On his palm was a rose, freshly cut, with drops of crystal water among the soft pink petals.
"It keeps right on going," he said, guessing my thought. He was covered with Illustrations from the blue tattooed ring about his neck to his belt line. He took his shirt off and wadded it in his hands. Everyone wants to see the pictures, and yet nobody wants to see them." "Another reason I keep my collar buttoned up," he said, opening his eyes, "is the children. "Are they still there now?"Īfter a long while I exhaled. I walk in the sun for hours on the hottest days, baking, and hope that my sweat'll wash them off, the sun'll cook them off, but at sundown they're still there." He turned his head slightly toward me and exposed his chest. I always hope that someday I'll look and they'll be gone. He slipped his fingers in to feel his chest. With his eyes shut, he put a slow hand to the task of unbuttoning his shirt all the way down. By now every carnival in America won't touch me with a ten-foot pole."įor answer, he unbuttoned his tight collar, slowly. He took off an immense shoe and peered at it closely. I should be making money hand over fist at any small town side show celebration, but here I am with no prospects." Here it is, early September, the cream of the Labor Day carnival season. "You'll be sorry you asked me to stay," he said. "I have some extra food you'd be welcome to," I said.
"Well," he said at last, "this is as good a place as any to spend the night. Perspiration was streaming from his face, yet he made no move to open his shirt. His sleeves were rolled and buttoned down over his thick wrists. Though it was a hot late afternoon, he wore his wool shirt buttoned tight about his neck. "I haven't had a job that's lasted in forty years," he said. He seemed only to sense my presence, for he didn't look directly at me when he spoke his first words: I recall that his arms were long, and the hands thick, but that his face was like a child's, set upon a massive body. I only knew that he was tall, once well muscled, but now, for some reason, going to fat.
Late in the afternoon I stopped, ate some pork, beans, and a doughnut, and was preparing to stretch out and read when the Illustrated Man walked over the hill and stood for a moment against the sky. Walking along an asphalt road, I was or the final leg of a two weeks' walking tour of Wisconsin. IT was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man.
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