place and ready to receive the marks by three o’clock Monday
afternoon.
It was a cloudless, warm day. The evening would be balmy. “Money
weather,” the carnies called it. Although Fridays and Saturdays were
always the best for business, the marks would flood in on a mild,
breezy night even if it was at the beginning of the week.
With an hour of free time before the fairground gates were opened to
the public, Conrad did what he always did on the first afternoon of a
new engagement. He left the funhouse and walked next door to Yang
Barnet’s ten-in-one Freak-o-rama, a name which some carnies found
offensive, but which drew the marks with greater efficacy than honey
ever drew flies.
A luridly illustrated banner stretched across the front of Yang’s tent:
HUMAN ODDITIES OF THE WORLD.
Yang had as much respect for show calls as Conrad did, and except for
the fact that the human oddities would not arrive from their trailers
until four o’clock, the joint was ready for business well ahead of
schedule.
That was especially commendable when you knew that Yang Barnet and a
few of his freaks always played poker Sunday night, into the wee hours
of Monday morning, accompanying the game with a considerable amount of
ice-cold beer and Seagram’s, which were combined into murderously
potent boilermakers.
Yang’s place was a large tent, divided into four long rooms, with a
roped-off walkway that serpentined through all four chambers. In each
room there were either two or three stalls, and in each stall there was
a platform, and on each platform there was a chair. Behind each chair,
running the length of the stall, a big sign, colorfully illustrated,
explained about the wondrous and incredible thing at which the mark was
gawking. With one exception, those wondrous and incredible things were
all living, breathing, human freaks, normal F minds and spirits trapped
in twisted bodies: the world’s fattest woman, the three-eyed alligator
,r man, the man with three arms and three legs, the bearded lady, and
(as the barker said twenty or thirty times every hour) more, much more
than , the human mind could encompass.
– Only one of the oddities was not a living person.
– It was to be found in the center of the tent, half ‘ 0?” way along
the snaking path, in the narrowest of all the stalls. The thing was in
a very large, specially blown, clear glass jar, suspended in a
formaldehyde solution, the jar stood on the platform, without benefit
of a chair, dramatically lighted from above and behind.
It was to this exhibit that Conrad Straker came . that Monday
afternoon in Clearfield. He stood at e restraining rope where he had
stood hundreds of times before, and he stared regretfully at his
long-dead son.
As in the other stalls, there was a sign behind the exhibit. The
letters were big, easy to read.
VICTOR “THE UCLY ANGEL” THIS CHILD, NAMED VICTOR BY HIS FATHER, WAS
BORN IN 1955, OF NORMAL PARENTS.
VICTOR S MENTAL CAPACnY WAS NORMAL. HE HAD A SWEET, CHARMING
DlSPOSmON. HE WAS A LAUGHING BABY, AN ANGEL.
ON THE NIGHT OF AUGUST 15, 1955, VICTOR S MOTHER, ELLEN, MURDERED
HIM.
SHE WAS REPELLED BY THE CHILD’S PHYSICAL DEFORMITIES AND WAS CONVINCED
HE WAS AN EVIL MONSTER. SHE WAS NOT ABLE TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL Bravery
within HIM.
WHO WAS REALLY THE EVIL ONE? THE HELPLESS BABY? –ORTHE MOTHER HE
TRUSTED, THE WOMAN WHO MURDERED HIM?
WHO WAS THE REAL MONSTER? THIS POOR, AFFLICTED CHILD? –OR THE MOTHER
WHO REFUSED TO LOVE HIM? JUDGE FOR YOURSELF.
Conrad had written the text of that sign twenty-five years ago, and it
had expressed his feelings perfectly at that time. He had wanted to
tell the world that Ellen was a baby killer, a ruthless beast, he had
wanted them to see what she had done and to revile her for her
cruelty.
During the off-season the child in the jar remained with Conrad in his
Gibsonton, Florida, home. During the rest of the year, it traveled
with Yang Barnet’s show, a public testament to Ellen’s perfidy.
At each new stand, when the midway had been erected again and the gates
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