The Blue Moon Circus

by Michael Raleigh

  The boy walked among them and studied their faces. They grinned at one another, beamed at the big tent, winked at Lewis Tully. And Lewis himself folded his arms and looked at his tent and just nodded, as if to tell the big tent, “I told you so.”

  The tent towered over the handful of nearby trees and billowed where the Oklahoma wind worked its way inside the openings. The bright colors of the panels clamored for notice. Where a section of canvas bore no colored patch, the self-taught artists of Lewis Tully’s crew had painted wild animals, grinning clowns, musical notes. And above the wide hole of the main entrance, the tent proclaimed itself to be the home of Lewis Tully’s Blue Moon Circus: A One-of-a-Kind Show and Menagerie.

  The boy found himself standing a couple of feet from Lewis. The old magician had joined Lewis, and they were studying the tent as though they saw something that the boy couldn’t see.

  “That’s the old tent, isn’t it? From the show back in ’17?”

  “It is.”

  “Where on earth did you get that striped part on top, Lewis?”

  Lewis gave Harley a slow, sly smile. “One of those hot air balloons. Come down in a field in Iowa, crashed actually, and I was there. The airman seemed to have lost his stomach for flight, and I give him twenty dollars and a bottle of Cuban rum for his balloon. Needed some red up there. Red ceiling gives your show that special glow.”

  The magician looked from the tent to Lewis and noted the marks of age and hard use: pink tracks of old cuts around Lewis’s cheekbones, crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, the scar across his eyebrow, and the white stretched skin where he’d taken stitches in his chin. Harley looked back at the patchwork tent.

  “It suits you, Lewis.”

  “Kinda broken-down-looking, I suppose. A Big Top needs character. Well, Harley, she’s up. Now we’ve got to fill her with acts and then go get some folks to watch, and we’ll have a circus. Who knows, maybe we’ll even make some money.”

  “We’ll do just fine.”

  Lewis said nothing for a moment. “I don’t know. If we don’t make it through a season this time…” He seemed to catch himself. “Don’t even know what kinda show this is gonna be.”

  “Except that it’s going to be ‘one-of-a-kind,’ like the sign says. If it’s yours, Lewis, it will be that.”

  Lewis stared at his tent and shrugged. “The hardest part for me is trying to be ready for whatever’s coming down the road, whatever surprises the Almighty’s got in store for us. There’s a reason for every one of those patches, Harley.” Lewis looked around and noticed the boy a few feet away.

  “What do you think of her, son?”

  The boy thrust his hands deep into his pockets and made a little shrug, but his eyes were alight.

  “It’s pretty big.”

  “Man of few words, our Charlie. Says your tent’s big.”

  Lewis nodded. “I expect you’ve seen ’em bigger than this one.”

  The boy inclined his head doubtfully. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, this Top of mine will hold six hundred people and now I’ve got the seating for ’em in those trucks. It’s fifty feet high at the outer edges, and right there where the big pole makes that kinda pointy thing there, it’s seventy-three feet high. Makes it high enough for a trapeze, wire acts, that sort of thing.”

  “It looks old,” Charlie said.

  “Sure, parts of it are old, parts of it are new. I’ve had older tents though.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Ah, they’re gone. Tents are like people. They pass through on their way to other things. I’ve lost a couple tents in my time, what with acts of God and people’s cussedness.”

  “Lewis is like a general with his horse shot out from under him, son. Bet he’d like to go in, Lewis.”

  Lewis smiled at Charlie. “Sure he would. Come on.”

  He followed the two men under the front flap and went inside. The thick canvas blocked most of the light so that the boy felt as if he had entered a cavern. The air within was ripe with unexpected odors: he could smell animals, and smoke, and food, and the mildewed surface of the canvas itself, and he thought he could smell burnt cloth.

  For a time neither man said anything.

  I can hear ’em, Lewis thought, If I close my eyes, I can see it full.

  Lewis inhaled the pungent odor and saw himself one more time in a tent full of noise and smoke and humanity, a tent billowing in and out with the workings of the wind across cornfields, the air blue with smoke, the grandstands jammed with sweaty people watching things they’d see only once or twice in their lives.

  Harley spoke. “I never thought I’d set foot in a circus top again, Lewis, unless I had a ticket. I’m obliged to you.”

  “For a while there, I thought I wouldn’t be able to track you down.”

  Harley chuckled. “You mean you thought I was dead, you and Hector.”

  Lewis patted the old man on the shoulder. “No, I never did. Like you said about Jacob Roundtree, I thought I’d know when you kicked the bucket. I’m just glad you stopped where you did. I know you wandered around for a time.”

  “I did. Went to look at some places from my past. Tried to do a little good here and there.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t stay retired.”

  “If you hadn’t come for me, I would have. Too old to roam around alone now, and…You know I, ah, I made some inquiries here and there.”

  “What kind of ‘inquiries’?”

  “Oh, to see if anybody needed a magician. Nobody did.”

  “They would have if they’d understood who was asking.”

  “Lewis, I’m a name out of the past to most of these new shows. One look at me and they start looking for a young dandy with a top hat and fine clothes. They don’t want a shuffling old man that can’t keep his hair combed. I’m a magician, Lewis, but I’m also an old man, and the market for old people in this country is real poor.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re back. We’ve got our Top and some of our people. Now if we can just get a few more folks to help us put on a circus.”

  Lewis thought of the other letters he’d sent out and wondered if any of them had reached its intended audience.

  NINE

  Epistles to the Faithful

  Lewis had sent out eleven letters that week in March—the greatest single day’s literary output of his life—and from those eleven brief notes, he hoped for at least five or six responses, hoped he’d gotten at least some of the addresses right.

  She had half a dozen breakfasts going and the start of the next day’s soup, and the girl who waited tables was asking her something, but Shirley Morrissey’s thoughts were miles away. She saw herself in a gray world, older and still tough as a bad steak, but alone. It was not the first time the thought had struck her, but she saw it this morning not as a bleak possibility but as the future. Roy was not well, any ninny could see that, but then there had never been a time when Roy was what one would call a picture of good health. He seemed to have been born with dark circles under his eyes, and his nose bore a sharp cleft where most people had a bridge—legacy of a brief and unlamented career as a prizefighter. His teeth weren’t bad but only because most of the bad ones had been pulled.

  Last night when he’d come home from his shift at the cafe, he’d barely been able to lift his feet. Not just limping—he’d been limping when they met, from a life of hard use and an unending list of leg injuries and wounds, most notably a small-caliber bullet in the left shin, his price for pulling a friend from a mob.

  She’d studied his knees, swollen and sculpted by injury and arthritis into the most bizarre shapes, and she could see he was getting worse. There would come a time when Roy Green would no longer be able to walk, but that would be nothing compared to the day when he would die. The coughing was worse, a little worse every day, it seemed. She had
never doubted that she’d outlive him by twenty years, but she did not care to be reminded, and this morning for the first time she’d seen herself without him. She paused over the cast-iron grill, saw herself tied to this little place with a dying husband, and sighed.

  She took away the six breakfasts, sliding eggs and ham and potatoes with a spatula off the grill, onto a waiting plate, and into the waiting hands first of Harriet Gilford and then her sister Ella.

  “Get the biscuits, girls,” she said, then tossed a bowl of chopped onions into the bubbling soupstock and stirred the beef bones, then stopped. It wasn’t ten o’clock yet, but she’d been up since four and working without pause.

  Twenty years from now I’ll be grateful for this, it’ll keep the wolf from the door. Right now, I’m sick to death of it.

  “I’m tired.” A quick glance from the younger Gilford girl made her realize she’d spoken aloud. She smiled at the girl—a pretty dark-haired young woman with huge brown eyes. “Honey, I wish I had your looks and what I know about men.” The girl gave her an embarrassed smile.

  “When I’m done with this soup, I’m going home for awhile. You and your sis can take care of the place for a bit.”

  “Sure, Miss Shirley.”

  They lived in a low-slung brown house at the far end of the little street, where the street ended in a stand of cottonwood and broken fence. People smiled or nodded as she passed, for she was now perfectly accepted and it seemed that finally Roy was, though she was certain they’d lost some business early on when folks realized that her husband was black.

  Good riddance to such trash, she said to herself.

  She paused at the door, struck by the sudden thought that he was dead just inside. Fumbling for her key, she fought the lock and pushed the door open and saw him perched at the edge of the sofa. He smiled at her and held up a piece of paper.

  “Got a letter in the mail,” he said.

  “Somebody left us their fortune?”

  “It’s from Lewis Tully. He’s getting a show together.”

  “What on earth…”

  “‘One more time,’ he says. ‘One more time,’” her husband repeated, and she thought his face didn’t look quite so pale.

  “Just a lot of goddarn foolishness,” she was saying, but her heart was pounding as she crossed the room and sank onto the old sofa beside Roy and put her arms around him.

  ***

  The tall man held up the back end of an ancient supply wagon while the owner, along with the smith, slipped the repaired wheel on. He was wiping his hands on greasy pants when the postman drove up, walked into the yard, greeted the other two men, and handed him a small envelope.

  “Got some mail there, Mr. Coates.”

  For the first time in anyone’s memory, the tall man showed an interest in something. The dull vacant look in his dark eyes was replaced by an alertness that they hadn’t seen before. As the tall man opened the letter and scanned it, the postman studied him, this being an excellent opportunity to view the tall man up close. He wasn’t really a tall man in the ordinary sense: he was seven feet two inches tall and as broad across the shoulders as the doorways he was forever struggling through. To the residents of the little Iowa town, he was a giant, the only one they’d ever seen.

  And now the giant was smiling. He held up the letter. “From an old friend. He wants me to come work his show. I guess I’ll be leaving in a little bit,” he said to the smith.

  “Can you stick around till the end of the week?” the smith asked.

  Mr. Coates nodded and then excused himself. An odd, glittery look had come into his eye, as though he’d been at the smith’s private jug.

  The man he was looking for was leaning against a flatbed truck in front of the feed store with half a dozen of his friends and interrupted himself to grin at Mr. Coates.

  “Well, look here, it’s the Monster.” He was a big man himself, tall and fleshy, with a heavy stomach.

  Mr. Coates nodded. “You’re still calling me names.”

  “What of it?”

  The giant gave him an odd look, as though he’d heard something amusing. Then he walked past them, turned the corner, and made for the outhouse behind the store.

  “Aw, look, he’s gotta pee, fellas,” he heard the man say.

  The outhouse was rarely used now, but no one wanted to be bothered tearing it down. He opened the door and wrenched it from its thin hinges with one short pull, then pulled at the back of the bench and tore it up, enjoying the high-pitched whine as the old nails pulled loose. He tossed the bench on top of the door, leaned over and satisfied himself that there was still liquid at the bottom of the deep pit, and went back out to the street.

  “I told you not to call me names,” he said to the heavyset man.

  “That a fact? And what did you have in mind, Mr. Monster?” He winked at his friends. “I think the Monster’s looking for trouble.”

  Mr. Coates scanned the little crowd calmly and saw that they weren’t all grinning. Had to give them credit for some sense, at least.

  “You stick in my craw, mister,” the giant said. The other man turned to face his friends and then wheeled suddenly, burying his big fist in Mr. Coates’s stomach. The giant took a step back, tensed his stomach muscles and fought the nausea, and put on the face he’d always planned to wear at this moment.

  “Just what I thought,” Coates said to the other men. “Hits like an old lady.”

  The other man came at him with a roundhouse right hand and Mr. Coates caught it in the biggest hand in Iowa, swung the man sideways, and picked him up. He hefted the man onto a shoulder and marched around the corner of the building. The others had just caught up when he reached the outhouse. He’d always planned to make this a dramatic moment, with a fine speech about paying back old scores and dealing with bullies, but it didn’t seem right somehow—too theatrical. Instead, he trod right up into the outhouse and tossed his opponent into the wet pit—feet first, from a sudden charitable impulse.

  The heavyset man went in whining his protest and landed with a loud splash. There was a moment of shocked silence from the onlookers, and the deep quiet of puzzlement from the bottom of the pit, and then the town loudmouth began to scream and curse and threaten death and bloody injury.

  Mr. Coates turned slowly and put his head down, glaring at the other men from under his enormous bony ridge of brow. His heavy fists hung clenched at his sides. It was a studied pose, one he’d used back in the old days with the Alf Wheeler Circus, guaranteed to give a grown man pause.

  “There was one other,” he said. “Somebody else said something about teaching me a lesson.”

  “No, sir,” one man said. “Never one of us. Only him, only Simmons.”

  “I never heard nobody say nothing like that,” another offered.

  “Never anything but the highest praise for you, Mr. Coates,” said a third.

  Mr. Coates seemed to be listening. In the background he could hear the other man splashing about.

  He jerked a thumb in the direction of the old outhouse.

  “Listen,” he commanded.

  “What?”

  Mr. Coates smiled. “He’s swimming. Well, treading water anyway. Better get a rope, boys, but hold your noses.” Then Mr. Coates walked out of the yard and on up the street, smiling and greeting the townspeople he passed.

  A few days later, farmers and people riding or driving from place to place were treated to a spectacle that passed on into local legend, growing, permutating over the years until it was the stuff of fairy tales, the sight of a giant named Coates striding the breadth of the state, wearing a derby and a dark coat with long tails, red muffler flapping in the wind, and carrying a suitcase that looked in his huge flat hands like a lady’s handbag.

  The children saw him first. Gathered around a spiderweb and transfixed by the spider’s busy wrapping and sto
rage of a future meal, they didn’t see the man till he was only a few yards away and once they’d seen him, they could look at nothing else, for they’d never seen any human being this big. No one spoke.

  The man was tired, any one of them could tell that, and dust-covered, and walked in a dogged, shoulders-forward way like a man forever marching uphill, and he was quite ugly. He had a long harsh-looking mouth and deep-set eyes in a face that was all ridges and angles, and the upper part of his head was simply enormous, as though on the verge of explosion. And the man had seen them, of that there was no doubt.

  “Oh,” one of the children said. She moved backward as if to run. Charlie stopped her with an outstretched hand.

  “Wait.” He saw the odd little carpetbag the man carried, a bag not much different from the boy’s own, and understood what this man was. “Laszlo, go get Lewis.”

  The man stopped a few feet from the children and set down his bag. He studied their eyes, nodded once, and when he thought he’d seen the faintest answering nod from the red-haired boy in the front rank, he relaxed a little. The red-haired one, at least, was not afraid of him. He’d heard the boy send for Lewis.

  He remembered not to smile, for he had once been told his broken-toothed grin was enough to scare the gargoyles off a church.

  After a moment, the man recollected himself. He looked down at his dusty suit and frowned, then attempted to slap it clean, with little result. He brushed the tip of one shoe on the back of his pants leg, then repeated the motion with the other shoe. Then he set himself to wait for Lewis Tully, and smothered the chill thought that had been in the back of his great skull since Iowa, that this one might not pan out either and he’d be on the road again.

  Children always stared, they meant no harm or disrespect, and Joseph Coates told himself he was glad for the company. As they stared at his enormous size, he studied them. He thought he recognized two of them as the Hungarian Count’s children, now grown almost a foot, and believed the boy called Laszlo who’d been sent to fetch Lewis was the Count’s oldest. They didn’t recognize or remember him, and he was not surprised, for he knew that seven years is a great gulf in the life of a child.