The Resurrectionist

LIMBO COMICS: FROM ISSUE # 7: “A Bloody Ordeal”

. . Needless to say, following the murder of Lazarus Cole, the freaks and their strongman moved through that first night of the Jubilee in a state of stunned disbelief. And yet, they seemed to be the only ones who experienced the aftershock of witnessing such a degenerate and orchestrated killing.

“But remember,” Chick said to them just before the sideshow annex was opened for business, “the Jubilee comes through Mach’pella every year. And according to the bannerline, Lazarus Cole has been with them for seven seasons now.”

“You’re saying,” said Milena as s/he applied talc in the dressing room, “that he’s not really dead.”

“He’s a magician,” said Aziz, doing his stretching exercises. “That’s what he does. It’s all a trick. It’s the art of illusion.”

“I’ve been on the circuit all my life,” the lobster girl said, applying oil to her claws. “And I’ve dated my share of magic men. But I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s obscene, is what it is.”

Bruno had been sitting on a stool, trying to memorize a spiel that Milena had written for him.

“If it is an illusion,” he said, “it’s the best damned illusion I’ve ever seen. And I’ve shared bills and played cards with the best magicians in Bohemia.”

“Even if it is an illusion,” said Kitty, standing atop two orange crates, ironing an evening gown, “it feels like the trick is beside the point.”

“Kitty’s right,” said Vasco, slicking back his hair.

“There’s something wrong with this show,” said Marcel, borrowing the comb and completing the thought.

“Well,” said Milena, picking a feather boa from a steamer trunk, “right or wrong, we’ve got to get to work. It’s showtime.”

BRUNO DID HIS BEST. On this, all the freaks would agree. He made a valiant effort. And if good intentions could fill a sideshow, the annex would have been a straw house that night. He helped each member of the clan up onto his or her particular stage, helped them get positioned, and assisted with props. He rolled down each curtain — the Jubilee had reasonably appropriate banners for a hermaphrodite, a female dwarf, and Siamese twins. The rest got velvet drapes without any illustration. No one complained and everyone hit the boards as confident professionals.

Everyone, that is, except for Bruno. Put him in a ring, on a field, and he would shine. He could box or wrestle three men at a time. He could break chains, heave boulders, hoist the largest livestock on the farm. But what he could not do was bark.

Bruno Seboldt was no salesman. Not so long ago, he would never have imagined a time in his life when this fact would constitute a problem. But tonight, in the country of Gehenna, in the town of Mach’pella, in the company of the Roving Jubilee, it was nothing short of a crippling disability. And he found himself utterly tongue-tied and, for the first time, genuinely fearful.

He stood at the annex entrance, choking in a bow tie, sweating under the band of a straw boater, a bamboo cane looking like a child’s toy in his hand. He tried to recite the patter that Milena had written for him but it was no use. The words he managed to remember came out stilted and ridiculous.

“Step right up,” he began. “See the world’s most astounding individuals. One small fee brings you face to face with eleven wonders of the universe.”

And by the second sentence, his tongue had swollen and his mouth had gone dry. He was perspiring desperately.

“See the human mule and the lobster girl,” he cried. “See the skeleton and the fat lady. See Vasco and Marcel, the Siamese twins.”

But it came out as if he were reading from a laundry list. And the marks just gave him a suspicious or angry look and walked right by. Inside, the freaks waited, not so patiently, to hear the familiar noise of bodies filing into the sideshow annex, the voices of braggadocio and wonder, the nervous quips and laughter. Now, all they heard was Bruno’s muffled and mangled attempts to bark up some business.

“The show starts in ten minutes,” the strongman called. “One price buys you eleven freaks. See the human torso. See the pinhead. See the chicken boy.”

But there were no takers. And this was a first. Bruno had traveled with circuses and carnivals all of his life. The freak show was the closest thing to a sure bet he’d ever encountered, through cities and villages, in good times and bad. The Goldfaden Freaks had drawn sell-out crowds all across Old Bohemia. Why weren’t they drawing them in at the Jubilee?

The answer was provided with gleeful hostility by Chief Shawnee, the Jubilee’s resident strongman. He approached Bruno minutes before showtime, peeked into the empty annex, and laughed, “Now that’s a damn shame,” though it was obvious that he relished the sight of the empty tent.

He held out a bottle to Bruno, who declined. The Chief shrugged and took his own swig, wiped his mouth with his forearm, and said, “You’re the worst talker I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not my specialty,” Bruno agreed.

“Oh, that’s right,” said the Chief, “you’re with the shovel brigade, aren’t you?”

“I’m a strongman,” Bruno said, “just like you.”

“That right?” Micmac said, arching his brows and pulling down his jaw. “I heard you were a dung shoveler. I heard you were a lowlife, shitslinging gazonie.”

The sweat was pouring down Bruno’s face and he could feel the muscles in his neck starting to pulse. He took a breath and said, “You heard wrong, Chief,” throwing all the accent onto the last word and turning it into a mocking insult.

The Chief took a drink and gave a half laugh. “No need to be ashamed,” he said. “Every circus needs its dung slingers. Hell,” a pause to belch, “I’d even say it’s a step up from trying to sell a bunch of sham freaks.”

“They’re not shams,” Bruno snapped, too quickly. “They’re the real things.”

The Chief nodded condescendingly. “’Course they’re shams. Everyone knows they’re shams. Why do you think no one’s buying a ticket? They all remember the last time the Jubilee offered up some freaks. They were all bogus. Every one of them. Frauds, fakers, and phonies.”

Bruno stepped out from behind the ticket booth.

“My freaks,” he said, “are genuine.”

“Well, then,” the Chief said, “you won’t mind showing them to me.” And he lifted the flap and strolled into the annex.

Bruno followed him inside, unsure of what to do. It was showtime, even if there was no audience. And if he refused to display the freaks, it would seem as if he were afraid of exposing their fraudulence.

“C’mon,” the Chief said. “Bring up the curtains and let’s have a look at your needle and thread monsters.”

Conflicted and annoyed, Bruno stomped over to the riggings and took hold of all the tie-lines at once. Instead of bringing one curtain up at a time, the way the show was supposed to unfold, he yanked all of them up simultaneously. And the freaks were revealed together, in eleven dioramas: Chick behind pen fencing, Kitty among oversized furniture, Nadja laid out with conch shells and sea stones, Fatos next to a cardboard cactus, and so on.

The Chief was taken aback at first. He’d been hitting the bottle when the curtains went up and he spilled liquor down his chest at the sight of them. Bruno watched him bite his bottom lip and stare. Then he took a step closer and leaned his head forward and muttered something unintelligible. He moved over to the first stage, where Antoinette was posed on a wooden stool before a classroom backdrop. The Chief studied the pinhead for awhile, then began to walk from stage to stage.

He took his time, stroking his chin as he gaped, sometimes scratching at his head. The last stage belonged to Milena, who was posed on a loveseat, lounging in an elaborate costume that was half white silk nightgown and half black pajama shirt and pants.

The hecklers and the rowdies always saved their strength for the hermaphrodite. It had been the same back home. Milena had heard every comment and developed several standard responses. So when the Chief said, “You gonna’ show them to me?” Milena didn’t even think before s/he said, “Not till you show me yours first.”

“I’m not the freak,” said the Chief.

“We won’t know that,” said Milena, “until I get a good look.”

Bruno was ready to launch himself if the Chief made a move toward the stage. But it wasn’t necessary. Shawnee glared at Milena, threw a hand dismissively in the hermaphrodite’s direction and uttered a single, disgusted syllable.

“Bwah,” he said.

Then he turned to Bruno and smiled.

“There’s only one thing,” he said, “more humiliating than a strongman playing wet nurse to a freak troupe.”

Bruno waited for it silently. The Chief allowed himself a belt from the bottle before he continued.

“A fake strongman,” he said at last, “playing wet nurse to a troupe of fake freaks.”

Satisfied with himself, Micmac Shawnee began to exit the annex tent.

Bruno could have let it go at that. And, perhaps, on another night, in another town, he would have. But the feel of the bow tie at his neck and the boater, too tight, on his head, had abbreviated his capacity to suffer fools gladly. And as the Chief bent to push through the tent flap, Bruno lowered a hand onto his rival’s shoulder and stopped Micmac’s progress.

The Chief turned slowly.

“I’ll say it again,” Bruno said. “They’re not fakes.”

The Chief looked at Bruno and then beyond him to the freaks, who were still frozen on their stages, several of them wishing their curtains would fall.

“And I’ll say it again,” said the Chief. “They’re the saddest bunch of frauds and imposters I’ve ever laid eyes on. It’s so obvious, I can only think that the ringmaster took them on out of pity.”

“Let me tell you what I pity,” said Bruno. “I pity the paying customer who has to watch a drunken tub of lard like yourself dress up like a real man.”

The Chief responded with a wild and off-balance roundhouse, telegraphed so far in advance of its arrival that none of the freaks even bothered to shout a warning. Bruno sidestepped the punch, pivoted and threw two shots to the Chief’s kidneys. Shawnee went down on a knee, stunned, but only for a second. And when he bounced upright, he barreled into Bruno with an enraged tackle. Both men went to the ground this time, rolling in the dirt and weeds, each trying to squeeze the other into surrender.

The freaks dashed to the lips of their stages to watch the spectacle, except for Antoinette who ran, sobbing, back to the trailer. Chick wondered if he should fetch someone but decided against it, unsure of whom he could trust.

The rolling and groaning and grunting continued for several minutes, each of the giants trying to break the other’s hold with a sudden twist or turn. But for a while, the two appeared well matched.

As it turned out, however, Bruno had youth and cunning on his side. He let the Chief tire himself, let the alcohol in the man’s blood go to work. And as the Chief’s strength began to ebb just slightly, the Bohemian Behemoth sensed his advantage and threw his opponent onto his back.

Bruno capitalized on the toss by rolling up into a sitting position on Shawnee’s stomach, fastening a grip around the Chief’s enormous neck. At once, Micmac began to struggle for air.

“Give,” demanded Bruno.

The Chief only gasped and tried futilely to roll away.

“Give up,” Bruno repeated with more ferocity in his voice. And Milena wondered just how the strongman would know if the Chief did, in fact, surrender.

“I’m telling you,” shouted Bruno, leaning down close to the Chief’s face, “give up and apologize. Or I’ll break your miserable neck.”

Chick and Kitty and Durga all flinched at this, but Bruno, drunk on adrenaline and testosterone and invested fully in the moment, didn’t realize the significance of what he was saying.

The Chief’s eyes began to flicker and the noise from his throat grew deeper and more raspy.

“Bruno, enough,” Chick yelled, throwing over the fencing, jumping down from the stage and running at his patriarch.

Bruno saw the flash of feathers at his periphery and, in that instant, he looked up to see the chicken boy flying toward him. Then he looked back at Shawnee, suddenly conscious of what he was doing and horrified that he was doing it. He took his hands, at once, from the Chief’s neck.

What happened next took only seconds: The Chief, panicked, gasping for breath, bucked. Bruno’s weight shifted and he began to slide off the Chief’s stomach. The Chief lifted his ass off the ground, reached around to the waist of his pants and pulled free his hatchet, then threw himself upward and brought the hatchet down with all his strength. The blade sank into Bruno’s flesh where the arm was joined to the right shoulder, at the socket. It fell to the bone and then it passed beyond the bone, chopping through the hard calcium and into the marrow of the joint’s core.

Blood spurted like a geyser. All of the freaks screamed in unison. Bruno tried to climb to his feet, staggered, swooned, and fell backward. The Chief ran to him, pulled free the hatchet and thought, for just a second, about burying it once again, this time in the skull of the foreign interloper. Instead, he climbed to his feet, waved the bloody blade, hex-style, at the freaks, and ran, wild-eyed, out of the annex.

Kitty jumped off the stage, as did Fatos and Milena. They ran to Bruno, who was in the arms of the chicken boy, whose feathers were turning black as oil, painted by the spray of the blood. Bruno was starting to slip out of consciousness. He tried to speak and managed only a weak grunt. Bubbles of saliva formed on his mouth. His wounded arm sagged next to his body, attached only by flaps of skin and ligament and sinew near the pit.

Kitty and Milena tore sleeves from their gowns and Chick tried to tie off the wound, but the gash was too deep and wide and the flow of blood too rapid. The rags were soaked in seconds and did nothing to stanch the hemorrhage.

“Fatos,” Chick yelled, “run and get the canvasman.”

The mule sprinted from the annex. Behind Chick, Jeta could be heard vomiting and Durga was trying frantically to find a way off her stage. Now, Nadja, Aziz, Vasco and Marcel came running to join the strongman.

The chicken boy looked at his compatriots and struggled for something reassuring to say. But he could feel his feathers and the skin beneath them becoming saturated with the strongman’s blood and this made him lightheaded. He wondered for a second if he were about to fade into the Limbo. But the father voice remained silent. And then Fatos was back with Forrest DeWitt and Dr. Taber, the yokel who had certified Lazarus Cole’s death. For a moment, Chick didn’t understand what Taber was doing here until he realized that the man must truly be a doctor of some kind.

Taber took one look at the injury and said, “Oh, Christ, this isn’t good.”

DeWitt gave him a shove toward Bruno. Taber went down on his knees next to Chick, looked more closely at the wound, and said, “We’ve got to get him into the clinic.”

Nodding gravely, DeWitt said to Chick, “We can take the ringmaster’s truck. I’ve got it waiting outside.”

Bruno passed out completely when DeWitt and the doctor tried to lift him. With the help of Fatos and Milena, they carried the strongman out of the tent and laid him in the open bed of a dilapidated pickup. Kitty and Milena started to climb in and DeWitt said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’ll go,” said Chick, hopping up into the bed. “The rest of you wait here. I’ll send word as soon as I can.”

The others did as the chicken boy instructed, stepping back from the vehicle and huddling into one another.

Taber and DeWitt climbed into the cab and gunned the engine, producing several backfires and a cloud of black smoke. They eased the truck into gear and drove rapidly across the fairgrounds in the direction of the county road.

Chick lay beside the strongman, cushioning Bruno’s head, whispering in the patriarch’s ear.

“I’m sorry,” Chick said, over the rush of the wind. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way.

“I chose you out of the world,” the chicken boy whispered to the unconscious behemoth. “And the world will not love those who are not its own.”