by Lisa Fiedler
But Cornelius simply nods to his companion and walks away. Without me.
I turn a baffled look to the man in the overalls.
“Seems some local busybodies are up in arms about the way we might be treating our animals. VanDrexel is off to assure them we ain’t never nor will we ever hurt a living creature in the name of entertainment.”
“Is that the truth?” I hear myself asking. “Or just what he’s going to tell them?”
“It is God’s own truth,” the man assures me. “Might not be the case with our competitors, I’m sorry to say, but round here, the beasts are like family. Loved and respected. Spoiled in fact. Cornelius’s sons wouldn’t have it any other way.” He hitches up his overalls, which seem to be part of his very being. “The name’s Vince. I’m the gaffer, which means I manage this mud show. Which means I’m your boss.”
“I’m Cath—uh, Victoria.”
“No, you’re First of May,” he corrects. “For the time being, anyway. Means somebody who’s new to the circus, and round here, you gotta prove yourself.” Then without even offering a handshake, he turns on his heel and trudges away from the tent.
For a portly guy, Vince moves fast. I have to practically run to keep up with him as we hurry across the grounds, which are littered with crumpled programs, soda cups, cigarette butts, and hundreds of slender white paper cones, some with sparkling pink filaments of cotton candy still clinging to them. It looks like a herd of unicorns passed through and chose this spot to simultaneously, perhaps ceremoniously, shed their mystical horns . . . and then eat popcorn.
I bend down to pluck one of the cones from the sprawling mess. When Vince sees what I’m doing, he stops in his tracks. “It’s not your job to pick up garbage,” he says brusquely. “We got people for that. We got people for everything. Circus runs smoother when everybody does the job they been given, so just do what you’re meant to do, and leave the other stuff to other folks.”
“Sorry,” I say, crumpling the cone and stuffing it into my pocket. “I don’t know all the rules here yet.”
“It’s not a rule,” he says. “It’s common sense. But if you run better on regulations, so be it.”
My father’s house was filled with rules—most of which were impossible to abide by. I kind of like the idea of making my own rules for a change, so I make a mental note: Everyone has a job to do.
Vince starts walking again, and again I am galloping in his wake. We pass the wagons where the big cats sleep, their mobile homes garishly painted in hues of candy-apple red and sunshine yellow. I’m struck by how these wagons can be so utilitarian and fanciful at the same time—the harshness of the metal bars offset by the ornately carved architectural borders, a fancy façade masking the danger within. Beauty on the outside, danger on the inside. Exactly what I’ve run away from.
Around me, the bustle of activity is like a balm. Roustabouts in dirty dungarees lug tools and equipment I have yet to learn the names of. Star performers, free of last night’s flashy garb and flamboyant makeup, are back to being merely people. A gang of little boys has snuck onto the grounds and no one bothers to chase them off. They should probably be at cello lessons or Little League practice but they’ve come to the circus instead, and everyone here understands that the circus is always so much better than where you’re supposed to be.
In the distance, I hear strains of music, a tinny glockenspiel and the brassiest brass section ever to blow a note, rehearsing for the afternoon show. And . . . “A calliope!” I cry out, mostly because in my whole life, I’ve never had cause to say the word calliope out loud, but also because it is the most magical sound I’ve ever heard.
“Pretty, ain’t it,” grunts Vince, still walking. “Now watch out for the horseshit.”
“Where are we going exactly?”
“The elephant cage.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because it ain’t gonna clean itself, that’s why.”
I don’t think I like the sound of that.
But the music is making me want to march, to tumble head over heels. The band beckons, Come with me! Something’s about to happen! I am so mesmerized by the sound I almost forget there’s an elephant cage in my immediate future.
Most impressive by far are the colors. The whole place is a traveling prism that’s been to more cities than I can even imagine. It’s been admired and marveled at by countless spectators. How many millions of people have been lured by the poppy-red stripes of the sideshow tent and the go-light-green paint of the snack stand with signs in bold pink print, promising ice cream bars for a nickel and funnel cakes dusted with cinnamon?
Someone in pajamas rolls past on a unicycle. The unicycle is silver; the pajamas are polka dot—magenta, cobalt, chartreuse. My father would pronounce them gaudy, and technically he’d be right, but I love them anyway. A handsome roustabout passes, leading a camel on a rope. The camel is the shade of a perfect pancake and the roustabout’s dungarees are indigo. So are his eyes; they hold on me as he draws nearer, and my heart skips.
“Mornin’, darlin’,” the roustabout drawls.
“Morning,” I say, liking the semisweet scratch of my hangover voice, liking his scruffy good looks, and especially liking the sound of that “darlin’.”
“What’s his name?” I ask.
“His name is Forget It,” Vince says unhelpfully, and I get the feeling it’s not the first time he’s dispensed that particular advice about this particular guy.
We breeze past the entrance to a private backstage area that appears to have been set up just for the clowns.
“That’s Clown Alley,” says Vince, with something close to reverence. “Admittance is by invitation only.”
I spy a bouquet of purple and orange balloons tethered to a pole. The remaining few that went unsold last night, they wilt and pucker, but they’re still afloat, and to me, they’re beautiful just for trying.
If the balloons can do it, so can I.
At last we reach the elephant cage (really not a cage at all, but a trailer). Its enormous gray inhabitant is coming down the ramp guided by his handler, a young man who murmurs words of encouragement in a deep, kind voice. “That’s it,” he says. “Good boy. Few more steps, pal . . . yeah, you got it.”
The handler is even cuter than Forget It the roustabout. He’s got green eyes and a ready smile. It’s a moment before I recognize that he’s one of the handsome lion tamers I noticed the first night. During last night’s performance he nuzzled the cheek of a full-grown lion as if it were a newborn kitten. Today he’s wearing a snug-fitting VanDrexel’s Family Circus T-shirt, clean blue jeans, and water buffalo sandals—the brown leather ones with a ring for the big toe to slide into. I really wanted a pair last summer, but my father deemed them “too bohemian,” and that was the end of that.
When the boy sees me staring at his feet, he laughs. “Still don’t like my sandals, huh?”
“Oh, it’s not that,” I say quickly, “it’s just—” I stop short, tilting my head. “Still?”
“Last night you asked me if I borrowed them from Jesus. But then again”—he mimes tippling a bottle toward his lips—“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t remember.”
Before I can ask him what he’s talking about, Vince clears his throat. “Allow me to make the introductions,” he says, giving the elephant an affectionate pat on the trunk. “This big guy is Rabelais. And this not-so-big guy is James.”
“Rabelais,” says James, “meet the new girl.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Rabelais,” I say with a perfectly straight face, and Rabelais makes a jolly trumpeting sound: elephant for “the pleasure’s all mine.”
“Wanna see him wave hi? It’s his signature move.” When I nod, James lowers his voice and says, “Give him some room, then shout ‘hello.’”
I take two steps to the side, then call out, “Hello!”
>
Recognizing his cue, Rabelais happily swings his trunk in a wide arc.
At the same moment, someone shouts Vince’s name from across the yard, anxiously alerting him to two of the company’s day laborers in the midst of a brawl.
“Be right there!” Vince hollers back, then stomps up the ramp, muttering under his breath.
I am unnerved at the sight of such violence. “Does that happen often?” I ask.
James shrugs. “Often enough that I’m not getting involved.” He gives me a lopsided grin. “Or as we say around here, ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys.’ Ain’t that right, Rabelais?”
The animal drapes his trunk playfully around James’s shoulders—an elephant’s version of a hug. It’s strange how utterly natural it seems.
“I thought you worked with the lions,” I say.
“I perform with the cats. But I work with all of the animals. See, I’ve got this special . . . connection to them. Probably because I was born in the jungle. My parents were missionaries in Africa.”
I’m immediately impressed. “That sounds exciting.”
“Well, it was. Until they died.” His voice catches, his muscles flinch. “Of malaria. I was just an infant at the time, totally abandoned. Luckily a family of apes took me in and raised me till I was three. Then some scientists found me and I was sent home to the States, where Cornelius put me in his sideshow. For the next five years, I was Baby Bongo, Child of the Congo.” He shrugs. “That’s my life story.”
“Or . . .” I mutter as realization dawns, “a really bad twist on the plot of Tarzan.”
James laughs, pleased with himself. “Okay, ya got me. But c’mon, you were buying it for a minute there.”
“Do you begin all your new friendships with a bold-faced lie?”
“Maybe.” His eyes twinkle, and his voice is a rugged purr, perhaps a side effect of hanging around with lions. “But who says we have to be just friends?”
Lesson learned: The cutest guy in the circus will turn out to be just as cocky as the cutest guy anywhere else.
Thankfully, Vince returns with a shovel, which he thrusts into my hand.
Shaking off James’s flirtation, I frown. “I don’t mean to be difficult, but why exactly am I cleaning the elephant cage?”
He looks at me as if I’m some kind of simpleton. “Because it’s dirty.”
“No, I understand that . . . I mean, why me?”
“Because James requested you.”
I whirl back to face the Baby Bongo impersonator. “You requested me? Why?”
“Wow, you really don’t remember, do you?” James chuckles, giving Rabelais a rub behind one of his kite-like ears. “When we met last night, in Duncan’s trailer, you were already somewhere between real tipsy and completely plastered.”
“And my punishment for that is to clean up after the elephant?”
“It’s not punishment. You’re here because you lost a bet.”
I have no memory of making any wager.
“Well, it was more of an audition, actually. You explained—adorably, by the way—that you and Dunc were trying to figure out what job you’d be good at. He was leaning toward putting you in charge of the midway game where you guess customers’ weights and ages, but I had my doubts about you being able to pull it off. Then you got all huffy and mad—also adorable—and bet me you could guess my weight and age blindfolded and with both hands tied behind your back. To which I said—”
The fog in my brain begins to lift. “You said, ‘That could definitely be arranged,’” I recount, scowling.
“Yeah, and you didn’t think it was funny then, either. Anyway, we decided that if you guessed right, you’d get the job. If not . . .”
“Elephant cage,” I finish, considering my surroundings.
“You guessed I was a hundred and thirty-six years old, and weighed seventeen and a half pounds—”
I fold my arms indignantly. “Did it ever occur to you, seeing as I was somewhere between tipsy and plastered, that I may have accidentally inverted my answers?”
“Of course it occurred to me. Especially because I am seventeen, and I weigh about one forty. But you still lost the bet. And then you threw up.”
Way to make a first impression, Catherine—I mean, Victoria.
“Look on the bright side,” he drawls. “We’re a small show—we’ve only got the one bull.”
“Wait. I have to clean up after the cattle, too?”
He laughs. “This isn’t the rodeo, sweetheart. ‘Bull’ is what we call an elephant.”
Then, with a gallant sweep of his arm, James motions to the ramp. We march up side by side into the long dark tunnel that is Rabelais’s home, and James sets about educating me in the intricacies of elephant-cage maintenance. It’s a short lesson because my job is basically to shovel up the poop—of which there is plenty—then deposit it into the barrel located right outside the trailer. When he sees that the stench is making my already bleary eyes water, he looks almost sympathetic.
“Don’t worry. After the first seventy or eighty pounds you don’t even notice the smell.”
“Seventy or eighty pounds? Are you crazy? I can’t—” My complaint is interrupted by a voice from outside the trailer that’s almost as ethereally lilting as the calliope I heard earlier.
“James? Are you in there?”
A girl about my age suddenly pokes her head into the trailer, wrinkling her nose at the odor. She’s wearing one of the new Lilly Pulitzer dresses from Palm Beach that I’ve seen Emily wear, and a pair of lime-green Pappagallo flats embellished with oversize grosgrain bows. Her blond hair is swept up loosely to showcase an expensive choker of graduated pearls. I have a similar strand sitting in my jewelry box at home. If I had known the circus called for formal attire, I might have thought to bring them along.
“You promised to give me a tour of your circus,” she reminds James, batting her eyes demurely, first at him, then at Rabelais. “I really like your elephant.”
I pivot toward James. “What kind of bet did she lose?”
“Actually . . .” James grins. “She won.”
Rolling my eyes, I scoop up a huge pile of elephant dung and toss it through the trailer’s wide opening. I’m not sure why, but it’s an effort to aim for the barrel and not the blond. She narrowly escapes the splatter and shoots me an icy look.
“You might want to step back a bit,” James tells his date. “I’ll be right out.”
Still glaring, she of the pearl choker removes herself from the path of flying crap.
James brushes the hay off his jeans. “She’s the mayor’s daughter,” he explains, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “It’s a favor, a public relations thing. People can be mistrustful of the circus, so we like to stay on the good side of the local bigwigs.”
“Well, then I wouldn’t walk her through Clown Alley, if I were you. They’ll probably think she stole those shoes from one of their costume trunks.”
James laughs again, and again, his eyes twinkle . . . just like Mr. VanDrexel’s. And that’s when it hits me.
“You’re Cornelius’s son, aren’t you?”
He rocks back on his heels, grinning. “The younger one. As well as the braver, more interesting, and much better-looking one. Also the old man’s favorite. Did I mention I was better looking?”
“You did. And I’m sure the mayor’s daughter would concur. But does she know you’re a compulsive liar?”
He gives me a confused look. “The Congo thing? That wasn’t a lie, it was a joke.”
“You told me it wasn’t your circus.” I deepen my voice to quote him. “‘Not my monkeys, not my circus.’”
His smile would be patronizing if it weren’t so charming. “First of all, you got it backward. And second, that wasn’t a lie either, it was an expression. An old Polish proverb to be exact. And t
he part about the monkeys happens to be true, because we don’t have any monkeys. So they can’t be mine, can they?”
It must be a rhetorical question because he doesn’t wait for my response. He simply saunters down the ramp, snaps Rabelais a friendly salute, and walks away with the girl’s slender arm tucked cozily in his.
“Maybe he was raised by apes,” I grumble to Rabelais.
The elephant shakes his giant head and lets out an amused little roar.
* * *
• • •
After shoveling dung for the better part of the morning, I decide I deserve a break. I sit down on the edge of the trailer, letting my legs dangle, just as a woman in a pair of short-shorts and a midriff top approaches; she pauses to nuzzle Rabelais’s trunk, then turns her attention to me.
“Anybody ever tell you you’ve got great legs?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you do.” She lights a cigarette and gives me a smile.
Now I recognize her. My next words come out in a squeal of excitement. “You’re the tightrope walker! Your act is amazing!”
“Thanks, hon. I’m Sharon.”
“Victoria.” We shake hands; I’m sure I stink to high heaven, but Sharon is polite enough not to say so.
Lounging against the side of the trailer, she blows out a cloud of smoke and offers me a cigarette, which I decline.
“Okay, sister,” she says, “here’s the part where we get to know each other. You tell me yours, and I tell you mine.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Time to swap sob stories. I’m guessing you’ve got one. Why else would you be here cleaning up after old Rabelais?”
I look down at the dirty knees of my pedal pushers and swallow hard. “Maybe I just like elephants.”
“And maybe I’m Ladybird Johnson.” Sharon laughs and takes another long drag on her cigarette. “All right, fine, I’ll go first. When I was about your age I dropped out of high school to try my luck in Hollywood. Real original, huh? Well, I got as far as Peoria, Illinois, and ran out of cash, so I was compelled to seek other means of, shall we say, gainful employment. One night on my way home from . . . work . . . I spotted a poster announcing that VanDrexel’s Family Circus was opening the next day.” She takes another puff and exhales with a dreamy expression. “Honestly, are there any other words in the whole damned English language quite as seductive as ‘the circus is in town’?”
