The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book)

by Robert Hough

  "We must make ziss thoroughly clean," Louis explained. He put a bit of pressure on the tip of his finger so that it separated the folds of the wound and dipped inside, producing a stinging that didn't, in any way, stay confined to the length and breadth of the wound. I wriggled a bit and tried to stay ladylike, though it was hard seeing as Louis's finger was moving toward the centre of the wound, splitting deeper layers of skin, the sensation mounting in a way that was practically vengeful. Air hissed through my teeth, and I arched my back, though I didn't yell out-I wanted to show him pain was something I had a higher than average tolerance for.

  "Zer," Louis kept saying, "zer zer zer. Iss better now, I sink. No chance for infection. Vee don't want you getting meningitis."

  I lay there a bit longer, may've even fallen asleep, while Louis took a chair in the corner, polishing his boots and the buttons on his tunic. When he felt the wound had stopped seeping for good, he pulled out a roll of sterilized gauze and wound it snug around the arm, wrapping the bandages to just beneath the elbow.

  "I sink is better now you get some sleep," he said. "In ze next town maybe we let it drain some more and get some stitches, no?" I was just about to oblige when a thought occurred to me.

  "Louis," I said, "where're you gonna sleep?"

  "Me?"

  "Yes you."

  "Ziss is not a problem. I vill sleep in ze chair. I haff done so many many times. Ziss is a talent I haff developed...."

  "Now Louis don't you be ridiculous. This is your car, and if anyone's going to sleep in the chair it's going to be me."

  "This is not possible. You must keep your arm supported or ze ache will be horrible. I vill not allow it."

  "Then you're just going to have to climb in. I'll skitter over and make room. Thankfully, there's not a lot of me so I don't take up much space.

  "I don't ..."

  "Louis. There's polite and there's just plain stupid, and you bunking in that chair overnight is nothing but stupid. You're a cat man. If anybody needs to be fresh come morning it's you...." With this his face soured-he was seeing things the sensible way, even though the sensible way also happened to be my way and he obviously didn't like being wrong. He got up and blew out the lamp, and I heard clothes being pulled off and on in the dark. I wriggled to the side of the car, and he got in bed wearing a long white flannel nightie.

  Course, the tension made sleep impossible, and for the longest time we just lay side by side, not touching, staring up at the car ceiling, listening to each other breathe lightly and rapidly. Was after who knows how long I finally heard Louis whisper, "Mabel?"

  "Yes?" I whispered back.

  "I vass hard on you in ze beginning. I am sorry."

  "That's all right, Louis."

  "Many sink they can be cat trainers. Zey know vee are paid well, and zey sink it is glamorous. If I don't chase zem away, zey can get hurt badly. It's for zer own good."

  "I know that, Louis."

  "I didn't understand you had ze gift."

  "Water under the bridge, Louis."

  There was a long pause, Louis and I lying there listening to rail sounds and rumblings. Finally he said, "Al G., he tells me you are an orphan?"

  Another long pause. I could feel Louis's eyes on the side of my face. Meanwhile, I was considering whether I really wanted to get into the whole orphan thing or not.

  "Nope. Don't know where he would've heard that. Funny how rumours get started."

  "So you're parents, zey are alife?"

  "Yep. Back in Kentucky. Working tobacco."

  "Hmmmmmm," Louis said while doing something I'd stopped expecting: one of his big sinewy hands crossed the great divide and took hold of the two smallest fingers on my good hand. The word finally popped into my head, and though I was tired enough to beat the band I wiggled toward the centre of the bed and I sidled up. A second later I felt Louis's lips on mine-his breath was warm and tasted of sourmash-and I felt one of his hands slide inside my blouse.

  After a bit of kissing and massage, I encouraged his hand to travel southward; though he did nothing more than rest his fingers on the spot where I'd placed them, his hands and fingers were trembling so badly there was a natural vibration that was not in any way unpleasant. Meanwhile, I reciprocated, pulling up his nightie and giving him a caress; he was tiny, that man, perhaps the size of a thumb, something that gladdened me for it wouldn't take much eagerness on my part to accommodate him. After a lot of kissing and touching, I rolled over and reached between my legs and guided him inside.

  After a few slow-moving strokes-men do that to show they're gracious, though you can always tell they consider it an annoyancehe began to move like greased lightning, one hand on my shoulder and one on my left breast, the bed now jiggling faster than the rail car holding it, and throughout Louis was completely silent except for a fffffffffft sound coming right at the end. Was like a punctured tire, though I took it as a signal he'd had his share and was ready for sleep.

  He got out of bed and, without looking at me, washed his face and hands and privates as thoroughly as he'd cleaned my wound. Then he got back into bed, tried to say he loved me, couldn't, and fell asleep. I stayed awake, counting rail lights, heart beating like a rabbit's, a single thought doing circles and loop-de-loops and Slides for Life in that curly blond-haired head of mine.

  Al G. would hear about this.

  He'd hear about this come morning.

  True to his word, Al G. bought me a wild Bengal from an Indian captain who had his freighter parked in San Francisco Bay. I named her Duchess. She was so wild for a while it looked like I was going to have to use a collar and chains to break her, which is a terrible way to train, carrying grudges pretty much being a hobby with tigers. Finally I gentled her onto her pedestal, though it took more than a month, and the first time I mixed her with King and Queen she opened a gash on Queen's nose, and to keep order I had to buggywhip Duchess harder than I'd ever hit an animal. She turned on me and lashed at my hand and would've done worse had Louis not been beside me to bring a whip down hard on her nose and eyes, which backed her out of the strike range but only just. She sat growling and looking scary. Meanwhile, Queen arfed at the tunnel door and King stayed on his seat, though his eyes were slit-like and fixed on Duchess's every quiver.

  While Red got the cats back into their cages, Louis held my injured hand in his own. The injury wouldn't've been so bad except a nail had caught the ring Louis had given me a few weeks previous, and it was the ring that'd torn through skin and muscles and fractured the joint, the finger now flopped over and hanging on by nothing more than skin and tissue on the far side. It took more stitches than you'd think a finger could take and never worked right after that. The one consolation was Louis nursed me again, and that nursing resulted in more nighttime affection, which pleased Al G. for the more Louis and I were together the less Louis seemed to drink. Even I was happy, for I wanted a baby and figured Louis would be as good a man as any to have one with.

  I had more wound cleaning later that season, up in Washington State, after Al G. gave me a new stallion to work during the riding act. First day in practise it bucked me, my head hitting frozen ground, opening a gash over my eye and breaking three ribs and putting me in a coma for a week. When I finally came to, I suffered from bad neck pain and partial blindness and a dizziness that was better some days than others but was never totally gone. Louis put cold compresses on me, and if I was up to it he'd clean the twisting gash above my eye with the mildest of ammonia solutions. To restore the vision in my left eye, he'd have me sleep with a witch-hazel pack, a remedy he swore by but did nothing but fill the car with the smell of fermented bark. For a full year my eyesight bothered me, until the next tiger Al G. bought me, Pasha was her name, took a swipe at me during a matinee in Leavenworth, Kansas. She opened a gash wasn't that serious but that bled like only a headwound'11 bleed-women were fainting and children screaming. Oddly enough, my vision started coming back in my left eye, and the double vision that'd bothered me every t
ime I turned my head went away too. The doctor said the cat must have ripped away a blood clot caused by the horse fall. Who knows? While I lay in hospital Louis went out and bought a half-dozen hats for me to look at, as I needed something to wear while the shaved patch grew back. I told him I couldn't decide, seeing as they were all so pretty. Louis clicked his heels, went back out again and paid for them all.

  Or: in 1916, Al G. sent me and Louis to San Bernadino to put on a lion act for some Orangemen. Midway through the act, an attendant decided he'd help out by reaching through the bars and slapping a stubborn cat on the rear. The lion screamed-not roared but screamed and after that all hell broke loose, cats attacking everything in sight including the pedestals and the bars and the other cats and of course me, my only distinct recollection being I was dragged around the cage by the arm until Louis ran in and tried to save me, getting himself chewed something furious on the right leg. Was a blur of panicking lions and screaming people and men rushing in with guns loaded with blanks and the air filling with flying hair and gob. When the cats were finally cleared out, Louis and I were left lying in bloody heaps. We looked over at each other and, I swear, smiled.

  Louis and I recuperated together, my cleaning him as best as I was able considering my arm was wired in two places, Louis cleaning me as best as he was able given the slightest movement caused him pain that sliced up and down his body like a knife. I was proud of him. The jostling of the rail car at night caused him such pain he couldn't sleep, and even then he stayed clear of the bottle. We were both a mess of bite and claw marks, Louis joking I'd brought him good luck, for until then a lot of people described him as the best unmarked trainer in the circus whereas now he was the best, period.

  Basically, we had ourselves a system. We'd take cloths and dip them in a boric solution before rinsing them thoroughly and hanging them on a line stretched across our rail car. Those we used for wound cleaning. We also mixed up several different batches of iodine solutions, each one slightly less strong than the one before. We kept them in Mason jars, lined along one wall on the floor, and as we recuperated we used weaker and weaker solutions, until the seeping got mild enough we could get stitches and wear bandages and move around. Once we started with bandages we changed them every day, Louis insisting we wash our hands in an ammonia solution. If the rips got sore, say if we hadn't stayed still enough during the day, we'd numb them with ice or creams cooling to the touch, for I didn't trust painkillers and Louis worried he might develop a taste for them. Or we'd talk our way through, diverting the mind being a lot more powerful weapon than people generally realize. It worked like a charm, every bit of it. We both got through without so much as a hint of infection, and that's saying something when you're dealing with cat marks.

  In three weeks time, we were both more or less healed and raring to get back to work. I decided to visit Al G., and as I walked across the lot the pain I felt with each step was so light I could almost pretend it wasn't there. After chatting my way past Dan, I found Al G. relaxing in his rail car, a smile framing the spot where his cigar stuck from between his teeth. Was a third of the way through the 1916 season, and he had a lot to smile about. He'd more or less won his divorce case, having settled for a lot less than Dollie had originally asked for, and his circus had grown to four rings with well over a thousand animals. Even the matinee houses were full, Barnes's theory being that a lot of young men were taken with the idea of seeing one more circus before America started sending soldiers to France. He'd bought a private rail car with a bathroom and electric lights, his other theory being that show owners ought to make the papers once in a while with what he called "demonstrations of flamboyance." It'd belonged to the millionaire William Holt, so we all called it the Holt car. Al G., feeling this undignified, named it Francesca.

  "I'm through with the lions" was what I told him. "Just don't have the knack. Louis does, but I don't. And I know that's hard to believe, what with every trainer on earth saying it's the lions that're easier to read. Hell, Louis is one of them-he can't believe I prefer the tigers, but I can only tell you my experience has been the exact opposite. Those lions are like a mystery to me. Maybe it's because they're pack animals. All I know is I get their signs mixed up every time. Tigers are what I want. If you got me one or two more, I could put on an act every bit as famous as Louis's finale. So what do you say?"

  Al G. pretended to think it over, his fingertips pressed together so they formed a church steeple. After a bit, an eyebrow lifted and he smirked.

  "Was there anything else, Kentucky?"

  "Well, just so happens there is, Al G. There is at that."

  A week later I headed into Boise city hall as Mabel Stark, born Venice, California, my proof a fake birth certificate one of the grifters got for me from who knows where. I came out as Mabel Roth, wife of the greatest big cat trainer of all time. The ceremony was in the Idaho capital, thanks to a blowdown cancelling a show and freeing up a night; we had the reception right on the lot, Al G. paying for everything, something he offered to do when Louis asked him to be best man. Was a couple of roast pigs and bathtubs full of beer and ice. Everyone came, from the performers to the workingmen to the Wild West performers to the sideshow freaks, which is why if you look at the pictures of my third wedding you'll see a girl with arms skinny and hairy like a spider's; a pair of Siamese twins from Patagonia named Eco and Ico; a man from Russian Alaska whose body was covered in fish scales; our famous dogeating Ingorrotes of the Philippines; a half-and-half named Geraldine who wore a beard covering the right side of the face only; and Bosco the glomming geek, who bit the head off a live squirrel and then swallowed it as part of a toast to the bride.

  The minstrel band set up and played until dawn, and we all danced as the wind whipped our hair and clothing. In the distance was the town, giving off a soft glow, and seeing as we were all dancing and feasting and generally having ourselves a good old-fashioned bacchanal it was hard not to feel like a band of drunken gypsies, parked on the outskirts of town. Everything went right that night. Though the workingmen got so drunk most of them could barely stand, they were kind enough to keep the fighting and town looting to a minimum. As for Louis, he stayed sober, though not so sober he didn't crack a smile and dance a little himself come midnight.

  And Al G.

  Good old Al G. Laughing and beaming and telling stories but mostly just presiding and strolling the circumference and admiring the little city he'd built. Sometime around one or two in the morning I noticed he'd disappeared, though a bit later he came back and was wearing a trench coat, which I figured he'd put on because of the wind. I was dancing with one of the Wild West boys when he came up and apologized to my partner and asked if I could come with him. I excused myself and followed Al G. to the sidelines, away from the merriment. There, he looked at me. He was so quiet and serious I thought maybe I'd done something wrong. After a half-minute he couldn't contain himself any longer and he broke into a big smile.

  "Thought I'd let you have your wedding present now." Then he opened his trench coat and showed me the real reason he'd changed; two Bengal punks were hanging on, their claws dug into Al G.'s vest. They were fluffy and mewing and red as pottery. I'd never seen anything more beautiful in all my life. Tears came to my eyes and I put a hand to my mouth and I drew breath through fingers and no matter how I tried I couldn't find the wherewithal to get out the thanks lodged in my throat.

  Instead, I named them on the spot. The one on the left I called Sultan. Was the other I named Rajah.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE BENGAL PUNK

  THE NEXT DAY, SULTAN LOOKED SNOTTY AND SHAKY AND when I checked the wicker basket the morning after that one of the punks was moving and one of them wasn't. Sultan just lay there, nose caked, spirit gone out of him. Funny how you can tell when someone or something's up and died: they take on a stillness that has the look of forever.

  Louis and I didn't tell a soul, at most maybe one or two cathouse groomers who saw my agitation. Somehow the news spr
ead anyway, and it took less than twenty minutes for the sideshow manager to come looking for us, offering to buy Sultan for a pittance so he could put him in a jar and add him to his pickled punk display. Even though he was a good half foot taller than Louis and stockier, he backed off quick when Louis waved his riding stalk under his nose and accused him of being a goon.

  That afternoon, Rajah and Sultan and I went for a walk in a forest near the lot, Rajah in the crook of my right arm and Sultan in a wicker basket I'd slung around my neck like a fruit picker's trough. Once we got there, I took it off so I could start digging. The ground was tough, but not too hard to get the shovel tip through. Though Rajah was old enough he could walk in a stagger, he mostly stayed close to me, fidgeting and rolling in leaves and chewing my pant cuffs and generally not paying the attention the circumstances were due. Meanwhile, I dug a little hole and kept Rajah amused by talking to him.

  "Now I know what you're thinking, little tiger, that your brother dying means you're all alone and believe me I know that can be a frightful prospect. But you don't have to think that way, on account of you've got yours truly to keep an eye out for you, which believe me is a better deal than I ever had. And I know I'm not a tiger but for some reason I can think like one, in fact there are times I think maybe I was one in a former life. God knows stranger things have happened, so I'd say I'm pretty much the next best thing, wouldn't you?"

  On and on I went, blabbing about tigers and loneliness and how the two somehow go together, until I'd made a nice little hole and placed the shoe box containing poor old Sultan inside. I shovelled over the hole and tamped it down nicely and when I was finished I marked it with wildflowers.

  "There. Should be an okay place. Won't get too hot in the summer, nice view through the leaves, I like the way the sun dapples...." We stood there for a few minutes more, letting Rajah pay his final respects, though to be truthful he was more interested in gnawing nervously on his own tail than in feeling mournful. After letting a wave of sadness come and go, I bent over and put the basket back round my neck, though this time with Rajah in it. We tramped out of the forest and back to the circus. On the lot I looked for Louis, as he'd promised to get me a live nanny goat seeing as how Rajah was having trouble wrapping his head around the idea of a baby bottle and hadn't eaten much for two days.