Read Online All the Broken Things by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer - Free Book Online Page B

perfectly at home in the water. These are humans, not freaks. I call them”—and here he again flourishedhis arm, this time careful not to bash the ceiling—“curiosities!” His voice had gone very low. Max grinned into Bo’s face, and drew his finger along the words in the contract, where Bo was to sign. “Who are we to judge?”
    Bo shook his head, then focused on the colour photograph to the right of Max’s head. It wasn’t more than half a foot square. He tried to identify what it was. A jar full of something curled into itself, pink, fleshy, limbs locked around it.
    Max followed his eyes and pointed at the picture. “This?” he said. “A true oddity, isn’t it.”
    “It’s—”
    “A fetus,” said Max quietly. “With an abnormal growth, see?”
    “What’s—?”
    “A stillborn human monstrosity. The hospital would not sell me the thing itself, just allow me to arrange for a studio photograph of it. No matter. I found another, better specimen. I’ve made a hallway of photographic curiosities as well as the specimen jars. It is one of the fair’s most popular attractions. Also, inexpensive for the peepers. A cheap thrill. We plan to expand the operation—more of it and better curiosities—and, well, we’re hoping to get the Canadian National Exhibition concession for next year. I tell you, kid, it’s looking good.”
    Bo’s eyes were still on the photograph. “A baby,” he said. It came out of him like a sigh.
    “Well, no.” Max pulled himself up tall. “Technically not. A baby,” he said, “would be alive, of course. Naturally.”
    “Orange.” Bo thought he’d only thought it, and was surprised at the thick silence gathering in the caravan.
    Max had stopped moving and was squinting at him. “What is orange?”
    There was no air in the trailer. “Nothing,” said Bo. He looked down at the contract. “Can I take it with me?”
    But Max wouldn’t let go. He cocked his eyebrow. “Tell me, really,” he said.
    Scanning the room, Bo now noticed one horrific photograph after another. The tallest man next to the shortest woman. A boy with three thumbs. A child whose face looked like a dog’s, all fur, and sorrow. A man with breasts. A woman with a beard. Some other awful thing he couldn’t quite understand. What was all this? Who might love these? This was what the whirligig operator had meant by “freak show,” what Max had called a sideshow.
    Bo got up from the table and said, “I better be going. Thank you for the ginger ale.”
    “Wait, kid,” called Max.
    The trailer door swung out and Bo stepped down into the grass. The camera in the rucksack banged against his back and the thought of taking another picture made him sick. He was glad to be outside. The air in the caravan had been too still, and out here it was so crisp. How lost in Max’s voice he had become.
    “Sweet Jesus, I’m sorry. I’ve frightened you.”
    Bo turned back to see Max’s face squished between the closing door and the aluminum trim of the doorway. He had forgotten the contract inside and now was too shy to say anything about it.
    “The bear,” said Max.
    “Yes.”
    “She’s a southpaw. Watch her left hook.”
    “Thank you.”
    “And boy?”
    “Yes?”
    “It’s all a show, you know that, right?”
    Bo nodded. He had certainly heard this enough today.
    “Because if you know that, you will always, always, be safe.”
    Bo stared up at Max, and there behind him, glowing on the wall, was that dead baby. It couldn’t be normal that people
liked
to look at these things, would pay to look, but when he considered that Gerry had said that people laughed at what troubled or surprised them, it made some sense.
    “My sister,” he said, like a pin dropping.
    “Your sister?”
    “I guess she’s a so-called freak show.” He was figuring this out himself in that moment. “It isn’t right to show them like that.”
    “Kid,” said Max. “I’m sorry—”
    But Bo pulled the door wide and then