Miraculum

by Steph Post

  Ruby started to speak, but Hayden held out his hand to stop her.

  “No, stop questioning me. I’m serious. I can give you the life you deserve. Far away from here. You can forget this place and come away with me and never have to set foot in a carnival again.”

  Ruby slid off the edge of the stage.

  “You want me to leave the Star Light with you?”

  Hayden nodded emphatically.

  “Yes! Finally, you’re listening to me.”

  “And then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “And then what do we do? Where do we go? Where do we live?”

  Ruby realized that Hayden couldn’t see what was so obvious to her. She had thought, for a moment there, they were back in sync with one another. That they had come to a new understanding. And now this. Hayden threw his hands up in the air.

  “We go anywhere you want! Anywhere at all. I can find work wherever we go. We can make it happen.”

  Ruby walked a few feet away from him and held out her arms. She was wearing part of one of her costumes. A thin, short dress that left her arms and legs bare. She spun around slowly and then lowered her arms.

  “And me? What am I going to do? Go live in a town somewhere with you? Where I can never go anywhere without being covered up every inch, including a veil? Where I’ll be ridiculed and mocked and asked on the street how much to take my clothes off so a man can see my tattoos. You ever stop and think about that for a second?”

  Hayden shook his head.

  “No. It won’t be like that. I promise.”

  Ruby crossed her arms.

  “Oh, it will. You can come and go between worlds, between the carnival and…”

  Ruby gestured toward the tent opening.

  “…whatever’s out there. But I can’t. And you know that. And now you get some harebrained idea that we’re just going to go join the folks in the real world and live happily ever after? What the hell’s gotten into you? I knew you had changed when you came back, but I didn’t think you’d lost your mind.”

  “So you won’t leave with me.”

  Ruby was taken aback. He wasn’t seeing where she was coming from at all. Not even trying to. Hayden could be stubborn, but she had never known him to be selfish.

  “No, I won’t leave with you.”

  Hayden looked toward the tent opening and set his jaw.

  “Fine. But I’m going without you. I have to leave this place. I want you to come with me, but if you can’t, so be it.”

  Ruby spat at him like her words were poison.

  “To hell with you.”

  Hayden shook his head.

  “To hell with you, too, Ruby.”

  Hayden tipped his hat to her and then turned on his heel and marched out of the tent. Ruby didn’t go after him. She turned around and kicked the stage as hard as she could with the heel of her sandal. He was infuriating. And obstinate. And now egotistical and stupid. She couldn’t understand what had come over him, but it wasn’t the first time they had fought. Nor would it be the last. Ruby wasn’t worried; she knew he wouldn’t leave her again.

  Ruby sat at a table by herself and stared into her cold coffee. It was early, too early, and the sun was already beating down on her mercilessly. Most of the freaks had chosen to cash-in on their marginal performer status and had settled down to breakfast under the shade of the cookhouse tent, albeit at the edge. That left only the rousties and gamesmen out in the uncovered area, sweating into their eggs and bacon. And Ruby, of course. She flicked the ash off her cigarette, but kept her eyes on the full cup in front of her. She didn’t want to look at anyone; she didn’t want to talk to anyone. Everyone, it seemed, already knew.

  Hayden had actually left. Sometime in the late afternoon of the day before, according to Franklin, and only hours after they had argued. Hayden hadn’t stopped to think or reconsider. He hadn’t taken time to cool down, walk it off. He hadn’t come to her again, trying a different approach, offering a compromise, talking it through reasonably. He hadn’t even said goodbye. Hayden had been so desperate to leave the Star Light that he’d let their fight be the last words between them. He had abandoned her again.

  No one had said anything to her yet, but she could tell from the sideways glances that word had traveled fast and everyone was aware Hayden had left. She didn’t think he would have spoken to anyone about why he was leaving, but secrets traveled like wildfire in a carnival. Ruby was ready for someone to come up to her and ask her about it, hoping to collect a choice piece of gossip. She had been through it all before. Ruby didn’t want to talk about it, but she did want to bite someone’s head off. Fortunately, she didn’t have long to wait.

  “I heard that Hayden left us sometime yesterday afternoon.”

  Samuel sat down in the chair across from Ruby and rested his hands in his lap. She flicked her cigarette and looked up at him.

  “Really? You don’t say. I wasn’t sure I had noticed.”

  Samuel sighed. He started to reach across the table, but drew back.

  “Ruby. I’m sorry. I know that I’m not very good at expressing…”

  Samuel paused, trying to find the right word. He traced his thumbnail along a woodgrain vein in the top of the table. Ruby gave him no encouragement.

  “…sentiments. But I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”

  Ruby crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair.

  “Why? I thought you’d be glad. Throwing a party to celebrate by now.”

  Ruby stubbed her cigarette out on the table and pitched it into the dirt.

  “And Jesus Christ, what is there to be sorry about? So Hayden left. He came back a week ago. And now he’s left. A man fell off the Wheel a few days ago, but I guess that bit of news has lost its shine. Is everyone so tired of pitying January that now they’re turning to me?”

  “Ruby.”

  “And you know, maybe Hayden is the smart one around here. Getting out while he could. Before this place sucks him down into the muck again.”

  Samuel frowned.

  “Is that how you see it?”

  Ruby slung her arm over the back of her chair.

  “How I see it is none of your business. But come to think of it, anyone who stays on here when they don’t have to is a fool. And anyone who has the sense to get out, who’s got something better going for them than this, should be applauded.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  Ruby jutted her chin out.

  “Maybe I do.”

  The Electro-Man and one of his assistants, who were hurrying out from underneath the tent, slowed and looked over, questioning. Three of the rousties at the closest table turned and one grunted his agreement. Ruby had made sure her voice was loud enough for anyone in the surrounding area to hear. Samuel’s expression had faded back into his usual mask of stoic practicality. He kept his voice low.

  “Well, it’s good to know you feel that way. And that you are undeterred by recent personal events. With that in mind, I have a favor to ask.”

  Ruby stood up and slung the full contents of her coffee cup to the ground.

  “Nope, not interested. Whatever you need, whatever it is you want to know, find someone else.”

  “That’s not exactly the attitude I was commending.”

  Ruby leaned one hand on the table and spoke very slowly.

  “I don’t care. Find someone else.”

  Ruby pushed away from the table and marched across the yard without looking back at Samuel. The tables had become silent and she knew everyone was watching her, but she didn’t care. She kept her jaw clenched and her eyes straight ahead. Let them stare. Let them talk. It wasn’t her job to fix problems or boost morale. It was her job to give a good Snake Charmer performance. That was all. She swung around the corner of the cookhouse tent and saw the geek coming through the line of wagons. Daniel stopped and bent his head slightly with his eyes fixed on her. He nodded once, slowly. The usual smug smile on his face had been replaced b
y an uncharacteristic look of concern. Not of pity, but of commiseration, perhaps. It was unnerving, and Ruby’s eyes narrowed as they met his. Then, without knowing why exactly, she nodded back to him before disappearing among the tents.

  Pontilliar’s vision for Ruby had been as a Tattooed Lady. It was 1909 and though the Star Light had been doing well that year, he couldn’t attract someone like Nora Hildebrandt or Irene Woodward, and he couldn’t have afforded to pay for them anyway. The animals for the big top circus show were literally eating all his profits and Pontilliar had been racking up more than his fair share of debts. He had decided to call in on a debt of his own and had sent a telegram down to New Orleans. He had to wait six months for a reply, but it was worth it. Madame Celeste had agreed to take Ruby. Pontilliar had been thrilled; he would be rid of Ruby and her frustrating uselessness for a year and gain a new freak attraction for free. As soon as Ruby had assented, Pontilliar had her packed on a train heading west.

  When Ruby arrived in New Orleans, she was sixteen with empty pockets and only one suitcase to her name. She waited at the train station for six hours until twilight began to set in and a dark-skinned man with jaundiced eyes approached her on the platform. She was to get into his wagon and he would take her to the Madame. When she asked how long the journey would take, his reply was only “bajou kase.” About an hour outside of the city he handed her a long silk scarf. She spent the night sitting bolt upright and blindfolded on the buckboard seat next to the driver, clutching her Barlow knife in the folds of her skirt, as the mule wagon carried them west and then south, deeper and deeper into the bayou.

  When the man finally helped Ruby down, she could feel the warmth of early daylight on her skin, but she still wasn’t permitted to unwind the scarf from her eyes. She could hear birds trilling all around her, then a woodpecker hammering into a tree and a barred owl hooting in the distance. The man tied a rope around her wrist and started walking. She stumbled along behind him, tripping over stumpy cypress knees and splashing into thick, warm water that oozed into her shoes. She carried her suitcase in one hand and gripped the rope with the other until she began to hear the sounds of civilization. People’s voices, roosters crowing, the thud of an axe hitting a plank of wood. The canopy of shading trees opened up and she could feel the sun beating down on her, suffocating.

  When the man finally yanked her to a stop, Ruby knew that she was in some sort of town or village, and she could sense the crush of people crowding around her. The man had told her what he would do to her if she removed the blindfold on her own and so Ruby stood still, her legs and dress caked in drying muck, the suitcase handle in her fingers slippery with sweat, and wondered whether it was better to die with your eyes open or closed. She did not die that day, but she did meet Madame Celeste Fontaine Laveau, who would change the course of her life forever.

  The inhabitants of the place Ruby came to know as Vilaj La Nan Pèdi A, or The Village of the Lost, said that Madame Celeste was over a hundred years old and the sister of Marie Laveau, the famed voodoun priestess from Bayou St. John and St. Ann Street. Some said she was Marie and Doctor John’s daughter, known as the Widow Paris, and some said she was Marie herself. Regardless, they all called her Madame Celeste during the day and Manbo Celeste at night and during the ceremonies. Madame Celeste welcomed the mystery about her identity. She claimed to be a quarter white, a quarter African, a quarter Comanche and a quarter Maori, from the other side of the world. She was fine-boned with yellow eyes housing enormous dark irises. She wore a long, sweeping skirt and kept her glossy black hair underneath a blue, seven-pointed tignon. Like a few of the elders, her right arm and the right side of her neck were pocked with small circular and linear tattoos. Everyone in The Village was terrified of her and she ruled the hidden bayou settlement with absolute power.

  Ruby’s given name disappeared the moment she first stood before Madame Celeste in the center of The Village market. Madame Celeste had removed the blindfold and spat at Ruby’s feet, laughing. The woman looked her up and down and pointed at Ruby’s arms, neck and chest, festering with mosquito bites, some angry red and fresh, some already oozing and crusting over. Madame Celeste had taken Ruby by the shoulders, turned her this way and that, and stood back to laugh again. “You are nothing but a feast for the moustik.” The old woman had then frowned. “But you are also nothing but a white woman lost. A ghost. You are Fet Wairua now. Like the story from the far island. That spirit did not survive. Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t. It matters not to me.” And so Ruby became Ghost Feast and took on a new life.

  It didn’t take long for Ruby to realize that Madame Celeste had no intention of turning her into a Tattooed Lady and sending her back to Pontilliar. At first she was kept in the garconniere of Madame Celeste’s Acadian house and was not permitted to leave. She sat on a pallet in her attic room and sewed gris-gris bags for Madame Celeste to fill and sell when she journeyed north to New Orleans in the winter. After two months of sewing in the dark with no complaints, Ruby was allowed to climb down the side stairs and run errands for Madame Celeste. The Village was larger than she had imagined and more spread out. The houses, mostly made of stripped logs and palmetto fronds, radiated out from the central market in a sort of spiral and were connected to one another by paths made of rough cypress planks pressed down into the mud. Only one straight street ran through the village, starting at Madame Celeste’s front door and cutting directly through the market. It ended abruptly at the edge of the wild bayou, with no indication of where to go from there. Ruby delivered Johnny the Conqueror roots and collected alligator skin payments; she learned to select the best ropes of rattlesnake meat from the stalls at the edge of the market and to bargain shrewdly with the beads and packets of tinted powder Madame Celeste had sent her with. No one in The Village liked her, but she traveled safely because she was Madame Celeste’s Wairua. Ruby kept her head down and her eyes open as she mapped out as much territory as she could. Exactly five months after she had first arrived, Ruby silently climbed down the stairs and fled.

  Ruby had threaded her way through The Village in the darkness of the new moon and headed north. She had no idea where she was in relation to any other towns, or even to any roads, but she had decided that traveling north, away from the water, was her safest bet. She had taken only her knife, her mother’s playbill and the clothes on her back as she disappeared into the thickets of arching cypress trees cloaked in Spanish moss. She had moved swiftly, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the scouts she knew would be out looking for her soon. Madame Celeste had warned her of what would happen if she tried to leave. She would become more than just a feast for mosquitos. Ruby could navigate mountain terrain in pitch darkness, but the bayou, with its quick mud and canals filled with glowing-eyed alligators, had been a different story. About two hours before sunrise, a bank of peat moss had given out beneath her and she had slid down into a dried-up canal bed. She had heard the snakes before she felt them, writhing and coiling over her trapped body, and Ruby had known it was the end. In the black confusion, she had felt the force of the bites and in a strange moment of lucidity, Ruby had realized that she was going to die as her mother had done. Ruby had felt a wave of comfort wash over her, and soon the world was gone.

  Ruby could taste it in the air; something was wrong with the town. With the light, with the shadows, with the soil. With the subdued crowd that walked along the midway timidly, nervous to try the cotton candy and put a nickel on red and spin the chance wheel. Chandler had gone ahead as usual and set up the advance, greased the right palms and plastered playbills up and down Main Street, but still the turnout was weak. The Star Light had skipped around Napoleon the past five years due to rumors passed along the circuit that the town was fading away. It had once been a thriving logging town, home to two of the largest and most prosperous sawmills in Mississippi, but the coming of the railroad had changed everything. The logs didn’t need to roll down the Pearl River to the Gulf when they could ride
safely in shipping cars along the iron rails of the newly laid Southern Railroad Line. The tracks bypassed Napoleon by too many miles and its habitants had slowly crept away to the new rail towns springing up across the bottom of the state. It was a testament to Pontilliar’s determination to turn a buck that the Star Light was now set up in the shadow of the abandoned Western Pearl Sawmill.

  The morning after the first quiet, unsettling night in Napoleon, January approached Ruby on the midway. One of the gamesmen, Gig, and his wife, Linda, had come up with a new game for their booth and were testing it out before the gates opened. They had built a circular trough in front of their stand and filled it with water and small wooden fish that floated on the surface of the continuous current. The object of the game was to use a short cane pole and line to loop one of the fish, each of which had a number painted on the bottom. The number corresponded to the prizes arranged on the back shelves of the booth. Linda and Gig were arguing over the logistics of the game, the speed of the water, the length of the line, and Ruby had wandered over to see the new game before the townsfolk arrived. She was bent over the metal rim of the trough, trailing her fingers in the water absentmindedly, when January appeared next to her and snatched up one of the brightly colored fish. She looked over at Ruby coyly.

  “So, are you coming tonight?”

  Ruby stood up and shook the water from her hand. January was dusted with powder and made up with lipstick and rouge, even though the Girl Revue wouldn’t begin its first show until late afternoon at the earliest. Underneath the thick makeup, January’s face was blotchy and puffy. Ruby tried not to notice.

  “What’s tonight?”

  January dropped the fish back in the water and sighed.

  “How do you not know what goes on around here? You used to be on top of everything. This town is a dump.”