Wonder Show

by Hannah Barnaby

  Portia restrained herself from telling Mosco he sounded like her Aunt Sophia. She’d already blamed her various culinary disasters on Sophia’s poor teaching—Mosco surely wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.

  She climbed into the red pickup, and Violet hopped in after her. The truck was narrow, and Portia struggled to keep a precious inch of space on either side of her. The heat was intolerable. She couldn’t stand to feel the silk of Violet’s going-to-town dress on her thigh, or the stiff brush of Gideon’s canvas work pants on her other side. She tugged her skirt down underneath her, but it wouldn’t cover her knees.

  Should’ve let my hems down before I ran away, she thought. The shorter skirts made it easier to ride her bicycle, but she needed to find ways to look older if she was going to survive on her own. She’d been trying to talk Gideon into teaching her how to drive, completely without success. But Violet had promised to help her pick out a lipstick at the five-and-dime while Gideon put gas in the truck and did the shopping, so at least she’d have something to work with. She had already informed Jackal that she’d be employing a new hairstyle—the braids weren’t fooling anyone, and she hated the way they bounced against her shoulder blades when she walked.

  When Violet asked Gideon to drop them off, he said, “Don’t you have enough of that junk already?”

  “It’s for Portia,” Violet snapped.

  Gideon frowned. His obvious disapproval made Portia itch. He thinks Violet’s a bad influence, she thought. But he’s the one who introduced us in the first place.

  She cleared her throat, as if to dislodge the words she wasn’t saying.

  Gideon shook his head. “Fine, whatever. But if you’re not back here by the time I’m done cleaning the windshield, I’m leaving without you.”

  Portia looked back at him over her shoulder as Violet dragged her away.

  “He’s bluffing,” Violet said. “He’s always threatening to leave me places, but he never does. Even when I want him to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just . . . nothing. Come on.”

  Woolworth’s was across the street from the gas station. Portia could see Gideon through the front window, leaning across the truck, scrubbing at the bugs on the windshield with a wet sponge. His right foot lifted off the ground, his arms extended. He looked like a dancer.

  “How about this one?” Violet was at her shoulder with a tube of lipstick, turning it up so Portia could see. It was a deep red, the color of overripe strawberries. “This would look great with your hair.”

  “Okay,” Portia said. She didn’t know enough to choose for herself. She could entrust this small choice to Violet, spare herself the mistake, if it was one. “How much?”

  Violet shook her head. “My treat, darling. Bad luck for a girl to pay for her first lipstick. It’s like the tarot cards. You can’t buy them for yourself. You can’t pay for something powerful. It has to be given to you.” She waved the lipstick like a magic wand. “And this,” she said, “is powerful stuff.”

  Before Portia could ask where Violet got the money to pay for such items, the bell on the Woolworth’s door sent its little birdsong through the sticky air. She looked up, expecting to see Gideon, embarrassed to be caught among the strange luxuries of the cosmetics counter.

  But it was three boys who entered the store—tall, clean cut, with the shiny scrubbed faces of young men sent into town by their mothers. They looked like a Norman Rockwell composition, the three of them stacked up by the door, until they moved through the doorway and one of them spotted the girls.

  “Well,” he said, grinning. “What have we here?”

  Portia recognized his tone, all false innocence and play. Brewster Falls had its share of boys who liked to follow the road out of town and surprise a wayward girl or two working in the orchard. Fortunately they had all been too scared of old Bluebeard to try to steal any of his wives. So no real harm was ever done, but the boys sometimes got just brave enough to hide in one of the apple trees and spook the girls. Mister had finally installed a few empty shotguns among the outbuildings and granted the older girls permission to brandish them when necessary.

  It was unlikely, Portia thought, that she could use that tactic in the middle of Woolworth’s. And if Violet had any of the same itchy feeling Portia had in her legs, it didn’t show.

  “Gentlemen,” she replied genially. “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

  The boys sauntered toward them. Portia glanced out the window, but Gideon’s truck was gone. She looked around the Woolworth’s. The only other inhabitant was the old man behind the cash register—his eyes were fixed on the fan limping in lazy circles on the ceiling.

  “Sure is,” the same boy said. “Y’all must be new in town. I’d remember seeing you before.”

  Violet smiled and appeared utterly charmed. “We’re just visiting family for a few days,” she purred. “We’re cousins. Our grandparents own the feed store down Main Street.”

  The boy looked perplexed. “Mr. and Mrs. Mason?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Violet.

  One of the other boys finally found his tongue. “You sure you ain’t part of the traveling show?” He sounded angry. Portia could feel her dress sticking to the sweaty small of her back.

  Violet giggled. “Of course not! Do we look like freaks?” She bit into the last word like a bad-tasting pill.

  All three boys just stared, but their foreheads were furrowed with the effort of trying to reconcile what Violet was saying with the improbability of it being true. But before they could get there, Violet grabbed Portia’s hand and bolted for the door.

  Gideon’s truck sat there like a chariot from heaven.

  “Everything all right?” he asked as the girls tumbled into the seat.

  Violet wriggled her fingers at the pile of confused farmboys peering at them through the Woolworth’s picture window. “Just fine,” she said.

  “How did you know what to say?” Portia asked, once they were on the road and she could breathe again. Gideon drove in his usual silence.

  “What do you mean?” Violet gazed out the window at the yellowed land.

  “How did you know about the feed store? And Main Street?”

  “Oh, that.” Violet patted Portia’s hand without turning her head. “There’s always a feed store, and there’s always a Main Street. And,” she added bitterly, “there are always rubes like that trying to sniff us out.”

  Then she reached into her bag. “I didn’t forget about you,” she said, and handed Portia the gleaming silver tube of lipstick.

  It was cold in Portia’s palm. Like a shotgun shell.

  Violet helped Portia copy a hairstyle from one of the movie magazines, an elaborate twist-and-pin updo that made Portia look at least twenty (or so Violet opined), and showed her how to dab and blot the lipstick until it was perfectly even. It made Portia unpleasantly self-conscious of her mouth, and she wondered if it would be difficult to do her bally, if she was thinking too much about what she looked like. But Violet was delighted and practically pushed Portia out of the trailer in her eagerness to show off her handiwork.

  Of course, the first one they saw was Gideon.

  He was sitting in the back of the red truck, reading, just as he had been when Portia arrived. Then, he had not seemed the least bit surprised to see her. Now, he sat up and gawped like a fish suddenly deprived of water.

  “Doesn’t she look terrific?” Violet squealed.

  Gideon said nothing. Portia’s stomach began to clench, and she fought the urge to run back to the trailer.

  “Geez,” said Violet. “You are such a killjoy, Gideon. Tell her she looks nice!”

  Instead, he said, “Can I talk to you?”

  Portia nodded.

  “Fine,” Violet snapped. “I’m going to help Mrs. Collington get ready for the show.”

  As she marched away, Portia and Gideon stood in silence. Finally Portia said, “I don’t have much time. Jackal’s waiting for me—�
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  “What are you doing here?” Gideon asked.

  “You know what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m looking for Max.”

  “No, you’re not. Not really,” he told her. “I’ve offered to help you, and you’ve ignored me. You just keep staring at people and writing things down in your notebook. That isn’t—”

  “What?”

  “That isn’t how you find someone.”

  He was saying everything she had worked so hard not to tell herself. Looking for Max like this, night after night—it wasn’t even like looking for a needle in a haystack. It was like looking for a particular piece of hay.

  “I know,” she told Gideon. “But I’ve been in one place all this time. I was living in that house, and I was waiting, and my father didn’t come to get me. What if—” She swallowed, took a breath. “What if he knew where I was all along?”

  Gideon leaned against his truck and rubbed at the back of his neck. Portia knew now that this was what he did when he was thinking, weighing his words. She found it oddly reassuring.

  “You don’t want to find him,” he said finally. “You want him to find you.”

  “I want him to be looking,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “I have to keep going,” she said.

  He nodded again. He did not offer comfort or promises, knowing how hollow they would sound striking against Portia’s words. He did not remind her that there were only nine more towns on the route card, ten days before the circus broke down for the last time and lurched east, and the Wonder Show disbanded for another season.

  She did not have much time left to shelter with them.

  But for now, the bally was waiting.

  Kites at Midnight

  Most nights Portia rode in the red truck with Gideon driving, her bicycle tucked securely in the bed. She gladly surrendered the trailer to Violet before they left the lot. It was too hot for the two of them, even at night, even with the windows open, and Portia preferred to ride up front. Gideon didn’t expect her to talk too much, didn’t try to start conversations just to fill the air with words. He let her sit in silence, when she wanted to. She could watch the land moving past and think about the growing distance between her and Mister. She tried not to picture his face too clearly, but kept him indistinct, imagined him getting smaller and smaller as she pulled away.

  The caravan drove, their many headlights cutting a narrow path across the prairie. Sometimes they drove all night, sometimes just a few miles. Occasionally, the road would curve, and as the trucks ahead of them followed its arc, their lights illuminated something: the shape of an animal trotting into a field, a dead tree, a collapsing house. They seemed to be parts of some hidden world that emerged only at night and revealed itself quietly, grudgingly. Portia felt privileged and strange to have witnessed these things.

  The night after Violet gave her the stolen lipstick, Portia saw a door, standing upright in its frame with no house behind it. It struck her as unbearably sad. But when she pointed it out to Gideon, he laughed.

  “The house must have come down in a twister and left the door behind.”

  “Don’t you think it’s lonely, though?”

  He rubbed at his ear. “Could be. Or maybe the door let the house go. Think how strong it’s got to be, standing there by itself. Hasn’t been blown over, hasn’t been stolen. Hell,” he said, “it’s probably still locked.”

  Portia smiled then and allowed herself to fall into a half-sleep, floating between night and day.

  She woke with a lurch as the caravan stopped suddenly.

  The caravan didn’t stop unless they hit a bad patch of road or got lost. Even with the advance man going out a day ahead and putting up red arrow signs to show them the way, wrong turns sometimes got taken, and it made for a foul mood all around. Especially all around Mosco.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Dunno,” Gideon said, and put the truck in park, and stepped out into darkness so black that he immediately disappeared. But the headlights were still on, and so Portia could see Jim carrying Jimmy toward her. She rolled down the window. There was just an edge of cold in the air.

  “What is it?” she asked Jim.

  “Wind’s up,” he told her. “Full moon, dry ground. Good night for flying.”

  Portia thought perhaps flying was another one of those carny expressions she hadn’t learned yet. She had been writing them down in her notebook, phrases like hey, rube and words like donniker, even though she knew she’d never say them while she was here, because she was still an outsider—and she’d never say them if she went back into the main part of the world, because no one would understand.

  A few of the trucks in the line had turned sideways so their headlights were shining at the empty field next to her, and she saw Jimmy and Jim and the Lucasies and Polly and Pippa all marching out to the edge of the field. They were dark shapes carrying dark shapes until more headlights were turned on, and they became people again. And they were carrying kites.

  “Where did those come from?” Gideon had come back and was standing next to Portia’s window.

  “Mosco made them!” Joseph called back. “Out of the old circus posters!”

  Jim loped across the field with two kites in hand, one for the twins and one for Jimmy. They stood and doled out twine as he went, Jimmy shouting, “Get way out there!” After a few minutes, Jim stopped and held the kites up over his head. His faded voice came from the darkness: “Ready!”

  Polly and Pippa leaned back and started reeling in their twine like they were fishing in the air. Their kite rose slowly, higher, higher, until it was hovering and bobbing above the trees. Then Jimmy’s, too, caught the wind and climbed the sky. Gideon walked over to watch.

  Mosco appeared, carrying Marie in a picnic chair, which he set down off to the side a bit so no one would crash into her. He threaded her twine between her toes and patted her knee awkwardly, and then he trotted out into the field to join Jim, thrusting Marie’s kite into the air as if he could stick it to the sky if he only threw it hard enough.

  Mr. and Mrs. Lucasie stood silently, glowing in the headlights while Joseph galloped around them, laughing his bird-laugh and holding a smaller kite above his head as if it might at any moment lift him off the ground.

  Jim’s faraway voice shouted, “They’re up!”

  The truck motors went off one by one, and the headlights too, so the field was dark again, and the kites flew at the moon like dangerous birds. Birds wearing the faces of the circus performers, the ones who would not speak to the freaks, or eat with them, or admit to breathing the same air.

  Doula wandered by Gideon’s truck. Portia opened the door and followed her.

  “Acting like children,” Doula muttered.

  “I think it’s beautiful,” said Portia. She heard a little slurping sound. “Doula.”

  “Porrrtia.” Slurp.

  “Where’s Violet?”

  Doula grunted. “How should I know? I am not her mother.”

  Portia muttered, “Lucky for her,” and walked the few steps to the trailer door. There was no answer when she knocked. She opened the door. “Violet?”

  Violet’s bed was empty.

  Portia ducked inside and looked around. There were not many places to hide in a fifteen-foot trailer, but she looked in the closet and, finding it empty, scanned what little space there was left, as if Violet might suddenly appear from behind something. There was only the usual clutter of magazines and scarves and discarded clothing.

  Then Portia saw something new. A piece of paper, tucked halfway under Violet’s pillow.

  She stepped over, picked it up, and read, “Dear Mother and Father and Joseph.” She stopped. This was not meant for her.

  Paper in hand, Portia ran to find Gideon.

  “Did you see Violet get in the trailer before we left?”

  “No. I guess not. Why?”

  “She’s gone.”

  Another Last Letter

  Dear Mo
ther and Father and Joseph,

  I am sorry I did not come to say goodbye. I knew that you would try to stop me from leaving, and I did not want that to happen. It is better for everyone this way.

  I am going to become a very rich and famous actress, and then I will buy a big house for you so you will not have to work ever again.

  Do not be sad. Do not worry about me. I will find you when I have made my fortune.

  Violet

  Silence Is Not Empty

  Violet’s note did not, of course, comfort her family. It did not keep her mother from crying or her father from clenching his fist around the paper as if he could squeeze more from it than what Violet had written.

  He turned to Portia. “Violet said nothing to you? About leaving?”

  Portia hesitated. “She talked about it sometimes. But she made it sound like something she would do someday. Not something she would do now.” She looked at Joseph. “I didn’t think she meant it. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Lucasie said. She blew her nose into a yellowed lace handkerchief that she had extracted from some secret part of her dress. “It isn’t your fault, darling.”

  Joseph was silent as a stone.

  “Are you all right?” Portia asked.

  He did not answer, only walked away with his kite dragging behind him.

  “He will be fine,” Mr. Lucasie said. “He needs to be alone when he is upset.”

  Mrs. Lucasie blew her nose again. “I just can’t believe no one saw her leave. How did she get away? Maybe we should go back and look for her. She can’t have gone very far. Rudolph? Please?”

  Violet’s father had crushed her note into a tiny globe. He coaxed it open again and smoothed it out against the side of the trailer. Then he folded it gently and put it in his pocket. “We must respect her wishes,” he said. “We must believe what she says.”

  “But she’s just a child!” Mrs. Lucasie wailed. “What if something happens to her? We must go and look for her!”