hear know it’s singing through her.
He knows that if he can hear it, so too can the other side… And they’d be all too interested in acquiring another a** to fill a seat in the bus they were driving off a cliff. He can feel the air burning and breathing and there’s a little girl in the crowd and she’s salivating and sniffing the air in her bubblegum pink dress and her teeth are sharp as needles and her eyes are black as coal and she’s smiling at him and she’s gone.
He moves quicker. Hoping he get’s there first.
