The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (15 page)

THREE WEEKS LATER, I PERFORMED A SLIDE FOR LIFE ON
opening day of the all new Al G. Barnes Wild Animal Circus,
a show A] G. really was calling "The Show That's Different." Was one
o'clock in the afternoon and the parade was just returning to the lot. A
goodly number of people had followed, the idea being the free act
would keep them there and make them want to buy tickets for the matinee, which was always a harder sell than the evening performance. I
started climbing a ladder anchored by guy wires. There were exactly
two hundred steps of "Height-Defying Hysteria" and back then just
seeing a thing stretch that high into the air was something. Meanwhile,
the whole contraption was wavering and teetering and circling in the
breeze, and with each step my legs grew weaker and my stomach more
air filled and I promised myself if I survived I'd attend church and give
money to the poor. All of this ran through my head as I climbed farther
and farther into the heavens, seemed I'd never get there, though finally I reached a rickety little wooden platform at the top. Here I focused on Al G.'s suggestion that you didn't look down, even for a second, no
matter how curious you got, though when you're that frightened advice
tends to turn into a senseless string of words that function more to keep
your mind occupied while you're standing knock-kneed and trembling
and dizzy as a weathervane.

Around the time I began to wonder if a person can die from overstimulation I reached out and squeezed my little hands around a padded
triangle. It was attached to a metal pulley, and this pulley sat on a long,
twisted metal cable that travelled from the platform to the ground at an
angle not quite forty-five degrees but pretty damn close. Eyes clenched
shut, I stepped off the platform, let rip a blood-curdler, and hurtled
toward earth, my body twisting and kicking and jerking and flailing. I
truly thought I was going to die for it didn't seem possible a mere pulley could hold a body gathering that much momentum, and because I
figured I was a dead woman, time slowed and my head cleared and I
had myself a moment to wish mine hadn't been a life in which survival
had always seemed such an imposition. This got me sad as hell, so sad
I almost forget why it was I was having such thoughts, it all coming
back pretty quick when the cable took a dip at the bottom and headed
back up skyward and then stopped. The triangle was wrenched from
my hands, practically tearing my arms out of the sockets, and I went
soaring, limbs akimbo, eyes clamped so hard they hurt. After soaring
for about half the length of a baseball outfield, I felt netting strands go
taut on my backside, dip me down low and hurl me straight back into
the air, though with far less velocity. As I kicked and flailed, I started
suspecting maybe I really would survive, a wonderful sensation when
seconds earlier you were thinking for sure it's curtains. I crawled from
the net, beaming, eyes teary, nose snotty, shaky from adrenalin and
yearning to puke. People were cheering and laughing and pointing and
saying, "Jesus Christ, you see that?" and was then I saw Mr. Barnes and
his Negro valet, Dan, emerge smiling from the sideline.

"What did you think?" Al G. asked his assistant.

"It was somethin', governor. Somethin' fo' sure."

"He's right, Kentucky. You're a natural-born performer."

"Natural-born, Miss Stark."

Here I looked at the both of them, and when I'd finally caught
enough breath to form a sentence it came out as "Al G., we have
to talk."

Once I'd done a few more Slides for Life it began to sink in that just so
long as I held on I'd survive, a rule I'd always subscribed to in life anyway. After a week or so I learned to style the act, bowing and curtseying
on the platform, smiling through the plunge, pointing my arms over my
head as I jetted airborne and then waving and smiling after I crawled
from the net. Truth be known, it got to be sort of fun, like flying, which
allowed me to concentrate on disliking my goat act and my riding act
all the more intently. Meanwhile, the circus headed south.

So. Lithe little blond thing. Twenty-three years old and nary a
scar, bone break or concussion under her belt (though the same couldn't be said about a sordid past). In the menage tent, near the cat cages,
in the off-hours before the matinee, a time of day the monkeys stop
chattering and the mules stop braying and the elephants stop trumpeting and the hyenas stop cackling. Even the horses and elephants close
their eyes, not so much sleeping but enjoying the lack of commotion
that part of the afternoon brings. My head on a rolled-up coat and that
rolled-up coat on a pallet. I'm dreaming, almost certainly, for I've suffered from doozers all my life, so I don't even hear him march up and
position those tall black leather boots beside my little blond head.

He waited a few seconds before impatiently rapping the heels
of said boots against the floorboards. This caused me to open my
right eye, blinking against the light filtering into the menage, before
realizing I was staring at a man's shin. I rotated that same eye upward,
and took my first look at Louis Roth, who'd been on loan to
Hagenbeck-Wallace for the past half year.

This initial impression moulded my opinion of Louis's size, for
from where I lay he looked to be about eight feet tall, with a huge ladleshaped jaw and hair as thick and well groomed as Al G.'s. He was
dressed in jodhpurs, black waistcoat and epaulettes, riding whip in one
hand. As I lay there, coming awake, a thought passed through my head:
Whoever he is, he ought to wear a monocle.

I got to my feet and discovered he was actually quite small, not
much taller than five foot six, which is average on a woman but veering
toward puny on a man.

"You are Mabel Stark?" he asked.

I said I was. At the same time I was noticing the smell of liquor.
And I'm not talking about the smell of a man who'd had a quick midday bracer, something common on circus midways and in corporate
boardrooms alike, but the smell of an odour on low ebb, dull but settled
in, like grain and sweat on easy ferment. As he talked, the muscles in his
face darted. It reminded me of the movements of a fly.

"You are ze vooman interested in tigers? In vorking viss them?"

"Yes, sir."

"I see."

Pause.

"Ver are you from?"

"Kentucky."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-three."

Another pause, though longer this time and reading higher on the
intimidation meter.

"I vill say this once. Forget about tigers. Go back to your horses
or your goats or whatever it is you do. Go back to your free act. I vill
never half a vooman trainer again."

He stood there for another few seconds, letting me digest the
news. Then he spun on his heel and marched off, his footfalls so heavy
they kicked up tanbark and caused a general stir among the animals. Seeing red, I marched out of the menage to the connection and strode
toward Al G.'s tent. I was no more than ten feet away when Dan
somehow stepped between me and the flap of Al G.'s office, all of
which was an amazing trick for it seemed as though he'd stepped out
of thin air to do so.

"Well hello, Miss Stark."

"Hello, Dan."

"Some weather we're having."

"Nice."

"What do you figure it looks like tonight?"

"Full house, I'd say."

"Full house fo' sure."

"Uh, Dan..."

"And it's a good town, too. You been in? Pretty square. Two
barbershops."

"No, Dan I was wondering..."

"Plus a place to go for collard greens. Can you imagine, this far
west? My, I do love collard greens. My momma made them all the time
when I was little, fried 'em in pork fat for flavour, which of course
made `em salty but if you take your greens that way why it's sheer
heaven...."

The whole time Dan was keeping his body between me and Al
G.'s tent. Course, I knew what this was a sign for. Everybody did. It
meant Al G. was inside, womanizing. I didn't know exactly with who,
as I wasn't the sort who kept up with rumours, though I did know since
Dollie Barnes had up and left him a few weeks prior he'd been busier
than ever in the goat-like-behaviour department, which is saying something as he'd been pretty busy in that department even when she
was around.

I thanked Dan for the pleasant conversation. Was a ladling of
sarcasm in my voice, which seemed to hurt him and which I regretted
immediately after, the upshot being I walked off with a soreness in my throat. See, cat training was supposed to be the thing that was going
to give me purpose and options, two things you need plenty of at any
age but most particularly when you're young. After a few minutes
of walking around aimlessly, I figured I might as well head back to
the menage, if only to give myself something to do before the
evening show.

To make a long story short I kept on helping the menage boys
with the tigers, no cherry pie asked for and none received, though it's
true I'd lost a little of my vim now I was doing it just to kill time
during lulls. Whenever I saw Louis I'd say good-morning or goodafternoon and then get out of his way pronto (though surely he
must've noticed how the tigers purred every time I got near the cage?
How they'd come over to me and rub their sides against the bars? How
they hardly ever tried to hook their claws in my arm and pull?) The
most I ever got out of Louis was a terse nod, and then the sound made
by those knee-high leather boots stomping away from me.

When I next spoke with Al G., he told me to pay Louis no mind,
that he had a sharpness about him and there was nothing I or anyone
else could do to change that. Only time would bring him around.

This went on for weeks: my doing my goat act and my highschool riding act and my Slide for Life and in my off-hours hanging
around the cats (while generally feeling logy and on the neurasthenic
end of things). It might've even been months. Then one day I was in
my corner, opposite King and Queen and Toby, reading a book though
finding it hard to concentrate for I was thinking maybe I'd quit and try
to worm my way onto another menage show. Louis came tramping
down the aisle between the cages. The ground was damp that day, and
his heels hit the earth so hard he kicked up divets.

He stopped in front of me and held out a twisted willow whip.

"Here."

Was the first whip I'd ever held, a long piece of leather smooth
and comfortable and with a smell halfway between worn wood and Louis Roth. He led me outside, through the backyard, and into an
empty stretch of dirt beyond the lot. It was a hot day, sun blazing. Louis
was wearing his meat belt, and he reached in and grabbed a hunk of
horse and dropped it on the ground. Then he walked me a dozen feet
back and said, "Wait for ze flies to come and when zay do start flicking
zem off. When you can flick off one fly so zat another is not disturbed,
vee can haff a talk. Are you understanding me?"

I nodded yes and he walked off. I stood there, alone, with a whip
and a piece of meat fixing to turn rank, which in the noon sun wasn't
going to be a long process. After a bit I started contemplating the thing
in my hand, impressed mostly by how it managed to be so smooth and
rigid at the same time. I shifted hands and noticed how my sweat had
seeped colour out of the handle, leaving a copper smear running diagonal over my palm. I put it back in my right hand and squeezed, and by
God its firmness reminded me of Dimitri the day I sponge bathed him,
by which I mean dead stiff though with a hint of sponginess.

By this point, the meat was starting to turn a dull grey green and
a trio of flies were doing a zigzag dance in the air above it; it looked
like they were deciding which one got the honour of being the first to
make a landing. I waited, it being a measure of my desire to follow
Louis's directions to a T. I didn't even think of practising until those
flies were on the meat. One landed, and another. I raised my right hand,
circled the whip dramatically over my head and let loose, snapping my
wrist at what I figured was the perfect moment for wrist snapping,
the idea being the force of that snap would travel down the length of
the braid and translate so hard into the popper it'd make a snap could
be heard on the far side of the lot. Instead, that long, long whip
unrolled like a carpet on a hill. By the time my wrist snap wound its
way to the tip it'd pretty much worn itself out, the popper flopping
silent into the dust, a full ten feet from the target. It didn't disturb the
flies' business one iota.

I cursed that nervous little Hungarian, for it occurred to me he'd given me the biggest whip in the business and the last thing someone
would ever learn on. Basically he was putting me off, thinking I'd get
discouraged and forget the tigers. Had this not occurred to me it
might've even worked, but the plain fact was I was mad, and anger's
always motivated me about as well as anything else. I spent all afternoon trying to make that damn thing snap, quitting only when I had to
go eat and then get ready for the evening show.

That night we jumped over the Colorado border to New Mexico.
When everyone was bunking down for a midday nap, I found Louis
polishing his boots in the menage tent. A pint of Tennessee sipping
whisky was beside him.

"Can I get another piece of horsemeat?"

Naturally I could've gotten my own piece of horsemeat-
could've borrowed a slab from a cage boy or bugged the cookhouse
staff or visited the butcher in town, for that matter. The point was, I
wanted him to know I hadn't given up yet. He looked at me, surprised
I was going to miss my sleep a second day in a row, and sighed.

"All right," he finally said. "Tell Red I said it vass okay."

Around the end of that day's whipping session, the meat gamey
and green and so ridden with flies it hummed, I started to get that popper to snap. Not powerfully, mind you, not the way Louis could, but a
snap nonetheless. I'd been thinking a lack of strength in my arms was
the problem when in fact it was my technique: the arm-circling has to
be tight and purposeful, the wrist snap coming at the exact moment the
power generated by all that arm circling is at its maximum (and not a
tenth of a second earlier or a tenth of a second later, a mistake not difficult to make). The first time the popper actually popped I practically
jumped out of my boots-I thought some rubes with pistols had wandered on the lot looking for trouble (which was something that happened all the time back then, especially if the workingmen had been out
stealing shirts off clotheslines the night before). When I realized what
had really happened, I grinned.