-August 9th-

The birds eating popcorn kernels strewn all over the carnival grounds were like deathbed sinners partaking of left-over communion bread while the priest wasn't looking. Charlie suspected that there were actually more birds – little black balls of tar-and-feathers – attending the carnival then people. And they didn't even have to pay to get in.

The place smelled of gasoline and weeping tar and men in game booths with sweat oiling their bodies and cigars hanging out of their mouths called at Charlie and his father as they walked down the boardwalk. Wrappers and wadded up napkins chased after each other.

And everywhere there was noise.

The place sounded like pinstripe tents set up for religious revivals where repentance was screamed at the top of lungs and people convulsed on the ground while the demons of their sin diffused out of their pores. It bombarded Charlie's ear drums and stole away his concentration, so he held his father's hand tightly and let his eyes leech onto the lights and the movement and the excitement. There was just so much to see. This was the whole planet vaccuum-packed into a single parking lot and lying there for his inspection.

Charlie's father shed his coat like a Matryoshka doll undressing out of another layer and slung it over his shoulders. The evening was comfortably warm and the air strolled along the boardwalk just like everyone else, trailing French manufactured perfumes of garbage and oil.

Charlie's father looked at his watch and said, “Another fifteen minutes, OK, bud? Dad's just about spent his retirement on popcorn and darts.”

“Sure.”

“Any place in particular you wanna go?”

A clown with his face all painted up passed by with a cigarette in one hand and his suspenders dangling at his thighs almost tripped over Charlie and swore. He had just come out of a sprawling, limp carnival tent that looked like a birthday present run over by a pick-up truck and Charlie pointed in it's direction.

Father squinted.

“Alright.”

They paid the five dollar entrance fee and stepped inside.

The smell of urine and chewing tobacco hit him the face with prize-fighter gloves. Father cleared his throat and checked his watch and Charlie let go of his hand to squeeze through a crowd of people around an open pen bedded with pine chips.

At first, Charlie didn't see anything special inside of it. Naked light bulbs around the pen hung their like the victims of deep south lynchings with all their dignity seeping out of them in the form of incandescence and made it hard for Charlie to see what was crouching at one end of the pen, where people were pointing. Half in shadows, half baptized by the light, he eventually made out a boy sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees rocking back and forth and whispering frantically to himself.

The left side of the boy's face which was illuminated was melted looking, as if his features were Barbie-doll plastic that had been held to close to the fire.

Hoarse voices dropped words that fell to the ground like pianos from twelfth story windows and shattered on sidewalk.

The crowd was angry.

They were impatient.

They wanted a show!

Charlie wrinkled his nose and tried to find a better position.

And then someone said, “For the love of God, make it do something!”

The crowd murmured and agreed and swore – like French Revolutionaries watching aristocrats dangle on single puppet strings. The man beside him shook his head and moved away and Charlie was able to squeeze to the left where he could almost hear what the boy was whispering.

He was praying:

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”

There were tears on the left side of his face.

They rolled down his cheeks and glittered in the harsh light.

“Blessed art thou among women.”

Wrappers were landing in the pen now and impatient pieces of popcorn bounced off of the boy's head like roses landing on stage after ballet performances and the crowd screamed for a spectacle. A door at the back of the pen burst open and a big man without a shirt and a club spilled out into the light with his mouth sputtering curses in a foreign language. He moved over to the boy and hit his head like a crusading knight beating the brains out of infidel children with skin that wasn't as pure and righteous as theirs.

The crowd roared approval.

The boy gasped and went face first into the floor.

This time the man kicked the boy's stomach and screamed for him to get up.

His arms fluttering like fledgling wings and his mouth juicy with blood, the boy stumbled to his feet and into the light.

There were:

Gasps.

Jesus-Mary-and-Joesephs.

Steps taken backward.

Before Charlie stood something that looked like a used crash-test mannequin. His limbs were draped down at his sides at odd angles and his face looked as if it had been carved and sculptured by someone with a chisel in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other. The top of his head was bulging and inflated and his hands were swollen balloon animals.

He was as thin as those poor African children with twig arms and distended bellies sitting around on street corners with flies buzzing around the sides of their eyes.

He was wearing nothing more than a pair of boxers.

The man with the club spread his arms wide and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Behold, the Elephant Boy!”

And the crowd was silent.

Their stares were houseflies buzzing around his head in nauseating halos and a few women gasped, their purity wilting. The Elephant Boy stood with his back hunched and his eyes meeting everything but the crowd in front of him. Charlie stared at him with his jaw limp, half disgusted, half intrigued. What was this thing doing with human skin and human feet and a human heart? Had he stolen them? What was he doing with prayers dangling from his lips in spitty strings of blood and with hurt pooling in his eyes? It seemed strange that something that looked so much like Charlie, could be so different.

The naked light bulbs made dust motes sparkle in the air like disco ball reflections.

Someone beside Charlie threw an entire box of popcorn at the creature in boxers and screamed, “Go back to hell, bastard!”

The crowd roared in approval and they became Middle Eastern men stoning a woman for adultery in dusty, sun-warped streets. Almost immediately, a small landfill of trash appeared at the Elephant Boy's feet and his face was spattered with tobacco spit and he was sticky with soda pop and more prayers were dropping from his lips like seeds where they were watered by silent tears and the man with the club had to lead him out of the pen before the crowd broke down the fence and lynched him then and there.

And then words erupted from the Elephant Boy's mouth as he was dragged away under the arm of the man with club, clotted by a speech impediment so that it sounded as if his tongue was a wadded up sock.

“And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen!”

Father's hand was suddenly on Charlie's shoulder and steered him out of the crowd as they lurched and writhed and shrieked like a litter full of kittens being dropped off the side of a bridge in a burlap sack.