by Amanda Davis
“Extreme vertigo,” she said. “Deterred early on.”
I asked about her family and she laughed, saying I’d meet them soon enough. “Dad coaches my brothers and sister now. He stopped performing when he fell four years ago, right after Mom died. But that’s a long story.” She dismissed it with a sigh. “You’ll see the act, and everything, I’m sure. They’re pretty great.”
I wanted to say I already had. I remembered them from when Charlie snuck me into the show in Gleryton. They’d worn green-and-purple outfits with puffy sleeves. And they stood on each other’s shoulders and juggled back and forth on the high wire. Their final high-wire pyramid had been made when a girl—her sister, I figured—was volleyed off the shoulders of one guy, tumbling and twisting through the air to land upright, with arms proudly outstretched, on the shoulders of another, who was perched on two more guys—all her brothers. Their act was energetic and exhausting to watch, my stomach clenched the whole time. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like to grow up in such proximity, but grounded.
“What else?” she asked.
With a pang I thought of Charlie walking through the big top with that bounce in his step. I was afraid to ask. Instead I fished around for something else. “Did you ever wish you could do it, too?” I said, worrying immediately that it was too personal a question, but Wilma smiled wistfully and shook her head.
“I like what I do,” she said. “I belong right here.” And she pointed at the trailer floor, where pins glinted in the slim light.
She’d begun assisting in the costume trailer at the age of eight. Two years ago, almost eighty and nearly blind, the chief costumer had retired.
“I’d been doing most of the work for years, anyway,” Wilma said. “I mean, not necessarily the design, but the fine work and the headdresses and all the repair. And it’s been my life, so far. I like it, so it made sense to Elaine and Mitch—he was her husband, Mitch Fartlesworth—for me to take over.” She leaned back against the edge of a cabinet and took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. There were little red ridges to mark where they’d been. Without their dark shape, her face was pale and delicate. And in the evening light with her eyes closed, she looked much younger than I’d thought.
“How old are you?” I asked, and Wilma’s eyes snapped open. The return of her direct gaze was startling without glasses to fence it off. “Twenty-three,” she said. “You?”
I hesitated. Eighteen? Nineteen? But Elaine’s voice rang in my head and I curbed the urge to lie.
“Sixteen,” I said. I thought she looked disappointed, but I wasn’t sure.
She nodded.
“Oh!” she said, looking at my plate, and leapt up to open a small refrigerator under the wigs. I had finished the sandwich, chips, and ginger ale in record time and was still hungry, though my mouth was tired from eating so quickly.
“The pièce de résistance,” Wilma announced, and extracted a pint of ice cream. She took two spoons from a cup by the sink and returned to sit opposite me.
I was prepared for Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and excessive coincidence, but it was Rocky Road. Wilma handed me a spoon and we both dug in. I was grateful Wilma hadn’t asked anything more about me, although I wanted to believe I could have handled questions, produced a suitable background for Annabelle. But I reminded myself: no matter how much I liked folks, I had to watch out. I had to guard my secrets fiercely. I had to remember who I was and why I was there.
I dug in and the sweet creamy coldness was pure deliverance.
Wilma was quickly devouring the ice cream. With a large piece of chocolate dissolving on my tongue I felt like maybe it was an okay time to ask.
“Do you know Marco the Digestivore?” I said.
She stopped with her spoon in midair. “Yes.”
I hesitated, but pushed ahead anyway. “Well, my friend, Charlie—” I started, but Wilma’s closed eyes stopped me.
“You’re a friend of Charlie Yates?” she said, as though it were blasphemous.
“Yes,” I said, suddenly uneasy. I took another spoonful of the ice cream, its chill reassuring.
“Jesus. Does Elaine know that?”
I swallowed. “Yes,” I said, wondering for a moment if that was true. But I had told her who I’d come to find, hadn’t I?
“Well.” This was somehow too much for Wilma. She seemed to forget I was there for a moment, and then it passed. “After all the mess, it’s amazing that she hired you,” she said, coldly.
“What mess?”
Wilma shook her head and pressed her lips together.
“Do you know where Charlie is?”
She looked up sharply. “Jail, I’d imagine.”
I swallowed, unsure how to proceed. Charlie in jail? “What happened? Why is he in jail? Where is he in jail?”
Wilma shook her head. “I really don’t want to talk about it. We left the three of them in Macon two weeks ago.”
I drew a sharp breath. The three of them? I’d been in Macon a week ago, our last stop before Mobile. I could have done something. Charlie had been in trouble and I hadn’t known it. I hadn’t done anything to help.
I saw familiar movement out of the corner of my eye and turned, hoping to see a blue dress, an arm, the silhouette of the fat girl watching us, keeping track. But it was only the shadow of costumes hidden in the darkness, swinging gently from the structures that supported them.
Later I went back to bed. Wilma crawled into the bunk below, and I lay awake wondering if Charlie was okay and what he’d done. And wondering where the fat girl was. I wanted her now, a familiar face in this strange place. I thought how bizarre we must have appeared, fighting in the grass the day before. What that must have looked like. And they’d asked Do you have epilepsy, are you on drugs? I giggled and caught myself, put a hand over my mouth.
Below me Wilma snored lightly.
I had to be careful.
If I was to cry out in my sleep, spilling my secrets like beads so they littered the floor, all anyone had to do was notice them bumping underfoot. To pick one up and understand it, hear it, and make a phone call or two. They would come for me with sirens and straitjackets, with photo flashes and horror and disgust.
I shook my head and stared at the metal ceiling. It wasn’t good to think of that, of any of it: his face bleeding, his tongue flying through the air. If I let my mind go there, it might all seep out of me when I least expected it. Better not to think of Gleryton, or what we’d fled.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on a field of flowers. There was a shape moving through the field, an enormous shape, blurry and indistinct, approaching slowly. I gave myself over to waiting patiently for it to approach, my mind relaxed and open. I fell asleep dreaming of Bluebell.
ELEVEN
I WAS up bright and early, the world full of light. I crept down from my bunk and pulled on the new jeans and work boots, a T-shirt. It was lovely to wake up clean, in a bed. To wake without the need to move on. I pulsed with energy.
Wilma was sound asleep.
I found coffee and the coffee maker, went out to the showers for water, and made us a pot. When it had brewed, I took a cup and sat in the open doorway watching the circus wake up.
That took a long time. Later I would come to know that mostly these were night people. Later I, too, would be a night person.
But today, after half a day and most of a night’s sleep, I felt somewhere between wonderful and like I’d been run over by a Mack truck. My limbs tingled from so little use, my body cracked its way into place, and my head was filled with cotton, which the coffee dissolved, bit by bit.
I felt a hand on my back and turned expecting Wilma, but it was the fat girl, cross-legged on the floor behind me eating a cruller. “Hi,” she said.
I didn’t answer immediately, but smiled and took a long sip of coffee, then turned, leaning my head back against the doorjamb so I could see outside and inside. It was going to be a warmer day, you could tell, though right now it was chilly.
&
nbsp; “How’s your face?” I said finally, careful to keep my voice low, and indicated the scratches on her cheeks, which were still red and puffy.
“Fine,” she said. “Why?”
At that I wondered about my own face. I put the coffee down in the doorway and stepped over the fat girl, scanning the trailer for a mirror. I checked to see that Wilma’s black hair still poked out from beneath a pile of blankets. She hadn’t stirred.
Opposite the dress rack, there was a large mirror framed by little round lightbulbs. I almost didn’t recognize the girl that stared out from it. Her face was bruised and swollen, her head crowned by wispy orange tufts with dull brown roots. She looked battered and wary, but tough. Her eyes guarded bottomless things.
I reached up and touched my cheek, the yellow, brown, and pale blue area around my eye. The skin was tender. Now I noticed that my jaw was tight, a little sore, though I hadn’t really felt it the night before. I opened and closed my mouth. Besides the color of bruises, my face was ashy and gray.
“Morning.”
Wilma shuffled behind me in lacy pink pajamas and blue bunny slippers. Without the accompanying makeup her granny glasses were harsh slices across her delicate face. I turned and saw the fat girl hold a finger to her lips, give a little wave, and tiptoe out the front door.
“Morning,” I said. My voice creaked a little.
“You made coffee.” Wilma sounded delighted.
I took a deep breath and rescued my own mug of coffee from the doorway, where I could see the fat girl ambling up the hill, her blue dress sharp and bright against the sleeping landscape. I took a sip, but the coffee had grown cold, so I tossed the remains of my cup out the door, where it splattered on the dull grass.
“Hey,” Wilma said from behind me, the coffee bringing her to life once more. “You ready for a day in the circus?”
I was. Oh, I was! I reported to Jim Brewer, with a little cover-up on my bruised eye and my scratched cheek. Wilma had suggested it, without asking where the marks came from, though I felt the need to explain them.
“I fell down,” I told her, and she gave me a knowing nod, which was fine. Let her believe whatever she wanted—it couldn’t be any worse than their real origin.
Walking around towards the animal trailers I marveled at the bright morning, at where I was headed, at my good fortune in getting this chance at a job. I wished Charlie were here—I thought he’d get a kick out of it. And then I thought about Charlie in jail and the whole of the late-night conversation and promised myself to be careful with questions. Lay low. Worry about Charlie later and for now just do what I was told.
And Jim Brewer had a lot for me to do.
I found him in the maze of animal trucks behind the big tent, sitting on a lawn chair between the two elephants, staring up at them when I got there.
I said, “Good morning.”
He looked up at me. “How do you feel about animals?” His accent clipped his speech, making it sound like little drumbeats or the tapping of tiny nails.
“Good,” I said. “I mean, they’re cool, you know?” He motioned for me to sit beside him on another lawn chair and I did. From down here the elephants were even more enormous. Their trunks slithered and snaked through the air like enormous limber fingers with wet pink tips.
“Right, luv,” Jim said. “That’s a splendid beginning, but if you are going to properly learn to relate to Bluebell and Olivia then I need to know if I can trust you.” He rose and stood between the elephants.
“This is Olivia,” he said, patting the elephant to his right who was slightly bigger, a darker gray, and had one long tusk and one stumpy broken one. “And this wee one here is Bluebell, the baby. I’m mostly concerned with how you relate to Bluebell. Now don’t get nervous—”
Could he tell that I was?
“—just answer truthfully. Take a look at Bluebell, here.” He stroked her trunk, which she raised under his hand. “Look at her face and then close your eyes.”
I did.
“Now, I want you to picture Bluebell’s face, let it swim before you, and tell me the first impression you get of her, all right?”
I felt dorky with my eyes closed trying to envision Bluebell’s face, but I took a deep breath and listened for an impression. What exactly did he mean?
“She’s really huge,” I said and giggled uncomfortably. How obvious. Duh, the elephant was large.
“Who is she, though?”
I felt stupid, but I tried to give myself over to it. I took a deep breath and concentrated and saw her large dark eyes in their heavy gray lids swim before me. “She’s sensitive?” I said, “And strong? And really smart?”
Were those things true? No, I was talking about myself, what I hoped someone would say I was like. Still, I didn’t have anything else to say. I sighed. “Can I open my eyes?”
“Oh,” Jim said. “Yes. That was quite good.” He stared at me with a penetrating gaze that made me wonder what he saw.
“Right,” he said, after a minute. “Well, you should be okay, luv. We’ll give you a try as my groom. Which means that you will do whatever I need you to do for the care of these animals. In addition, you will muck up after them and keep them in water—these bulls each drink about forty gallons a day, and pass nearly two hundred pounds of scat apiece, so this is no lean task—”
I guessed what scat was. There was a definite elephant smell, though not as strong or awful as the tigers had been in Gleryton.
“—and then I’ll mostly want you to help me with dressing Bluebell for the show. There are several headpieces and they can be unwieldy. Olivia is a stubborn git, and very picky, and won’t trust you for a while. But Bluebell’s a real sweetheart, and you’ll see that. Very smart, quite perceptive, and she has a wonderful sense of humor. She’ll let you dress her, but she can get angry, like anyone. She follows Olivia. Follows her around like Olivia was her big sister. Olivia’s forty-three, an Asian. I’ve had her for thirteen years. Bluebell’s an African elephant, but born in captivity. She’s only a kid, eleven—”
He rested his head against her leg and she reached her trunk around to fish through his pockets until she found an apple, which she delicately tossed into her mouth. When she opened it I saw her tongue. It was bigger than my whole arm.
“—and I’ve raised her. She likes company when we’re on tour, likes someone around, or she gets lonely, and so that’s a bit of your job when you’re not busy.”
I nodded. I was watching Bluebell watch us. She had finished the apple and stood, looming, her shoulders arcing into the enormous dark shadow of the elephant truck. Only a kid.
“Wow,” I said.
Jim gave me a musty tan jumpsuit and showed me what to do. I watered and mucked—shoveled huge loaves of elephant poo into a wheelbarrow and then carted it off into the trees that lined the field.
“Excellent fertilizer,” Jim told me, though I saw hay and orange peels in it, and in one pile a soda can and an empty cigarette pack. At some point Olivia lay down in the sun to nap and Bluebell soon followed. From the back, as I came up from the woods with the empty wheelbarrow, they looked like little mountains.
“Shhhh,” Jim cautioned me like a protective parent. I tiptoed. My arms had really begun to ache. “Follow me,” he said quietly, and led the way down the hill to meet Benny, the horse trainer.
When we reached the same brown Winnebago Sam had thumped unsuccessfully the day before, Jim stopped. “You’re mostly to be with me,” he said. “I’m your first responsibility, and you’re my groom, but Benny may need a little help, as well.”
He gave a quick knock and Benny Thomas stepped outside the trailer, followed by a posse of small black-and-white dogs. He was older than Jim, short and rumpled, with a pronounced overbite and a long jagged scar on his right cheek. His hair was jet black, shoe polish black, and shadows of black stained the tops of his ears. The five little dogs ran in enthusiastic circles, then settled themselves in a straight line and sat, mouths open, panting expect
antly.
Jim introduced me and Benny nodded and said he could use my help now that Yael was gone.
Yael, Yael, Yael, I thought. Her shadow followed me everywhere I went.
“Hold on a minute,” Benny told us, and he disappeared in the trailer. Jim laughed to himself and shook his head. When Benny returned he had five red balls, which he tossed one by one to the dogs. Then he motioned for me to follow him and bade Jim good-bye, with a gruff “I’ll send her back later.”
Jim waved to me and headed off towards the Midway. I trod back up the hill next to Benny, followed by the dogs. They were a funny sight behind us, following each other in single file—each with a red ball in his or her mouth.
“Stop,” Benny called when we reached the paddock. “Preee-sent!”
Five red balls flew high in the air, and were caught in five tiny upturned mouths.
“Good little soldiers,” Benny sang out, and the dogs dropped their balls and wagged their tails.
“Can I pet them?” I asked. Benny looked annoyed, but he nodded so I bent to nuzzle the dogs. They were squirming bundles of energy, so thrilled by my touch that it seemed they might wriggle right out of their skins with joy.
“What are their names?”
“That’s not what you’re here to learn,” Benny snapped. I stood up slowly, my face hot, and shoved my hands in my pockets. Deep breath, I told myself. I kept quiet, followed Benny into the first stall, and paid attention. He spoke quickly and snorted a lot. And he had plenty for me to do.
He taught me to groom the three horses, Uno, Dos, and Billy, with broad firm strokes. To feed them, to check their hooves. He explained what tack was, how to put on a show saddle, then demonstrated how to trick Billy into her bridle and how to avoid getting kicked in the head by Uno. I was scared of that and there was a lot to remember. I concentrated so hard I thought my eyes might roll back into my head, but Benny turned out to be a nicer teacher than I’d thought. He even promised he’d teach me to ride if I “made good.”
