by Robert Hough
The rest of the day I went about my routine-caring for my cats, doing a little training but only a little, riding High School in both shows, helping to load the tigers onto the flat cars, and then lying down beside Art in our darkened suite at the end of the day. I made sure I undressed in the dark, and seeing as this was a policy I'd always had anyway, Art didn't take any notice. As I cuddled up he started chattering away. "I've been giving some good hard thought about boys' names, Mabel, and to my way of thinking I've got it pretty much narrowed to Michael, Thomas, Wesley, Jake, Leonard, Parker, James, Cornelius, Beauregard, Pete, Julius, Richard, Lewis, Kenneth, Conrad or Frank. Any of those reach out and grab you? Hmmmm, Mabel?"
I didn't answer, my mind a thousand miles away, Art having to nudge me in the side and say, "You listening, Mabel?" Though I told him I was, that all those names were fine, I was really thinking about what I'd just done with Rajah, and how awful it is when life forces you to confront the things that give you pleasure.
The next day, in a town called Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I stayed away from Rajah altogether, feeling guilty about doing so but figuring I was punishing myself as much as I was punishing him. Two days after that, May 8 and 9, we were in Pittsburgh, and during those dates I felt fine and rested and like I was getting back my grip on things, which turned out to be a dangerous way of thinking for the very next day, in a place called Morgantown, West Virginia, I allowed myself to visit Rajah again, just to see how he was doing and give him a cuddle, never stopping to think why it was I'd brought a clean towel along. We visited a good long time, enough that after a while I started thinking, Good, there's nothing wrong with me. I barely feel tempted, so I stood and walked out, giving Rajah a hug and a kiss and that's all.
(Which was not at all what happened the next day, May 11, in a town called Clarksburg, West Virginia, an over-the-hill Mabel Stark sitting down beside a dozing old tiger, and because she'd proved the day before she didn't suffer from any sort of compulsion or obsession she goes ahead and she pulls the same three tiger claws against the underside of her arm, watching blood rise and fine mist sift and all the while she tells herself, See, it was nothing, I didn't enjoy that, uh-uh, no way, no reason anyone would.) May 12 and 13 we were in Charleston, where a blowdown hit so fast we couldn't get the big top down in time, meaning everything got blown all over hell's half acre and a fuming Charles Curley left behind a team of workingmen to deal with the mess, all of which involved hiring a private locomotive to pull the section of train he'd had to leave with the clean-up crew. May 14 we were in Beckley and May 15 we were in Roanoke, two little towns where there was nothing to do and if there's anything that'll make a person succumb to their predilections it's boredom. On May 16 we pulled into Waynesboro, where one of the High School riders got thrown from her horse and broke her collarbone so badly she was howling and weeping and bent as a pretzel when they took her out of the ring. May 17 and 18, Richmond, where Lillian Leitzel got her plange count up to 184, John Ringling telegraphing her afterwards with a message that must've pleased her mightily, for the next day she walked around with her nose lifted even higher than normal, and because this didn't bother me one little bit I knew I was happy as happy gets and as a result God's unseen hands were just waiting to get me and grab me and squeeze the life out of me and it was this knowledge that kept me fighting the inclination to visit Rajah. May 19, Norfolk, and then on to Virginia Beach, the jump less than an hour. Because the circus pulled in before midnight, the local speakeasies, brothels and betting houses experienced a brief one-night bonanza. May 21, Durham, North Carolina, and a little farm girl from the tobacco end of Kentucky knew she had a problem, but because she was her mother's daughter she refused to admit it to herself, meaning she continued to put her head down and work and pretend everything was like it was before Art's announcement she was going to be a mother this time next year. May 22, Raleigh, and it was there, late in the day, just before the jump, that Art grabbed me in our Pullman and roughly pushed up my sleeves, which I'd been keeping buttoned to the wrist even though the weather had turned agreeable. We both looked down. A silent, miserable few seconds passed. Art's eyes looked jellied. Glancing back down, I saw the underside of my arms as he was seeing them instead of how I usually saw them. Was no denying it. The skin was swirled with scratches, like the swooping criss-crosses bugs make on the surface of a pond.
Art eyeballed me, and I do believe it was the first time I ever saw him look flustered or upset or just plain incapable of handling a situation. It took him a long time to talk, but when he did it came out like a crackling. And though his words probably won't mean much to you, understand they were one of the last things he ever said to me, and that they still wound every time I think of them.
"Goddammit, Mabel," he said. "Can't you just be happy?"
Which brings me to yet another subject we need to hash out. Words. Used to be they came to me in sentences, in paragraphs, in sequences. Used to be they came to me in order. Now they come the way time does, though with more of a vengeance. They come to me mixed up, blazing, intending only to confuse, subtle as a hailstorm. They come to me hollering, and when they do it's only a matter of time before they get reduced to those five old awful word s-can't you just be happy?and they repeat, over and over, till I want to hold my head and yell with the shame of it, for if I'd dealt with those five words when Art first posed them then maybe he'd be an old man today. Maybe it's my age, or maybe it's my medication, or maybe it's me being so upset about the way things're playing themselves out. All I know is my thoughts are a maelstrom, that keeping them straight is exhausting me and that in the centre of that maelstrom is a quiet plan, born on that valley ridge with Roger Haynes. You tell me. How many words do you think I've used in this little confession? Has it been ten thousand? Has it been a hundred? All I know is I've been at it for weeks now and the only thing that's made any sense or given me any comfort is the idea of doing what I'm thinking of doing to myself. Maybe the problem is I'm not done talking yet, and when I finally get out this last little bit all my words'll have added up and given me the things I was hoping to get out of this damn confession in the first place, like calm, like peace, like rest.
Like ... absolution.
On May 23, 1927, the Ringling circus pulled into a place called Laurinburg, North Carolina, a destination only because it broke the jump between Raleigh and Charleston. Since the big top held the whole town, Curley killed the evening performance, figuring it'd been a time since everyone had had a night off that wasn't a Sunday. The matinee went fine, and after doing my riding bit I went to the menage to visit with Rajah and work my other tigers. Then I went back to the train to have a bit of a read and a lie down. When I got up it was already close to five, so I decided to go back to the lot and find Art and see if he wanted to go into town for dinner, a practice customary on Sundays and nights off. As I was pulling on my dungarees there was a knock on my door. I opened up.
It was May Wirth's mother, frowning and wringing her hands and looking generally perturbed. When she spoke, it was in an Australian accent that hadn't been weakened one iota by her time in America.
"They say you used to be a nurse?"
"A long, long time ago."
"Then come. Please. Help."
I followed her down the line of rail cars. A strong wind had picked up; it was ruffling my hair and swirling paper and when I looked up I noticed the skies were darkening. As soon as we entered her daughter's stateroom I could tell by the smell someone was seriously ill. That someone was May, the riding sensation from Perth.
She was a pretty girl, May, much prettier than Leitzel and a far sight nicer. Truth was, I admired her and wanted to help, particularly when I saw how sick she was. Her face, which was pale at the best of times, had turned the white of chalk. Her hands, which were gripping her bedspread at her throat, had wizened, the skin wrinkly and the joints enlarged. Next to her bed was a pan filled with greenish sick.
I sat on the bed beside her and could feel the s
heets were dampened with sweat. Her forehead was hot as a grill. Meanwhile May lay perfectly still, her eyes unfocused and at half-mast. Her breathing was raspy, and a remnant of sick spanned the corners of her mouth. With each slow breath it bubbled up and then popped messily.
"May," I said, "it's Mabel Stark. Can you hear me?"
She nodded weakly, and I was beginning to plan a course of action when she came off the bed, the muscles in her neck and face distending, poor little May leaning over the side of her bed and releasing a torrent of pale green waste into the already filled pan. When she was finished, she collapsed back on her pillow and gave a long, pained moan. She pulled the blanket back up to her chin and I decided to have a look at the whole of her, so I took the bedspread from her weakened hands and, bunching it with the bedsheet, pulled it down. Just as I'd thought, she'd soiled the bottom half of her as well.
"How long's she been this way?" I asked May's mother.
"Two hours, maybe three. It started with pains in her stomach."
I put a cold compress on May's forehead. Her lips trembled for a second and she closed her eyes. If she was any more comfortable, she sure didn't look it.
"I guess it's some sort of flu," I said. "It's best we get her cleaned up
Again I pulled down her bedsheets, though this time I pulled May's arms and got her sitting, something that inspired another round of convulsions and vomiting. With her mother's help, I pulled off her nightgown and changed her into something with flannel in it. As her mother held her, I cleaned up the lower half of her bed as best as I was able and then covered the wetness with towels and we laid her back down. May took a deep breath and closed her eyes and seemed to fall asleep, though I could see from the droplets on her upper lip and forehead it wasn't so much sleep she was having as the stupification caused by fever. Every twenty seconds or so she'd give the meek, shuddering groan that indicates a person's insides are aching and aching fiercely. I felt for her, I really did, though I wasn't unduly worried for I'd seen lots of people with bad flus back at St. Mary's, and knew it was a rare one a healthy young person couldn't recover from.
"Well," I said to May's mother, "she's sick all right but so long as she gets enough liquids twelve hours from now you'll see improvement. I'm not saying it's going to be pretty, but keep giving her water and she'll pull through."
I stepped outside and was about to pursue my plan of finding Art and having some dinner when one of the elderly Concellos, long past his flying years, came bustling along the train, his old face a mask of worry. Spotting me, he took my hand and pulled me along the train while saying, "Please. Hurry. Please. Is-a Antoinette."
The Concellos were a big family and they occupied a row of staterooms that could be opened up to make one long Pullman. The old Concello pulled me inside and again I was greeted with the smell of sickness. A whole group of people, flying Concellos all, were huddled around a bed no doubt occupied by the ailing Antoinette. No one turned to acknowledge me, they being too busy fretting and arguing in Italian, so I stood there not knowing what I was supposed to do.
The old Concello took my wrist. "Come," he said. "Dis-a way, please." When he spoke, the other Concellos turned and, seeing I was there, backed away from the bed so I could look at poor Antoinette. Even from across the room I could tell she was suffering from the same pallor, convulsions and ungodly stains. I moved closer. If anything, Antoinette was even sicker, for the smells were fouler and her eyes had loosened in the sockets and were pointing toward her nose. Plus when she vomited she didn't even have the energy to lift herself off the bed, the evil greenness just gurgling out of her mouth and down the side of her neck. Someone handed me a damp cloth and I wiped Antoinette's face. It was then I noticed her lips were so cracked and dry that every time she groaned flakes of dead skin flapped and wavered. This made me sufficiently impatient I turned and barked.
"For Christ's sake, can't you see the girl's drying up? She's got the flu!"
This inspired a hubbub, the Concellos who spoke English explaining what I'd said to the Concellos who didn't speak English. When everyone understood, my diagnosis was met with grim expressions and mutterings. The men turned their backs as I had the women clean up Antoinette, who hung limply as she had her clothes changed and her body sponged. Then I had the women change the sheets and put down towels and return Antoinette to bed. She was shivering and clutching her torso and saying in English how much it hurt and how cold she was. I kept dampening her forehead and mouth, water seeping through the cracked dried crevices of her lips. It was a hell of a flu, this, and though I told the Concellos I'd seen lots of cases like it back in my nursing days, the truth was I was beginning to question whether I really had.
"Remember," I said. "Water. Plenty of it. She gets any more dehydrated that's when the problems'll start for real."
This sparked another burst of yammering and hand gesturing, everyone suddenly so emotional I made it real simple by pointing at my open mouth and saying. "Water. Acqua. Lots of it."
I left the Concello suite and headed back to my stateroom. The winds had turned into a full-out gale, and I had to stoop so's not to get blown over. There I changed into clothes that hadn't been sicked and sweated on. I'd just finished when there was another knock on my door; I almost didn't answer, for I figured it was someone else without enough sense to treat a flu with liquids and clean bedsheets.
Instead it was Doc Ketchum. The long strand of hair he normally kept plastered over the top of his head had come loose and was irritating one eye.
"Mabel," he said gravely. "I could use your help."
I let him come in. He rearranged his hair and then rubbed his eyes hard with the base of his hands.
"Been busy?" I asked.
"I've been at it for three hours."
"Some flu," I said.
"I thought so too."
I nodded knowingly, but then stopped. If my ears weren't playing tricks he'd used the past tense.
"You thought so?"
He nodded, tight-lipped. "Then I helped Con Colleano take a piss."
"So?"
"Was blood in it. Mabel. I'm gonna need a good nurse."
I raced out of my room. Ran all the way to May Wirth's and barged in without knocking. May was stirring and moaning, her mother lifting a glass of water to her lips.
"No!" I yelled.
Mrs. Wirth looked up, frightened.
"It's the water. The barrels are bad. Infected." Was then I looked around the room and saw that May, like most of the performers, had a small paraffin stove; I told her mother she had to use it to boil water and then give May that water and that water only.
Mrs. Wirth immediately gained the blinky, weak expression people get when circumstances change in an instant, which is the way she still looked when I ran from her stateroom to the Concellos'. Was a lot of yelling and throwing up of hands and accusations directed my way in Italian, none of which I hung around for: a whole lot of people were going to come down with amoebic dysentery that night if we were lucky. If we weren't, it was going to be typhoid or cholera and a lot of dead piled up by morning.
Seems Ketchum had gotten tired of waiting in my room, for I ran into him just as he was stepping down to the rails. By then the skies were darkening both because of the time of day and the gathering rain clouds. I had to yell to be heard over the wind, which had escalated from a howl to an out-and-out screech.
"WHAT DO WE DO?"
"GET MORE HELP."
I went looking for nurses, Ketchum for orderlies. Amazing, how people will suddenly insist you need a special license to wipe spew off a bedsheet, though after moving through two or three performer cars I discovered who the real troupers were. Here I'm talking about the ringmaster's wife, Ella Bradna; Anders Christensen's daughter Petra; a Loyal-Haganski named Olga; and believe it or not Lillian Leitzel, who I'm sure volunteered just so's she could prove any opinions I had about her wrong.
("So? Haff zee circus is ill? Veil, den. Lillian vill help. Lillian vill help v
illingly.")
We started moving from car to car. The first sick car we reached was the one belonging to Poodles Hannaford, something I remember for two reasons. First, he still had his clown freckles and clown smile on, which looked nothing but macabre on a man bent over naked and retching. Second, the moment the Loyal-Haganski girl caught a whiff of foul odour she vomited all over her shirtfront and skirt. When she'd finished emptying her stomach, Ella Bradna led her, white and shaky, back to her stateroom.
This meant we were down to four, which was fine, for four is about as many as can work in a small stateroom anyway. Together we bathed and stripped and cleaned and formed bundles out of slimeoozing bedsheets and assured relatives gone frantic with worry there was nothing to worry about, only a little bug in the drinking barrels, tomorrow everything would be back to normal, just you wait and see. Ella Bradna worked like a mule, steady and without complaint, at one point telling me she'd seen the same thing happen on a German circus she'd worked on years earlier. Petra Christensen was tentative, a fault of her being no more than sixteen, though once she overcame the embarrassment of seeing people nude and splattered with sea-green muck, she put her head down and worked as quietly and efficiently as Ella Bradna.
Which left Leitzel. Naturally, everything was done with flourishes and sweeping arm movements and sighs meant to draw attention. And while she wasn't particularly helpful in the cleaning departmentshe held everything at arm's length, meaning she couldn't get much oompf into her scrubbing-I have to admit she did excel in the feareasing department. When we got to the room belonging to Merle Evans, the bandleader, we found him shivering and coated with diarrhea and frightened his age was going to work against him.
