Thinner - Stephen King [15]
Linda had gotten up, brushing at the seat of her Levi's as if in a dream, and started toward the young man juggling the bowling pins.
'Linda, stay here!' Heidi said sharply. Her hand had gone to the collar of her sweater and was fiddling there, as it often did when she was upset. Halleck didn't think she was even aware of it.
'Why, Mom? It's a carnival, at least, I think it is.'
'They're Gypsies,' Heidi said. 'Keep your distance. They're all crooks.'
Linda looked at her mother, then at her dad. Billy shrugged. She stood there looking, as unaware of her wistful expression, Billy thought, as Heidi was of her hand at her collar fiddling it uneasily up against her throat and then back down again.
The young man tossed his bowling pins back into the open side door of the microbus one by one, and a smiling dark-haired girl whose beauty was almost ethereal tossed him five Indian clubs, one after another. The young man now began to juggle these, grinning, sometimes tossing one up under his arm and yelling 'Hoy!' each time he did it.
An elderly man wearing Oshkosh bib overalls and a checked shirt began handing out fliers. The lovely young woman who had caught the bowling pins and tossed out the Indian clubs now jumped lightly down from the van's doorway with an easel. She set it up and Halleck thought: She is going to exhibit bad seascapes and perhaps some pictures of President Kennedy. But instead of a painting, she propped a bull's eye target on the easel. Someone from inside the van tossed her a slingshot.
'Gina!' the boy juggling the Indian clubs yelled. He grinned broadly, revealing the absence of several front teeth. Linda sat down abruptly. Her concept of masculine beauty had been formed by a lifetime of network TV, and the young man's handsomeness had been spoiled for her. Heidi stopped fiddling with the collar of her cardigan.
The girl flipped the slingshot to the boy. He dropped one of the clubs and began to juggle the slingshot in its place. Halleck remembered thinking That must be almost impossible. The boy did it two or three times, then flipped the slingshot back to her and somehow managed to pick up the club he had dropped while keeping the others in the air. There was scattered applause. Some of the locals were smiling - Billy himself was - but most of them looked wary.
The girl stepped away from the target on the easel, produced some ball bearings from her breast pocket, and shot three quick bull's-eyes - plop, plop, plop. Soon she was surrounded by boys (and a few girls) clamoring for a turn. She lined them up, organizing them as quickly and efficiently as a nursery-school teacher prepares pupils for the 10:15 bathroom break. Two teenage Gypsy boys of approximately Linda's age popped out of an old LTD station wagon and began to scruff the spent ammunition out of the grass. They were alike as two peas m a pod, obviously identical twins. One wore a gold hoop in his left ear; his brother wore the mate in his right. Is that how their mother tells them apart? Billy thought.
No one was selling anything. Quite carefully, quite obviously, no one was selling anything. There was no Madame Azonka telling the tarot.
Nevertheless, a Fairview police car arrived soon enough, and two cops stepped out. One was Hopley, the chief of police, a roughly handsome man of about forty. Some of the action stopped, and more mothers took the opportunity the lull afforded to recapture their fascinated children and bear them away. Some of the older ones protested, and Halleck observed that some of the younger ones were in tears.
Hopley began discussing the facts of life with the Gypsy who had been doing the juggling act (his Indian clubs, painted in jaunty red and blue stripes, were now scattered around his feet) and the older Gypsy in the Oshkosh biballs. Oshkosh said something. Hopley shook his head. Then the juggler said something and began to gesticulate. As the juggler spoke, he moved closer