by Jim Tully
Cameron and Finnerty stood near where the cash drawer had been. They fought valiantly in the midst of enemy and friend.
Benches were upturned in the main tent, the center pole toppled, and soon the vast canvas crumpled like a wet rag, the wind whistling around it.
Boards, maul handles, quarter poles, every instrument imaginable was used in the frightful welter.
Rosebud had not taken time to put his drum away. A club crashed through it and made an explosion as of thunder. Rosebud heard the noise and fell wailing over the broken drum. A man grabbed him by the collar and yanked him upward.
“You God damn murderer,” Rosebud screamed as he turned around and jumped toward the man. Both his hands stretched outward like the paws of an angry cat. His fingers became stiff as his nails dug bloody gashes in his antagonist’s face. The man fought furiously and soon Rosebud fell backward, his head hitting the hard sides of his drum. He sighed deeply and lay still.
The man turned from Rosebud to join his comrades in a combined attack on Finnerty and Cameron. With a catlike spring he grabbed Finnerty around the throat. Together they rolled to the ground, heavy fists thudding. Finnerty, a blood-streaked madman now, threw his right fist upward. It crashed against his attacker’s chin and he crumpled near Rosebud’s body.
Finnerty stood like an immense one-eyed gorilla about to spring and snarled between oaths, “Come on you, God damn rubes, and meet your master!”
A man circled behind him with a club. It went upward and downward while Finnerty dodged. The momentum of the intended blow threw the man off his feet for a second. Before he gained his poise Finnerty walked in close, his teeth grinding, his tongue licking the blood from his battered upper lip. His two fists struck with horrible precision on each side of the man’s jaws. The head went backward as if pulled suddenly with a rope. As he fell unconscious Finnerty kicked him twice in the groin. Still enraged, Finnerty then pounced upon him and drove his fist straight downward. The blow covered the man’s entire face with blood.
“Look out, Slug,” a voice yelled, and now the bloody monster turned swift as a tiger. Two men engaged him in battle. Their fists crashed against his face. He fought them both viciously without moving backward. The band stand toppled over.
The two men had placed the money drawer in the stand while they returned to the fight.
The coins scattered everywhere. Many, more eager for gold than battle, scampered after it. Cameron had fought near the stand until it fell. Then, seeing money scattered on the ground he rushed madly at those who tried to pick it up. Jock had by this time come upon the scene. He charged into the fight. Seeing Rosebud unconscious, he carried him out of the fracas.
Someone, whether stake-driver or Rube, had crashed a club against Cameron’s head. He waved from side to side, but stood up under the thudding impact. Another blow caught him across the back. A man of seventy-three, heavily ruptured and wearing a truss, he sank downward and remained on his knees by a tremendous effort of will. Then, too weak to remain in that position, he rolled over on his back and made an effort to pull his truss and the heavy weight upon it into place. Rising, he clutched at his groin with one hand, and swung a “staub” with the other. At last, fully conscious, but unable to move, Cameron lay still and blasphemed. His oaths could be heard above the noise of the conflict.
“Come on, boys,” he yelled, “we can’t let the God damn ratty rubes lick us.” A man kicked at his face. He rolled over, groaning with pain, and protected it with his arms.
Jock rushed up yelling to the man, “Come an’ battle a man that’s on his feet.” The heavier man rushed Jock but fell writhing from the effects of two blows delivered far below his waist line.
The general noise and confusion attracted the women. The Strong Woman rushed at the enemy who retreated before her. She moved about, an infuriated four-hundred-pound giantess, her hair streaming, wet and bedraggled in the rainy night.
Finnerty, now battered beyond recognition, fought on, though too weak to take command. It fell to Jock who was soon joined by the Baby Buzzard.
“Hello Betsy,” shouted Cameron upon beholding her as she slashed at the enemy with a long black-snake whip.
“Tell Goosey to bring the elephants,” Cameron yelled.
Soon two elephants charged across the lot, each holding the end of a thirty-foot pole.
Cameron lay in the path of one of the elephants. The Baby Buzzard tried to drag him away. Cameron crawled out of danger on his knees.
Goosey rushed the elephants through the crowd while friend and foe scampered before them. They retreated with curses and moans.
The enemy rushed off the lot pursued by Goosey and his two elephants and a roaring crowd of circus roustabouts.
They barricaded themselves in a small rickety barn. It was soon completely demolished and its occupants beaten until they were unconscious.
Silver Moon Dugan, the boss canvasman, gathered his fighting forces and entrained the circus.
An engineer hauled it to a place of safety on a far siding.
Lights were dimmed and the train guarded until the chief despatcher gave us an engine and the right of way.
Cameron’s loss was several thousand dollars. Finnerty had gained eighty cents.
IV: The Moss-Haired Girl
IV: The Moss-Haired Girl
WE reached ———, Missouri, in a worn condition. The news of our battle had preceded us in the newspapers. Cameron was unable to leave his bed. Finnerty’s one eye was completely closed. He could not see for several days. But his spirit was indomitable. He was the first to appear on the new lot.
We dispensed with the parade until mid-afternoon and spent the morning mending the main tent. After buying all the half-inch rope that could be had in the town, we again painted the tents with paraffine to make them waterproof. The canvas was two seasons old and had begun to leak.
When all was nearly ready for the parade, a deputation of citizens arrived and asked for the proprietor. Upon being shown to his car they informed him that he was forbidden to show in the town. We were billed in the place for two days. Cameron used all his eloquence and tricks on the men. They remained firm. Telegrams from the Oklahoma city gave reports of our hey rube fight with biased detail.
The performers and other aristocrats with the show were indignant at such treatment by the rubes. But we who had the hard work to do were glad. Our next jump was one of four hundred miles on a third-class railroad. The trip would consume the better part of two days and nights. It would give us a respite in the incessant round of toil and turmoil.
But Cameron found work for idle hands to do.
We spent the first day mending the tents and seats and in rubbing pained black and blue spots on our bodies with arnica and liniment.
There was a gash in Rosebud’s body which had been inflicted when he fell on the edge of his drum. He sat with a heavy bandage around it, while he polished his drum sticks and cleaned his other musical contraptions. Late in the afternoon he walked wearily into the town with his broken drum.
With Jock’s consent I divided my time between Cameron, Finnerty, the Strong Woman and the Moss-Haired Girl. The latter had been struck by a flying club which had fractured her rib.
As she shared with the Strong Woman the honors of being Cameron’s most valuable freak, she was treated with consideration.
“Why don’t you sue the broken-nosed old devil?” Buddy Conroy, who operated the loaded dice game under Finnerty, had asked her.
“No, no, I wouldn’t do that. The old faker has troubles enough. Besides, I’m of age. I should have kept out of the way of the club. Anyhow, he was blind when he threw it.”
“Maybe Finnerty threw it because he couldn’t never make a date with you.”
“No, he was just blind, that’s all,” was Alice’s rejoinder.
I worked about the tent until Conroy left.
Then the Moss-Haired Girl turned to me, saying:
“Heavens, I’m glad he’s gone. He gives me
a cold feeling—like a dead fish.”
“Yeap,” I said, “he’s as bad as Finnerty.”
The girl laughed. “No, he’s not that bad. There’s nothing as bad as Finnerty—but then—maybe we don’t understand.”
Few people knew the Moss-Haired Girl’s real name. To the circus people she was known as Alice Devine. Her mother had been Swedish, her father Indian and Irish. She was the most superior person with the circus, and the weirdest. She converted her hair, which was between blonde and brown, and long, into a tangled heap of moss by washing it frequently in stale beer, which she tinted green with herbs.
Cameron gave her seventy-five dollars a week and all expenses, and billed her as “The Moss-Haired Girl.” The women flocked to see her in every town. She also earned about fifty dollars a week by selling portraits of herself.
Her eyes were a deep blue, her complexion dark, her body graceful, her face beautiful.
She read a great deal, and often loaned books to the Strong Woman and the Baby Buzzard.
The Moss-Haired Girl talked to me often. Her life was as empty as an unused grave. But, with many opportunities, she seemed to desire no change. She did her washing twice a week. She always left silk underclothing and dresses to be cleaned and expressed to her in the next town. She would arrange each week about the buying of beer, which she allowed to grow stale. She bought many different magazines.
Looking back on her now I realize that she was repressed but deeply emotional. She loved all that pertained to life and hated philosophy. “It’s all rot,” she used to say. “None of them know a bit more about things than I do.”
Now that the fogs of twenty years have cleared away, I see much that I have lost and little that I have gained. Then, I was but a day or two from hunger and destitution. Now they are years away. But something else has happened. The brain has grown tired. The ennui of life is everywhere. Adventure lurked around every corner then, and life was wild and free. I often went to my canvas bunk with muscles that ached and legs that dragged wearily. But each morning opened on a new world—and many tales were told.
The Moss-Haired Girl, the Strong Woman, Aimee, the Beautiful Fat Girl, The Lion Tamer, Whiteface, Lefita and Jock are people that I shall never meet again. But I would trade the empty honor of a writer’s name to be once again their comrade.
There was something in the girl which I was not mature enough to fully appreciate at the time. Her eyes squinted often, as the eyes of people will who have spent early years in a desert country. She had reverted to the lethargy of the Indian and loved to live in a tent. Her cleanliness of body must have been derived from her Swedish mother.
The Moss-Haired Girl had been born in a little desert town of Arizona. Her father was a railroad engineer who fell in love with a brakeman’s wife and ran away. He was never heard of again. Alice was five years of age at this time. Her mother struggled through and managed to live by running a small restaurant.
When Alice was seven her mother became converted to Catholicism, and within a year the small daughter began her life at a convent.
An old nun, part Indian, became fond of her. The little girl fell in with the routine of the convent, and with stoical silence absorbed everything. The aged nun was in charge of the linen department, and Alice spent hours with her in the sewing room. It was her duty to thread the needles for her old friend, whose eyes were watery and weak.
The nun’s black habit hid her sparse grey hair and projected two inches out from her forehead. Her mentality was hardly above a child’s. She owned five rosaries and spent much time in shining the naked brass bodies of Christ which hung upon them.
Always she talked of Christ as though he had been an Indian. She called him the Great Fire-builder. Some day he would come and burn to cinders all the Irish in the world. For they were the people who in her opinion had crucified Christ. There were several old Irish nuns in the convent who gossiped a great deal. Sister Marie did not like them.
Often, when the little girl had threaded the needle, the decrepit black-hooded woman would hold it aloft and talk of the Great Firebuilder.
“He come down—way down—and stay on top o’ San Francisco mountain—he throw a torch and burn all up but you an’ me an’ Indian people like us … he give us back America an’ all the fish in the sea—an’ never no more houses and things, but like birds we be free. An’ Gabriel’ come back o’ Jesu’ and blow big horn an’ all people go right in fire an’ they’ll all go. ’Oh blesse’ Jesu’ she burn an’ burn—an’ the big voice roll down the moumtan an’ scare the eagles an’ it’ll say, ‘This is but water compare to the everlastin’ fire. A million times hotter it be—so hot—the desert is cool in July’—Then the fire will go out an’ big green trees and water in brooks and little white birds will be all aroun’. Then camps’ll be an our people livin’ in them.”
Then in a moment of exaltation she would clasp the little girl in her arms and squeeze her so tightly that Alice felt like screaming.
Alice often cried in the night when she thought of the Irish people being burned up. She thought, of course, that there were only two classes of people in the world, the Irish and the Indians.
Once the old nun gave her a huge and beautiful wax doll. She slept with it five months and smoothed its blonde hair and washed its immense blue eyes every morning and evening. She called it Lullaba-lie.
One Friday she was called quickly for noon-day devotion and left the doll sitting with perfect poise at the end of the arbor. In fifteen minutes, as Alice prayed, the sun crawled around the arbor, and the wax doll melted like the Irish in the Great Fire-builder’s flame.
Alice ran away from the chapel in the direction of her doll. Two little marble-blue eyes and a yellow wig were all that was left. The child stood for a moment, then clasped its hands, started to cry, held the tears back and sank down near the heap of wax. The sun burned her bare arms, but she sat for a long time, as still as a beautiful little female Buddha.
Something drove something out of the little girl’s soul at this moment. What it was I do not know, and neither could she ever explain. She was an Indian and a Swede, and to explain it one would be forced to explore long damned-up and century-old rivers of emotion. Her finely chiseled little mouth went tighter. She rose, and absentmindedly tried to pull a skirt over her knees. She wore bloomers at the time, but she obeyed a habit imbedded in her by long dead female ancestors.
She picked up the little blonde wig and dropped it. She then picked up the little blue eyes. They rattled in her hand. She kissed them all over, then placed them in her waist pocket over her heart.
She walked slowly under the blazing Arizona sun toward the sewing-room. The old nun was polishing the largest figure of Christ she owned. The little girl staggered half blindly toward her and held out the two marble blue eyes.
Not a word was said for a long time. Then the old lady held the little girl’s face in her wrinkled hands in such a manner that all that could be seen of it were the red lips and the small pearl upper teeth. She leaned down and put her leathery mouth against the girl’s and sobbed:
“O Jesu’, Jesu’, Jesu’—you take Lullaba-lie all home.”
Alice said no word. She put the marble eyes back in her pocket. That night she placed them in a little pine box, wrapped about with cotton. Each morning she would open the box and look at them. She carried the marble eyes for eighteen years.
When she was twelve years old Alice knew nothing of her body. When nature worked a change in it she was dreadfully frightened. She washed her clothes in cold water and put them on again hurriedly. Pneumonia developed and for three weeks Sister Marie nursed her day and night. She passed the crisis in the fourth week and slowly recovered.
Out of her head six days, she heard Irish bodies sizzling in a fire built by a red-headed man thousands of feet high. She saw him blow clouds away from his eyes that he might see.
The convent would sail through the air for hours at a time.
Sister Marie had changed
into the most beautiful of young angel women. She flew constantly about Alice’s head.
Sister Marie broke down when Alice became convalescent. When Alice became strong again, the old nun died.
Alice heard the news. Her lithe young body went rigid and fell.
In three days Sister Marie had five rosaries wrapped about her worn and scrawny hands. She was placed before the cheap gilt altar in the chapel.
A nun stood on each side of Alice as she looked at the body of her friend. There was a faint smile on the old nun’s lips, as though she saw the Irish burning. The gossipy old nuns were now tearful.
The priest told of God’s work, while sun shadows danced across the chapel and burned the lamp of the sanctuary a rubier red.
The pensive girl listened, and as the priest talked her mood turned into one of whimsical sadness. Above her red and blue angels flew around the mighty figure of God seated in a chair which was enveloped in a white cloud. Sister Marie was with him, and after all she was happier. And Alice half wished she also were up with God.
The high chapel ceiling, painted by a rustic artist to represent God ruling the starry heavens, was a never-failing source of wonder to Alice.
Sister Marie had told her about the man who had painted the ceiling. “He had a long white beard an’ he talked like a German an’ he worked up there weeks an’ weeks an’ weeks an’ once they came in the chapel an’ he was kneelin’ down in front of the great figure of God—us sisters all thought God’s face looked sadder in the picture after that.…”
The priest’s voice brought Alice from revery. The priest, a powerful man, held his arm high. Silver and green embroidery glistened under his white surplice. That hour was burned forever in the memory of Alice. The priest remained a symbol of all manhood to her. She confused him with God—and held ever afterward the blending of the two as her great unknown lover.
At twenty-seven, in spite of vicious environments, save for rough repartee now and then, she was still clean of heart and mind—as virginal as Sister Marie. The old nun had often talked of being “married to God.” Years later the Moss-Haired Girl said, “He’s really the Great Lover—no worry of children or sickness—and never any desertion—and always understanding—and if you lose in the end—and He’s only an illusion—you’ve had the fun of kidding yourself a whole lifetime—that in itself is God!”