Chapter Nineteen
Rusty, he looked so wound up I thought he was a clock spring ready to break. The blonde beauties were sitting on a makeshift stage in that dark tent, not quite side by side, but facing each other a little. They were plain good looking, with ample curves beneath two gowns that somehow were slit at the side. Grecian gowns, you might say, diaphanous and womanly. One wore a nice seashell necklace. Both had rings on their fingers.
I couldn’t say what Rusty was thinking, but he didn’t doubt these here were his Ukrainian mail-order brides, and now they were on display in a freak show, and it was shameful.
When the tent was full up, maybe thirty people sitting on wooden benches, that huckster at the door came in and climbed onto the platform.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, you will see one of the wonders of the world, two beautiful women, joined from now to eternity, at the hip, and fated to live their lives in sublime union. Look hard; they will show you this wonder for only a few moments. And then tell your friends and neighbors to come here and see for themselves.”
He eyed the silent crowd, gauging its interest.
“Now, they don’t speak a word of English. They’ve come over the seas to these shores, so you can’t talk to them. They get about three proposals a day, but they turn them all away, because their fate in life is with each other, beloved twin sisters, bound together. Now, we don’t know their names, so their friends here in the carnival call them Tiddlywinks. On the left, there, is Tiddly, and next to her is the beauteous Winks.”
“That’s Natasha,” said Rusty.
“Now, folks, it is time to prove that this phenomenon is real. There is a bridge of flesh; indeed, they share some organs, the doctors tell us. And I will ask them to stand and draw apart their robes just enough so you can have one discreet look at this oddity of nature.”
He stepped aside and gestured. The twins stood, and each tugged the split gown away from her side, baring the connection that began at the ribs and continued through the rest of the torso of each.
“Step right up, folks, and have a closer look. You don’t need to be glued to the seat. Come up and see for yourself, but don’t touch. We’re a respectable company, and this is an educational exhibit.”
Several of the audience, all male, sprang up, studied the oddly shaped bond that connected the women, as if it were gun cotton ready to ignite. Then they drifted back, satisfied that the joining was real, and not some carny trick.
The women stared nonchalantly at the spectators, even as the citizens of Doubtful stared back, and then they rearranged their skirts. It wasn’t indecent, but it violated them anyhow, and it made me boil up. Rusty, he just clenched his fist, struggling to keep from hammering that huckster, who was smiling blandly.
“Now the ladies will walk in a circle, to show you how beautifully coordinated they are, and that will conclude this amazing exhibit, the most amazing sight ever seen in, ah, Doubletree, Iowa.”
Again the twins walked a tight circle on their little stage, and sat down together, and people stood up, stared at the women, and drifted out in a pensive mood. Then the women exited through the rear of the show tent.
Rusty, he corralled that huckster, who was standing blandly as the tent cleared.
“Where’d you get them?” Rusty asked.
The huckster eyed him, and eyed me, and saw the badges.
“We purchased them not long ago, and no, the act is not for sale. It’s the top draw in our lineup. Man, it’s the hit of the carny.”
“What do you mean, you purchased them?” Rusty asked.
“Oh, I’m sure Mr. Pike has the contract in his files,” the huckster said.
“These women are wanted by the law,” Rusty said. “They were stolen off a stagecoach.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’ll refer you to our manager, and he can answer your questions. They ladies certainly enjoy the attention. They earn a nice income for doing nothing at all but draw the draperies aside a bit. Man, that’s a rare sight.”
“You’re a pimp,” Rusty snapped.
“Oh, I’m worse than that,” the huckster said. “That’s the least of my crimes.”
“These ladies were kidnapped, and we’re holding them here,” I said.
“Go talk to the manager. He’s over in the Little Egypt tent. That’s his sweetie.”
“Come on, Rusty, we’ll talk to the women later. We got law business to do,” I said.
Rusty, he just sat on that bench, poleaxed. But I pried him up and we headed down the midway to the Little Egypt tent, where we spotted Heliotrope Pike selling tickets and chewing on a cigar.
“Pike, we want to talk to you, right now,” I said.
He started to protest, saw the look on my face, and nodded. Some lackey stepped in to sell tickets to the belly dancer show.
“You got a couple captive women that got kidnapped off a stage to Doubtful, and we’re keeping them here.”
“But you can’t. That would be entirely illegal, sheriff. They’re an act we purchased.”
“They got removed from a coach at gunpoint, and vanished until now,” I said. “We’re taking them in.”
The manager nodded, and we followed him to a sort of office wagon, and he led us in. He lit a lamp, opened a file drawer, and extracted a handwritten page. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it, and it sure wasn’t using any letters I’d come across.
“This is their contract. They were sent to us by a booking agent in the Ukraine. It details their salary, term of service, and special quarters. We’ve got them for three years at ten dollars a week plus feed. It’s expensive, feeding two women.”
“They were kidnapped off a wagon, Pike. They were to be mail-order brides.”
Pike beamed, and pushed his bowler back. “That’s an old racket. Get some love-struck groom to pay the passage. Then when you get here, ditch him.”
Rusty, he sure was looking thunderous, but he kept his trap shut.
“Who talks Ukraine around here?”
Pike shook his head. “No one in the outfit.”
“We’re going to find a way to talk to them ladies, and I’m bringing over some witnesses that saw them get taken off the stagecoach, and if those ladies got kidnapped, they’re staying here until we get it sorted out. That clear, Pike?”
“No, it’s not. I paid good money for the act, and I’m keeping it.”
“I want that contract. You’ll get it back. But I am going to get her translated.”
“It ain’t yours, copper.”
“I have the feeling if I don’t take it now, we’ll never see it again, and it’ll vanish from sight.”
Pike, he stared at me, stared at Rusty, who was looking like hell unloosed, and handed over the contract—if that was what it was. It was a sheet with a lot of foreign stuff on it.
“Is there a translation?” Rusty asked. “You got a contract in your file you can’t read, and you say no one in this outfit can speak Ukrainian?”
Pike, he sort of smirked. “Show people, we got our own language,” he said. “Look, gents, this is no big palooza. This is carny biz. These lovely gals, they’re happy as corks in wine bottles. They can speak a little bitta English; go on over and have little talk with ’em. Now, I gotta get busy. We got a nice crowd here, and I got work to do. So if you’ll excuse me . . .”
Rusty, he didn’t wait. He headed for the Ukrainian blondes, who were in their own special wagon, awaiting the next show. Lots of people from Doubtful were wandering the midway now, trying games of chance, and flocking to see Little Egypt. Some of the town ladies, they were a little put off, but curiosity got the best of them, and I watched them pay up, and slide into the show tent to see the famous belly dancer, and no doubt cluck their disapproval.
This was the first carny show I’d been to, and I wanted to see the whole works. But Rusty, he stalked through the place like a torpedo, and knocked on the door of those blondes, and pretty soon they opened. Together, of course. They had to do it all together.
Rusty, he actually removed his sweat-stained hat and held it to his chest. “I’m looking for Anna and Nastasha,” he said. “I’m Rusty.”
“Rusteeeee,” squealed one of them. “Rusteee,” squawked the other. They motioned us in to a tiny dark bunk room.
“This here’s Sheriff Cotton Pickens,” he said, dutifully.
“Pleased to meet ya,” I said, thinking I’d marry whichever one was left over.
“Who’s my bride?” Rusty asked.
They laughed. “Bride, what’s dat?”
“Who did I send for?”
One of them sighed. “You don’t send for one. You send for two. That was the trouble.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am Natasha. Too bad, Rusteee. We were coming to marry you, but the bosses got to us first.”
“The bosses?”
“Ah, Rusty, Pike. He sends men to chase us when we were going to marry you.”
“He kidnapped you?”
“Oh, no, Rusteee. We tried to sneak away so we could marry you.”
“So his men made you get off the stagecoach?”
“Oh, no, Rusteee, we thought it was good, he sends a wagon to get us, and we joined the carnival. We laughed all the way to the show.”
Rusty, he didn’t know what to make of it. Me, I thought maybe Pike’s story was probably the right one. Rusty had gotten milked for a ship’s passage.
Rusty, he wasn’t buying it. “Hey, you read this in English,” he said, and handed her the contract, written in some foreign language.
“Oh, Rusteee, this is a letter from our mother. She is saying that he should take good care of us, and not send us back to Lvov, and pay us promptly, and send her a tenth of it. She says we’ll be in Cheyenne soon.”
“This is your mother’s letter? Not a contract?”
“Oh, Rustee, you are such a simpleton.”
Rusty, he was starting to deflate. I could see the hot air leaking out of him. I was about to tell him he should be content with Riley, but I kept my trap shut for a change. Rusty was hurting. A lot of dreams were sliding into the outhouse vault. A man needs his dreams, and Rusty had been alive with this one for many months. And now it was gone. Two blonde twins had taken him for a ride.
“Hey, Rustee,” Nastasha said. “We’ll marry you, but you gotta join the show. We’ll both marry you, and you join the carny, and we’ll have a lot of good times, right, Rustee?”
Rusty, he wheeled out of there into the night. I shrugged, nodded, and followed him out the door. The next act was about to begin, but Rusty wasn’t going to stick around to see it.