The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (42 page)

A minute later, I heard sirens. Was another minute before I realized they were after yours truly. So I took an off ramp and parked on a
side street.

A tall, lean cop got out of the cruiser. Immediately I knew I wasn't about to buy my way out of this one, it being a strange truth the
skinny ones are rarely crooked. Sitting there, I pined for the days when
cops barely got paid and appreciated a gratuity from time to time.

He stepped up to my side as I was rolling down the window. I was
just about to hit him with the "Is there anything wrong, Officer?" when
he proceeded straight to the "Step out of the car, ma'am."

We were in a black neighbourhood. While he looked at my fake
driver's license, which bore a picture of me taken in 1952, I had myself
a look about. Behind me was a little strip mall with maybe four or five
storefronts, three of which were papered over. Still in business was a
liquor store with the word Michelob flashing in neon blue, and of all
things a creole shack. What a creole shack was doing two thousand
miles from the bayou was anybody's guess, but I can tell you at that
moment it hit me I hadn't eaten in the better part of a week and
would've killed for a hot ladling of etoufee. Goddammit, how the circus used to cheer itself up whenever we crossed the Louisiana state line,
and believe me it wasn't the humidity or the gators or the French
whores or that funny squeeze-box music they had down there. Uh-uh.
Was the food.

I was planning to ask the officer if he could spare me for a minute
when he told me to stand on one foot and close my eyes and touch both
fingers to my nose.

I practically laughed.

"Might as well ask me to flap my wings and fly, sonny Jim. You're
looking at an old lady, and old ladies have trouble staying upright on
two feet."

He stewed on this a second. I even saw a flicker of sympathy
cross his face, something that made me think he'd never last.

"All right," he said, "count backwards from a hundred by sevens."

Again, I had to laugh, this being a test as old as the hills. Back in
the days when the Ringlings were hiring Pinkerton agents to help thin
the grift a little, there were a few months when John Ringling's fastidious wife, Mabel, decided she wanted to rid the circus of alcohol too.
This made us all snicker, Mabel Ringling having a husband who drank
schnapps all day and who never went to bed without having a dozen
pints of German lager. Course, maybe that was the reason she was so
keen to see the circus turn temperate: she was worried her husband's
drinking would kill him, which of course it eventually did. In the meantime, she'd stand near the workingmen's train on nights off, bushwhacking those on their way back from the blue car and asking them to
count backward from a hundred by sevens. Was about as unfair as
unfair gets, seeing as a typical workingman'd never made it out of
grade school and couldn't have done it sober. They'd fluster up and
cipher in their head and usually go mute with nerves. Then Mabel
would fine them 50 cents, an amount the front office boys never bothered to collect, seeing as they were the ones who sold them the beer in
the first place.

Though I never got the test myself, I knew enough to practise. It
wasn't hard, once you got the hang of it, so when that officer asked for
it I knew I had him licked, the sharpness of my mind being about the
only thing I still took pride in.

I started.

"One hundred," I said, proceeding by memory to the next step,
"ninety-three" and the next, "eighty-six."

Now here a distressing thing happened. I couldn't recall what the
next number was, though this didn't overly concern me, for it'd been
more than forty years since I'd practiced Mabel Ringling's sobriety test.
No problem, I told myself. I'd just figure it out. Problem was, by this
point I seemed to have forgotten the number I'd just said, so I had to go
back and repeat the count in my head: One hundred ... ninety-three ... oh, right, eighty-six. Once I got the eighty-six back, I had to minus the
seven, though I found pulling the number out of thin air was like
pulling teeth: instead of just landing on the number like I would've
years earlier, I had to count backward from eighty-six, embarrassed the
whole time my lips were moving.

"Seventy-nine?" I said weakly.

You could see by the hopeful expression on the young man's face
he was rooting for me. I guess he figured if a woman as old as me could
handle this test then maybe old age wasn't so fearsome after all. His
eyes widened and his lips parted. I thought he was even going to mouth
the next number. Course, he didn't, and by that point I'd forgotten what
I'd just said, so I had to start all over in my head, stalling at eighty-six,
counting my way down past seventy-nine and losing my place somewhere in the mid-seventies. Meanwhile, my stomach was growling and
my head was hurting and sun was getting in my eyes so I decided I'd
take a guess.

"Seventy-four?" I croaked, my tongue seeming to quit on me as
well.

The young officer immediately looked guilty as a sinner. Was
like he was the one who'd smashed a few cars in the JungleLand parking lot.

"Ma'am," he said softly, touching my sweatered elbow with two
fingers.

In this way he led me to his squad car. He opened the front passenger door and I got in. When he got me home he said he wasn't going
to press any charges but that I wasn't about to drive again either; to
emphasize this fact he took my old forged license and slid it into an
inside jacket pocket (which didn't bother me unduly, as I had four or
five others sitting in one of my kitchen drawers). After promising him
I had someone to look after me, he nodded and drove off. I went inside
my house and immediately hated the green, the garden, the little
kitchen, the me-ness of it. Believe me-it wasn't possible for a person to feel lower than I did at that moment. I knew I couldn't be alone-in
fact, I could practically feel my memories reaching from the walls and
trying to grab me by the throat and it surprised me when I realized
there was only one living person in the whole world I wanted to see. I
picked up the phone and dialled the JungleLand cathouse. When I got
through I asked for that little Okie job-stealer Roger Haynes.

"Mabel!" he said. "How in Sam Hill you doing?"

I let a pause go by.

"Better come, Roger. Better come."

He got there shortly after the supper hour. I didn't answer the door, seeing as I couldn't hear him over the TV and two radios blaring. Luckily,
he had the smarts to come on in, finding me on the living room sofa.

esus."

First thing he did was run around and turn off all the racket, and
then he galloped into the kitchen and grabbed me a glass of water and
a hunk of Velveeta. Though I pushed them away, he insisted, and figuring he was a guest in the house I eventually became amenable to getting something in my system.

First thing I said to him was, "Oh, Roger, why in the hell didn't
you tell me Chief and Tyndall were still working?"

"I was afraid to, Miss Stark."

"Goddammit, Roger. I feel like a fool."

"Plus I figured Parly was going to."

"Well, maybe he should've."

After that, it got difficult to communicate. Roger mostly kept his
eyes fixed on the carpeting, and he kept rotating his wedding ring,
something he tended to do when nervous. Course, I wasn't helping,
which was strange given a few hours earlier he was the only one on
earth I figured could stop me from doing something desperate. Maybe
it was my last shred of dignity talking.

Roger's face lightened and the corners of his mouth sneaked upward. "Miss Stark. I was wondering if you might let me show you
something."

"Depends what it is."

"If you're curious, you'll just have to wait and see."

Here I asked him a few more questions about the nature of the
surprise. Roger wouldn't answer any of them; instead, he rose to his feet
and kept shaking his head and saying, "No no no, Miss Stark. You're just
going to have to trust me. We'd better hurry or we'll miss it."

Here I figured if I couldn't trust a person like Roger then there
wasn't much point in trusting, period. Getting to my feet was difficult
given all the Hamm's I'd poured into myself, though once I did I let
Roger guide me outside the house to his car. Course, he did this by putting two fingers on my elbow just like the police officer had.

We got into his car and headed northeast on Highway 5. Roger
drove faster than the speed limit, which I ordinarily wouldn't've tolerated. After about half an hour, we got so we could see the foothills of
the Tehachapis, which I knew well for I'd crossed them every year I
was on the Barnes show. We drove a bit more, neither one of us saying
anything. Then Roger made a right onto another smaller road, this one
unmarked and gravelly, like the kind ranchers use. Only you could tell
this one wasn't in use anymore, for the space between the tire ruts had
grown over with weeds and chaparral. Probably the land had been
bought up by developers willing to let it sit idle until the value went up.

"Roger, where are we going?" I asked.

Instead of answering the question he looked at his watch and
said, "Oh good, Miss Stark, we're here right on time." It was dusk, the
shadows lanky.

We followed along the little path as it inclined a drumlin. I pretended to be cranky, saying, "Jesus Christ, Roger, you're going to get a
tire stuck," though I was doing it mostly to hide the fact my curiosity
had been pricked and pricked good.

Roger stopped the car just as the lane turned into a footpath. We were parked before a split in the drumlins, and the path seemed to lead
up between the two of them. I peered up it, squinting for effect, and
said, "You can't possibly expect me to trot on up there like a mountain
goat, Roger. I've had me a long day."

Fortunately, by this point he understood I was just being disagreeable out of reflex. He grinned, and came around my side of the
car to let me out. This time when he took my elbow, I shook his hand
away, saying, "Good grief, I can manage."

So we walked up the path, Roger leading the way. As I'd thought,
the path split the two drumlins but instead of leading back down the
other side it stopped on a ridge. Roger invited me to sit on some boulders and we both looked out over a valley.

"Roger ..."

"Shhhhhh, Miss Stark. It's just about to happen."

Roger pointed, and I realized he was pointing at the sun, which
was getting ready to dip below the mountains on the far side of the valley. As soon as it did, it started to turn colour, filling the valley with a
thick golden light.

Then it happened. My mind's eye and that valley blended into
one and I saw things, floating and shimmery. Like Rajah's face. Like Al
G. Barnes's mischief grin. Like an audience on its feet with the lights
turned up.

Like: Art.

After a minute or so, when the gold had downgraded to a rusty
copper, Roger turned and said, "Well, that's it."

"That was something, Roger."

"I'm glad you liked it. We might as well go."

"Might as well."

We left the ridge, and because it was getting a little on the dark side
I didn't shake Roger away when he took my elbow. We got in the car, and
Roger headed back to my house in Thousand Oaks at a speed aimed to
calm. I kept on looking out the window at the city lights in the distance.

"Roger?"

"Yes, Miss Stark?"

"You ever wonder why things happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"What makes the things that happen, happen? God, you figure?
Or is it all just luck? What do you think, Roger? If it's God running
things, I could live with that, but pure dumb luck? I'm not sure how
wild I am about that...."

He looked at me, his lips slightly parted and the rest of him white
as a halibut. "I don't know what you mean, Miss Stark."

I let the matter drop, figuring he was a young man and it was a
mistake bothering him about an old person's concerns. Still, was no
denying I felt like gabbing.

"Tell me something, Roger."

"Uh-huh?"

"You got yourself a baby at home."

"Yes, Miss Stark."

"Then why work so hard? If I had little ones I'd put them before
tigers, believe you me."

He didn't say anything, and I felt bad about turning naggy.

To make amends I said, "Roger?"

"Yes, Miss Stark?"

"That sunset. It helped. It did."

"Don't mention it."

"Well, just so you know."

"You're welcome, Miss Stark."

"Helped put my head on straight. I owe you one, Roger. Maybe
I'll knit that little gaffer of yours a sweater. I'll bet she's a sweetie. How
come you never brought her around?"

"I never thought you'd be interested, Miss Stark."

"Well, I would've."

There was a pause.

"Well, just so you know, Roger. I feel better."

"I'm glad."

"No, really. I feel like a new woman."

This went on and on, my thanking the boy but never telling him
exactly what it was I'd decided while watching that sunrise. It felt good,
finally having myself a plan I knew, without a doubt, I could make happen. For the truth of the matter is, there's something about gazing on
majesty that makes the big decisions seem so small as to barely be decisions at all.