by Amanda Davis
I stopped at the gully and emptied the wheelbarrow and stood there. I tried to imagine kissing Rod, but it just made me giggle nervously. If Hugo Genersh was a spotlight, swinging his beam from one place to the next, then Rod was a lantern, still and even and low.
Still, I liked him very much. I liked his quiet company, and the way he would appear by my side and look right at me. The way he included me in things, all the while making me feel like I was just some girl. A real girl, nothing freaky, nothing gross. My heart began to thump a little faster. Oh shit. Oh man. I wiped my brow with the sleeve of my T-shirt. It was hot. I got a whiff of my own smell and grimaced. What was Rod thinking?
Then I saw the fat girl approaching, a bucket of strawberries swinging from her wrist. She raked berries between her teeth and tossed their green tails behind her as she walked.
“Hey there,” she said. “How are you?”
I blinked. “How am I?”
“Thought I’d ask,” she said, biting into the red fruit. She had pink juice dribbling down her chins. I pointed at it, then poked around in my pocket for a tissue, but there wasn’t one. She wiped it off with the back of a grubby blue sleeve.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Don’t kiss him,” she said. “If you want my advice, that is. I mean I wouldn’t.”
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks.”
“Things happen, is all I’m saying. And feeling sorry for someone is never a good reason to touch them.”
“I don’t feel sorry for him,” I said. What I felt, right then, was intruded upon.
“I mean it has all kinds of connotations. And it feels different for the one kissing for charity, than for the one getting kissed.”
“I don’t plan to kiss Rod for charity.”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” she said. “After all, you know what that feels like, to be the one getting touched because someone feels sorry for you. Pretty awful when you realize it, right?”
She gave me a slow, pitying smile and I was Faith again in that instant. My whole body went hot. I swallowed. It burned where Tony Giobambera’s hand had traced my cheek. He had felt sorry for me. After what he did.
“You’re such a bitch,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
She narrowed her eyes. With a perfect, knowing smile she let it go. “Sure, honey,” she said. “Whatever you want.”
I covered my ears, and then grabbed my wheelbarrow, threw the shovel in with a clang, and started back for the animals as fast as I could go, her words like little ice cubes melting down my back. I didn’t look, just hoped she wouldn’t follow, and was grateful, when I returned to Bluebell and Olivia, to find the three of us alone.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was careening towards change and there was nothing I could do. For the rest of the afternoon I had a knot under my ribs worrying that Rod would come back and try to talk to me again. That he would try and tell me how he felt or what he wanted and I would have to respond one way or another. But he didn’t.
And then in the twilight, by the show tent, I saw Rod walk by with his brother James and both were laughing and Rod tossed his head back and I felt my stomach flip over. In a good way.
I swallowed and tried to ignore it, to shove it away, but I knew it was there, this flutter. This way that Rod suddenly seemed different, was different. This way that I was.
I unfolded Olivia’s glittery anklets and lay them across the lawn chair. I retrieved Bluebell’s ruffled neckpiece and watched the performers making their way towards us, towards the tent. How could I ignore what I’d seen in his eyes? Wasn’t that sort of what I’d wanted all along?
I had a show to put on, a routine to perform. I had responsibilities and they would not go away, even if my world was turning over. Benny waved as he walked by leading Uno and Dos in full dress. I waved back. His five little dogs trailed faithfully behind. I climbed up the stepladder and threw Bluebell’s neckpiece over her shoulders, so that its ties hung down to where I could reach them from the ground. I climbed down and walked under her head, keeping one hand on her rough skin. It was so thick, and yet Jim had told me that she could feel the tiniest mosquito bite her.
“Blue, we’re alike, you and me,” I said, and tied the strings in a bow. “Because I’m not as tough as I should be either.”
I woke to the same day there always was. I made coffee. I dressed and greeted the animals. I brushed Billy and Uno and Dos until they shone. And again I waited for Rod to show up and turn everything upside down, but he didn’t.
“No day at the beach,” Benny said, when I was oiling the horses’ tack. “Did you hear? Elaine got the Shriners to sponsor another show, so no more hole. No hole, no beach.”
He looked glum. “That’s too bad,” I said, though I was secretly relieved.
“Tell me about it. Those goddamn Shriner shows are always packed with animal freaks.”
I nodded. Benny and Jim talked about the animal rights protesters a lot. I’d seen them a few times, standing with signs about mistreated elephants and stuff. But mostly the cops we hired kept them outside the gates where they couldn’t bother anyone. At the last Shriner show, three motley, livid women dressed as bandaged elephants waved identical pictures of a scalded elephant. Jim did burn Bluebell’s and Olivia’s hair off with a blowtorch, I knew, and I didn’t see why that was really necessary, what was wrong with their hair. Still, the elephants didn’t seem to object very much. When they objected to something, there was no mistaking it.
“Why would I mistreat this creature?” Jim was always saying while he stroked one of the bulls. “She’s my bread and butter!”
More disconcerting to me than the protesters were the stories I’d heard associated with them. A woman had been killed by one of Steve’s tigers in Sarasota when she’d tried to “liberate” the cat by crawling in its cage. At another show, a guy had been mauled trying to pet a trained bear. He’d had to climb over fences and past warning signs to do it. Then he tried to sue the show. The general consensus seemed to be that they were crazy.
“Well, I bet there’ll be a good turnout,” I said. Benny snorted.
“When are we going to Virginia?” I said, but Benny wasn’t listening anymore. He was watching Sam approach and muttering under his breath.
When he was within shouting distance, Sam squared his shoulders and looked at me. “Mother needs you in her trailer at four-thirty,” he said. “Don’t be late.”
“Do you know what it’s about?”
He gave a long sigh and shook his head. “Annabelle. If I did know, do you really think I’d tell you?”
“Never hurts to ask,” I called after him as he strutted away. Benny didn’t meet my gaze. “Never hurts to ask,” I said to myself, but I had a bad feeling all of a sudden. I watered the horses, then headed to the costume trailer to consult with Wilma.
I took my boots off outside the door and found Wilma on her knees, pinning a complicated yellow feather-and-sequins number on one of the Thomasettes, who introduced herself as Marie.
“I’ve seen you around,” she said. She had a sweetness in her voice that made her sound a little stupid. Up close her body was fascinating, entirely muscled and ropey, yet still smooth and feminine. “Ow,” she said, and Wilma apologized, adjusting whatever had poked her.
“I love your act!” I said. “It’s amazing how you leap on and off those horses. But won’t that be hard to somersault in?”
“Thanks!” Marie looked down at the costume. “You think it’ll be hard to somersault in?”
I felt Wilma’s glare. “No,” I said quickly. “I mean it looks that way, but that is the beauty of it, of all Wilma’s costumes, you know? They look really complicated but they have this total ease of movement that is amazing…”
That seemed to do the trick. With relief, I drifted back to the bunk beds and climbed up on mine and waited.
“That girl,” Wilma called to me as soon as the door had swung shut behind Marie, “is such a pain in t
he ass I can’t even tell you.”
“She seems sweet enough.”
“Sure she does,” Wilma threw the costume in a heap on a trunk in the corner, and sat beside it to unlace her high black combat boots. I propped myself up on one elbow to watch.
“But actually, that’s her masterful trick. She’s so sweet that you can’t deny her anything, because you end up thinking it will destroy her, when actually she’s made of granite—knows exactly what she wants and by golly she’s going to have it! Doesn’t budge an inch.” Wilma sighed, rubbed her neck, then arched her back until it popped twice.
“I have remade that costume four times. FOUR! And we aren’t talking about minor adjustments here either, I mean completely reimagined and reconstructed from scratch, an entire costume—and she isn’t happy with it. Jesus!”
She crossed the room, turned off her work lights, and flopped on her bed. I leaned over the edge of the bunk and watched her eyes close.
“I’m just glad she left,” Wilma said. “I thought I was going to have to kill you over that somersault comment.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know.”
She threw a hand over her forehead and waved my apology away with the other. “I am so tired I could just cry,” she said. Then she opened one eye and gave me a suspicious look. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Sam came by and told me to report to Elaine’s trailer,” I said. “Isn’t that weird? I’m a little worried. Should I be worried?”
Something dark flashed across her face. She closed her eyes again and pinched her lips together. “How the hell should I know?”
“I don’t know, I thought you might—that maybe you’d have an idea what it’s about.”
“No idea,” she said.
“I hope it’s nothing bad,” I said. “I mean I hope I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Wilma didn’t answer. I lay back on my own bunk. The trailer was cool and dark. In the distance I heard people’s muted voices. How pleasant it would be to fall asleep. How incredibly delicious. But I had to go see Elaine at four-thirty. Don’t be late.
“Have you and Sam ever worked that stuff out?” I asked.
“You ask too many questions,” Wilma said. Her voice was firm and final. I waited a minute, then climbed down. She turned away from me and curled up.
I shut the door quietly behind me.
I returned to shoveling the elephantine mess with a strange balloon in my stomach. Why the hell did Elaine want to see me? When I could stand it no longer, I made my way to the stone benches by the outskirts of the aerial encampment, and there I smoked a cigarette and let my mind imagine the worst:
Elaine knows what I did and plans to turn me over to the police. She’s seen a warrant for my arrest. She’s been contacted by a private investigator hired by the Giobambera family and is turning me in for a handsome reward.
That’s ridiculous, I told myself, but I had broken out in a thin sweat just thinking about it. What if they were there waiting for me at four-thirty? This could very well be it—I would be sent back to Gleryton in a police car.
I shook my head to expel the thought, but my hands had gone all clammy. For the first time it occurred to me that I was a criminal. I committed a crime. I had done something wrong, something really wrong. And even if I was justified, would the world care? Would the police care?
I am a wanted criminal.
I took a deep breath. Live a round life. How did I live a round life with secrets like these? How could anyone?
For just a moment, I let myself imagine how good it would feel to come clean, to confess it all. I felt sick to my stomach.
“I leave you alone for two minutes,” the fat girl said, plopping down beside me. “And you fall apart. What are we going to do with you?”
“You,” I said. “You are not helping.” And then I noticed what was in her lap. A stained paper towel wrapped around something. Something small and long.
I swallowed. “Get rid of that.”
She blinked at me, all wide-eyed innocence. “What do you think it is, Faith?”
“It’s Annabelle,” I said through gritted teeth. “Jesus Christ, I’m sick of this.”
She didn’t say anything. I held my breath and made myself look down. It was my whole other life wrapped up in that paper towel. It was Homecoming and Gleryton and Berrybrook. But it wasn’t really Tony Giobambera’s finger. I hadn’t cut off his finger. I hadn’t.
“Bury it,” I said.
“Is that what you want? What you really want?”
I put my head in my hands and breathed the smell of dirt and of elephants and of horses and sweat. “I know what we did,” I said. “I did it. I know.” I exhaled and kept myself from running or screaming or trying to strangle her. “I want it fucking behind me, okay? I want to move forward. Bury it. Please? I want you to bury it.”
I raised my head and looked at her then and I grew calm. Her eyes betrayed very little, but deep inside they protected sad things that I knew all about.
“I am not going to fall apart,” I said. My words were sharp and true. “I’m scared, but I’m going to be fine. You should go away.”
“You going to make me?” she said, shaking her Popsicle, but I stopped her with a hand on her wrist. Something in me had loosened.
“Maybe,” I said. “I bet you we won’t get to Gleryton together.”
“Like you know anything.”
“I know that,” I said with all the conviction I could muster. I didn’t know it exactly, especially as I couldn’t even see myself getting to Gleryton, but I wanted to believe it so much I’d said it out loud to make it true.
“Everything’s changing,” I said. “I feel it.”
She cocked her head. I wanted her gone, with every bone in me, but I put my arm around her shoulder and guided her head to rest on mine. “You go ahead and bury that,” I said. “It doesn’t change anything, I promise you.”
She sighed. “We’ll see,” she said, but with so much affection it was almost a hug. “What would you ever do without me?”
When I left that bench I had more than an hour and lots of nervous energy. I headed for the midway, going out of my way to walk by the Genersh compound, but I didn’t see Rod.
The midway was bustling. People drifted from tent to tent and in the bright afternoon the colors seemed as loud as the talkers beckoning traffic with their voices. First I peeked into Professor Charles C. Charley’s tent, but there weren’t many people yet and I didn’t feel like waiting for the flea circus. I kept going until I came to Germania Loudon’s trailer, but instead of going in, I went to finally see Marco’s act.
I elbowed past a man with a toddler on his shoulders, and slipped by a guy and girl holding hands, pushing my way towards the Digestivore, following the sounds of his barker: Ladies and gentlemen, the chance of a lifetime. Step in and see this creature swallow the most dangerous items imaginable! The Digestivore performs in just seven minutes!
I waited on line with the others to pay my three dollars, but the blond boy playing barker recognized me and waved me in.
“Have you seen Charlie?”
He shook his head but was already making change for the man behind me, so I filed in with the others—men and women and children, a small crowd of us—and stood on the grassy floor of the tent waiting to see what Marco could swallow.
Tinny music filtered through from hidden speakers. Over and over again, the barker’s disembodied voice proclaimed the feats we were about to see. Ladies and gentlemen… Part of me wanted to leave while I still could, but then the lights dimmed and a hush fell. Cymbals crashed from behind the curtain, which was slowly pulled back to reveal a large, shirtless man in dark red tights standing on a makeshift stage beside a lavishly decorated trunk. He had orange-and-black lightning bolts carved into his chest and his face was painted entirely red, except for his eyes and lips, which were ringed by sparkly blue.
Not Marco. This was the Digestivore!
The voice of the b
arker announced the Digestivore’s talents and with a flourish the Digestivore brandished each item to be swallowed. I watched him consume six Ping-Pong balls, a rubber snake, a wristwatch belonging to someone in the crowd, and a lightbulb. Each item went down smoothly—you could see it travel down his throat—and returned unscathed. Then he whipped out a twenty-two-inch sword and slowly thrust it down his gullet. When that was inside him to the hilt, he bent over to show us the handle.
It was impressive and disgusting all at once. I felt like I didn’t have quite enough air. When he picked up an umbrella, I’d had enough. I slipped outside and walked around back.
I spotted Charlie quickly. He was shirtless and his tattoos were bright against his pale skin and the dirty white trailer. He had his tongue in the barker boy’s ear, his hand moving in the barker boy’s pants.
When he saw me, he sat up and withdrew his hand. The barker continued to talk into a small microphone. I stared. I could hear the movements of the crowd and see the silhouette of Marco inside, but I could no longer remember what I was doing there or why I’d come to find Charlie. The guilty, slippery look on Charlie’s face washed my mind clean.
He stood and brushed at his jeans, then glanced at the startled barker boy and approached me. I took a step back without meaning to.
A pained expression crossed Charlie’s face. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say what? then stooped to pick up a white T-shirt, which he pulled on. He took my elbow and led me away from the trailers, down a hill out of sight. We trudged in silence through tall grass. The sun was still high overhead.
“That was nothing,” he said finally. I stopped walking and he did too.
“Okay,” I said. But I bit my lip. I was thinking, Poor Marco.
“It didn’t mean anything.”
I was uncomfortable and couldn’t stand still. “Whatever.”
“So I’m guessing you heard…?”
“Heard what?” I waited for him to tell me that Marco had broken his heart, that the barker boy was only comforting him, something. But then I remembered being summoned to Elaine’s and my stomach knotted itself again and again until it was a small solid mass underneath my ribs. I took a deep breath. “Heard what?” I said again.
