Finally it was finished. The first to see were the other children, who’d gathered after lunch to watch him paint. Charlie put the final touches on the eyes and heard Sam Jeanette’s grandson Lucius say, “That’s real good, Charlie.”
The boy pretended not to hear, but he felt himself smiling. Gradually all the children expressed their admiration and he shrugged, felt his face going red. He turned and said, “Thanks,” and then saw Lewis striding toward him.
“So it’s done?”
The boy opened his mouth and then cast a quick indecisive look at his grand opus. Then he nodded.
Lewis studied the painting and slowly began nodding. He felt the boy’s eyes on him, saw the child wetting his lips and milked the moment, then turned to the other children of the circus.
He jerked his thumb in the direction of the painting. “Now, that’s a gorilla.”
They nodded in near-unison and Charlie seemed to relax. Lewis leaned over and patted the boy the shoulder.
“That’s a good job.” Nodding, he walked away. From over his shoulder, he said, “Every circus needs somebody that can paint a gorilla.”
When he wasn’t touching up the scratched paint of trucks and wagons, the boy found himself spending considerable time working with Zheng and Sam Jeanette. Zheng’s knowledge of animals amazed him, and he was delighted to assist, listening to Zheng’s dignified but constant chatter at the beasts.
The moments he spent with Sam Jeanette were different: after hearing Lewis’s tale of their dramatic meeting on San Juan Hill, the boy now saw Jeanette not merely as a smart old man but as a genuine hero who had saved the lives of both Lewis and Shelby. The old man worked the horses and zebras in silence, occasionally doling out terse compliments to a beast that performed well. To Charlie he spoke quietly, primarily to give him tasks, but the boy grew comfortable in his presence.
Sam Jeanette stood in the center of the corral and shook his head as the zebras passed him in a loose interpretation of a circle. At one point, a smallish animal suddenly leaned over and tried to bite a bigger one. The big zebra kicked at its antagonist and resumed the routine. Sam called out commands to them, smacked a long stick against his leg, and the zebras grudgingly tightened up their formation. He let Foley relieve him and climbed over the top rail of the corral. For a moment he watched Foley arguing with the zebras. He chuckled and shook his head again, then caught the boy’s eye.
“Looks like they’re stupid, doesn’t it? Like they can’t figure out what a circle is. The truth is, they’re doing it on purpose. Zebras are some of the orneriest beasts the Good Lord ever saw fit to entertain Himself with.”
“You think he made them to entertain himself?”
“I do. Them and a few other animals.” Sam studied him for a moment with a little smile and then asked, “How else does an intelligent boy like yourself explain a giraffe? Doesn’t that look like somebody having fun?”
“I guess so. Are the zebras the hardest to train?”
“Well, a man that works with bears or big cats will give me an argument, ’cause those animals are always gonna be dangerous, but you feed them and let them get their rest, which is most of the day, and they’ll do what you say. If they don’t kill you, that is. But a zebra can kick a man senseless, and they’re accurate, too. You saw those two fighting just a minute ago?”
“Yes. Why were they fighting?”
“The young one wants to show what he’s got and the old one’s more than willing to smack him down. Difficult animals. Stubborn.” Sam thought for a moment and gazed off in the direction of Sheba’s private compound. “Now a zebra’s not in the same class as your camel in terms of unruliness, bad temper, and general difficulty. To be fair, no animal on God’s green earth is in the class of the camel, and Mr. Tully went and got him a camel that is already notorious.”
“Why?”
She’s evil, Sam wanted to say. Instead he said, “She’s just a real unusual camel. Lewis tends to find your more colorful animals for his show.”
“You know about all the animals.”
“No. Mr. Zheng and Mr. Aiello, they know more about old Jupiter and monkeys and apes and what have you. Of course, there’s not much to know about Rex, seeing as he’s one of a kind.”
“Is he the only red ape in the world?”
“Only red gorilla I ever heard of, except for his daddy, who was a remarkable performer, kind of a clown in an ape’s body.”
“Do you know about elephants?”
“I know they don’t see well but they hear just fine. And I know the one we’ve got is smarter than most people, and strong as a train locomotive, but she’s set in her ways and given to moods. She’s also devious and patient, and she’ll get loose at least once a year. She doesn’t really want to leave for good, it just amuses her. I saw her open a corral latch with her trunk one time.”
“I wish we had dogs,” the boy said.
“Not me. Dogs fight each other, kill each other sometimes. There’s all kinds of other animals that’ll do tricks without eating each other afterwards. Horses like each other, for instance. You see how they stand front to back like that? That’s so they can use their tails to flick the flies away from each other’s faces.”
He smiled at Charlie, warming to his subject. “And there’s a lot of other animals more interesting than dogs. You take your common pig, now that’s an intelligent creature, most people have no idea how smart they are, but folks won’t pay good money to watch pigs. Takes a very sophisticated audience to be willing to watch pigs. I’m fond of pigs.”
Just as it seemed that Sam would wax poetic, he caught himself. “And of course, after they’re done performing, you can eat ’em.”
The boy gave Sam Jeanette a horrified look, then saw that his leg was being pulled. He grinned.
“You were a soldier. Lewis told me.”
Sam Jeanette smiled. “If’n he told you that, then he told you how I made his acquaintance.”
“You saved his life, him and Mr. Shelby and the poor Spaniard.”
The old man gave a delighted laugh. “’The Poor Spaniard,’ that’s what he’s called that fellow since that day they shot each other in 1898.” After a moment’s reflection, he added, “A pair of very bad shots, Lewis and that Spaniard. Thank the Lord.”
“He said you were a hero and your men saved everybody.”
Jeanette gazed at the boy for a moment. “I was no hero, I was a non-commissioned officer in the Tenth U.S. Cavalry. But we saved everybody, he’s right about that. My troopers pulled those poor white boys out of harm’s way and we never got a bit of credit for it.”
“Why?”
“Newspapers weren’t interested in the exploits of colored soldiers. Tell you what, though, the Spaniards thought we were downright fascinating.” Sam Jeanette winked at him and turned back to the corral, where the zebras were having a fine time irritating Foley.
“Give ’em a rest, son,” Sam called out to him, “before they drive you crazy.”
The boy found Harley sitting on a barrel on the far side of a small clump of young cottonwood trees, staring off into the distance with an odd expression on his face. He looked as though he’d just seen something surprising. He sat transfixed, and eventually the boy decided to slip away without bothering him. Then the magician beckoned without even turning his head.
Charlie moved closer and sat on the ground a few feet from him.
“Hello,” Harley said.
The boy chanced a small smile, then asked, “Are you practicing a new one? A new trick?”
“No. And if you were one of the bigger folk, I’d tell you I’m in the midst of a deep and intense contemplation of the powers that control the universe. But since you’re not, I’ll just say I was sitting here thinking.” After a moment he muttered, “Facing my so-called future.”
“What does that mean?”
/> “Means I’m getting too old, and it’s high time I admitted it. I had myself half-believing it would all come back to me, my energy and my, ah, ‘touch,’ all the things I could do once. There was a time I was considered something of a doctor—I could heal people of minor illnesses and small injuries.”
“I know.”
The old man peered at him for a moment. “How?”
“I saw you with Mr. Dugan, you put your hands on him and he felt better.”
“Oh, that. Well, that was…nothing.”
“How did you do it?” he asked, ignoring the old man’s response.
“Take too long to explain. It’s something that was taught me by my betters.”
“By Hendrick? The man you told me about?”
“He was the main one, yes. It’s all gone now, though. I’m just a very old man, you’d be appalled to know my age, boy. But now I’m down to the tail-end of things.”
Something in the old man’s eyes struck Charlie and he felt a sudden unease.
“What’s gonna happen?” he heard himself ask.
“Well, I’m going to go the way of all my old companions of the road, for one.” He saw the sudden shock in the boy’s face, blinked several times, and then seemed to recollect himself.
“I keep forgetting how that sounds to someone your age. I don’t mean I’m going to pass on a week from this Wednesday or anything like that. I can still get around under my own power and I still have a fine appetite. And if it comes to that, I can still earn my way in Lewis’s show, I have all those tricks and sleights and what-have-you. I’m not sick, boy, I’m in a damn sight better shape than poor Roy Green, be surprised if Roy can…”
Harley flashed the boy a sudden look and gave himself a whack on the side of the head. “Listen to me run on. I’m sorry, Charlie. You didn’t know about Roy.”
“I know he’s sick.”
“Yes, he’s sick, that’s it exactly, in a nutshell. He’s sick.” Harley nodded.
“He’s going to die?” the boy said in a quiet voice.
“Maybe not for a good long time to come, son, but yes, he’s going to die. His lungs are shot, and you know how he walks—he’s got worse legs than I do. But these are not things you need to worry yourself about. Now then, let’s go through a few of my better routines and you can tell me which ones I should use in tomorrow night’s show.”
The boy nodded and tried to focus on the old man’s hands. After several minutes he blurted out, “Will you tell me when?”
The magician froze in mid-act and raised his eyebrows. He looked at the boy and read his eyes with ease. “Will I tell you when I’m fixing to leave this worldly circus? Yes, you’ll be the first to know. Don’t hold your breath waiting, though.”
“No, sir,” the boy said.
That night he went to bed before the men came in, and he lay on his cot and thought about this new discovery, that two of the kindest of these people were going to die. He hadn’t believed for a moment Harley’s claim that his death was not at hand—he didn’t think even magicians had such vision. Charlie saw that he’d made a mistake: he’d allowed himself to believe that this circus would go on forever and that these odd people would be around him for many years to come. Now he faced what he knew to be truth, that some of them could die, that the season would end with the cold weather, that he had no idea what would happen to him then, but he was certain of one thing: no matter how long it could be put off, he would eventually be without a home again.
A new scene came to him unbidden, a scene he’d long suppressed: himself fidgeting at the edge of a chair, eaten alive with nerves and cold terror. Across from him in the shabby armchair she favored, eyes closed as if in a catnap, was his mother, and he knew she was dead. It was the middle of the night, the two-room wooden shack was literally rocking in the wind, and he was alone on the longest night of his life. Charlie hoped never to be so terrified again.
In the morning he woke to the nasal chorus of the men snoring. Outside he could hear birds greeting the first tentative light of day and one of the bears was snorting as though he had something up his nose. Charlie lay in his cot and thought of his fears of the night before. He stole a glance over at the sleeping Lewis. Lewis knew about all these things, Lewis had never had a home of his own and had nonetheless lived to an incredible age, had even rescued another homeless boy from a hard life. No matter what happened, he had to stay close to Lewis, to do whatever was necessary to remain in Lewis’s favor.
The next morning after breakfast, Lewis went on his rounds of the camp and soon threw himself into half a dozen different projects, as soon as one was finished, moving on to another. Charlie hung back, talked with Laszlo and the Jeanette boys, Lucius and Eli, but never took his eyes off Lewis.
Toward the end of June, the Canty Road made a long slow curve to the north, and they made slower progress now: the Colorado landscape had begun its inexorable rise to the mountains, and roads were worse. Nights and the early mornings were colder, set-up and tear-down would get harder, and if it rained, Lewis knew his little show would be lucky to make four towns a week.
They entered Little Egypt early in the morning, and Lewis’s man told him Preston Crowe was in one of the mining towns to the southeast and several days behind them even if he was inclined to catch them.
Lewis shook his head. “You never saw Preston Crowe push a circus. He’ll catch us if he has a mind to.” Lewis thought of the bigger towns lining the eastern slopes of the mountains and hoped Preston wouldn’t have much interest in racing with the Tully Circus.
As for Hector Blaney, the man had no news.
“Well,” Lewis said, “we won’t go too long without hearing from Hector.”
THIRTY-ONE
Jupiter’s Lark
The show in Little Egypt was flawless, and the getaway the next morning would have been just as smooth had it not been for a single defection.
“Jupiter’s gone.”
Tony Aiello stood in Lewis’s tent and tried to find something to do with his hands. Eventually he took off his sweat-stained fedora and began strangling the brim.
“Gone?” Lewis said, mainly for effect.
Tony Aiello sighed. “I looked everywhere, especially around the food. Thought I’d find her in the cookhouse like that one time in ’17.”
“Lord God, I’m having a bad dream.”
“She can’t be far.”
“Sure she can. They’re fast and they’re smart. They walk across Africa when they’re bored, so what’s to stop Jupiter from ending up in Detroit, Michigan? I’ve got one chance in a hundred of making any kind of a schedule and now I’ve got to look for a wayward pachyderm.”
“I’m sorry, Lewis.” Tony changed the grimace on his face slightly so that it became a faintly different grimace, intended to show strong emotion. In truth, all his facial expressions were grimaces, each one indistinguishable from the next to anyone but an intimate. Lewis knew this particular grimace, having seen it in the horrific season of 1919 when lost elephants were a minor annoyance compared with the disasters to come. He knew Tony was genuinely apologetic—itself a rarity, for Tony Aiello had admitted to being wrong no more than once or twice in his life.
“Aw, we’ll find her, Tony.”
Shelby jammed his hat on his head. “We can look in that pretty little box canyon we passed yesterday. That’d be just the place for an animal to hide.”
Lewis shook his head. “She’d think it was boring. She’ll be looking for other elephants or interesting sights, and I think she’ll find there’s a shortage of elephants in Colorado.”
“She’s gregarious,” Tony Aiello pointed out.
“She’s a lot of things,” Lewis muttered, “most of them damned inconvenient. J.M., get the Captain and his men. Sam, get Foley, he can ride, have all those men fan out to the east and west. You and I can drive on ahead and we c
an have Lucy and Helen drive on back the way we came.”
As they walked out to the car, Shelby clapped Lewis on the shoulder. “Might be better if we don’t find her. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
Lewis nodded. “Yep, she’s that. But God knows what kind of trouble she can get into if she throws herself into it with enthusiasm. And besides, if I lost an elephant in the middle of Colorado, you think these other circus men would ever let me forget it?”
***
Jupiter was having a glorious time. From Lewis’s camp, she headed straight north, and for a half hour she had gone at a dead run, exulting in her own cleverness and her speed. But her quick progress through the countryside was compromised by her curiosity and her appetite. She found small farms, ranches, and had to peer inside each building she passed. Outside a farmhouse, she ran afoul of a line of laundry hanging out to dry, and emerged wearing a pale blue bedsheet across the high crown of her skull, like a giant bandanna.
The denizens of these buildings, most of them just getting started on a day’s work, saw something gray move past, momentarily blocking out the sun, or looked up from breakfast to see a huge moist eye gazing with interest at their scrambled eggs. When they burst outside, the great gray visitor was gone, her huge rump just visible through the cloud of dust moving off to the north.
Her sortie took her through a tiny hamlet on a dirt road, and she plodded up the sleepy center of it and into legends that would outlive both town and elephant.
Her ponderous progress across the plains aroused first curiosity and fear, then enmity, as she tore through gardens, ate patches of new grain, and stomped her way across fields rich with the fragile shoots of new crops. Just north of the town, she ran off a prize bull, then found herself in a darkened barn and escaped by charging through the back wall in a shower of splintering boards.
The Blue Moon Circus Page 26
