Medici looked away. “Ah, Holt, my friend, I’m afraid equestrian acts have lost their shine. People know horses—they see them every day. They want something new from a circus.”
“Max, please,” Holt said softly. “I need to work.” Medici had always treated his troupe like family, so Holt knew he wouldn’t kick him to the curb just because the horses were gone…but Holt needed to feel useful. He needed the distraction.
“Aha, good news,” Medici replied. “I have one job opening.”
Holt perked up. “Okay then. Give me a showstopper.”
Medici scratched his nose. His chair creaked as he leaned forward. “That old rascal Itchy McPhee finally ran off with the bearded lady. I’ve had roustabouts filling in since then, but I need someone to tend to the elephants.”
“You’re not serious.” Holt couldn’t hide his dismay.
Milly and Joe shared a worried glance.
“Occasionally, I am. It’s a big job. You know it is,” Medici proclaimed.
“No, it’s just a big shovel for a big pile of—”
“Dad!” Milly and Joe scolded. Annie had never allowed foul language.
Holt staggered to his feet. “You sold my horses, but you kept your elephants. Your scrawny, mangy, cut-rate elephants!”
Medici held out a placating hand. “They’re important. Especially this season. It goes against my nature, but for once, I have made an investment.” He smiled calmly up at Holt.
Holt’s shoulders sank. There really was no other option—the circus was family, home, and job all rolled into one. He had no other trade. He couldn’t leave; he had to support his kids. He glanced at their hopeful faces.
“All right. Let’s go see this investment of yours,” he grumbled.
Joe hurried to keep up with Holt, Medici, and Milly, who strode toward the animal boxcars. From up ahead, they heard a loud bellow of protest. Medici sped up.
Rufus Sorghum stood at the bottom of a metal ramp, a pole in his hand. Inside the boxcar, one of his lackeys tried to corral an elephant onto the ramp, while another tugged on a rope looped around its neck. The elephant’s trunk shot up and it bellowed again. Joe recognized it as Goliath.
“Let’s go. Move yer ugly stinking wrinkles!” Rufus shouted, poking the elephant’s rump from the safety of the ground.
A burst of anger flared in Joe’s chest.
Medici scurried over, but his voice was placating. “Handle with care, Rufus. Respecto, respecto.”
The taller man scowled at him. “Needs to earn my respect. And don’t gimme that Italian royalty act, Gustavo. You grew up shining shoes.”
“Why’s he calling Max ‘Gustavo’?” Joe whispered to Milly as the men coaxed the elephant down the ramp to join its brother, Zeppelin, in line.
“I don’t know,” she answered, shrugging. “Maybe he got kicked in the head.”
Rufus’s eyes landed on Holt and he smirked unpleasantly.
“Well, look who’s back. Or most of him,” he drawled.
Joe started forward, but Milly’s hand stopped him. Their dad didn’t even flinch. Joe admired his confidence.
“Still glad you served your country instead of helping us sell tickets?” Rufus asked.
With a flick of its tail, the elephant splattered Rufus with mud—at least it looked like mud—as it lumbered past him. Rufus cursed. Nope, not mud, Joe realized happily.
Grinning, Joe followed Medici, his dad, and his sister, glancing over his shoulder briefly at Rufus, whose cheeks and forehead were turning pink from rage. As Rufus wiped his face, he caught Joe watching and glared at him. Joe didn’t care. Rufus could glare all he wanted—Joe’s dad was home now, and soon the elephants would be safe from the roustabout. Still, Joe hurried to catch up.
“As you see,” Medici said quietly as he led Holt to the next boxcar, “I’ve been making do. But you, Holt, you know animals. And they love you!”
Holt scratched his head. He’d never handled an elephant before. He knew they were smart, and they certainly tended to pick up tricks fast…but would they respond to him?
Medici rolled back the boxcar door and headed inside. Hay covered the floorboards, and a large gray elephant lay on the ground. Her eyes followed them, but she didn’t even bother to lift her head more than a foot off the hay.
“Voilà!” Medici exclaimed. “Meet Mrs. Jumbo. Our brand-new Asian female I bought from Brugelbecker in Biloxi. Talked him way down on the price.”
Holt didn’t know much about the beasts, but this one looked ill. Her abdomen was swollen, perhaps with a tumor.
She let out a tired wheeze.
“I saw something special in her eyes,” Medici continued.
Maybe your eyes were clouded by dollar signs, Holt thought. Medici was a good leader for the most part, but he sometimes let his ambition get the best of him. Aloud, he said, “This is your investment? An old, sick elephant?”
Medici shook his head. “Oh, no. She isn’t sick. Any day now, she’s having a baby.” His voice was reverent. Milly and Joe seemed to share his excitement. Their faces shone as they gazed at the mother-to-be.
“A baby?” Holt asked. “How exactly is that going to keep the circus afloat?”
“Let me show you.” Medici grinned, gesturing them out of the car. Mrs. Jumbo slumped back into the hay as they left with a relieved snuffle.
Medici strode toward a nearby tent. “What’s the one thing that unites all the people of the world? What brings a smile to their faces, a tear to their eyes, a hippity-hop to their hopeful hearts?”
Holt raised an eyebrow. When Medici went into performance mode—which was most of the time—he was a bit over-the-top.
“Ice cream?” Joe offered hopefully. He’d been pestering Medici to find a way to sell the delicacy for years.
Medici shook his head. “Babies!”
He flung open the tent flap to reveal a giant hay-lined bassinet, complete with a barbell-sized rattle, a massive pacifier, and a teddy bear. A banner draped overhead read WELCOME TO OUR DEAR BABY JUMBO!
“People love babies,” Medici continued, striding over to the bassinet. He tweaked the lace-covered hood. “I don’t, myself, but I’m the exception to the rule. People love cute things; that’s why they have children. And children love small things; that’s why they like babies. So…babies mean children mean parents mean tickets!”
Medici paraded around the larger-than-life nursery, past several plain stacking blocks, then turned to Holt, beaming. “That means big things for you and me! Pending pachyderm gender, of course, we’ll paint.”
Joe wandered toward several cans of paint stacked in a corner.
“You want me to babysit an elephant.” Holt’s expression was flat. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him.
“Twenty-five cents extra for a peek in the tent.” Medici bounced on his toes, mentally collecting the fares.
Holt’s face darkened. “You want me. To babysit. An elephant,” he repeated.
Medici looked ruffled for the first time. He leaned toward Milly and Joe. “Why’s he saying things twice? Is that ’cause of the war?” he whispered.
That was it. Holt stormed over to Medici, his fist clenched. “I had eighteen beautiful horses!” He flung his arm out as though directing imaginary steeds around the ring.
“Yes, you did,” Medici answered calmly. He tilted his head, a firm but sympathetic look in his eyes. “And a wife. And an arm. A fellow can go broke from all that living in the past.”
Holt glared. Maybe there was no turning back time. That didn’t mean he had to accept the present, though.
“Cha-cha-cha-ching!” Medici thrust the giant rattle into Holt’s hand with a jangling sound. Having delivered the news, he sauntered away. “You’ll thank me later. Elephants are the way of the future!”
“Come on, Dad.” Joe tugged on his shirt. “Let’s get you settled before dinner.”
Holt set down the rattle and followed his kids to the living quarters. People called out greet
ings and he waved back vaguely, barely registering Arav meditating outside his tent or Ivan and Catherine fiddling with their one-way mirror box. Not even the rowdy group of clowns, a family from Greece, roughhousing in the campfire ring broke through his daze.
Joe and Milly ducked inside a small beige tent, a quarter the size of their old one. Where are they going? A spike of concern pierced the fog in Holt’s mind as he entered the tent.
Three cots were crammed in next to two large trunks, one emblazoned with STALLION STARS in golden letters. A small crate formed a makeshift bookshelf, and a second crate in the corner held an assortment of pots and pans.
“Watch, Dad, I’m getting better,” Joe said, picking up a handful of apples and starting to juggle them. He lunged for them as they plopped to the ground.
“Whoa, hang on, this is our tent?” Holt stared around in dismay. “But we had furniture, beds, rooms…” As the stars of the show, he and Annie had the finest, largest tent, with curtains partitioning it into two bedrooms and a main space. Holt eyed the cots nervously—he wasn’t even sure one could hold his weight.
What didn’t Max sell? he wondered. Panicking, he dove for the STALLION STARS trunk and flung it open. Glass tubes and colorful cups lay on top.
“Toys? What’s with all these?” He lifted out what looked like a funnel.
“They’re not toys,” Milly said. “They’re for my science experiments.” She frowned—her dad was looking at them like they were from outer space. He’s going to call my studying science silly, just like Medici, she thought. Her mother had at least tried to understand, buying her the chemistry sets from stops along the way before she had gotten sick.
With a wan smile, Holt eased onto the cot. Setting the funnel down, he took Milly’s hand in his own and drew her closer. “We’re a circus, darlin’. A circus. We need to be practical if we want to survive.” He paused. “You couldn’t take up one act? Tumbling? Tightrope?”
Milly stiffened. “Maybe I don’t need the world staring at me. Maybe I’m just not you and Mama.”
Holt’s mouth pursed and he stood up, insulted. “Who makes the rules in this family?”
“Mama,” Joe said automatically.
A silence hung in the air, fraught with tension. Annie flashed through their minds, bubbly, sweet, firm, and alive.
“Well, well—I make them now,” Holt finally sputtered. “Just go to your room.”
“This is my room. This is all our rooms,” Milly said. She jutted her chin in the air.
Plucking his cowboy hat off a coatrack, Holt shoved it onto his head, then stalked back to the trunk. From the bottom, he hauled out a silver saddle. At least Medici hadn’t sold that.
“You see this? You know what this is? Your inheritance.” With a huff, he marched out of the tent, clutching the saddle with his arm.
“Dad, wait! Where are you going?” Joe raced to the flap and peered out.
“Don’t worry,” Milly said as she joined him. They watched their dad pace one way and then the other. He finally stopped next to a log and slung the saddle down atop it before straddling it, his back to them. “He’s not going anywhere. He’s stuck. Just like you and me.”
Born and raised on a ranch, Holt Farrier could tell which horses would be steady and reliable and which would just as soon kick you in the teeth as let you put a saddle on them. It was the latter ones he loved to work with—winning their trust, teaching them he was a leader worth following. Horses Holt could understand. People…people were harder. He was a straight talker, and sometimes people said things they didn’t mean or tried to trick him. So while he was friendly with strangers, he only trusted his small circle of friends.
Annie, on the other hand, could charm the hat right off the grouchiest rancher, which is just what she did when she met Holt at a rodeo. She raced her mare through the barrel course, leaping and turning as though they were one instead of two. Annie knew how to handle horses just as well as Holt. And crowds. She loved the roar of applause, the gasps as her horse reared on command, hooves pawing the air.
At the end of her turn, she trotted over to the sidelines where Holt stood, eyes fixed on her.
“Howdy, cowboy,” Annie said. “Enjoy the show?”
“Not bad,” Holt said.
Annie raised an eyebrow. “Let’s see you do better.”
Laughing, Holt held up the schedule. “I ain’t up for another half hour. Do you want to grab something to drink while we wait?”
The rest, as they say, was history. After Annie and Holt were married, they continued in the rodeo circuit for a few years. But when Medici approached them to join his circus, they jumped at the chance. They got to design their own act—the two of them—from beginning to end, and they were able to include more tricks than the rodeo judges allowed. Plus, once they had Milly and Joe, they were able to travel as a family, all together, and there was always someone to mind the babes while they were performing.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” Medici’s voice boomed one night in Lexington, Kentucky, “prepare to be amazed at the unbelievable feats and dazzled by the dancing hoofwork of the king and queen of horses, Holt and Annie Farrier—our very own Stallion Stars!”
Eight-year-old Milly peered out from the side curtain of the ring as Joe squirmed next to her. It wasn’t until their parents galloped out that he stilled, his head poking through the gap under her.
Annie and Holt steered their horses in opposite directions through an obstacle course of hay bales, barrels, and upside-down buckets stacked in a pyramid. As their horses neared each other, Annie stood, arms flung out to the sides.
Joe gasped as, with a light push-off from her own steed, Annie flipped and twisted through the air, landing behind Holt. Then Holt swung sideways in one direction as Annie lunged in the other, making the horse appear to be riderless.
Whooping, they both pulled themselves back up while a stagehand loosed the next pair of horses into the ring. Annie slid onto one, grabbing the reins for the second. Then she stood, one foot upon each horse’s back, guiding them around the ring at a canter.
Meanwhile, Holt showed off his rope work by swinging lasso after lasso as the rest of the herd joined the loose horse in the ring. Soon Holt had a line of horses standing together. Annie leapt back to her original horse, and together the duo directed the other horses through jumps and run patterns with whistles and called commands. Then, for the grand finale, Annie and Holt each rode their horses over the course, thundering through it with ease. The horses all galloped into a perfect spiral with Annie and Holt at the center, standing atop their saddles, arms around each other and waving at the crowd, their faces alight with adrenaline.
As soon as the duo was out of the ring and the horses were handed off to the crew, Annie jogged over to her kids and swept them up into a hug, the key necklace she wore bumping into Milly’s chest.
“How are my little good luck charms?” she said, planting kisses on their cheeks. “I love you so much! Did you like the show?”
“Sha-baam!” Joe replied.
“You’ve been spending time with Ivan and Catherine again, haven’t you?” Holt laughed as he joined them. He ruffled the tops of his kids’ heads.
“You were great! As always,” Milly said.
“I think we may need to add some new rope tricks,” Holt said to Annie. “Maybe you could jump over a rope I throw?”
“Stop fiddling with the show,” Annie answered. Then she smiled at her husband, her eyes softening. “We can think about it later. Right now, let’s get these little rascals to sleep. It’s way past their bedtime.”
Holt scooped Milly up as Annie carried Joe.
“Not sleepy,” Joe objected, even as he curled into his mother’s neck, eyes drooping.
After they’d tucked the children in, Annie and Holt sat outside, gazing at the stars. The music of the circus continued in the background, but the crowd was dwindling now that the main performance was over. There’d be stragglers, of course, some stay
ing past midnight to gawk at Pramesh and his snakes or try to tug on the bearded lady’s facial hair. Boy, would they get in trouble for that!
“They’re growing up so fast,” Annie said.
Holt startled. He’d been thinking through the show again. “The kids? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?”
“Yes, I just…sometimes wish I could slow it all down, capture a moment—like a photograph, you know?”
“Photographs are pricey,” Holt said.
“Ah, my darling, but the only thing worth anything in this world is love.”
Holt tugged his wife to his side and she leaned her head on his shoulder. “Well, then, we must be millionaires.”
“As rich as the number of stars in the sky,” Annie whispered.
“And anyway, time ain’t going to stop for the likes of us.”
“You’re right. Time may not stand still, but each new moment lets us learn and change and grow our love.”
“Speaking of change—” Holt started.
Annie slapped his chest lightly. “Holt Farrier, are you going to be talking about switching up our act again? Haven’t we already fiddled with it four times since we left Atlanta?”
“Well…” Holt didn’t know what to say.
“You and Milly, always experimenting, exploring new things. What am I going to do with you?” Smiling, she examined him. “All right, cowboy, tell me your idea.”
So Holt laid out his plans as Annie rested against his side, gazing at the stars. Somewhere in his speech, he figured out she’d fallen asleep, so he lifted her into his arms and carried her to their tent. There’d be time enough tomorrow.
A few years later, war broke out. Proud to serve his country, Holt had enlisted in the army, and although Annie fretted over him, he’d waved off her fears. Holt had never considered she would be the first one to run out of tomorrows.
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