The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (24 page)

By the time we were finally done, I was tired and cold and my
fingers ached. I went off to our stateroom, not having seen my husband
all night and knowing full well for what reason. The stench was terrible, practically manufactured it was, Louis lying spread-eagled in the centre of the bed, his boots and uniform not in any way bothering him
seeing as he was practically in a coma. Thankfully, it was one of those
times when there's enough good going on in your life you sort of need
a dose of bad, if only to balance things out and keep the gods happy. I
closed his eyes, pushed him to one side and crawled under the covers.
That night I dreamt of the way applause has a rise and a fall that's as
close to music as something non-musical gets.

We all left as tired and sore as it's possible to be, and made it so late into
San Diego we had to cancel the matinee, which left Al G. mighty sore.
Thankfully, it was a two-night stand, and we caught up on some sleep
before a night in Escondido and three full days in Los Angeles. Then there
was the Mojave and over the Tehachapi Pass to Bakersfield, where we
played all the usual towns in the San Joaquin Valley before heading up to
northern California and San Francisco, a place that always made me feel a
little agitated owing to my wedding with that rich voyeur James Williams.
Still, things were good, Al G.'s theory about wartime attendance holding
firm, for the houses just kept getting bigger and bigger. According to
Bandwagon, Sells-Floto and John Robinson and Hagenbeck-Wallace
were all doing sellout business too. The only difference from before was
the faces belonged to kids and grandparents and women without men, all
easily entertained because they needed it so badly.

Al G. bought me three more tigers, including a cantankerous
Sumatran named jewel who tried killing me on a number of occasions,
Sumatrans being extra dangerous because they're so small and quick.
The way I was feeling back then I could've dodged bullets, so I took
her natural tendency toward springing and turned her into a hoop
jumper par excellence. When White Tops reported I'd done the impossible by mixing a Sumatran in with nine Bengals, I scoffed out loud at
the article. "No such thing," I said to myself, "as impossible."

Rajah knew it too. As he crept up to his first birthdate, he reached
his adult weight of 550 pounds, which is huge for a Bengal; I've known smallish female Siberians that weren't that big. He was the most beautiful tiger I've ever seen: face shaped like a heart, eyes the green of a
jewel, fur thick and gleaming, whiskers long and delicate and purple
black. Plus everything the right size for everything else, something you
don't find that often on a big cat. Plus he'd gotten an ovation every
night since Santa Monica and don't think that won't swell a tiger's head.
Soon he had himself a regalness the other tigers lacked (except for
maybe King), and by this I mean he moved slowly with his head up and
his shoulders back, not unlike a deb learning to walk. Dignified, he was,
his bearing reminding me a little of Louis when he wasn't on the drink.

Which brings me to the topic of Louis.

I'm in the Holt car, talking to Al G., Dan having gone to town
with Miss Speeks.

Al G.: "That husband of yours, Kentucky. What are we going
to do?"

Me: A shrug, as it seemed unfaithful for a wife to out-and-out
admit her husband was lost to the bottle.

Al G.: "Talk to him, Kentucky. Spell it out. Though do it in a way
he doesn't realize he's having it spelled out for him. You hear what I'm
saying? Use tact and niceness and your God-given wiles."

That night, Al G. lent me his rail car and I made Louis a dinner
of goulash and dumplings he was practically too drunk to eat. When I
suggested maybe his crapulence was getting on Al G.'s nerves and that
bosses' nerves were something you definitely didn't want to get on, he
became defensive and upset, and the next thing you know he spat out a
subject reserved for wounding and wounding only: children, or to be
more exact, the fact we didn't have any.

I saw red. The fight could be heard all over the lot. I even hurled
a dish or two, which irked Al G., for he'd had them shipped all the way
from Provence. I decided to spend the night in the menage car, bunked
beside Rajah, one of his paws on my chest. In the morning I awoke with
straw marks on my cheeks.

That day, we pulled into a little town in southeast Nebraska called
Falls City. Though it was nothing but a tiny dot on the map, it was
memorable to Barnes troupers in that it represented the farthest east the
show had ever gone, the Barnes circus being a West Coast show and
nothing but. It was late July and hot, the smell of fresh corn hanging
over town like an overcoat. I had some time before parade so I went
downtown as a little treat, wearing a hat pulled low. Was a nice place,
Falls City. Course, most towns were before the interstates: the town
square had a gazebo and carved wooden benches and a place where a
band played on holidays. Plus a neat little courthouse and a drugstore
that sold penny sodas. It was a Saturday, and because the stores had
closed for the circus, there was a little open-air market in the square,
bonnetted women selling preserves and baked goods.

Despite my fight with Louis, I was feeling good about the world.
After parade, the usual gaggle of reporters asked for interviews, and
believe me when I say it wasn't Louis they wanted to talk to. Nor was
it Cheerful Gardiner the elephant man, or Captain Stonewall the seal
man, or Al Crook the producing clown, or even the charismatic owner,
a man known throughout the circus world as Lucky Barnes. Uh-uh,
wasn't any of them.

That night during the wrestling display, I stood in the steel arena,
Rajah seated behind me, peering into the audience, pretending to be
deaf or stupid or both, while the audience hollered out variations on
"My God, look over your shoulder!" I whistled, and Rajah came jetting
off his pedestal and knocked me down, and as sometimes happened he
jumped on me before I had time to roll over, such that my belly was
down and the right side of my face pressed against tanbark. I entered
my world of heavy furry silence, though this time something different
happened: Rajah gave me a bit of air and he leaned his jowls beside my
ear and he offered up a little rumble that sounded both affectionate and
dangerous. He licked the side of my face, and was then I felt both big
paws settle on my shoulders, his claws sinking deep into padding. He held me down. He opened his jaws and closed them over my neck, eyeteeth pressing against skin, me saying, "Rajah, no no no," which he
ignored. For a second, I thought something was going totally wrong,
and that maybe it was true you never could trust a tiger, even one
you've raised from birth.

Rajah began rubbing his body against mine. To the rubes it
must've looked like he was fixing on having me for breakfast, which in
a way he was: I could feel his manhood, about the size of a whip handle and covered with a white wispy down, searching for an entrance in
my leather. Finding none, it contented itself with rubbing against me,
a motion that shook me like a Raggedy Ann. Rajah let go of my neck
and roared the way a male tiger does when so occupied, the rubes
screaming and yelling for help and the usual assortment of bravehearts
rushing the cage and getting held back by groomers and cage boys and
clowns, a sight that got the rubes whipped up all the more. Rajah picked
up the pace and, with a roar that scared even me, finished and then
rolled me over with a paw and buried his face in my neck and gurgled.
I hugged him as the rubes' screams turned into screams of relief.

He rolled me around a little more before I finally pushed him off.
I took only the quickest of bows. Truth was, I was embarrassed as hell,
for his spunk had got all over my back, and when he'd rolled me over
the tanbark shavings had stuck to it, my beautiful black leather uniform
about as messed as it was possible to be: quite frankly, I looked like I'd
been tarred and feathered, something I'd seen happen to more than one
sideshow grifter. I left the arena red-faced, and as I did I passed two
men who'd been standing just outside the door. The first was my tunnel man and cage boy, fled, who realized what'd happened, and who
was laughing and pointing and enjoying the well-worn sight of me.

The second was Louis, who also knew what'd happened, and
who didn't find it funny in the least.

JESUS CHRIST I'M GLAD YOU'RE HERE. IT'S ALL HAPPENING
and if there was ever a time I needed a shoulder to lean on it's
now. Was a few days ago. A pair of them, in black suits, like twin
funeral directors, poking around like curious sons of bitches, inspecting cages, huts, wagons, I even saw one of them standing outside
Annie's steam-belching snack hut and shaking his head like he couldn't
believe what he was seeing. To add further emphasis in case anyone
was watching he kicked it. Looked ridiculous, he did, like it was a used
vehicle he was beginning not to think much of, pulling his foot back
and inspecting it instead of the scuff he'd made on the side of the
building.

They were with Jeb and Ida practically the whole day, and on the
odd times they weren't you'd see them having their breaks together,
sipping iced tea and scheming. When I asked Roger, "Who in the hell're
those two?" he told me he didn't have a clue, so I asked the same question of Uncle Ben. He shrugged as well, saying, "The only thing I know is they're in from Omaha. I'd ask Jeb if I were you." This was
easier said than done, for I couldn't confront Jeb when Ida was around,
and I sure as hell couldn't pin him down when he was showing around
the strangers, they being the ones I wanted to talk about in the first
place. In other words, I had to steam about it pretty much all day, until
finally, near the time I was about to go home, I saw Jeb heading across
the connection. As usual, he was wearing a cowboy hat and the frown
that comes from owning a money-losing business. I timed it so I turned
a corner and we practically ran headlong into each other.

"Mabel!" he said after a quick sidestep.

"Jeb! Christ, you scared the bejesus out of me."

He laughed and made to move around me, causing me to shift
into his line of vision, a signal I was in the mood for a chat.

"Quite a day," I said.

"Quite a day."

"Sunny. Not too hot."

"Wish it was always like this. Business would sure be better."

"What we used to call a real circus day."

"Oh, it's a circus day for sure."

"See you got some visitors."

"Visitors?"

"Those men in suits keep following you around."

"Oh. Them. They're hardly visitors, Mabel. To be visitors you
have to be invited. They just phoned up and told us they was coming
and I didn't have much choice in the matter."

"That a fact?"

"Well, Mabel I gotta ..."

"Who are they, Jeb?"

He peered at me for a second.

"Who's who, Mabel?"

"Oh for Christ's sake, Jeb, the guys in the pallbearer suits!"

Here he took a breath and looked at me squarely.

"Insurance folk, Mabel. The company that holds our policy got
sold, and the new company says they have to poke around."

"Oh."

"Nothing to worry about."

"No, course not."

"One thing we never have to worry about is your tigers, Mabel,
and neither will they. Not with the way you labour over them."

"No, I'm not worried, just curious was all."

This was followed by a few more seconds of awkwardness. We
parted and walked in separate directions, me feeling jittery and air
filled.

Problem was, he'd told me I had nothing to worry about before I
told him I was worrying.

They were there again the next morning, poking about, generally trying to sink into the woodwork though achieving the exact opposite with
their latest Nebraska fashions. Everyone was on tenterhooks and then
some. Then, at midday, Jeb tracked me down in the cathouse and said,
"Uhhhhh ... Mabel?"

"Yes, Jeb?"

"You're needed in the office."

"What for?"

"Those men. They need to talk to you."

Was my turn to be cagey.

"What men would that be, Jeb?" though I immediately regretted
it for Jeb wasn't my enemy, no matter who his wife was, and he gave me
a spent look reminding me of that fact. I followed him out of the training barn and then headed alone to his office, where the men had set up
on a card table in front of mounds of paper. I entered and suspected
right off this wasn't going to be pleasant.

The two men. One was taller than the other, and he wore his hair
in a fashionable cut, by which I mean silly: Little Lord Fauntleroy bangs and wisps travelling down over his ears before doing a little flip
up sideways. Why a man close to forty years of age would let himself
get influenced by what those hippies are doing is beyond me, but there
it was: he had himself a hairdo that made me yearn for the 1940s, a time
men knew how to dress, as opposed to today, a time men just plain
don't. The other man was older, maybe in his fifties, and slightly more
dignified, his hair greyer and sparser so he was less tempted to follow
the trends. Both were in cheap suits, poorly stitched and dumpy,
the older of the two with a ketchup stain on his tie that sacrificed what
little he had in the dignity department.