The Devil's Tub

by Edward Hoagland

  A woman was in the gym, on spike heels, and stacked, and colored with an orange stripe up her hair. Kelly wondered if she belonged to Rudd, because he ought to have a good one. With any sort of a manager to move him he would move and Kelly might be telling grandkids of the day when he’d been walloped by a champ. Rudd’s new partner was faring better. He was skinny, with ingratiating eyes, and was simply blocking punches, nothing else, and so he wasn’t getting tagged. Oh, he’d feel for a chance to use his hook, which was his treasure obviously, but never more than started it. A trainer watched, placid and motionless, and next to him a peppy youngster bobbed and bounced, exercising, pumping his arms and simultaneously chattering gaily to the trainer, although the trainer gave no evidence of listening. The youngster’s sweated hair poked wildly in all directions, while the trainer’s stayed correctly combed. Kelly’s middle grew more tender as the numbness lessened. Kelly would be like the trainer, not the youngster, from now on.

  “Pretty tough boy, hey? Yeah, I wish I had him. Who doesn’t?” Straws glanced over Kelly’s frame for bruises. “Good experience for you to box him and you’re lucky—anybody else’ll seem easy. His manager says he will still let you box him and a little later he’ll start paying you. You remember how he said he’d pay you?”

  Kelly stared at Straws, unbelieving.

  “You remember, don’t you?” Straws chuckled nervously, patted Kelly. “Yesterday he said the last week he would pay you, son.”

  “You’ll make me cry!” Kelly burst out. “You don’t want to lose your lousy cheap three bucks you paid DeJesus! You’re afraid to lose three bucks! You’d drop me afterwards and when you finished taking out expenses I couldn’t buy a candy bar with what you left—and I’d be in the hospital!”

  “You’re a catcher, you’re a bum!” Straws snarled and backed away as though from something vile and went to Crackers, thumbing at Kelly with a bitter-twisted mouth. Crackers gave no sign of a reaction, didn’t even shrug. Straws went around to managers and thumbed. Some laughed at him for having gotten stung; some said so Kelly heard: “He don’t like it, he don’t work,” and looked at Kelly bleakly. They had you if you still wanted to box, but Kelly didn’t. He showered slowly, trying to sponge the pain away, slowly pulled on his civilian clothes, put his store teeth in his mouth—the crusher in his present mood—and sat caved in. He tried to talk to Peapod and his voice squeaked from the belting of the voicebox; his nose, swollen, hindered too. You had to go on living your whole life after you quit boxing. You couldn’t be all busted up inside and sick and crippled because you’d taken extra punches when you’d got too old. A kid paraded to the mirror naked, a little jiggling nod of pride accompanying each step. It wasn’t only stuck up kids who jiggle-headed when they walked, but punchdrunks too; except a punchdrunk couldn’t help it, and his face was molded grisly as a burlesque queen campaigner’s, instead of, like the kid’s, being snottily untouched.

  Circus Dawn

  THE HIGHWAY TEEMED with people and cars. More and more the town was waking up to the terrific fact it had a circus in its lap. Cars were stopping. Cars were pulling off the highway. Hardly any went by, unless to turn around at the gate of the amusement park. The convoys of circus trucks had to thread their wagon trains through a bottleneck of cars, something they were expert at. But every once in a while a big interstate diesel truck hove in sight cruising along on a schedule. The old electric horn would blaaaat, blaaaat and the air brakes f’ch-sssssssssss-f’ch! The driver’d be cursing, knowing if it wasn’t a million-dollar fire it must be a circus to jam up things at this hour of the morning.

  The cars were from both directions, the fathers bending to the windshields as they drove and the rest of the family almost out the windows watching for the lot. The cookhouse they sighted first, since nothing else was up. Arms pointed. “There it is! There it is!” The cars eased cautiously onto the grass. The families piled out and clustered with neighbors from home to chat about how exciting it was, all the funny-shaped, colorful wagons, and how much land it took, and was that tent there (the cookhouse) the big top? Was this the whole circus? The parents joking about how long it had been since they were up so early and agreeing they should have brought rubbers and this was an experience children mustn’t miss. The kids tugged. “We’ll be late! They’re doing it all!” The parents lagged stodgily, still overcome with their virtue and accomplishment in getting even this far, and worrying about wet feet. . . .

  Chief and Fiddler luckily were out of earshot. Just looking at a mass of townies, Fiddler could hear the chatter in his ears, from so many, many towns, always the same chat. It was better when the sun wasn’t up and they were mere silhouettes—a whole horizon dark sometimes with townies—or on a foggy morning when you’d have to figure out where voices came from, if you wanted to. These were precious minutes while the townies lingered near the highway. Soon they’d be everywhere, like gnats.

  The Seat men and their buddies appeared on the edge of the lot by the highway. They must have walked from the diner. A single figure separated from them and strode to a parked jeep, jumped in, and barreled toward Chief and Fiddler. Chief chuckled, “Boss! It’s the Boss, boy!” which meant it was the Boss Chief, the Head Canvasman. The jeep was equipped with stake driving apparatus. The Boss Chief would put in the little clumps of stakes that anchored the big top’s center poles. White people called him “Chief” like any other Indian, but the Indians had named him “Boss” because he was the only one of them to reach a boss status and get paid like a boss. The Boss Chief was minus an ear. As a kid he’d bet somebody his ear against theirs, the story went, and lost. Then he’d turned more serious—become a boss.

  “They must have been telling him their troubles,” Fiddler said.

  Candle flames flickered in the depths of Chief’s eyes. He didn’t reply. He hurried to meet his friend, Fiddler after him, kicking through the grass. The grass grew shin high. The cats and elephants and ponderous seat wagons hadn’t stomped over it yet. It wasn’t as lush or as Irish green in the sun as grass on the eastern lots, but brown and nice still. The show would take the ginger out of it. The grass would grow after the show left, but not like before.

  The Boss Chief skidded his jeep to a halt. The pair of bright-eyed Indians punched each other mockingly.

  “I see you got it all laid out, Mr. Menagerie Chief.”

  “Yeah, I got it fixed. Where’s your tent? Where’s your poles? Where’s your blasted tent?”

  “We’re waiting on you! You ain’t spotted all your wagons yet. You ain’t even got your train unloaded.” Then the Boss Chief quit fooling. “Was your boy with you?”

  “Him? He was sleeping, weren’t you, Fiddle? He was in bed.” The tone of voice was not so much scornful as matter of fact.—Is he of age?—Not yet. Fiddler flushed.

  “Maybe it’ud been better if you’d both been in bed,” said the Boss. He was speaking as a Boss. In spite of his grave expression, his eyes glittered in sympathy with Chief.

  “But he did pretty good this morning.”

  “Yeah?”

  The circus water trucks hauled a whole slew of wagons onto the lot—the runner raced in front, beckoning directions—then cut them loose and powered away, just as quick as that. “There are the cages!” shouted Fiddler. The big lay-out Cat clacked and clanked toward the wagons as fast as it could, the little pinman hanging on behind like a monkey. The cat seemed certain to bulldoze right into the wagons but at the last instant spun in its tracks, hooked on to a string. It was cages, but the wrong ones, the act cages and the dog wagon. Fiddler had to be patient. The lay-out cat maneuvered, snorting and starting and stopping, and the pinman bobbed on and off, unhooking the wagons one by one. Then the cat returned to the lot entrance and pulled Fiddler’s entire line of cages into the deep grass behind the cookhouse, where he wanted them. They rolled prim and well-kept-looking behind the big cat. He was proud of them.

  “He’s got to see his babies,” Chief laughed as Fiddler rushed off.
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br />   The cages were behind Number 4 Wagon, the Ice Box, in two-foot grass where the manure could be raked out and left as it fell. The pinman scarcely had a chance to chock the wheels before the townies were on the spot to find out what was up. The lay-out cat steamed at them as it went and scattered them momentarily. Fiddler opened his tiger cage just to look at “his girl,” say good morning. The townies scurried and swirled in his wake. She came to the bars with a flat, blank, murderous sheen in her eyes for the townies. He stood within easy range of her paws; his face nearly brushed against hers at the bars. Past his ear she roared her tiger’s roar—more abrupt than a lion’s, bristling with the actual sound of breath, like a gasp, titanic. Fiddler could hear the townies trip over themselves as they fled back.

  But then they were coming again. “What in the world have you got there?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and shut the cage. The lady had folds in her neck like a chicken’s wattles.

  The lay-out cat returned with more cages and put them behind the first string. Frank, the rhino, had pried the boards off the bars of his cage; the fastenings weren’t right. He was exposed to the public when he shouldn’t have been, bumping his horn on the bars, boisterously swinging his head as if he was aiming a home run.

  Like a conscientious soul, the pinman suggested, “You better tell the guy who takes care of him, that batty guy that talks to himself.”

  “I can do it,” Fiddler replied. He petted Frank, reached between the bars and took hold of Frank’s head, laid his arms along both sides of Frank’s face. The head remained still. The eyes closed blissfully.

  “He’ll break your arms to bits, kid!” the pinman warned. “I’ve seen you do the stupidest—” The cat lurched and carried him off clasped on for dear life, the nosy son of a bitch. What business was it of his? What a sucker’s job he had.

  Frank’s head was formed like a turtle’s, even to the hooked lip and dull turtle eyes; but his ears flared out like the bells of trumpets and his horn was wedge-shaped, high. His body was big as a bus, long, made for ramming. Frank closed his eyes, let out a deep breath and propped himself on his elbows to be petted. Fiddler scratched behind the huge ears, over the eyes and in the itchy areas at the base of the horn.

  “What’s his name, mister?” a kid asked.

  “Frank.”

  “Can I touch him?”

  The people were crowded around. They’d blow cigarette smoke in Frank’s eyes and get their fingers crushed—more than their fingers if you gave them time. Fiddler started boarding up the cage. He was trying to make the fastenings stick when—“Number 12, hey, Fiddler!” Red sang out in the distance. Fiddler glanced between the cages. Yes, the wagon was there. He had to leave Frank’s cage no better than he’d found it. Kids were climbing on all the wagons, peeking in the air vents.

  “Get off there! They’ll scratch out your eyes!” Fiddler yelled. He didn’t wait to see the results because they were always discouraging. The day’s work had begun.

  The lay-out cat driver set Number 12 Wagon precisely where Brownie wanted it, next to his truck, and Brownie gave him a salute. The Animal Department in full, impressive muster moved forward to help unload the wagon. There was Taylor the madman, Brownie, the boss, and Coca Cola—the wagon ladder almost came down on Coca Cola’s head when they opened the door; he didn’t have the co-ordination to get out of the way; Chief caught it and saved him—there was Coca Cola who’d graduated to Coca Cola and aspirin from wine, and Chief, Fiddler, Red.

  After the ladder, the next thing out of the wagon was Nigas, the Department’s dog. His real master was serving a life sentence for murder, so he belonged to everybody. He was fox-red, small, spunky, with eyes black and hard as two beads. He was in ecstasy to be free in the sun and grass with Chief, Fiddler, and Brownie, his favorites. After Nigas, the wheelbarrow came out and the stakes, hammers, the water barrels for humans and animals, the top, the poles from the wall racks, the butchering board and sawhorses, the axe, shovel, cage tools—brushes and scrapers—the crum boxes, and the stray tiger cub in its cage. Everything was painted red except the tiger cub and the top. The Animal Department’s color was red.

  Fiddler went up on the wagon and caught the ropes that were thrown to him and lashed one end of the top to the wagon. Meanwhile Chief drove five stakes, shocking them into the earth a foot at a blow with his big sixteen-pound sledge. The canvas went up, the poles were set, the lines were noosed to the stakes and guyed out, and the flaps of the top tied out for ventilation. Next door the horse tops were going up, although the horses hadn’t come up from the crossing yet, and Murphy, the Ringstock dog, was running and barking like Nigas. The Animal men were lucky in not having to put up much canvas. Their cages were exhibited in the big top, so they only needed a shelter large enough for themselves. The crum boxes were placed in a square inside the top. Coca Cola had to open his right up and burrow after aspirin and Coke amongst his crummy stuff to send him into Happyland. “Crum” box was the word for his.

  Chief grabbed a scraper, stakes, and his hammer. Fiddler took the broom and a coil of rope. The scraper and broom were each iron rods about ten feet long, the scraper having a small iron bar at one end instead of a brush. They were toted on the shoulder. They see-sawed when you walked, and all the townies wondered what they were for and followed to find out.

  The lot was still bare and open. The four ticket wagons and the silver office wagon were spotted at the front of what would be the big top—the sideshow would be catty-corner to them—and the commissary wagon marked the middle of the backyard, with the cookhouse on one side and the Wardrobe and Band wagons in the process of being spotted beside the half-raised horse tops at the other. The cookhouse was up; the sideshow poles were up; the horse top canvas was stretched out on the ground, billowing a little wherever a breeze could get under it. But in the center of it all the grass grew undisturbed. There wasn’t a pole or a bundle of canvas. The stake drivers had hardly gotten a fourth of the way around.

  Passing the cookhouse, Fiddler and Chief could smell the ham cooking, the biscuits, the Cream of Wheat. Fiddler was hungry as hell. When they reached the cages, there were the same kids climbing to peer in the upper vents. “Get off there; they’ll claw your eyes out!” Fiddler ordered.

  “Get down off there!” said Chief.

  They did.

  Chief drove the row of stakes faster than Fiddler could tie the rope between them. The people ranked themselves along the rope, holding on to it. You had to give them something to hold on to or they’d simply press closer and closer to the cage until they were pushed up against the bars and you were pushed against the bars and they could hold on to the bars. Mothers would lift up babies to kiss the lion’s nose. It was unbelievable. Even using the rope, when the first wagon was opened, the leopards’ wagon, some kid got carried away and ran under the rope and nearly escaped Chief’s arm. The leopards were crazy to get him, lunging with their paws—he was almost close enough. Chief chased the kid back. The mother wagged her finger at the naughty child to play such a prank when the man didn’t want him in there.

  Chief worked fast. There was never a chance to fool with the animals when Chief was there because he worked fast. He put the pressure on Fiddler and deliberately kept him from playing with the cats. Earlier, Fiddler’s petting the animals had been a point of argument with them, but now Chief just stopped him whenever he could. “Get your hands outa there!” he’d say. Chief would give each cage a rough once-over with the scraper, pulling out the dung. Then he’d go back and cut the meat, fill the wheelbarrow and come with it—and Fiddler had better be through. It was Fiddler’s job to brush the residue of straw out of the cages so the floors would be clean for the cats to eat off of. “Clean as your plate,” Chief said.

  “Are they tame?” a voice asked, presumably referring to the leopards.

  “Nope,” said Fiddler. Chief didn’t answer questions, which was the best policy if you could block your ears and not hear them repeated and repeat
ed and repeated. Of course, the questions were repeated and repeated and repeated even when you answered them, because new people came.

  “Across the wide Missouri!” Chief boomed out tunelessly for no reason and turned to Fiddler with a toothy grin—a missing-toothy grin.

  “Missouri?”

  “Sure!”

  “Missouri? Oh, yeah, that’s where we are, isn’t it? That’s the river, the guy in the diner said.”

  “Sure, Missouri River! Big River! You had schooling, boy. You should know that stuff!”

  The only other sign of drink in Chief besides this sudden outburst was the headache wrinkles over his eyes, and he’d had those all morning.

  “You should keep track where you are! I didn’t have much school, but I know,” Chief concluded.

  There were five leopards: Rajah, Sweetheart, Taboo, who was black, and Minny, the fat one, and Rita, who was wilder than the day she’d been caught. They lived together harmoniously except when one of the females would get in heat and go stir-crazy. Rajah, being the only male, enjoyed himself. He had a large, square build and was supercilious when you petted him, demanding to inspect your hands, then stalking back and forth indifferently. Sweetheart was the gentle one. You could put your arms between her paws or stroke her lips or kiss her lips—Fiddler had done that once, as an experiment. Taboo was glossy black and slender, pretty, quite trustworthy. Minny was the old one, a fat, quiet, well-adjusted cat. Minny had a policy—not to try particularly to hurt someone she knew would not hurt her—an easy, lazy policy. You could pet her back and flanks and neck. She’d curl her upper lip but not really mind. Rita was the nuisance, lightning Rita always flattened in a corner, watching her chance. Her eyes were deep gray-blue and her spots were navy blue, not black. What should be white on a leopard was gray on Rita, so that sometimes she looked dingy. But now and then the blue would mingle with the gray and make her very beautiful, misty blue, loose-muscled, small and slim and gray. Fiddler would ache to touch her.