by Amanda Davis
I realized I was staring dumbly. I sat on a bench against the wall across from her and put my backpack on the floor beside me. I sat up straight and tried to look presentable, but I was still sore and disoriented. Out the window, I saw trucks in the distance, rumbling down a highway flanked by brownish hills. One of those roads led to Gleryton. And then for a split second I pictured a line of police cars, lights flashing, sirens screaming, headed here to claim me and take me back. I swallowed.
The lady was watching, waiting expectantly. I blushed and stammered, “I…I…”
This seemed to annoy her. “I am Elaine Hachette and I run things around here. Now who the hell are you?”
“Annabelle.”
“Annabelle what?”
I hesitated. No one had asked for Annabelle’s last name before. I looked at the edge of the table, at the tiny cramped kitchen to my right. “Cabinet,” I said.
“Annabelle Cabinet.” She sighed and shook her head, causing more ash to crumble and fall. “Lord help us,” she mumbled. She took a rubber band from the table, swiftly bound the money, and plunked it down on a mountain of envelopes.
“Okay, Annabelle. Are you epileptic?”
I shook my head.
“Prone to seizures?”
“No.”
“Well, Annabelle Cabinet,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “What the hell were you doing rolling around on the ground slapping yourself silly by the midway out there? We have families coming to the show today and we don’t need that, don’t need any kind of disruption. We’ve had enough of that this season.”
I was sweating profusely by now, so hot I knew my face must be ten shades of red. She seemed to be waiting for an explanation, but I didn’t have one. Nothing that would make any sense to anyone. By now I could only tell part of anything, anyway. And which part was the part to tell?
“I was hoping to get a job—” I began, but she hooted and took another long thin cigarette from the pack by her elbow.
“Good,” she said, and tapped it against the table as if it offended her. “That’s good. Great way to get a job. You come mess up sales by picking a fight with yourself, by pummeling yourself on the ground like you’re having some kind of fit. That, my dear, is a fantastic way to impress a potential employer.”
She stopped talking for a minute and looked at me. Her eyes were fierce and beady. Sweat rolled down my back.
She took a deep drag, and when she spoke again it was in a low conspiratorial voice. “So, Annabelle…how long you been on the road?” she said.
I half stood up, then sat again but didn’t answer. I pulled my backpack into my arms, shielding myself with it, and held it tight to keep from panicking. Breathe, I told myself. Breathe. I swallowed again, hard. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“Ms. Cabinet,” the woman said with exaggerated politeness. “If you want me to let you go without calling the cops—”
At this I stood again, heart pounding, but she raised her eyebrows until I sat back down.
“—we have to start with what you’re up to. I have been in the world for sixty-two years and I know a runaway when I see one. You are dirty and confused and I’m guessing not a day past fifteen—”
“Sixteen,” I mumbled.
“—and if you wish to reach an understanding with me then you better come clean immediately. Am I understood?”
I didn’t know what else to do. I nodded.
And then I told her that I couldn’t go back, just couldn’t. That I was looking for Marco, for Charlie. That I would do anything she asked if she just let me stay.
Elaine looked at me hard. I felt her eyes take inventory not only of my words, but everything in my head. When I was done, silence settled on us like a fine mist and we stayed like that while she seemed to consider every disastrous ounce of trouble I could cause. But I met her gaze. I made myself. I could feel how important that was.
“Okay,” she said, finally. “Here’s the deal. You will pick up trash around the midway and in return I’ll feed you, but that is it. You get two days with us and then you have to move on, because I don’t need any more strays to look after, okay? I’m sorry it has to be this way. I ran away to join the circus when I was only a few years older than you. I know the tradition, but we can’t afford it right now. Christmas is over. Can’t be picking up extra mouths to feed just for nostalgia’s sake. Not right now. Now, do you have a sleeping bag?”
I shook my head.
“Oh for Chrissake.” She stubbed out her cigarette and crossed her arms. “What are you doing on the road without even a sleeping bag?”
She stopped like she was waiting for a response. My mouth had become unbearably dry. “I hadn’t planned—”
“Hup!” She stopped me with a flat palm and a firm look. “Don’t start telling me your sob story,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it. I’m not changing my mind. We can’t afford it. Two days. That’s all you get. Am I understood?”
“Yes,” I said. But where are Charlie and Marco, I wanted to know. I held my tongue.
Elaine stood up and came around the table. She was plump and limped a little and there were streaks of ash all along her leg. “All right, Annabelle,” she said, her voice kinder now. I stood too and she stuck her hand out to shake mine.
She limped ahead of me and opened the door, then waited for me to step outside before she locked it behind us and started off the makeshift porch. “I’m going to introduce you to my son, Sam,” she called over her shoulder. “He’ll show you what to do.”
Behind one of the carny games a skinny guy with a thin mustache stood arguing with a dwarf clutching a clipboard. The back door of the game was open, and I could see some of it through the door. Knock-down ducks and water guns. But I was more interested in what lay beyond that. Even at our distance I could see the motion of the midway through the frame of cheap stuffed animals. And then I noticed that some of those stuffed animals looked familiar.
Stuffed chickens in various pastels.
A pink, a pale green, a light blue.
I shook my head and tried to focus.
“Hey!” Elaine called, limping slowly towards the arguing men. They both turned.
The man with the mustache ran his hands through his hair and smiled. “Yeah?” he said just as she walked up. She swatted him on the shoulder.
“Not you, Grouper,” she said, smiling. “I wanted my son.”
The dwarf looked completely annoyed. “I am busy,” he said, and rolled his eyes.
“I need you to take care of something.”
He sighed heavily and shook his head and began gesturing at the other guy with his clipboard. “Mother,” he said with exaggerated patience, “I need a few more minutes with Grouper, here, and then I will come and I will find you, okay?”
Elaine patted him on the back. She seemed unfazed. “Thirty seconds,” she said kindly, then turned and limped back to me.
I watched Sam’s face get red and his eyes narrow. He said something low to Grouper, who nodded and then waited until Sam walked away to make a face at the back of his head. Grouper kicked the side of his game trailer before he passed through the door and shut it, sealing off my view of the midway.
Instead I watched Sam approach. His legs and arms were stumpy, but his torso was long. His head seemed large, out of place on his small body. He had short dark hair and a handsome face, beautiful even, with freckles and full pouty lips and Elaine’s dark eyes, but he looked like he wanted to kill something.
“What?” He spit the word like it tasted bad.
“Charming,” Elaine said. “Really, Sam.”
He sighed—it was more like a hiss—but Elaine ignored him. “This is Annabelle,” she said. “She’s going to need a blanket or two. I told her we’d feed her if she picks up the trash. I want you to set her up.”
She turned and limped away, leaving us alone.
“Great,” Sam muttered. He glared at me. “That’s just perfect.” He marched off towards the
big tent and I had to hurry to catch up with him.
He led me to the back of a large tractor-trailer and disappeared inside, returning to toss me a pile of thick black garbage bags and a pair of soiled work gloves. I caught the bags but dropped them to try and catch the gloves, which I dropped to catch a broom.
“Pick it up,” Sam snapped. He climbed down from the truck and put his hands on his little hips and glared at me some more. Then he snatched back one of the gloves.
“You are going to put these on,” he said, waving the glove as close to my face as he could reach, “and pick up every single nasty piece of garbage you see lying in the dirt or grass. Every cup or wrapper. Understand? Every newspaper or flyer. Every goddamn piece of gum or other disgusting crap you see. When this place is clean, you’ll eat. Now come with me.” He marched off again.
I collected everything as best I could and followed him. We continued back the way we’d come until he found a large green trailer, near the edge of the big tent again, almost back where we’d started. I wondered if he was trying to confuse me.
“Wilma! Open up,” he said, thumping the door with both fists.
It opened. Wilma had straight black hair cut in bangs across her forehead and red, red lips. She wore blue rhinestoned granny glasses and a beaded white cardigan over a fiery orange dress from the fifties that was fitted through the waist and then flared out. When she moved, I heard crinolines. Her feet were buried in heavy black combat boots.
“What the hell do you want?” she said.
For the first time Sam seemed to balk in someone else’s presence. “I need some blankets,” he said, and glanced at my skirt and sweater. “And maybe some old pants, if you have any.” He jabbed his thumb at me. “For this one.”
“Did you just get hired?” Wilma said, smiling at me. I shook my head.
“No,” Sam said. “Just get her some blankets.”
She put her hands on her hips. “You watch that tone, Samuel.”
Wilma disappeared into the trailer and Sam seemed to wilt. I shifted from one foot to the other. My ankle was killing me, but I didn’t want to draw attention to it. And my stomach growled so loudly I didn’t know how it was passing undetected.
Sam had his hands behind his back while he stared at the sky. A big blue vein in his forehead twitched and pulsed. The fat girl poked her head around the side of the trailer, but I pretended not to see her.
Wilma reemerged with two rough green army blankets, which she added to my overloaded arms. “So when did you run away?” she said.
I rolled my eyes and exhaled before I could stop myself, but it was so unfair. How come everyone here knew immediately that I’d run away?
“What makes you say that?” I said, but my voice caught and I had to clear my throat and say it again before I was understood. Then they both laughed at me.
“What?” Even I heard the humiliating whine in my voice.
“She’s sweet, Sam,” Wilma said. “I bet I can find her something to change into. Can we keep her?”
“That is not funny! That is not fucking funny and you know it!”
“Awwwww, I hit a little nerve there, huh Sammy?”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Sam said. “Get her some clothes. She can sleep in the hay truck tonight. And she eats with the job-ins, so send her when the flag goes up. I have better things to take care of.” He started to walk away, then stopped and turned back to me. “You better not ‘lose’ any of those blankets, Runaway,” he said, miming quotation marks with his fingers. “And you better not have any kind of a drug thing going on. Either of those and I will tear you limb from limb. When you show up at the cookhouse I’m going to be there to inspect your work. I better not even find a fucking straw.” He turned on a heel and marched off.
My face was really red now. I swallowed and stared at Wilma’s big black feet and tried to shield myself with the garbage bags and broom.
I waited until I couldn’t hear him anymore before turning to make sure he was really gone. When I glanced back at Wilma, she leaned against the doorway staring after him and she looked sad. It was a few moments before she remembered I was there.
Then she pointed out the cookhouse and gave me a pair of tattered navy work pants and a long gray shoelace to hold them up. Wilma told me to watch for the yellow flag. “I’m serious about that, Runaway. You miss that yellow flag and show up with the white one or the red or anything else and I promise you won’t be eating tonight. Job-ins eat when the yellow goes up. We don’t mix around here.”
“It’s Annabelle,” I said. “My name is Annabelle.”
She softened a bit. “Well,” she said. “Listen, don’t mind Sam. He’s actually not a bad guy. He’s just had his heart broken…”
She trailed off and I nodded, but after looking into Sam’s eyes, I had no doubt that if I missed a gum wrapper I wouldn’t get any dinner. He was the angriest man I’d ever met.
Wilma didn’t invite me inside to change, so I walked around to the back of her trailer and checked furtively before taking off my skirt and pulling on the pants. I stuffed the skirt inside my backpack and stashed it under one wheel of the trailer, tossing some leaves around it for camouflage. I still didn’t know where the hay truck was, but all I could think about was food and not pissing off Sam.
I worked diligently all afternoon filling every trash bag, and kept my eyes open for any sign of Marco or Charlie, but very little was familiar in this landscape. Apart from the layout, which seemed to be pretty much what it had been in Gleryton, I didn’t recognize anyone or anything, so I let my mind melt into the hunt for trash. I picked up every scrap I saw, but still there was more. As soon as I thought an area was clean, I’d turn around to find that some guy had tossed his cotton candy on the ground. It amazed me how many people threw things next to the garbage can.
By the time the yellow flag went up, my ankle was white hot and I was exhausted. Sam wasn’t at the entrance. I waited there for about ten minutes, the smell of warm food making my stomach growl, and then finally, after convincing myself that the flags were going to change soon and I was going to miss out, I went inside.
It looked like a tiny cafeteria, with the food along the far wall and a handful of long aluminum picnic tables. I took a tray and was given a big bowl of meaty chili, a roll, some cooked spinach, and a piece of yellow cake by a fat man in a hairnet, who seemed to be sizing me up. I collected a Styrofoam cup of lemonade and some utensils as quickly as I could and found a seat at the empty end of one of the tables.
It wasn’t until then that I noticed that every other person in the room was a big man, and I mean big. The other end of the table was packed with them, and the table across the way. They were burly, rough guys of all ages, and every one of them looked scruffy and down on his luck.
I was scared, which made no sense. I mean, what were they going to do to me? But I was alone and felt like such a girl.
My hands shook. I spilled some of the chili. Where the hell was I? What had I gotten myself into? I’d given up everything familiar without any plan for the future. Breathe, I told myself. Breathe.
I managed to get some of the chili to my mouth. It was spicy and warm and good. I tried to focus on that, but my mind drifted to the boys at Homecoming. To the way they’d moved in packs down the halls.
“Hey!” I snapped to attention. It was Sam, his face all red. I stood up. “No, it’s okay,” he said. “That’s fine. You sit and eat.”
I sank back into my seat and felt all eyes on us. Sam climbed onto the bench opposite me. “You did a good job out there. I checked. Very thorough.”
“Thanks.”
“You can do it again tomorrow. Get someone to point out the hay truck. You can sleep there. Use the Porta Potties by the horses. We load out day after tomorrow. If you do a good job tomorrow, you can eat on Sunday too. Then you’re on your own.”
I swallowed. “Thank you,” I said.
He ignored me and climbed down from the bench. “What t
he fuck are you looking at, Spencer?” he called to an enormous black man with long messy dreadlocks. “You want a piece of me?”
Spencer threw his head back and laughed. “Oh Lord,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Now that is some funny shit.”
Sam gave him the finger and walked out.
Clang clang clang. The fat man from behind the counter knocked a big silver spoon against a metal serving bowl. “You folks got nine minutes,” he said. “Then it’s the red flag.”
There were grumbles, but all the jostling and camaraderie stopped and people began to eat with fierce concentration, myself included. I felt some of them looking at me, but no one said anything. When I had inhaled as much as I was going to, I got a cup of water and drank it down and refilled it and drank it down.
“Where you from?” someone called. I didn’t turn around or look up. I drank as much water as I could hold, then scraped my tray into the garbage, careful not to spill, and left the cookhouse.
Clang clang clang, I heard behind me. “You fools got two minutes.”
The hay truck was near the elephant trucks, near the horse trailers, near the menagerie. A tall skinny guy with a British accent showed me where it was and how to open the latch. “Be sure to climb to the back,” he said, and grinned. “Don’t want to get hit with a pitchfork while you’re sleeping.”
It was a gruesome enough thought to petrify me, but even that couldn’t keep me awake. My back ached and I couldn’t wait to get my boots off and let my poor ankle rest. I climbed in with my backpack and the blankets. I hadn’t expected the pitch blackness of it, but of course there were no windows, just some vents high up along the walls. I stumbled blindly towards the back of the truck enveloped by the rich, musty smell of hay. I heard creatures skitter beneath me. Mice? I shuddered and bundled myself in the blankets, using my backpack as a pillow, and disappeared into the dark abyss of sleep.
I lurched awake in the aftermath of a loud noise, listening with every pore of my body, blinking in the dark, my breathing so loud. And then it happened again. An elephant trumpeted and I heard running and shouting, all sorts of commotion.
