The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel by Charles L. Grant Read Free Book Online

your head?” he said to the twilight.
“Christ, Bethune, who the hell do you think you’re kidding?”
     
    She wasn’t there.
    He walked the length of the crowded midway and
its side streets several times, ate more than he should have to
give his hands something to do, ended up at the carousel and called
himself ten kinds of a fool and a hundred kinds of an idiot who
ought to be old enough to know better.
    She wasn’t there.
    He rode on a dolphin and a ram, watched the
bears play their tunes, tried to catch himself in the mirrors; he
stood by the dance floor and tapped his foot, nodded his head,
snapped his fingers, turned and watched the thrill-rides until a
threatened headache closed his eyes.
    She wasn’t there.
    He drifted past a Ferris wheel that seemed to
wobble on its braces; he listened to a jovial barker try to
convince passersby that inside his tent, and nowhere else in the
world, was the only living survivor of a mysterious tribe of
African pygmies, who ate only roots and berries and a pound of
human flesh a day; on the midway he tried to knock down a
three-level pyramid of milk bottles until he gave up in disgust; he
spotted Tina Elby with some friends at a hamburger stand and made
an abrupt about-face into a wide lane that boasted farm and jungle
animal exhibits, with a small arena at the far end where the acts
for an hourly show were posted.
    Twice, he started to leave, disgusted with
himself for acting like an adolescent, and twice changed his mind.
Just in case.
    He returned to the carousel and rode the llama
four times. No one rode the gold lion.
    He headed for the exit, ignoring the crowds,
ignoring the music, ripping the ticket from his shirt and tearing
it in half, tossing it over his shoulder and not caring when
someone behind him complained about the slob.
    She didn’t promise, you know, he said to the
toes of his dust-covered shoes; she only said maybe.
    Shit.
    Damn.
    He stood under the arch and glared across the
Road at the Station, daring someone, anyone, to say the wrong thing
so he could smash in a face, kick in a few ribs, spend the night in
jail and it would serve them all right.
    She called his name.
    He turned abruptly and tripped over his own
feet, stumbled backward and tried to wave as she rode by on a
palomino pony, a gang of kids in cowboy suits running behind and
cheering.
    “Tomorrow!” she called as she veered into the
midway. “After sunset!”
    He grinned; he waved. He nodded; he grinned.
    He hummed all the way home and fell asleep on
the couch, woke up with a stiff neck and hummed in the shower, got
into fresh working clothes and slapped his thighs as ifhe were
slapping leather.
    “All right, boys,” he said to his tools in a
cowboy drawl, “there’s some heavy work on the south forty gotta be
done before sunset.” He stepped out onto the front porch. “Head ’em
up, move ’em out.”
    All the shrubbery was brown, all the flowers
shriveled.
     
    A stout bar across the entrance, a quintet of
crows perched on the weathered black wood, facing the road, every
few minutes fluffing feathers, stretching wings, pecking at drying
strings of red meat draped over the barrier.
    Hammering inside, the whine of a saw.
    Sun bright, heat strong, no one to take tickets
because no one had come and no one would come, though there was no
sign on the arch that declared the fair closed; later, much later,
but for now just the crows.
    And from somewhere inside, the soft quiet sound
of a young woman laughing.
     
    He stood on the front walk, hands first in his
hip pockets, then on his hips, then clasped, clenched, back in his
pockets, tangled behind his back, shredding blades of grass,
adjusting his belt. He didn’t know what to do and so did and said
nothing as a uniformed woman knelt beside the porch steps and
scraped something into a clear plastic bag. It was the fifth time
she’d done it. Maybe the sixth. He’d lost count. And he had stopped
trying to talk to her because all he had