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

by Robert Hough

  The final show was sometime in late November in Tempe, Arizona. I didn't even go to the farewell party, just locked my door and listened to the hooting and hollering rage on outside while Rajah and I had a quiet evening in. Next day, the circus packed up and moved to temporary winter quarters in Phoenix, Arizona, the rumour being that divorce lawyers hired by Leonora Speeks were already picking apart everything back in Venice and Portland.

  I spent the next day and a half reading and knitting and taking Rajah on field walks. Was a happy time, being alone with a cat and a rosy-looking future. Midway through the following afternoon, the eastbound came. A Negro porter deboarded, having been instructed to be on the lookout for a white woman, a steamer trunk and a housecat the size of a sofa.

  PART TWO

  THE RINGLING SHOW

  CHAPTER 9

  THE RINGLING ACCOUNTANT

  IT TOOK THREE DAYS TO GET RAJAH ALL THE WAY TO Bridgeport. At every whistle stop I'd gentle him and coo at him through wire mesh, and if the baggage hands were susceptible to flirtation I'd leash him and take him out for little walks around the rail yard, Rajah arfing and moaning when I put him back. He lost weight and piddled like an old person.

  By the time we reached Bridgeport, there were already spots where his hair was growing sparse. A different winter quarters with different people didn't help much either. Within a week and a half, he was bald as a pool cue, again, meaning I was subjected to the usual jokes about my prize tiger and how if old P.T. was still alive he'd advertise him as a rare hairless sabretooth from the northern plains of Manchuria. I was living in a hotel in downtown Bridgeport that didn't allow pets, much less wild ones, and though Rajah spent all day following me around I still had to put him in a menage pen at night. Slowly he adjusted to his new life, though I do mean slowly: we'd been there a month and only small, plum-sized patches of hair had grown back, his coat looking more checkerboard than regal. Two weeks into the new year, I started to worry my famous wrestling tiger might not be ready for the season opener in New York City. Nervousness or no nervousness, he had to start working again.

  That afternoon, I leashed Rajah and let him into the practise arena. He went to his pedestal, in fact he looked sharp doing so, which is why I suppose my guard was down. I turned my back and gave the signal and a second later I had a tiger around my shoulders, nuzzling the spot of neck between ears and back. He leaned his weight against me, this being Rajah's way of pushing me down and smothering me with fur and body. Lying under him, I felt pleased, so I said, "Good Rajah, that's real good," and to show he understood he purred and began a series of wriggles and warm undulations.

  At which point a tapir wandered by.

  Now I don't know if you've ever seen a live tapir. In this day and age there're zoos in pretty much every decent-sized city and the average person knows a whole lot more about animals than the average person in 1921, so I assume you have. But just in case you haven't, believe me when I say a tapir could just be the ugliest animal ever put on this green earth, and that's saying something given we also have pugs, duck-billed platypuses and the naked mole rat. In other words: wrinkly black body, a little like a donkey and a little like a horse and a little like neither, along with a face that'd be nothing worse than mopey except for a long, dong-like thing dangling where a nose should rightfully be. What this tapir was doing wandering free is anybody's guess, though at times the menage hands did let the gentler animals out when they cleaned their cages. Though it was strictly against the rules, it meant they didn't have to find other cages to put them in.

  Anyway, I was lying there, peering through the gap between tiger and floor, when the tapir stopped and looked and let his face-dong waggle with curiosity. I suppose he'd never seen a big naked cat lying atop a woman before, and I suppose this bizarre sight inspired him to let out the screechy barking noise tapirs make when they want to comment on something. Suddenly I could feel Rajah's muscles clench, and I knew something was wrong. He growled, stood and started toward the tapir, who was braying like a lanced mule and waggling his dong-thing so furiously it was practically a blur. The one thing the tapir wasn't doing was backing away from the cage bars, common sense never being a trait among animals who defend themselves by looking weird enough to frighten.

  Meanwhile, Rajah was stalking his way toward the outer cage, his ears back and his body low. It was clear once he reached the bars he was going to reach through and take the tapir's dong-thing clean off and probably its head right along with it. And while the thought of a dead tapir didn't upset me greatly, it was equally true I didn't have much clout with the Ringlings, seeing as so far my world-famous act had amounted to nothing but a bald tiger whose sorrowful arfing kept the other animals up all night. Under no circumstances could Rajah kill that tapir. By the time I figured this out, however, he was exactly one tiger step away, meaning all I could do was lunge forward, yell, "Rajah no!" and take hold of his tail.

  Was sheer stupidity, my forgetting Rajah was tiger, for he chose that moment to take out all his perturbation of the past six weeks. Meaning: he turned and swung a forepaw full force at my head. He kept his claws in, which proves he was only trying to issue a complaint (though even if he had killed me I wouldn't have blamed him for it was my fault trying to work him so soon). In the end, it didn't make much difference who was at fault and who wasn't at fault, for I was lying flat on my back out cold. At least I was doing better than the tapir.

  I woke up in the Ringling infirmary with a jackhammer for a head. When they asked me if I was all right I assured them I was fine, though in truth I was soon pestered by headaches and dizziness and, most worrisome, periods in which my hearing would go on the fritz, everyone sounding as though they were standing a long way off and mumbling. Around this time, I stopped kidding myself that Rajah would be ready for the season opener in New York. If I wanted to keep my reputation I needed to find something interesting and cat-like to train, and I needed to find it quick.

  So I went for a good long walk through the Ringling menage. I'd done it before but this time I had my eyes peeled and that's a different experience altogether. I saw black bears, brown bears, grey bears and polar bears taken from Eskimo villages in Greenland. I saw nilgai, black bucks, aoudads, gemsbok antelope and the tapir bought to replace the tapir Rajah had beheaded. I saw six giraffes from the plains of Ethiopia; because of their specially built car, the Ringling circus had to be routed so it didn't encounter any tight tunnels or low bridges, which was possible only because the Ringlings owned half the railroads in the country. I saw hippopotamuses from the Transvaal, orangutans from Borneo, howler monkeys from British Honduras and tiny rhesus monkeys from the jungles of India (who by the way are the only monkeys on earth with a natural friendliness about them, chimps being testy and gorillas being grumpy and the orangs being out-and-out vicious). I saw Peruvian llamas, Ecuadorean pumas, Mexican macaws, Nicaraguan toucans and oscillated turkeys lifted straight from the jungles of Guatemala. I saw sea lions, sea elephants and sea turtles. Saw rhinoceruses, elephants and jumbo the hippopotamus (who like Barnes's hippo was fed only water dyed red, it being the fashion back then for circus hippos to sweat what was supposed to be blood so they looked like something from the Book of Revelation). I saw kangaroos, koalas and hairy-nosed wombats. I saw bats and snakes and spiders and serpents and salamanders, all sideshow-bound. I saw camels and horses and zebras (though back then troupers called zebras convicts, owing to their stripes). I saw yaks and bison and Vietnamese water buffaloes. I saw a white stallion with a papier-mache horn that'd be billed as a unicorn if someone could figure out how to stop the horn from shaking free every time the horse hiccuped. I saw pigs and Sicilian burros and goats and deer. I even saw a wild boar or two, with their tiny, pig-like eyes and wine-corklength horns.

  Plus I saw Nigger.

  Now I know that's a dirty word today, but back then people used it all the time and if you want me to apologize for the sins of an age well maybe I should. Still, there's no denying when I fir
st laid eyes on him, I was struck by how dark he was, darker than the darkest of the Negro stake drivers. Even in sunlight there wasn't a suspicion of purple in his coat or the spots that lay underneath; right then and there I decided I had to work him, a pure blackness being something that's mighty rare and beautiful to look at.

  I admit there was also a healthy dose of my own vanity at work here, for until then there hadn't been a trainer in the history of the circus who'd tried working a jaguar, probably because every other trainer in the history of the circus had had the horse sense not to, jaguars being evil, flat-foreheaded beasts who in addition to suffering from extreme hostility are fast as greased lightning. The only upside was if they attacked, they were small enough you'd most likely survive.

  This one had been bought by a Ringling animal hunter in Barbados and had been shipped to Bridgeport in a wooden crate. Throughout the trip he kept trying to batter his way out, so the Creole deckhands had driven nails through the sideboards. The upshot was the cat had gotten scratched and punctured and perforated on the way over, something that didn't help his disposition one iota.

  I started breaking him. Thankfully, the rest of the act was trained, for it took all winter, hours and hours a day, a whip in one hand and a sawed-off broom handle in the other. Was ages before I even got Nigger to entertain the notion of taking a pedestal, and even then I had to put a second pedestal between the two of us, seeing as he had a bad habit of acting quiet and kitten-like before launching a sudden spitting swipe at the eyes. The key, of course, was rewarding him every time I drew close and he didn't launch one of those big muscled forepaws at my eyes (jaguars having paws of a size that wouldn't look out of place on a Sumatran).

  I told him he was a good baby a hundred times a day. I dropped him enough hunks of beef to feed an adult lion, his nervous energy burning it off as fast as he could lap it up. When he was on his hind legs, pawing the air, I'd tickle his pleasure spot with the broom end, a niceness that confused him and made him spit. Then one day it happened. You're a good cat crossed his mind. You could see it pass over him. Just sat there, he did, head cocked, mulling the whole prospect over. Was as though I'd convinced him tenderloin wasn't good eating.

  After that, Nigger was still miles from being docile, but he did start considering the possibility of being agreeable on the occasions when there was something in it for him. I got him to sit up, something he'd been doing all along, only now he was doing it for meat and not because he wanted to wave his claws in my face. Then I started sending him through hoops, his size and agility allowing him to jump twice as far as a tiger. Plus I got him to do tricks with the Bengals in the steel arena, something that wasn't supposed to be possible with a jaguar, no how, no way.

  Late one afternoon, about two weeks before the season opener, I was sending the last of the Bengals through the cage tunnel when I smelled cigar. I looked over and realized John Ringling had been watching the whole thing. Though it was winter and the cat barn was chilly, there was no cause to be wearing a full-length Italian virgin wool coat and kid gloves besides. He looked at me for a few seconds, sucking on his cigar. Then he pulled it from his mouth and walked away, looking not at all displeased.

  So.

  April 22, 1921, Madison Square Garden, Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Greatest Show on Earth. We opened with a spec the Ringlings had been putting on for years called "The Durbur of Delhi." As the name suggested, it was East Indian in flavour, and included four dozen elephants, each mounted with a howdah and a waving red-dotted girl inside, two dozen stallion-drawn Roman chariots and a float done up to look like the golden dragon Chu Chin Chow.

  Then came the aerialists, a picture act pure and simple, intended to please the senses rather than thrill. The bandmaster, Merle Evans, would spur the orchestra into something lush and romantic. Then thirty-six girls, each one dressed like an Andalusian, with red skirts and black net stockings and a rose between her teeth, would invert themselves and hang from a rope crooked through the knee. Then they'd rotate slowly and in syncopation, bathed in red and green and gold, their arms extended and their smiles fluorescent. Was a thing of beauty, seeing all those young women rotate in tandem, particularly if you consider slow precision a form of beauty. Plus a lot of chest area was caught by swirling light, giving the dads in the audience something to remember now that the citizen groups had pretty much railroaded cooch into carnivals and burlesque halls and the lowlier wagon shows. After a few minutes, the music would wind down and the girls would get lowered to the big top floor and Fred Bradna-top hat and monocle in place -would announce, "Ladies and gentlemen, all eyes on the centre ring steel arena ..."

  In other words, me. The Ringlings believed the cat trainer should go on soon as possible so they could get the steel arena out of the way early. With an orchestra blare I came in wearing my white leathers, waving and smiling and cracking my whip for effect. Then came the tigers: eight of them, beautiful Bengals all, beef fed and straw bedded and mighty pawed, their coats gleaming from egg baths and visits with a real veterinarian. Then it was Nigger's turn, lurching down the tunnel, looking left and right.

  The audience hushed, for Nigger started pacing the arena like a caged animal, which I suppose was fair though it upset me anyway. I followed him at a respectful distance while shouting, "Seat, Nigger! Seat!" When this didn't work I kept trying to cut him off to get him to his pedestal, which is impossible to do in a circular arena, Nigger doubling back and crossing behind the line of Bengals. I finally got him on the pedestal around the seven-minute mark, the time at which the display would normally be over.

  Truth is, I was starting to get nervous, for the Ringlings were sticklers for punctuality, believing flow was what made a circus and not the contribution of any single act or performer (the one possible exception being the elephants). So I flowed. Or leastways I tried to. Sent the Bengals through their sit-ups and rollovers and hoop jumps as fast as was possible, forgetting Nigger completely until it came time for the finale. This was the only trick I couldn't excuse him from, for he was the top, and without him I would've just had a bunch of tigers sitting in an odd-looking clump instead of the world's first tiger-topped-withjaguar pyramid.

  He wouldn't do it. Just plain refused. As the Bengals took their positions, he kept taking little runs at me from his seat, which I'd fend off by sticking my broomstick into his mouth. Or I'd pull out my gun and fire blanks in his face, cats not being fond of loud noises or the smell of gunpowder. He'd slink back to his pedestal and snarl and glare and generally do everything in his power to look menacing. It was around then the world went silent.

  It didn't particularly bother me, my damn hearing picking that moment to up and go, for blocking out all the noise and clamour did help me focus on the problem at hand, something I sorely needed with a pissed-off jaguar lunging at me every few seconds. It was like we were alone together, everything quiet and thick as though underwater. Meanwhile, I had to keep an eye out for the Bengals, for even the best tiger on earth will turn ferocious if it detects a weakness in its trainer. In other words, I had a lot on my plate. By the ten-minute mark I was soaking wet. Around the twenty-minute mark, John Ringling himself left his box and came arena-side and started yelling, "Give it up, Mabel!" Truth was, I couldn't hear the man, didn't even know he was there, though later I was told he went pink in the face and the skin padding his chin started to wobble. Even if I had heard him I probably wouldn't've obeyed for if a cat wins a battle even once you can never work that animal again. At the thirty-minute mark I decided I was good and angry, and to hell with who was watching and any sensibilities might be involved. So I walked up to that snarling almond-eyed devil and I stared him straight in the eye and I unnerved him by smiling.

  Was a move dangerous and foolhardy and one resorted to only in the spirit of absolute frustration, for I was offering up my body as a target: had he leaped, there would've been nothing but nothing I could've done. This was the point, for I'd found in the past if you show an animal
you trust them completely it can have a calming effect. Course, I'd forged this theory with Rajah and trained Bengals and not on a bitter black jaguar who still yearned for palm trees and warm ocean trade winds. I tried it anyway. Instead of springing, he looked at me perplexed, as if to say, Now what could she be up to? Then he relaxed. You could practically see the tension flow out of his shoulders and jaw. Next thing I knew he was jumping off his pedestal and not just moving to the top of the pyramid but moving there sharply. The applause came in the form of a roar, which I heard because my hearing had come back, though to my left ear only, meaning for a second I thought one half of the tent had liked the trick and the other half for some reason hadn't. Sightlines, I figured.

  As I exited through the blue curtain, the performers from the next display all patted me on the back and said, "Way to show 'em, Mabel! Way to hang tough!" Was a case of them being nice, I figured, so I headed straight to my car and collapsed beside Rajah and spent a long, miserable night holding my tiger. Here I'd been paid to provide flow and spectacle, and instead I'd taken thirty minutes to get an animal no bigger than a large dog to move from one seat to another. Mighty impressive. As I didn't sleep well, I slept late, wakening to the sound of knocking on my car door.