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

by Robert Hough

  "Oh Mr. John could l!"

  "Well, good. Good. I thought you'd be pleased. I hope to get them by the start of winter quarters. Would that give you enough time to train them before next year's opener?"

  "I'll make sure it does!"

  "I figured you'd say that too. Good. It's settled. You'll have the biggest cat act in America. How's that sound?"

  "Wonderful, Mr. John. Absolutely wonderful!"

  "Good, good, good, I thought you'd say that...."

  A few minutes later I left, John Ringling pleading he had a full night of work to attend to, and we must really get together another time soon. It'd been my second meeting with Mr. John, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how he'd gained a reputation for being so hardassed and fickle, for it seemed like every time he butted his nose into my affairs my life improved in a way was nothing but dramatic.

  Four days later we pulled into Bridgeport, most of us feeling sickly and green from the last night's party in Richmond, Virginia. Three days after that, I awoke early and took Rajah to the corner store, Bridgeport being the one place on earth I could take Rajah for a walk without raising a stir. Bought myself a Billboard, and would've got myself a White Tops as well except they hadn't been delivered yet. I sat at the soda bar with Rajah on the stool beside me, the soda jerk barely noticing. I ordered a float and looked at the front page.

  Suddenly I couldn't draw breath. Read the words over and over and though they made sense at the same time they didn't.

  Seemed John Ringling was cancelling all cat acts in his travelling show, citing danger to the trainers and the recent picketings by Jack Londoners. Seemed he'd always felt the cat acts caused a flow problem, what with the awkwardness of the steel arena. Seemed it was an effective cost-cutting measure, the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus being the most expensive bit of theatre ever produced in the history of mankind and one that lost money each and every time a ticket got sold. Seemed he'd still have a wild cat display, but only at the arena shows in New York City and Boston, and it seemed the display wouldn't be the one by Mabel Stark, world's best big-cat trainer, but the one by a tousle-haired newcomer borrowed away from HagenbeckWallace.

  Seemed the kid's name was pronounced "Baytee" and not, like everyone thought, "Beety."

  CHAPTER 11

  JUNGLELAND

  IT HAPPENED. KNEW IT WOULD ALL ALONG, AND YET, WELL, you hope. Deep down you think, nah, all my fretting's enough. All my worrying's plenty. You imagine a big scale in your head-bronze, with fine links and gleaming plates and an overall fineness-and you figure if you weigh it down on the bad side yourself whoever's in charge will take this into consideration and won't weigh it down even more. It's a thing we do for order. It helps us pretend things don't happen at random, which is a pretty frightening concept and the reason people get nervous when things go well; in all that quiet they can practically hear it-disaster, lurking around the corner, breathing heavily, waiting to pounce. Art once told me the Eskimos have a word for the sensation sets in when you're positive your kayak's going to tip, even though the waters are calm and there's no wind and not a dark cloud in the sky. When struck with this suspicion they dump their kayaks on purpose, the idea being the gods won't then hit them with something worse.

  What makes the whole thing even trickier is I'm starting to believe the powers above have interesting ideas about how the scale balances itself out. Though my mother wasn't a believer my father was Catholic to the core, and when I was little he used to gather me up on his lap and tell me stories from the Bible. Was lovely, just being that close to his body, listening to an accent that soft and soothing. On special occasions-Easter, say, or the Sunday before Christmas-he'd take me all the way to Louisville so I could confess and hear a proper mass. It was during those trips I learned how belief in a higher order can help calm you, can help you forget blue mould and early frost and excess rain and everything else that'll kill a tobacco crop. But then, after my mother's passing, I got shipped off to my aunt, who was about as stern and Presbyterian as it's possible to be: black dress, black granny shoes, pins in her hair the length of fingers, neck as brittle as a twig left to dry. To her, religion meant thunder and hard words (whereas to my father it'd meant grace and poetry, proof positive religion is one of those things that can only give you what you're able to receive). She sent me to church every Sunday, all day Sunday, and when I came home from school during the week I had an hour of Bible study besides. That's why I know the Good Book inside out and that's why I can say with conviction you'd be hard pressed to imagine a book more chock full of mayhem, venality, salaciousness and sin. At the same time, it's a book full of words like judgment, atonement, reckoning, just deserts-I could keep going. After a while, it's not hard to figure the two concepts must go hand in hand, so as to even things out in the end.

  Remember: I spent my adolescent years in that house of piety, and I admit there were times I took that book to bed with me and read the juicier parts by candlelight, and if that was wrong I'll apologize now. Still, I didn't think it was wrong at the time, for it was something my aunt never objected to, which I always considered strange as she did object to pretty much everything else, including dancing, ribald storytelling and talking above a certain volume. At the same time, she didn't mind me reading a book with an entire chapter devoted to the goings-on in Sodom.

  Naturally, the Sodomites got smited, which I suppose was fair, given how dirty and foul and overrun with vermin the place was getting. Fun's fun but there are limits and I understand that. What I've always had trouble understanding was the times the innocent were smited just so their faith could be tested. Here I'm talking about locusts or frogs or dust storms so bad they'd blind you, or some weird disease that killed infants by the score. The point is, just what had they done to deserve it? Some past sin the Bible skips over, due to its distastefulness? (Hard to believe, given what's already in there.) Or was it sin enough just being mortal? If so, that's pretty harsh. Reading those stories, I'd always imagine how I'd feel after a blighting and I tell you: once those locusts and frogs and dust storms and baby-killing scourges finally got called off, gratitude might not've been the thing I'd be feeling. Instead, I'd be feeling nervous.

  Instead, I'd be thinking, Just how in Sam Hill does this system work?

  Like all buildings on JungleLand property, Jeb and Ida's office was made to look like a thatched hut in Africa. It looked real in postcards, but that's about it.

  I went inside. Ida, Jeb and my press agent Parly Baer were there. I sized up the competition. Parly was an old friend and would be on my side no matter what. Ida was a snake in the grass and would fang my eyes out were it not contrary to the laws of California. Jeb was the question mark, for he and I had always got on, seeing as how he'd always had some appreciation for who I was and had always treated me accordingly. So it was hard to say where he'd come down on the Mabel Stark problem. Yes, Ida was his wife and had undue influence for that reason. At the same time, he understood I'd been centre ring on the Ringling show of the twenties, and to fire me would be a slap in the face of the circus at a time it sure didn't need one.

  Course, this was straw grasping, there being nothing but silence when I sat down and said hello to the three of them. Ida was smoking a menthol, the smell of which made me want to sneeze. Jeb and Parly kept shooting glances at each other. Finally Parly spoke, though when he went to use his voice it came out as a croak so he had to pretend he'd been intending to cough. He started all over.

  "Mabel," he said, "it's not just you. It's Chief and Tyndall as well. It's your age, Mabel. Damn insurance company thinks you're too much of a risk. Chief and Tyndall, too. Besides, Mabel, you can't work your whole life. You have to stop one of these days. You have to take a rest sometime."

  At this I pretty much went hysterical, something that involved standing and leaning over the desk so my face was in Jeb's and spouting he was a goddamn two-faced liar and if he or Ida ever, ever, tried to take my kitties away from me I'd come
back and let myself in the steel arena and challenge one of the meaner ones, Mommy or Tiba, say, over a hippo steak. Hearing this, Jeb sputtered and spurted until Ida hissed a plume of smoke and said, "C'mon Jeb, we don't have to listen to this."

  They both stood and walked out, though Jeb did say, "I'm sorry, Mabel," before having his elbow yanked on by his wife. Just sat there crying, I did. Crying and crying and crying. Parly came around the desk and pulled up a chair and said, "Listen to me, Mabel. Jeb and Ida, well Ida mostly, they wanted me to escort you out of here today. This minute. I told them no way, uh-uh, we're talking about the greatest woman big-cat trainer ever lived, maybe the best period, and if word gets out you treated her this way you'll regret it. You have to let her say goodbye to her cats. You've got to let her clean and feed and water them tomorrow. I argued for it long and hard, Mabel, for Ida was dead set against the idea. She said you'd vandalize something, or hurt one of the tigers, shows you how much she knows. So you're not helping with all this talk about killing yourself with the tigers. You're not helping one bit. You've got to tell me you'll behave tomorrow, so I can go tell Jeb and Ida you can be trusted to have one last morning with them. Can I tell them that, Mabel? Can I?"

  A numbness set in, the same numbness I first knew way back when with my Hopkinsville tubbings, the nerves firing until they couldn't fire any more and then a calm that feels like cold exhaustion takes root. Suddenly I didn't care. About me, about JungleLand, about the tigers. I didn't care one whit. I'd done nothing but care for the past sixty years and now I was worn out and in need of a lie-down.

  "Yes," I told Parly. "You can."

  Parly drove me home, parking my big old Buick in the spot behind my house and then asking if I was sure I'd be okay. I told him yes, I'd just been talking it up back in Jeb and Ida's hut, though before he'd let me go inside I had to promise not to do anything stupid or rash. I was in such a daze it never even occurred to me he had no way of getting himself home, and to this day I'm not exactly sure what he did. Probably went to one of the neighbours', I suppose Pauline the cook, and called himself a cab.

  I went inside and got a Hamm's and sat in my easy chair. Just sat there admiring the inside of my house-curtains, sofa, framed needleworks on the walls. Funny. It was the worst day I'd ever had and all I could think was how satisfied I was with the colour I'd picked for my wallpaper. A lot of people don't like green, but I think a nice light shade's restful on the eyes. Makes you think of forests, or tended lawns, or tiger eyes.

  So I sat there for the longest time. Not so much thinking as mesmerized by the wallpaper. Time passed and there was a ring at the door and I got up and Pauline was there holding my supper. Steam was rising between the gaps in the tinfoil and dampening the underside of her chin. She took one look at me and started sniffling, her eyes filling with water the same way Parly's had in the meeting. I ended up inviting her in and sitting her down and giving her a cup of cool water and telling her that, really, it was all for the best, it's true I was upset before but I'm okay now, besides who ever heard of a woman my age doing what I did for a living? Was a blessing, I told her, for it'd give me time to do some knitting and some gardening plus I had a whole bunch of Billboards and White Tops and Bob Denver fan club newsletters to get through.

  After a while she left, though not before I'd given her more of the same don't-worry-I'll-be-fine assurances I'd given Parly. My head felt foggy. I didn't feel like eating even though she'd made my favourite, beef stew with tea biscuits to sop up the gravy. Wasn't a coincidence, I figured.

  Instead, I got another Hamm's and watched Gilligan and never laughed harder. Tears were rolling down my cheeks and I was holding my stomach, I thought it was so funny. After that, I took two of Dr. Brisbane's pills and slept like a log, and the next morning I took another couple to see me through what I had to do that day. I ate my corn mush squares and my bacon and my black coffee and, like any other day, backed that big old Buick of mine into traffic. Pulled onto the Ventura freeway, sticking to the slow lane, for one thing I've never really liked is driving and in particular driving fast. That's the reason I drive a car as long as my house is deep-it makes me feel protected.

  Got into work at exactly 6:20. It hardly seemed possible this was going to be my last day with Goldie, Tiba, Toby, Ouda, Mommy, Prince and Khan. Thinking about this, I felt a twinge of loneliness for old Dale, a magnificent cat with a head like a bear's, who'd died about a year previous. Course, Roger's car was the only other car there; I went inside for the last time and he was waiting at my cage line, fretting and reminding me of Dan the educated valet, the way every thought that ever went through his head was splashed across his face. First thing he did was rush up and say how sorry he was and that firing me was a disgrace and a situation somebody ought to do something about. Then he stopped and came a little closer so he could be heard in a lowered voice, something that struck me as unnecessary seeing as there wouldn't be another person around for at least another hour.

  "Mabel," he said, "you won't ... I mean ... you're not really thinking ..."

  I looked at him sternly and said, "Oh for goodness' sake Roger. What's wrong with everybody? It's high time you remember I'm an old lady and old ladies have a habit of blowing off steam once in a while. It's called crankiness, Roger. It's called sore joints and bad sleep and indigestion. It's called knowing the best's so far behind you it might as well never've happened. It's called not having a man since 1932. For heaven's sake I'll be fine."

  By this point he was laughing, and though amusing him hadn't been my intention I didn't mind that it had. We went to work. I took out my tools and put Goldie in the exercise pen and put Toby and Tiba in the ring and started sweeping cages, moving tigers as we needed. As we'd done a hundred times before, we cleaned the wheelbarrow at seven and started feeding, making sure Goldie got her shoulder blade and Mommy her shank. While the animals ate, we scrubbed the blood gutter, leaving everything spotless and then having ourselves a cup of coffee, Roger telling me what he thought of last night's episode as he'd made himself a fan of Gilligan's Island just to please me, and damn it if I wasn't sitting there, chatting with him as though this day was the same as any other.

  At 8:45 we boned out and by nine I was watching my tigers settle down to sleep, thinking, Never ever again, though at the same time feeling like it was someone else who was having these thoughts. Maybe it was my mother's voice, forcing me not to feel anything, or maybe it was Dr. Brisbane's pills, which forced me not to feel anything as well. Either way, I was looking at claws and whiskers and tails and beautiful black-and-orange coats and wet pink noses, and none of these features were adding up to tiger. Whether I was cheated or whether I was spared is hard to say.

  Some time went by, how much I couldn't honestly say, though after a bit I noticed Roger was standing on one side of me and Parly was on the other side of me and maybe a dozen feet away were JungleLand's carny owners, just looking on, grim-faced.

  In other words, it was time.

  "Mabel," Parly said, "we thought maybe Roger and I could see you got home safe and sound."

  "Yes," Roger echoed, "safe and sound," and when I agreed I was happy at least there was a little forethought this time around, Roger driving my car and Parly following behind in his Ford. We got to my house and they both looked so worried and sheepish I thought, Ah what the hell they might as well come on in.

  "You boys like a Hamm's?"

  There must've been something unusual in the way I said it for they peered at each other, all surprised, before looking relieved and saying yes. To tell you the truth, it was unusual, for it's been my policy for the past thirty-six years to keep a manless house. A lot of my neighbours are ex-circus but at the same time a lot aren't, and the last thing I need is them seeing men traipsing in and out and getting wrong ideas about the old circus woman at 3076.

  Roger and Parly came on in. They looked kind of nervous, like they'd stepped inside a museum, until I told them to take a load off. I gave them each a can of bee
r and watched as they pulled the tabs and slurped. Then I opened a bag of Cheezies and it was like we were having a little party, only one without much in the way of talking. If they'd been women, I suppose they would've given me a pep talk, or maybe they would've sobbed a little on my behalf, or one would've gone off and come back with a Bundt cake and coffee. They weren't, however, meaning they just sat there, looking glum and taking glugs of beer and making grim small talk about the weather and baseball and the general state of the circus world. Though they meant well, it was depressing as hell, so when they'd both finished their beers I stood and said, "Well, boys, was great seeing you but I suppose things're busy at JungleLand. Suppose you've all got a lot to do."

  They looked at each other, stunned. Parly said, "You don't want us to stay a little longer? Maybe help with the dishes?" to which I said, "And what dishes would those be, Parly? The bowl holding the Cheezie dust? C'mon. I'm an old woman and I may not have a job but I've got my health and I've got my marbles and that's a lot more than a lot of ladies my age have. Tell you what. You don't feel sorry for me and I won't feel sorry for me, deal?"

  This made them confident I wasn't about to do anything rash, so they put on their jackets and it was a moment in which it would've been appropriate for them to each give me a hug or a kiss. It was also a moment in which I regretted the guard I'd built up over the years, the one communicating to the world Mabel Stark doesn't accept humanly contact. So instead I saw them to the door. From my stoop I watched them each give a little wave before getting into Parly's Ford and driving off.