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beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other and sat low and tired-looking in the big overstuffed chair by the fireplace, her long legs stretched out on the hassock, barefoot.
    Woofer glanced up at her from the floor. “What’s a hootchie-koo?”
    “Hootchie-koo. Hootchie-kootchie. Dancin’ girls, Ralphie. That and the freak show. When I was your age we had both. I saw a man with three arms once.”
    Willie Jr. looked at her. “Nah,” he said.
    But you could see she had him going.
    “Don’t contradict your mother. I did. I saw a man with three arms—one of ’em just a little bitty thing coming out of here.”
    She raised her arm and pointed to her armpit neatly shaved and smooth inside the dress.
    “The other two were normal just like yours. I saw a two-headed cow as well, same show. ’Course that was dead.”
    We sat around the Zenith in an irregular circle, Woofer on the carpet next to Ruth, me and Willie and Donny on the couch, and Eddie squatting directly in front of the television so that Woofer had to shift to see around him.
    Times like this you didn’t have to worry about Eddie. In his house they didn’t have television. He was glued to it. And if anybody could control him Ruth could.
    “What else?” asked Willie Jr. “What other stuff’d you see?”
    He ran his hand over his blond flattop. He was always doing that. I guess he enjoyed the feel of it though I couldn’t see how he’d like the greasy waxed part up front.
    “Mostly things in bottles. Stillborns. You know stillborns? In formaldehyde. Little shrunken tungs—goats, cats. All kinds of stuff. That’s going back a long time. I don’t remember. I do remember a man must have weighed five, six hundred pounds, though. Took three other fellas to haul him up. Fattest damn thing I ever saw or ever want to see.”
    We laughed, picturing the three guys having to help him up.
    We all knew Ruth was careful of her weight.
    “I tell you, carnivals were something when I was a girl.”
    She sighed.
    You could see her face go calm and dreamy-looking then the way it did sometimes when she was looking back—way back. Not to Willie but all the way back to her childhood. I always liked watching her then. I think we all did. The lines and angles seemed to soften and for somebody’s mother, she was almost beautiful.
    “Ready yet?” asked Woofer. It was a big thing for him tonight, being able to go out to the Karnival this late. He was eager to get going.
    “Not yet. Finish your sodas. Let me finish my beer.”
    She took a long deep pull on the cigarette, holding the smoke in and then letting it out all in a rush.
    The only other person I knew who smoked a cigarette as hard as Ruth did was Eddie’s dad. She tilted the beer can and drank.
    “I wanna know about this hootchie-koo,” said Willie. He leaned forward next to me on the couch, his shoulders turned inward, rounded.
    As Willie got older and taller his slouch got more pronounced. Ruth said that if he kept on growing and slouching at this rate he was going to be a hunchback. A six-footer.
    “Yeah,” said Woofer. “What’s it supposed to be? I don’t get it.”
    Ruth laughed. “It’s dancing girls, I told you. Doncha know anything? Half naked too, some of them.”
    She pulled the faded print dress back up to halfway over her thighs, held it there a moment, fluttered it at us, and then flapped it down again.
    “Skirts up to here,” she said. “And little teeny brassieres and that’s all. Maybe a ruby in the belly button or something. With little dark red circles painted here, and here.” She indicated her nipples, making slow circles with her fingers. Then she looked at us.
    “What’d you think of that?”
    I felt myself flush.
    Woofer laughed.
    Willie and Donny were watching her intently.
    Eddie remained fixed on Cheyenne Bodie.
    She laughed. “Well, I guess nothing like that’s gonna be sponsored by the good old Kiwanis, though, is it? Not those boys. Hell, they’d like to.