by M. P. Barker
“It might not be enough,” said a calm voice nearer to hand.
“What?” Daniel’s head jerked toward the unfamiliar voice.
The black juggler, Mr. Sharp, faced him over the fence, on the opposite side of the pen from the teamsters. As soon as Daniel met the man’s eyes, Mr. Sharp looked down, seemingly intent on the three knives in his hand. “Being incombustible. It’s a start, but it may not be enough. Not to them, anyway.” He tossed one of the knives and caught it, then flicked the blade in the direction of the pavilion.
“I don’t understand,” Daniel said. In the show ring, Mr. Sharp spoke with a slow drawl, his sentences full of ain’ts. But now the man’s words came out as clearly enunciated and grammatically correct as if he’d studied one of Mr. Stocking’s books.
“Nigger. Coon. Darkie. Paddy. Bogtrotter. Boy.” The juggler lifted his head to meet Daniel’s eyes. “It’s all the same, isn’t it? What they call you. To make you less than they are.”
“Less?” Daniel repeated, confused. A black man no less than a white one? How could that be true? He remembered his school geography book telling about the four races of man, from the most superior white race to the Asians, down to the savages like the Indians, and lowest of all, the Negro, a degraded race of brutes fit only to serve, so the book said. Fit only to serve . . . Indeed, wasn’t that what Lyman had said of Daniel once? But there was nothing brutish or stupid in the dark eyes staring back at him, as intense as Mr. Stocking’s when the peddler had a hard lesson to teach.
The juggler tossed the knives in a low arc. “Being incombustible, that’s good. It’ll be enough for them.” He made a tiny motion of his chin toward the teamsters, who had lost interest now that Daniel and Billy had stopped working with Gray. “They don’t mean anything.” He caught one knife but continued to juggle the other two with one hand. “But some folks won’t stop until they get past your . . . incombustibility.”
“And then?” Daniel asked.
The juggler shrugged. “What do you do with a fire you don’t want?”
“Put it out?” Billy suggested.
The juggler grinned, a slow bloom of white cutting across his dark features. “Now there’s a clever boy,” he said, gesturing toward her with one of the knives.
“Like what you done with that rude fella the other day?” Daniel said.
A pair of rowdies had mocked the two jugglers, but particularly Mr. Sharp. “Any monkey can do that,” one had taunted. “I could do it easy.”
Mr. Sharp had responded, “Yes, boss, you surely can,” then handed the tough the three torches he’d been about to ignite and gestured for him to come into the ring. “I’d ’preciate it if you’d show me how it’s done, sir,” he’d said, opening the gate. The man’s friends had laughed and shoved him forward. Mr. Dale, the white juggler, had lit one of his own torches with a great whoosh and come toward the suddenly sober rowdy, who had turned the sickly yellowish white of parchment.
“Now you go easy on Mr. Dale, boss,” Mr. Sharp had cautioned the rowdy. “He might not be able to keep up with you.” The rowdy had cast a suspicious glare at Mr. Sharp to see whether he was being mocked. But the juggler’s face had been creased with concern that looked so genuine it had almost fooled Daniel.
Mr. Dale had tossed his torch into the air, staggered as if he were going to miss it, and caught it barely in time to keep it from scorching the trampled grass. The rowdy dropped his unlit torches and backed away, shaking his head frantically.
“You’d best thank the man, Caesar,” Mr. Dale had said sternly, jutting his chin toward Mr. Sharp. “It’s very kind of him not to outdo you in front of all these good folks.”
From the looks on the jugglers’ faces, it had seemed as though Mr. Sharp was the one who’d been put in his place, not the heckler. Amid gales of laughter, the rowdy had headed back to safety behind the low wall surrounding the ring. He’d strutted before his friends as though he truly believed he’d bested Mr. Sharp and Mr. Dale. But he’d kept quiet for the rest of the performance.
“That was a fair bit of acting. I’m none so clever as all that,” Daniel said.
“I’d’a set him afire,” Billy said. “Well, thrashed him, anyway.”
Mr. Sharp nodded. “You could do that. More likely his friends would outnumber you and you’d be the one thrashed. Or you could be smarter than him. Better than him.”
“And how do you do that?” Billy asked.
Mr. Sharp smiled. “My father was a preacher. It was something he said all the time.”
“Me mam said something a bit like it. She told me not to wish anyone ill, because it’ll always come back at you,” Daniel said.
“Being a preacher, of course, Papa never held with fighting,” Mr. Sharp continued. “And being a black man, well . . . in most places if I ever laid hands on a white man, I might as well write my own death warrant. Some places it’d be death for me even to look a white man in the eye.”
“So you got to be always turning the other cheek, no matter what?” Billy said.
“So I thought at first, and did it ever gall me.” Mr. Sharp’s fingers tightened around his knives. “But then I saw that being better doesn’t mean giving up. It means finding some way other than fighting to win. Like you’ve been doing with your ponies.”
“Me?” Daniel said.
“Ebenezer Pruitt was afraid of being bitten or kicked, so he struck out at them before they could strike out at him. Not too many men are brave enough to win without cruelty. Or smart enough, either.”
Could Mr. Sharp be right? Or were these only stories a man invented to make himself feel less beaten down? Yet the juggler didn’t seem at all beaten down or defeated.
“Where the other fellow’s weak, that’s where you’ve got to be strong,” Mr. Sharp continued. “You’ve got to be quick where he’s slow, brave where he’s cowardly, clever where he’s stupid.”
“All of that? It seems a lot to learn,” Daniel said.
“You never stop learning. And even then, sometimes you still have no choice but to fight.”
At his worst, Lyman had never worked Daniel at as furious a pace as he worked himself to prepare for the show. For an hour each morning, he and Billy worked with Francesca and her brothers, learning falls and handsprings and cartwheels and somersaults and vaults—more falls than anything else, at first. They started practicing on the ground, then on a barrel set up on sawhorses, then on Phizzy at a standstill, a walk, and finally an easy canter, the placid old gelding unruffled by their antics. Then Daniel practiced with Ivy and Mr. Stocking, learning how to swoop up an object from the ground at a canter or how to coax Ivy to cross her front legs daintily as she walked and to prance with light dancing steps that seemed to float.
After his lessons with the tumblers and with Mr. Stocking, he worked with the ponies, teaching them to stand calmly no matter what he touched them with or how he moved about them, showing them not to fear new things, and that the old ones that had once hurt them would do no harm in his hands. He replaced their harsh bits with snaffles and removed the straps on their bridles that had bound their heads unnaturally high. Although Daniel at first objected, Mr. Stocking showed him how to use the longeing whip, not as a means of punishment, but as an extension of his arm, guiding the ponies with a feather-light tickle. Mr. Stocking helped him figure out what commands and tricks the ponies knew, and take note of what they didn’t. He showed him how to coax them through simple maneuvers and patterns.
In between it all, Daniel kept the ponies and Ivy fed and groomed and helped the teamsters and Mr. Lamb and his assistants with their beasts whenever an extra hand was needed. He helped set up the museum and menagerie pavilions and Mr. Chamberlain’s dressing tent, the tiered benches for the audience, the low wall that bounded the ring. He helped Mr. Lamb set up the dens for the menagerie stock, and helped Mr. Stocking ready his wagon to peddle his tin after the show. He shined up the ponies’ green-and-gold wagon for the Grand Cavalcade Entrée that paraded throug
h town and opened the show.
His week’s grace seemed too long and too short all at the same time.
Chapter Thirty
Thursday, September 26, 1839, Sheffield, Massachusetts
“You. Come here.” Mr. Chamberlain stood in the entrance to his pavilion, his long arms crossed over his chest, one bony finger beckoning to Daniel. The conjurer slipped back into his tent, and Daniel followed, wondering what sort of trouble he was in now.
“You’re not ready for tomorrow afternoon, boy,” Mr. Chamberlain said.
“I am, sir, I swear it,” Daniel replied. “Ivy and I practiced just this morning. Ask Mr. Stocking—” He realized that there was a whole crowd of people in the tent watching him.
Francesca, Mr. Varley, and Mr. Stocking stood near Mrs. Varley, the wardrobe mistress. Spread across a nearby table were a pile of clothing and what appeared to be small dead animals.
“Yes, yes, I’ve seen you practice, so I know you can perform, but who are you supposed to be?” Mr. Chamberlain gave Daniel a glower that would have made him squirm had it not been for the bone-deep relief of hearing that the man believed him ready to perform.
“I—er—nobody,” Daniel said. “Nobody but meself, I mean.”
“That won’t do at all,” the wardrobe mistress tut-tutted. She sorted through the items on the table. Daniel realized that what appeared to be animals was actually an assortment of wigs.
“Fred wants to make you a red Indian,” Mr. Stocking said.
“Whoever heard of a red-haired Indian?” Mrs. Varley said with a sniff. She swept a set of fringed leather leggings from the table in a swirl of powdery reddish dust.
“He could be a gypsy,” suggested Mr. Varley.
“Lord, no, he’s pale as a fish-belly,” his wife protested.
“What about a Cossack?” Francesca said. “A Cossack might have red hair and freckles.”
“Who says he’s got to have red hair?” Mr. Chamberlain picked up a dark, curly wig and shook the dust from it. Something crawled out and ran up his shirt cuff. He dropped the wig as if it had scalded him. “Hell, Jerusha, don’t you ever clean them things?”
“I’ll not be wearing someone else’s bugs.” Daniel poked a cautious toe at the wig, which looked ready to crawl out of the tent on its own. “Why can’t I just wear me own things?”
All of them went silent and gave him withering glares.
“A Cossack, definitely.” Francesca started up the discussion again as if Daniel hadn’t spoken. “He could pass for Russian, don’t you think?”
“I don’t speak any Russian,” Daniel pointed out.
“Varley’s going to do the talking,” Mr. Stocking reminded him. “If you got to say something, just do it in Irish. Most folks won’t know whether you’re talking Gaelic or Russian or Hottentot, just so long as it sounds foreign.”
“Sit, boy,” Mr. Chamberlain commanded, pulling out a stool and shoving Daniel down onto it. “And let’s see what we can make of you.” He planted a hand firmly on Daniel’s head to hold him still, then reached for one of his makeup pots.
Friday, September 27, 1839, on the road from Sheffield to Great Barrington, Massachusetts
A little boy on the side of the road clapped his hands over his ears, and a brace of babies wailed at the boom and clatter of the drums. The trumpet and the French horn blared in a fanfare of noise as glorious and brassy as the golden autumn morning. Stately elm trees shaded the road like a triumphal arch. Daniel urged Ivy to the head of the procession, then halted her at the side of the road so he could take in the spectacle before assuming his own place in the cavalcade.
Waves of people lined the road from Sheffield into Great Barrington. The most aggressive boys shoved their way to the front, while smaller ones sat on their fathers’ or brothers’ or friends’ shoulders. Other children, and a good many adults, stood atop fences and stone walls.
The bandwagon led the caravan, followed by Mr. Chamberlain’s red-and-gold wagon. The conjurer sat on top, dressed in his mirrored robes and turban. He let fly a flash of sparks and a puff of colored smoke with a bang that startled the boys who’d gotten too close and sent them fleeing with squeals of laughter. Next came the acrobats’ wagon, with Mr. Sharp and Mr. Dale sitting sideways on the two gray horses that pulled it. They juggled half a dozen apples between them, every now and again taking a bite from an apple without losing either balance or rhythm. When one apple was done, the jugglers would let the core fall to the ground, and Mr. or Mrs. Varley would toss in a new apple from a basket sitting between them on the wagon seat. Every now and again, Mr. Sharp or Mr. Dale or Mr. Varley would cry, “Catch!” and fling an apple into a knot of boys, who would wrestle for it as if the jugglers had thrown a silver dollar.
In the road on either side of the wagon, the Ruggles Brothers performed their leaps and somersaults and catches. Francesca, meanwhile, stood on the wagon behind the Varleys, wrapped in a bejeweled, red, ermine-trimmed cape. The cape was merely an old blanket onto which Mrs. Varley had glued bits of glass and edged with moth-eaten white fur that the wardrobe mistress claimed was rabbit, though Daniel had his doubts. Still, Francesca looked regal as a princess. She waved and curtsied to the crowd, somehow keeping her balance in spite of the potholes and ruts that shook the wagon.
Behind Francesca’s wagon came Mr. Lamb’s menagerie, the bear and the panthers staring nonchalantly at the waving and cheering crowd. Next was the enclosed wagon carrying the snakes and the props. The crowd oohed over the pictures on the wagon’s sides, which depicted a viper swallowing a sow and eight piglets. After the snakes came the antelopes and then the emus. Napping in their cage, the great birds looked like a pile of feathers waiting to be made into pillows. But two men swore they’d seen fangs and claws under those feathers.
Three camels, tethered end to end behind the emus’ wagon, brought up the rear of the menagerie. Their jaws moved rhythmically side to side as they chewed their cud, looking not altogether different from the tobacco-chewing men watching from the roadside. One man spat a thick brown stream toward the camels. Lorenzo, the largest camel, belched and directed a splatter of regurgitated hay and grain onto the man’s shoes. The human spitter cursed and stepped back while his companions roared with laughter.
Billy came next, driving the six ponies and their wagon. Mrs. Varley had decked the lass out in a green velvet suit and a wool cape that fanned out around Billy’s shoulders to hide the back of her tailcoat, which was miles too big. Having no time to alter the jacket, Mrs. Varley had used clothes-pegs and straight pins to gather the slack in back, then concealed the lot beneath the cape. Billy grinned broadly, and Daniel let Ivy fall into step alongside her.
“’Tis grand, isn’t it?” she said. “I wish we could parade about all the day.”
“Aye,” Daniel said with a chuckle. “If you could parade about all day, you could avoid all the work that’s waiting for you at the pavilion.”
“And you’d not have to think about dancing Ivy before all them folk,” Billy said.
“I’d mind what I was saying if I was you,” Daniel teased back, poking her shoulder. “It’d take no more’n a tap to send all them pins into you.”
“I’d like to see you try.” Billy stuck her tongue out.
Daniel drummed his fingers on Billy’s top hat, pushing it down on her brow. “It being such a lovely day, I’d hate to be spoiling it by rowing,” he said.
Billy shoved her hat back up and gave Daniel her sourest glare. “That, and you don’t want to be sleeping with your eyes open all week, wondering how I’d be taking me vengeance.”
Daniel let her have the last word. Some time ago, their bickering had progressed from combat to sport, with him not quite knowing when or how it had happened, the way a touch of frost could mellow an apple from tart to sweet, with no sign on the outside to show the change.
“Well, son, what do you think?” Mr. Stocking asked as Phizzy pulled up alongside Ivy.
Daniel looked back at the wagons
that held the tents and ring fence and other gear, the green wagon that held the camelopard’s remains. Behind them came a train of curiosity showers, peddlers, tinkers, knife grinders, patent medicine salesmen, and itinerant craftsmen riding the show’s coattails into town.
Daniel caught his breath. “’Tis a bit like a dream.”
“Enjoy it now, son,” Mr. Stocking said with a grin. “Next town, they’re as likely to be greeting us with stones and rotten cabbages. And who knows but they might warn us out of this one, if they don’t get the show they expect.”
“But for now it feels . . . well, I don’t fancy I’ve felt so grand in me life.”
“I know.” Mr. Stocking winked. “Kind’a like being an Irish prince, ain’t it, son?”
“You look splendid, Daniel,” Billy said, fingering the spangles on his multicolored vest.
Between the two of them, Mr. Stocking and Mr. Chamberlain had invented a tribe of red-haired gypsy nomads from the steppes of Pomerania, the location chosen with a hatpin and a map from Billy’s geography book. Never mind that Daniel hadn’t a clue whether Pomerania had any steppes, or that the only steppes he knew of had to do with dancing and staircases. Mrs. Varley had cobbled together a costume that was part Gypsy, part Cossack, and part Turk, but thankfully included neither wig nor tights. The outfit reeked of tansy, old sweat, and stale tobacco, and had put Ivy off nearly as much as Daniel. She’d snorted and pulled her upper lip back when he’d first approached, and even now cast a dubious eye at him as they waited with Mr. Stocking and Phizzy just outside the show pavilion.
Daniel ran a finger under his collar, wondering how many creatures besides himself resided in the costume. He resolved to boil it the first chance he could get. “I stink,” he said.
“That’s all right, son,” Mr. Stocking assured him. “Just as long as your performance doesn’t.” He tugged his lapels. “I’m a little rank myself. Maybe I should give Mrs. Varley some Parisian toilet water for her wardrobe trunks.” He cocked an ear to the applause that told them that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Dale had just completed their juggling act. “Our turn next, boys,” he said, leading Phizzy into the pavilion.