Utah Saints (pt 3).

The power’s out in the bar. There’s a lit candle on the table that makes his face look cut out of rock.

I didn’t mean to, Dixie says. I need you to believe me. I just grabbed him too hard.

It’s intoxicating to hear him. And so much better that all of that heroin. I think he can see me a little or at least smell me; he’s gritting his teeth while he bends quarters in half as if they are made out of paper, dropping them in a pile of little silver wounded birds. Do you know how strong you have to be to do something like that?

What are you doing here? His hands have stopped moving. I want to know right now.

I hold up my hands. I am no danger to you, I tell him, forcing myself not to smile – but it is difficult, because people can be very funny at times, especially when they are dying. I tell him what I can read off the inside of my head: that I was discharged from the Army two weeks ago and since then have been on a state-to-state bender seeing old friends. I just happened to show up at the right time, I tell him. Bad luck is all.

Bad luck, he repeats. He’s like something coiled and barely held back by being real. The bar is full of shadows that run into one another, making apologies. Fireballs float in the air from lit cigarettes. Dixie is staring at me; I stare back, betting that I will win. And I am right. What the fuck, he mutters, dropping his eyes to his hands. What the fuck.

Listen, I say. I want to tell you something. It’s just coming to me right now. When I was a kid, my old man took me to see the circus. It was probably the only good thing he ever did for me. Or at least the only time I can remember him not fucking me up the ass when he came home drunk. He even let me get cotton candy, which was unheard of because he never let me have anything sweet. Don’t want you porking up, Ham-Sandwich, is what he said. Don’t want you getting fat like that cunt you call a mother.

What the fuck, Dixie says again. What is happening. Why can’t I leave. Why.

Shhh, I say to him. I am trying to tell you something.

I stop to breath, and calm myself. It’s not as easy as you might think, even if you’re built to do it. Even if you were made to do a thing, that doesn’t mean it comes naturally.

My old man was trying to fuck one of the performers, I say, so I was on my own. There were these motor homes parked in a row, and sitting in all of these lawn chairs were the freaks that I had just watched pound nails into their heads and eat lightbulbs and walk on knives. And they are just smoking and drinking and laughing – the bearded lady, the Siamese twins, the dog boy, and on and on. The sort of thing that these days would have people trying to free them into a better life I suppose, but it was Kentucky.

Help. Dixie’s voice is barely a whisper.

Would you please fucking listen, I tell him. Or I am going to get mad at you and that’s not going to feel very good. I’m almost done anyway, and after that I’m going to move on and you and I will never see each other again. But I do want to tell you that it was funny. All of it was really so funny.

He moans; his eyes fill with tears. My point, I tell him, is that I watched these freaks for a long time, because they didn’t care one little bit about how they looked. They loved each other. They were disgusting and ridiculous but they were taking care of each other and having just a great big fucking freak barbeque. It was horrifying – but I still wanted to be with them so badly that I would have cut my legs off right there if it would have made me one of them. That’s people, Sergeant Gamble. They would do anything to make somebody love them. Anything.

Dixie’s face is a ruin; I lean over the candle. Now you be nice to Hammie, you hear? I say, and I blow out the candle.