The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [26]
Jake approached slowly. Two little younguns in overalls stood before the flying-jinny. Near them, seated on a box, a Negro man drowsed in the late sunshine, his knees collapsed against each other. In one hand he held a sack of melted chocolate.
Jake watched him stick his fingers in the miry candy and then lick them slowly.
‘Who’s the manager of this outfit?’
The Negro thrust his two sweet fingers between his lips and rolled over them with his tongue. ‘He a red-headed man,’ he said when he had finished. ‘That all I know, Cap’n.’
‘Where’s he now? ’
‘He over there behind that largest wagon.’ Jake slipped off his tie as he walked across the grass and staffed it into his pocket. The sun was beginning to set in the west. Above the black line of housetops the sky was warm crimson. The owner of the show stood smoking a cigarette by himself. His red hair sprang up like a sponge on the top of his head and he stared at Jake with gray, flabby eyes. ‘You the manager? ‘Uh-huh. Patterson’s my name.’
‘I come about the job in this morning’s paper.’
‘Yeah. I don’t want no greenhorn. I need a experienced mechanic.’
‘I got plenty of experience,’ Jake said. ‘What you ever done? ‘I’ve worked as a weaver and loom-fixer. I’ve worked in garages and an automobile assembly shop. All sorts of different things.’ Patterson guided him toward the partly covered flying-jinny.
The motionless wooden horses were fantastic in the late afternoon sun. They pranced up statically, pierced by their dull gilt bars. The horse nearest Jake had a splintery wooden crack in its dingy rump and the eyes walled blind and frantic, shreds of paint peeled from the sockets. The motionless merry-go-round seemed to Jake like something in a liquor dream.
‘I want a experienced mechanic to run this and keep the works in good shape,’ Patterson said.
‘I can do that all right.’
‘It’s a two-handed job,’ Patterson explained. ‘You’re in charge of the whole attraction. Besides looking after the machinery you got to keep the crowd in order. You got to be sure that everybody gets on has a ticket. You got to be sure that the tickets are O.K. and not some old dance-hall ticket. Everybody wants to ride them horses, and you’d be surprised what niggers will try to put over on you when they don’t have no money. You got to keep three eyes open all the time.’
Patterson led him to the machinery inside the circle of horses and pointed out the various parts. He adjusted a lever and the thin jangle of mechanical music began. The wooden cavalcade around them seemed to cut them off from the rest of the world. When the horses stopped, Jake asked a few questions and operated the mechanism himself.
‘The fellow I had quit on me,’ Patterson said when they had come out again into the lot. ‘I always hate to break in a new man.’
‘When do I start?’
Tomorrow afternoon. We run six days and nights a week--beginning at four and shutting up at twelve. You’re to come about three and help get things going. And it takes about a hour after the show to fold up for the night.’
‘What about pay?’
‘Twelve dollars.’
Jake nodded, and Patterson held out a dead-white, boneless hand with dirty fingernails.
It was late when he left the vacant lot. The hard, blue sky had blanched and in the east there was a white moon. Dusk softened the outline of the houses along the street. Jake did not return immediately through Weavers Lane, but wandered in the neighborhoods nearby. Certain smells, certain voices heard from a distance, made him stop short now and then by the side of the dusty street. He walked erratically, jerking from one direction to another for no purpose. His head felt very light, as though it were made of thin glass. A chemical change was taking place in him. The beers and whiskey he had stored so continuously in his system set in a reaction. He was sideswiped by drunkenness. The streets which had seemed so dead before were quick with life. There was a ragged strip of grass bordering the street, and as Jake walked along the ground seemed to rise nearer to his face. He sat down on the border of grass and leaned against a telephone pole. He settled himself comfortably, crossing his legs Turkish fashion and smoothing down the ends of his mustache. Words came to him and dreamily he spoke them aloud to himself.