Mark Roller presents Jonathan M. Vick's
Only a condemned house sits there now; a house and a small barn. Beneath the tall weeds and spiderwebs lies the undisturbed ash of the carnival. Little else remains to tell the tale. But I remember.
At one time it was a beacon of activity; a center of youth and joy - a grand carnival, Vicke's Carnival of Oddities - complete with lights and bells and whistles and screams. It was the screams I remember the most; the screams and the way the twisted, mal-formed, hideous faces of the carnies laughed in the flashing lights; their teeth breaking through the flesh of their rotting gums like tombstones in a cavern; the stench of sweat and tar and tobacco on their every breath; the look of lazy death in their eyes.
In 1937 the field was just a big empty field. Nothing but grazing cattle and a few ramshackle houses. This was the center of Polk County cattle raising, and the Crackers, as they were called then, rarely saw their neighbors, and even more rarely saw strangers.
So, when the carnival blew into town once or twice a year everyone attended. It was a chance for young men and women to find people outside their own family trees, and a chance for the married ones to look for a little excitement; a stranger on the ferris wheel or behind Madam Carlotta's Fortune Telling tent.
Old Man Roller was fixing a car the first time the carnies came out of the tangle of trees and overgrown grass towards him. They limped and dragged and forced their broken, misshapend forms across the field. Roller's dogs growled softly behind the safety of the barn, their tails between their legs, occassionally whimpering in fear.
William Vicke struck out first, crossing the short grass between the woods and the broken car. But the leaves on the low branches at the woods edge trembled in the breeze of many breaths, panting heavily from their journey, and waiting for their boss to finish negotiating.
A few moments later and they were setting up the carnival near the lake at the edge of the property; setting up for what was to be the last time -- ever. Each missed nail and unsecure bolt was simply forshadowing the tragedy that was about to ensue. None of them would live past the midnight show ...
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