When Emma was sure no one was looking, she ran behind two cars on the railroad tracks. It was the only time in her life she’d wished she was a boy. How easy the whole business would have been. As quickly as she’d done anything in her life she dropped those overalls, praying all the time no one would sneak up on her. The puddle she was making in the dust grew from a river to a small lake. If ever she’d gotten a glimpse of how long eternity was, that was it. Getting caught with her pants down in broad daylight, squatting there over her own puddle of pee, would be worse than any hell she could imagine.
“Hey!” It was the boss’s voice. Emma got those pants up and buckled quick. Even Houdini couldn’t have done it faster. “Where’s that kid who’s supposed to be watering the elephants?” Boss Man yelled.
Emma grabbed her bucket and ran back between the cars.
A man no more than three feet tall pointed in her direction. “There!”
Already she had told three lies to get to see the circus and find the man in the photograph. She figured she’d try to even things out with one small truth. “Just had to pee . . . relieve myself is all, sir.”
“Well, you get back and relieve them pachyderms, you hear?”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
She couldn’t remember which elephant she’d left off with, so she started back at number one. By the time she got to the ninth elephant for the third time, she felt as if she had drunk more water from that hose than the elephants had. By now those pachyderms thought the whole thing was great sport. Instead of drinking the water, they’d fill their trunks and squirt their backs. It was playtime, and Emma was the entertainment.
As she placed the filled bucket in front of pachyderm number three, he stuck his trunk into it like a straw drawing water. He lifted that trunk, and instead of drinking and instead of squirting his back, he let that water loose on Emma. She tried to leap out of the way, but pachyderm number two grabbed her hat with his trunk, and there she stood, wetter than a newborn kitten, with her curls exposed for all the world to see.
That’s when the boss man with the cowboy hat walked up.
Chapter Six
Boss Man
Hey there, Curly,” the boss man said.
Quicker than a jackrabbit, Emma bent over, grabbed Granddad’s damp, muddy fedora and shoved it back on her head.
Boss Man stood there grinning at her, as if he’d told a joke that could make a dead man laugh. But Emma knew. This joke was on her. She held her breath, waiting for him to tell her this was “no place for girls.” Instead he said, “Looks like those elephants know who’s boss.”
She chuckled, from relief, mostly. “Yes, sir. Guess they do.”
“And looks like you could use a trip to the barber’s, too, kid,” he said, pressing his hand on top of Granddad’s fedora. “You don’t want the world to be thinkin’ you’re a girl, now, do you?” Boss Man’s eyes smiled along with his mouth.
“No, sir. Not me, sir.”
“Well, do yourself a favor then and let your ma take her shears to that mane of yours. You don’t want folks gettin’ the idea you’re somethin’ you’re not.”
“No, sir.” Holy cow. Was she ever stacking up the lies like pancakes on a Sunday!
Boss Man lifted his cowboy hat and rubbed the sweat off his brow, gawking at her with a puzzled expression. “You kinda remind me of someone. What’s your name, kid?”
“Ah…Will,” she said.
“Will what?”
“Reiner. Will Reiner.”
Lies. Lies. Lies.
“Will, eh? Well, Will Reiner, mind if I call you Curly?”
“No, sir.”
“Well now, Curly. See those bales of hay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pull a couple close to the elephant line and break ‘em open. And see that pitchfork over there? Take it and give each elephant about a quarter bale of hay. When you’re through, come and see me.”
“Yes, sir!” she said. Emma raced to the hay bales. Boss Man believed her lies, believed she was a boy! Then she recalled Boss Man’s ready smile and odd expression and got a sinking feeling she might not be home free yet.
Pitching hay was easier than lugging buckets of water to nine thirsty elephants, but every time Emma opened a bale, she had to go back to the hose and get a drink. The heat and breathing in sawdust and hay made her mouth and throat scream for water. Once the hay was piled in front of the elephants, they settled down though. And except for the darn flies, those nine pachyderms might have been mistaken for statues. Stomp, stomp, stomp went the elephants’ big feet trying to keep those flying devils from biting.
The morning was warming up and Emma’s sweat was attracting its own company of hungry insects. With every breath came the smell of hay, dung, piss and her own sweat. And the sounds! Elephants trumpeted, lions roared, and monkeys screeched. Everywhere there was hammering and the shouting of roustabouts. An exotic new world was making its home right here in Racine, Wisconsin, and she was part of it.
After Emma finished the hay job, she plopped down on a bale. Her stomach growled. While she munched on the apple she’d stuck in her pocket, she glanced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of some of the performers, hoping to spy Filippo the Flying Wonder. But no one wore costumes, so it was hard to tell who was who. Kids and grown-ups from town milled around the lot, gawking at the sights.
Roustabouts pounded the stakes into the ground where the Big Top would be. Groups of them clustered in circles around the stakes hammering and sweating as they pounded. Other men positioned poles on the ground around the tent.
“Hey!” Boss Man said. “Loafin’ ain’t gonna earn you a matinee ticket.”
Emma jumped to attention. “No, sir!” She saluted like a soldier.
Boss Man looked at her like he was trying to hold back a smile. “King pole’s about to go up. How ‘bout lending the Big Top gang a hand?”
“You bet. Glad to!”
Boss Man blew a whistle, and workers who had been busy at other jobs hurried over to the Big Top’s gigantic center pole lying on the ground.
“Go on,” Boss Man said, motioning with his head toward the king pole and the fifty or so men who would raise it. “Give ’em a hand, Curly.”
“Yes, sir!” she sang. Emma ran to grab hold of a section of the king pole along with the gang of smelly, sweating men, pressing her palms and squeezing her fingers hard against the mighty solidness of the wood, wider than a telephone pole. All around her men chanted as they muscled that tent pole up.
Emma, too, pushed on the king pole with all her might, breathing deeply the smells of sweat and sour whiskey mixed with sawdust and hay. Goosebumps sprouted all over her as she listened to the men singing sea chanteys, feeling the surge of power as they pushed together to raise the pole.
When the center pole stood straight, high, and secure in the boxed-in hole that anchored it, she blurted, “We did it!”
The fellow next to her, a hairy, shirtless man, grinned and slapped her back. “Aye we did, Matey.”
Matey. Music to her ears. She was one of them. How easy it was to fool people, so sinfully easy. In the next few minutes, with the help of horses, the other poles for the Big Top were hoisted into place. Wham, bang, clang the iron sledges sang as men pounded stakes into the earth.
“What are the stakes for?” she asked a roustabout.
“To secure the ropes and hold the canvas from blowing away,” he said.
Emma sat on a hay bale and watched a crew of men unrolling bundles of canvas that had been placed around the lot. Another crew followed quickly along, lacing the sections of the Big Top together. Ropes from the canvas ran up over the tops of the poles and off to the circus horses, Emma couldn’t count how many, who stood at the ready.
Boss Man blew his whistle. At that signal, the horses moved forward and the huge canvas
Big Top rose to the top of the king pole. Above her Emma could feel and hear the tent stretching up and out, welcoming in a cool breeze from the lake. All around the outside of the tent, men fastened the canvas to the stakes that had been pounded into the ground. Other men waited outside the tent by the ropes, ready to pull on them.
As she watched the Big Top quickly coming to life, out of the corner of her eye, Emma spotted a woman hurrying in her direction. She wore a wash dress like Mother’s and a wide-brim hat that covered half her face. Emma ducked behind the hay bale. Could this woman be Mother? Had she gone to the Reiners’ and found Emma wasn’t there? Or had Clarence told her? What if she’d looked in her bureau and found the photograph missing? Emma felt her heart beating hard. She leaned against the bale, taking deep breaths.
You’re a bad person, Emma Monroe, she thought. You disobeyed your mother. Lied to her. You know what happens to bad people. They go to hell.
Well, she guessed she probably was a bad person, but a girl needed to know who her father was. Didn’t she? If Mother wasn’t going to tell Emma who her father was, she had to find out for herself. Didn’t she? Would God send her to hell for that?
Emma reached into her front pocket and pulled out the photograph. The handsome man stared back at her. She had to find him—and that was that.
She slipped the photograph back in the bib pocket and closed her eyes, imagining Filippo the Flying Wonder swinging high on a trapeze, flying across the Big Top. The scene cartwheeled across her imagination, while roustabouts chanted as they pulled the ropes to tighten the Big Top.
“Heave it, heavy down;
Hump back, jump back;
Take it back,
Break your back,
Hackenstack;
Down stake; next . . .”
After a few minutes, Emma peeked over the bale to see if the woman in the wash dress was still there. She didn’t see her. She was safe . . . at least for now. But Emma gasped out loud at what she did see. In the short time she sat hidden behind the bale, a small city of tents had sprung up, more than a dozen.
A loud bell rang. “Chow time, Matey!” the hairy guy hollered.
The smell of bacon frying made Emma’s mouth water.
“Curly!”
Emma turned to see Boss Man standing outside of the tent, motioning to her.
She ran over to him, hoping he’d tell her to go to the cook tent.
“Ready for the next job?”
“I’m kind of hungry, sir.”
“Sorry, Curly. The cookhouse is only for bonafide circus folk. No rubes.”
Emma’s heart sank close to her growling, empty stomach. “Yes, sir.” She hung her head and ground her heel into the dirt, hoping for a little mercy. When none came, she asked. “What’s the next job?” Hungry or not, she had to keep working to earn that ticket.
“Putting up the stands and seats. It’s a man’s job, but maybe you can help haul the iron braces over to the stands after the roustabouts hook the stands together.”
“You bet I can, sir.” She tugged on the brim of Granddad’s fedora.
Again, Boss Man smiled so big it put creases in his leathery face and he ogled her with that same puzzling expression.
“Then get goin’, Curly. We ain’t got all day. This here’s a water stop. Matinee’s at two. That’s it. Then we push off.”
“Yes, sir!” Emma shouted and ran to the pile of braces that Boss Man had pointed out.
She was just about to pick up the first brace when she heard a voice that made her heart leap into her throat.
“Emma!”
Chapter Seven
Trouble
Emma didn’t have to turn around to know who was yelling her name. But she did anyway. Clarence and Teddy ran toward her all sweaty and red-faced.
“What in the heck are you doing?” Clarence asked.
She picked up an iron brace. “What does it look like I’m doing? Working. For a ticket to the Big Show. Like I told you.”
“Honest?” Teddy said.
“You’re going to be in a heap of trouble when your ma finds out,” Clarence said. “And what are you doing in my overalls? And Granddad’s hat?” Clarence bent over in mock laughter. “Boy, do you look dumb!”
“Let me try it on!” Teddy lunged at her, trying to snatch her hat. Emma blocked his hand with her arm.
That’s when Boss Man walked up. “These your friends?”
“No!” She blurted, glad to tell the truth at last.
“What’s your business here, boys? This ain’t a play yard. We’ve got work to do.”
Clarence, wearing a too-small pair of knickers and a dirty cap, puffed up his skinny self. “We can work,” Clarence crowed.
Emma’s heart stopped. She glared at her cousins, hard. Why should they weasel in on her plan? Already she’d put in hours of work. It wasn’t fair.
“Well, guess I can’t turn down an offer of more free labor,” Boss Man said. “See that pile of seat planks? See those stands under the Big Top? You can give Curly here a hand. Carry them planks over to the stands there. No messing around, though. Or you’re outta here. Got me?”
“Sure,” her cousins said in one voice.
The roustabouts had already hooked the metal stands together under the Big Top. A huge pile of long, heavy seat planks that had to be put on the stands lay off to one side. After only about ten minutes of hauling those planks and setting them on the stands, her cousins started complaining.
“Man, it’s hotter than the devil,” Clarence said, sweat dripping off his face and onto the plank. Teddy carried the front end, Clarence the back, and Emma the middle. “And you,” Clarence said, glaring at her. “You’re not picking up any of this weight. Me and Teddy is doing all the work.”
She let her hands go and stepped away from the plank.
Teddy turned his head around. “Hey! What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Emma said, taking hold of the plank again. She grinned at Clarence and stuck out her tongue. She gave Teddy an ornery grin. They couldn’t carry that plank without her. All those chin-ups and pull-ups on the monkey bars had made her strong.
On their way back from the stands to the plank pile, Boss Man yelled, “Hey, Curly, see if you can make your boys step it up a bit, to a man’s pace, I mean.” Again that grin.
“Why’s he calling you Curly? Who is he, anyway?” Clarence whispered.
“The circus boss,” Emma told him. “You’d better move it like he said, or we’ll all be kicked out of here!”
The roustabouts, carrying the heavy planks on their shoulders, ignored them. They made the work look easy. Emma’s back ached and the blisters on her hands stung. But she wasn’t about to complain, not like her stupid cousins.
“Lift more weight, Emma,” Teddy said. Now he was bringing up the rear, and Clarence was at the head. “You’re not carrying your share!”
“What do you expect from a girl?” Clarence said.
“Shut up,” she told them.
At that moment both Clarence and Teddy let go of the plank. For an instant, it was only Emma who held that plank in midair. And then she lay flat on her back, in the dust, with that plank on top of her chest. It hurt like heck, but she wasn’t about to let on.
“All right. What’s going on? I told you boys no messing around. I ain’t got time for no shenanigans.”
“It wasn’t me, sir,” Emma said, that plank still on top of her, tears smarting her eyes. “Those two dropped the plank!”
“Hmmm.” This time Boss Man was trying not to grin. He stared at her lying there in the dust looking like Henny Penny holding up a piece of fallen sky. “Guess I can see that.” He lifted the plank from her easy as if it was a popsicle stick and turned to her cousins. “OK, fellas. Curly was doin’ fine before you came around. Vamoose. Off the circus grounds. Now.�
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“What? You’re going to let her stay?” Clarence asked, pointing at Emma.
She stood up, dusting herself off.
“Her?” Boss Man said. “Who are you talking about?”
“Her,” Clarence said. “She’s a girl. Her name’s Emma.”
She could have killed him, right then and there in broad daylight with all those witnesses. Gladly. Instead, she looked straight into Boss Man’s face and dared him to say she was a girl.
Boss Man stared back. She waited for those next words, the words that were going to determine her fate.
“Right,” Boss Man said. “And I’m an Injun and my name is Pocahontas. Listen, if you two hooligans wanna earn a ticket into the Big Show, you’re gonna have to do it on somebody else’s time. Now vamoose!”
For once her cousins didn’t talk back. Boss Man stood tall, over six feet. His bulging muscles glistened in the midday sun. Size, Emma guessed, they respected, because they turned tail and ran. Probably as glad as fleas on a pup they didn’t have to work anymore, but madder than hornets that she got to stay, that Boss Man believed her and not them. At least her plan hadn’t been ruined because of her meddling cousins.
Her cousins had gotten as far as the railroad spur when Clarence turned around. “You’re gonna be in a heap of trouble if Aunt Saffy finds out you’re here!” he yelled.
“Aunt?” Boss Man said. “Those boys your kin, Curly?”
Truth or lie?
She stared into Boss Man’s coal-black eyes. He stared back.
“Yes. They’re my cousins. We live together.”
Catch Me When I Fall Page 4