“Honest dirt, Lewis. A workingman doesn’t have to be ashamed how he looks.”
You look just fine to me, she thought.
“How’d you hear?”
“People talk. I know circus people and they all know what you’re doing. What they don’t know is how.”
“I’m not sure of that myself.”
“Do you have somebody for costumes and props and so on?”
Lewis looked at Shelby, who just raised his eyebrows.
“Well, no, I don’t. I was thinking of teaching Shelby how to sew.”
They laughed and the others joined in.
Helen folded her arms and fixed Lewis with a candid look. “I’ll handle costumes, repairs, props, and I’ll supervise the concessions—you provide the butchers and I’ll make sure they sell candy. And I’ll tutor the children like I used to.”
Lewis rubbed the back of his neck again and tried to meet her eyes, then gave up.
“Well…” he said.
She came closer and spoke in a low voice. “I’m the best deal anybody sent you in a long time.”
“I couldn’t pay you much, Helen,” he said quietly, smelling her soap-and-powder scent and forgetting the remainder of his sentence. She moved closer and he caught himself in the act of moving back and stopped.
“We can talk money later. I need work, you need me around. I need one more summer of this and I can stop.”
Lewis blinked. “And…do what?”
“I got some money saved. I’m going to open a café.”
He nodded. “You always had a head for business. One question: what were you gonna do if we couldn’t use you?”
“Head for a city, get a room, find a job, and make some money. Folks do it all the time.” Her gaze went past Lewis. “Now, introduce me to the polite young man who went to fetch you.”
The boy shifted from one foot to the other.
“This here is Charlie Barth.”
“Hello,” the boy said in a quiet voice.
Helen looked from the boy to Lewis with a half-smile, the question obvious in her eyes.
“Memento of a wild youth, Lewis?” she said in a whisper.
“Charlie is…you see, Alma was taking care of him…”
“Oh, Alma’s involved. Then it probably makes good sense,” she said, walking past Lewis.
“I don’t know about all that…”
“I do,” she said. She patted the boy on his shoulder. “You a friend of Alma’s?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you’re my friend. Alma’s a favorite of mine.” She smiled at Lewis over her shoulder. “Now, if Mr. Tully will be kind enough to fetch my bags…”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lewis said softly.
She’s come back, he told himself and felt a sudden wave of discomfort, followed immediately by exhilaration. Shaking his head, he strode toward her car and tried to make sense of his own confusion.
***
Lewis heard the motor when the car was still half a mile up the road. He paused, wrench suspended over a heavy bolt, and tilted his head to one side to listen. The motorist was going too fast, for one, and driving in a new car, from the tight, clean sound of the engine—a Nash engine, he’d guess, or Dodge Brothers. Driving too fast on a dirt road in a new car: that narrowed down his field of suspects.
Lewis began walking toward the road, and Shelby met him a few yards from the trucks, saying nothing but raising his eyebrows in question.
“Driving like a maniac, whoever it is.” A little gleam came into Lewis’s eyes.
Shelby nodded. “Gonna kill himself. Or herself.”
“Herself,” Lewis said, and felt his face breaking out all over in a grin.
The driver was leaning against a new Nash Light Six, hands thrust into the deep pockets of a beige coat that nearly matched the color of her automobile. She pulled off the scarf she’d worn in the car and shook loose her amazing, gleaming, unfashionably abundant hair the color of burnished copper. She looked at Lewis and a glint of amusement came into her cat’s eyes.
“Hey, mister, can a girl still run away and join the circus?”
“I don’t advise it. It’s what I did, and look where it got me. Hello, Miss Lucy Brown.”
“Hello, Lewis. Hello, J.M.”
Shelby touched his hat brim. “Lucy. I knew you’d be back.”
She looked over her shoulder at the road she’d just driven. “I didn’t. I thought I was retired, gonna live as a fine lady in a big town. Putting on airs, folks would say.”
She gave Lewis a frank look, and he saw her disappointment. It took him by surprise.
“You are a fine lady, just not that kind. You’re not for a place like that. You’re no city girl.”
“I was born in one, Lewis.”
“So was I. Doesn’t mean you’ll be happy in one.”
Lucy Brown shrugged. “I guess. Give me a hand with my bags? I brought a lot of clothes, Lewis. I guess I turned into a clotheshorse,” she said and laughed at herself.
“With pleasure. We’re glad you’re back, Miss Lucy Brown. And there’s others here that’ll be just as glad. Harley’s here, Lucy.”
“He’s still alive? God bless him.”
“And there’s some others you’ll recollect. We’re gonna have us a show, Lucy. And I’m taking care of…a kid,” he heard himself saying though he could not have explained why.
“A child, Lewis? Whose child is it?” She cocked her head and watched him with interest.
“Long story.”
“Alma’s idea,” Shelby said with a grin.
“Oh, then it’s a complicated story, too.”
“Yep,” Lewis said, picking up a suitcase in each hand. “If Alma’s involved, it’s complicated.”
She watched his back and then a thought struck her. “I hope Helen’s coming back, Lewis.”
“She’s here already,” he said in a doomed voice.
Then your life really is getting complicated, Lucy Brown thought, grinning at him.
TWELVE
From the Court of the Tsar
Just before sundown on the first warm day in April, Charlie watched a miniature caravan bump and clatter its way over the ruts in the dirt road. In minutes, a crowd had gathered for a look at the newcomers.
First came an enormous man on an ill-used horse. He was handsome in a fleshy way, and deigned to look at no one as he sat on his swayback mount and ignored the jolts of the road. He was dressed in a scarlet coat and leggings and wore a little pillbox cap at a jaunty angle on the side of his head, like a hussar on parade.
Behind him came an automobile. An older man hunched over the steering wheel and peered out at the circus folk from under the most improbably dense eyebrows any of them had ever seen. The back seat of the car held passengers, several of them, all small and furry and mottled, and it was soon whispered that the newcomers had a carful of rats or rabbits or even skunks.
Bringing up the rear was a truck painted like a gypsy wagon, a boxy apparition in yellows and oranges. The driver was a beautiful woman, as imperious-looking as the giant on horseback, with wide-set blue eyes and black hair worn in a chignon. She seemed amused. A door and small windows had been cut into the truck’s sides, and these were covered with curtains, and the final section had been converted to hold a tall cage. In the center of this receptacle, a very fat bear sat splay-legged and stared like a passing tourist. Both the car and the truck had been festooned with advertising, with inscriptions in English and a language that Harley Fitzroy identified as Russian—how, no one knew—and the side of the car bore a fanciful but recognizable likeness of the late, lamented tsar.
The rider reined in his tired horse and held up a hand, and the little procession came to a halt.
“I look for Mr. Lewis Tully,” the man said in a booming
voice like an opera tenor’s.
Lewis stepped out of the crowd. “I’m Lewis Tully. Mr. Alexei Dostoevski?”
“I am,” the man said, slapping his scarlet-encased chest. “This is my family,” he announced with a wave in the direction of the automobile and wagon. “Except for cats and bear. They are only acquaintances.” He grinned, and a couple of people in the crowd laughed.
Lewis walked over to him and held his hand up. The Russian sprang from the horse and began pumping Lewis’s hand. Behind him, the horse seemed positively relieved.
The old man and the woman alighted from their vehicles, and it became clear that the furred passengers in the back seat were indeed cats, half a dozen of them, fat, pampered, and just pulling themselves together from a communal nap.
“Mr. Alvin Choyinsky told you about my family?”
“Yes, sir. He said you have a couple of good acts.”
“We have three: we have my poor self, in performance of unusual acts of strength, very nice act. We have my father who trains cats…”
“Can’t train them cats,” someone called out.
Dostoevski surveyed the crowed and grinned. “You will see. We come from Russia, escape Bolsheviks, run from cavalry of Red Army to bring you unusual acts, very nice. My father will show you.”
“And you have a bear.”
Mr. Dostoevski shrugged. “All Russian circuses have bear. Anybody can train bear. This is not so special, I think. I think it is boring act, to train bear, but Americans love to see bear. He is very nice bear but he is not interesting.”
“Well, we’re glad to see you.” Lewis turned his attention to the other two Russians, trying not to stare at the young woman and failing completely. He looked around as if for help, and his gaze fell on Helen. She had a sly smile on her face.
The Russian made a generous sweep of his arm. “My wife, Irina.”
“Ma’am,” he said, nodding to the Russian woman and feeling his cheeks growing hot. He bit off his impulse to ask her if all Russian women were perfect. Instead, he sallied into polite conversation. “So, you train cats.”
“No, no. Alex’s father, my father-in-law, trains cats. I train bear.” She held his gaze for a moment and then smiled, and Lewis felt the breath leave his body. He forced himself to look at the old man, who regarded the crowd as though they were ants caught in the ice box.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Dostoevski.”
The man sniffed and nodded in the direction of the younger man.
“That one is Dostoevski. He takes name of famous Russian writer. I am Ivanov.”
Lewis looked in confusion from the old man to the younger.
Dostoevski smiled.
“Ivanov is common name. Everybody in Russia is Ivanov. It is like ‘Jones’ in America.”
“Your ancestor was Count Ivanov at court of Ivan Grozny,” his father snarled. “This name was good enough for him.”
“Who?” Lewis asked.
Dostoevski smiled. “Great tsar you call ‘Ivan the Terrible.’ My father tells many stories of Ivan Grozny. His stories very nice, but they feed no one.”
Lewis made haste to head off a fight. “So, you train the cats, Mr. Ivanov?”
“Of course.”
“Have you trained other animals, like dogs or…”
The man made a little “pfff” out the side of his mouth.
“Dogs,” he said. “I spit on dogs. They are stupid. Cats are intelligent. From earliest days of Egypt, cats are known to be intelligent animal.”
The man regarded Lewis with a dubious glance. Time to make an impression.
“I’ve heard about your cats, sir,” Lewis said casually.
Now he had the little man’s attention. “Yes?”
Lewis nodded. “Friend of mine in Seattle saw them, said he never saw anything quite like it in his life.”
The old man made a short bow. “You honor me.”
“No, I think you honor our show. But as you just heard, there are still some skeptics in the crowd.”
The old man pursed his lips and surveyed the onlookers. With a bored shrug, he strode to the car, yanked open the door, and yelled, “Sasha!”
Immediately a fat white cat tumbled out of the back seat, followed by a black-and-white cat which he quickly caught by the nape of its neck.
“No! I say ‘Sasha.’ Are you Sasha? No, of course not. You are Misha. And you are very stupid. People see you, they think, ‘Ha, these cats are stupid.’ Now go back inside or I will let Americans eat you.”
He glared at Lewis. “I save these cats from Red Army patrol, hungry Red Army patrol. They are barbarians, they would eat cats, rats, people, anything.” He sighed as though provoked beyond human limits. From the trunk of the car he produced a little American flag which he fastened to Sasha’s left forepaw. He slipped a little blue cap on its head, stepped back, and slapped his hands together smartly.
“Now, Sasha. March, march, march. ‘Yankee Doodle go to town, riding on pony, eating macaroni…” he sang tunelessly, and Lewis wondered if the old man had been banished from his homeland for his singing.
The man bent over the cat with his hands on his hips and glared. The cat sank back onto its haunches and stared back, and for one long moment the two of them formed a tableau of stubbornness, and a couple of Lewis’s canvasmen snickered. The Russian made a clicking sound in his mouth and then the cat blinked. The man nodded, brought his pointed nose to within a couple of inches of the cat’s pink snout, clapped his hands again, and stood back.
Slowly the cat lifted its sinewy body on its hind legs till it was standing. Then it began to walk, a rigid, stiff-legged gait that took it in a little oval around the edge of the clearing. As it marched, the little Russian scuttered behind it, clapping his hands and singing a mixture of his version of “Yankee Doodle” and something Russian, and the cat’s paw began to bob up and down, so that it seemed to be waving the American flag.
“Goddamn,” someone said from the back row.
Lewis watched the strange little march of the old man and the fat white cat, and Harley Fitzroy appeared at his elbow.
“That’s a helluva thing. It’s like magic acts, Lewis: they don’t sound so interesting till you see ’em. What else does he make ’em do?”
“Oh, the usual animal stuff: jumping through hoops, so on and so forth, lying on their backs and juggling a ball with their paws. They tell me he gets one to push another one in a baby carriage. And he ends up with all the cats marching like this one.”
He turned to look at the old magician. A look of doubt had come into Harley’s eyes, as though he thought he was being had.
“Lewis, I’ve seen elephants dance, I’ve seen birds that can count and talk, I’ve seen a boy that was raised by wolves and a wolf that thought he was a boy, but I’ve never seen or heard anything like that.” He shook his head and looked away. A moment later he said quietly, “And I’d pay to see cats marching in a straight line, Lewis. That’s a fact.”
“I’m hoping other folks will as well.”
“What does the big fella do?”
Apparently others had asked this question, for Mr. Dostoevski walked his elegant walk over to the front of the colorful truck, smiled and waved to his audience, gripped the front fender in one meaty hand, and lifted the truck’s front end off the ground. The crowd gasped and clapped, and the big Russian just shook his head and shrugged. He held up one finger, then clambered up a little step-ladder built into the side of the truck. On the roof, he worried at a lock of some sort, then opened a trap door and pulled out a ladder. Working silently, he extended the ladder and propped it up until it waved in the air some twenty-five feet above the roof of the truck. Then he leapt to the ground with the grace of one of his father’s cats.
He made a sweeping motion of one arm, indicating his wife. The woman made a little bow as well, th
en disappeared behind the truck for several seconds. When she reappeared, the crowd gave a startled cheer, for she was no longer in the thick woolen skirt but wearing yellow tights and a snug-fitting brocade jacket. In her hand she held what appeared to be an antique cannonball. She curtsied this time, ignored the whistles and admiring murmur of the men, and scampered first up the side of the truck and then up the ladder one-handed. When she reached the very top, she paused and let them see how the ladder swayed unsupported in the wind some thirty-five feet above the ground. Then she called out to her husband.
The big Russian dropped the scarlet coat and revealed a torso of enormous thickness, with unusual muscular growth along the back and shoulders. He stretched for a moment, then moved backwards until he was within a couple of feet of the truck. He spent several seconds peering up at his wife, adjusting his feet, stretching and positioning himself. Then with a final look up at her, he nodded, looked down at the ground, and yelled something to her.
At the top of her perch the woman held the ladder with her legs, reared back with the cannonball held over her head, giggled, and, with a look of mischievous glee, threw it down on her husband as all breathing stopped in the little clearing.
The whoosh of the heavy ball’s flight was audible as it sped down on its target, and when it struck the man, a gasp filled the air.
The Russian moved slightly and caught the cannonball in the thick knot of muscle between his shoulderblades. He squeezed and turned slowly to display the steel ball, then flexed his back to pop the heavy ball free. He wheeled and caught it before it hit the ground and held it up to the crowd, then tossed it to one of Lewis’s big Irish canvasmen. The man had to use both hands to hold it, and passed it among his fellows, shaking his head.
Off to one side, Lewis watched in satisfaction.
“Are the people with the cats gonna be in the circus?” Charlie asked.
“Oh, they sure are, son,” Lewis said.
Harley laughed and patted him on the back. “What other tricks you got in store for the good folk of the plains?”
“I’ve got the greatest magician of his time and cats that march to Yankee Doodle. What the hell else do I need?” And as Lewis laughed, a part of him was answering the question: he would need luck.
The Blue Moon Circus Page 12