Chapter 3

The gathered crowd pressed forward around me and the entrance to the tent and, seeing this, many others began to join the throng.

This WAS going to be a big night, the carny part of my brain told me, and I found myself suddenly whacking the pointer on the surface of the podium and loudly barking, "Pussy Show! C'mon in boys! Pussy Show! See the thing that teases and pleases! See it up close! Only five dollars! Pussy Show! So near, you can smell it! C'mon in boys!"

A sea of five dollar bills appeared before me and I was using both hands to collect the money as the eager soldiers and teenage boys and farmers and red-necks filed past me and into the tent.

When the tent couldn't handle a single person more, I stopped taking the money and closed the flap, whacking the pointer on the podium three times to signal Betty that the show could begin.

The disappointed strangers, who didn't make it in, stood their ground, not wanting to miss their front row status for the next performance.

I heard Betty, through the canvas of the tent behind me, loudly say, "It's time for the pussy show, boys!"

It was quiet in the tent for a few minutes.

I couldn't stand it. My heart was pounding in my chest.

I turned my back to the throng and peered into the crack of the closed flap.

Betty was laying on her back with her knees up and her legs wide apart, holding her hairy twat wide open as the floodlights beamed down and the men craned forward as a single, horny animal.

It seemed like nothing at all happened for many long minutes more.

I thought I saw Betty say something, lifting her head and looking at the closed tent flap behind her.

Then the flap opened and Cookie walked in.

The men in the tent seemed to gasp in unison as Cookie stepped forward, losing her left heel, under her foot, for a moment but quickly righting herself and then standing next to the reclining Betty.

Cookie just stood there, for a long while, with her arms limp at her sides and her fingers twitching. I could see her trying to smile as her chin quivered noticeably and her eyes were wide and darting from face to face to face as the men peered back at her in excited expectation.

No! That's the wrong thing to do! I tried to telegraph to her. Don't look at them, Cookie!

Then my sister reached down and grasped the hem of her mini- skirt with both shaking hands and, closing her eyes tightly, stood upright and pulled the skirt up to her waist.

A deafening, teamed howl went up from the tentload of excited men.

I could see Cookie's ghost-white face wince.

I could also see (as could every man in the tent) my fifteen- year-old sister's beautiful, light blond pussy, right between her curvy, exposed thighs, as pretty a pussy as God had ever created.

"Damn!" someone shouted loudly.

As odd as this sounds, (me being her brother and living with her, in close quarters, for all of these years) I had never seen it before. Had never even given it a thought. And now I (and about a hundred other males) were staring right at it.

Cookie never opened her eyes as she scooted down into a daintily modest, sitting position next to Betty.

From the sick look on her face, I half expected that she wouldn't go through with it but Cookie lay herself back, opened her sexy legs, and with the men suddenly hushed in dramatic anticipation, she reached down with her trembling fingers and spread her pretty, perfect vaginal lips wide apart.

A loud gasp of awe swept through the crowd and then Betty (who had been laying there, holding herself open for so long a time) quickly jumped up and yelled, "Gentleman, that concludes the pussy show! Now, if you would please file past the stage and out the side entrance... "

I couldn't take it anymore as I quickly turned my back on the tent, breathing hard and unable to focus my eyes on the blurred congregation of men who stood, waiting in the warm night air, in front of me.

I was shaking. But I didn't know why I was shaking. Was it in empathy for the ordeal that Cookie had just put herself through? Or was it because I had just seen up the perfect, baby-pink vagina of my own kid sister?

The men were coming out of the side of the tent now, all with bulges in the front of their pants and all commenting, to one another, about the awesome spectacle of what they had just witnessed.

Most of them were going to the back of the long line to pay another five and see the show again! In all my years in carny, I had never seen so many of the chumps do that before!

And so it went. On into the night. Fifteen packed shows, one right after another, until the carny closed at 11:00.

During the last show, just before closing, when all the chumps had drifted away, Nick and Steve walked up to the tent and stood, next to me, by the flap.

"How's Cookie doing?" Steve asked, in a concerned voice, as I stood there with my change apron bulging from the obscene amount of five dollar bills I had collected.

"She's holding up," I said. "Seems to be doin' better than she was the first show... "

"Everybody's talkin' about it," Nick said excitedly, taking hold of the tent flap with both of his hands and pushing his face toward the crack.

I don't know why, but I grabbed his hands and pulled them from the canvas, just as he was going to peer inside.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked me testily.

"You don't want to look in there." I said.

"Yes I do," Nick insisted, pulling his wrists from my hands and grabbing the tent flap again as we heard the collective gasp from the men inside.

Steve grabbed his younger brother's collar now and pulled him roughly back. "No you don't, Nick," he said sternly, looking directly into his face. "Cookie's doing this for every one of us. She's like our own little sister. You don't want to embarrass her, or her brother, any more than I would."

Nick bowed his head and then he looked at me. "Sorry Jack," he said now, "I guess I just wasn't thinkin'." And then he added, sarcastically, "I know YOU never took a peek, through the flap, at my sister Carol's pussy... "

Steve roughly pushed Nick away from the tent now, causing him to lose his footing and fall backwards against the podium.

"Our sister's a slut, Nick," Steve said angrily, but not loud enough to disturb the show. "Everybody knows that! Plus she's a God Damn lezzie! She's probably out there somewhere, right now, suckin' pussy! What the hell difference does it make? God, you can be such an asshole!"

Now Betty's voice came from inside the tent, "Gentleman, that concludes the pussy show! Now, if you would please file past the stage and out the side entrance... "

Steve hauled his brother up and dusted him off and the two of them walked away, without looking back at me, as the throng of men started filing out the side of the tent.

"Thank you for comin' to our pussy show," I heard Cookie say, and I started walking toward Trooper's trailer to turn in the collected cash.

When I stepped from the Trooper's trailer, and started walking in the cool night air, I felt a large hand wrap tightly around my arm and stop me.

Scared shitless, I spun around and was looking up at the face of Officer Sharker, the man from the Youth Bureau, who had questioned me this morning.

"Hi Jack," he said, smiling at me.

"God!" I said, trying to make my heart stop pounding and catch my breath. "Officer Sharker! I thought you were some asshole tryin' to roll me!"

He laughed that humorless, icy laugh of his, and then he said, "Call me Sharky, kid. Everybody does."

He started walking me, by the arm, away from the trailers and over to the big electrical truck. I could hear my heart pound and our feet whooshing on the dewy grass as we went.

"What's going on?" I asked him, feeling uneasy about the way he was acting toward me.

Reaching the side of the truck, he turned me to him, not releasing my arm, and said, "I caught your little pussy show tonight. Three times. Didn't you see me?"

It was the damndest thing. But I hadn't. I wasn't looking at the faces of the men. I was too busy worrying about Cookie and taking the money.

"No," I answered.

"Funny... " he said. "Anyway, Jack... It turns out that little Cookie was born in 1959. That makes her what, Jack?" I saw his rust-colored eyebrows raise, drawing a response from me.

"Fifteen?"

"That makes her a minor, Jack. You too, for that matter. Do you know what that means?"

"No."

"It means that you all are in some really deep, and stinking shit, Jack. It means that I'm going to have to put all of you sons-of-bitches under arrest and close down this fucking circus. It means I'm going to have to impound all of this property. And that your dad and your boss are going to do some long, hard time in a Kentucky state prison, Jack." He squeezed my arm hard now. "That's what it means."

I don't mind telling you, I was scared. I was really scared. So scared in fact that, as I stood there, I was afraid that I was going to actually piss in my pants.

"P... p... prison?" I asked.

"For them," he said. "For you and your sister, a Youth Correctional Facility. Until you're 21, Jack."

"Officer Sh... Sharker... "

"Call me Sharky, Jack."

"Sharky... "

"Are you scared, Jack? Does all this scare you?"

"Ye... yes!"

"That's what I'm gonna' have ta' do, Jack. That's my duty. That's what the law dictates I do. You broke the law, Jack. You and your family shit on the laws of the State of Kentucky, Jack."

"Please, Mister. We're just tryin' to make a livin'. My dad and Trooper, they didn't know Cookie was going to be in the show. The regular girl didn't show... We had to do something."