by Billie Letts
“By the time he was seventeen, he was the great aerialist, even better than his papa. But all that fame, the praise, the press, the girls. Oh, my God, the girls! They were crazy for him. But somehow, I guess it wasn’t enough. And that’s when the trouble started.”
“What happened?”
“I was still on the road back then, and I think we were in Arizona. Kingman. Anyway, Juan took Ray’s pickup and drove to Las Vegas to see this fancy show called a circus, but it’s not a real circus. Not one animal in the whole show.”
“Cirque du Soleil?”
“Yes! And after that, it was all Juan could talk about. Cirque this; Cirque that. Breakfast, dinner, supper. He even went to cathedral to ask God’s help. Can you believe? Praying to be in a circus when you’re already in one of the best in the world?
“But his papa would never consent, would never give his blessing to allow Juan to leave. See, Fate, to us, this is not just a circus, but the circus. The circus of our family.”
“Your tribe.”
“That’s right. We’ve been here, here with this circus, for sixty years. I first performed with a hoop when I was just a little girl. Then I was a tumbler; after that, a clown. But the first time I climbed on the back of a horse, the deal was done. I performed with horses for over twenty years. Still be doing it, too, but for a beautiful little pinto I named Princess. And she was, too. A real princess.
“Spirited, bold, brave. More dare than brains, I suppose. One night in Toledo she tried a jump. Broke one of her legs and one of mine. I bawled for a month. But that was the end for both of us. I cried so hard they had the doc give me a shot. Slept for three days.”
Mama Sim got up from the table then, ladled soup into a bright red bowl, and put it in front of Fate. She handed him a soup spoon and a stack of warm tortillas.
“Now. See if you don’t like that, huh?”
After the first taste, Fate grinned.
“See what I say?” Mama asked. “Won first place ribbon at the fair with my avocado sopa. Three times. Beat out last year by the mayor’s wife. No doubt she cheated.
“You know what? Once I was in the Safeway grocery store and she was there, too. I watched her exchange all the small eggs in a carton with extra large in another. Saved her thirty-four cents. She’s a woman with no principles. No ethics. Such a woman would certainly cheat at a county fair to get a first place ribbon.”
“So,” Fate said, “you were going to tell me about Juan’s trouble.”
“Oh, my mind wanders down odd paths. But I don’t care. Some of the paths of my imagination are so much more interesting than the one I’m really on.
“But, I will tell you this tonight because it will be the elephant in the room for days when the word spreads that the circus is coming back and that Juan is home. See, it was no secret, Juan was his papa’s favorite child. But when Juan left, his papa rarely spoke of him again. Especially after Juan became such a huge hit with Cirque du Soleil.”
“And Juan never came back for a visit. He told me that.”
“No, after the accident, he—”
“Is that what happened to his leg? An accident?”
“Juan was doing an act with Cirque, fell forty feet. No net. He was in the hospital for more than three months. In a cast, actually in several different casts, but nothing worked. And you can see how that left him. A cripple.
“Twenty-two years old and a cripple for life. Ray sent me and Essie to Las Vegas to get him, bring him home. But he wouldn’t come.
“He had too much pride, he said, to come back and become a juggler or a clown. So we came home without him. By then, he was a drunk, a doper, living on the streets. All his talent gone to waste, his dreams a nightmare.”
Mama Sim pulled a tissue from her apron pocket and wiped her eyes.
“Never figured we’d see him again. And I doubt we would have if not for you and Lutie. I hoped he’d stay, at least long enough for him and Ray to put all that behind them, ’cause one’s probably gonna carry the other to the cemetery someday. But he said he won’t be here long enough for that to happen.”
“What do you mean, ‘long enough’?”
“He hasn’t told you that, either, has he?”
“Told me what?”
“He’s leaving before his papa brings the circus home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FATE HAD GONE back to bed after finishing his soup, but he didn’t do much sleeping. He had a lot to think about now that he knew Juan was planning to leave before long. He wondered if his friend was going to return to Las Vegas, and if he did, would he want two kids tagging along. Maybe, he thought, Juan was going to dump them on Mama Sim the way Jim McFee had dumped them on Floy.
In the early hours of morning, Fate heard voices downstairs, which prompted him to dress and tiptoe down to the kitchen, where he heard Juan and Mama Sim talking in hushed tones, sometimes in English but also in Spanish. He took a quick peek into the room where he saw Juan leaning against the kitchen counter, watching Mama Sim at the stove pour pancake batter onto a cast-iron griddle. Though he knew he shouldn’t eavesdrop, he stepped back, pressing himself against the wall so he could listen without being seen.
Juan asked, “You know what he’d do if he seen me here? Nothing,” he said in answer to his own question. “He wouldn’t say any word. Just pretend not to see me, not to hear me. Just act like I be a ghost. Just the way he act on the day I told him I was leaving.”
“You don’t know that,” Mama Sim said. “It’s been fifteen years. A man can change a lot in fifteen years.”
“Not him. Not Raynoldo Vargas.”
“Oh, he hasn’t changed, but you have? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I made many mistakes, Mama. I did, but—”
“Yes, you did.” She turned then, using her spatula the way an irate teacher might use a ruler to chastise a student. “When you left here, a young stud, you knew everything. Dropped out of school in the ninth grade—”
“Décimo,” Juan corrected.
“Okay, tenth, if that makes you feel any smarter. Said this circus was a waste of time. Wasn’t anything left for you to learn here. Like to broke your papa’s heart.”
“But I was just a kid, Mama.”
On a roll now, she acted as though she hadn’t heard him. “You said you knew all you needed to know to make a name for yourself in the big time.” She shook her head, turning back to flip pancakes. “Cirque du Soleil,” she said, her face squinched up as if the words had left a bad taste in her mouth.
“I was a . . .” He struggled to find the word, then gave up. “Gilipollas. I was a gilipollas.”
“I see you haven’t made much progress in learning English, either. Yes. You were an asshole.”
“But I’m sorry.”
“Remember when me and Essie went to Las Vegas to bring you back after your accident? Found you sleeping on the streets, lice in your hair, vomit in your beard, head messed up with that dope and cheap wine. Not a soul out there who cared if you lived or died. You remember that?”
“Yes,” he said, turning his head away from her in shame.
“You know who sent us to find you, bring you back?” Without waiting for an answer, she supplied it. “Your papa, that’s who. Have no idea how he knew you were in trouble. But he knew.
“Maybe he had a dream about you, or maybe some old friend called him. More likely it was God who told him to find his son and bring him home. But did you listen to us? No! Said we should mind our own business, let you mind yours.”
“But I am different now. I do not drink, do not do drugs. Got my head straight; got my life right.”
“You got an apartment?”
“No.”
“Stay in a homeless shelter? Get a bed in a flophouse when you panhandle a few dollars?”
“No panhandle. No stay in flophouse or shelter. I have good tent.”
“Oh, honey. Why don’t you come home, stay with us? We’re the only family you’
ve got. And there’s always work in a circus. You know that. And Raynoldo, he’s not getting any younger. But most importantly, we love you. We want you with us.”
“What would you have me do, Mama—sling hash in the cookhouse? Help the roustabouts hammer stakes for the tent? Sell tickets? Be a barker?”
“Juan, it’s not what you want. I know that, but it’s—”
“Mama, I was great aerialist. Maybe best in whole world. Can you think how I would feeling to ring the cookhouse bell for breakfast? Hear some rigger whisper about me? Hear his friends talking about me, how I think I too good for circus, so I go to Las Vegas to become star, but come away with nothing but cripple leg? No, I cannot to do that. If I can no perform, then—”
“Okay. I understand. But will you talk to your papa? Try to make things right between you? Can you at least do that?”
Before Juan could answer, Mama Sim turned away from the stove to put a plate of pancakes on the table. And that’s when she saw Fate standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Well, good morning, little silent one. You sleep well?”
“Yes. How about Lutie?”
“Hardly moved all night. Feeling better today.”
“That’s good news.”
“Say, how you like to go over to winter quarters with me after breakfast?” Juan asked. “Let me show you around.”
“Sure. I’d like that. I’d like it a lot.”
The winter quarters for the Vargas Brothers Circus was only three blocks from Mama Sim’s house, so Juan and Fate walked, with Juan filling in a bit of Hugo’s history, pointing out where various performers lived, where the old high school had been located before a fire destroyed it in 1982, the original Vargas land where zebras, llamas, yaks, giraffes, and horses were housed until the circus outgrew the land and new structures were built elsewhere.
Just as they walked across a cattle guard under a brightly painted sign that said, VARGAS BROTHERS CIRCUS, Fate was startled by the roar of an animal.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Tiger.”
“Is the circus back?”
“No, not yet. But not all animals go on road each year. Some pregnant, some ill, some in accident. Or sometime just too old.”
“What happens to them then?”
“They stay here until ready to be back on road. Stay with us until taken by zoo or animal shelter. Or until they die.”
“Really?”
“Sure. They give us best years of their lives. We give them comfort and love.”
“Love?”
“Fate, you cannot to perform with elephant for twenty, thirty years without finding to love it. We celebrate when they have babies, we sad when they lose they mates. We cry when they die. They might have three tons, but they our pets just as much as cats or dogs. They just can’t curl on our laps to sleep.”
“Is that where the tiger is?” Fate pointed to a barn with a sign above the double doors that said, CAT HOUSE.
“Come on,” Juan said. “I show you.”
They entered an immense structure partitioned into large cages—clean and roomy—most bigger than the places where Fate had lived.
“This is it. Home to tigers and lions.” All the cages were empty except one where a mama tiger was nursing two cubs. She didn’t rise at the appearance of the man and boy; instead, she let out a menacing growl that seemed to say, “Okay, guys. That’s about close enough.”
“She’s beautiful,” Fate said. “I wonder how old her babies are.”
“I’m guessing four, five weeks.”
In the EQUINE BARN, they encountered one horse, pregnant and glad for the company. As she reached the fence of the enclosure, she put her head over the top rail for a scratch behind her ears and maybe a treat. Juan supplied both, rubbing her head and producing a carrot from his pocket.
“You came prepared, didn’t you?”
Before Juan could answer, the barn door swung open. A boy with a pitchfork and a head of frizzy red hair said, “Who are you?” with an air of authority in his voice.
“I’m Juan Vargas. And this is my friend Fate McFee.”
Unable to hide his suspicion, the boy asked if they had permission to be on the winter grounds.
“Well, I think so. I Raynoldo Vargas’s son, Mama Sim’s grandson,” a reply that seemed to let the boy relax.
“Who are you?” Juan asked.
“I’m Johnny Leon Conner.”
“You Dub Conner’s son?”
“He’s my daddy.”
“Well, I be damn. Never figured Dub to saying ‘I do.’”
“You know him? My daddy?”
“My running buddy, boys together. We fish, chase girls, play flag football. Even went to jail together. Cellmates for a night. And he—”
From outside the barn, they heard a man’s voice. “Johnny? You better not be hidin’ from me or—”
“In here, Daddy. In here with Sarah and an old friend of yours.”
When the door opened, a redheaded man in starched khakis with Vargas Brothers Circus embroidered onto the shirt pocket squinted into the darkness of the barn, then turned on the overhead fluorescent lights.
“Juan? Juan Vargas, you SOB! Is that you?”
“Damn sure am, Dub.”
The men walked toward each other, shook hands rather awkwardly, then gave it up and embraced the way true friends do when they’ve been apart for years.
“I knew it,” Dub said. “Told ’em, ‘He’ll be back one day,’ and sure enough, here you are.” Only then did he notice the boy behind Juan. “This your boy?”
“Wish he was, but no. He’s my friend. Fate McFee, meet Dub Conner and his boy, Johnny.”
The boys, struck by shyness, mumbled, “Hi,” while studying their shoe tops.
“I know where your boy got red hair,” Juan said, “but does he got your temper, too?”
“No, my wife put the quietus to that. But he got his blue eyes, his smarts, and his love of horses from her. Sarah, there”—he gestured toward the mare—“she’s his.”
“Looks like she ready to foal,” Juan said.
“She is.” Johnny rubbed the horse’s muzzle. “Couple more weeks.”
Dub said, “I just put on a pot of coffee. Come down to the cookhouse, Juan, and let’s catch up. Got time?”
“Plenty of time.” Then, to Fate, Juan said, “You want to seeing the cookhouse?”
“Well . . .”
“Can he stay with me?” Johnny said. “I’ll show him around.”
Then, to Fate, “Want to?”
Fate smiled and nodded.
“Okay, then. He belong to you for a while. Besides, I don’t think your dad want you to hearing some of the shenanigans we did when we were kids.” Juan looked at Fate for confirmation. “Is it right? Shenanigans?”
“Right.”
After Juan and Dub left the barn, Johnny stood the pitchfork up, leaning it against Sarah’s stall.
“What do you do with that?” Fate asked.
“I’ve got to muck out some of the pens. Hey, you wanna go bike riding?”
“I don’t have a bike.”
“We’ve got lots of ’em down in the prop shop. Come on.”
As they jogged across the lot, Fate asked, “Do you get to travel with the circus?”
“Yeah, but not this year. My dad had surgery about a month before the circus went on the road, so he needed me to stick around, help him out until he’s a hundred percent again. Mom didn’t go this year, either. Said she had too much to do in the costume shop, but I think she just wanted to be here in case my dad needed her.”
Fate followed Johnny into a metal building with six-inch steel center columns spaced out the length of the structure, which looked to Fate to be as long as a football field and a lot more fun. Each side of the building was separated with partitions made of chain-link fencing with storage bins located from floor to ceiling, all with neatly lettered signs describing what was contained inside: tools, electrical wirin
g, hoses, pumps, air hoses, tires, oil, saddles, bridles, drills, nails.
Fate took his time reading the signs, looking over the materials he passed, but Johnny shot ahead.
“Hurry, Fate. The good stuff’s down here.”
And he was right. All that clowns could need was at the far end of the building: musical instruments, hats, row after row of miniature cars, buses, police cars, fire trucks; juggling pins, costumes, rubber chickens, gloves, wigs, shoes, rubber noses, racks of bicycles, unicycles; plastic swords, guns, knives.
“Look,” Johnny said. He had on a green wig, a fake yellow nose, a fireman’s hat, and rubber shoes twice as long as his feet. His appearance was a signal to Fate that they could put on anything they wanted.
And they did. As a bald-headed ballerina, as a construction worker with a yellow hard hat and polka-dot work boots, and as myriad other incarnations, until Fate, as a policeman, “shot” Johnny as a threatening gorilla, who twisted, gasped for breath, and expired in a B-movie death scene.
“Hey!”
The man who’d stepped inside the building, dressed in the same uniform as Dub, was obviously an employee of the Vargas Circus.
“You boys ruin those outfits, Essie and Katy’ll be on you like sunburn on the Fourth of July.”
“Okay, Lymon.”
“And put all that stuff back where you got it, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
After Lymon drifted away, the boys got out of their costumes. As Johnny shook the dust from the gorilla suit, he said, “Lymon’s grounds supervisor. He never goes on the road, but stays here to keep an eye on the equipment and the animals. He can tell just by looking if one of the animals is sick.”
While they were folding costumes and stacking them as neatly as teenage boys could fold and stack anything, Fate said, “What grade are you in, Johnny?”
“Seventh. This was the first year I’ve ever started school on opening day. See, when we go out in March, we don’t come back until October.”
“How do you make up all that work?”
“Oh, we have teachers who travel with us, make sure we stay up to grade level so when we return, we aren’t behind.”
