The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (23 page)

"Is funny. All trainers say zat. You know, I vas there when
Marguerite Haupt vas killed. A mean old cat did it. Far vorse than King.
Put him down afterwards. Vas no one's fault but his. Anyway,
Marguerite is lying zer and you can imagine vat iss coming out of her,
and vis only a minute or so to live she says to me, "It vas my fault,
Louis. I should not haff vorked ze tiger in ziss heat. Vas too hot for ze
tiger, Louis."

"You trying to scare me?"

"Yes."

"Guess you know it won't work."

"Yes." He chuckled. "I am avare of ziss."

Louis didn't say anything more for a long time. Neither did I,
choosing to concentrate on the nice feeling of warm water dripping off the cloth onto my face. After a few more minutes, he decided the worst
of the seepage was gone, so he removed the silver clamps and let me
sleep a good long time. I slept and awoke feeling fine. Louis had another look at the wound and was so satisfied he replaced the cotton and
secured the new cotton with tape. When he was finished, I thanked
him, though I suppose I did it a little too formally for he started thinking about the problems we'd been having of late.

"It has been a while since you and I ver as man and wife."

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry, Louis."

"I haf been missing you," he said, and because I'm a woman and
that's a state of affairs that comes with duties, I suddenly felt sorry for
him. I invited him into my arms and kissed him. After a minute or two
of this, he moved down and unbuttoned my blouse and started giving
me tender little kisses, though I wasn't enjoying the sensation at all for
the ceiling was all colourful and bendy and I couldn't figure out what
was wrong with me.

"What did you give me, Louis?"

He lifted his lips from my chest and said, "Give you?"

"For the pain. You gave me something for the pain."

"Oh, yes. Vas some morphine is all. For zee eye. You vill discover nothing hurts more than an eye scratch."

My heart started pounding. Luckily, Louis didn't notice my galloping pulse, as he'd moved farther south, and I didn't say anything if
only because I didn't want to do any explaining. Instead I took a few
breaths and told myself I was going to get through this, no matter what
it took, for Louis had been deprived of late and he was a man and I was
determined to make it up to him. When I heard him lower his jodhpurs
and extract himself, a switch got thrown, and here I'm talking about the
one that takes unpleasantness and instantly upgrades it to nightmare.
One second you're hanging on, the next you're trying your damndest
not to scream at the horror of it. See, I was seeing those damn tin soldiers, watery and grinning, red jacketed and on the prowl, taunting me, and the memories they brought back made me start to cry and shake
and peep, "Please, Louis, please ..."

He rolled off and hitched his pants and stood above me while I
lay on that bed weeping and nude and not caring. My hands were over
my eyes, though I took a second to peek with my good eye through slitted fingers, just long enough to see the worry and confusion on his face.

"Oh" was the only thing he said, though it could've been air
coming out instead of an actual word. Crawling in bed beside me he
said, "Zer are sings I do not know about you, Mabel Roth. Maybe one
day you will tell me, hmmmmmm?" and was then he put the full weight
of a jacketed arm over my chest, a bit of bodily contact I both needed
and couldn't, in any way, stand.

The season opened in Santa Monica, California, the atmosphere so hot
and heavy when the rain finally settled on hot concrete wispy clouds
rose off. The show started with an opening spectacle called "The
Conquest of Nyanza," Nyanza being a name made up to sound
African, Al G. wanting to distinguish ours from all the Far Eastern
specs logging miles around America. A chorus dressed in loincloths
chased around a gold-painted chariot pulled by a team of bears dressed
to look like Masai plainsmen, and if reporters with the Santa Monica
Reporter knew there was no such thing as an African bear they were
nice enough to keep it to themselves. Meanwhile, an orchestra blared,
and there was an excess of drumming and chanting and spear waving
and, for no reason I could ever figure, the sideshow Wild Man riding
willy-nilly on a llama. In the middle of the melee was Leonora Speeks
herself, barely dressed in a drooping cavewoman outfit and roped
tight to a quarter pole, being carried through the air by savages, as
though being led away for sacrifice. Course, she loved it, for it
afforded her the opportunity to do a lot of shrieking and wriggling
and calling attention to herself. Rumour had it the savages were under
strict instructions to carry her straight out of the big top and over to Al G.'s car, where she stayed tied up for another twenty minutes, if you
understand my meaning.

After the spectacle-I played a camel-riding tribeswoman, which
isn't as easy as it sounds seeing as camels are foul, nasty and lazy by
nature, though at least my eye patch was newly off and though my eye
still throbbed I could judge depth again-I didn't come on again till the
twentieth display, when every able-bodied female performer had to
mount a high-school horse and ride around smiling prettily. Five displays later, I put on my new seven-tiger act, Al G. having bought me
another two Bengals named Kitty and Ruby. Was a decent little act, all
seven tigers sitting up while in a pyramid, something no other trainer
was doing with tigers back then. Plus I got five of the seven to do a
rollover together, the two holdouts being Queen, who looked at me
with blank blinking eyes every time I tried teaching her something new,
and King, who had a tendency to start fights if he got touched by
another animal's fur. He more than made up for it with his hurdle jumping and hind-leg walking, though.

Display thirty was the clowns, and after that the big top went
dark; the Barnes show was the first circus in history to travel with generators and electrical lights, so just making a big place suddenly go dark
was enough to impress. Was no introduction, no hyperbole, no swell of
music, nothing. Just a light, suddenly shining on the steel arena, Rajah
sitting on his pedestal. Then I came in myself, wearing tight black
leather with a pair of black boots that tied up the inside and stretched
to the knees. Felt like something, I did, for I was strong from all that
cage work and limber from jumping out of the way of paw swipes, and
if there's one thing the body's good for when young and fit it's parading itself.

I stood eyeing the congregation of rubes, as though I'd completely missed the fact a tiger grown to almost five hundred pounds
was sitting behind me. Grinning, I was, in a way suggesting I was either
naive or stupid, and in either case in a state of high vulnerability. Meanwhile, Rajah was squirming and licking his lips and adjusting
his paws and basically acting like a tiger yearning for action. The
house fell silent. Completely silent. Was a silence I pretended confused me, my flummoxed expression stating, "Hey, we're in a circus-ain't no place for quiet. I even put my hands on my hips and
scrunched my face to play up my perplexity. The calls started: "Look
out behind you" and "Mind the tiger" and "For Pete's sake-over
your shoulder lady!" In response, I bent at the waist and put a hand
to my ear, as though I was hard of hearing. This made them call louder, and pretty soon each and every rube was screaming to beat the
band, while I stood there cupping my ear, pretending I'd chosen that
moment to turn stone deaf. I was also trying not to laugh, the ears
being amazing things in that they somehow filter the din and let the
funnier warnings sail through. For instance: the man in the front
straw row, standing red-faced and frantic, shrieking, "Fer the love of
Christ, lady, you're gonna get your ass et!"

Was then I whistled. None of the rubes knew I did it, for they
were noisy and I'd lowered my head so no one would see me doing
something different with my lips. The only thing they knew was their
worst fears were coming true, something that excites people and
makes them feel good: Rajah stormed off that pedestal and hit me
three-quarter force and roaring, knocking me down and leaping on
top in the process. The whole world went away, both my hearing
and vision muffled by soft orange. Once I turned my head to get a
breathing passage, I was completely safe, and would've even been
comfortable were it not for the weight on me getting serious every
time Rajah took a breath. Plus his belly fur tickled.

Later, the workingmen told me when Rajah hit and my neck
whipped back, the whole audience thought he'd snapped the bone
clear in two, a suspicion confirmed by the fact my hands and feet, the
only parts of me poking out from underneath the tiger, weren't in any
way moving. Apparently the screams and cries were deafening, ladies fainting and children screaming and some of the braver men rushing
the steel arena to rescue me, though what they thought they were
going to do once they got there is beyond me; it took a dozen clowns
and elephant groomers to hold them back. Meanwhile, Rajah roared
and growled and aired his back teeth, acting for all he was worth like a
tiger guarding its kill. I lay under a mound of animal, thinking it probably all looked mighty funny from outside the cage. After a bit, I
pulled my right arm underneath Rajah and scratched his pleasure spot,
a signal to him that everything was fine and dandy and that despite the
addition of hollering rubes the game was the same as ever. With that,
he rolled off me onto his back, something a cat normally hates to do,
and let me roll atop him, at which point he crossed his paws over my
back and hugged me like we were slow dancing.

Well. Was a crest of applause-a crest one part relief and one
part resentment at having been scared witless and one part disappointment they weren't there the night Rajah the wrestling tiger ripped apart
his trainer. These three parts got all whipped up into a din had a life of
its own. The din expanded to fill the big top, where it sat like rain
clouds trapped in a valley, getting louder without even trying, when
finally it began to transform into laughter, and here I'm talking about
the laughter caused by people realizing they've been had and had bad.
Even after Rajah and I had stopped rolling around and we'd taken our
bows, they were still holding their stomachs and wiping tears, though
as I walked Rajah out of the arena toward the blue curtain they started
applauding as well. And whistling. And standing on their feet and
cheering; was like I'd just showed them all the secret of immortality.
Inside the curtain, I handed the cat off to Red and looked at Al G., who
was beaming and not because he'd just feasted on the tied-up lusciousness of one Miss Leonora Speeks.

He had to yell to be heard over the applause: "Well, go out and
give them what they want, Kentucky!"

So I did. I went back out there and bowed. Was just a quick dip at the waist, for despite Al G.'s generosity the one thing a trouper never
does is interrupt the flow of a performance. Still, during those five or
ten seconds everything that'd ever happened to me suddenly seemed
sensible and worthwhile, if only because it'd led me to this. I ducked
back behind the blue performers' curtain and floated on air through the
dancing bears and the bucking mules and the elephants parading
around the hippodrome while wearing giant tutus.

Then came the finale, Louis's lion act, the numbers having been
cut from twenty to twelve for Al G. had recently developed worries
about Louis handling a group that large. Though the act ran smoothly,
Louis suffered from a slowness of step that would've been dangerous if
his cats hadn't been so well trained. In fact he looked like he was wading through water; though the cats were doing their sit-ups and
rollovers and pyramids, they weren't doing them with the crispness that
separates a good cat act from one just getting by. Truth was, his cats
were lollygagging, and normally in the world of Louis Roth there was
no worse sin than that. I half watched the act, and half watched Al G.
watch the act-his eyes were narrowed and his jaws muscles flexed
under powdered skin, though his showmen's guise bounced back into
place when Miss Speeks squealed, "Look at all the lions, sweetheart!"
and started to hop on both feet. The act ended with a group sit-up that
impressed the rubes but seemed to drain Louis: he had to struggle to
keep them all paws up at the same time.

That year the after-show was a bunch of magic and song-anddance acts we called a Vaudeville Presentation, Miss Specks herself acting
as the woman who gets herself sawed in half by a dastardly magician.
Was put on in the sideshow tent so we could get to tearing down the big
top right away. And when I say we, I'm being literal, for there was a war
on, and most of the workingmen had taken farm jobs that'd opened up
on account of young farmhands all across America feeling patriotic and
signing up. A few of the workingmen had gone off to fight as well, though
not many, the typical razorback being too afflicted with alcoholism, nervous problems or pederasty to get by a draft board. There were so
few workingmen left, in fact, that Al G. had to inform the performers
if they didn't chip in and be troupers that big top wasn't about to get up
and down all on its own.

The main performance ran till ten in the evening. Normally, the
workingmen would get the big top down and rolled and loaded by midnight. Took us till four in the a.m. that first night, tear-down being a
complex job involving precision and timing and a whole team of elephants pulling up tent pegs with their trunks. The boss canvasman, a guy
named Peterson, yelled till he was blue in the face, though all the yelling
in the world couldn't change the fact we didn't know what we were
doing. There were slowdowns and fuck-ups and rigging injuries galore.
That night I mostly ended up bandaging people who'd been hit by sliding bail rings, and putting icepacks on noggins conked by toppling quarter poles (for as you know, I'd worked as a nurse and was therefore
knowledgeable of things medical). The whole operation bogged down
around half-past one in the morning, when the centre pole team somehow got way ahead of everybody else, meaning the whole tarp came
wafting down with everybody still underneath it, and if you want to get
an idea what disorientation's all about try having a canvas tarp bigger by
half than a football field fall on your head. Suddenly the whole world was
screaming and pitch-blackness. For the next twenty minutes we were all
occupied by crawling our way out. More than once I bumped into someone confused and heading back toward the centre, and when we were all
finally out from under we had to figure a way to go back in and retrieve
all the fallen half poles and aerial riggings and electric light stands. Jesus,
what a kerfuffle. Poor old Peterson got so agitated I made him sit still and
breathe into a brown paper bag and think pleasant thoughts.