by Amanda Davis
“Looks cute,” I told her, but she shook her head and put it back on the rack. I wondered where mine was. In the trailer? I hadn’t seen it in a while. I picked up the hat and put it on. Wilma was looking at key chains.
“What do you think?” I posed for her and she turned and saw me and smiled.
“Yikes,” she said, but kindly. She came over and took the hat off and rumpled my hair. “I could cut it for you, if you want,” she offered, running her fingers through with a critical eye. “Just even it out a little?”
“Sure.”
“And we could even re-dye it, you know?”
I reached up and touched my hair. There was a mirror on the wall and I walked over and looked at myself. It was awful, she was right. It looked like someone had chewed the ends off, had chopped at it with no thought to shape or style. It looked like someone had cut it in the dirty bathroom of an abandoned gas station, didn’t it?
“I’d like that,” I said, and Wilma smiled.
“Good.” She put her hands on my shoulders and steered me towards the restaurant. “When we get where we can sit for a few minutes in Shreveport, we’ll see what we can do.”
I felt self-conscious now, as we walked through the aisles of merchandise, past the stray truckers picking at gifts for their families or heading to the showers. We made our way to the restaurant and its familiarity was shocking after the foreignness of the store. I scanned the tables wondering if I would see anyone I knew, talkative Monty from Asheville or Willie who’d picked us up in Chattanooga, but there were only strangers, an array of men leaning against the walls of small booths with huge plates of finished or half-finished meat and potatoes on their tables, distractedly stirring their food with a fork, while talking on phones that protruded from the booth walls. It was almost 2 A.M. I saw something familiar in each face, something lonesome and tired. I focused instead on the back of Wilma’s red jacket as the waitress led us to our own booth with its own phone.
Who should be waiting there, a triumphant look on her face and a blue cowboy hat on her head, but the fat girl.
Wilma slid into the booth and I slid in next to the fat girl, who tried to scoot over and make room but couldn’t. I realized I was sitting on the edge of the booth and I wondered if Wilma would notice. The fat girl clamped a hand on my knee.
“We have a conversation pending,” she said in the old chilly voice that meant something was wrong. “We have some things to sort out.”
My cheeks burned but I didn’t say anything. I read the menu. It was all meat. Big meat, bland meat, smothered meat, overcooked meat. I knew this food and it washed my hunger away, just the thought of it, the smell of it, which wafted all around us.
“I’m starving,” Wilma said. I would have agreed with her only moments before but now I felt certain that anything solid would catch in my throat, prevented from going down as firmly as if there was a finger inside my neck pushing it back out. I tried to find something soft, something bland.
I ordered mashed potatoes.
“That’s all you want?” Wilma said. She was more disturbed by my order than the waitress, who projected a very pure disinterest.
I nodded, asked for a hot tea also, and tried to make myself comfortable.
The fat girl’s grip tightened. “I want to talk to you.”
There was music playing and Wilma said something about the next show, about Shreveport, about performers. I had trouble listening.
“—and that will be different. But I’m sure it will all work out. It always does.”
Maybe she could tell I wasn’t listening. Maybe she’d been waiting to say it all along, I don’t know. But quiet descended on our table, the mumbled conversations of the truckers all around us faded to a kind of white noise, and Wilma leaned towards me.
“If you want to call home, you can. I’m sure your family misses you.”
I was too startled to reply. The fat girl jabbed me in the side and squeezed my knee again, which made me jump.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, indicating the direction of the rest rooms with my head. I extracted myself from the booth and made my way through the maze of tables, to the soothing familiarity of the generic public rest room. The fat girl followed close behind.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I shouted as soon as we were alone. “What is your fucking problem? I can’t have a conversation with you in front of Wilma. What the hell were you up to out there?!”
She leaned against the wall between a condom machine and another machine that dispensed perfumes. I didn’t want to look anymore, to look at her, at anything. I turned to face the wall I was near and pounded the button of the hand dryer nearest me. It came to life with a satisfying roar. I hit another, and another, until all five were on and the room sounded as though it had filled with a private audience of screaming fans.
“Are you done?”
I wasn’t. I wasn’t done. But I was defeated, the anger drained out of me so quickly that it took my breath with it. I doubled over and watched my feet, the cracked black toes of my cowboy boots.
“This can wait.” Her voice was kind, all her evil swept away by my fit. I was too tired to do anything. Too tired to agree, too tired to argue.
Too tired to conceal how much I wanted her to leave.
“Fine,” she said softly, and that was that. When I lifted my head she was gone. The door to the bathroom swung gently in her wake. I was all alone.
For some reason in the quiet I thought of Starling. Of Charlie coming to rescue her over and over again until he couldn’t anymore. He had gotten me this far, even though he didn’t know it. If it wasn’t for him, where would I be?
I splashed water on my cheeks. It would be so nice to have Charlie around, I thought. To have someone around who knew the real me.
In the mirror I looked older than I once had. I looked like maybe I knew some things. I smiled. Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was best that he wasn’t here, after all. Maybe I needed to do all this all on my own.
I dried my hands and took a deep breath and went out to face my mashed potatoes.
Wilma didn’t bring it up again. We ate quietly and split a piece of apple pie. All around the room people leaned into their phones, talking to faraway folks. I tried to remember what my mother’s voice sounded like, and it horrified me that I couldn’t. The waitress came; we settled our check and made our way back to the truck.
Then we pulled back on the empty highway and fell into the rhythm of driving. I was dreamy with food, with the hum of the road and the dark secret shapes of the towns we passed. Wilma was focused and alert. She didn’t seem to want to talk and I didn’t have much to say. I scooted down in my seat and put my feet up on the dashboard. I adjusted to get comfortable and my boots made a few loud thumps. Suddenly the radio came on.
“Whoohoo!” Wilma fiddled with the dial until she found a crackling station playing a lonesome country song. The recording was old but catchy, and I found myself tapping along with it. I didn’t know who it was, but Wilma did. She turned the volume way up and sang along and her voice was light and sweet.
My heart is ever true
I love no one but you
My Dixie darling
My Dixie queen
“Who is it?”
Wilma raised an eyebrow and cupped an ear towards me and I pointed at the radio. She was nodding in time to the music, tapping away on the steering wheel. “Carter Family,” she said. “I love them.” She reached down and began to dig around in a cubby near one of the gearshifts.
“I have one album. Where’s the hell’s that—fuck!”
She braked hard and we were both thrown back. Through the screech of wheels I saw something large lumber off into the dark. I pressed my face to the window again to try and see what it was but I couldn’t.
We shuddered and stalled and came to a stop. In the silence my heart beat hard. “Maybe that was a moose,” Wilma said. She exhaled and then turned the key and started the engine again.
“Fuck, I’m full of adrenaline. Maybe it was a bear.”
I didn’t think Alabama was moose or bear country but didn’t point that out.
“Well, it wasn’t me, if that’s what you were thinking.”
At the sound of her voice, I flushed scarlet and tried not to be obvious about turning around, looking behind me into the tiny extra cab. I didn’t have to turn far to see the fat girl and smell her cheese pizza. I glanced at Wilma but her eyes were on the road. I tried to communicate silently. I gave a small shake of the head to say No, I hadn’t thought it was you.
“Bullshit,” the fat girl said. “You always think it’s me.”
It didn’t take long to find out what it really was. Almost immediately we saw the line of animal trucks pulled over to the side of the road.
“Oh fuck,” Wilma said. In the spill of our headlights I could just make out the painted FARTLESWORTH CIRCUS! logo on the side of each truck before we pulled off in front of them and parked ourselves. I hadn’t realized how much noise our truck made until Wilma turned off the motor. Then the silence seemed to roar around us.
Wilma sat with her hand on the keys for a minute before saying anything. I heard the fat girl chewing but forced myself to face front.
“Goddammit, I bet that was Bluebell again,” Wilma said.
“Bluebell? You mean back there?”
Wilma nodded. “Do you remember where we were when that happened?”
“Kind of. It was right before that exit with the gas stations.”
She nodded and sighed. “Come on,” she said, and opened her door.
I followed her out. It was late and dewy. The moon was just past full or just getting there and lent a blue cast to everything. We walked back towards the idling animal trucks and their motors hummed like giant purring beasts. We heard their human passengers before we actually found everyone behind the last truck, which was Jim Brewer’s.
“Look what the cat drug up,” said a tall figure who I recognized as Creole Kevin, the tiger groom. He was leaning against the side of the truck alongside Steve, the tiger trainer, and Benny. Next to him, with his hands in his pockets, was a short brown guy I didn’t know, and farther down, a pale lanky man with a drooping mustache.
“The cats are in the truck,” Mustache said, but everyone ignored him.
“Where’s Jim?” Wilma had her hands on her hips and her legs planted wide, a defiance in her stance that I didn’t understand.
“Don’t you worry about Jim,” Benny snapped. “He’s just fine without your help, little girl.”
I couldn’t see Wilma’s face but I could feel her anger. She looked at her feet, and after a minute, she said quietly, “We saw her go.” Then Wilma cleared her throat and raised her head and looked at each of the men, one at a time. “The bull. She crossed us on her way into the woods back by that last exit, about a mile or so ago.”
“He’ll find her,” Benny said, and this time the tone of his voice was more gentle.
“Come on,” Wilma said to me. “Let’s go.” She turned and marched off and I followed.
When we were back in the truck, she shook her head and started the engine. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. We pulled onto the highway again and Wilma told me to look on the map and see how far we had come. I waited a few minutes before I asked.
“What was that all about?”
“What?”
“Back there. I mean, does that happen a lot with Bluebell? And why did Benny want us out of there so bad?”
She looked at me, then back at the road before answering. When she did, it sounded as though the words were difficult to pronounce. “Jim and I were…involved. And it didn’t work out,” Wilma said. “Let’s just say there’s some fallout.”
Involved sounded very grown-up.
“How much longer on Ninety-eight?” Wilma said without looking at me.
“Were you in love with him?”
She looked at me quickly, then back at the road. “Yes,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”
I checked the soft map. “Another few miles,” I said.
We spent them quietly, each lost in our own thoughts. I didn’t know what Wilma was thinking, but I wondered how much a person could take. How many quiet things could fill you up before you overflowed with them. Or choked. And I was wondering how many secrets I could live with.
FOURTEEN
BY the time we reached the fairgrounds in Shreveport it was full-on morning. Wilma didn’t even unhitch the truck, just parked it where Lou said, got out, stretched, and headed for the trailer. I waited a moment before joining her.
We slept for a few hours and then put the show together. Jim had me scout out a place to dump the elephant dung—there was plenty of it from the night before and the morning. We weren’t as close to a stand of trees this time, so my wheelbarrow rides were longer, my arms rattling as I hit ruts and rises. The air smelled like honeysuckle. Honeysuckle and elephant shit.
“Sometimes when we’re traveling,” Jim said, as I shoveled yet another load, “I scoop their mess into a Dumpster along the way. At night, though. Very late so no one will see.”
I nodded. He’d been talking a blue streak all morning and I couldn’t tell if it was his sleepless night tracking Bluebell—the animal trucks had rolled in nearly four hours after us and the big top couldn’t go up without the elephants’ help—or something else altogether. But I was too tired to care. Faced with my huge stinky task, I fell into the rhythm of removal. The shovel clanged against the metal wheelbarrow with each pass, the weight of it pulling me down to the trees. There was a heavy thump as it hit and then lightness up the hill towards the bulls.
“Once…” He chuckled, a sure sign that another reminiscence was on the way. “Outside Springfield, I think it was, Olivia turned over a Dumpster. That was a bloody mess, I tell you!”
I wiped the sweat off my face with the corner of a sleeve. Jim was sitting in his lawn chair with a Coke and the paper. It was beginning to bug me, his relaxing while I sweated. I kept having to remind myself how happy I was to be allowed to be there, to have a job with Fartlesworth.
“How did Bluebell get out of a moving truck?” I said.
Jim ignored me. “There are some towns where they’ll come and get you,” he said. “They’ll even chase you down with the shit you dumped.” He shook his head. “I hate that.”
I went and deposited another load. When I returned Jim pointed to the back of the hauling truck and told me to scrub it down inside with soapy water. Then he leaned back, put his feet up on a bucket, and lit a cigarette.
“You know, I think I’m going to go do the horses first,” I said. Jim raised his eyebrows but didn’t object. It was the same job, but even changing the kind of poo I was to scoop seemed like a good idea.
I made my way over to the horse stalls and said hello to Billy and Dos and Uno. They were happy to see me and each in turn nuzzled my outstretched hand. Billy sniffed around to see if I’d smuggled him carrots, but I hadn’t. I apologized and set about mucking stalls.
By the time I’d gotten around to grooming Dos, my irritation at Jim had worn off. It was just me and the horses, the sun, the sounds of people putting the show back together, calling to one another across the encampment. I forgot everything and focused on the feel of brush against hide, the smell of hay and manure. I’d just set to work on Uno when I heard a hello and turned to face two of the Genersh brothers. They stood just outside the paddock, sun on their faces, ruggedly handsome with freckles and pale skin framed by thick curly dark hair that stood out every which way. Both had big green eyes and except for their different-colored T-shirts, they looked very much alike.
“I’m Hugo,” the one in red said. “He’s Rod.” Rod lifted his hand in a mock wave but didn’t smile.
“I’m Annabelle.”
“We’ve seen you around,” Rod said, lifting his hand to cover his mouth, but not fast enough to hide his missing front teeth.
“Yeah, with
the elephants and stuff,” Hugo added, and smiled. His teeth were perfect and his eyes were warm. My stomach, all furry and light, abruptly shot into my throat.
“You’ve seen me around?”
Rod nodded and Hugo tilted his head and considered me at an angle. “How come you’re never at dinner?” Hugo said. “Is my stuck-up sister squirreling you away?”
“Dinner?”
“Dinner,” Hugo said with a big grin. “You know, evening meal? You’ve heard of it, right? That food served around sunset?”
“Dinner.” I was doomed to repeat everything, like a slow schoolgirl. I kept a hand on Uno, enjoying the feel of her warm solid body. I swallowed and ran my other hand through my choppy hair. They both had long lashes. I was sweaty and smelled like dung.
Rod pursed his lips and elbowed his twin. “Lay off, man, she’s new. Maybe they don’t eat where she’s from.”
I smiled. I wanted to turn and run but I was sure my legs wouldn’t move even if I asked them to. “I ate in the cookhouse when I got here. With the job-ins. I guess I’ve just been eating in our trailer, you know, with Wilma.” I ran my hand through my hair again and tried to look casual. “You don’t eat in your trailer?”
Rod looked at me like I had antlers, but he answered without sarcasm. “Everyone eats together when their flag goes up,” he said. “Stanley set up the pie car near the picnic grounds. Some cities we barbecue or eat in the parking lot, or if we aren’t tenting, if it’s like, an arena or something, sometimes we eat in the stands or whatever. But usually we eat together, you know. The show, I mean. My sister likes to eat by herself. She’s a freak.”
“So will we see you tonight?” Hugo said, and gave me that smile again.
I swallowed and nodded, sure my face was red as well as sweaty. “I’ll be there,” I said, and forced myself to turn and walk towards Billy and Dos.
But Hugo Genersh was like a sun, a star, a heavenly body. As I turned I could feel the heat of him behind me, illuminating my neck, my scalp, the backs of my knees. I didn’t turn back to look but knew when they walked away, because I felt the world cool as Hugo took that light and directed it at someone else.
