“I never saw nobody that big,” Ben said.
Foster giggled the giggle of a drunk. “You know what his name is, Ben? Baby. Baby Cotwell. That’s it, by God. His real name is Baby. I call him Cotwell. Let it out that he may be on the run from the law, and we do a couple of tricks to keep people wondering.”
“What kind of tricks?” asked Ben.
“Well, like today,” Foster explained. “We didn’t do a thing until the sun got behind this tree and that give us a shadow between where Cotwell was throwing and I was catching. Ball disappears in that shadow, fast as he throws it.”
Ben laughed softly with Foster. He sat and looked into the night sky and remembered the drunken Foster on the train ride from Augusta.
“I was reading somewhere that Milo was doing all right,” Foster said.
“I guess so,” Ben said solemnly.
“Aw, shit, Ben, just forget it,” Foster said. “I told you before, it’s not much of a life. Let Milo do it. Hell, it’ll happen to him, too, sooner or later. The ax falls on everybody.”
“I don’t know,” Ben said.
“Well, by God, I do,” Foster insisted. “I damn well do. C’mon, let’s have us a drink to Milo.” He handed the bottle to Ben. “C’mon, Ben, one swallow. It’s not gone kill you, not one swallow. It’s Kentucky-made. Last bottle I got like it.”
Ben took the nearly empty bottle and sipped from it. The bourbon burned his lips and throat. He handed the bottle back to Foster, and Foster drained it in one swallow.
“Tell you what, Ben, I got a surprise for you,” Foster said. He shifted against the tree and motioned with the bottle toward the carnival. “Look coming yonder.”
Ben turned and watched the girl crossing the field, a slender figure against the dull steel of the sky.
“Don’t go to thinking nothing, Ben,” cautioned Foster. “It’s purely a working arrangement.”
“What is?”
“You’ll see.”
She was only a few feet away before Ben recognized her. He looked with surprise at Foster. “Lottie?” he said.
Foster grinned. “In the flesh,” he answered. “I told her you’d be by.”
Lottie walked into the light of the lantern. She smiled warmly at Ben. “Hello, Ben Phelps,” she said.
Ben stood. He said, “Uh, hello.”
“You bring it?” asked Foster.
Lottie pulled a jar of corn whiskey from the fold of her arm and handed it to Foster.
“That’s the arrangement, Ben,” Foster said. “Lottie here, she’s my nurse. I got her a job working the carnival and she looks after me.”
“Oh?” Ben said foolishly. “What do you do? With the carnival?”
Foster snickered. He slapped the ground with the palm of his hand. Lottie glared at him.
“Depends on where we are, and what tents they throw up,” Foster said. “That right, Lottie? Take here, it being a small, God-fearing town, Lottie works one of the food tents.” He glanced up at Lottie. “They call them ‘joints,’ don’t they, pretty girl?”
Lottie did not reply. She sat on the ground and tucked her dress beneath her knees.
“But in them big towns, like Knoxville, she works the girlie tent,” Foster continued. He opened the jar of corn whiskey, tasted it, frowned in disgust, recapped it. Ben stood uncomfortably, looking from Foster to Lottie, Lottie to Foster.
“Now, don’t get me wrong,” Foster said. “She’s not no main act, or nothing like that, even if she is the finest-looking woman they got. She just sort of stands around the stage, looking good, in one of them barely nothing costumes, making every man and boy in the county howl at the moon. Am I telling it right or not, Lottie?”
Lottie shrugged nonchalantly. She looked at Ben and then across the field to the tents.
“They keep trying to put her in the middle of things, make her do things that run a man’s blood up, but I won’t let them,” Foster declared. “I told her I was taking her home—even trade for helping me out—and, by God, I aim to do that, without her head turned to fancy thinking. Then I’m going home, Ben. Going home to Kentucky, and, by God, that’s where I’m gone stay.”
“Home?” Ben said to Lottie. “So, you’re going home?”
“I guess,” Lottie told him. She pushed her hand through her hair. “Norman, he left,” she added. “Said he had to go on working.”
Foster nodded gravely. “Good man, he was, Ben. Found me the doctor. Stuck around for the cutting and a little drinking after it was over. Wouldn’t see me staying by myself. Made Lottie stay with me. Good man, he was.”
“I’m glad you made it through all that, Foster,” Ben said.
“I’m fine as one leg can make a man,” Foster said in a slur. He lifted the jar to Ben.
“Uh, no thanks,” Ben said. He glanced at Lottie.
“Aw, shit, Ben, Lottie don’t care if you take a drink, do you, Lottie?”
Lottie shook her head lazily. She hugged her knees and gazed at Ben.
“He took one before you come up,” Foster said. “Bet it was the first time, wadn’t it, Ben?”
Ben shifted on his feet. He could feel his face coloring. “Not the first,” he said. “I had some before. Milo and me.”
“Well, God-o-mighty, that offends me, Ben,” Foster replied indignantly. “Maybe the last time I’ll ever see you again on this earth, and you turning down a drink with me.” He again offered the jar. “You ought to like it. It was made somewhere around here.”
“Maybe a sip,” Ben said. He took the jar and opened it and tipped it to his lips and swallowed. The taste was sharp and sour. He swallowed again. A shock tickled his skin.
“Now, that’s being a friend,” Foster said, taking the jar from Ben. He capped it, then reached for his crutches and pulled himself up.
“Where you going?” asked Ben.
“For one thing, I’m gone find me a bush and take me a long, yellow piss,” Foster said. “Then I’m gone find Cotwell and give him his cut for the day. I don’t, he’ll get drunk and come bulling in here in a little while and want to fight me over it. Crazy bastard when he’s cold sober, Ben, but you ought to see him when he’s been drinking some.”
“I’ll go with you,” Ben said quickly.
Foster smiled. He leaned on his crutches and moved his face close to Ben. “They’s nothing on earth Baby Cotwell would like better than squeezing your head like it was a grape, Ben. Besides that, you wouldn’t want to leave Lottie out here by herself, now would you?”
Ben looked at Lottie. Her eyes were dark in the orange light of the lantern. She said nothing.
“Uh, well, no,” Ben stammered. “We’ll—we’ll wait here for you.”
Foster pushed away on his crutches, swinging the stump of his right leg. “Well, I’ll be a little while. Help yourself to a drink, you want one. Just don’t leave it empty.” He moved laboriously across the field, toward the carnival.
Ben sat near the tree. He opened the jar of corn whiskey and sipped from it—a bare sip. He could hear grass insects singing around him.
“You doing a good thing for Foster,” Ben said at last. “I can tell.” He touched his lips again to the mouth of the jar, pretending to drink, then he asked, “You really going home, like Foster said?”
“Maybe,” Lottie said. Her voice was soft. She watched as Foster disappeared into the darkness.
“Maybe?” Ben said.
“Maybe I’ll stay with the carnival. It’s all right. We get to go places. Better than sitting around at home, looking at that old river like Sister does.”
Ben picked up a small rock and rolled it in his hand. He lifted his head to the voices of the tent people drifting across the field, voices underplayed with laughter. He knew that Lottie was watching him.
“Don’t think I’d like that, all that traveling,” Ben said.
Lottie did not reply. She pushed up on her knees and brushed the front of her dress. She looked again in the distance, toward the tents.
“What is it?” asked Ben.
“You think Foster’s going to die soon?” she said.
“I don’t know. He drinks a lot. Drinking can kill a man,” Ben answered.
“Sometimes he says he loves me. You think he does?”
Ben did not answer for a moment. Then: “I don’t know. He says so, I guess he does.”
Lottie shook her head, flinging her hair. She slapped at something in the air. “He don’t say it unless he’s been drinking.” She paused. “That’s like my daddy was.” She stood and extended her hand to Ben. “C’mon, Ben Phelps.”
“Where we going?”
“Just come on,” she said casually.
Ben took her hand and she tugged him up, then she turned and started walking toward the tent.
“Lottie—”
“C’mon, Ben.”
Ben stared at her in confusion. He could taste the corn whiskey on his tongue.
“Ben—”
“All right,” he answered.
At the tent, Lottie threw back the flap and motioned Ben inside. She stepped in behind him and pulled the flap closed.
Inside, the tent was tinted with the light of a small lantern, and in the pale amber of the light, Ben could see a mound of quilts spread across the ground. A large and a small valise had been pushed into one corner. An ivory-handled fan was spread open on the top of the small valise. A painting of tiny, delicate red and yellow flowers, dangling from dark green stems, flowed across the fan’s face.
“That’s pretty,” Ben said. He gestured with his face toward the valise. “The fan. My mama’s got one almost like it.”
“Foster bought it for me,” Lottie said. “It’s the prettiest thing anybody’s ever give to me.”
Ben twisted back to face Lottie, who stood against the tent flaps. “Why—am I here?” he asked in a weak voice.
“It’s what Foster wants, Ben,” Lottie said calmly. “Foster likes you. Said it was all you needed to be a man.”
Ben watched her fingers moving down the front of her dress, slipping buttons.
“What—what’re you doing?” Ben whispered.
Lottie did not answer. She reached down, crossed her arms and caught the hem of her dress and peeled it over her head. She stood nude before him.
“I’m going to make love to you, Ben Phelps. I’m going to make you a man. Me and Foster, we talked about it.”
Ben was frozen. He had never seen a woman who was nude.
“Foster said you’d be scared,” Lottie murmured. “Said you’d want to leave. Said you’d be scared somebody would find out. Nobody will, Ben. Not ever. We’ll be leaving after tomorrow. Nobody’ll know. Foster wants me to do it.” She stepped to Ben, touched his face with her fingers. The protruding nipples of her breasts were tan in the light of the tent. “But that’s not why I’m doing it, Ben. I’m doing it because I want to.”
Ben could not move. He was terrified. He felt her hands playing across his chest, slipping the buttons of his shirt, pushing it back. Her fingers danced lightly over his stomach, skimmed his belt line, flashed along his ribs to his armpits. He could feel himself growing, and he moved to relieve the tightness.
“Touch me, Ben,” Lottie said quietly, taking Ben’s hands and guiding them to her breasts. Her breasts were firm and smooth. She pushed her nipples between his fingers and forced him to squeeze them gently. A great flood of blood exploded in him, weakening his legs. His fingers circled the erect tips of her breasts and she lifted and pushed against him.
“Lottie—”
She fell to her knees on the quilts and pulled him down with her.
“Lottie—”
She raised her hands slowly over her head in a dancer’s pose.
“Look at me, Ben,” she said.
Ben tried to speak. His mouth was dry. He could see the pumping of her heart across her abdomen, and the dark, feathered pit of curled hair at her legs. Perspiration oozed from his neck and shoulders. He pushed back, his shoulders rubbing against the canvas of the tent.
“Look, Ben, look.”
She began a slow, sensuous weaving of her body, her knees spreading, her hands leaving shadows against the trapped, amber light of the tent. A muted sound of music—barely audible—played in her throat.
“This is how I dance in the show,” she whispered.
“Lottie—”
“Hush, Ben, hush.”
She moved to him again, her fingers skimming his stomach, circling down over his belt and his trousers. Her hands found the rigid bulge of his penis and she began to knead it softly.
“Lottie, no—”
“It’s all right, Ben. Nobody’s here but me and you.”
“I—can’t,” he whimpered.
“Yes you can, Ben. You can.”
“No—” He caught her hands, held them. “It’s not—right.”
A sudden, quizzical expression blinked in Lottie’s eyes. “Don’t you want me, Ben?” she asked softly.
“It’s—not that,” Ben whispered. “I just—can’t.”
For a moment, Lottie did not speak, then she said gently, “It goes against the way you was raised. Is that it?”
Ben nodded.
“It’s all right, Ben,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the forehead. “I’ll tell Foster we did it. That’ll make him happy.” She began to button his shirt. “You’re a good person, Ben Phelps. I knew that the first time I met you. Foster knows it, too. He’s always talking about you, saying how hard you tried when you was playing baseball.” She paused, buttoned the last button on his shirt. “You know what I wish, Ben? I wish Foster could still be playing baseball. I never saw nobody miss something as much as he misses baseball.”
“I guess he does,” Ben mumbled.
Lottie reached for her dress, paused with it in her hands, gazed thoughtfully at the lantern. She did not seem conscious that she was nude. “Sometimes I think I love Foster,” she said quietly. “Do you think that’s wrong, Ben? Him being so much older, I mean.”
Ben shook his head. “No,” he told her. “If you love somebody, I don’t see that it matters too much.”
Lottie slumped on her knees, still holding the dress, still gazing at the lantern. She smiled. “He don’t know what to do with me, he says. Says he don’t know if he ought to marry me or put me on the next train home. Says he’d probably put me on the train, but he don’t trust me to stay on it past the first stop down the road, unless he’s on it with me. Says he plans on walking me up to the front porch of my mama’s home to make sure he’s kept his bargain.” She turned to face Ben. The smile grew. She opened her arms to expose her body. “Do you think I’m pretty, Ben Phelps?”
Ben bobbed his head once. “Yes, I do. You’re very pretty.”
She pulled the dress over her head. “I’m glad,” she said. “I like to be pretty.” She began to button the dress. “When I was little, I used to think Sister was the prettiest person I’d ever seen. I always wanted to be pretty like Sister.” She touched her hair with her hand. “But she’s not pretty anymore, Ben. It’s like she poured all her prettiness in that old river and she just sits there watching it wash away.”
“You won’t do that,” Ben said.
She looked away. “I don’t want to, Ben. I don’t ever want to do that.”
FOSTER LEANED ON his crutches in the shadow of the tiger’s cage and drew from a finger-rolled cigarette. He stared across the field to the faint light of the tent that he shared with Lottie.
“That’s a good boy,” Foster said to Baby Cotwell.
“You done wrong, giving her to him,” Baby Cotwell said bitterly.
Foster drew again from the cigarette and dropped it to the ground and clumsily crushed it with the tip of one of his crutches.
“It’s what I want,” he said evenly. “That boy means something to me. Damned if I know why, but he does.”
“He’s nothing,” Baby Cotwell growled.
Foster looked solemnly at the giant standi
ng beside him. He said in a low voice, “Listen, you son of a bitch, I know what you thinking. I see you around that girl. You ever touch her, by God, I’ll kill you.”
Baby Cotwell sneered. He spit a laugh and walked off into the night, weaving among the tents. Foster saw the midget leap from a nearby table and waddle after the giant, like a dog following its master. Foster rolled his shoulders against a chill. He had not seen the midget huddled on the table, his body folded tight like a sleeping bat.
BEN DID NOT want to see Foster. Foster would be drunk. Foster would preen proudly, would tease him about the remarkable gift of Lottie Barton, would try to force him to drink more of the corn whiskey as celebration. Without meaning, or meanness, Foster would make him feel like a small boy. Most damning, Foster would believe he had taken the gift of Lottie as his initiation into manhood. If he told Foster the truth, if he said that he had left Lottie’s tent without making love to her, Foster would be astonished, would think him a weakling, and he did not want Foster to turn against him.
Lottie would lie.
Lottie would tell Foster that she had done as he wished, and Foster would be happy.
Ben avoided the street of carnival tents, moving cautiously along a worn path at the tree line that surrounded Jericho. The path was a shortcut to the school and the playing fields and had been used by every child in the town for as long as Ben could remember. He and Milo had used it a thousand times. Maybe more, he guessed. He believed he could walk it blindfolded.
It was a dark night, the slivered moon dangling at treetop like a pale-bronze Christmas ornament. He could hear a soft babbling of voices from the carnival, sleepy, barely different from the voices of cicadas and owls and distant, barking dogs. The night smelled of summer, of field dust and honeysuckle and pine.
He would be glad when the carnival left, Ben thought. He did not believe he would see Foster and Lottie and the one-armed giant named Baby Cotwell again. Not seeing them would be best. To the people of Jericho, Foster and Lottie and Baby Cotwell were like outcasts. Being seen with them would create whispering gossip, and with his new job at Ledford’s Dry Goods, Ben could not afford gossip.
He wondered if Foster or Lottie would talk about him to the townspeople the next day.