“My friend Tommy died. Someone took a wrench and busted his head open. His eyes filled with blood and one came out and his
jaw was like it had no bone. And my brother-in-law died there, too. Someone busted up his ribs and he bled to death, in his
heart and lungs. My sister… My sister went… She wasn’t right,” Roosevelt said finally. “She never got over it. Cried all the
time, always crying, and she never got out of bed. They put her in an institution. One day I come in to see her and she… she
didn’t know my name. She kept asking me if I had any gum, just a stick of gum, it’d taste so good.
“So I just ran. I ran south. I was in the back of some truck, full of illegals and migrants, and someone said they had heard
about a barfight in a town outside of Cincinnati and some fella had been cut up good. And the man who done it, well, he was
some man with a cut-up face, they thought. Scarred as hell, they said. So I came south. And I met Pike. And we met Hammond.
As you’ve met us. That was long ago. Almost a year. Almost a year before I met Hammond.”
“And I ran into him in Atlanta,” said Pike. “Where he killed my friend. Cut his throat. But that was longer than any of you.
For I tell you now that I have been looking for this man for four years of my life. And still he has eluded me. Not until just recently did I know that I was not alone. There are others. This man
is far worse than even you can imagine, Mr. Connelly. If we are here, then there are many others.”
“And what has he done to you?” asked Roosevelt.
Connelly just bowed his head.
“Sometimes there are no words,” said Pike. “There are no words.”
“What the hell is he?” Connelly said.
“We don’t know,” said Hammond. “We don’t, for sure. He’s motivated to kill and he’s smart enough to keep moving, and it’s
getting a lot easier now because the whole goddamn country is moving with him. Migrant workers are everywhere. Everyone is
looking for something better. And among them, there’s him. Something drives him to do this, I don’t know what.”
“Some madness, maybe,” said Pike. “Some disease of the brain that urges him to butchery. I’ve heard of such men, like Jack
the Ripper in London, years and years ago. Perhaps he’s one of them. He goes from town to town, stalks someone for a few days,
then strikes and moves on.”
“But now he’s doing something strange,” Roosevelt said. “He’s not moving with people anymore, but against them. He’s going
west, into the plains, while everyone else is trying to leave them.”
“Lot of people going west from them, though,” said Connelly. “People from Oklahoma and Kansas and the Dakotas. They’re going
west.”
“That is true,” said Pike. “We’ve considered he’s trying to join with them. It’d be far easier to hide there. A whole country
has been unsettled. These are dark times, and they are getting darker, I think. But we’re close. Closer than we’ve ever been
before.”
Connelly said, “And if you find him, you’ll kill him.”
They did not react at first. Then Pike said, “Yes. We will. Would we not be justified in doing so? Would not God and this
nation look approvingly on us if we were to kill him, Mr. Connelly?”
“I don’t know about God,” said Connelly. “I know less about God than I do the nation. I don’t think about that. I don’t need
to. Some things don’t need to be thought about. You just do them. And I aim to.”
“I can understand that,” said Hammond.
Pike stirred the fire again. “Will you come with us, then? Will you join with us?”
“You know I will.”
“I don’t. What I want may be different from you. Because there’s no going back, and no turning aside here. I said at the start
of this that I would die finding him if it came to it and kill if I had to. Would you be willing to do that?”
Connelly shrugged.
“You can’t say. But listen, friend. Listen to me, now, Mr. Connelly, you must listen—should a man raise his hand to us and
come between us and our quarry, it is in our righteous duty under God to strike that man down if need be. Nothing matters
but the road and the man, and where the two meet.” His greasy fingers crisscrossed over the fire. “Nothing matters but where
this ends. And it will end, regardless of the cost, and it will end in blood. For everyone he’s taken from us and for those
he’s taken from others, it will end in blood. Will it not, Mr. Connelly? Will it not?”
Connelly stared into the fire, hunched over his lap, his eyes aglow and his hands clenched. He said, “I suppose so.”
“Then that is settled,” said Pike, and spat into the fire. They watched it sizzle among the embers.
“But he ain’t here,” said Connelly. “No one saw him.”
“He’s not here any longer, no,” said Hammond.
“We heard from some people in the camp,” said Roosevelt. “Some folk in there said they seen a man with a cut-up face in Oklahoma,
just across the border. He’s headed south. They saw him in Shireden, not much more of a town than Rennah. But that’s where
he’s at. That’s where he’ll be. That’s what’s next.”
“Amen,” said Pike.
And to that they had nothing more to say, and turned to sleep.
Mr. Shivers
Connelly listened to the men sleep restlessly around him. Stones dug through his bedding and the whisky did not sit right
with him and so he chose to watch the clouds roll in above and think.
The hobos said that when Father Time woke up Mr. Shivers was there waiting, just sitting on the ground beside him and smiling.
They said he took his blade and cut Father Time across the hand and ran away laughing, and from then on Father Time was bitter
and cruel and gave every man hardship and ate every dream.
They said Mr. Shivers had been in every jail in the country. The bulls would lock him up and he would sit there waiting for
nightfall and when the moon shone through the bars he’d climb up the beam like a man on a staircase and be out just as fast
as you could think. The next day the cops would come on by and just sit scratching their heads at the empty jail cell.
They said that when bums and all the runaway boys and girls die they get their last chance to ride freight with Mr. Shivers,
that he has a train made of night that rides straight to hell and the furnace don’t run on coal or wood, the furnace runs
on you. Mr. Shivers comes back and takes a foot or a hand or an eye or an ear and feeds it to his train, spurring it on, sending
it down to the depths of the earth and to eternity as it eats you alive.
Mr. Shivers, the moonlight man, the black rider. Mr. Shivers, the bum’s devil. The vagrant’s boogey man.
There were a lot of stories about Mr. Shivers. Connelly had heard most of them. In the dark when he could not sleep they often
came back.
It had been a hard time getting here. In the days in Memphis when it had just been him and his grief and his empty home he
had not known what to do. But he remembered. He remembered that ruined face.
How could he not.
Months ago. Years ago. Lives ago. When he had still been himself and was not this wreck, this empty hulk that was half a man,
functional only in terms of endurance and rage. Seas of time lay between himself and that man.
And Molly. Between him and Molly. His little girl.
“I’m close now,” he mouthed silently. “I’m closer than ever before.”
Someone has to put the world right, he said to himself. Someone has to make things right. And he shut his eyes.
Somewhere a train whistle moaned like a man dreaming under a fever. None of the other men stirred. Connelly rolled over and
tried to sleep.
* * *
They spent the next three days waiting for a train that would take them into Oklahoma and close to Shireden. Roosevelt spoke
to a man who was in at the freightyards and learned of the schedule and Pike told them to rest while they could, and so they
caught small game and did their best not to drink or spend money. Each day they watched the camp outside of Rennah ebb and
flow, grow and swell with the people who had abandoned their homes, and each of them would go among the people and ask if
they had seen the scarred man. From two they heard the same—south, and to the west. If there’s anything left of Shireden,
they said, he’ll be there.
“What do they mean, left of?” asked Connelly.
“Beats me,” said Roosevelt. “But that’s what they said.”
And with each day the land to the west became a deeper red, like the horizon was a gash in the sky and it was bleeding out.
“Don’t know what’s coming,” said Pike as they watched it at evening. “But it’s not good.”
On the third day Roosevelt came back from camp with a smile on his face and a small heavy bag in hand. He sat and produced
a revolver and a box of bullets and began playing with the weapon.
“What in the hell is that?” said Hammond.
“It’s a gun.”
“What the hell are you going to do with a gun?”
“Shoot stuff.”
“And what do you know about shooting?”
“I know where the bullets come out.”
“Huh. Anything particular you going to shoot?”
“Whatever needs it, I suppose,” he said, and he spun the cylinder and snapped it back.
“Damn, Rosie. Take care of that thing, will you?”
“I’ll try,” he said, and stowed it in his bag.
Finally their day came. They went down to the tracks and crouched in the soggy ditch next to the woods and waited for the
train to pass. As it lumbered by they sprinted out and seized hold of the back railing. They lifted themselves aboard where
they stowed away in a car carrying lumber. It was already occupied by two old men, both in denim and rawhide, and they watched
the new arrivals with faint interest.
“Where you boys going?” asked one as Connelly and the others settled.
“South,” said Hammond.
“To Shireden?”
“Yes,” said Hammond, surprised.
They looked at each other and nodded. “You going to go see the gypsy girl?” one asked.
“The what?”
“The gypsy girl.”
“No. What do you mean?”
“They got a gypsy girl down there, at this carnival. She’s famous. She can tell fortunes, tell you your whole future. It’s
why we’re going. I knew a fella who went and talked to her and she told him exactly where he’d be when fortune did him good,
and the next week all she done said came true and he was in a gambling hall and he won close to a hundred dollars.”
“And you’re going to hear your fortunes?” said Pike.
“Sure are.”
“Boy, I’d like to get a listen to what she had to say,” said Roosevelt. “It’d be nice to know when the next windfall was coming
my way.”
“You don’t really believe in that stuff, do you?” said Hammond.
“Sure I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’s a bunch of baloney, of course. They’re just scamming a bunch of yokels out there in the sticks. No offense to
present company, of course,” he said, and smiled at the two other hobos, who scowled.
“Come on, Pike,” said Hammond. “Back me up on this.”
Pike nodded thoughtfully. “I tend not to trust such things. Don’t know much of devilry,” he mused, “but if it can be used
for our aim then I suppose in that sense it’s all right.”
“What? You aren’t serious about going to see a goddamn gypsy, are you?” said Hammond.
“I am. And I’m also serious about the tongue in your head, Mr. Hammond.”
“Seems like a waste of time.”
“Why not? It won’t be out of our way any. And as we grow close we need all the guidance we can get.”
“Besides, it’s a carnival, Hammond!” said Roosevelt. “A carnival! Maybe they got a Ferris wheel and… and beer!”
Hammond sighed. “Well, you can depend on beer to work,” he said, “but I don’t know about the gypsy girl.”
They rode through Missouri and then Arkansas, sharing cigarettes and what meat they had, and so passed into Oklahoma. They
jumped off at a set of fields close to Shireden and walked the next ten miles into town. When they arrived it was nearly midnight.
They found a traveling carnival was arranged in one of the fields. The night was full of torches and reedy music and laughter
and the scent of old ale. Aged booths and carts sat squatting in the grass, covered in peeling red and purple paint. Misshapen
tents glowed beyond like jellyfish suspended in the ocean deeps. Men and women smeared in paint juggled or sang or danced.
Some ushered the drunken townsfolk into games and shrugged indifferently when they lost.
They asked for directions, then wound their way to a dilapidated cart in the far back. It smelled of horse and something sickly
sweet, like bile or rot. On the side was a sloppy painting of a young girl’s face with stars around her head, her lips thick
and her forehead large. As they approached a man in shirtsleeves came out and squinted at them.
“What you want? Game’s over,” he said sourly.
“We come to see the gypsy girl.”
“The what? She ain’t no gypsy. She’s from Akron. Get out of here, it’s late as hell.”
“We brought money.”
“Lots of people bring money lots of places. It’s a popular thing to bring. Get lost.”
“We come all the way from Missouri to see her.”
“Really?” he said, thinking. “Well. We’re getting popular. Huh. That’s good news. You know what, sure, you can see her. Let
me see the money.” They pulled it out and he inspected the coins in their hands. “Fair enough. Hey, Sibyl!” he shouted into
the cart. He pounded on the side. “We ain’t done yet! Just few more!”
Nothing came. Then there was a voice but it could have been just the breeze and Connelly did not hear a word in it. But the
carnie said in answer, “We got paying customers here. Come on, get your stuff together.”
“It’s late,” whined a girl’s voice. “I don’t want to see them.”
“People don’t want a lot of stuff. It happens.” He turned to the men and winked. “Takes a while, magicking and seering the
heavens. Takes some work.” He took out a flask and took a belt from it, then shouted, “Come on, you’re holding up the show!”
“I don’t want to see him.”
“See who?”
She didn’t say anything.
“See who?”
“The big one,” said the girl’s voice, and it was quiet and shook with fear.
All of them looked at Connelly. He raised his hands and shrugged.
“Goddamn it, girl,” said the carnie, and went into the cart. He was there for some time and when he came out he marched up
to Connelly. “Let me see your money,” he said.
“Why? You seen it.”
“Let me see it again, then.”
Connelly showed him. The carnie frowned, then returned to the cart and was there for a few minutes more. When he came back
out he said, “Okay. We’re good to go, folks. But you’re last,” he said, nodding at Connelly.
“Why?”
“You got a lot of damn questions. Why don’t you ask the damn fortune-teller, huh?”
Connelly shrugged and sat down in the grass with the rest of them. They watched as the old men passed through the beaded curtain.
It was too dark to see very far in and both were swallowed by the shadows.
Connelly listened to the drunken singing and atonal music from the carnival across the way. He turned to watch the stragglers
go back and forth in the distant fairy lights, moonbeam-white and rose-pink. People staggered out and where they walked grasshoppers
sprang from the turf under their feet and twirled away into the sky, faintly luminescent in the weak light.
“What do you think she’s showing them in there?” asked Hammond.
“Not her titties,” said the carnie. “Not for what they paid.”
“Lechery sprawls across the face of creation,” said Pike. “As it always does. One wonders what clay God made men from. Something
weak and watery, I’d say.”
“You a religious man?”
“I am.”
“Funny thing, religious fella at a fortune-teller.”
“When I was a boy there was a scrying woman on our street who could look in a teacup and see when the rains would come. She
was never wrong. It’s a foolish man who doesn’t think God works in strange places.”
“Or she could have just looked at the sky,” said Hammond quietly, but Pike did not hear.
The two old men came out looking pleased and one said, “You boys are in for a treat!” They made their way into the night.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Hammond. “You believe in fortune-tellers?” he asked Connelly as Roosevelt handed the
man his money and went in.
“Don’t know,” said Connelly.
“Well, do you think it’s likely?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, likely some girl knows what’s going to happen to you?”
He thought about it. “No.”
“Jesus. Me neither.”
“What was it I said about blasphemy?” said Pike idly from where he lay in the grass.
“You said I was a Jew before you said anything about blasphemy. Jesus is your God, not mine.”
“I think the whole northeast is lost to godlessness,” said Pike. “All city folk and Yankees hold nothing sacred.”
Time ticked by. The wind rose and fell. Then Roosevelt came out of the cart looking irritated.
“Damn it all!” he told the carnie leaning up against the cart. “That was just… just… Damn it, you just suckered me out of
money!”
“Sucker hell,” said the carnie. “I didn’t sucker anything. You might’ve just not liked what she said.”
“I didn’t like any of it!” said Roosevelt. “Everything she said was just damn insulting! Come on, let’s go, boys,” he said
to them, and began to stomp away.
“What did she say?” said Pike.
“What?” said Roosevelt, and he stopped.
“What did she say?”
Roosevelt looked at them a moment longer. Then he swore and strode away toward the carnival, shaking his head.
“Could be there’s something here worth a listen,” said Pike, and he stood and gave the man a few coins and went in.
After he was gone the carnie looked at Connelly and Hammond on the grass. He smiled at them. “Say, you boys want anything,
uh… anything extra with this?” he asked.
“Extra?” said Hammond.
“Sure. You look like you boys been on the road a while. Probably been lonely.” He took another belt from his flask and nodded
at the cart.
“Probably costs a considerable amount more than a fortune-telling, huh?” said Hammond.
“Probably. But it improves your immediate future a hell of a lot, I’ll tell you that.”
Hammond eyed the people at the carnival and smiled. “I can probably improve my fortune for free.”
“Jesus, you’re not going to find anything under a hundred and fifty pounds over there. Any farmgirl still drinking beer at
this time of night ain’t nothing worth looking at.”
“I don’t know,” said Hammond with a wry grin. “It’s a pretty dark night.”
“Goddamn. Suit yourself. What about you, big fella?” he said to Connelly.
Connelly shook his head.
“You don’t say much, do you?”
Connelly shook his head again.
The carnie grunted, chuckled, then drank and spat.
Pike charged out of the cart looking downright furious. “A waste of time,” he said angrily. “A waste of time and money.”
“Told you so,” said Hammond.
“Nothing but lies come out of her mouth. Nothing but lies. Just bitchery and foolishness is what it is.” Pike spat at the carnie’s shoes and
strode off toward the carnival after Roosevelt.