All the Broken Things (9 page)

Joined at the waist
—Bo pictured something terrible. He sipped the cold pop and waited for what would come next. He took in the space—the blood-red interior—a miniature home, with a kitchen; the eating booth Bo sat at was like ones he’d seen in diners in his neighbourhood, but smaller. Through an open door down a short corridor, he spotted a toilet. The place smelled of bacon, and Bo realized he was hungry.

Max said, “I do not—ever—call it a freak show. People deserve dignity, don’t you agree?” He was now rummaging in a drawer. Pure propulsion, he seemed to Bo. Max muttered, “Dignity at any cost.” He pulled out a sheaf of papers,
glanced at it, put it back, rummaged some more and pulled out another, smaller batch of papers. “Gerry and I would like to give you a contract,” he said, frowning a little. He leaned down, his eyes very large as he met Bo’s stare. “Now, I want you to look at it and think about it before you sign it. A contract is serious—it’s a very serious document.”

Bo nodded. He wished he had some idea what this man was talking about, and looked at the paper for clues. The contract said “Jennings’ Magic and Carnival Enterprises Unlimited” at the top and there was the bear-head design from Gerry’s card right underneath.

“I’d like to see you fight first, of course,” said Max, “but do have a read-through.”

Bo stared up at Max—at his hair, that smile, and the eyebrows—and then when he began to feel rude for staring, he surveyed the walls, the many framed photographs screwed to them so that, he supposed, they did not whip about when the trailer was in motion. He focused in on one of them. A boy not much older than he was, with another person growing out of his stomach.

Max followed his gaze and intercepted his thoughts. “The handicapped are simply differently gifted,” he said. He caressed the frame of one of the photographs as he spoke. “The bearded lady is a scientific phenomenon! The cod boy, half-human, half-fish, is billed unfairly—for he is perfectly at home in the water. These are humans, not freaks. I call them”—and here he again flourished
his arm, this time careful not to bash the ceiling—“curiosities!” His voice had gone very low. Max grinned into Bo’s face, and drew his finger along the words in the contract, where Bo was to sign. “Who are we to judge?”

Bo shook his head, then focused on the colour photograph to the right of Max’s head. It wasn’t more than half a foot square. He tried to identify what it was. A jar full of something curled into itself, pink, fleshy, limbs locked around it.

Max followed his eyes and pointed at the picture. “This?” he said. “A true oddity, isn’t it.”

“It’s—”

“A fetus,” said Max quietly. “With an abnormal growth, see?”

“What’s—?”

“A stillborn human monstrosity. The hospital would not sell me the thing itself, just allow me to arrange for a studio photograph of it. No matter. I found another, better specimen. I’ve made a hallway of photographic curiosities as well as the specimen jars. It is one of the fair’s most popular attractions. Also, inexpensive for the peepers. A cheap thrill. We plan to expand the operation—more of it and better curiosities—and, well, we’re hoping to get the Canadian National Exhibition concession for next year. I tell you, kid, it’s looking good.”

Bo’s eyes were still on the photograph. “A baby,” he said. It came out of him like a sigh.

“Well, no.” Max pulled himself up tall. “Technically not. A baby,” he said, “would be alive, of course. Naturally.”

“Orange.” Bo thought he’d only thought it, and was surprised at the thick silence gathering in the caravan.

Max had stopped moving and was squinting at him. “What is orange?”

There was no air in the trailer. “Nothing,” said Bo. He looked down at the contract. “Can I take it with me?”

But Max wouldn’t let go. He cocked his eyebrow. “Tell me, really,” he said.

Scanning the room, Bo now noticed one horrific photograph after another. The tallest man next to the shortest woman. A boy with three thumbs. A child whose face looked like a dog’s, all fur, and sorrow. A man with breasts. A woman with a beard. Some other awful thing he couldn’t quite understand. What was all this? Who might love these? This was what the whirligig operator had meant by “freak show,” what Max had called a sideshow.

Bo got up from the table and said, “I better be going. Thank you for the ginger ale.”

“Wait, kid,” called Max.

The trailer door swung out and Bo stepped down into the grass. The camera in the rucksack banged against his back and the thought of taking another picture made him sick. He was glad to be outside. The air in the caravan had been too still, and out here it was so crisp. How lost in Max’s voice he had become.

“Sweet Jesus, I’m sorry. I’ve frightened you.”

Bo turned back to see Max’s face squished between the closing door and the aluminum trim of the doorway. He had forgotten the contract inside and now was too shy to say anything about it.

“The bear,” said Max.

“Yes.”

“She’s a southpaw. Watch her left hook.”

“Thank you.”

“And boy?”

“Yes?”

“It’s all a show, you know that, right?”

Bo nodded. He had certainly heard this enough today.

“Because if you know that, you will always, always, be safe.”

Bo stared up at Max, and there behind him, glowing on the wall, was that dead baby. It couldn’t be normal that people
liked
to look at these things, would pay to look, but when he considered that Gerry had said that people laughed at what troubled or surprised them, it made some sense.

“My sister,” he said, like a pin dropping.

“Your sister?”

“I guess she’s a so-called freak show.” He was figuring this out himself in that moment. “It isn’t right to show them like that.”

“Kid,” said Max. “I’m sorry—”

But Bo pulled the door wide and then slammed it as hard as he could in Max’s face to let him know what he thought of his freak show. The caravan wobbled on its concrete block foundation, and he heard Max inside yelling, “Hey, hey.”

The feeling of telling Max about Orange—the brazen feeling Bo had got—dissipated the farther he got from the trailer, until his running became a walk, and his breathing calmed to normal.

Bo queued for a hot dog and had already slathered it with ketchup when he heard Max behind him, apologizing again. He turned to find him sweating through his lovely jacket.

“I’m so sorry. I have—clearly—offended you. Your sister. You must love her very much.” It was hard to tell whether this man was kind or evil. And in the space of thinking this, Bo heard: “And may I ask?”

Max crooked his neck and made his eyes soft. “What’s wrong with her? In what way is the poor thing handicapped?”

Bo plunged the end of the hot dog into his mouth and took a huge bite, stood there glaring up at Max, chewing, chewing. “Bad,” he blurted through the food. Max was shaking his head, as if in sympathy. And then, Bo saw how blue the man’s eyes were. They held such clear intention.

Max smiled. “I could meet her.”

Bo wiped his face with his sleeve. He said, “No
thanks.” Rose would never allow it, for one. And second, there was no way he wanted this man seeing Orange.

“Listen, call me Max, would you?” Max flapped his jacket to air his armpits. “Kid,” he said. “Look, how bad off is she?”

“This is—” Bo wanted to say “stupid” or “ridiculous” but couldn’t find the word straightaway.

Orange was bad, Bo thought, really bad if he compared her to the freak show pictures on the walls of Max Jennings’ caravan. “She’s a monster,” he said. “And not for sale.”

Max looked affronted. “I wasn’t offering to buy her,” he said. “The curiosities have
contracts
, child.” He went thoroughly red in the face. “Well then, what about a photograph? Fifty? Seventy?”

“No,” said Bo. No photograph.

“Come on, boy. Everyone has a price.”

“No.”

B
O PUSHED BACK THROUGH
the midway to find Gerry. Once he got to the ring, he saw a huge man clad only in sparkly blue trunks prancing around the ring with his arms aloft, hands fisted, chanting, “Me, me, me,” and another man slumped in the corner covering his face in a cape fashioned out of a Canadian flag and
rocking in exaggerated lamentation. Watching took Bo’s mind off Max. His eyes followed the ruckus in the ring, but when Bo slowed his thoughts and pulled his gaze to waist level, he saw men opening wallets, men accepting money, nods and shrugs. Green flowed. He did not know exactly what it meant, but he knew that Gerry saw in him a green flow.

Every so often the sad wrestler lifted his eyes to watch the huge man, then launched into another bout of crying. This the crowd loved. They shook their heads, yelled, “Come off it, get over yourself.” Bo overheard someone say, “He ain’t called the Clown for nothing, eh?” And then the wrestler who had lost the match unwrapped himself to reveal the dregs of face paint melting off his cheeks and a rubber nose hanging around his neck from an elastic band. The Clown.

The announcer peered from the ring into the audience. “And now it’s your turn, people! Who here is a ninety-eight-pound weakling? Who here has something to prove?” On the other side of the ring, Gerry rubbed Loralei’s neck, latched the chain to her collar.

Look at her, Bo thought, she’s beautiful.

The announcer swung the mic around and around, grabbed it and crooned, “Prove your strength with the lovely Loralei! Who’s gonna be the first nutcase?”

The bear scrambled up the ramp, Gerry restraining her with the leash. Bo thought of those Junction dogs lucky
enough to get walked to High Park, dragging their owners. The bear did not seem to know she had a person attached to her. But no, Loralei scented back; her nose danced to the left and right to track Gerry. Bo saw this. He thought back to his first sight of her, her butt-scratching anxiety, and knew she felt safe. She trusted Gerry hanging there at the other end of the leash as she joyously dragged him along.

Bo thrust his hand upward, as the other children sometimes did in school, eager, pumping, stretching his arm to the sky. As if he knew something. He did. He knew he had to cling to the bear in the ring, find her spot, bring her down. It would not be so much a fight as a play fight, a show.

“You Chinese?” The announcer queried over the mic, over the ropes. “How much do you weigh, kid?”

“Ninety-eight pounds,” Bo said. “Exactly.”

“You couldn’t hurt a flea.”

“I fight every day at school.”

This brought waves of laughter. Someone patted his head, and one young mother with a baby in a stroller said, “The poor—” but did not finish her sentence before she began to shake her head.

“The bear’ll eat him,” someone yelled.

“Good riddance.”

“Aw, nice talk.”

“Little nipper, step back.” A man in a ripped T-shirt and jeans pushed Bo to the side, trying to get the attention of
the announcer. He seemed to think the battle would be between Bo and him. He hopped, jabbed at Bo. “I’ll fight the slant. I’ll fight him.”

“Shut up.”

“Drunk,” Bo heard someone mutter. And the man in the ripped T-shirt was. He reeled around to smash someone, anyone, but the reel was too far, too fast—dizzy, he stopped to bend and vomit.

Gerry hugged Loralei in such a way that it appeared as if he were forcibly restraining her. But the bear looked almost bored, sniffing the midway sugar and salt combination.

The announcer shot a look at Gerry. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me, me, me!” Bo tossed his arms up as he had seen Wolfman do earlier. He stomped widening circles from his spot at the ropes until he had a space in the grass roughly the size of the ring itself. He dropped the camera and rucksack to the ground beside him, began to beat at his chest and rip at his clothes. If he had to get down to his underwear to get his fight, he would. Then he roared, and the announcer, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, turned again to Gerry, who only shrugged and half smiled.

“Thirty dollars, kid,” the announcer demanded.

But Gerry called out, “Forget it. The kid fights for free. Come on. Look around you.”

An immense crowd had formed, double or more the size it had been, pushing toward the ring. The referee pulled Bo up by both his arms and into the ring, set him down in the corner, draped him with a housecoat, squirted water down his throat, swiftly massaged his shoulders.

“Geez,” he said, shaking his head. “I dunno, kid.” Then he slipped into centre ring to begin officiating.

Bo watched his own feet lift his body up off the stool and jig him around the bear. He ran giddy in the circle, thinking of Ernie, back in the Junction—who would, pathetically, fight
only
him, while
he
would fight this immense beautiful thing. The pleasure of it overwhelmed him. When Gerry sent him a signal, he held his fists up and hopped around the ring, roaring at the people, white knee socks flashing, mimicking what he’d seen on Saturday television.

The announcer’s voice was so smooth: “Our own Little Nipper, folks! You saw it here first.” He shook his head in mock incredulity, wiping a non-existent tear from the edge of his eye. “I love this kid already, and so do you. Don’t you, folks!”