What the Man Wouldn’t Buy
Part One
“Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls! Step right up and witness something beyond all comprehension. Come and see the boy who doesn’t bleed. Gasp as he sticks pins and needles through his flesh. Fall silent in stunned amazement as nails are driven through his flesh with no mess and nary a grimace on his face!”
A fat man with crow’s feet stands in a shiny blue suit, barking out a carefully choreographed slogan to a weary crowd of carnival goers. This is no one’s first rodeo, everyone who decided to show up knew what they were really coming here for.
This isn’t the heady days of the twenties or the dust bowl, country rube, thirties. This isn’t even the last gasp of the war time forties and the bored house wives willing to pay to have a real-life freak appear at their private patio functions.
This is 1957, U.S.A. and stuck down in god forsaken north Florida no less. Flat broke and broken down. Not even enough money for grease paint for the fucking clowns or gas for the damn rides.
Boss man chose to call it a limited preview. An exhibit of only the truly exotic. Seven small tents, two set aside just for the premium working girls in costume, with a separate side lot for the family sized Buick's and Chevrolet's rocking away on their axles.
Herbert Hume, purchaser, purveyor, and curator of the truly rare and exotic, nearly the last of the original golden age side show barkers, reduced to being little more than a pimp and a salesman besides of pure, grade A, horse shit. The worthless parlor tricks that the talkies and the damn television have already made of his beloved art.
Business was business and times were as rough as they ever were. Boss man had already let go or committed to diseased asylums nearly all the best of his stock. No one paid for midgets or bearded ladies or pin heads anymore. No one gave a shit about your geeks or your regular block head or sword swallower acts.
This was 1957 after all and everything that could be explained, was being explained in painful detail, live on the damn air. The once grand carnival show was reduced to the lewd and the grotesque and boss man still reluctantly fed the grist into the mill. Well, mostly reluctantly. He had a soft heart for the girls, gave them second and third chances and even left the dead beats and the lushes in the arms of whatever morons managed to knock them up on the road side as he sped ever onward. He ignored the odd predilection and helped smooth out the occasional issue with the local law. Boss man prided himself on having a heart of gold except for the boy.