Short Story - Gibsonton

The man is an animal, born only to fuck. Fuck up everything he touches and fuck everyone over he meets. This whole tour had been an excuse for him to leave his wife and child and fuck his way across America. The gigs were just a paper-thin excuse to fuck the cheap whores and drink the cheaper liquors in the different dives they came across. Dave was getting sick of him.

The hope that he had nurtured in his heart that this would kick start a career he had desperately wanted since he was a child had been sucked out of him and spat into the gutter. The same way that the scabby whores did to his famous music agent in the various alleys he found them in.

Playing night after night in bars to an audience, usually in single figures, while that fat bastard sat and got drunk on bourbon, eyeing up women. A far cry from the dreams of crowds undulating like giant waves, screaming out lyrics to his songs.

“Look, Dave, just play OK. It’ll be better than silence.”

He didn’t want to play to an empty room. He didn’t see the point.  The only other man in the bar, apart from the one-eyed barman, was sitting in a booth eating behind them. The mirror behind the bar allowed Dave to steal glances without drawing any attention. The man was making grunts and whines as he held up a bowl the size of a dog dish and poured the contents into his mouth. Piles of similar, dirty bowls littered the table, which looked like it had a crescent section cut out to accommodate his obese stomach. 

“Let’s get a drink first,” he said.

Brian’s rheumy eyes lit up. For a second, Dave thought he saw him licking his lips. He turned and ordered two bourbons. He wasn’t going to play tonight. Instead, he was going to leave Brian where they were and head back to Oklahoma with his tail between his legs. But he wanted to tell Brian what he thought of him before leaving, and for that, he needed a drink.

He watched as Brian downed his in one swallow. Dribbles running down his chin were wiped away with the back of his hand, which he then wiped down his grubby, old t-shirt. He held the glass at eye level and nodded to himself.

“Damn, this is good bourbon.”

“It’s called ‘Carny’,” the barman said from the other side of the bar. “We make it ourselves. Glad you like it.”

“What?” Brian shouted. “You talking to us?”

“The drink,” he motioned to the glass Brian was admiring, “it’s called ‘Carny’. We make it ourselves.”

Brian tipped the glass at the barkeep in a salute.

“Why is it called ‘Carny’?” Dave asked.

“Cause we is all carny. Spring, Summer, Fall, we are on the road putting on a show. When Winter is in the chair, we huddle down here, in Gibsonton.”

“We don’t care. Just give me another bourbon.”

The barman was expressionless. His one eye tightened just a little. Dave could see he was trying to work them out.

“You a bard?” The barman nodded towards his guitar case. Dave nodded. He then looked at Brian. “And what are you?”

“Thirsty. What are you?”

A smile crept across the barman’s face. “I am a circus freak.” He unbuttoned his waistcoat and held it open; wrapped around his stomach was a thin, baby-like arm. It uncurled and flexed its tiny, stubby fingers.

Brian jumped up from the bar stool he was perched on and swore.

“And I am one of the most normal. You want, you can pay skinny over there a dollar and watch him eat a whole litter of kittens.” A grunt came from the obese man sitting at the back of the bar. “Listen to their little bones break, as he chews them up. Out back, we have ourselves a girl that really loves her horse. Wantin to see her, cost you another dollar.”

Dave saw Brian take a step backwards.

“Ah, I can see in your watery eyes what you want to see. You want to see the abnormal, don’t you? You want to see,” he flexed his tiny, third arm and waved, “more of this. Well, we have more if you have the stomach. Come out back and see Trixie, but not if you are scared of spiders.”

A high-pitched cry escaped Brian as he ran past Dave, barging him out of the way.

He smashed through the doors and ran.

“That is the last we will see of him, right skinny?”

A wheezing laugh sounded out from the back of the bar.

“I don’t know who that guy was to you, but he was a total rube. A selfish son of a bitch. Bad news. We may all look odd, but we are still human.”

Dave was letting his mind digest what had just happened. He couldn’t respond; he didn’t know what to say. The barman wrapped his third arm around his waist and did up his waistcoat again. He could now pass as a normal man, apart from the eye patch. He poured a measure of their home-brew bourbon into Brian’s empty glass and held it up.

“We need a songsmith. Always room for musicians in the carnival.” He gulped the drink down, much the same way that Brian had, and then waited for his reply.
Was there anything better on offer? He had sunk to the lowest point in his life so far after teaming up with Brian Greene. A few months on the road, playing to actual crowds, would be a positive move. It was either that or go back home and listen to his parents tell him they were right and that he should have listened to them.

He nodded, smiling, took his own drink and downed it. He coughed as the strength of it burned his throat.

The barman laughed, “Don’t worry about that. You’ll get used to it.”

When Dave got his coughing under control, he looked back to see that the barman was smiling.

“You are one of us now.”