***
As the first light washed the sky, Lewis Tully stood beside the ruin of his big top and studied the completeness of the fire’s work. The entire roof was gone and the front section of the tent wall. Inside, two of the three sections of grandstand had been reduced to charcoal, and the great poles looked like the leavings of a bonfire. He inspected the rest of the sidewall and then went back to the camp.
Morning came in cold and damp, and the rain that had finally put out the fire had filled the air with the smell of wet burnt wood and scorched canvas. The camp came to life, and Lewis soon had them all at work taking inventory of their losses and rounding up the animals that had been freed during the blaze.
Old Royce and his crew were already banging around as though this were just one more breakfast on a wet day, and the individual tents and huts had been put up again. Lewis was sitting at the little card table sipping coffee and listening to the accounting of his disaster.
“Three trucks: hay truck, of course, that’s where it started, and the equipment truck, one of the flatbeds,” Shelby said. “Tires burst but there’s parts we can use.” He sighed. “Three of our wagons, Lewis.”
“The old one, Mr. Forepaugh’s wagon?”
“That one’s okay. The top and the seats…them you know about.”
“Yes, I do.” Lewis turned to Sam Jeanette, who had a deeply troubled look in his eyes.
“That big corral’s gone but the horses will be all right, Lewis. We got most of ’em, them big Belgians and Percherons couldn’t go far anyhow, and we found more’n fifty in a little hollow just south of town. We’re still missing about two dozen but we’ll find ’em. I think they followed Lucy’s mare. She’s kinda adventurous, but she’ll come in eventually and they’ll come in with her.”
“How about the other animals?”
Sam looked irritated. “Couple of my zebras are gone, I found four but the other two—”
“Dead?”
“Naw, they just did it to be contrary.”
Lewis gave him a tired smile and waited.
“The llamas never left the camp, we got the buffalo, the bears are okay and Alexei and Irina took care of all those little beasts. Lion’s okay: too damn lazy to run off anyway.” Sam seemed to be dancing around the something, around the truth.
“What else, Sam?”
Sam sighed and said, “Jupiter.”
“She’s dead?”
“Worse. She’s loose.”
“Sweet Jesus, that’s all I need.”
“And I think she’s long gone…”
“The fire scared the bejesus out of the beast, Lewis,” Emmett McKeon offered.
Lewis sank back in his chair and thought for a moment. Then he looked at Shelby. “How many more towns did we paper?”
“Three.”
Lewis thought a moment, then said, “Best to take down our bills from the last two. We’ll play one more stand before we head home.”
“Lewis, you got no tent.”
“Won’t be the first show played under the stars.”
“No seats.”
“We have some seats and we have straw.”
Shelby nodded. “I knew you’d say that. Just felt like arguing.”
Zheng entered the tent. His face was ashen and there were brownish circles under his eyes. He took several steps inside and then stood there as if waiting for permission.
“Come on in and have some coffee, Mr. Zheng. We were just making small-talk about circuses and fires and calamities and whatnot.” Lewis tried on a smile and then saw the stricken look in Zheng’s eyes.
“What’s wrong, Zheng? Is your father okay?”
“He flourishes. I was looking for animals, for the monkeys.” He gave Lewis a look rich in guilt and failure.
“They’re dead.”
“No. Life is not so simple, Lewis. I found…only one.” Zheng bowed and backed out of the tent, and when he returned he had a small cage. In it was a single, singed, soot-covered monkey. “This one survived.”
“Poor little…” Lewis began, and then caught the look in the little monkey’s eye. The monkey stared at him and then leapt onto the wooden bars of his cage and began cackling and bobbing up and down.
“Aw, that’s impossible,” Lewis muttered.
“No,” Zheng said.
“Jesus the Christ,” Emmett McKeon said, crossing himself.
“Fire probably scared that little monkey half to death,” Sam Jeanette offered.
“No,” Zheng said. “When I found this one, he was making claps.”
Zheng gave a stiff imitation of clapping and looked at Lewis.
Lewis stared at the monkey. “Clapping, were you? Clapping at the fire.”
And the monkey bobbed up and down, grinning.
FORTY-FOUR
Breaking Camp
Lewis went on ahead of the caravan and drove into Billings with three of the canvasmen who had suffered minor burns. Behind him, Shirley drove Roy Green, whose tattered lungs had taken in more smoke fighting the blaze than they could stand.
At the hospital, Lewis had his men looked at, paid their bill, and then stopped by to see Roy just as a young doctor was leaving. Shirley met him at the door.
“I guess this is as far as we go, Lewis.”
“I’ll come by after we play this last town.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think he’ll be getting out anytime soon.” She looked off to compose herself.
“Is he gonna make it, Shirley?”
“This time, most likely.” She gave him a tired smile. “But we won’t have him long, Lewis. That’s a sick, worn-out man in there.”
“Well, you know where I’ll be after all this. You let me know how he’s doing, and I’ll let you know…if anything comes up,” he said, and went in to see Roy.
Roy Green looked tired and old, and he also looked calm.
He lifted a hand in greeting when Lewis came in.
“They tell me you’re thinking of living.”
“For now, I guess.” Roy’s voice was hoarse, and Lewis could hear the raw sound of his breathing.
Lewis sat on the edge of the bed and felt an urgent need to do something with his hands—roll a cigarette, pour a drink, sip coffee. He stole a quick look at Roy and found the old clown watching him.
“Sorry to get sick on you, Lewis, and I’m sorry about the tent and the trucks and all.”
“They’re just things. The people are all alive.”
“If you were anybody else, I’d be giving you my condolences, Lewis, but I think you’ll land on your feet. You’ll figure something out, probably be something real strange, too.”
He laughed noiselessly, and after a while, Lewis joined in.
“And if you need a clown, and I’m still here…”
“Sure, Roy.”
“…and even if I’m not, Lewis…”
“I can always use her, Roy. If I got any kind of show at all.”
Roy nodded and looked pleased.
“One way or the other, Roy, if we both make it through the winter, you’ll be hearing from me.”
“Bye, Lewis. And thanks: it was some show.”
Lewis patted him on the knee and left the room.
***
Just across the Montana state line they stopped along a high ridge to get a glimpse of the country ahead and Lewis had just climbed out of the truck when Shelby pointed.
“Lewis.”
Lewis squinted down at the plain below. A narrow road perhaps three quarters of a mile off was alive with movement, packed with trucks and cars and color.
Lewis nodded. “Preston.”
It was indeed Preston Crowe with what at this distance looked like the advance column of an invading army. The great red Mack trucks gleamed in the sunlight, an
d the other vehicles in Preston’s caravan had been painted a bright orange, just in case people were slow to notice. At this distance, Preston’s huge water truck looked like a great sausage mounted on wheels. The Preston Crowe Circus stretched out on the Montana plain for almost a mile, and Lewis caught Shelby giving him a concerned look.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t make much difference now, J.M.”
“Still, it don’t feel good to be setting up here and have to look at that…”
“I don’t know, J.M. It sure is pretty. There’s whole countries wouldn’t take up as much road as a Preston Crowe circus.” Lewis smiled and put a hand on Shelby’s shoulder.
They went on to play one final show in Montana, a few miles outside Billings, where Lewis took on water and gasoline and food, looked in on Roy and Shirley again, and gave them a few dollars of what he called “expense money.”
The following day, under a low gray sky that threatened rain or worse, Lewis met with his troupe in the center of a tight ring of vehicles.
He stood with his hands stuck into his back pockets and scanned the faces around him. A smaller group now: some of the canvasmen and roustabouts had already gone—a few had come to wish him luck, others had just slipped off quietly just as they had one day appeared without warning at his camp. Some of these faces around him looked nervous, some seemed sad, a couple might even have shown relief, and they were all tired.
“Well, we had ourselves a short season. I was hoping to get up a little farther into Montana, maybe hold on till the cold weather, but it looks like we’re finished. I feel like I should be grateful for what I got, though. It was a dandy show, we had some excitement and we gave the folks their nickel’s worth. Played places that never see a circus, gave ’em an honest show…” He let his voice trail off and then just looked around him and smiled at all of them.
“But I’ll tell you one thing: on this show, I had everybody I wanted to have. I had the best, just this once. I’ll be heading back south now, and anybody that wants to know what I’m up to, you write me down there. Some of you might want to get in touch with Preston Crowe,” and he grinned at them, “or even that fine Hector Blaney show…” A burst of laughter and catcalls told him how likely this last would be. He laughed with them and nodded. “And anybody needs a place to stay for a while can feel free to come on down there to sunny Jasper, Oklahoma, and bunk with me and Shelby and the boys. I have your last pay, and you should give me someplace where I can get in touch with you in case…”
He smiled, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “Anyhow, I’ll be breaking camp this afternoon.”
Helen was leaving. It shocked Lewis but he saw the sense of it. He entered her tent with a shuffle and, though she gave no sign, he knew she’d heard him. She was puttering with the little things on her tiny chest of drawers, pretending to be occupied with these irrelevant tasks, and he had no idea what to say. Then he just reached out and put his hand on her back, and she turned. Tears had just started to form, her nose was getting that pinkish look it took on when she cried, and she was acknowledging none of it. She gave him a quick kiss on the lips and then held him so tightly her strength surprised him. He stepped back to give himself room for what he needed to tell her. Then he took off his hat to buy a few seconds.
“Helen, something I need to say…”
“I already know whatever you want to tell me.”
“You do, huh?”
She nodded. “I want to know what happens to that little boy.”
“He’ll stay with me.”
“He needs a home. He needs to be in a safe place where he’ll be sure someone will be there to take care of him.”
Lewis looked away to hide the fact that she’d stung him. “I’m not saying my camp is the best place for a boy. But he could do worse. And it’s a damn sight better than what I had. But I’ll get him fixed up. Bound to be a school there somewhere around Jasper.”
Lewis listened to himself in wonder: it was as though the words conjured themselves up.
“Bound to be,” she said.
He nodded and wondered if he looked as foolish, as helpless, as he felt. “It’ll work out, he’s a good boy. And if I have to go on the road to make a dollar…”
Yes, what then, Tully?
“He can come with me, Lewis,” she said.
“You’re heading home then.” He nodded and tried to sound casual, and his chest felt near to bursting.
“Yes, I’m going home. I’m going back to North Dakota.”
He looked at her and wet his lips and understood that this was the moment he’d let pass so many years ago, the same moment come again.
Go slow, Tully, he said to himself.
“It would be real…real good if you came with us.”
“With us?” she asked, looking him in the eye. “Oh, you mean to look after Charlie.”
He opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. These were perilous waters. Then he shook his head and laughed, at his own foolishness, at the ridiculousness of the moment, of the idea, and just said, “No, that’s not exactly what I meant.”
“Oh,” she said, helping him not at all.
“No, I meant, I’d like for you to come with me. The boy—he’s not your responsibility, he’s mine. He’s gonna come with me no matter what. But I want you to come with me. I know I don’t have a thing to offer you that you don’t have already, but…” He paused.
She was looking down so that he couldn’t see her eyes, but he could tell from the set of her face that she was just being polite, hearing him out.
“One way or another, I’ll manage to make a living, I always do, never needed to beg from nobody. I still have the herd and a few things I can sell off. We won’t be broke. I know you’ve got that nice farm up there in North Dakota—”
“I turned that over to the children. It’s their headache now.” She looked him directly in the eye and he thought he saw a smile hiding back in there somewhere.
“I’m no good at this,” Lewis said.
“Not particularly, no. You never were, Lewis.”
“Will you come with me?”
“Better late than never, Lewis?” she said with a trace of malice.
“I didn’t say anything like that, I didn’t even think it.”
“Well, it’s true. I guess it’s true for most things. But—yes, I’ll come with you.”
“If you need more time—”
She smiled now. “No, Lewis, you’re the one who needs time to be sure about things.”
“I’m sure about this, Helen.”
She brushed hair from Lewis’s forehead and said, “One way or the other, I have to pack, Lewis.”
“Well, sure.” He put his hat back on and stood there for a moment. Then he said, “So it’s…it’s settled, then?”
“Yes, Lewis.” She nodded, eyes bright and a mild note of wonder in her voice. “For once, it’s settled between us.”
Lewis Tully left the tent, giddy with uncertainty, short of breath.
Well, he thought, I’ve got a woman and a child and no clear livelihood. What happens next?
In the tent, Helen Larsen made room on her small bed and sat on the corner amid the things she’d been packing.
Was it true, she wondered, what she’d just told him, “Better late than never?”
She pictured the reaction of her children: her stolid son who’d affect to be thunderstruck though she refused to believe he could be that unimaginative; and her daughters, twice as clever, who would feign disapproval but knew perfectly why she had come down to Oklahoma in the first place, signing on with a circus at the age of fifty.
She admitted to herself that she felt quite foolish.
But for these past six months I’ve had the time of my life.
“So now what happens?” she asked aloud, and was thrilled at the very question.
Unfinished Business
He spent several hours seeing them all off: the Perez Brothers bound for Joaquin Villareal’s show in Mexico, the Antoninis for Texas, Alexei and Irina for Seattle, the DePerczels for California—there was talk of a new kind of film with sound, and the Count fancied the prospects for a tall, handsome man with a booming voice. Mr. Patel accepted a ride from the Count and would be visiting relatives in San Francisco. Lewis envisioned a tearful reunion in which a roomful of Indian people fainted in concert after their pet snakes attacked them. Foley would take Rex to the south, where he’d had offers from several small traveling menageries to make Rex a star. He assured Lewis it was just to get a couple of coins to rub together.
Lewis watched him walk to his car and after a moment blurted out, “You know where I’ll be, Foley.”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Foley said without turning. As he reached his car, Lewis saw Lucy walk over to him. They spoke for a moment, and a stranger might have thought they were a pair of nineteen-year-olds. He saw Lucy hand Foley a slip of paper and saw Foley nod. When it looked like they were going to kiss, Lewis turned away.
***
“We ready?”
Shelby nodded. “The old Centerville Road’s the shortest way back home.”
“Not yet. We’ll just head back on the Canty for a bit.”
Shelby raised his eyebrows.
“Have to pay our respects before we leave these parts,” Lewis said.
Shelby smiled. “Thought you might be thinking along those lines.”
“Seems the proper thing to do.”
***
They’d seen his little column coming, a dusty caravan, patched and soot-covered and looking more like the Kaiser’s Army at the surrender than a circus. Hector Blaney was waiting for him at the head of a group of fifty or more of his men. Lewis pulled his truck up until Hector had to jump back, then he and his men climbed out of their trucks.
“Hello, Hector, you old devil.”
Hector Blaney looked around to reassure himself that Joe Miles was close at hand. He gave Lewis a wary look, a short nod. “Lewis. Shelby. How you boys doing?”
The Blue Moon Circus Page 35
