She held up a brief gold-and-red riding outfit. “Like this scandalous thing.”
She looked wide-eyed at the little costume and shook her head. Then she gazed back at the boy and said, “You like Lucy, and you don’t like me. I’m sorry about that. Maybe later on, you and I can be friends. Anyhow, I’m not jealous ’cause she’s a pretty young thing and I’m old.” She turned back to her work and said softly, “There was a time when I was a pretty girl. Not like Lucy or that lovely Russian girl Irina, but I wasn’t bad to look at. I know it’s hard to believe now,” she said, and smiled at him. Against his will, Charlie smiled back.
She was mending a costume for one of the Perez brothers and it was apparently not going well. The boy heard her murmur something under her breath and a moment later she exclaimed, “Goodness sakes!” in a tone suggesting something a good deal stronger.
The boy shot her a quick glance from the math lesson. She was holding up the costume, and he could see that, just above the point where she was mending it, the entire seam had given way. She noticed him watching her and seemed to be embarrassed.
“Don’t mind me. I’m just off my feed. And I’ll be sitting here till midnight fixing these old worn-out costumes for the Lewis Tully Circus.” She sighed and let the costume drop onto her work table.
“Do you like Lewis?” He had no idea where the question had come from, it seemed as though it had sprung from his mouth of its own will and he now wished he could reel it back in.
Helen gave him a long slow look, her head to one side. Her forehead was shiny with perspiration and a strand of dark hair was pressed to her cheek: he thought she looked pretty, and he was surprised that this was possible for someone so old.
The woman studied him, wondering if he were asking the question that she’d be asking if she were in his shoes. Then she shrugged and gave him a little smile. Why not?
“Not always. Lewis and I have…a complicated friendship, I guess you’d say. We don’t always like each other but we’re friends.” Her eyes filled with amusement. “I can read your mind, honeyboy. You’re wondering how Lewis Tully could be friends with this crotchety old lady. Well, the world is a place of wonder,” she said, and turned back to the wounded costume.
TWENTY-ONE
Battle Joined
Lewis stood with his hands on his hips and watched Zheng work with Bill the Bear. A few feet away, Irina laughed and clapped for her own bear. A short, fat creature with thick dark fur, he could actually dance a bit and pedal himself for short rides on a stunted-looking bicycle. He even made a noble attempt at juggling apples, a trick which lasted perhaps three seconds and ended with the bear eating the apples and then being chased around the ring by Irina. Lewis thought an audience would love it. And her.
She brushed her hair from her eyes, and Lewis told himself to stop staring at her. He turned to Zheng, who actually had Bill making little half-turns as Zheng clapped his hands. A few feet away, old Zheng watched his son and the bear with a distressed look. His eyes narrowed and, seeing Lewis, he made a little shake of his head.
Young Zheng turned to Lewis. “We make progresses with this one. You see, he dances—after a fashion.”
“I’m impressed. How’d you do it?”
“I watch the lady and her bear. She rewards it with much affection, she kisses it, pats it on the nose.”
“Got you kissing Bill there, Zheng?” Lewis said maliciously.
Zheng looked at him without expression, though Lewis could tell he was amused. “I do not kiss this one, not yet. This would disturb my father, who already believes his son is crazy man.”
“Tell him I said he’s got him a good son.”
“He knows I am good son, Lewis. But he worries about my work make me go crazy.” Zheng looked over at the twin monkey cages.
The monkeys were Zheng’s newest assignment, and Lewis knew Zheng would have said his latest trouble, brought about by Lewis Tully’s inability to say no to a down-and-outer.
And Lewis had understood precisely what he was doing. The man selling the monkeys was tall and gaunt, and his bad luck hung about him like a cloak. He gave his pitch fast, in a bad accent, attempting to sell the idea that he was an Italian monkey trainer and these were spider monkeys.
Lewis listened to the wretched Italian accent and then called for Mr. Zheng. A moment later, he heard Zheng behind him.
“Mr. Tully?” Zheng said in his precise, unaccented English.
“I am at a loss here, Mr. Zheng. I’ve got this fellow here, seems he’s from Italy, Mr. Pianetto. Perhaps you can say something to him, put him at his ease. Find out where he’s from.”
Zheng nodded and launched into a musical stream of Italian.
The man took a short step back, looked in panic at Lewis, then said, “What’s he sayin’?”
“Mr. Zheng here speaks Italian. He was formerly with the Da’Nicola Brothers Circus out of Florence, Italy. He’s something of a linguist, Zheng is. Speaks five or six languages. I got a feeling you don’t speak but one, and that’s English. What’s your story, Mr. Pianetto?”
The sad eyes widened and he opened his arms wide, and the accent took wings. “I need some luck, Mr. Tully. I’m busted, flat broke. I had a run of troubles. I’m…”
“I think I get your drift. What’s your business?”
“I’m a…” Lewis could see the man wondering whether to try out one more lie. “I’m just another drummer. I’m a salesman,” he said glumly. “Like half the guys in the country. I’ll sell anything.”
“How does a fella get into the business of selling monkeys?”
Pianetto’s haunted eyes grew more distressed. “It just seemed…”
“Like a good idea at the time,” Lewis finished. “How many of ’em you got in that cage?”
“Twelve. They’re good monkeys. Spider monkeys, they are.”
Lewis shook his head. “No. Spider monkeys look different, longer arms and legs. Not as cute as these little fellas but a lot easier to get along with. What you got there, as I’m sure you well know, is squirrel monkeys, and you’re right, everybody loves monkeys, especially this kind. But…”
But they’re ill-tempered and unpredictable and prone to violence, he thought. They’re a pain in the ass, he wanted to say, they’re a curse on a circus, no circus man in full possession of his senses takes them into his show. Still, he remembered a small circus in New Jersey that had used squirrel monkeys as little jockeys on ponies and goats, and the kids had gone crazy. He looked speculatively at Mr. Zheng, who returned the gaze without expression. Lewis raised his eyebrows, and Zheng pursed his lips, a gesture which passed for excitement with Zheng. Lewis put his hand to his chin and pointed the index finger at Zheng.
“I can do it,” Zheng said.
“What’re you asking for them?”
Pianetto wet his lips, then took a look at Lewis Tully’s worn, sunburnt face and saw that there would be no rug-trading here. “Make me your best offer,” he said, and swallowed hard.
Lewis gave him twenty dollars for the cage and two bucks apiece for the monkeys, and Pianetto beamed his thanks as he pocketed the money.
When he was gone, Lewis crouched down on one knee beside the cage and held out a grease-stained finger. Several of the monkeys grabbed at it, held it, attempted to pull it into the cage. One monkey shimmied high on his bar until he could look directly into Lewis’s eyes.
Lewis chuckled. “Well, hello, little fella.”
The monkey threw himself from the bar and began to scamper around in the far corner of the cage, shrieking and bouncing from one side of the cage to the other.
“Got one with personality here,” Lewis said.
The little monkey gradually calmed down and found himself once more the object of the jaundiced stares of his companions. Having lived in his company for six months, the other monkeys no longer found him cute, n
ot even his mother, who had tried once to strangle him as he slept. The little monkey was cunning, aggressive, manipulative, and given to ostentatious display of emotion. A human being with these characteristics might have been incarcerated, a dog would have been put down, a bird would have been pecked into the next world by the other birds. The little monkey, having come into the world with his psyche slightly akilter, stared back at his irritated fellows and grinned.
Mr. Zheng studied the monkeys for several minutes and then turned to Lewis with the faintest trace of humor in his impassive face.
“That one is very interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“I think he is crazy,” Mr. Zheng said, walking away.
***
Now the monkeys resided in two cages: one contained eleven of the little squirrel monkeys. The other cage held just one.
“That him?”
“Yes, difficult one. I separated him from other ones. I came to give them food and he was strangling one of them.” Zheng sighed. “He is a challenge. Smartest one, as well.”
“That would figure.”
Lewis crossed over to the cage, glanced at the first cage where eleven monkeys sat in various states of boredom, grooming, or what Lewis had always considered the monkey version of sexual perversion, then moved over to the second cage and bent over to peer in. The solitary resident sat with his back to Lewis, pulling wet handfuls from the heart of a mushy apple and tossing them around his cage. Lewis chuckled.
The little monkey turned its tiny head, saw Lewis, and appeared to grow agitated. Lewis was about to say something to him when the monkey reared back and hit him in the eye with a handful of wet apple. As Lewis wiped his face, the monkey ran madly around his cage, chattering triumphantly.
“‘Difficult,’ Mr. Zheng says. Oh, you’re difficult, all right.”
***
Six days after he’d left, Shelby returned with the three Irishmen, and Lewis greeted them at the entrance to camp. The trucks now carried hay, oats, and straw, and Shelby and his men bore the marks of a fight. Shelby had a gash across the bridge of his nose, and one of the younger Irishmen had a long cut over one eye. Lewis studied them for a moment and saw the confident look on Shelby’s face, and understood how it had gone.
“Good to have you back, J.M. You boys all right?”
“We’re fine. Bought a little hay and so on.”
“Mr. Shelby’s been leading us on adventures,” Emmett McKeon said.
Lewis nodded. “A clem with some towners?”
Shelby shook his head. “No. The towns treated us fine. Billers.”
“Hector Blaney’s,” Lewis said, and realized he’d been expecting something like this about now.
“Yeah. Run into them twice in three days. Pulling down our paper or putting their own bills over ours. Told them you probably wouldn’t like that.”
“Harsh words were spoken,” Emmett said with a little smile.
“I’ll bet. How many of ’em did he send?”
“Seven, so they decided to give us a rough time.” Shelby glanced at Emmett. “I’m here to tell you that this old man is the dirtiest fighter, bar none, that I ever saw.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. You fellas sure you’re all right?”
“We’re fine. And your paper’s up all the way from here, ’cross Kansas, and on into Colorado. They know we’re coming, Lewis, and they want to see a circus.”
“Nice work. Thanks, boys.”
The men tipped their hats and made their way on into camp.
Lewis and Shelby leaned against the hot hood of the car.
“So what’s your feeling about the route?”
“We’ll do fine. There’s a lot of farmers want to sell us corn and grain and hay and produce. We’ll have no shortage of meat, either. Couple of these farmers, Lewis, I think we’ll be the difference between them keeping the farm or folding the tent.”
“It’s always the way.” Lewis looked around and then asked the last question. “So what about Hector, J.M.?”
“Well, I don’t think his billing crews are gonna give us any more trouble, least for now. He’ll run out of men.” Shelby looked around them at the trucks.
“We’ll see ’em again, Lewis.”
“I’m pretty sure he sent somebody to fiddle with the trucks the other night. Didn’t cause any harm this time, but not for want of trying.”
“We’ll have to keep an eye out from now on. They know we’re ready, Lewis. They know we got a show.”
“They’re right about that. What about Hector’s show?”
“The usual: paper and ballyhoo. His paper is a work of art, Lewis.” He covered his eyes with one hand and laughed. “You’d think the Ringlings was coming through Kansas, to read Hector’s bills. Claims he’s got a dozen elephants and twice that many cats.”
Lewis snorted. “A dozen bulls. That’s a good one. He’s lucky if he’s got four left, and no more than that many cats. Had more at one time but it’s a hard life for an animal in a Blaney circus.”
“Even if it wasn’t just a bunch of tall tales, Lewis, Hector Blaney never saw the day he could match one of our shows.”
“Maybe not, but you can’t tell from his posters what a damn brainless idiot Hector is.”
Shelby nodded, then met Lewis’s gaze. “Brainless or no, he’s trouble.”
“Always was. Any sign of Preston?”
“Nope. Keep your fingers crossed.”
“Make any detours? Maybe over into Sparta?”
Shelby looked away and did his best to muster some nonchalance.
“Oh, for a couple hours.”
“Don’t suppose you saw Betty Ostertag?”
“Matter of fact, I did.”
“She’s well?”
“She is. She sends her regards.”
“Got you thinking about a life in Sparta, Kansas?”
Shelby looked down at his boots and shrugged. For a moment he said nothing, then he chuckled. “I don’t know what she’s got me thinking about, Lewis. But she’s got me thinking, as always.”
“You can’t escape that woman, J.M. My nickel’s on her in the long run.”
“Maybe in the long run, Lewis. For now, I’m a circus man in the employ of Lewis Tully.”
Lewis clapped him on the shoulder. “Good to have you back, J.M. I think it’s time we got this bunch moving.”
Lewis walked off toward the heart of the camp, deep in thought, and Shelby watched him for a moment.
In the long run, Lewis, you’re probably right about Betty Ostertag. But right now she’s not the one needs looking after.
Shelby followed Lewis and soon caught up with him.
That night, after dinner, Lewis gathered all the members of his camp and lit a huge bonfire against the chill air. They were unusually quiet. The children sat off to one side, and the younger ones whispered to one another, but Charlie was silent, his eyes on Lewis Tully.
Finally, Lewis took his place in front of the fire and raised his hands for silence.
“I won’t take long, folks. By now, you’ve probably noticed that sometime in the last three or four weeks, we turned into a circus, almost in spite of ourselves. Tomorrow we get on the road. Our first stop will be in Jasper. Most of you know about our route, but just to make it official, we’re gonna play half a dozen towns between here and the Kansas state line and then we’re gonna cross in a more or less diagonal line up through Kansas and Colorado, and then on into Wyoming. Once we leave Kansas, we’ll be bringing this glorified mud show to a part of the plains that doesn’t see many circuses. There’ll be times the towns will be pretty far apart, and for some of it, we’ll be lucky to find roads. But I think it’s gonna be interesting.”
“It always is with you, Lewis,” someone said from the back, and they all laughed.
&nb
sp; Lewis joined in the laughter. “Well, I want this one to be as interesting as any of my other shows but maybe without some of the, ah, adventures. I hope to avoid floods, fires, blowdowns, road wrecks, stampedes, gunfights, and duels this time out.”
“What about mandrills, Lewis?” a reedy voice called out, disguised, but he knew it anyway.
“Don’t need mandrills to cause us trouble, Harley, we’ve got you.”
He waited through the volleys of catcalls and repartee, then held up a hand for silence.
“I hope to have this show on the road till November. All I want is for us to give the folks something they’ll be talking about and thinking about this time next year. And I want us all to have a high old time doing it.
“Only one thing that’s maybe different from some of the other shows you’ve been associated with. In the last few years most of the shows have dropped the parade: costs too much money, shows folk too much for free before they have a chance to spend anything, at least that’s what the big boys say. But I didn’t pull all these wagons out of cornfields and barns and empty lots just to slap some paint on ’em. Every town we go in, each and every one, we’re gonna parade.”
An excited murmur went through the crowd.
“Now go get some sleep: we’ve got a date with the unsuspecting populace of Jasper, Oklahoma.”
TWENTY-TWO
Parade!
The next morning they broke camp and Lewis Tully’s circus spread out in a long thin line along the road, an armada on wheels: the carillon and bandwagon and nine circus wagons on Lewis’s converted flatbeds; trucks laden with food, equipment, costumes, candy, and souvenirs; a generator truck and a water truck, a truck to carry the big top and poles, a truck for Lewis Tully’s homemade grandstands, two filled with hay and oats and feed, one for the smaller tents, a huge Mack Bulldog full of Jupiter and her private supply of hay, a tank truck filled with gasoline; four long trailers loaded down with horses, llamas, buffalo, and zebras; two buses for the crew, four smaller trucks belonging to the performers, and five automobiles, thirty-eight vehicles in all. Standing with one foot on the running board of his truck, Lewis Tully watched his show pass by and then climbed into the truck with Shelby and drove to the head of the column.
The Blue Moon Circus Page 19