A Girl and Five Brave Horses

by Sonora Carver

  Behind me I heard Harriet, one of the Hawaiian divers, shouting and realized, as in a dream, that she was shouting at me. In the confusion of that whole dreadful moment my ears registered her warning but not her words. Responding to them, I turned and ran a few steps and bumped into a bench. I did not fall completely over it but I did fall forward. The thundering crash of metal breaking and wood splintering seemed very close, and then there was a final crash.

  Almost immediately someone grabbed my arm and rushed me across the area to my dressing room. “Stay here,” he said. “You’ll be safe.” As he spoke and pushed me inside I knew that it was Marty.

  The sound of shouting voices and running feet was rising tumultuously as he opened the weatherproof telephone box that hung on the wall outside my door and called frantically for an ambulance.

  Roxie was the first to be brought backstage, though she was the second to fall. This was because PeeWee, the first person to reach Irene, had started toward the front of the pier with her in his arms. Somebody caught him and headed him backstage, but Roxie had been carried there in the meantime and was put on the only cot in the first-aid room. Between cries of pain I could hear her say, “My back! Oh, God! My back!” and then, as if she had lapsed into a partial state of consciousness and with less agony in her voice, “What’s the matter? Is something wrong? What’s happened?”

  PeeWee finally arrived with Irene and laid her on a bench outside my door. In contrast to Roxie, Irene was silent, too silent. I wondered which was worse—Roxie’s cries so full of pain or Irene’s silence. Then someone said, “Here’s a nurse. She was in the audience,” and someone else said, “Where’s Mrs. Pallenberg? Tell her to take care of Emile. He’s sick.”

  A new voice, a woman’s, spoke after a minute and said, “I can’t do anything for this one,” and then I heard her going into the first-aid room to see about Roxie.

  Little Dirbima Pallenberg seemed to be wandering around lost. “Is somebody dead?” she was asking. “Did somebody get killed?” and I thought, “Why doesn’t somebody take the child away from this?” I opened my door and called, “Dirbima, come here,” but just then Mr. Pallenberg spoke up. “Never mind,” he said, “there isn’t anything I can do, so I’m taking her home.”

  I closed the door again, but it was opened immediately by Harriet. She was crying as she entered, “Oh, I’m so glad, so glad!” For an instant I felt shocked and then thought, “She’s hysterical. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  I said, “Tell me what happened, Harriet,” and she began, “Irene—she—“ But her voice broke and she began sobbing more violently. I made no effort to comfort her. I had no words.

  I remained at the door, wondering why the ambulance was taking so long. Outside I could hear Orville speaking—crying, really. He was saying, “I’m through. I’ll never build another rigging as long as I live.” I felt vaguely surprised that he wasn’t hurt, until I remembered that he had been on the deck at the time of the accident rather than in the cradle. Then somebody shouted, “Here come the stretcher-bearers.”

  A few seconds later Al dashed in, kissed me, and said, “I’m going to the hospital with Orville. When Arnette gets dressed, go on home.”

  Harriet got up and went out, and in a minute I followed her. I moved toward a group of voices, and as I did so Pee-Wee stepped up and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Thank God,” he said, “you’re still with us.”

  It seemed such an odd thing for him to say that I asked, “What in the world do you mean?”

  “If it hadn’t been for that bench,” he said, “you’d have been killed. The rigging crashed down less than a foot above your head as you fell.” Listening to the story of my close call, I understood for the first time what Harriet had meant when she said, “Oh, I’m so glad.”

  The theory that the show must go on was ignored by the spectators, making it totally unnecessary to call it off. Many of the spectators had fainted, but those who were able to left the grandstand, and as Arnette and I passed by on our way out it was deserted, she reported, except for a few who had not yet recovered, their friends and the ushers who were helping to revive them.

  As we walked along the corridors of the pier, usually so thronged with pleasure seekers, it was strangely empty, and the few late-comers who had bought tickets after the accident wandered about seemingly bewildered and lost. At the front end of the pier somebody told us that the horror of the spectators who had seen the accident had been translated to those who had not, and crowds had left the pier like refugees pouring from a doomed city.

  Some of the performers went home, but others, anxious for news and knowing Al would bring it when he came, followed us to our apartment. We gathered in the dining room and sat down around the table, miserably unhappy.

  The differences in the characters of the individuals were revealed by their reactions. Those who felt compelled to talk discussed the accident in all its phases, and as I listened I gradually gained an idea of what had happened. Apparently Harriet had been the only one who was watching. “When Irene got on the rope,” she explained, “instead of spreading out into the arabesque, it looked as if she went into a back bend.”

  The instant she said it I remembered hearing Irene talk about a back bend. She said she was tired of the arabesque and wanted to try something different. It was conceivable that she had decided on the spur of the moment to do it without having first figured out that she would have to wrap her leg around the rope in a manner directly opposite from the pose required by an arabesque. When she pushed back with her weight instead of forward, the rope would have come unwrapped from around her leg and she would have fallen. That was and still is the best theory any of us has been able to offer. No explanation of the accident really makes sense, because Irene was such a marvelous performer, but it seems unlikely that it could have happened any other way.

  As Irene fell she struck two wires, one at sixty feet and another at fifty, which caused the anchor hooks to straighten out. This sudden and forceful release of the two supporting guy wires on the same side that held Roxie’s weight was too much of a strain, and the rigging collapsed. The men couldn’t pay the rope out fast enough to let Roxie down easy, so she had fallen from about seventy-five feet. Marty said that when he got to her he found one of the bones in her ankle had broken through the flesh and was sticking into the planking of the deck. He and the others who lifted her had to pull the bone out of the wood and in the process broke part of it off.

  After Marty’s description everybody was silent for a while, and then Kelsey began talking about other accidents and continued for some time in this vein, piling up harrowing and gruesome details. Finally someone threatened to throw him out if he didn’t shut up, and the threat was backed up by a chorus of “Yes, for heaven’s sake!” Then there was another silence.

  Finally Al came home about four o’clock in the morning and told us that Irene was dead. The surgeons believed she had broken her back when she hit the first guy wire and her neck when she hit the second one. She never regained consciousness, but her vitality had been so great that she had lived for nearly two hours. Roxie’s injuries were compound and still not definitely catalogued. She had a badly fractured ankle and a broken foot. Several vertebrae in the lower part of her spine had been crushed, and the doctors didn’t know whether she would live or not.

  Finally we went to bed, and I fell asleep almost instantly, taking refuge in the only place where I could keep from thinking.

  When I woke about nine the next morning I felt drugged, and as I struggled to overcome the sensation I became conscious of a sense of guilt, and the atmosphere seemed heavy with vague desolation. I couldn’t think why at first, and then I remembered; Irene was dead and Roxie was in the hospital. She too might be dying or dead by now. But it was impossible! It was just a bad dream. In a few minutes we would all get up and have breakfast together.

  I opened my eyes, and the simple act brought with it the realization that it was all true. I g
ot up, slipped on a robe, and went out into the hall. Arnette met me and said, “Al has gone to the hospital. Mrs. Van Myers is here.” Her voice was dull and even, and I felt she had spoken less for the purpose of giving information than to appear balanced and in control of her emotions.

  In a little while Al came back with Orville and made him go to bed. Roxie’s life was still hanging by a hair, Al said. We tried to eat breakfast, but it was no use; empty chairs around the table were as visible to me in my mind’s eye as they were to Al and Arnette. We gave up and went down to the pier.

  The wreckage had been cleared away, and many who had been too stunned to weep the night before were weeping openly now. Arnette expressed the feelings of us all when she said, “It’s hard to tell whether it would be worse looking at all the wrecked rigging or the empty space where it stood. It’s horrible, that wide empty place on the deck.”

  During the next few days Roxie fought for her life and Orville was seldom at the apartment. Orville’s mother arrived from Des Moines in time to attend Irene’s funeral. She hadn’t known Irene, but her presence comforted Orville. Of course the whole thing was worse for him than for anyone else, but the aftermath of the tragedy had its effect on all of us.

  During the next few days everything seemed to go wrong, from minor injuries to major ones, and odd, uncalculated happenings took place. Perez, a slackwire performer, fell and injured a foot, and one of the girls in the water sports fell off her aquaplane as it made a turn, and the board flipped up and laid her head open. Worst of all, at the end of the week one of the Pallenberg bears got loose and mangled Tommy Kao.

  Tommy had been taking a sun bath and fallen asleep while the Pallenberg act was on. The bear got off his leash somehow and darted backstage through the half-open door. The shouts of the crowd excited him even more, and as he ran back he found Tommy lying on the bench and attacked him.

  My first impulse when I heard the commotion outside was to open the screen door of my dressing room to let some of the scattering performers find safety inside, but the instinct toward self-preservation squelched the impulse quickly. A wide-open door might prove an invitation to the bear, and so I stood there anxiously wondering if I should change my mind and be brave. Then I heard high-pitched screams like those of a woman in pain and immediately thought of Arnette. I opened the door and started out, propelled forward by my fear for her safety, which was suddenly greater than my fear for myself. But just then I heard a scuffling sound and stopped as Mr. Wylie, owner of the aero-wheel act, called out, “Somebody help Tommy while I take care of this bear,” and I realized it was Tommy who had cried out. This was followed by a breaking and splintering noise. Mr. Pallenberg mumbled something. A few minutes later he had the bear under control and back on his chain.

  Tommy’s injuries proved minor—a clawed back and chewed hand, both of which would heal—but tempers were running so high and everyone was under such a strain that Mr. Pallenberg later had a fight with Mr. Wylie because Mr. Wylie had hit the talented animal with a chain. Reports from eyewitnesses stated that after Mr. Wylie hit him over the head the bear had worn a definitely woozy expression.

  These were the outward aftereffects of the tragedy. The inward effects were less visible, but all of us were scarred to some degree. Everything considered, I felt I had more reason than any of the others to be affected by Irene’s death and Roxie’s desperate injuries, for I was about to face the ordeal of riding blind. My helmet had just arrived and Elsa was scheduled to leave in three days; soon I would make my first ride.

  It was hard to think of Irene and Roxie and not be haunted by doubts. It seemed foolish, presumptuous even, for me to think I could do my act without injury when performers who had sight were being injured daily. Again the pendulum swung from doubt to certainty to doubt. Could I do it? Of course I could. How did I know?

  It is debatable how long these inner arguments would have continued had it not been that they were all reconciled suddenly by a circumstance no one had foreseen.

  Eighteen

  I was scheduled to make my first ride on the seventh. On the third, Elsa, who had just finished the last afternoon performance, was in my dressing room changing when she received a telegram from Lorena. Lorena’s season had not been due to open until the tenth, or so she thought. However, the message said that she had gotten her dates confused and the park was opening the night of the fourth. This meant that Elsa would have time to do nothing more than throw her belongings into a trunk and leave.

  I heard this news with a mixture of panic and relief. My first thought was, “Oh no!” but my second was, “The waiting is over.”

  I had planned to make a practice dive before Elsa left, but now that was impossible. With only about an hour between the last afternoon performance and the one of the evening, I would hardly have time to do more than get my things together and get dressed before I would have to be ready to go on. I made my preparations automatically and had almost finished when Al came along.

  “Are you up to this?” he asked the minute he walked in.

  I said, “I think so.”

  “If you’re not,” he proposed, “you know we can call it off. I’m sure Mr. Gravitt would understand.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then I added, “I’ve got to do it.”

  He said, “Yes, I think you must.... Will you let me come up with you? Just this first time to stop the horse? I can hold him while you get on. That’s all that’s really worrying you.”

  “No,” I replied, “I’d rather you didn’t. I’ve got to do it alone.”

  He was quiet a minute. Then he asked, “Are you afraid?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I haven’t had time to think.”

  “It’s better,” he said, “if you don’t think. Just go up there like it was old times and keep remembering how often you’ve done it.”

  “All right, I will.”

  He looked at his watch. ‘It’s almost seven. I have to leave.”

  “All right,” I repeated. “And don’t worry.”

  He kissed me and, a moment afterward, left

  I picked up the helmet, testing the feel and the weight, hefting it in my hand. Although a football helmet, it was much heavier and clumsier than standard models because of the metal frame on the front which encased a piece of clear plastic. The plastic came down over my eyes and fitted across my nose. The back of the helmet laced up so that I could adjust it to my head, and the inside was padded with foam rubber. To hold it on there was a strap with a buckle that fastened beneath my chin. After I had tried it on several times I threw my shawl around my shoulders and went out.

  On the bench outside my door where I had often waited in the past I sat now, feeling the raw spring breeze nip at me. I wished it were a warm night; somehow that would have been better, but it wasn’t a warm night and that’s all there was to it.

  I followed the music out front, checking off each act in turn, and after a while I heard Dempsey coming down the pier. He was barking furiously, making way for Red Lips, and in a moment George and the horse came around the comer and halted at the foot of the ramp.

  Sparkey and Kelsey were about through. I would be on next. I got up and crossed over to the guide rope and let the fringe of my shawl brush it as I walked to the foot of the ramp. The applause out front ended for “Spark Plug,” and Al began our announcement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness the most exciting act in show business today. All eyes cast atop this lof-ty tower—”

  I turned and put my shawl on the railing and buckled on my helmet. Then I began to climb.

  As I mounted I counted the cleats. I already knew how many there were, but if I counted it would keep my mind off other things. I began dutifully, “One . . . two . . . three . . . four,” thinking how familiar they felt, “five ... six ... seven ... eight,” and how I must do as Al said. “Nine ... ten . . . eleven ... twelve.” But the fear was creeping
up. Would I be able to mount Red? Would I be able to tell where he was? Moving sound was hard to pinpoint. My actions would have to be precise. A split second off and I’d miss him. I could lose my balance and fall. “Twenty-five ... twenty-six ... twenty-seven.” I had lost track and was counting at random. “Twenty-eight... twenty-nine .. . thirty.” As I continued I felt like yawning and remembered an article I had read. Yawning, it said, was caused by three things: boredom, illness, or fear. “Forty-one . . . forty-two . . . forty-three . . .” Roxie was badly crippled. She would live. When she learned she might have to lie in bed for the rest of her life would she still want to? Would I be like Roxie? Could that happen to me? Yes, it could and I know it could. “Seventy-five ... seventy-six ... seventy-seven ...” Just as I started to say “Seventy-nine” my foot came down with a thump, the kind of thump that follows an attempt to take a step where there isn’t any. I knew I had reached the level floor of the platform. As I stepped forward I heard Al say, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, Miss Sonora and Red Lips.”

  In the old days I always tried to time my arrival at the top with his concluding words and had been pleased when we synchronized. Tonight I had done it without trying and thought, “That’s a good omen!” But almost immediately the feeling of well-being was dispelled, for as I boosted myself up on the railing and listened for the sound of George turning Red Lips, I could not hear a thing from the bottom of the ramp!

  For a split second I thought I had lost my hearing, and panic seized me. Then I detected hoofs on the ramp and felt their vibration. Thank Cod! I could hear him, though not as clearly as I had expected.

  I realized that the foam rubber inside the helmet partially deadened sound. Still, I would be able to hear him better the closer he got, and I tensed on the railing, remembering how fast Red traveled. Then, when pounding feet and vibration told me he was very close, I held out my hand and felt the tip of an ear flick by my fingers. Immediately I lowered my hand; I had reached too high. I found the side of his neck and felt the coarse hair of his body brush by. The next instant I closed my hand over the neck strap and threw my leg over Red’s back. In one swift motion I mounted him and knew I had mounted him perfectly!