Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

softly.
    “It's true, Lil. There's nothing. He's just a regular ... regular baby.” And then Lil's face is wet and her breath is bubbling nastily. Al is darting at me where I am holding Arty up in the doorway, and Elly and Iphy are pulling on my arm, and Al says, “You kids fix some supper for yourselves -- get, now -- leave your mom to rest.” And Lil's soggy voice is crying, “I did everything, Al ... I did what you said, Al ... What happened, Al? How could this happen?”
     
    Al liked the snaky backroads in the hills. He drove like a rock, his whole body slumped in a twitchless, nerveless mound. Even his mustache seemed frozen over his mouth. Only his eyes flicked constantly and his hands moved the wheel just enough and no more. Arturo sat in the big co-pilot's seat, strapped upright, his eyes flickering like Als. I leaned on Arturo, half dozing in the dark with the color points of the instrument panel warming my eyes.
    Lil hung on the support bar behind us. Her pale hair and face caught the red glow of the dash lights. She swayed lightly on the turns.
    “It's nearly midnight, Al.” Her voice was a stretched tissue of sound that meant she was not going to cry, that she was deliberately squeezing back the more obvious forms of grief. It was harder to deal with than her crying. Al s hand tugged at a strand of mustache and then returned to the wheel. His eyes never left the road.
    “We'll hit Green River in another half hour ... Did you write the note?” His voice was genially matter-of-fact.
    Her body swayed behind me and I could smell a heavy wave of sleep and milk and sweat from inside her robe.
    “I've been thinking a laundromat,” she said. “It would be warm. Women go there.”
    The new baby had to be left somewhere. Al sent the rest of the show east to Laramie. Green River, he said, was a good town, clean, where a regular boy could grow up well. The plan was to drive through in the night, leave the baby on a doorstep where he would be found quickly, and then head out, leaving no clues to connect him with a carnival hundreds of miles away. A freighter went past going the other direction. Wind shook us from the floorboards up. Al waited until the roar was gone.
    “Lil, honey, this is a small town. The laundromat is most likely not open twenty-four hours.”
    “I thought we could put him on top of a drier and put in enough coins to keep it going all night.” Al was patient, driving stolidly.
    “We'll find a place that opens early. A snappy-looking business. Owner a local pillar. Not white-collar, though. No insurance or real estate. I don't want him brought up by an office worker.”
    Arturo's ribs swelled against me as he inhaled, then his soft voice, “A gas station, maybe. Sure to be one on the main drag.”
    Al took it as though it had come from his own mind. Arty had that knack.
    “A gas station would be about right. You bundle him up warm, Lil. They'll open early to catch the mugs going to work.”
    Lil was fumbling in the dark.
    “I can't find the writing pad,” she called. Her voice had tears high up near the surface now. Al's big hand touched my scalp.
    “Help your ma, Oly.”
     
    I found the writing tablet and a pencil in the drawer. Lil had gone back to the bedroom. Iphy and Elly were asleep as I slid by their bunk. I was proud to be up and useful while they slept.
    Lil was propped up on the pillows of the big bed. She was pulling on the long red gloves that she used for shows. The baby slept beside her, wrapped tight in the yellow blanket that had covered each of us in turn. Lil's face was flat and wet with pain. I handed her the pad and pencil and climbed up beside her. She sat up and leaned over the tablet. She gripped the pencil between her long red fingers and opened the pad to the blank middle pages. She rubbed the page with her gloved hand, turned it over and rubbed the other side. Then she turned it back and began printing carefully against the sway of the van. Some tears came out