DISCLAIMER: Carnivale and its canon characters are the property of HBO and the show's producers; no copyright infringement is intended.
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I'm dyin'. Oh my God, I'm actually about to die!
Ruthie had known that from the beginning, from the moment she identified the snake that had bitten her. But its full import was only now sinking in, as she lay helpless on the trailer floor and struggled for every breath. Her arm was swollen and throbbing. She was burning up with fever. But the sure harbinger of death was the ever-worsening constriction of her airway.
I'll die before Gabriel gets back with Ben. No, no! I'm scared, I can't face it alone...
Calm down. I did the right thing, sendin' him to get Ben. If my precious baby has to see me die or find my dead body, I don't want him to be alone. That's what's most important.
I can die knowin' that as my last act, I did the right thing.
But oh God, I need to see him again! I need to see them both again!
She wondered whether she'd be able to see, if they came in now. Should the trailer be this dark? Was she already blind?
She might not be able to see, but she could hear. And her wheezing breath sounded as frightening as it felt.
I won't be able to speak, she realized. I wanted to talk to Ben.
She'd sent Gabriel for Ben partly so he wouldn't be alone, but she'd also had something else in mind. She'd had the crazy idea of asking Ben to look after her mentally retarded son when she was gone.
Maybe it's better I can't ask. What made me think I could impose on him like that? How could I expect an eighteen-year-old to take on that kind of burden, when he's only known us a few months? It would've made more sense to ask Samson.
So why had she sent Gabriel to get Ben and not Samson?
I know why. Oh Ben, I love you, I love you! The hell with the age difference. I love you, an' I would've fought for you.
It's not fair! Why do I have to die now, just when I've found someone I can love?
She felt her back arch as she tried desperately to suck air into tortured lungs. Her head was swimming.
This is wrong. My last thoughts should be of my sweet Gabriel. Think of Gabriel. Not of...not of...Ben...
The darkness swallowed her up.
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She woke with a start and took a huge, gasping breath. Her pounding heart seemed about to burst from her chest.
Wh-what happened?
As she lay still and let her heart slow to a normal rate, she realized there was nothing physically wrong with her. Nothing hurt, she wasn't uncomfortably warm or cold, and she was having no trouble breathing.
That was just a nightmare?
She was too horrified by the experience to give thanks to God for its not having been real.
Then, slowly, she began to sense that some things weren't right. It was seemingly late at night - as it should be, if she was having nightmares. But she was fully dressed, lying atop her still made-up bed.
I never do this!
Though it was undoubtedly night, too much light was coming in through the windows. The light had a flickering quality. And she could hear a lot of shouting. She was grateful the noise had wakened her from that nightmare, but -
I was exhausted, that's all, an' I collapsed on top of the bedspread an' fell asleep. An' there's a bunch of drunken rousties outside, havin' a grand old time around a bonfire. They've done it before.
But they'd never made this much noise.
An' they don't sound like they're havin' fun...
Whatever was going on, she decided she'd better check on Gabriel. He was a sound sleeper, he was almost certainly safe in bed - but she needed to know he was. She slid off her own bed, tiptoed to the door of his room, and looked in.
The bed hadn't been slept in.
Now her anxiety turned to terror. He couldn't be out there drinking with the rousties, could he? Surely they'd send him back inside. They knew he was just a man-sized child!
She raced for the trailer door, screaming, "Gabe! Gabe!"
He was sitting on the steps, and when she threw the door open, he jumped up and practically hurled himself at her. "Mama, Mama!"
For a few seconds, as she embraced her son, she knew only overwhelming relief.
But then, once again, she started to notice things.
There was no drunken party around a bonfire. The carnies were fighting a major blaze! She didn't remember where the various vehicles had been parked, so she couldn't determine what was burning. It was nearby, but not close enough to threaten her trailer.
Gabriel was clinging to her, blubbering, as if he hadn't seen her for a year. If the problem was just that the fire had scared him, why hadn't he wakened her?
Strangest of all, he had heedlessly cast off the sling he'd been wearing on his broken right arm, and was hugging her fiercely with both arms. But he couldn't have full strength in that arm yet!
Oh God. Maybe I really am dead or dyin', an' this is some kind of dream I'm havin'.
She began paying attention to what Gabriel was saying. "I thought you were dead, Mama, I thought you were dead!"
She went rigid.
Then he sniffled and said with childlike innocence, "But I shoulda known better, shouldn't I? I shoulda trusted Ben. I shoulda known all along he could fix it!"
Ruthie felt faint. The snake bite was real? An' Gabriel's sayin' he should've trusted Ben Hawkins to "fix" it?
If all this is real...does that mean Ben did "fix" it?
Just as she was about to pull her son inside the trailer and ask him some hard questions, a familiar voice rang out. "Stop!"
That was Ben.
But the command, shouted loudly enough to bring everyone to attention, wasn't meant for her.
The fire obediently stopped. It vanished completely.
The entire troupe began shrieking. By the time the mob became coherent, Ruthie could hear from her trailer steps that they were demanding to know how Ben had stopped the fire.
Then another voice - a woman's - rose above the din. "He didn't stop it! I did!"
Ruthie was sure she'd never heard that voice before. And as lanterns were hastily brought out of trailers, she understood why.
The speaker was Apollonia.
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When Ben Hawkins fled the Management trailer, still in the dark as to who or what was behind that accursed curtain, he meant to stick around just long enough to check on Ruthie. If she wasn't all right, he'd settle the score with Management before he left! Either way, he was history.
Why bother tryin' to explain about Lodz? I'm already wanted for murder. I care about Ruthie, but I just bring trouble wherever I go. The best thing I can do for her is get outta her life.
Then he saw the fire.
He stopped dead in his tracks, bewilderment giving way to horror. Oh my God.
He was torn, undecided whether to circle around to Ruthie's trailer or try to help.
And then a memory assailed him. I yelled "Stop!" an' the Black Blizzard stopped...
Was that real? He'd had so many dreams and visions these past few months that he couldn't keep straight what was real and what wasn't.
But once the idea had occurred to him, he knew he had to try. He looked at the burning bus and shouted "Stop!"
The fire stopped.
What followed was pandemonium. The three people who'd been in the bus staggered out: Appy (surprisingly, on her own feet), Sofie, Jonesy. All were miraculously unhurt.
But Ben was the focus of unwanted attention. Surrounded by carnies peppering him with questions, he couldn't get away. How had he stopped the fire? Why, when every other able-bodied man had already been fighting it, was he over near the Management trailer? Where had he vanished to all day? Why were there bloodstains on his shirt?
Considering his state of shock, the lies came with surprising ease. He hadn't stopped the fire. He'd gone into town meaning to leave Carnivale for good. But he'd changed his mind after a bloody bar fight, and decided to stay with the carnival till it reached a friendlier place. He'd just gotten back and was walking past Management's trailer when he saw the fire and shouted. Why? Because he saw Stumpy getting too close to it!
Unfortunately, no one seemed to believe him. So he clammed up, waiting desperately for a chance to escape.
Has Lodz's body been found yet? An' what in God's name has happened to Ruthie?
He struggled to look over the heads of the crowd. Finally, as someone ran by her trailer with a lantern, he was able to make out two figures watching from the steps.
He almost passed out from relief. She's alive! Nothin' else matters. The carnies can decide I'm a demon an' kill me, for all I care.
They pressed against him, still insisting he had magically stopped the fire. He was worn out, sick of resisting, on the verge of admitting it.
Then a woman's voice cried out, "He didn't stop it! I did!"
The entire crowd, Ben included, turned to stare in amazement at Apollonia.
Her voice was hoarse from disuse, but determined. "You all know I have powers. Lodz started the fire, and I stopped it! He actually did me a favor. The shock cured me of whatever was wrong with me."
No fewer than four other voices, all female, began screaming objections.
Lila: "Lodz would never do such a thing! How could he? He's blind! Where is he, anyway? What have you done to him, you witch?"
The louder of the Siamese twins: "It was us first spotted the fire! It began inside - not under the bus, like someone set it!"
Most damning of all, Sofie: "Mama's lying! She started the fire herself, deliberately - made an oil lamp fall over! And she hung onto me so I couldn't get away!"
Ben was thinking, Lodz? Couldn't be. There was no fire when I went in the Management trailer, an' Lodz was there the whole time...
"Listen to me!" Appy's voice drowned out the others. "I can explain! And Lila can back up something I'm going to tell you."
"Oh, yeah?" Lila blustered. "We'll see about that!"
The crowd noise subsided, until most of what remained was made by people shushing each other.
"I can move objects with my mind," Appy told them. "Quite a few of you know that. Earlier today I wanted to see Lodz. So I made his phonograph start up, and got the record stuck on the phrase 'I want you,' playing it over and over. Isn't that so, Lila?"
Lila apparently hadn't expected Appy to claim something she really did know to be true. Caught by surprise, she blurted out, "Yes."
"He came over," Appy continued, "but he resented the way I summoned him. So our get-together wasn't friendly. He told me he was working on developing that same power, and he'd show me what he could do -"
The crowd gave a collective gasp, and Lila said, "Now just one damn minute -"
"He knocked that lamp over, from a distance," Appy said firmly. "I didn't do it, and there's no one else who could have. And I wasn't clutching Sofie deliberately. My hand spasmed, and I couldn't let go of her!"
She's lyin', Ben realized. Lodz had other things on his mind then. An' like she says, they were the only two people who coulda done it. So it had to be her.
If she's lyin' about who started it, she may be lyin' about who stopped it too...
Is she coverin' for me?
By now scattered voices were calling out, "Where is Lodz, anyway?"
"He's not here or in his trailer," said Lila. "She's done something to him!"
"No, I haven't," Appy retorted. "Listen, will you? I didn't claim he was trying to kill anyone. I don't think he meant to start a fire, just move something in my bus. When he realized what he'd done, he probably panicked and ran away."
"But he's blind!" came from several directions.
"Yes. So maybe he won't get far. Or maybe something has happened to him out there in the brush. Shouldn't search parties start looking for him?"
A voice at the level of Ben's waist murmured, "Whaddya bet he'll never be found?"
Ben looked down and met Samson's eyes. "Yeah, I've been in the trailer," the dwarf said quietly. "No great loss. I'll take care of it. Just keep yer mouth shut, kid."
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Ruthie wasn't sure she believed Appy's claim of responsibility for stopping the fire. But at least it meant Ben would be able to get away from the crowd fairly soon. If he was going to turn up at her door, she wanted to talk to Gabriel first. So she dragged him inside, ignoring his protests.
She looked him in the eye and said, "Gabriel, what happened to your broken arm?"
He looked like a child who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
After a beat he hung his head and said, "It warn't never broke. I'm sorry, Mama! I acted like it was broke 'cuz I didn't want folks to know I'd made a fuss over nothin'."
She felt a chill. "Gabriel! You've never lied to me, an' I don't want you to start now. I helped Samson set that bone, remember? I know it was broken."
Tears welled up in Gabriel's eyes. "I'm sorry. But please, Mama, I promised not to tell! I can't break a promise, can I?"
Her heart went out to him. "No, sweetie. But you won't be breakin' your promise if I guess, an' you just don't say no." She took a deep breath. I can't believe I'm gonna ask this. "Did Ben somehow 'fix' your arm?"
Gabriel pressed his lips together and said nothing.
"All right," she said softly. "Did he 'fix' what was wrong with me?"
To her surprise, she got an answer this time. "I think so, Mama. I didn't make another promise. Ben was real upset himself. But it took a long time, an' I thought he gave up."
Five minutes later Ruthie had learned this wasn't the night she'd been bitten by the snake, but the next night. Ben had put her in a truck, unconscious, and driven off with her - God knew where. He'd brought her back, no better, left her in the trailer, and gone off alone. Many hours later he'd returned briefly (with blood on him!), then left again.
That was incomprehensible. Had he tried to take her to a doctor, brought her back with the intent of fetching a doctor, and ultimately failed to find one who'd come? Had she recovered naturally?
No. She knew that with utter certainty. He healed me, somehow.
Thinking back, she remembered a question that had puzzled her months ago, even though it hadn't seemed to trouble anyone else. Where had the townspeople in Tipton gotten the idea Ben possessed healing powers, if he really didn't?
He told me they mistook him for some healer whose picture had been in the paper. I asked why, if that was so, they bought his havin' the made-up name Benjamin St. John? He said that was the healer's name, an' part of the reason they thought he was the guy was that they heard Jonesy call him "Ben."
But a couple rubes told me a little girl had looked right at him an' said he was the healer who'd cured her paralysis. Not just that he looked like some picture! Samson claimed the name Benjamin St. John was one he made up. An' whenever I've heard Jonesy talkin' to Ben, he called him "Hawkins."
She wished Ben had dared to tell her the truth. Could he have thought she'd imagine his powers came from the devil?
Truth is, I don't care where they come from. I love him - comin' so close to death made me realize how much I love him, how bad I want him. An' knowin' he struggled for twenty-four hours to keep me alive just...fills me with awe. It don't make me love him more, 'cause I couldn't love him more.
That thought made her a little weepy, and her precious Gabriel asked what was wrong. She was cuddling him, feeling like the luckiest woman in the world, when she looked up and saw Ben in the doorway.
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Ben waited quietly while Ruthie looked in on Gabriel. She came back with a smile on her face, saying, "He's asleep." Then she snuffed out the candles and crawled into bed beside him.
They were both fully dressed; he meant to stay that way, bloodstained shirt and ripe odor notwithstanding. He'd worry about sin if they made love, and he was too exhausted to deal with that tonight.
Besides, he was also too exhausted to make love. Or take his clothes off, or even fear nightmares.
But for some reason I feel safe when I'm with Ruthie...
I feel like an old married man. Hell, Ruthie an' Gabriel are my family! I don't want to stay with Carnivale much longer - I don't trust Management. But maybe I can risk stayin' a little while, till I can line up jobs for all of us with another outfit. Appy an' Samson got me off the hook for killin' Lodz.
And yet he'd always have guilt feelings. He'd acted without proof Lodz had killed Ruthie, just Management's word. He knew now that it was almost certainly true. The snake had been in a bag of clothes Lila had mended. But even so, he wasn't convinced he'd had the right to kill.
Management said that because Ruthie was murdered, God had nothin' to do with it. Maybe I shoulda thought more about that. Didn't God still permit it?
To complicate matters, he also had guilt feelings about regretting anything he'd done to save Ruthie. He'd resolved not to tell her she'd been dead, partly so as not to upset her, but mainly to keep her from realizing how troubled he was by his sin.
He was already planning the lie he'd tell when she got around to asking why her "healing" had required so much time and travel. For her case I had to search for a magic plant the Mexicans use. An' I finally found it, but I can't show her none 'cause the ritual called for burnin' it up.
Lies an' more lies...
He tried to shake off the nagging thought that a foundation of lies didn't bode well for their future together.
"Ben?" Ruthie said now. "You healed me somehow, didn't you? You really do have healin' powers!"
Her tone surprised him. "Uh, yeah. I thought you knew. Wasn't that why you sent Gabriel to get me?"
She sat bolt upright. "Of course not! I didn't want him to be alone, an'...well, I wanted to see you. One l-last time -" He couldn't see her face in the darkness, but the tremor in her voice spoke volumes. She brought it under control and said, "How could I have known? You didn't admit it back in Tipton...oh, Gabriel?"
"Yeah, Gabriel for one." Ben sat up too, and put his arm around her. He could feel her trembling. "I thought he told you when you got bit, if he hadn't before. An' then I remembered somethin' else. I figured that along with what Gabriel said, or even if he hadn't said nothin', you knew my father healed you years ago."
"What? Your father - Hack Scudder? He was your pa, wasn't he?" She sounded stunned. "He had powers too?"
"Sure he did." Still does. "You said he helped you when a cottonmouth bit you..." Ben thought back. "I got the impression he saved your life. An' you said he sat up with you all night, put his hand on your face."
"Y-yes," Ruthie said slowly. "He probably did save my life. But he just did it by nursin' me, like anyone might have, till the fever broke. Did you think his puttin' his hand on my face was important? He only did it to give me a little relief, 'cause I was hot an' his hand was cool."
She was excited now. "Ben, I've never understood why he was the one took care of me that night. We weren't that close, before or after. He volunteered, pushed closer friends away. Now it makes sense - he had powers like you do, an' he stayed with me in case I got so sick that he'd have to use them! But I didn't, an' he didn't."
It makes better sense than you know. Of course Scudder hung around an' waited...no one would risk usin' these powers if he didn't have to.
An' when I think about it, I s'pose he could touch a sick person without doin' no healin', if he didn't intend to do none. I've bumped into Jonesy more'n once, an' I ain't healed his knee!
But after Ben had absorbed that, the words he kept hearing were "We weren't that close, before or after." Words Ruthie had blurted out without thinking, undoubtedly the truth.
He didn't call her attention to what she'd said. He knew she'd been right when she told him her sexual history was none of his business. But as he drew her into an embrace, one tiny reservation about their relationship slipped away.
"I'm just glad you're alive," he whispered. "I want you around for a long, long time."
And then, by unspoken agreement, they began stripping each other's clothes off.
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The End