Bacchanal

by Veronica Henry

  “He found me,” Liza said. “I don’t know how. I woke up one day and he was there. That was four years ago.”

  Hope straightened, her long crystal earrings glittering. Judging from the way they dragged her earlobes down, they were a bit too heavy. Liza fingered the plain silver bulbs in her own ears.

  “And I’m Eliza, but folks call me Liza.”

  “If it please you, I like Eliza. My mama’s name is Elizabeth, see. You got a last name, Eliza?”

  “I do—does it matter to you?”

  “It’s polite to give your full name to somebody when you meet them.”

  “Polite ain’t one of my strong suits. But the last name is Meeks, if it makes you happy to know it.”

  “Well, good to meet you, Eliza Meeks.” Hope gestured at the trailer Clay had assigned Liza. “Shall we?”

  Heart pounding, Liza shifted her bag to her other hand. Anything would be better than the moldy garret she’d been sleeping in. “I guess.”

  “It’s tight but it’s comfortable.” Hope mounted the short flight of steps. The trailer was indeed small, but more cozy than claustrophobic. The scent of lavender hung in the air. Two bunks lined either side of a narrow floor. Faded white sheets and a thin blanket covered the made-up beds. One bed held a simple pillow in a white case; the other was piled high with colorful, beaded, tasseled pillows. Liza wondered what her roommate was like. Based on the beadwork, she had expensively tacky taste.

  A lamp sat on a tiny round table against the back wall at the end of the path between the bunks. The last of the waning sunlight streaming in from the window above either bunk cast the small space in a most pleasant glow.

  “You can put your things here.” Hope gestured to two sets of drawers skillfully slotted beneath the bunk. A hook near the foot of the bunk held a clean towel, probably white at some point but now a faded gray. “You’ll be bunking with Autumn. A little snooty, if you ask me. You’ll see for yourself later.”

  “This looks fine to me,” Liza said. The practiced cool expression she’d perfected covered her face like paint even as her emotions surged. The little slat of a window might provide her some reading light at night, if the moon cooperated. She hefted her bag onto the bunk. Inside, her only other pair of pants, another set of undergarments, magazines, Mico’s toy, and a battered black-and-white photo of her family. Mico had scrambled out of her pocket and now made himself comfortable on the pillow.

  “That your family?” Hope asked.

  Liza sighed. “Not anymore.” The trailer door had no visible lock. “I can leave my things here?”

  Hope turned serious. “You don’t have to worry about thieves in this carnival. Management . . .” She paused. “People who steal never do it more than once.”

  “Management?” Liza asked. “You mean Clay? And that weird red trailer that somehow is and isn’t his?”

  “Clay didn’t give you the speech?”

  “He did.”

  Hope tucked a curl behind her ear. “This carnival pays better than any of the other flea bags, and they ain’t never been late. We get good food and are treated mostly pretty good. If people don’t follow the rules, well, all I know is they disappear, gone. Look, I can tell this is your first time working a carnival, but some of the others are rough. We got some troupers here been working the circuit for a long time. Follow the rules: don’t steal, do your job, and don’t ask questions about matters that don’t concern you.”

  Caution was Liza’s constant companion, but her ever-curious mind weighed the thinly veiled warning. People sure were jumpy about that red trailer. Maybe Clay wasn’t squirreling his wife away in there, after all, but he was hiding something, sure as the day was long.

  Hope nestled a shoulder against the trailer’s doorjamb and waited while the new girl arranged her things. There wasn’t much to speak of. It all fit in one drawer, with a corner to spare. Eliza slid that drawer closed and was halfway out of her crouch but then kneeled again, took out her magazines, and carefully smoothed and stacked them in the other drawer by themselves.

  Hope had accumulated what her husband called an unreasonable amount of clothes and flashy jewelry over the last couple of years, but she’d first come to Bacchanal with just the clothes on her back. She recognized the signs of a hasty escape.

  The girl was polite, pleasant even, only she hadn’t smiled. Not once. What had her all wound up? And that odd jolt from when their hands touched. Nothing she could pin down good or bad; it was too quick. Probably something to do with whatever Clay had seen in the girl. Every performer who joined the carnival seemed to drag in two sets of baggage: one you could see, and the other, trickier variety, all tussled up on the inside.

  With the little monkey settled on the bunk, the girl stood and nodded. Well, it would be nice to have someone new to talk to. Hope wasn’t much of a bookworm, but she did fancy having a new mystery to unravel.

  “Tell me again,” Hope said. “You can talk to animals?”

  “Not out loud, like.” Eliza held her hands open, as if searching for the right words. “We can communicate, but it’s not like the way I talk to people. Know what I mean?”

  “No, I sure don’t.” Hope chuckled. “But it must be pretty special. Clay only takes folks that got real talent. It took some time and what I guess was a whole lotta money to get the few animals we keep. ‘The carnival’s ace in the hole,’ Clay calls them.”

  “Can you take me to the animals?”

  Hope sighed. The day had been a long one. She’d never gotten used to the whole traveling part of being in a traveling carnival. A fact that her husband never ceased to tease her about. Come to think of it, he’d probably be looking for her soon.

  “It’s late,” Hope said. But the pitiful girl deflated so, and she relented. “Oh, all right.”

  “I didn’t see any signs in town. How are we going to do a show if nobody knows about it?” Liza asked as they strolled back outside.

  “Oh, believe you me, Clay probably put somebody on it as soon as he got back,” Hope said. “That one don’t miss a thing. He swung by to look for some gator wrestler before heading on to Lake Charles. But they came back with you instead, and guess now we got a show to do.”

  “And how is it you can tell people’s fortunes?” Liza asked. “Several people I met when my family traveled claimed to have the gift, but most of them were putting everyone on.”

  “Another nonbeliever? Don’t you know nothing about your African roots?”

  “My mother wasn’t a talker.” It was quick, but Hope registered Eliza’s grimace and felt awful.

  “And I couldn’t shut my mother up,” Hope said. A well-placed joke at one’s own expense was a cure for all ills. “My people are Yoruba. The gift was dragged ’cross the Atlantic in the belly of them ships right along with us. It may skip a generation or two, but it is always there. I only use them cards because that’s what folks want to see. But if they give me permission, I get a vision. I guess I can’t explain it no more than you can tell me how you talk to animals. I can see some things—not all of it—and sometimes it don’t even make sense.”

  “But a person has to give you permission first?”

  Hope hesitated. Eliza seemed earnest enough. Still, she wasn’t sure how much she should share. “Yes, ma’am. Otherwise, they as blank to me as a tree.”

  They rounded a bend and stopped in front of the animal tent. “Here we are,” said Hope. Eliza positively beamed. “Nice, isn’t it? Not even sure who came up with the look of it. It’s been this way since—”

  Eliza’s eyes went wide. “There’s a man creeping up behind you, and I swear he’s the biggest man I’ve ever seen.”

  Hope took in her new friend’s slack-jawed expression. “Oh.” She turned, then grinned. “Meet my husband, Bombardier.”

  Just like the first time they’d met, when he smiled, the sun, the moon, and the stars burned with envy.

  By the time Hope and Bombardier brought Liza back to her trailer, the clamor of
activity had abated. Carnies lazed outside their trailers or chatted and laughed in groups like old friends.

  The woman inside was asleep. Careful to make as little noise as possible, Liza settled onto her bunk. The night air of a Louisiana summer limped in through the window and settled down on her like a prickly wool blanket.

  The animal tent had been an unexpected surprise. The tapestry matched the intricate stitching from some of her mother’s baskets: red, gold, green, blue, orange. Colors woven in alternating square patterns. Mama had called the pattern “kente.” A kente weave in the middle of an American carnival was unsettling. Clay seemed to have an obsession with African things.

  All Liza had wanted was a peek. Inside the tent were two cages. A man wearing overalls and the weariness of a full day of hard labor had refilled a water bowl and slid it into a cage. One animal looked like a strange dog; the other—and she blinked to make sure—looked like nothing more than a big turtle. This was the “ace in the hole” exhibit?

  After seeing the animals, Liza felt less sure than before. How was she supposed to create a show out of those poor creatures? They looked well cared for, but an unmistakable sadness hung in the air around them; that much she could tell without conjuring a single image. Hope had given her an idea, though. She’d never thought to ask the animals’ permission. Would an animal even understand the concept?

  She’d only sat with them this first time, letting them get used to her presence.

  If Mico had picked up anything from the animals, he hadn’t let on. He’d only watched, curious, like her. Why folks would pay a nickel to gawk at a dog and a turtle was beyond her. Life in a carnival was strange indeed.

  Liza shifted on her bunk, her stomach lurching. These animals must be something special. If Clay found out she couldn’t fully control her power, not only would she be out on her butt with no money, but the way he seemed to have these people scared to even talk, there was no telling what this man could have in store for her. She would have to find a small creature to test on again. She didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t afford to practice on the carnival animals.

  After a time, she drifted into a loose and disquieted slumber, her dreams rising and falling to the carnival’s collective heartbeat.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  INSATIABLE

  Toby watched as the closed-up storefront was plastered over with a banner line of painted canvas squares showing the wonders of the carnival. Some of them were giant black and white, some colored, each plugging a different part of the show. There was a big man in a muscle-bulging pose, a lady in a dress so short his ma near about fainted. He didn’t know the word scrawled at the top in fancy lettering, Bur-les-que, which he sounded out under his breath. The next one showed another lady in a long dark robe, a scary-looking third eye sitting smack-dab in the middle of her forehead, with rays of light shooting out around her head as she looked up at the sky.

  Ma said some hooligans were plastering up the whole town. “It’s so’s everybody will know the carnival’s opening tomorrow night.”

  Toby wriggled out of the vise grip Ma had on his hand and barreled a few doors down to gawk at the men slapping up another poster. He stopped short, and one of the men beamed down at him. As if he knew Toby couldn’t read it, the man did it for him: “Come one, come all, to the G. B. Bacchanal Carnival. Oddities, freaks, feats of skill and wonder. Try your hand at games of chance. Bring the family to the rides. Good eats! Don’t miss it!”

  Toby grinned in wide-eyed wonder until Ma’s rough fingers clamped down on his shoulder. Pa moseyed up alongside her and shot him the look, the one where he cocked his head forward and narrowed his right eye. Run off again, and I’ll tan your hide and good, the look said.

  But Pa’s sour look couldn’t put a damper on Toby’s delight. Here he was, one night away from his all-time biggest wish ever. A carnival. The picture of a candy apple called to him so strongly that it may as well have had his name carved right there on the side. The Ferris wheel—why, he’d have to ride that one, sure enough.

  A girl, one he recognized from the only day he spent at school last year, was walking down the road with her folks, headed straight for him.

  He tugged at his ma’s hand; he didn’t want the girl to see him. His knickers were a couple of inches too short, and just yesterday he’d had to wallop another boy for snickering about them. Ma ignored him, and luckily the girl turned down another path.

  If Ma and Pa had offered him the choice of a full supper or the carnival, he wouldn’t have given his answer a second thought, even though they’d had only watery soup with a half-rotten potato all day, and his stomach rumbled painfully. He’d told his parents that there was sure to be a booth loaded up with french fries, cotton candy, and those shiny red apples, but Pa told him there wouldn’t be money for treats tomorrow any more than there was today.

  He was real sore at Pa and was about to tell him so when a man with the reddest hair he ever saw came up to them.

  “Bet that boy of yours would like to try his hand at the balloon and darts game tomorrow night,” he said, plucking at his suspenders. “Toy truck to the winner.”

  “I’m much obliged, stranger,” Pa said. “But I reckon that carnival will cost me a pretty penny, one I ain’t got to spare.”

  That meant he wouldn’t get a shot at winning the toy truck.

  The redhead winked at the boy. “You’re in luck, friend. This here token will buy you one free game.”

  Toby pleaded with his eyes and fidgeted in that quiet space before, sure enough, Pa shook his head and turned away.

  The boy and his parents strolled home, their spirits low. When they reached their one-room shack, Toby begged to stay outside for just a little while longer. With a warning to stay close, Ma and Pa went on in.

  As soon as the door closed, he got an idea. The stranger had said the carnival was setting up just outside town, and boy, would it be fun to get a peek at it. With one glance at the house’s only small, dim window, he darted off into the growing shadows.

  He stood at the end of the road, suddenly afraid. He couldn’t see anything; maybe he’d heard it wrong. Just then a truck rolled past, and the red-haired man waved to him from inside. “Can’t wait till tomorrow, I see. Hop in—I’ll give you the tour.”

  Pa had passed a few words with the man, so he must be all right. Toby climbed into the cab and slammed the door. The man asked him all kinds of questions about his folks. But the boy started to feel uneasy. Ma would worry.

  “If it’s all the same to you, mister, I need to go back home now.”

  But when Toby clambered out of the truck, he caught a glimpse of the lights. Then the sounds caught up to him, too, bell dings and music and laughter. The carnival. He sought cover behind a tree. He was crouched there, straining to see, when a lady appeared at his elbow.

  “My guess is that you have your eye on winning a magnificent toy truck.” She pointed toward the carnival. He could just picture a bright-red one sitting on a shelf loaded up with other toys.

  Toby glanced over his shoulder and eyed the road home.

  Ma had warned him about strangers and such. But she was such a pretty lady. That had to be real gold around her wrist, and her dress was as colorful as the quilt on his bed. Why, she looked like a black rainbow. Pretty ladies were supposed to be nice.

  He squirmed, picking at the tree’s rough bark, and gave the lady a sideways glance. “That’s what I want, all right, and I’m gonna win it tomorrow.”

  The lady smiled. It was a real friendly smile. “Well, who says you have to wait until tomorrow? There’s a special attraction tonight. And there’ll be loads of tasty treats for all the children.”

  Toby wanted a toy truck more than anything, and he figured he could pocket a few treats for Ma and Pa too. So when the lady offered him a special invite, of course he followed.

  The boy’s colorless face was slack, lips partially opened. A sliver of drool fell from the left corner of his mouth. It was as i
f, at ten years old, he had suffered a terrible seizure. He sat in a simple wooden chair, his feet dangling several inches from the floor. One shoe remained on his right foot; the other, badly in need of a new sole, lay where it had been kicked across the room. The child was dressed in the rough navy-blue slacks and dingy white shirt of a poor farmer’s son.

  His green eyes were wide in semi-permanent fright, pupils dilated to the size of the marbles still in his pants pocket. While he couldn’t move his head, his gaze roamed over the inside of the trailer. Dim light filled the space, which was still and close; the shadows seemed to climb atop one another, struggling for room to stretch out. Countless masks covered the pale-yellow walls that had maybe once been white. The wooden masks wore scowls, had long pointed chins, strange carvings. Others looked like they were made of plaster, painted in bright colors, freckled sparkles, blank holes for eyes.

  Ahiku swayed to the thrum of spirited African drums. There may as well have been a man pounding out the rhythm right there behind her and her prey. The boy probably wondered where the music came from. There was certainly no man, and no phonograph either.

  He looked longingly at the windows on either side of the trailer, and Ahiku could imagine him picturing a daring escape. No matter, though; he was hers. There was a thick curtain at the back of the trailer, behind which she disappeared. She hissed at the old woman bound in the corner—she’d deal with her after—and when she reemerged, she was wearing her smile. The boy had a panicked stink about him: something sweet trying hard to cover the smell of a feral dog.

  Ahiku had been told she had a natural iridescence like the coat of a most beautiful raven. Her dress, a cross between a gypsy’s and an African queen’s—all bright colors and flashy jewelry. Black skin with the sheen of a night sky, and she was near as tall as the boy’s father.

  A red scarf was tied around her head; several long kinky braids trailed down her back. She smiled, flashing a glimpse of perfect milk-white teeth.