by Robert Hough
Al G. hooked his thumbs in his vest and rocked back and forth on his heels. Then he took a deep breath, like a man who'd just climbed a mountain and wanted to sample the altitude.
"Ahhhhhhhh. Don't you just love the air up here in Oregon?"
I told him I did, though wearily. Like most people on the show I was tired of hearing Al G. insist an ugly divorce was not in any way, shape or form the reason we'd hightailed it out of California. Yet now that Al G. was on a roll, he wouldn't be dissuaded by body language or a disbelieving tone of voice.
"Ah yes, Kentucky. I do believe Portland's going to do the Al G. Barnes Circus just fine. Did I tell you feed up here only costs six cents a pound? Down in Venice I was paying eleven. Now that's a considerable savings...."
On and on he went, detailing how even the constant drizzle suited him just fine, until Dan noticed my eyes were glazing over and I was itching to get back to my cages. Was then he did something he hardly ever did, by which I mean he interrupted his boss.
"Tell her, governor."
Al G. stopped talking and for a second looked chastened. Then he obliged, his demeanour going solemn.
"Kentucky," he said, "it's about Louis."
I looked around, checking we were alone. I didn't want anyone else to hear what we were about to talk about, even though Louis's problem was known to everyone from the dwarf tumblers on down to the dog-eating sideshow freaks.
"What about him?"
"Now you know and I know Louis is the greatest trainer ever to appear in the American circus. Or any circus, for that matter. Better than Bostok. Better than Van Amberg. I've never seen a man read an animal's mind the way he can. But he drinks. And he's drinking more than ever. It's only a matter of time before he hurts himself and there's no way I'll be able to replace a man like Louis Roth."
I looked at him, blinking and maybe saying something naive, for Al G.'s eyes widened and he said, "Kentucky, you do know why he's hitting the bottle, don't you?"
"I figured it was just his way."
He shook his head.
"Well, it is and it isn't. It's you, Kentucky."
"Me?"
"You."
"I don't think so."
"Kentucky, please. Let's have a look at this as though you weren't one of the people we're talking about. He let you put his two best lions in with those ill-mannered tigers of yours. Do you have any idea what those lions are worth? Thousands and thousands, Kentucky. Maybe more. Plus lie's shown you about all he could show you in the time you've been here. Plus he invited you to dinner. What's the man have to do? Put an announcement in White Tops? Kentucky, the man has gone moony over someone and that someone is you."
This was a lot to digest, there being a big difference between suspecting something and having it confirmed. Mostly I was waiting for Al G.'s plan, Al G. being a guy who always had one. His expression perked up, as though an idea had just occurred to him.
"Tell you what. You want yourself an all-tiger act, right? Well then sidle up to Louis. Make him forget the bottle and I'll owe you a favour."
"Can't," I said. "I never see him anymore."
"Oh no?"
At this Al G. gave his all-purpose smile, the one he used whenever he had an idea or was about to slip his hand under a woman's skirt or was just plain disguising the way things really were. What irked me was I looked over at Dan and saw he was smiling too. Obviously, they'd cooked up something and they'd cooked up something that was going to have a less-than-subtle effect on the life of yours truly. By the time I put this all together, Al G. was on another damn tangent, something about how much he liked Portland's mountain backdrop, and throughout he kept looking at Dan and saying, "Am I right?" to which Dan would reply, "Surely are, governor. You surely are."
The very next morning I spotted Louis coming toward me, a forefinger bent and gesturing for me to come. I put down my tools and followed him out of the menage tent and across winter quarters. At the door of the training barn I kicked mud and tanbark off my boots while Louis sat and scraped the undersides of his with a stick until they were as black and new-looking as the tops. He stood and said, "Come viss me," and I followed him into the middle of the barn, where Red was standing next to a big male lion. We pulled a little closer, and I saw the lion was Samson, a cat too old and docile to do tricks. Louis mostly used him to warm seats in his finale.
Louis stopped about a half-dozen feet from the cat, and I pulled up as well. We both stood there looking, Louis silent, letting me figure it out. The lion was sitting on a platform cornered by ropes, and all four of those ropes were looped over a single pulley rigged to the top of the barn and then connected to a winch on the barn floor. Turning the winch would've lifted the platform straight into the air, and it hardly took take a genuis to figure why a winch, a lion, a platform and a young blonde might all be in the same barn at the same time.
I walked over to the lion and stood beside him and patted his mane and said, "Good boy." Instead of throwing my leg on over, I went all girly and extended my hand for support; when Louis took it, I gave his hand a little squeeze that wasn't exactly necessary. I threw my leg over sidesaddle, hoping this would be another reminder I was a girl and an unwed one at that. I stood for a second, weight on my feet, before lowering myself. Meanwhile, old Samson panted and looked around and belched raw horse. When I put my full weight on his back he became a lion again, for he turned his head right around and looked at me. At the same time, he made the rumbling full-throated growl only an animal with a larnyx the size of a ham can make. I could see teeth and the pink cavern of his mouth.
Louis purred at the cat, saying, "Good boy, good boy. Zat is it, good boy." This calmed him, and I lowered my weight again, the lion growling and generally getting ornery until Louis hugged him around the forequarters and kissed him on his nose. I settled my weight again and this time the lion was a little better, for instead of growling he stayed still, hissing. Louis said, "Good baby," and gave him a generous lump of horsemeat. Red walked over to the winch and started turning so that little old Mary Haynie from the tobacco fields of Kentucky was lifted into the air while seated on a six-hundred-pound lion. The whole time Samson trembled so bad he wasn't a danger to anyone or anything with the possible exception of his own heart. At about ten feet, Red stopped winching. After letting us sit in mid-air for a half-minute, he lowered the lion and me back to earth, and again I held out my hand so Louis could come and take it and sample its warmth.
"Vass good," he said, though to toast that morning's work he pulled a flask out of his jacket pocket and had himself a sip of Tennessee's finest.
The next day, we practised the balloon act again. (Even though the winch was in plain sight, the audience was supposed to think Samson and I were being lofted into the air with balloons, a denial of reality that only seems to work when people are in a tent and have paid to see a circus.) We went up twenty feet that day, Samson trembling every second. Somehow I'd forgotten to do up the top button on my blouse, so when Louis took my hand and I leaned over to get off the lion, he saw a mixture of shadow and flesh. Next day, we went up thirty feet. This time, when I stepped off the lion, hand extended and blouse drooping like a hobo's pants, Louis said, "I sink ze lion he likes you."
Figuring this was as close to a joke as Louis Roth was ever going to make, I laughed and with my free hand touched his elbow and said, "Oh go on with you," which any man with half a brain would've translated as I am a woman and I am touching you in not one but two places and you're now formally invited to figure out what this might mean.
Was then it hit him-what all my handholding and shadowexposing and weak-joke laughing of the past few days might actually have meant. His eyes went wide. His face drained of colour. He licked his lips. Before recovering, he said, "Tomorrow vee vill continue." Then he bustled off.
This went on and on-my giving him little glimpses of flesh and having him touch me at the slightest call and laughing at jokes that were barely even jokes. Nothing happened. No dinner in
vitations, no professions of love, no inappropriate fondlings. Nothing. Around the time we perfected the balloon act I decided the whole thing was hopeless, that Louis Roth was the type of man who preferred a state of misery to one of happiness. (A lot of men are like that, for it gives them an excuse to act mopey and boy-like. Plus it makes drunkenness feel noble, and over the years a lot of men with the weakness have told me noble drunkenness is the best kind of drunkenness there is.)
I went to practise the next day and got on the lion the way I would a horse. This time my blouse stayed fastened to the top and I barely spoke a civil word to Louis. I generally acted like we were having a lovers' spat without ever having been lovers, which I realized was a case of putting the cart before the horse but having run fresh out of ideas I figured at the very least it'd make me feel better. That day, old Samson and I got hauled to the top of the tent and I set off the battery charge with my foot. Fireworks went off all around us, blue screamers and red shooters and frog-green twirlers and orange nightriders, all exploding against the top of the tent (which for some reason never struck us as a stupid idea seeing as the tarpaulins were waterproofed with paraffin and couldn't've been more eager to catch fire).
Those fireworks kept screeching and screaming, Samson kept trembling and hissing, and throughout I felt like a pillow that'd been torn on a bedpost. I came down with an emptiness inside. I stepped off the lion. As I passed Louis he said, "Vood it hurt you to smile?" to which I said, "I dunno, Louis, would it hurt you to kiss my ass?"
I spent the rest of that day sulking and keeping to myself. The day after that, we opened in a place called Roseburg, Oregon; was April 9, almost a full month after the Barnes show normally opened, everything having been delayed by Al G.'s legal troubles down in California. Was a straw house, meaning we had to put down bundles of straw for the overflow crowd to sit on. That morning Louis had given Samson a bath and a blow-dry, which was accomplished back then by washing and towelling the animal and then waving a piece of cardboard until the cat fluffed up like a show animal. Some animals don't like it, though if Samson was one of them he didn't show it; he even purred a little as I led him into the lights and the noise. I put him on the platform, and as we lifted into the air he commenced with tremoring, which didn't bother me as this was just his way of saying he didn't particularly like the act but would do it for the horse hock he got after.
We reached the top and I kickstarted the fireworks. A second later I heard it: rasping, like a needle scraping the end of a cylinder, a much higher-pitched sound than a lion'll usually make and scarier because of it. Immediately, I realized the rubes were making him nervous, and I cursed myself for not practising the act with some groomers watching and making as much noise as possible. My heart started to pound, seeing as I was stuck forty-five feet up with a panicking cat, a flaw in the design of the act I was amazed I hadn't considered previously.
As those damn fireworks kept firing and those damn rubes kept applauding, I called up every gentling technique in the book along with some that hadn't yet been invented; luckily, Samson was glued to the spot, so I had the opportunity to apply them. I told him he was a good kitty, and I purred in his ear, and I scratched low down on his belly, and I promised him all the meat in the world if he didn't make me die face to face with the top of a centre pole, with people watching and music thundering and fireworks going off to make the event more memorable still. He seemed to listen. The fireworks stopped and we started to come down and the only thing left was some weak applause and the odd powder burst. His rasping faded, and when we reached tanbark his shivering lessened as well, both of which I was mighty thankful for. I swung my leg over and a razorback came running up with Samson's leash, which I snapped onto the collar he wore around his neck. (This was for the benefit of the audience only, there being little a hundredpound woman can do should an adult lion decide to make a run for it.)
I took a step. I waited for Samson to walk off the platform. I took another step and felt the leash go tight. I turned, looked at Samson and it happened: a paw snapped out and took hold of my arm. The whole thing happened so fast I never even saw it coming.
The pain was sudden and spectacular though tempered by the fact that things were about to get much worse. The rubes, meanwhile, were howling, thinking this was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, a lion resting a paw on his trainer's forearm as if he didn't want to leave the ring. Course, what the rubes didn't realize was Samson had latched his hooks good and deep into my arm, the blood flowing free and warm down my sleeve and pooling where the sleeve bends at the elbow. We just stood there, Samson and I, looking at each other, though I knew very well what was about to happen: he was going to yank my arm so sudden and hard he'd pull the ball out of joint until nothing but skin stretched thin as paper was holding it in place. Then, because it's fun, he'd swipe it off with his other paw, in effect showing me what would happen if I or anyone else tried making him go up on that damn platform again. Wasn't a doubt in my mind this was going to transpire; I even started wondering if I could learn to handle a whip with my wrong hand. The only thing I resented was it taking so long, and that four thousand rubes were being entertained by it. Meanwhile, Samson kept peering into my eyes and panting lazily, obviously enjoying himself, stretching both my arm and the moment, the weight of his paw making a statement on my sorely stretched shoulder joint, when a thing can't happen, happened.
Samson pulled three of his claws from my arm. Now this is a move requiring a dexterity lions don't have, but one I can prove did happen by the oddity of those particular scars on my forearm. My arm was now hooked by only a pinky; his paw looked like a society lady's hand holding a cup of tea. I glanced back up into those gleaming golden eyes. While tigers can't smile, a lion can, and he gave me a big one, something made the audience start laughing harder still. He dug the single claw in deeper, through the cutaneous and subcutaneous layers, reaching where the body gets pulpy and blue. Then he ripped. Pulled open my arm as slowly as you or I'd open a letter, neatly dividing cloth, skin, muscle and sinew, leaving a clean straight tunnel. Just before the wrist, he calmly stopped, extracted his pinky nail and smiled, and as he smiled it occurred to me he clearly thought he deserved a reward for not tearing my arm off. He was actually just sitting there grinning, waiting for me to pat him on the head and say, Good kitty.
Funny thing was, I obliged. Scratched him behind the ears and said, "All right Samson, you made your point." Then he got up and led me to the blue curtain, as well behaved as a Dalmation, the audience clapping and howling and wiping away tears. Outside the big top, people saw my costume had turned red from the elbow down. There were screams, though not loud ones. I was starting to stagger from faintness, and blood was beginning to make its way over my fingers, the colour red mixing with field earth. My good hand, gone ash white, was still holding the leash of that panting contented lion, seeing as Louis was in the menage and was no way anybody else was going to lead Samson off. I stood there for minutes and minutes, feeling silly and weak, the trickle of blood from my sleeve turning to actual flow. After a bit, the ground started to teeter like a see-saw, the voices around me turning slow and unnaturally deep.
I woke up in darkness, circus-lot sounds nearby. My eyes adjusted to the dimness well enough I knew I was in a rail car, though I didn't know whose until Louis came in with a lit kerosene lamp in one hand, a bowl in the other, and a cloth over his shoulder. He must've just finished the evening show, for he was in his performing getup. Steam from the bowl rose into his face. I looked around the car. It was full of old furniture, lots of dark wood and red velvet, the walls covered with framed photographs of Louis: with his platoon back in Hungary, performing in the George R. Rawlings show, putting his head in a lion's mouth, guiding a trio of lions through a rollover. In another he was posing with Al G., Al G. beaming and draping his arm over Louis's shoulder, Louis looking stonefaced and uncomfortable. Was also a framed New York Times article from 1905, reporting that Louis was the first to ever put his hea
d in the mouth of a lion, which was pure horseshit seeing as Van Amberg was doing it back in the 1800s.
A sheet separated myself and the bedspread, and my arm was resting on a mat of towels. The wound was stinging, no doubt from carbolic acid. Because it was animal inflicted, they'd left it open so it could froth up and drain. Louis sat down. Instead of looking in my eyes, he looked at the wound, gently turning my arm so as to inspect it from different angles.
"So," he finally said, "vee haff had a little accident."
"Looks that way."
"Hmmmmmm. I haff seen much vorse."
"It'll scar?"
"Oh yess."
"Good."
He took the cloth and dipped it in the hot water and began to wipe the wound. The cut looked long and pristine, like a canoe, though built with layers of pink softwood. Louis kept looking at it, couldn't take his eyes off it, and might've stared at it for a whole lot longer had the rail cars not started shunting. He left, saying he'd be back, and an hour later, when the train was built and we were about to make the next jump, he returned carrying another bowl of hot water and another clean cloth. He washed the surface of the wound till it was pretty and pink and glistening in the soft light cast by burning kerosene.
"Zer," he said, though he didn't stop, for he then poked an index finger into the cloth and dipped the point of the cloth into the warm solution. The train started to pull out of the station, Louis waiting for the jiggling to settle into regular motion before he did what he was intending.
Which was: press that carbolic-acid-and-warm-water-soaked cloth, made pointy with an index finger, into one end of my wound.