She signed something back to him. She crossed her wrists and clawed them at her shoulders. What was she signing? He looked to Max but Max had no idea.
“Never seen that one before,” he said.
She kept at it. Scratch, hands crossed over. Bo pushed the book toward her. “I don’t understand,” he said.
She tried again, making a face, her cheeks wrinkled up with her awful misshapen mouth pursing, and the hands scratching emphatically.
Bo shook his head. “Here—” he said, pointing at the book. “Find it for me.”
He turned the pages and watched her watch the pictures, watched her
read
! They were well into the book before she banged her hand on the floor in glee, and pointed, jabbing the image.
Bear. Bear. Bear
. She signed and signed it.
“Bear,” said Max.
Bo signed it back to her.
Bear
?
Bear
. She made the sign:
To see
. She wanted to see Bear.
Max looked appalled. “You can’t take her there.”
“Why not?”
“She’s never been out.”
“You’ve never let her out. But I have.”
“It’s my decision,” said Max. But he said it in a way that indicated he wouldn’t stop Bo from doing this. He would find a way to turn a blind eye, act like it wasn’t his idea. Well, it wasn’t his idea.
Bo tried to get up but his legs would not obey. He rubbed them and placed them for easier standing. Bo was laughing and so was Orange by the time he got
himself up. He would walk through the trailer site with her. He would carry her if she couldn’t make it.
Orange was leaning back, laughing, drawing her fingers into crooks in a crossover in front of her face.
Ugly
, she signed, and pointed to him.
“Me?” Bo said, and she nodded fiercely.
Ugly, ugly, ugly
.
“What’s she saying?” said Max.
“None of your business,” he said. “You coming?”
“I made a promise, and I’m keeping it. If she’s going, you take her.” But he held the door for them.
It took some doing to get out the door, Bo in pain, and Orange never in her life having moved over anything less flat than a floor. Her muscles were untrained to the task. Bo had to catch her to prevent her falling a number of times, steady her, compensate. But they did it. When she got down the trailer stairs, she slumped to the ground, and Bo worried she was hurt, but no.
She caressed the grass, smoothing her fingers over it, letting the blades run through them, playing the grass like she could hear something gorgeous coming out of it. When she looked up at him, he signed
Okay
and she pulled herself up using his pant leg, letting him help her too.
“This way,” he said.
They moved through the tight alleys between the caravans and trailers, the tents and the laundry. He
saw freaks everywhere. Self-made freaks with full-body tattoos, and in clown getups, people who had defined themselves by the carnival’s terms. And the natural-born monsters—the tiny and the giant, the thin and the fat, the conjoined and the limbless, chatting, drinking, joking, being people, and then, like a wave, they turned toward this new sight. He wondered what Orange saw as they gawked at her, at Toad Girl, Max’s prize, whom they had seen only through the darkened glass.
These freaks were being out-freaked.
“Jesus, where’d you unearth that?” the Mule-Faced Woman screeched. She tried to run but Mino held her.
Bo heard his bass rumble, “Respect.”
“Respect.” The word flowed like a sudden acclamation on the lips of the tent city freaks. “Respect,” and “It’s Alive!” and then laughter, even joy.
And then Bo and Orange were in front of Morgana.
“You found her.”
“I found her.”
“She looks worse than in her photographs.”
“I’m sure she’d be happy to know that. She
can
hear, you know.”
“Well, I meant it as a compliment.”
Orange walk-hopped over to Morgana and stood swaying, looking at her eye to eye. If Orange weren’t so crooked she’d be taller than Morgana. She was signing like crazy and looking back at Bo. She wanted a translator.
Bo felt useless, especially when Morgana said, “What the hell is she saying?”
Bo pulled the book from his back pocket, crouched and drew his sister’s face toward him.
Help
, he signed. And they went through the pages again.
Tiny
, she mimed.
Witch
, she pointed.
“Oh,” said Bo, and laughed. “She’s calling you a tiny witch.”
Morgana looked pissed at first, then smiled wide and curtseyed. “It’s not the first time I’ve been called that.”
“Hey, kid.” Mino was striding toward them. When he got close he waved his hands over them as if they were his puppets. It was a joke he liked to make. “She okay?”
“So far. You okay, Orange?”
She nodded, twisted her hand side to side. To show
so-so
. Mino crouched, said something about the air quality down there, and even still he was monstrous beside Orange.
“Little girl,” he said. “Hello.”
She signed her greeting.
“You’re a whole new category,” Mino said.
Orange cocked her head.
Mino swept his hand toward the loose grouping of freaks who had come out to see her. “I’m God-made,” he said to Orange. “Some of them there are self-made, like him and him.” He pointed to the tattooed man and the sword swallower. “You—” he said, and Morgana finished for him, “She’s man-made.”
The freaks nodded, and Orange watched them. To Bo, in that moment, she looked like a baby bird, something almost cute in its crushing strangeness, its wide-open eyes, its purity. She seemed to have given up on talking, having wrapped her fingers around two tussocks of grass. He did not know and could not imagine what she was taking in, but he was happy to watch. To be a part of this. She crumpled to the ground then and rolled, and began to sign
Bear
.
Morgana patted her. “There, there.”
Bear
, she signed,
Bear, Bear, Bear
.
“She wants to see Bear,” Bo said.
Morgana’s eyes lifted from Orange to Bo. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
“The last time I saw Bear—”
“Ach,” said Morgana. “You never had a bad day?”
Morgana’s response gave him the permission he needed. “I’ll bring her out,” he said. “Hang on.” He peered down at Orange, her signing now frantic and obsessive:
Bear, Bear, Bear
. “Hang on,” he said. “Hang on.”
He looked sharply at Morgana and then walk-ran, until the pain reminded him to slow down. He found Bear’s snout pressed between the bars. If she could have pushed through on the strength of her desire, she would have, she was so happy to see him.
Bo said, “Field trip.” He pulled out her harness and collar, and opened the cage so he could put them on her.
She wanted out. She was chirring with pleasure and gently head-butting, burying her snout in his T-shirt.
“That’s Orange you smell,” said Bo. “You know that, don’t you?”
The bear looked at him, pushed her ears down and proceeded to shove him two feet with the force of her excitement.
“No!”
She sat and bounced, yawning to calm down. She lifted a paw and scratched the air as if by way of apology. Bo thought of Orange signing.
By the time they got outside, he had Bear well in control. She knew to stay calm even if she quivered with the constraint. And then there was Orange, all askew, sitting beside Morgana. The day was clear, a wide pale blue sky and no clouds, so that Morgana and Orange seemed etched into the scene, a picture. Orange signed; she was not calling for the bear anymore, she was acknowledging Bear, showing the creature she had learned her name, that she could now speak to her.
Bear shook to the point she had to sit to calm herself. She raised her paw and held it in the air to mimic Orange. And then she slid to lying and snuffled the grass wherever Orange had been. She rolled and slid her snout along it, bathing in Orange, loving her. Hello, she seemed to say, Hello.
Orange stopped signing. Her body tilted
sideways—bearwards—and she looked as if held by a string, but she never fell. She just held herself all bent and wrong and ugly and man-made, and she watched the bear.
“I never,” said Morgana. “Look.” The bear had slid so she could sniff at Orange’s knee.
And then Max was calling to Bo. “It’s time, kid.”
And Bo turned. He watched Max striding over to them.
“Time to get back to work.” Max looked both resolute and pained. He was holding a tiara, twirling it. “The show, kid. The show.”
Bo looked from Bear and Orange to Max, then caught Morgana’s eye and saw the flit of shame in her gaze, and then to Mino, who hunched over the girl and the Bear, and who seemed to be avoiding eye contact. Bo figured it was nine or nine-thirty and the Ex would be opening soon. Max had a point, he knew. It was a job, and for all kinds of reasons they had all signed on; they owed a debt to this work and to this lifestyle too, for making them less freakish, for giving them something like home. But still.
“Stop calling me kid,” Bo said. “My name is Bo.”
“Come on, kid.”
“No,” said Bo, and he spread his arms out in front of Bear and Orange as if by this gesture he could offer protection. He was a kid, he was as good as owned. He had nothing. “No,” he repeated.
Max’s eye twitch turned into a squint. “Bo,” he said pointedly. Then, “Oh, for crying out loud,” and then,
“Come on, guys. You owe me better than this,” for behind Bo, the freaks had gathered—Mino and Morgana, and the rest of the midgets, a couple of dwarfs, the sword swallower, the clowns, and even the Mule-Faced Woman. They said nothing. They didn’t need to say anything.
“Oh, cripes,” said Max. He threw the tiara down. “I give up. It’s you oddities yourselves who’ll drive the whole game into the ground, you know that?”
F
OR THE NEXT WEEK
, the freaks and Bo looked after Orange and coddled her, taking turns between acts. Emily came sometimes and looked after her too. Helped Bo learn more sign language.
And then the Ex was over. The tents collapsed like lungs losing air. Bear had to be locked in her cage. Bo hated to see that, but they would be travelling, moving through the last circuit of small towns before the winter. The other freaks were heading south.
“Come visit,” Morgana said.
“Maybe,” Bo replied.
Bo had a wallet full of cash but not enough to live on forever. His plan was to tour the bear-wrestling circuit
with Gerry until the local fairs dried up and make enough to carry himself and Orange through the winter.
“Where’re you going after the season ends, Gerry?”
“Back to my farm.” Gerry looked hard at him. “You’re always welcome.”
Bo thought about the bears circling stakes beside a farmhouse, pacing, pacing. That would be him, too, restless and running in circles. One thought persisted: if he managed to save up enough to look after Orange, what would he do then? Maybe he could ask Emily for help, or the church group; maybe someone would take them in.
Max wanted them to head south with him. “Even if she wobbles around the local fairs down there, she’ll draw folks,” he said.
“You never give up, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
Bo stood outside the deflated midway watching carnies moving poles and material all around him, and he stared down the carnival corridor; the three weeks they’d spent there had felt like a lifetime. The path on which so many thrill-seekers had trod, had laughed and argued and eaten, that path was strewn now with cigarette butts, and straws, the remnants of cotton candy cones. Mud intermingled with the mess too, where the sod had been so trodden it had given up for the season. The CNE caretakers would come in and rake the earth flat again
for next year, re-sod. It wasn’t the concession’s responsibility to leave it as they had found it.
Bo needed to find Gerry and figure out when Bear would be loaded onto the trucks. The plan was that he would ride in Max’s trailer with Orange. They had two vehicles, ten-tons, and Gerry and he would drive ahead in his pickup. Gerry was king of the world now. He’d paid off his farm, Beverley had agreed to be his fiancée, there was a rumour she was expecting. “Half-child, half-bear” had been the joke, and Gerry didn’t seem to mind.
The breakdown action got louder, more frenzied, as Bo moved toward where he hoped to find Gerry. The hammers, yells, drills, and the clatter of aluminum sliding against aluminum, the canvas swish of awnings and tents, that pop of air when tents were folded, carnies shouting over one another. But under it all something thin was rising—a scream, a series of screams.
Where to look—no one could fathom this. The sound became dire, and then everyone seemed to be running in its direction. Cries of “Loralei” preceded the awful thing, so that by the time Bo pushed through the wall of carnies, some crying and some spitting “Fuck,” he knew, or half knew, what he might see. Flesh—but whose? Beverley was leaning against Gerry’s trailer with one hand covering her mouth, to hold in a shriek so deep it made no sound. And then it came. She screamed again and again.
Loralei stood on her back legs, clawing at some invisible wall that she would never again be allowed to breach. She kept batting her own nose to calm herself, her tongue pink with what she had done. Gerry was in pieces, strewn across the grassy knoll in front of the trailer. Gerry. Bo’s gaze landed on Loralei, and the sight of her made him cry.
“Gerry,” he whispered. Already there were flies. Already grief wrenched at his throat. He looked at Gerry’s body and thought of his mother leaning into the water. He thought of his dead father. He couldn’t breathe.
“Loralei,” Max was saying. “Why’d you have to do that?” A bluebottle settled on her jowl. “Heel, girl.” She did not budge. Max’s face streamed with tears. “Lora,” he said. “Oh, geez, Lora.”
Bo turned and pushed past Beverley, who was sobbing. He tried the trailer door and found it locked.
“Beverley,” he said, but she was too grief-stricken to help, so instead he ran out to the midway in the hope of finding someone willing to sell or give him a root beer. If they could lure her back into the cage, maybe there was some hope.