Swamp Foetus Read Online Free PDF Page B

but I thought I could feel his scream, silent and spiraling and endless, echoing through the rooms.
    One morning he was gone. Every tube of paint he owned had been emptied and smeared in great arcs across the floor and up over the walls, smothering the skeletal cats, clouding the eclipses. Sammy’s rainbow footprints led through the mess, down the stairs. As I was leaving the church, I saw his guitar broken-necked in a corner. I got into my car and drove six thousand miles, drove two years trying to forget Gene’s dark swollen face and Sammy’s guitar choked into silence.
    Georgia. I only knew I was home because a sign had welcomed me some miles back. The wood-and-glass renaissance town I had left bore no resemblance to the landscape of abandoned gas stations, grimy hamburger stands, junkyards watched over by seamed old men in tarpaper-and-tin shacks that peppered my route now. A town sprouted at the side of the highway—diner, graveyard, Baptist church—and withered again. A faded banner strung between two telephone poles flapped against the aluminum sky:
    McGRUDER & LARKS
    CARNIVAL SHOW
    ROCKVILLE FAIRGROUND JAN 20-22.
    A few jacked-up cars and rickety pickups were parked in the fairground lot. I pulled in, hoping for a an ice cream cone as sweet and cold as they used to be, a slice of greasy, chewy pizza, a ride on the merry-go- round maybe. A small adventure, a way of botting out the silences that Georgia had brought back.
    The pizza was thin and cardboard-dry. The ice cream melted in a gummy river over my fingers, and they had no merry-go-round. I was making my way through the oily mud and evil-smelling wastecans toward the exit when a hand brushed my shoulder and a Georgia voice said, “You haven’t seen everythin’ yet.”
    I met his eyes. An aging child beginning to fatten, but he might have been handsome, even beautiful, once; his lips, bowed like a baby’s, might have kissed; his pale blue eyes might have dreamed. Now his fair hair straggled like dry cornsilk around his ears. A tiny gold hoop sparkled in one lobe. On his blue shirt, in fraying orange letters, was stitched the name Ben. He smiled, and though he lacked a front tooth, his smile was amazingly sweet. “It’s almost closin’ time,” he said. “I’ll let you in here for free.”
    Canvas flapped behind him. Lurid painted shapes billowed and writhed. I made out the ornate red-and- gold lettering:
    2-HEADED GOAT. SPIDER PIG WITH 8 LEGS. DEVIL TWINS FROM WALES. The freak tent. I wanted to turn away, to get back to my car and drive six thousand more miles, two more years. But I could not spoil Ben’s small kindness. “Thanks,” I said, and the carnival must have grown more deserted than I’d realized, for my voice echoed among the tents and stalls.
    “Sure,” he said, and parted the canvas doorway.
    The inside of the tent smelled of ancient dust and animal dung and acrid, deathly formaldehyde. The two- headed goat was alive, but its flanks trembled from the cold and the sawdust beneath its heads was spattered with greenish foam. The spider pig and other arcane fetuses floated in dim jars, curled, uncaring. The devil twins, flat and arid under glass, seemed to have flesh of hard earth, hair of dry grass.
    Ben touched my shoulder again. “There’s one more. Out back. He usually costs extra, but seein’ as I let you in free anyhow—You’re not from round Rockville, are you?” Something trapped and screaming surfaced briefly in his eyes. I knew I did not want to see whatever solitary freak he kept out back, in the cold and the wind, for spectators curious or morbid enough to pay an extra fifty cents.
    “No,” I told him. “I’m not from around Rockville.” He nodded, quiet, resigned. His eyes were once again as pale and placid as blue milk. “Come on then,” he said. “He’s waitin’.”
    The out-back smell was heavy, sweet, and doyingly rotten. Dung and garbage crept in great soft piles up the back of the tent. A few feet away,