Medicine Show Read online

  And why shouldn't there be? There was certainly plenty of interest in the eyes of the other men who crowded around the small raised platform when she performed. It was an interest that she had grown accustomed to over the past five years, the time that she had been doing the dance, and it galled her that Ray Storey seemed to be the only one who never noticed her.

  Well, that wasn't strictly true. The Boozer never seemed to notice her either, but he was an old man and his senses were so dulled by the alcohol he drank it was doubtful that he would have noticed Salome doing her dance of the seven veils. Louisa didn't mind if he didn't notice her. She didn't even want him to.

  But Ray Storey was different. Ever since he had joined the show, she had tried in one way or another to get his attention, without success. He was always polite, always courteous, but it was almost as if she didn't exist as far as he was concerned. He was that way about a lot of things. There was an air of preoccupation about him that she could never penetrate.

  She had once talked to her father about it, but all he said was that "All men have their Secret Sorrows," and shook his head sadly. She was sure then that the Colonel had no more idea about Storey's secret than she herself did. One thing she was sure of, and that was that whatever the secret was, it had nothing to do with the kind of Sorrows that the Colonel's pills were supposed to cure.

  She had talked to her mother too, but without finding any more satisfaction in her answers. "He may be brooding over a lost love," Sophia said, shaking her head as sadly as the Colonel had done.

  Louisa was convinced that her mother's notion was just as wrong as her father's. There was just no way that any woman was going to let a man like Ray Storey get away from her, much less jilt him and cause him to brood.

  She resolved to put just a little bit more energy into her dance that evening. Sooner of later, Ray was going to be forced to notice her. She knew that the healing dance had done a good deal more for relieving the Secret Sorrows of a good many of the audience than a whole tin of the Indian Vitality Pills.

  That, of course, was the point.

  "I want those men to go home feeling as if they have received a certain amount of stimulation from our show," was the way the Colonel usually put it. "There will be the intellectual stimulation of the anatomy lecture, and of my own talk, but at the same time we want them to receive the more subtle stimulation of Ro-Shanna's description of the virtues of those wonderful pills."

  What he meant was that the men would be stimulated by Ro-Shanna's outfit, but he would never have put it that way.

  "And there is also the healing dance," he would say. "There should a certain sinuosity of the motions that will suggest to the audience the lithe sinuosity that their own bodies will experience when they have partaken of our marvelous remedies."

  Louisa thought that she knew what that meant, too. She tried to make the dance as sinuous as possible, and tonight she would do even better than usual. Storey would be forced to look at her. And he would really see her for a change. Or so she hoped.

  She saw that she had strayed quite a distance from the tent, and she turned back. Her parents didn't like for her to go wandering off too far. She was still young, after all, and you could never tell what you might encounter in the woods, or even in town.

  She wasn't worried, however. She regarded herself as practically grown and certainly capable of taking care of herself in virtually any situation that arose, short of something that might involve shooting.

  She looked at the ground, admiring the way the sunshine filtered through the trees and made patterns on the dirt. She scuffed her feet through the pine needles and thought some more about Ray Storey. She thought about his arms around her, pulling her close to him.

  She was suddenly warmer than the day would seem to have warranted, so she turned her thoughts to other things and walked faster. It was time to get back to business.

  3

  The snoring man spluttered awake and sat bolt upright in his chair, staring wide-eyed around the saloon. It was as if the name of Sam Hawkins had frightened him even in his sleep. From halfway across the room, Storey could see that the man's eyes were bloodshot and that he needed a shave.

  The man looked blankly at Storey and the bartender, but it was plain that he didn't really see them. After a second or two, his head fell back to the table top, hitting it with an audible thump. Within seconds he was snoring again. The solitary drinker never even looked up.

  The bartender put down the glass he was working on and stuck the towel somewhere under the bar. "Sam Hawkins," he said. "I guess that's a pretty common name."

  "They call him 'Hawk,'" Storey said.

  The bartender nodded as if Storey had said something with which he agreed. There was a strange look in his eyes. "He got a brother named Ben?"

  Storey felt a sharp thrill shoot through him as if he'd been struck by a lightning bolt, but his face showed nothing.

  "Yeah," he said. "That's his brother, all right."

  "They ain't the most agreeable folks in town," the bartender said. He was talking in a low voice now, hardly above a whisper. "You might say they got pretty bad reputations."

  "Sounds like the ones I'm looking for," Storey said. It was all he could do to keep himself from reaching for his pistol. He wanted to feel the comforting weight of it in his hand.

  "Tough fellas," the bartender said, looking at Storey out of the corners of his eyes. "What was it you wanted with them two, anyway?"

  "Just wanted to talk to them," Storey said. "We have some friends in common."

  "Didn't know those boys had any friends," the bartender said. He reached under the bar and brought out a bottle and a sparkling clean glass. "You sure you don't want a drink?"

  "I'm sure," Storey told him. "You go ahead without me, if you want to."

  "Don't mind if I do," the bartender said. He pulled the cork from the bottle and poured himself a drink. The hand holding the bottle shook slightly, and the neck of the bottle clinked against the top of the glass.

  "The Hawkins brothers live around here, do they?" Storey said.

  The bartender licked his lips and brought up the glass. He put it to his mouth and leaned his head back as he drank, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. He set the glass down on the bar and wiped his mouth.

  "Ahhh," he said, shaking his head. "I don't generally drink, you know. Too much temptation, havin' it around all the time. A bartender that takes to drinkin' don't usually last long in the job. But I needed that one."

  "You know Sam and Ben, I take it?" Storey said.

  The bartender did not answer directly. He reached under the bar for another cloth and started polishing the bar. The bar was so shiny that Storey could see his face reflected in it. It did not need polishing.

  Storey waited silently.

  Finally the bartender looked up at him. "Look, mister," he said, "I don't know you. You come in here in some kind of funny-lookin' outfit and say you're with a medicine show, and maybe you are. But then you start talkin' about the Hawkins brothers. How do I know you ain't the law?"

  Storey laughed shortly. "You ever see a lawman dressed like this?"

  That got a thin smile from the bartender. "No, I surely never did. I guess you're with a medicine show, right enough."

  "I don't want to arrest the Hawkins brothers," Storey said. "I can promise you that." It was true. He just wanted to kill Sam Hawkins. While he was at it, he might as well kill Ben, too. Do the world a favor.

  "I got to live here," the bartender said. "If it got out that I told a lawman about those boys, well, I might as well buy my coffin box right now. Those two--" he stopped and looked around as if there might be someone listening "--they'd just as soon kill a man because they don't like his looks, much less a man that sicced the law on 'em."

  "Sounds like the men I'm looking for," Storey said.

  "Friends of yours, you said. You don't look like the kind of friend they'd have, if they had any friends."

  "Friends might
not be exactly the right word. I know them, though. From 'way back."

  "Listen," the bartender said, grabbing Storey's arm. "I hope I didn't offend you, the way I talked about 'em. I hope you won't be tellin' 'em what I said."

  "No," Storey said. "I won't be telling them that."

  The bartender relaxed his grip. "They got ever'body in this town cowed down. They make us dance to whatever tune they decide to play."

  "I imagine they do," Storey said. As he had said, he knew the Hawkins brothers from 'way back. He straightened up from the bar. The dollar he had put down was still there, right beside the glass the bartender had drunk from.

  "You never said where they lived," he said.

  "Out in the woods north of town," the bartender told him. "You sure you want to go lookin' for 'em?"

  "Oh yeah," Storey said. "I'm sure, all right."

  * * *

  Naomi Stump was thinking about Ray Storey as she walked back home, but she was thinking of him as Kit Carson. My, he had been tall and handsome in that buckskin outfit he was wearing in the store. She had almost forgotten what it was that she had gone there to purchase, just looking at him. She thought again about the way he had smiled at her, and her stomach felt weak.

  She went into the house by the back way and was surprised to see her husband sitting at the kitchen table.

  "I thought you would be at the church," she said.

  He looked up at her, as if startled. Then she noticed that there was something lying on the table. It was one of the handbills that Kit Carson had been passing out, and it appeared that her husband had been studying it.

  "Are you going to the medicine show?" she said.

  He stood up hurriedly, kicking back the chair he had been sitting in, and stuffed the handbill into the pocket of his black coat.

  "I might have to go," he said. "But only as the watchdog of the community's morals. I believe that such shows are often of a kind not conducive to proper behavior."

  Naomi listened to the warmth of his deep voice, a voice that she had fallen in love with two years before, and wondered how such a sensitive voice could come from such a hollow shell.

  She blamed only herself for her mistake. She had led a sheltered life until meeting the Reverend Stump when he came to preach a revival at the small church where her family were all members, and she had been completely won over by his preaching, his singing, and his apparent relish for life. He had responded to her in kind, and before he left they were engaged. He had his own church, and he was well able to support a wife.

  After their marriage, however, she had learned that supporting a wife was about all that interested him as far as marriage was concerned. There were other things that she had expected, but they had not developed. At first she had told herself that she was sinful for even wanting them, but she knew that other women experienced them. She had heard women talk. She thought about the way she had felt when Kit Carson smiled at her.

  "I'm sure there is nothing wrong with the show," she said. "I met one of the members of their party today at the store. He seemed like a fine young man. I would like to go myself."

  The preacher seemed to swell. "I forbid it," he said. "It would not be fitting for the minister's wife to attend such a show."

  He pulled the crumpled handbill from his pocket and showed her the last line: "Women and Children POSITIVELY NOT ADMITTED!" "But that refers only to the anatomy exhibition," she protested. "I was not thinking about attending that."

  "I forbid you to go to any part of it," Stump said. "That is my final word on the matter." He stalked to the front of the house, looking for his hat. When he found it, he settled it on his head and went out the front door.

  Naomi heard the door shut behind him. She pulled her own copy of the handbill from her purse and looked at it again. She read the part about the Indian Vitality Pills again. Might they not be exactly what her husband needed? She was sure that there was something lacking in him, and maybe the pills would help.

  She thought again of Kit Carson. She was sure that such a man as that did not need any pills. He would know exactly what to do with a woman if he had her.

  She decided then and there that she would attend the show, no matter what her husband had said. And she would buy the pills, too. Getting her husband to take them was another matter, but she would worry about that later.

  * * *

  The Reverend Stump walked to the church, his face burning, and not from the heat of the day. He could imagine what his wife was thinking. She was thinking that he was less than a man.

  And she was right, he was convinced of that. He should never have married her, but he had been captivated by her innocence and her beauty and allowed himself to give in to urges that he felt were better ignored, or if ignoring them was impossible, crushed.

  He believed that such urges were unbecoming in a man of God. He had fought them for years, successfully, he was proud to say. But Naomi had brought them out so strongly that he had lost control of himself and given in to them.

  Not completely. He had avoided taking pleasure in the act, thank God, but it had been difficult. Almost impossible. He had tried to explain things to Naomi, but he knew that she didn't understand. How could she? She had not committed herself to living a Godly life as he had at an early age. She thought that her marriage should be like everyone else's. But he had promised God that he would devote all his energies to the church, shunning the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; he had to keep his promise.

  He entered the church, and as always he felt an immediate sense of peace and relief. His face cooled. The church had been shut up all night and the day's heat had not yet invaded it. There was one window near the front that still had a small amount of stained glass in it, and the sun shone through it, throwing a pattern of red and green across the altar.

  The Reverend Stump walked down the aisle, looking to right and left at the empty pews. When he got to the altar, he knelt down and began praying aloud.

  "Forgive me, Father," he said. "Forgive my weakness and my human frailty. I know that I can do all things through you, if you give me the strength."

  Usually he found it quite easy to pray. The silence of the church, the beauty of the mornings, the peaceful serenity of the old building, all aided him in his devotions.

  But today was different. He found his mind wandering to the handbill that was still stuffed in his pocket. He wondered about the anatomy lecture, the healing dance, the Vitality Pills.

  It was almost as if the right side of his coat were sagging down under a heavy weight, as if the handbill were pulling it earthward.

  Stump felt his face growing hot again and he screwed his eyes shut tight as if that would chase the thoughts from his head.

  But the thoughts would not leave him. Finally he stood up and went to the small room in the rear of the church that served as his office. He would work on his sermon for the coming week. That would drive the thoughts away, he was sure.

  In the office, which was a room containing a writing desk, a chair, and bookshelves holding his bible and the few commentaries he owned, he began thinking about a text. There was a single window in the room, and he could see his ghostly reflection in the glass.

  "If thine right eye offend thee," he said to the reflection, "pluck it out."

  He took a piece of paper from the desk, dipped a pen nib in ink, and began to write.

  * * *

  There were no customers in Barclay Sanders's dry goods store at the moment, and he took advantage of the few minutes he had to spare to look at the handbill given to him by the stranger who called himself Kit Carson.

  Kit Carson, my foot, Sanders thought as he looked over the bill. He could remember at least one other advance man for a medicine show who had called himself the same thing. It seemed to be a popular name with men like that. That had been five years or so ago, Sanders recalled.

  That show had been a good one, though he would not have admitted that to the stranger. Sanders se
cretly enjoyed going to medicine shows, even if he had no faith at all in the so-called remedies they sold.

  In fact, he saw that the handbill was carefully worded so that Colonel Mahaffey did not even claim that his nostrums were remedies. He merely said they "relieved" certain symptoms, not that they cured them.

  Sanders thought he would probably buy a bottle of the oil, anyway. The entertainment might be worth a dollar, and besides, he wanted to see that anantomy exhibition--any presentation from which women and children were excluded sounded as if it had promise.

  He was putting the bill in the window where it could be seen from the boardwalk when he saw Carl Gary looking at it through the glass. Gary moved away from the window and came into the store. He owned the Western Dandy saloon and was considered one of the community's leading citizens.

  He was a dapper man, thin and trim, with a shadow of a moustache on his handsome face. He wore a broadcloth suit and the shiniest boots in town.

  "Mornin', Mr. Gary," Sanders said. "What can I do for you today?"

  "Noticed the bill you were putting in the window," Gary said. He had a such smooth voice there were people who said he must drink honey for breakfast. "I was wondering what you knew about the show."

  "Nothing much," Sanders said. "The advance man just left it with me. All I know's what's on the paper."

  Gary reached into the window and took the handbill. Sanders did not protest. He simply stood there in silence while Gary read it.

  "No harm in it that I can see," Gary said when he was finished. "I'm sure the fellow is a fraud, but he might bring a bit of entertainment to the town. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose."

  "No, sir, nothing wrong with that," Sanders said. "That's exactly what I was thinkin' myself. You goin' to the show, then?"

  "Probably not," Gary said. "I have other things to attend to. Good day, Mr. Sanders." He turned his back on the storekeeper and walked out the door.