Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 37, No. 1, July 1975

The Clarion Call by John Lutz

The ferris wheel, calliope, the barrel ride, played their sweet and clarion tunes, nostalgic accompaniments to a child’s death...

Grayville was isolated off minor blacktop highways that wove through thickly wooded hills. Not the usual place for a tourist to find himself, but then Mason was more than the usual tourist. Even on his two week summer vacation he was still the devout journalist of the offbeat, roaming in search of the remote and long neglected human interest story.

There was one in Grayville, his reporter’s inner voices told him as he drove his station wagon slowly down the main street. The buildings on either side of him were old but well kept up; a grocery store, loan office, barber shop. Not much in the way of commerce; the typical country community only smaller and less prosperous. The kind of town people moved away from young, and returned to old.

As he was driving past the town’s main restaurant, Mason became consciously aware of what had been on the edge of his mind. Calliope music, with its rising and falling lilting rhythm. He looked to his left, beyond the stark frame two story building he was passing, and there was the carnival.

Mason stopped the car and stared at the twisting, plunging tracks of a fairly large roller coaster, the flickering quick view of a bullet-shaped gondola revolving on a long metal arm, two girls walking past carrying lush cotton candy. Looming above it all, the skeletal frame of the most gigantic Ferris wheel Mason had ever seen. He slipped the station wagon in gear again and turned onto a sun-baked dirt road that led in the direction of the carnival.

He’d expected one of the fast dollar, portable carnivals that roamed the country during the summer months. Instead Mason found a permanent amusement park, complete with pecan shell midway and a pavillion. It wasn’t a large amusement park, and there appeared to be more people milling about it than actually were there. It struck Mason now that the town had been virtually — no, not virtually, completely — deserted. Everyone, apparently, was here to enjoy the carnival.

Mason parked his car, climbed out, stretched to shake off the long hours of driving, then began to walk about. “Must be some sort of town celebration,” he thought. Even though the amusement park was obviously a permanent structure, there couldn’t be enough people in Grayville to support the business on such a grand scale.

Of course, Mason didn’t know the geography of this back-woods, mid-west territory. Maybe there was another, larger town nearby. Or sufficient farms in the vicinity to add to the population.

“Easy enough to find out,” he thought. “Ask somebody.” As he began to look for someone who looked like an accurate source of information, he was suddenly aware that he was drawing mild double takes and odd, sometimes surprised glances from the smiling, excited crowd on the midway. Most of the men about him were wearing workman’s clothing and the women had the ruddy, healthy stamp of country wives. The darting and laughing children seemed to be dressed in bright but ragtag fashion as they whisked in and out of the crowd.

Mason chose a thin old man with a trimmed white beard who was standing watching the children ride their endless circles on the carrousel. The old man turned at Mason’s gentle hand on his shoulder.

“What’s the occasion?” Mason asked.

The man stared at him, one blue eye narrowing amid sun browned wrinkles. “Carnival,” he said in a puzzled voice, is if surprised by the question Mason had put.

Mason smiled at him, “But why today? Any particular reason?”

“Weather’s perfect for Carnival,” the man observed, squinting up at the clear, hot sky.

Behind and to the left of the smoothly revolving carrousel was a ride Mason had seen at various amusement parks; a circular platform that revolved and tilted simultaneously. Customers stood along the inside perimeter of the circular structure, their backs against a curved wall that went all the way around it. Then, as the ride revolved faster and faster, their backs were pressed firmly against the wall by centrifugal force and the floor dropped down a few feet to leave them giddily whirling unsupported from below.

“That takes a young stomach,” Mason said, motioning toward the walled platform that was beginning to rotate to frantic gay music. He turned and saw that the old man was gone. Mason caught sight of him some distance up the midway, shuffling through a crowd of women carrying picnic baskets.

Mason looked after him, shrugged, then with a glance at the carrousel walked toward the parachute drop near the other end of the short midway.

He didn’t know what made him turn and look up to see the arcing form against the blazing afternoon sun. It was a young boy, slender, his arms and legs outspread as if by some timely miracle he might be able to fly.

Above the music, his scream was barely audible as he fell outward and down. Horror stricken yet calm, Mason saw that a section of wall from the circular, madly revolving, platform had given way, hurling the boy up and out as if from a huge sling. There was no way he could live.

Mason trotted in the direction of the boy’s fall. The people stared at Mason as he passed them. “An accident!” he shouted. “Over there!”

When Mason reached the scene he saw that there was already a knot of people about a small figure covered by a gray blanket. From beneath the blanket only a worn blue tennis shoe protruded, twisted at an odd angle so that the sole was almost flat against the hard ground.

Three men stood with their hands on their hips, staring down at the gray bundle, and a hugely fat woman stood off to the side with an unbelieving, horrified expression on her bloated features.

“Who was it?” Mason asked. “Does anybody know the boy’s name?”

The four people simply stood as they were, staring at Mason now instead of the covered corpse.

“The boy’s parents?” he suggested.

One of the men, a tall redhead, twisted his florid face in anguish and looked down again at the body. “Six hundred to one!” he moaned.

“His dad,” a woman said near Mason’s ear. He was shocked to see her indicate the man who had just spoken.

“Listen,” Mason said, “somebody’s sure as hell got to tell whoever’s in charge.”

“You see what happened?” a voice behind Mason asked.

Mason whirled, relieved to see a brown uniform and a sheriff’s deputy’s badge. “I saw enough to know what happened,” Mason said. “A section of wall on that centrifugal force ride gave way and the boy was thrown through the air.”

Another man wearing a brown uniform walked toward them, a heavy set, muscular man with short cropped, frizzy blond hair and a lit cigar.

“This man saw it happen, Sheriff,” the first brown uniform said.

“Ever’thing?”

“Most.”

“I’ll be glad to sign a statement,” Mason said. “Any cooperation I can give.”

“I’m Sheriff Garrity.” The muscular man stuck out his hand. “This is Deputy Lem Norten.”

Mason shook the hand. “Larry Mason.”

“Drivin’ through, Mr. Mason?” the sheriff asked.

“I was, and I saw the carnival. Came over to investigate and I was walking around and just happened to glance up.”

A drab looking tan ambulance arrived on the scene then, and Mason watched the two attendants begin the task of transferring the small body.

“You better come along back to my office,” the sheriff said.

“Sure, anything.”

Mason began to walk alongside the sheriff, noticing that the deputy walked a few feet behind and to the left, his hand resting casually on the butt of his holstered revolver. As they neared the amusement park exit, Mason turned his head and saw the white bearded old man leaning on the fence again watching the children on the carrousel.

Mason sat in the front of the patrol car with the sheriff, while the deputy sat in back, directly behind Mason. There was an unseen intensity about the man that made the back of Mason’s neck itch.

“On vacation?” the sheriff asked, as the car turned onto the main street.

“Right,” Mason said. “Decided just to drive around and see this part of the country.”

“Where’s the family?”

“No family,” Mason said. “Not much time for one. I’m a reporter, and I guess you’d have to say I’m married to my work.”

Sheriff Garrity turned off the main road, down a narrow alley between two tall frame buildings. He turned the smoothly running patrol car to drive down a gravel road parallel to the backs of Grayville’s main street establishments. Then the Sheriff wheeled abruptly into a space in the rear of a freshly painted two story building and cut the car’s engine.

Mason walked between Garrity and his deputy up some concrete steps and through a rear door. “Do you know the boy?” he asked.

“Yep,” the sheriff said, “young Will Cooper. Twelve years old.”

“It’s a damn shame,” Mason said. “I hate to see a thing like that happen.”

The other two men were silent as they ushered Mason into a large room off the hall. There was a gigantic old-fashioned roll top desk along one wall, cluttered with papers. On the opposite wall were filing cabinets and a row of bookshelves. An electric typewriter, the only modern thing in the room, sat on a stand next to the desk in a dusty, swirling shaft of sunlight that angled down through curtained windows.

The deputy walked past the bookshelves and held another door open for Garrity and Mason. Down some wooden steps then, directly into a small office with a bare metal desk. Behind the desk was a gleaming cell door, open.

“You’ll want me to sign a statement, I suppose,” Mason said.

“I suppose we’ll want you to place the contents of your pockets on the desk,” the sheriff said.

Mason was frozen in surprise for a moment, before the indignation set in.

“What is this?” he asked, moving closer to Sheriff Garrity. “Are you telling me you intend to hold me in jail?”

“Remove your belt, too, Mr. Mason.”

Mason stiffened in anger, sensed the deputy moving up to stand behind him. Sheriff Garrity leaned with both hairy-knuckled fists on the bare desk and stared at him with the impassiveness of the professional law officer, waiting for his command to be obeyed.

Mason sighed and complied. He placed his wallet, keys and loose change on the desk, then removed his belt and laid it coiled beside them. “Wrist watch too?” he asked.

Sheriff Garrity nodded.

“I’d like to call my lawyer now,” Mason said, slipping off his watch and dropping it on top of his closed wallet.

“This way, Mr. Mason,” the sheriff said.

Mason didn’t even have time to struggle. Sheriff Garrity suddenly had him by one arm, the deputy by the other, and he was moved the few feet that placed him on the other side of the jail cell’s threshold. The iron bars closed on him with the customary clang.

“Now just a minute!” Mason yelled, gripping the cold bars.

Ignoring him, the sheriff and his deputy jogged up the wooden stairs, through the door to the old-fashioned office and were gone.

Mason turned to see that he was in a cell about ten feet square, with a cot, toilet facilities, and a small plastic chair and table. That was all. Mason bowed his head, walked over and sat down on the firm cot to stare at the smooth cement floor, his thoughts circling like the carrousel.

Little more than an hour passed before Sheriff Garrity reappeared at the top of the wooden steps, looked placidly at Mason and walked down jingling a ring of keys.

“Here to release me?” Mason asked.

“Not here to beat you with a rubber hose,” the sheriff said, fitting a long metal key in the door. He swung the door wide. “C’mon upstairs.”

Mason walked ahead of the sheriff, up the wooden steps and into the large old-fashioned office. Sheriff Garrity waved a hand toward a small chair near the big roll top desk, and Mason sat down. He wondered at the possibilities. Had someone in authority realized they’d seriously violated his rights and decided to try to make it up to him in some way that would keep things quiet? Or was he going to be interrogated? Or formally booked on some fantastic charge?

“I’ll be outside by the door,” Sheriff Garrity said, and left Mason alone.

The office was quiet, restful, warm and thick with the golden sunlight that poured through the wide windows. Probably the windows were nailed shut, but Mason could pick up a piece of furniture, smash the glass. And have Garrity hear the noise and shoot him down before he could make another move? Was that what they wanted? Mason sat where he was and only looked out at the green of the treetops outside the windows.

The office door opened and a small, wiry man in his late sixties wearing a rumpled dark suit and vest entered. He had a graying mustache that matched thick eyebrows, and there was an angular shrewdness about his lined features and alert gray eyes. He nodded at Mason and smiled a faint, rather wise smile that narrowed one eye.

“I’m Ben Burdell, Mr. Mason, owner and editor of The Clarion Call.”

Mason stood, shook the extended dry, strong hand and sat back down. Burdell sat in the big, comfortable looking leather swivel chair at the roll top desk and turned it so he was facing Mason across the corner of a small wooden table that had a stack of yellowed file folders piled at the other end.

Mason remembered the front of the building then; large, overly ornate, with the newspaper’s name lettered on a darkened brass plaque over the entrance. He was sure he was in that building; a sheriff’s office and hold-over cells in the basement of a newspaper office didn’t seem all that unusual for a small town, and the location, from what he could tell as they’d approached from the rear, seemed about right.

“That’s where you are,” Bur-dell said, looking speculatively at him from beneath a cocked eyebrow, “in the offices of The Clarion Call.”

“And you’re going to explain this?” Mason asked.

Burdell nodded. “What you haven’t figured out by now. You’ve been thinking down in that cell, haven’t you?”

“Some.”

Burdell gave a crooked smile. “One old newspaperman can’t fool another. You’re a trained journalist. You saw what happened, and the deputy tells me you heard what Al Cooper said over the body of his boy.”

“ ‘Six hundred to one’,” Mason said, “is a curious thing to remark when you’re looking down at your dead son.”

Burdell leaned back in the leather chair. “I’m glad you’re leveling with me, Mason.” He sighed and rubbed tan knuckles across his chin. “Times are kind of hard right now in this country. Then, too, there’s the power of tradition. Humans can be bound tightly by tradition; we need tradition.”

Mason sat still in his chair, watching the wizened editor.

“Of course, there are better reasons than tradition — sound economic reasons. Only towns of a certain population qualify for the big money in the State Aid to Small Communities annual grant. And Grayville only has two real industries, Mason: the lead mines and the plant that prints this newspaper. Neither makes gigantic profits, so there’s not much money floating around. People leave town now and then, but they tend to come back, and there’s just so many jobs at the paper and the mines, just so much little business here that can earn enough to stay open.”

“What about the amusement park?” Mason asked.

Burdell looked at him sharply. “Only open once a year, for one day in the summer. The day you happened to be driving through and doing some professional snooping.”

“So the community can only support ‘X’ number of citizens,” Mason said.

“Support them in a reasonably decent fashion.” Burdell cocked his head to one side as he peered across the small table. “Do you know what animals do when they exist in an area with limited food supply, Mason? The herd thins out. That’s nature’s way. They reduce in numbers until there’s adequate food.”

“Nature’s way,” Mason said.

“Instead of nature,” Burdell went on, “we here in Grayville have the annual Carnival. The odds on each of the rides are painted on the ticket booth — I’m sure you noticed them, though you probably didn’t realize at the time what they were. Three hundred to one on the Ferris wheel, four hundred to one on the roller coaster, and so on. No one knows when it will happen or to whom.”

“But why does anybody go on the rides?” Mason asked, not really able yet to believe completely what this man was calmly telling him.

Burdell looked at him as if surprised Mason didn’t understand. “Why, danger is the reason people go on any of those rides anywhere anytime. We here in Grayville just take it a step further. Once a citizen passes twelve years of age, he or she can go on the rides of their own choice. It was voted on once, sometime long ago in the town hall.”

“So the townspeople risk their lives and the lives of their children to — prune the community...” Mason shook his head incredulously. It was insane, somehow terrifying, and true.

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s nothing so selfless and noble as that,” Burdell said. “It’s human nature. You see, no one really ever thinks it will happen to him or her, always to someone else. The human animal can’t actually conceive of his own personal mortality. We even have a ride with ten to one odds, Mason, ‘The Pit And The Pail’. People go on it — not many, but some. Like all the other rides, the odds are accurate and the elimination is neat, quick and sure.”

“And they’ll take the chance because the odds are in their favor.”

Burdell smiled and shook his head no. “They’ll take the chance even if the odds are against them. The ‘sooner or later’ is always ‘later’. If you sent ten soldiers on a dangerous mission and told them only one would return, each of the ten would think he was that man. That’s how the human mind works.”

“And Grayville takes advantage of it.” Mason understood what the old editor was saying, could see the terrible perverse logic in it. “But now the most important question to me. What happens when somebody discovers what’s going on? Surely I’m not the first.”

“No, you’re not the first, Mason. And don’t worry, we’re not murderers. There’s no selection in our Carnival — it merely accelerates the life and death cycle for the benefit of the community.”

“You can’t really intend to hold me for the rest of my natural life in that cell.”

“The Clarion Call has a circulation that includes several nearby towns larger than Grayville, Mason. If I raise the annual subscription rate ten cents a month, the amount will easily supply the modest expenses for food and clothing you’d need in your vell. We could incarcerate you for life — or we could release you.”

Mason looked into the editor’s shrewd, level eyes, knew he might as well be candid. “I’m a journalist. I’d talk.”

“Who’d believe you?” Burdell asked. “The town easily alters records of births and deaths. We know no one would believe you because we’ve released people like you before, people who’ve found out. The cells downstairs are empty.”

“Then why not release me?”

“We can’t afford to release too many,” Burdell said, chewing briefly on his moustache. “Eventually one of you would be believed enough to cause serious trouble. The odds, you see.

A mild summer breeze stirred outside the windows, and the ticking of an unseen clock filled the room. “So how do you decide?” Mason asked.

“We don’t decide. You do, one time, like all the others.” Burdell reached into the roll top desk’s center drawer and removed an old Colt six-shot revolver. He flipped out the gun’s empty cylinder and inserted four gleaming, deadly looking cartridges at random. The remaining two chambers in the cylinder he left empty. After replacing the cylinder and spinning it a few times, he carefully laid the gun on the table before Mason.

“You either spend the rest of your life imprisoned here,” Burdell said, “or you hold the gun to your temple and pull the trigger that one way or another sets you free.”

He leaned back and folded his arms, a curious, expectant look in his narrow gray eyes. “Two to one, Mason. Not bad odds.”