Audacity Jones Steals the Show

by Kirby Larson

  There was Min, cradled in a baby elephant’s trunk. Though Audie’s ears were not buzzing, her heart began to pound. Elephants were dangerous! She herself was an orphan all because of these great beasts. She tried to call to Min, but all the saliva had gone from her mouth. Her tongue clicked against dry teeth. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Here, Min. Here, puss.” She patted her leg for Min to come to her.

  But Min did not. She blinked, her golden eyes shining like flashlights into Audie’s heart. Audie’s grip on the bars relaxed. She watched Min nimbly climb up the elephant’s trunk to a flat spot near the back of its head. Then Min began bathing the elephant, as if it were a kitten, giving special care to the tops of its boat-sail ears.

  This was a baby elephant, Audie could see that. An orphan, no doubt; who better than Audie to know the pain of that situation? “What’s your name, little fellow?” she asked, her heart softening. Audie glanced around and noticed a small placard on the wall near the cage. “Baby? Is that you?”

  The elephant made a snuffling noise, raising its trunk slightly, as if confirming Audie’s guess. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, Audie could see that the young creature was chained to the wall. Her heart sank further when she saw the raw spots on its foreleg, the one ensnared in some kind of manacle.

  Without words, Audie and Min and Baby remained in one another’s company for a good while, rehearsals and costumes and magicians completely forgotten.

  * * *

  Jamie shifted his cap back on his head, considering this intruder.

  Maybe Helmut had tumbled to Jamie’s activities. Sent this girl as a spy. What else could she be up to? Wasn’t she a juggler, along with that Persian man? They must be some kind of team; they wore matching garish costumes. You’d never catch Jamie in laces and tights like that!

  He turned back to the matter at hand. The girl.

  Jamie shifted slightly in the dark recess, silent as midnight, but still the girl stopped. Turned. He ducked and nearly tripped over something low to the ground. Something alive. He shuddered, remembering the rat-infested wards at the orphanage. When he caught the stripes on the creature’s back, he exhaled in relief. It was only a cat! A cat that circled his legs before slipping fearlessly through the bars into Baby’s cage. What on earth? Curiosity overcame common sense, and he stepped out of the shadows.

  “They’re friends.” The girl uttered the words as if in prayer. “Good friends.” She turned toward Jamie, her face ghostly in the dim light.

  Jamie was so drawn to the scene that he was now standing at the girl’s shoulder.

  “Are you Baby’s keeper?” the girl asked.

  Jamie nodded. “Assistant,” he clarified.

  The girl’s hand trembled as she pointed to the bull hook hanging on the wall. “Do you use that?”

  “Never.”

  She nodded. “I’ve read about them. In Harmsworth Natural History and other books.” She blushed, fearing she sounded quite the snob. “They’re social creatures, as well you know.”

  Jamie grunted. He knew no such thing. Wasn’t even sure what “social” meant.

  “Do you know they can live for seventy or eighty years?” she asked. “Well, more like forty in captivity.”

  Jamie looked over at Baby. How old was he? Not even a year? He got sick at his stomach thinking of that sweet creature living another forty or fifty years under Helmut’s “care.” “That so?”

  She nodded. “And it’s horrible what we do to them.”

  Jamie stiffened. He had done his best to show Baby nothing but kindness. “I take good care of this one, I do.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt about that.” The girl slipped two volumes from the costume bag she carried and offered them to Jamie.

  He glanced at the titles. Harmsworth Natural History. Animal Kingdom, Volume 1, it said. Volume one! How many books were there about animals? About elephants? “Might I borrow these?” Jamie asked.

  “Of course.” The slim young thing held out her hand. “Audacity Jones. Audie to my friends.”

  “Pleased to meet you, miss.” He shook, tipped his cap. “Jamie Doolan.”

  Audacity cocked her head, as if listening for something. A long moment passed. It felt to Jamie as if his worth had been weighed and measured. “I can’t bear to think of Baby trapped here forever,” she said. “Neither can Min.” She nodded her head toward the cage.

  “Is that your cat, then?” Jamie stuffed the books in his pocket. “Best to keep her out of Bert’s sight. He doesn’t like cats. Says they make him sneeze.”

  “She’s very clever,” Audacity said. “She’ll stay out of Bert’s way.”

  Jamie hadn’t much experience with cats. But this one did appear to have good sense. And Baby had taken to her, hadn’t he? “That’s a sight that warms my heart,” he added, watching cat and elephant together.

  “Doolan!” A harsh voice shredded the quiet. “Where are you?”

  Min jumped down, having completed Baby’s toilette.

  “You two best be going,” Jamie urged. He reached for a pitchfork, so Helmut would find him working. “My boss wouldn’t like you taking up with Baby.” He flipped dirty straw into a wheelbarrow.

  The shouting grew louder and closer.

  “There’s a way out, over there,” Jamie said. “Hurry.”

  “We’re going.” Audacity patted the bars of Baby’s cage. “But we’ll be back.”

  “Mer-row,” added the cat.

  It was Lilac’s day to be head of the Order of Percy, so it was she who answered the door to the telegram delivery boy who insisted he must surrender his missive directly to Miss Maisie’s hand. But Lilac took him into the kitchen where Beatrice served him hot chocolate and fresh croissants, and he soon forgot about telegrams altogether.

  “Won’t you have another?” Lilac offered. “Four croissants is hardly enough for a strapping young lad such as yourself.”

  “I think I have room,” the delivery boy answered with chocolate-stained lips. Lilac delivered the fifth pastry on a small sterling tray. “Let me get this out of the way.” She slid the telegram into her pocket. The boy—in a chocolate-and-butter stupor—did not even notice.

  After reading the message, Lilac set about finding her sisters. Violet was teaching the littlest Waywards to ride the School’s one bicycle. Lavender was leading interpretive dance sessions in the parlor. “Important meeting,” she whispered in her sisters’ ears. “Ten minutes.”

  When the meeting was convened in their hiding spot, Lilac shared the telegram.

  “Oh, dear,” Lavender sniffled, threatening to burst into a full-blown sobbing episode. “How on earth could we possibly help?”

  “Tears are not going to solve anything.” Envisioning Audie’s own response, Violet squeezed her sister’s hand firmly. “Audie left us in charge. And if she thinks we’re capable of assisting with her scheme, we cannot disappoint.” To remind her sisters of all they owed Audie, she merely held up a fabric fragment of Audie’s old stuffed giraffe.

  Lavender hiccupped softly, putting an end to any waterworks. “But hiding an elephant?” Her blue eyes grew wide. “How on earth could we do that?”

  Lilac chewed her lip, concentrating. “We need someplace big,” she said.

  “And free,” added Lavender. “We don’t have any money.”

  Violet nodded. “These are mighty obstacles.” Her fingers stroked the tiny bit of Percy’s ear.

  The triplets sat quietly, racking their brains for an idea.

  “You know.” Lilac hesitated. Should she reveal what she’d heard in the still of the night? It might offer a solution to the problem at hand. Yet it was Divinity’s secret. Lilac weighed the pros and cons and arrived at a decision. “Divinity said something very odd in her sleep.” After drawing a deep breath, she confided all in her sisters.

  “Farm?” Violet’s ears perked up. “But that’s the perfect solution!”

  “She’d never agree.” Lavender’s eyes glistened. “It’s h
opeless.”

  For a moment, Violet, too, nearly succumbed to doubt. Then an image of their initiation ceremony flashed in her mind. “What does Audie always say?”

  The girls knew the words so well, they did not need to say them aloud.

  Violet clapped her hands together, once. “All right, then. We need to get to work.”

  Bert’s head ached from sneezing. His eyes itched. And now worry was eating a hole clean through his stomach. Why hadn’t he taken his mother’s advice and become a fireman? There was a nice quiet life, to be sure.

  So far, with tomorrow’s big show looming, he had a trained seal that required quarts of fresh herring, which were apparently in short supply in New York City; a set of jugglers who really couldn’t juggle; and an usher that could not hand out programs. Bert wiped his brow with a red bandana. At least, the headline act was sound. Mr. Houdini would never let him down, though it exasperated Bert that everything surrounding this new illusion was so mysterious-like. Only certain stagehands were being let in on certain bits. None of it was to his liking, but Bert understood the need for secrecy. Magicians tended to be overly protective of new acts; less chance for some competitor to poach it.

  Bert dosed himself with Dr. Leo’s Breathene, and then took a bite of the lunch his wife had prepared. Liverwurst on rye. Not ideal for a nervous stomach, but she meant well. He swallowed, then took a swig of the carbonated water at his elbow. Belched. If he survived the next few days, he would buy some acreage in New Jersey. Build a small house with a picket fence. Give piano lessons. He took another swig of the carbonated water.

  He also had to survive the meeting with the Hippodrome’s owners, set to start in five minutes. Bert polished off his sandwich, then headed to the Shubert brothers’ office. The first item on the agenda was the balky “usher.” That poor baby elephant. Bert could barely stomach being around Helmut. All the rough talk about power and submission. It certainly wasn’t having a successful impact on Baby. No matter what Helmut did, the creature could not seem to grasp the idea of using its trunk to hand out programs to patrons. Bert felt it was a lost cause.

  “Just have him stand outside the theater,” he suggested at the meeting. “People love baby animals. They won’t care that he can’t hand out programs.”

  “He can learn.” Helmut glared at Bert. “He will learn.”

  Bert felt Helmut would have used the whip on him had he been given the chance.

  The brother owners conferred and then decided to give Helmut another chance. “It’s the perfect gambit to complement Houdini’s illusion,” Mr. J. J. Shubert, the plumper of the two, said.

  “Perfect,” Helmut echoed.

  Bert changed the subject. “This Oberon keeps pestering to audition,” he said. “Says he has a boffo levitation gimmick.”

  Mr. Lee Shubert flicked his hand about. “Put him off.” He sniffed. “Those suckers only care about Houdini, not Algernon.”

  “Oberon,” Bert corrected quietly.

  “So it’s all a go for the Vanishing Elephant illusion?” Mr. J. J. Shubert asked.

  Bert caught a sneeze in his red bandana. “Of course. Of course.” He coughed out a laugh. “Does Houdini ever disappoint?”

  “There’s always a first time,” said Mr. J. J. Shubert.

  “You’re not catching cold, eh, Bert?” asked Mr. Lee Shubert.

  “No cold,” Bert said to the first Mr. Shubert. “And no disappointment,” he said to the second, with far more confidence than he felt. “Houdini’s Vanishing Elephant illusion is going to be the talk of the town.”

  The owners nodded, satisfied. “Talk of the town is fine,” one said, “but it’s filled seats we’re after.” With this pronouncement, Mr. Lee Shubert stood, signaling the end of the meeting. Mr. J. J. Shubert followed his brother to the door.

  Forcing a smile as he saw the brothers out, Bert spoke reassuringly. “Oh, we’ll fill seats all right.” And he hoped with all his might that his words would come true.

  “You’re not still fretting over dropping the balls at rehearsal, are you, chum?” Bimmy asked. Audie had been uncharacteristically quiet on the stroll back to the hotel. She pulled Audie out of the path of a businessman briskly swinging a large valise as he strode past.

  “It’s not that.” Audie was on the verge of confessing one of her secrets to Bimmy, but she bit back the words. It was one thing to assume the risk for herself; she could not involve her sweet friend. “I was merely wondering how everything was going back at Miss Maisie’s.”

  “I’m sure the triplets are managing just fine,” Bimmy assured her, now tugging Audie out of the way of a pair of sturdy matrons, both of whom tsk-tsked at the girls as they passed. “I don’t think I would ever get used to all the people if I lived here.”

  “People?” Audie nearly collided with a pram. The nanny pushing it deftly steered around her.

  “Your mind really is far away,” Bimmy said. “Are you sure there isn’t something you’d like to chat about?”

  Again, Audie felt the temptation to share. Bimmy had loads and loads of circus experience. And circuses had to transport items of all shapes and sizes. “Oh, sometimes my mind gets taken with the oddest notions.” Audie did her best to act as if discussing the most trivial of concerns. She would come at this through the back door. “For example, how on earth does our friend Herring get moved from town to town?”

  This was familiar ground to Bimmy. “Well, the big circuses have their own special rail cars, like rolling cages, that the wild cats and such ride in. But a seal like Herring could travel in a smaller cage, even in a baggage car.”

  Trains were a logical choice. But also very public. How would one hide an elephant, though small, using that mode of transportation? “But, Bimmy, what if the circus was a lesser one? Or what if it were traveling to a town without train service?”

  The girls held their noses as they passed a street sweeper at work. Audie did not envy that poor street sweeper. In one quick glance, she counted over a dozen horses carrying cabs and wagons up one side of the street and down the other.

  Once they were safely past the odiferous pile of horse droppings, Bimmy removed her fingers from her nose to point. “See those cart horses there?”

  Audie followed Bimmy’s fingers. “Bees and bonnets! They’re huge.” Two magnificent creatures, muscles rippling as they worked in unison, steadily pulled a wagon heaped with large barrels labeled MAGIC CITY SOUR PICKLES.

  “They’re Percherons,” Bimmy explained. “Bred to carry large loads. When we were in the Barley and Bingham Circus, they had a stable of them. Each pair carried a cage on wheels.”

  Audie studied the horses and the wagon they pulled. The horses appeared to haul the loaded wagon with ease, clip-clopping down the street. “What kind of animals were in that circus?” she asked.

  Bimmy squinched up her face, remembering. “The usual. A lion, two tigers. A bear, the cart horses, of course, and some performing horses. A dog act.” She tapped her forefinger to her mouth, thinking. “Oh yes. And Pearl.”

  “Pearl?”

  “She was the gentlest creature,” Bimmy said. “Her trainer used to let me ride on her back in the big-top parade.”

  “So Pearl was a horse,” Audie guessed.

  “No. An elephant.” Bimmy gestured with her arms. “One of the biggest I’ve ever seen.”

  Audie’s heart skittered in her chest. She did her best to reply calmly. “And two horses could pull Pearl’s cage?”

  “Easily.” Bimmy took Audie’s arm as they approached the curb. A hansom cab barreled past, not even slowing for the girls or any of the other pedestrians. “It looks safe to cross now,” she said.

  Audie felt lighthearted as she strolled next to Bimmy the rest of the way to the hotel. Surely there was a wagon master in this city willing to give a baby elephant a ride. She wiggled the toes in her left boot. If necessary, the gold coin in that boot could cover any expenses incurred.

  Now all she needed was to find a haven fo
r Baby. It was a daunting task, to be sure. But hadn’t that Mr. Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right”? That’s why she’d sent the telegram to Miss Maisie’s. One never knew where answers might lie.

  Audie was choosing to think she could do this thing.

  Heartened and inspired, she took Bimmy’s hand. “I think this calls for ice cream!” She led the way into a nearby drugstore.

  “What are we celebrating?” Not that Bimmy needed a reason to eat ice cream.

  Audie thought fast. “A successful mission!”

  “It’s not over yet,” Bimmy reminded her. “Maybe it’s bad luck to celebrate too soon.”

  “Nonsense.” Audie hopped up on one of the red stools by the soda fountain. She patted the seat next to her. “Nothing could possibly go wrong now.”

  The Shubert brothers frowned. “I thought you could teach any elephant anything,” J. J. said.

  “Not this one.” Helmut banged on the cage bars. “Stupid as they come.”

  “He looks bright enough,” Lee Shubert observed.

  “If it were me,” Helmut said, “I’d get rid of him.”

  “We spent fifteen hundred dollars on this creature.” The two brothers exchanged glances. “We’re not accustomed to throwing away good money,” said J. J.

  Jamie leaned the pitchfork against the wall and stepped forward. It hurt him something awful to hear Helmut speak ill of Baby that way. “Would you allow me to give it a go?” He tugged nervously at his cap.

  Helmut snorted. “You?”

  “I have an idea—” Jamie began.

  “You are a no-good, worthless Irishman,” Helmut interrupted. “Fit only to shovel filthy hay.”

  “I’m Irish, all right.” Jamie stood his ground. “But Baby and I understand each other. Both being orphans and all.”

  “Get back to work.” Helmut grabbed the pitchfork and shoved it at Jamie.

  “Hold up there.” Mr. J. J. Shubert stepped forward. “What harm is there in giving the lad a chance?”