the townies, my boy. Their fathers are always the sheriff.’
It was the knife thrower’s wife who caused Jeff to leave the carnival. The show had just arrived at Milledgeville, Georgia, and the tents were being set up. A new act had signed on, a Sicilian knife thrower called the Great Zorbini and his attractive blonde wife. While the Great Zorbini was at the carnival setting up his equipment, his wife invited Jeff to their hotel room in town.
‘Zorbini will be busy all day,’ she told Jeff. ‘Let’s have some fun.’
It sounded good.
‘Give me an hour and then come up to the room,’ she said.
‘Why wait an hour?’ Jeff asked.
She smiled and said, ‘It will take me that long to get everything ready.’
Jeff waited, his curiosity increasing, and when he finally arrived at the hotel room, she greeted him at the door, half naked. He reached for her, but she took his hand and said, ‘Come in here.’
He walked into the bathroom and stared in disbelief. She had filled the bath with six flavours of Jell-O, mixed with warm water.
‘What’s that?’ Jeff asked.
‘It’s dessert. Get undressed baby.’
Jeff undressed.
‘Now, into the bath.’
He stepped into the bath and sat down, and it was the wildest sensation he had ever experienced. The soft, slippery Jell-O seemed to fill every crevice of his body, massaging him all over. The blonde joined him in the bath.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘lunch.’
She started down his chest towards his groin, licking the Jell-O as she went. ‘Mmmm, you taste delicious. I like the strawberry best …’
Between her rapidly flicking tongue and the friction of the warm, viscous Jell-O, it was an erotic experience beyond description. In the middle of it, the bathroom door flew open and the Great Zorbini strode in. The Sicilian took one look at his wife and the startled Jeff, and howled, ‘Tu sei una puttana! Vi ammazzo tutti e due! Dove sono i miei coltelli?’
Jeff did not recognize any of the words, but the tone was familiar. As the Great Zorbini raced out of the room to get his knives, Jeff leaped out of the bath, his body looking like a rainbow with the multicoloured Jell-O clinging to it, and grabbed his clothes. He jumped out of the window, naked, and began running down the alley. He heard a shout behind him and felt a knife sing past his head. Zing! Another, and then he was out of range. He dressed in a culvert, pulling his shirt and pants over the sticky Jell-O, and squished his way to the depot, where he caught the first bus out of town.
Six months later, he was in Vietnam.
Every soldier fights a different war, and Jeff came out of his Vietnam experience with a deep contempt for bureaucracy and a lasting resentment of authority. He spent two years in a war that could never be won, and he was appalled by the waste of money and matériel and lives, and sickened by the treachery and deceit of the generals and politicians who performed their verbal sleight of hand. We’ve been suckered into a war that nobody wants, Jeff thought. It’s a con game. The biggest con game in the world.
A week before Jeff’s discharge, he received the news of Uncle Willie’s death. The carnival had folded. The past was finished. It was time for him to enjoy the future.
The years that followed were filled with a series of adventures. To Jeff, the whole world was a carnival, and the people in it were his marks. He devised his own con games. He placed ads in newspapers offering a colour picture of the President for a dollar. When he received a dollar, he sent his victim a postage stamp with a picture of the President on it.
He put announcements in magazines warning the public that there were only sixty days left to send in five dollars, that after that it would be too late. The ad did not specify what the five dollars would buy, but the money poured in.
For three months Jeff worked in a boiler room, selling phony oil stocks over the telephone.
He loved boats, and when a friend offered him a job working on a sailing schooner bound for Tahiti, Jeff signed on as a seaman.
The ship was a beauty, a 165-foot white schooner, glistening in the sun, all sails drawing well. It had teak decking, long, gleaming Oregon fir for the hull, with a main salon that sat twelve and a galley forward, with electric ovens. The crew’s quarters were in the forepeak. In addition to the captain, the steward, and a cook, there were five deckhands. Jeff’s job consisted of helping hoist the sails, polishing the brass port-holes, and climbing up the ratlines to the lower spreader to mast the sails. The schooner was carrying a party of eight.
‘The owner is named Hollander,’ Jeff’s friend informed him.
Hollander turned out to be Louise Hollander, a twenty-five-year-old, golden-haired beauty, whose father owned half of Central America. The other passengers were her friends, whom Jeff’s buddies sneeringly referred to as the ‘jest set’.
The first day out Jeff was working in the hot sun, polishing the brass on deck. Louise Hollander stopped beside him.
‘You’re new on board.’
He looked up. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Jeff Stevens.’
‘That’s a nice name.’ He made no comment. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘No.’
‘I’m Louise Hollander. I own this boat.’
‘I see. I’m working for you.’
She gave him a slow smile. ‘That’s right.’
‘Then if you want to get your money’s worth, you’d better let me get on with my work.’ Jeff moved on to the next stanchion.
In their quarters at night, the crew members disparaged the passengers and made jokes about them. But Jeff admitted to himself that he was envious of them – their backgrounds, their educations, and their easy manners. They had come from monied families and had attended the best schools. His school had been Uncle Willie and the carnival.
One of the carnies had been a professor of archaeology until he was thrown out of college for stealing and selling valuable relics. He and Jeff had had long talks, and the professor had imbued Jeff with an enthusiasm for archaeology. ‘You can read the whole future of mankind in the past,’ the professor would say. ‘Think of it, son. Thousands of years ago there were people just like you and me dreaming dreams, spinning tales, living out their lives, giving birth to our ancestors.’ His eyes had taken on a faraway look. ‘Carthage – that’s where I’d like to go on a dig. Long before Christ was born, it was a great city, the Paris of ancient Africa. The people had their games, and baths, and chariot racing. The Circus Maximus was as large as five football fields.’ He had noted the interest in the boy’s eyes. ‘Do you know how Cato the Elder used to end his speeches in the Roman Senate? He’d say, “Delenda est cartaga”; “Carthage must be destroyed”. His wish finally came true. The Romans reduced the place to rubble and came back twenty-five years later to build a great
