“You approve of my costume?”
“It’s swell.”
“At times, it is entertaining to be Chinese,” he said, and sauntered off. “I must perform now on my bells.”
Moments later he heard Mr. Zheng’s metallic music calling the towners to the show.
The boy was in front of Helen’s tent when she emerged with Lucy, making some last-minute adjustment to Lucy’s shimmering costume of white and silver. The younger woman looked like a princess, her hair pulled back tight and her face powdered. She wore rouge and dark red lipstick meant to be seen in the cheap seats. In the door of the tent she paused as Helen worked at the costume, and she noticed Charlie.
“Hello, sugar. Don’t you look like a little angel.” She smiled and her gaze became distant, and he realized that she was, at least for the moment, no longer the simple girl from Iowa but the royalty of the Lewis Tully Circus. Her costume finished, she headed toward the back lot. A moment later, Helen Larsen emerged in a light blue dress, patting down her hair.
“Well, ready for the show?”
“I guess.”
“Lewis says we’ve got a straw show.”
“A what?”
“A sold-out show. We’ve got people sitting on the straw just for the chance to see this circus. Who you going with? Are you gonna sit with the Zhengs?”
The boy shrugged but wouldn’t meet her eye. “Maybe.”
She thought a moment. “Well. Come along with me till you find them. I don’t have an escort for the evening.”
“All right,” he said, and she surprised him by taking his arm in hers. He thought of pulling away but told himself he’d let her hang on, just for a while.
The air inside the tent was already blue with smoke and dust. Lewis had said his tent could hold six hundred, but the crowd looked like Pershing’s army, rocking the fragile grandstand and swarming out onto the ground, where a lucky few indeed had seats on straw. Many more sat on the bare ground, on grass and dry yellow Oklahoma dirt, and from their faces it was plain that this was small cost to see a circus.
Helen led him to a bench off to one side of the “hippodrome,” the narrow strip between the ring and the back wall of the top—where Lucy Brown and Captain Walling’s men would ride. She caught the eye of a candy butcher and bought the boy a bag of mixed hard candy.
At the far end, Lewis Tully’s tiny band had many in the crowd swaying to “The Man on the Flying Trapeze,” “In the Good Old Summertime,” and “Sidewalks of New York.”
J.M. Shelby came in through the back of the top and gave them a little wave. He was hatless, and he’d not only washed and changed clothes but shaved as well. He was still recognizable as himself, though, the last person the boy was to see in the show who had not undergone a metamorphosis of some kind.
Shelby looked around for a moment, then made a long slow circuit of the ring and the hippodrome and the grandstand. He counted the candy butchers at work hawking concessions—the younger canvas men, got up in red-and-white striped shirts—and then went back out. As he left the tent, he held up one hand and the band started an energetic version of “Yankee Doodle.”
Charlie crunched down on his candy. Beside him, Helen made a quiet sighing sound. He stole a glance at her and she turned and smiled.
“I think you’ll recognize the next gentleman.”
The “next gentleman” was Lewis Tully himself, and the boy made a little start. It was Lewis Tully but not as the boy would ever have thought of him. This Lewis Tully entered the tent briskly, a man with no time to waste and much to do. Like Shelby and all the other males in the camp, Lewis was scrubbed and shaved, wearing a sky blue coat with tails over a starchy white shirt and a dark blue bow tie. A silk top hat worn at a dashing angle made him appear even taller than he was. As he moved into the heart of the tent, the heart of his crowd, Lewis swept off the hat with the gesture of a man entering the presence of his betters. He made a series of sweeping bows to include all sections of the stands and raised his hand to silence the band. He paused for a moment and scanned the crowd with a look of gratitude on his face, then lifted the yellow megaphone he carried.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, good people of Jasper, Oklahoma. Welcome to the Lewis A. Tully Blue Moon Circus. I am Lewis Tully, Master of Ceremonies and Equestrian Director. We’ve got a little show for you that we think will compare favorably with any of the great circuses you’ve seen in the past.”
“Always politic,” Helen muttered. She looked at Charlie. “They haven’t seen any great circuses.”
“We’ve scoured the world for acts that will enthrall, excite, and entertain the sophisticated modern audience,” he went on.
“Master of exaggeration and euphemism,” Helen added.
“Acts that have never been performed in public,” Lewis said.
“Master of the outright lie,” she whispered to Charlie, and he saw the delight in her eyes.
“And acts the likes of which have never been gathered before under one tent.”
She thought for a moment and said, “You’re right there, Mr. Tully.” She studied the tall man in the center of the big top and then looked down as though a darker thought had intruded.
The boy assessed Lewis’s wardrobe and remembered the only circus he’d ever seen, a roaring vision of color and thundering animals and people whirling about on wires and ropes. In the midst of it all there had been a man with a megaphone. The man had had a dark waxed mustache and a fine suit that suggested he was a grand duke or close to it. Most of all, the boy remembered the man’s high, slick black riding boots, burnished almost to iridescence and glowing in the bright lights of the circus tent. Charlie looked at Lewis Tully and found him wanting. Under the fancy coat, Lewis Tully wore plain dark work pants, and the boots were the same ones the boy had seen every day of his time with the circus.
Beside him, the woman seemed to read his thoughts. “He’s in his fine hat and coat and still wears those old scuffed boots. Isn’t that just like him. Still, this is how I always like to think of him. If I never saw him again, this is how I’d picture Lewis Tully,” she said, and then murmured something the boy could not hear.
The tent was impressive in its own right, the parade had been fine, but the boy was not convinced, especially after seeing its leader in his attempt at finery, that the circus itself would be anything but a crude approximation of the real thing. It was by him in a blur, a rapid progression from act to act—the Flying Perez Brothers first, flinging from bar to bar high overhead, then the Antoninis dancing and leaping and juggling everything from wooden clubs to flaming torches, then Jupiter, balancing on a large ball or perched on a colored wooden block and managing to look regal and bored at the same time. The Count came out with his entire family, his booming laughter carrying out into the plains night as he scampered across the high wire and faked an occasional loss of balance.
Captain Walling emerged with his men and a dozen riderless horses and raised a red cloud of dust that sprinkled hats and faces. When his act was finished, the Captain took his bows with his men as Lewis reminded the audience that these were genuine veterans of Teddy Roosevelt’s famous First Volunteer Regiment, and then they were gone with the herd. A single horse, a young colt, remained in the forefront of the hippodrome path, pawing at the dirt and looking impatient.
Just when the crowd had decided this was a circus mistake, Joseph Coates came into view. He strode purposefully to the horse, spoke to it, pretended to listen to it, shook his head and in a great show of irritation, stooped beneath the animal’s belly and picked it up on his shoulders. With a casual nod at the crowd, Coates walked off carrying the beast as a normal man might carry a deer carcass. The crowd gasped. Mr. Coates walked fifty paces with the horse on his back and then set it down. The horse bolted for the tent exit, and Coates made a show of brushing off his hands. He made a final salute to the
crowd and left.
Shelby returned and took a seat beside the boy. “What do you think?” he asked no one in particular.
“So far, it’s a circus, Shelby,” Helen said.
Shelby nodded. “That’s what he wants ’em to think.”
The Perez brothers reappeared in new costumes, hair combed differently, now called “The Fabulous Guerreros,” performing aerial feats from rings high above the ground.
When they were finished, the ring lay empty for several minutes. Shelby looked down at Charlie.
“How do you like it so far?”
“It’s fine. What are they waiting for?”
“Now we’re gonna have the second part. First part is where we show ’em we’re a pretty fair show. Second part is where we show ’em we’re something special.”
“What are we gonna…” he began, and never finished.
The boy would remember the next hour imperfectly, his recollection both augmented and distorted by the noise, the lights, the red glow of the evening sky through the top of the tent, and the rapid procession of Lewis Tully’s acts.
For the moment, the boy forgot that he knew these people. He saw them as the locals saw them, took in the acts with little gasps and peals of laughter. The air in the tent grew thick with the smells of circus animals and six hundred humans, cigar smoke and sweat and food and damp straw, and the boy’s shirt stuck to his thin back, but he noticed none of it as his mind reeled with the flickering images of the circus.
Roy and Shirley pantomimed a fight to the death over a chicken leg.
Mr. Patel held them all in the palm of his sweaty hands as he played bad flute music to an ill-tempered viper and keeled over in his ersatz deathswoon. Lewis and Doc Morin rushed to his side in the well-rehearsed tableau of tragedy, and in the grandstands, three people had fainted.
Irina danced with her bear, then dared fate atop her swaying ladder, swinging from the top rungs and pretending to lose her grip. Finally she balanced overhead like a dark-haired wraith and gleefully dropped iron shot on her husband’s head; Alexei and Mr. Coates lifted the yellow wagon with Irina atop and carried it away as though it were made of paper; Mr. Ivanov emerged from the wagon with the strange little cats, barking at them in disjointed English and waving a little American flag as the cats strutted off into the distance pushing a little red wagon.
Lucy Brown emerged riding Roman on the backs of a pair of matched bays, looking regal and half-dressed. She did backward and forward somersaults, dismounted one and mounted the other. The women envied her grace and the men fell in love.
It was time to terrify the crowd. Foley and Mr. Coates entered pushing a small wagon, an outlandish orange-and-yellow cart with a crude likeness of a gorilla and the legend KING OF ALL THE JUNGLE lettered in gold along the top. Lewis had been uneasy about the painting: Emmett McKeon had done the work and was unaccustomed to painting animals, with the result that his gorilla looked more like a bear with Cal Coolidge’s face. When the little cart was in the center of the ring, the two men stared at one another as if hoping to postpone a dreaded moment. Then Foley threw back the door to the cart with a great flourish and made a fine show of leaping out of the way.
Nothing happened.
Foley shot a look at Lewis on the far side of the ring, gave the cart a solid whack, and said, “Food!” in a harsh stage whisper. Before the word had quite cleared the air, the cart was moving, rocking with the force of its tenant. Lewis could hear the onlookers murmuring, and then Rex the Red Ape bounded out of the cart, tethered with enough naval cable to hold a frigate. He spent a long moment on his haunches in the center, staring around him at the crowd. The huge black eyes proclaimed his hostility, and the great chest heaved with his breathing.
From his vantage point, Lewis waited to see what the beast would do before an actual crowd. At the moment, the ape’s intense stare had sucked all breath out of the tent, and they waited for more. Then Rex flung himself out toward the stands with a roar that took a year off the life of the spectators.
The ape backed off and surveyed the effect, his enormous red head turning slowly. For a moment he seemed to relax, and the crowd mustered some collective nerve and perched on the edge of their seats once more. Then without warning, the gorilla leapt at them, waving his thick hand as though he would strike, and kicking up a yellow cloud of dust. He circled the little cart, gave it a great whack, and pulled at the bars so that the whole thing threatened to come off its chassis.
Rex tore the air with his roar, threw his huge fist into the wall of the cart, smacked at the bars again, then came bounding at the front of the grandstand, thrusting his awful face at Jasper, Oklahoma, and showing them four-inch fangs. People screamed, leapt back, and several tumbled off the far end of the top row, coming to rest in a little mound of humanity on the ground.
Rex charged, came up short at the end of his cable, grabbed it and gnawed at it, pausing a moment for a comic pose with the cable dangling from his wide mouth. He rose up on his hind legs, snarled, slammed the offending cable onto the earth, and dared anyone to meet his gaze. As Rex surveyed the terrified faces, his eye caught Lewis’s. Lewis saw the little glint of primate humor and knew he had a showman.
Foley made a show of tossing a handful of apples and bananas into the cart, and Rex began to make his way back. Foley backed away until he was near Lewis.
“Well, Foley, if there was ever any question that this was the son of the great Rex the Red Ape, he just laid it to rest. A born thespian, just like the old man.”
Rex paused at the door to his cart, took a long, slow look around at the crowd, and then went in for a snack. Foley and Joseph Coates then closed the door and moved the wagon out.
All at once the crowd regained its nerve as well as its voice, whooped and hollered and clamored for more. Lewis let them stew for a few moments. They sat expectantly and waited for a grand finale, something to eclipse all that they had witnessed, fighting clowns and dead snake charmers and men who caught cannonballs on their necks and cats that marched to “Yankee Doodle” and goddesses on horseback and a homicidal gorilla turned loose in their very midst.
Charlie turned to Helen, who watched the tent door with a half-smile. “What happens now?”
Shelby exchanged a quick glance with Helen and looked at him for a moment. “You finish up with your best, you give ’em something no one else can match. Most shows finish with something big and noisy. Some shows would finish with Lucy.”
“What’s better than a gorilla?”
Shelby nodded toward the back entrance. “Unless I miss my guess, we’re gonna see the old man. If he’s awake.”
Lewis stepped forward with his megaphone and the music died.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. The final act of the evening and the rarest of all acts. The greatest wizard of his time. Fitzroy the Magnificent.”
As the boy turned to look, the curtain rippled briefly and a cat scampered out, followed by an apparition in black and gold. The boy sat up straight and squinted out at this new person, a tall man with a slow but straight-backed walk, grim-faced and purposeful, wearing a conical hat that would have looked silly on anyone else and a cape that billowed behind him and gave the impression of power and force.
Harley said nothing, but stood for what seemed a long time, leaning on an ebony stick and surveying the audience. People in the front rows and children seated on the straw shifted nervously, and then Harley nodded and allowed them a small smile. Then he pretended to notice the cat for the first time, pointed at it, made a wave in the direction of the grandstand, and Xenophon went missing.
The crowd gasped, then laughed as a woman in the top row shrieked and found the cat on her lap.
Harley shrugged as if to apologize for the inconvenience, removed his hat, and released the finches. He gazed for a moment inside the hat and then drew out a small pup which he encouraged to move away.
As six hundred heads craned forward, the magician frowned into the depths of the conical hat and pulled one bizarre item after another from within: a multi-colored ball, silk scarves, a ribbon-tied pack of cigars, a coffee cup, a harmonica, a horseshoe. He frowned at the appearance of a rumpled handkerchief, then stared in surprise at a cheese sandwich, and his puzzlement drew laughter.
He took a small volunteer from the audience, prying him from his terrified mother, waved a cloak over him, and made him disappear. The woman cried out, and Harley gave her an irritated look and pointed to the far side of the ring to the place where the boy stood blinking in the bright light. He pulled eggs from men’s ears, candy from the noses of the children, and made his finch reappear in the gaudy cloth flowers of a lady’s hat. From the folds of his cloak he produced frogs, ribbons, white gloves, and a straw boater. People in the crowd lost possessions, only to see Harley pull them from beneath his cape or pluck them from the clothing of other spectators. The old magician blinked at his audience for a long moment, fighting a smile.
In the end, Harley Fitzroy stood bareheaded before them and bowed to their applause. He folded his arms beneath his cloak and waited for the applause to subside. He cocked his head, held up one finger, and pointed to the dry scuffed dust before the front row of the grandstand, then bent over and drew a circle in it. He stepped back, stared down at it and jumped with the rest of them when it burst into flame.
Composing himself, he pointed once more and the circle of flame turned into a hoop of fire that he sent rolling across the center of the tent. When it neared the cloth wall on the far side, it vanished. He turned to the crowd and wiggled his eyebrows. The audience whooped and got to their feet, clapping and stomping and shouting and rocking Lewis Tully’s patchwork big top. The old man tipped the conical hat, waved absently, and walked off with the air of one who must consult with kings.
The Blue Moon Circus Page 21