Phil Beach was a mysterious kid. His family had moved into the neighborhood a year before Roy got to know him, but neither Roy nor anyone he knew had a clue as to exactly where the family lived. Phil was in Roy’s seventh-grade class, but since he was thirteen, he was a year behind where he should have been. Beach was average sized, and he didn’t have any unusual physical characteristics—none that were obvious, anyway. The only thing that distinguished him, unfortunately, was his vile body odor. Phil stank; it was apparent to anyone who came near him that he did not bathe often, if ever. In the classroom he always took a seat in the back row, apart from the other students. His pants and shirt were a little dirty, though not torn or otherwise remarkable. Phil’s hair was cropped close to his head, so close that it was difficult to determine what color it was. He did not speak in class unless addressed directly by the teacher, and then only minimally. He always had a slight smile on his face. In the schoolyard during recess he kept to himself or was unseen.
It surprised Roy when, leaving school on a Tuesday afternoon, Phil Beach asked him if he wanted to make some money.
“Doing what?” Roy asked.
“Working at a carnival,” Phil said. “There’s a small traveling carnival I’ve worked at for the last two years, doing odd jobs, setting up tents, and running errands for the roustabouts and performers. This year they’re setting up in the empty lot across from Marchetti’s Funeral Parlor on the corner of Victory and Hood. They take up the whole block. It’s called Rangoon Brothers but I’ve never met anyone named Rangoon.”
“Maybe they want to make it sound like Ringling Brothers.”
“A guy named Double Jeff runs it. He’s hiring kids now.”
“Why’s he called Double Jeff?”
“All the carny people got funny handles. I don’t know any of their real names.”
“What do they pay?”
“Dollar an hour, by the day. Next two weekends, start Friday after school and all day Saturday and Sunday, sometimes until pretty late, midnight. If you want, I’ll take you over Thursday morning around six to meet Jeff. We’ll get to school on time.”
It was raining on Thursday morning. Phil had not spoken a word to Roy since their conversation on Tuesday. Roy set his alarm clock to ring at 5:15 a.m. It took him twenty minutes to walk to Victory and Hood. Phil was there, hatless in the light rain, smoking a cigarette. Roy was wearing a Chicago Cubs cap.
“You a baseball fan?” Phil asked him.
Roy nodded. “I play Little League. Next year I’ll be in Pony League at River Park by the Bohemian National Cemetery.”
“We used to live over there, off Foster. My father worked at Clark Electric.”
“Is he an electrician?”
“Not really. You want a cig?”
Roy shook his head.
Double Jeff was standing in front of a tent that had the words CARMELITA THE COBRA WOMAN written on the entrance flap. He had one arm, his left; the long sleeve his missing arm would have been in was knotted just below his right shoulder. He was about forty, Roy guessed, stocky, five foot eight or nine, wet red hair flat on his scalp. He was smoking a cigarette.
“Mornin’, Jeff,” Phil said. “This is Roy, he wants to work.”
Jeff looked at Roy. Both of his eyes were bloodshot, he hadn’t shaved in the last few days, and a couple of his top row of teeth were missing.
“What can you do?” he asked Roy.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Okay, Phil, show him around.”
Jeff turned away and went into the Cobra Woman’s tent. Roy followed Phil over the muddy paths between tents and game booths.
“No animals,” said Phil.
“What about the cobras?”
“She got two. They ain’t really cobras, they’re boas, one of ’em’s blind. There’s a chimp belongs to the Dog Man, they have tea parties together. Ferris wheel, Tilt-a-Whirl, the Wild Rat, Dunk the Drunk.”
“What’s that? The drunk.”
“You’re a ballplayer, you’ll like it. Throw two balls for a quarter, hit a bull’s-eye, plank drops, guy takes a dip. Mostly rummies, get two bucks and a fifth of Old Crow. Bonecrusher the Strong Man, Rex the Fat Man, Mona the Fat Woman, Caterina the Gypsy Fortune Teller, Jack the Juggler, Spider Girl.”
“What does Spider Girl do?”
“Lets spiders crawl all over her naked body. Mostly naked, anyway. A real moneymaker.”
“Do you know how Jeff lost his right arm?”
“No, but Spider Girl told me he still has it, keeps it in a steamer trunk coated with some kinda preservative, takes it with him wherever they go.”
When Roy and Phil arrived at the carnival site on Friday afternoon, sawhorses were lined up blocking the entrance. There was a sign hung on one of them: CLOSED BY ORDER OF CHICAGO POLICE DEPT.
“What happened?” Roy said.
“Got me,” said Phil. “I’ll go find out.”
Phil wedged his way in between two sawhorses. Roy waited by the entrance for about ten minutes. Phil did not return, so Roy vaulted over a sawhorse and went to look for him. There weren’t many people around, nobody he recognized from the day before. Roy found his way to the Cobra Woman’s tent and went inside. A middle-aged woman with long black hair, wearing a heavy army overcoat several sizes too large for her, was sitting on a stool smoking a cigarette. A long metal box with air holes on the top was on the ground beside the stool.
“Pardon me,” Roy said, “I’m looking for my friend Phil Beach, who works for the carnival. I was supposed to work here, too. Phil might be with Double Jeff.”
The woman had yellow-green eyes. She took a long drag on her black cigarette, then exhaled before she spoke.
“Jeff’s in jail, honey. We’re shut down. I don’t know your friend.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“Cops took him away last night, arrested him for rape. Sheila says the girl was underage, eleven or twelve. I seen him with younger. Usually he takes two at a time, that’s why he’s called Double Jeff.”
“Who’s Sheila?”
“Pothead chick lets them arachnids crap on her. She’s already headed to Elkhart, Indiana, where she’s from. I’m about to scoot, too, soon’s I figure out where to go.”
Roy thanked her and left the tent. He walked around the grounds but did not find Phil. The sky was darkening and rain started to fall, so Roy gave up and walked home.
On Monday morning Phil Beach was absent from school. Roy asked other kids if they’d seen him, but nobody had. After school Roy walked back to Victory and Hood. The tents, booths, and rides were gone, the lot was empty again. On the ground was a gold banner with RANGOON BROTHERS written on it in bright red letters. Roy picked it up, brushed off the dirt, rolled it up, and put it into his coat pocket. He wondered what had happened to Double Jeff’s steamer trunk. 
Barry Gifford is the author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into thirty languages. His most recent books include Black Sun Rising / La Corazonada, Roy’s World: Stories 1973–2020, Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, Sad Stories of the Death of Kings, and Imagining Paradise: New and Selected Poems. He cowrote with David Lynch the screenplay for Lost Highway. Wild at Heart, directed by David Lynch and based on Gifford’s 1990 novel, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
“Carnival” is an excerpt from the novel The Boy Who Ran Away to Sea, a work in progress.
