So Dylan Thomas wrote an amazing story called "After the Fair". So it inspired me to write my own version. This is the draft before the rough draft, wrote it yesterday. I'm kinda diggin where its going.
The fat man and the carousel
The world slips past as if pulled by rope. It passes as a blur of brown. Telephone poles swiping across with a rhythmic dip in their carried lines. This is a land without horizons. Each passing field revealing more flat fields of dead things now yellow, or brown. Grass grew here once but now only as markers between properties, or as road, or as a place for cattle to graze. The fat man looks from his small, porthole, window. His breath steams the cool glass. Watching the land blur.
The train is not particularly hot but the fat man is always hot. So he presses his soft cheek against the cool of the glass. Ahead the bearded women is applying her makeup in a mirror. The bearded women must have been beautiful once. She is slender with round hips. The fat man often watches her from afar, picturing the hair removed from her face, a bead of sweat lodging itself on her chest, right where her soft breast meet her strong pale sternum. He closes his eyes and pictures her spilling out from her shirt. Resting herself upon his stomach, her ear pressed against his chest as she strokes his nipple, or plays with a tuff of his hair between her fingers. He dreams of sex in the way through a series of perfected calculations, no room for improvisation. He is careful to make sure that each maneuver works best to hide his size. It is possible than that because of this, when he does have sex with women, they often stop him, leaving, laughing at his fumbling and poorly targeted kisses.
The train slows down. Town approaching. The driver begins to blow his whistle and megaphones hung underneath the cars begin to play the big top music. The performers all make their way to the golden spiral stairs at the end of the car. All except for the fat man. The fat man simply walks to car and sticks his head out of the one large window. He is too fat to climb the golden stairs. Above him a trap door opens so that the performers can stand on the flat railinged roof of the car and wave to the children as they chase behind. The children scream “When will you be back” or “Why aren’t you staying?” with smiles stuck like summer ice cream stains across their faces. The brave older children, who no longer believe in clowns, or laugh at elephants, wait on top of a bridge and throw stones at the performers. The bearded lady, the man made of rubber, the dwarf, the fat man, all duck down as the older boys laugh and the older girls grimace. As they had pass through the other side of town the driver blows his whistle again and the performers file back into the car as the train speeds off into horizon.
It is night before the train stops. The air now cool and filled with the living smell of mold. All around the train men are hard at work. Some are leading elephants, others moving carriages. Soon the ground is flooded with light from the ten tall portable stadium lights. An army of men begin to erect the big top, the light casting shadows as long as football fields. The train is still playing big top music. Small children hear the noise and ride their bikes over, peering through the chain linked fence at men who look like giants. The fat man finds his trailer, and goes inside. This trailer was made before the turn of the century. Hand painted, hand carved. There is a small bed hung like a swing chair on one end, but the fat man is too large for it so he sleeps on a mattress stuffed with old clothes and rags on the floor. On the other end is a small kitchen. A wall with a sliding door divides the trailer long ways in half. When the ringmaster rings the morning bell the fat man slides the door back. On the other side is a stool. The fat man sits there waiting for a ticket to slide through the slot. As soon as it is, the fat man cranks the lever to his left rolling up the canvas wall in front of him and exposing the face of a disgusted and bewildered child. Sometimes mothers would cover their sons faces and sigh in disgust, others would throw food at the fat man. Either way the fat man sits on his stool, shaking his belly or rubbing his breast, bellowing “ I am the fat man, have you seen any fatter? Gaze upon me…be amazed!” until the chime chimes indicating that time is up and he could roll down the canvas.
At the end of the day the fat man collects his tickets and takes them to the collection man. For every ticket the fat man is paid fifty cents. After the collection man has counted and verified the fat mans tickets the fat man puts the money into his pockets. He has been saving money now for three years, almost 5,000 dollars saved up now. Now is the time that the fat man is happiest about being the fat man. Most people have to spend their earnings on food, unless they are satisfied with eating the stock bean and ham soup. But the fat man never has to eat the stock food. The fat man always gets to dine with the ringmaster.
The ringmaster is a tall slender man whose hips are exactly as wide as his shoulders. The ring master can always be found in his long red tailed suede jacket, the one with the hand engraved gold buttons and the gold sashes on the shoulders. Often he wears his tall top hat to hide his almost bald head. Tonight as the fat man enters the ringmaster’s tent he finds him sitting, spread eagle, his crisply creased cream pants slightly unbuttoned, his suspenders loose around his hips. The ring master is slicking back the three or four small strands of black hair and twiddling his large curled mustache with a small ball of wax. The ring masters brow is dewed in sweat and his undershirt is yellowed. The entire tent smells of stale man and pipe smoke.
“Come, sit fat man. I am glad you are here!” the ring master says as he points to a chair close to his. The fat man moves clumsily around the table and squeezes himself into the normal sized chair, fearful that the creaking wood will eventually release against the strain.
“I was thinking of your parents today. I remember when they joined our troop. They were good people, you know.” And the fat man nods his acknowledgement. The fat mans parents were trapeze artists, the best there every was, the ring master would say. But they like all people got old, and their bodies no longer moved like they used to. People stopped going to their tent. One day the ringmaster told them they had to leave. The fat man was just a small boy then. His parents knew that without trapeze they had no way of providing for their child. So they left the fat man with the ringmaster. The ring master quickly put the fat man to work as an elephant handler. As the boy grew the ringmaster began to notice his immense size. He would burst through the bottoms of child’s jeans, he couldn’t button the middle of his shirts, he began to grow breast before the girls did. And so the ringmaster had decided that the small boy would one day be the fat man. For years the fat man was just a fat man. At night the ringmaster growing frustrated with the fat mans lack of growth would sit scowling and yelling, demanding the cooks bring more food. Watching as the fat mans face filled with sweat, his eyes with blood, his belly spilling over itself until finally it could stretch no more and the fat man would collapse on the floor from cramps.
“I had a dream last night, no more of a vision I suppose. I saw the circus, as it will be five years from now. We will had two more big tops! And a train that will stretch for miles so that children in one town can welcome us while children in another town can wave goodbye. And the will come for miles fat man! They will come to see you, or the bearded women. They will come to see me stick my head in a lions mouth. They will flood the gates and we will run out of tickets and they will leave with smiles and begging for more…I had a vision last night fat man, and now everywhere I walk I cannot help but see it!”
“Sir?” the fat man said quietly.
“yes what is it? Come on boy speak up now!”
“Well sir, it just is, well you don’t have any children sir. And, well three big tops sounds wonderful. But who will you leave this all to?”
“ahh, fat man, you know me so well. I too have been wondering who I will leave my legacy to. I assume then since you ask that you have a suggestion.”
“Its just that, well sir, I have been practicing. And, well I can get the lions to sit, and I can crack a card with a whip, and sir, its just that, well I thought maybe I could be the ringmaster one day.”
The ringmaster began to laugh. A low rumbling laugh that comes from the intestines and snowballs its way out of the throat. The ringmaster laughed until he saw the water welt up on the edge of the fat mans eye. “You are serious? You can’t be serious.”. Suddenly when the ringmaster saw that the fat mans’ expression had not changed he grew angry. Dinner was over and the fat man was quickly dismissed to waddle back to his trailer, that creaked and moaned as it bared the burden of its swollen master. The fat man felt a sharp pain in his arm. It passed quickly, this had been happening more and more frequently. The fat man went to the back of the trailer and pulled from the corner a metal trunk filled with his most prized possession. From the trunk the fat man pulled out an old tattered red coat. The coat hadn’t fit him so the fat man had cut the back in half and stitched in red bandana’s and cloths to expand it. He pulled out a top hat that had no top, and a long worn leather bull whip.
The fat man turned and stared at the stool that had now become a lion. Back, back he would say as he cracked the whip just above the stools seat. The fat man circled the stool imagining backing it into a corner. Back, back, he would say the cracking whip piercing the silent night. Finally the fat man could feel the last bits of air squeeze from his lungs, so he put the whip on the stool and sat down on his bed.
The fat man awoke not sure how long he had been sleeping. There from his door came three quick quiet raps.
“Whose their!” the fat man demanded but received no answer so he laid back down to try and sleep. Shortly after his eyelids begin to lay heavy together another quick and quiet three raps echoed from his trailer door.
“Whose their!” he yelled, though this time slightly more frightened. “Can’t you leave a fat man alone. I am tired! It has been a hard day.” Yet still no answer. The fat man now pulled his blanket high over his head and tried to fall back asleep. Just as his jaw began to relax and the faintest roar of a snore escaped from his lips another three quick and quiet rasps rapped against his door.
“ I want to be left in peace!” the fat man screamed as he leapt from his bed. The trailers old springs squealing like a struck pig as the fat man barged from his bed to the door. When the door had been swung open the fat man launched himself out the door proclaiming “Who are you, what do you want. Why have you come and disturbed me!”
In front of him was a small slender girl. Whose skin was moon pale and seemed to slice through the night surrounding her. Her lips were blush red and in her arms was a baby who was nursing on a perfect pink nipple. The fat man stunned fell backwards and landed on the stairs of his trailer with an echoing thump.
“I am sorry to disturb you” she said “ but my daughter won’t sleep, I was hoping we could ride the carrousel.”
The fat man unable to stop choking on his words simply shook his fat head and pointed towards the carousel. As they walked the girl wrapped her slender arm around the fat mans massive forearm and rested her head against his soft bicep. The fat man was suddenly overly conscious of the beads of sweat beginning to form on his forehead and nervously tried to wipe them off without her noticing.
The fat man helped the girl onto a horse and darted his eyes to the ground as her small pink cotton panties glimpsed through her thin white summer dress. When her and the baby were seated he went and turned the carousel on. The music rolled off the surrounding tents and trailers and bounced across the fields. The lights cast deep shadows and suddenly the circus around them was cloaked in darkness’s shadow. The world was now just carousel.
A smile spread across the girls face. The small breeze of the spinning carousel caused her thin white dress to stick to her small round breast. The fat man grew even more embarrassed, but he was unable to turn his head from staring at her emerging pink nipples.
“Here” she said, “Will you hold her?”.
The girl placed the child in the fat man’s giant arms. The baby only as big as his forearm. The fat man curled her up against his breast and laughed as she tried to nurse from him. The girl wrapped her arms around the pole of the horse and leaned back letting her hair drag in the wind. The fat man walked a few steps away and sat down in a large wooden sleigh. He cradled the baby against his chest singing
“Hush-a-bye don't you cry,
Go to sleep-y, little baby.
When you wake you shall have
All the pretty little horses.
Blacks and bays, dapple grays,
Coach and six white horses.
Hush-a-bye don't you cry,
Go to sleep-y, little baby.”
And the baby grew soft in his hands. And the baby laid tight against his chest. And the fat man leaned back, the cool air rushing over his warm sweating forehead. Ahead of him the girl squealed with laughter as the swung back and forth from the horses pole.
And in the morning the ringmaster found the fat man sleeping in the sleigh. His arms wrapped as if holding a baby. His red jacket wet with morning. The fat man was singing
“Hush-a-bye don't you cry,
Go to sleep-y, little baby.
When you wake you shall have
All the pretty little horses.
Blacks and bays, dapple grays,
Coach and six white horses.
Hush-a-bye don't you cry,
Go to sleep-y, little baby.”
And the world was just carousel.
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