by Steph Post
In the morning, she stood leaning against the well pump, shivering, watching the still-closed cabin door. There was a fire inside, thin blue smoke drifted up from the chimney, but she would not go in. Finally, the door creaked opened and her grandfather called out from the gloom. He told her to go find a shovel.
Ruby spent most of that winter in the woods, surviving in the ways her mother had taught her. The Chole land had been in the care of her mother’s people for generations, and Ruby knew their five hundred acres of Appalachia as well as she knew her dreams. Her mother had taught her how to build snares made from delicate slips of twine and crackling branches. She knew how to find the trout still murmuring under the thin skin of creek ice and how to chew and swallow bark if she couldn’t find anything else. She knew how to kindle a fire from damp, mushy wood and she knew how to sleep in the snow and stay warm. When her mother had twisted the necks of squirrels, she had forced Ruby to watch. Now, alone, Ruby looked the squirrels in their tiny black eyes and felt nothing. She crushed the skulls of muskrats and felt nothing. There was nothing left inside of her to feel.
It wasn’t cold or loneliness or even pity that drove her back to the cabin, but a dull sense of duty. Her grandfather was slowly sinking into another world and Ruby, though she knew she could not save him, felt the need to at least bear witness to his descent. She brought him chunks of smoked meat and made pans of cornpone with what was left in the sack by the hearth. She stoked the fire and crouched near it, shoveling the flat bread into her mouth with greasy fingers, watching as her grandfather stared vacantly into the flames. She left food in the cast iron pan and melted snow in the bucket, but did not pull the blanket tighter around his shoulders. She did not take his hand or nudge his rocker forward or part her lips to speak. She ate and made herself warm and then went back out into the winter.
When Ruby came one evening in the spring and found her grandfather dead, she had still felt nothing. She had wrapped him in his blanket and dragged him up the mountain. He had been lighter than she expected and his body had slid easily over the slick new grass. She had dug a grave next to her mother’s and added him to the long line of Choles. She had not returned to the cabin. She had known it was time for her to leave.
The jump had been a nightmare. Baton Rouge was only a hundred and fifty miles east of Sulphur and they should have arrived at the lot on the northern outskirts of town well before midnight. Instead, here it was daybreak and they were just now pulling in. With a caravan of nineteen vehicles, twenty now that Hayden had joined up, delays were to be expected, but this debacle was an exception. Between overheated engines, closed roads and Chandler, the advance man, having painted half the follow arrows in the wrong direction, the journey had taken them into morning. Ruby’s eyes were burning as she steered around recently cut tree stumps and circled her wagon in with the others. Chandler was on the ground already, trying to step out the lot and put markers down for the tents, rides and booths on the midway. Ruby could hear Franklin hollering at Chandler that he was doing it all wrong before the trucks had even slowed to a stop. She found the mark for her wagon, as always wedged between where the snake show tent and the illusion show tent were to be erected on the cul-de-sac back end of the midway, and shut the engine of her truck off. She shook Sonja awake and then tumbled out of the cab, grateful for her boots to hit the ground. All she wanted was a cup of coffee, but it would be another hour at least before the cookhouse tent was set up and Jimbo had picked up the pre-ordered provisions in town. Until the flag’s-up call went out for breakfast, everyone needed to get to work.
Ruby stretched her arms and twisted her shoulders, trying to wake herself out of the travel-induced daze. Sonja had already slipped away to join the rest of her family who were lifting boxes out of the back of the acrobats’ wagon. As soon as the long cargo trucks had arrived, the rousties had swung down from the piles of canvas they had ridden in on and begun to pound tent stakes. Ruby could feel the ground vibrating beneath her feet as Franklin and his crew sunk the spikes deep into the dry, packed earth.
Everyone was expected to pull their weight in setting up the carnival and no one would be allowed to rest until every tent was constructed, every bally banner hung on the line, the donikers dug, the rides bolted together and the electric lights strung up and down the length of the midway. The performers and freaks were responsible for outfitting the tents and the gamesmen for the booths, but everyone had multiple roles in bringing the show to life and everyone worked together. Augustus, the Electro-Man, dragged cables from the hot wagon generators and Timothy the Giant helped him check all the bulbs on the midway’s entrance arches. The dancers unrolled canvas, the acrobats carried the long tent poles across their shoulders and even Pontilliar was on the lot, hoisting boxes and begrudgingly taking direction from Franklin.
Ruby was standing beside the snake tent, coiling up a length of rope around her shoulder, when she saw him. A man striding across the midway in an immaculate black suit. He was tugging at the cuffs of his jacket, as if he were on his way to a fancy dinner and fastidiously adjusting himself before he arrived. His skin was unnaturally white and even from a distance Ruby could tell that his eyes were glittering black. While everyone else around him was already coated with a layer of sweat and grime, his slick black hair shone in the sunlight and matched the gleam of his oiled leather shoes. Ruby stared at him, incredulous, until the man’s gaze swept vaguely in her direction, passing over her like a lighthouse beam, and the world around her went black.
Ruby’s eyes were open, but she could not see. Or rather, what she saw could not be there. A thousand glistering constellations, all on fire, swirled around her. Or they were her. Or she was they, moving in and out of the ether, hurtling toward an empyrean supernova that was somehow inside of her chest. Ruby could feel herself draw a breath, but as she did, her chest was pierced with an incalescent arrow and the fever blossoming from the wound shrouded her in a warmth of wings and she knew herself going backwards into millennia.
“Ruby?”
Ruby blinked.
“Hey there, Ruby. You okay?”
She looked up. Zero was standing over her, a clown wig in one hand and a wet rag in the other. Ruby stretched out her hands and became aware that she was now sitting in the dust outside the snake tent. The rope was in a tangle beside her. She shook her head and allowed Zero to help her to her feet.
“What the hell?”
Zero shrugged his bony shoulders and handed her the rag. It was cool and she pressed it to her face.
“Beats me. You was standing there one minute and then, just as sure as day, the next you was on the ground. I thought maybe the heat got to you, so I run over with some water.”
Zero nudged a tin pail of water at his feet.
“To tell the truth, I was just about to drown you with it if you hadn’t looked up. The way you was just sitting there like that, with your eyes open. Give me the willies. The heat must’ve got to you bad.”
Ruby dipped the rag in the water and squeezed it over her face and neck. She took a deep breath and smiled at Zero, who was anxiously watching her every move.
“I’m fine, Zero. Thanks.”
He nodded solemnly.
“It’s powerful hot out here. You best find some shade and rest a spell.”
“I will. Thank you. Really, I’m okay.”
She smiled at him again and finally Zero nodded in satisfaction and went back to the big top. Ruby shaded her eyes as she watched the clown walk away, but she had the sinking feeling she’d just lied to him. Ruby pressed her hand to her chest, where she felt a spark still flickering. She wasn’t sure she was okay at all.
January looked the chicken in the eye, waiting for it to blink. It didn’t. She pushed a finger through the wire, trying to scratch one of the birds underneath its scraggly wing, but it twisted around and went for her. She yanked her finger back and instinctively wiped her hand down the front of her turquoise and cream kimono, even though she hadn’t touched the animal.
“Do you like them?”
January started and whirled around, instinctively closing her kimono tighter across her chest. Underneath, she was wearing one of her costumes for the show, a short chemise barely covering her thighs. Most everyone in the carnival had seen her in far less than a slip, but she still tried to maintain an air of decency when she could. And this man was a glomming geek, lower than a doniker digger in January’s opinion. She might take her clothes off night after night for strangers in a crowd, but at least she didn’t bite living creatures. She’d seen a geek show only once before, as a child, and she had thrown up outside the tent. Even now, she could see the spray of blood and the discarded chickens and snakes, still twitching, their necks ripped open on the stage.
The new geek came closer, moving in a wide circle around her, as if he knew she was uncomfortable and was trying to respect that. He walked over to a wooden crate in the shade and pulled out a Coca-Cola. He pried off the cap and held it out to her.
“Want one? They’re not very cold, but then, it seems difficult to keep anything cold in this heat.”
His movements were languid, easy, completely unthreatening. January eyed the bottle of soda, sweating in his hand. He wasn’t even looking at her, at her chest or her bare legs or even her eyes. He was just holding the bottle out, his pale face placid as he watched the chickens scuttling around in the cage behind his tent. January stepped forward and took it.
“Thanks.”
“Of course.”
The man took out another bottle and placed a board over the crate so he could sit down. He opened the soda, but set it, untouched, in the dirt at his feet. January came closer.
“So you’re the new geek, huh?”
“I am. My name is Daniel. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Daniel held out his hand. January glanced at it before taking it. She always did this because, from her experience, people’s hands said everything about them. Daniel’s hand was pale, his fingernails burnished and translucent. When she shook his hand, his skin felt cool and slick, but not from sweat. It was like lightly touching the surface of a basin of water. No one who worked in a carnival for very long could have such skin.
“January. I’m over with the girly show.”
She let go of her kimono and it hung open loosely, revealing the nearly sheer slip beneath. She watched his eyes. They didn’t drop lower than hers. Daniel nodded.
“So, you like the chickens?”
January let her brows knit for only a moment before assuming her usual coy smile. Any newcomer, any townie, any man at all invariably said the same thing once she mentioned being in a girl show. Some variation of “I bet you are” or, “Well, I can see why” or, “Oh, so I might get to see something more when I pay my dime?” This man, sitting in his tailored suit, one leg crossed over the other, with manicured nails and pomaded hair and teeth whiter than milk, was asking her about chickens. She took a sip of her Coca-Cola and turned to the cage. The birds were cooing and ruffling their feathers as they scratched against the wire bottom.
“My uncle had chickens up in Lexington. My folks sent me up there to visit him once when I was a kid.”
“You were working in the carnival then?”
January shrugged.
“Just hanging about. Helping with the washing and costumes. I think my ma was trying to get me away from the show. I wanted to be one of the acrobats under the big top. You know, doing flips in a star-spangled suit.”
January stepped up to the cage again and hooked her fingers through the wire.
“But Ma knew better. She knew if I stuck around, I’d only wind up in the cootch tent, just like her.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Daniel. His dark eyes were watching her intently now. Not her body, but her lips. He was listening to every word she spoke. It made her nervous, but she didn’t want to stop talking to him. January turned back to the cage.
“So my uncle had chickens on his farm and it was my job to feed them. Collect the eggs. I kind of liked it.”
“But you didn’t stay.”
January shook her head.
“There was no real work for me there. I was fourteen and too puny to be hired out as a farm hand. Too dumb to work in a shop in town. Uncle Ebert wouldn’t keep me on if I wasn’t bringing in any money, so I came back to the Star Light.”
She looked over at Daniel. He was sitting perfectly still, with the palms of his hands resting on his legs. He hadn’t touched his soda.
“Did you try to become an acrobat? As you had wanted?”
January rolled her eyes.
“No. That was just a child’s dream. Kid stuff. I started on the girl show the next season. Had to. My ma and daddy were on the Corning train. Maybe you heard of it? The Independence Day Wreck? It was in all the papers back then. They made up two of the thirty-nine who didn’t survive.”
There was no emotion in January’s voice. She watched Daniel’s dark eyes and he watched her lips.
“My older sister had already gotten out by then, so she wasn’t coming back to help me. Helen’s living up in New York City now. Acting up on a real stage, so she says. Thinks she’s the damn cat’s pajamas. I get a line from her every now and then.”
January leaned down and scratched the back of her bare calf.
“Christ. I got no idea why I’m telling you all this. I don’t even know you.”
Daniel shifted on the crate and crossed his legs again.
“Because I’m listening.”
“I guess.”
January turned back to the cage one last time. The chickens were settling down in the heat. This time when she poked her finger through the cage she was able to stroke one down the length of its wing. She could feel the brittle shoots at the base of its feathers.
“Are you really going to bite their heads off tonight?”
She heard Daniel stand up behind her.
“Are you really going to take your clothes off tonight?”
She twisted around to shoot him a dirty look, but there was something in his face. Something that was complicated and exposed. Maybe honest. Maybe not. He wasn’t smiling. There was sadness at the corners of his mouth and January suddenly felt pity for him. She nodded.
“Yes.”
Daniel nodded back.
“Well then, yes.”
January gestured with the near empty bottle of soda and backed away from the cage.
“All right. Well, I got to go. We start drawing the tip in an hour and I got to get ready for the bally. Thanks for the drink.”
Daniel put his hands in his pockets. He nodded again.
“You’re very welcome.”
If he stood at the right angle, Hayden thought he could catch a glimpse of her through a separation in the side tent flaps. Ruby. Or, as she was known when she was up on stage draped with snakes, Esmeralda the Enchantress. Hayden hadn’t been sure if she was still going by that name, there had been quite a few throughout the years, but the last banner he had painted, depicting Ruby as an exotic Eastern princess with a desert in the background, was still snapping in the breeze above the talker’s bally. It was a good painting, one of his best banners actually, but Hayden disliked it. It wasn’t Ruby. It looked like the woman on the stage, though he supposed that was the point. Hayden moved against the side of the snake tent, trying to get a better view. He could see part of the audience and though their faces were caught up in rapture, he could recognize the fatigue as well. It was late, the last show of the night, and some of the marks must have been as exhausted as he was.
From his tiny stand, just an easel and two chairs really, wedged between the high striker and the Wheel of Chance, he had watched the faces of the townies as they ambled down the midway. Whether they were coming or going, each face had been lit up with a certain kind of light, and in drawing a patron’s portrait or caricature, he could always tell whether they had just arrived or already witnessed all that the Star Light had to offer.
If it was still earl
y in the night, he mostly drew the likeness of folks who had just hit the midway. Their faces were shining with gluttony and the expectation of more. They had played a few games of chance, knocked over a few milk bottles, maybe already won a chalkware prize. They had stuffed themselves with popcorn, with roasted peanuts and cotton candy, and were buoyant, spending their hard-earned pennies and nickels on whatever delights floated into their view. If anything, they were astonished by the colored lights, by the height of the Ferris Wheel and the speed of the Whip, by the crush of people, moving in all different directions, a disorganized herd scattering toward wonders and then realigning and bunching back into crowds. These were faces flushed with excitement, but not yet transformed. That would come later in the night.
About three hours in, Hayden had sketched his first face that he was sure had witnessed the back end of the carnival. The boy, maybe in his late teens, dressed in his cleanest pressed overalls, unruly cowlick stubbornly sticking up, had a shine in his eye that told Hayden he had already seen the first show at the big top. Hayden knew the boy had seen the Royal Russians fly through the air on invisible wings, urged on by Pontilliar in top hat and tails, calling from the center ring and pointing with his cane. The boy must have laughed at Zero and Marco, the duo clown act, chasing each other in baby doll dresses and tumbling in the dirt, and held his breath in awe as the sisters, Sonja and Zena, blindfolded and swathed in shimmering gauze, pirouetted around one another on the high wire. From the glint in his eyes and the flush of his throat, Hayden knew the boy had already visited the Ten-in-One with the freak attractions. He had set eyes on the Ossified Man, lying in pain in his straightjacket of bones, and on the Bearded Lady and the Human Blockhead and Henry/Henrietta, the He-She from Chicago. He had ducked into the cootch tent and stood with mouth open, eyes agog, as January and the girls performed the Dance of the Dragon Lady and left their costumes on the floor by the footlights.
And Hayden had been sure the boy had looked upon Ruby. With her dark hair swinging down in braids and a snake curling up around the gold cuffs on her arms. He was sure the boy had seen the sandals laced up her calves to her knees and the gauzy skirt beginning to hike up her thighs and the curve of her exposed lower ribs, more ink than bare skin flashing in the dim lights of the tent as Ruby swayed to the drumbeat and exotic whine of the sitar coming from the gramophone in the corner. Hayden had felt a stab of jealously as he filled in the shading around the boy’s eyes, knowing where those eyes had been, knowing whose body they had seen and lusted after, knowing that the boy would go home and not dream of January’s creamy flesh or Zena’s arched back, but of Ruby’s kohl-rimmed eyes, mesmerizing the serpent in her hands.
