by Eric Dupont
Puffing and blowing like a steam engine, Idaho Bill was radish-red and making headway in second place. Of this interesting character, it should be said that he did not in fact hail from Idaho, but rather from California, where he had been baptized Everett Sterling in Sacramento in 1918. How had he wound up competing as a strongman in the Midwest and Northeastern United States? The answer depends a lot on who you ask. What we do know is that Idaho Bill did live at one time in Idaho, where he had been a cowboy or a lumberjack—accounts differ—and that he had decided to call himself Bill after a price was put on the head of a certain Everett Berling (in the wake of a sordid sex scandal that also involved the governor of Oregon’s brother) in four states right at the start of the Roosevelt administration, an event that dealt a severe blow to his career as a strongman. It was this version of the story that was told most often; when Bill was around, at least. And just in front of him was The Warsaw Giant, advancing with no apparent effort, a man whose nickname required no explanation: standing more than six foot six inches tall, he towered over most of his fellow contenders by at least a head, sometimes two, meaning that his regular walking pace was enough to win him the car-pulling event, a feat he accomplished to the sounds of a crestfallen crowd that was rooting for the Canadian out of sympathy for Floria and Beth. Aware that his victory had disappointed the crowd while putting a little spice back into the contest, The Warsaw Giant looked around sadly. In his native Poland, his victory would have been met with adulation, but here it seemed only to stoke the fairgoers’ desire to see the Canadian win the day, an outcome that was looking increasingly uncertain. With a ballerina-like flourish, The Warsaw Giant crossed the finish line that had been whitewashed onto the warm green grass, as Floria and Beth Ironstone looked on in dismay. Not wanting to break the titan’s heart, the crowd applauded all the same. Idaho Bill finished far behind, cursing the heavens for not being taller. Then came Louis Lamontagne, Alexander Podgórski—whose squint returned as soon as he was freed from his harness—and finally the now Not So Great Brouyette, who never did manage to make up the ground he lost by falling on his ass two seconds after the race started, caught up in his own harness. The passengers who had been used as ballast stepped out of the Oldsmobile one by one, swapping notes on the incredible race, laughing at the master of ceremonies’s quips, and waving to the crowd, feeling a few crumbs of the Polish champion’s glory fall on their own shoulders. The passengers from the winning car scoffed at the losers, taking credit, however undeserved, for their beast of burden’s win.
But outright victory still wasn’t completely in The Warsaw Giant’s hands, far from it. His long legs might have won him the third event, but this easy win wasn’t enough to surpass Lamontagne’s triumphs in the first two events, the bent press and the squat lift. Which meant that Lamontagne had come out of the first two events with six points, comfortably ahead of The Warsaw Giant, who had only four points to show for having twice finished second. After his victory in the car pull, The Warsaw Giant now had seven points, tied with Louis Lamontagne, who had had to make do with a solitary point for his third-place finish. Disappointed but not disheartened, Lamontagne vowed he would do better in the final event.
Among the crowd of visitors to the St. Lawrence County Fair, the Ironstone sisters weren’t the only ones praying with all their might that the Canadian might take a shine to them. Louis’s guilelessness, youth, vigor, and simplicity had conquered the hearts of every last fairgoer. They loved him for all kinds of reasons: languidness, admiration, a fascination for his extraordinary physique. And while it is undeniable that certain young ladies would have immediately taken the handsome devil up on an offer to dance, parental consent be damned, it would not be true to say that all of St. Lawrence County was drawn to him for reasons of the heart. Louis Lamontagne’s presence was a source of fascination, inexplicably soothing and exciting at once. A mere glance from Louis was enough to awaken the best and the worst of the man—or especially the woman—his eyes happened to fall on. Louis was to the St. Lawrence County Fair what Marlene Dietrich was to the American troops: the charms, at once sophisticated and unrefined, of a vague elsewhere, a promise of something new. At a time when Uncle Sam was recruiting men the length and breadth of the United States, a handful of his agents were naturally at the county fair and, scattered throughout the crowd, had immediately remarked the five rivals in the strongman competition and were now waiting for events to follow their course.
The master of ceremonies decreed a two-hour break to let the strongmen recover and allow the crowd to refresh itself, what with the heavy air that foretold a late-afternoon storm. No doubt to maintain the air of mystery that surrounded him and seemed to have worked to his advantage so far, Louis Lamontagne took care to keep a safe distance from the crowd that had gathered around the competitors as soon as they were out of their harnesses. People scrambled to see him up close, to touch him with their own hands, to see him with their own eyes, but the Canadian preferred to play hard to get, heading off to the privacy of a trailer a little to the side of the field, flanked by his cross-eyed colleague. The Ironstone sisters sighed.
“Come on, Floria. Let’s go talk to them! I’m sure they have whisky in that trailer!”
“Mmm. A little shot of Canadian whisky. They’re bound to have some.”
Beth was taken aback at her own daring. Her sister followed behind, trying to hide her jitters. Both men disappeared into the trailer. Two scrawny horses grazed a few yards away. How many times did Floria rearrange her hair as she approached Louis Lamontagne’s trailer? Which of the two was more nervous at the prospect of speaking to the young man? Who among the rest of the crowd had failed to notice that these brash young things had plucked up enough courage to do what they all dreamed of doing? So many unanswered questions. A door on the side of the trailer opened with a loud crack, revealing Louis Lamontagne and Alexander Podgórski sitting on wooden stools in surroundings that were far too small for two men of their size. Before them on the table was what looked like an enormous turkey, which Podgórski had brought back with him from Buffalo. Strangled and roasted the day before by a helpful woman from Gouverneur (the strongmen were welcomed like kings wherever they went), the bird was equal to the two huge appetites. For the Ironstone sisters, it made for a moving scene: two strapping young men who had given their all and were now sharing a gargantuan meal in a trailer where trapeze artists, lion tamers, bearded ladies, and dwarfs would not have been out of place. Louis was busy tearing one of the thighs off the huge bird. Floria, her hopefulness winning out over bashfulness, as was her way, got straight to it:
“I so wanted you to win, Horse!”
“So did I,” her sister Beth chimed in. “But I’m certain you’ll win the horse event! We saw you in the tent. You’re so strong! I’m Beth, and this is my sister, Floria. We’re from Potsdam.”
Beth pointed east. Both men, who were busily wolfing down their meal, glanced up at the two women, chewed some more, then swallowed. They wiped their lips and smiled. Lamontagne’s English was fairly basic. He would intersperse his speech with snatches of French—which Podgórski would translate, sometimes hesitantly due to the often mystifying Canadian accent—then go on, giving the impression the sisters were speaking to a two-headed man, one speaking something akin to English in a thick Slavic accent, the other impeccable Frenglish, embellished with sweeping hand gestures, facial expressions, and mannerisms that formed the grammar of his language every bit as much as his vocabulary. Floria and Beth wanted to know everything: Where from? How? When?
Podgórski told them he had been born in Warsaw in 1918 to an unknown father and an uncertain mother. He had been raised by anyone and everyone, fed more often than not by the nuns in the Praga neighborhood, the first to become aware of young Alexander’s uncommon strength. At the age of twelve, he was hired by the convent and received full board in exchange for his brute force. When he became too old for the nuns to keep him in their service, he was given the chance to join a religi
ous order in Warsaw. But young Alexander had already begun to display his might in the main squares of Praga, in nearby neighborhoods, and even beyond the Vistula in the more stylish parts of the city. It was at a feat of strength that involved hoisting a barrel of sauerkraut that young Podgórski caught the eye of The Warsaw Giant who, back then, was still known as Wlad. Impressed by the performance of young Podgórski who, without batting an eye or losing his footing, had, before a crowd of four thousand, managed to heft the barrel brimming with sauerkraut off the ground, the Giant had always remembered him and, once established in America, realized the country was big enough for more than one Polish strongman and wrote to the young man back in Warsaw, inviting him to cross the ocean and join him in Baltimore. A whole continent awaited him, a continent partial to shows of strength and muscle, a continent where a Slavic accent was enough to get you hired as a fairground entertainer. The Giant liked to recall the delightful scene in Warsaw: up on the platform, Podgórski’s pronounced squint had left the crowd come to admire the strongmen’s feats in stitches. But their boorish, hurtful laughter gave way to stunned silence once the young man took hold of the barrel, knees bent. At that very moment, his eyes returned to their normal axis, his gaze straight and steady for as long as his muscles were contracted.
“Look! He’s not cross-eyed anymore!” they cried, pointing up at him.
And as the people of Warsaw looked on dumbfounded, Podgórski had not only lifted the barrel of sauerkraut, he’d stopped squinting too. The potential was not lost on The Warsaw Giant.
Alexander had been kind enough to share the barrel of sauerkraut—it was the winner’s to take home—with the sisters of Praga, who received his mail and read his letters to him since the boy, unlike The Warsaw Giant, was completely illiterate. The nuns had been sad to see their protégé and supplier of foodstuffs leave them (the barrel of sauerkraut was not the only bounty that Alexander had brought back to the convent over the course of his last few months in Warsaw). Beer, sausage, unripened cheese, milk, eggs: the youngster’s exploits tended to be rewarded in kind. The nuns of Praga would never again eat so well, and their sadness was great—as was their hunger—when they gathered on the platform at Warsaw station to bid their final farewells to the young man who looked out at them in cross-eyed fondness from the seat paid for by a generous archbishop.
“I’ll come back, sisters! I’ll come back a very rich man indeed!” the boy cried from the window of the train as it pulled slowly out of the station of the hometown he would never see again.
The call of America had long been ringing in Podgórski’s ears, but he decided to give one last chance to Old Europe before crossing the ocean. And so Alexander left for Krakow to join a traveling circus.
It was the Great Krysinski, tamer of big cats and business associate to the owner of a famous German circus, who snatched him away from Poland and had him hit the roads of Germany. Podgórski was a hit wherever he went. “The Cross-Eyed Pole! Come see him cured through hard work!” In Berlin in 1936, Podgórski was the hottest ticket in town, the platform close enough to the crowd that each and every one of them could see the miracle for themselves as he lifted eight Fräulein sitting on a door.
To the delight of the Berlin audience, Podgórski’s cross-eyed squint disappeared the very instant he lifted his head. The usual stunned silence was followed by a burst of laughter and applause. The circus continued on its way through Germany to Strasbourg, where Podgórski was picked up by a French circus, which was delighted with his number that aroused at once admiration, astonishment, and general hilarity, an exploit in itself for a fairground entertainer. And Podgórski thus roamed from town to town in the Third Republic. From Troyes to Sète, from Orange to Angers, and from Cannes to Vannes, he discovered the beautiful country that was France and learned the language of the people—or more specifically, the women—who lived there. The German circus manager had been right about his Polish performer: Podgórski was a randy young fellow, a fact that went completely unnoticed in 1930s France. And if amused reports from any number of his French lovers were to be believed, the Pole also lost his squint at the very height of passion. But Podgórski skipped over this particular detail as he recounted his origins to the Ironstone sisters in the field in Gouverneur. Something told him that, with a little luck and a helping hand from his Canadian colleague, Beth might very well have an opportunity to witness this rare, inexplicable phenomenon for herself by sunrise.
As he explained how fate had brought him to this New York field to drag a black Oldsmobile one hundred yards, a crowd had begun to gather. The onlookers had followed the Ironstone sisters, curious to see just how far the unseemly young ladies would go to win the handsome Canadian’s heart. While their behavior may have been unbecoming, in America’s outlying counties where there was nothing but Deathly Boredom to be had, agricultural fairs had become carnival-like events where propriety and decorum tended to be set aside. After all, weren’t fairs a place to celebrate nature’s bounty and generosity? Standing outside the open trailer, twenty-odd people were now hanging on Podgórski’s every word. Lamontagne used the distraction to gobble up the rest of the roast turkey, tearing it apart, bit by bit. Podgórski ended his story by recounting how in Calais, at the end of a tour that had threatened to take a dramatic turn—another case of ending up in the wrong bed—he had gone to England in the hopes of finding a ship to take him to America. And that’s how he set sail for New York in May 1937, unable to sit still at the thought of discovering a whole new continent of women. In the United States, the Pole discovered a drab, boring country, its cities rough and filthy, its people of no interest to him. The Americans, on the other hand, were fascinated by him. Despite being illiterate, he managed to track down The Warsaw Giant, whose nickname amused him no end. The two men were each delighted to find a compatriot on American soil, but the Giant was of no great use to Podgórski. The troupe he had been traveling with had gone bankrupt in the wake of the Great Depression and all the two men could do was travel across America from town to town, from Sioux to Cheyenne, from Miami to Toledo, from Bismarck to Lafayette, entering strongman contests and renting out their brute strength to industry, agriculture, and the occasional mine. Their trajectories separated, but sometimes they met up again, as in August 1939 in Gouverneur, New York.
Podgórski and Lamontagne had first met at the Montcalm Hall in Montreal, on the corner of Saint-Zotique and De Lorimier. Both were entered in a bench press event that Lamontagne, newly arrived from the depths of the countryside, won hands down. Podgórski, dumbfounded by the young man’s might, wanted to get to know him better in order to uncover the secrets of his strength, and so an admirable symbiotic relationship developed between the two. Young Lamontagne, absurdly handsome and well built, attracted the young women of Montreal to him like a magnet. He would keep his favorite—who, strictly speaking, wasn’t always the prettiest since he was especially partial to big brown eyes, curly hair, and slender hands—and toss his second choice into the waiting arms of Podgórski, who became Lamontagne’s commensal: one who lives with and eats at the same table with another, content with leftovers and causing no harm. In return, Podgórski would interpret into English for Lamontagne. Louis seemed to be on the lookout for what others might have termed “imperfections” among these one-night stands. A gap between two teeth, a few merry pounds too many, a surfeit of freckles . . . every conquest had a particular trait that lingered in his memory. Because, for Louis, that’s what grace was all about. Like braille to the blind man, all that mattered were the little rough spots on the smooth surface of a beautiful woman. He wanted to feel them all. Together Podgórski and Lamontagne had bought the blue wooden trailer from a family of New England dwarfs that had opted for the comforts of sedentary life and now ran a home near Albany where, in return for fifty cents, it was possible to observe them at leisure through a one-way mirror. Tired of staying in seedy hotels, Podgórski and Lamontagne had bought the vehicle—complete with a couple of old nags—for n
ext to nothing and now moved at a snail’s pace along America’s roads.
“And what about you, Mr. Lamontagne. Have you always been so strong?” Beth Ironstone was desperate for the Canadian to speak.
Louis set down the turkey leg he had been picking clean to explain that he couldn’t recall ever being weak. He stood up and, in front of a crowd of onlookers that was growing by the minute, began to explain how he had become known as Louis “The Horse” Lamontagne back in Rivière-du-Loup. Louis flung an apple at a little boy who had been hungrily eyeing the half-eaten turkey. Now, whenever Podgórski interpreted one of Louis Lamontagne’s stories, he would put all his cognitive faculties into the tale, making every effort to come up with just the right word, the best possible expression. His Slavic accent imbued Louis Lamontagne’s stories with an exotic perfume that the American public couldn’t get enough of, fascinated as they were to hear what went on in a land so close recounted with such a distant accent. No matter the hall or field where Lamontagne performed, he always seemed to attract two or three brazen young ladies, and sometimes even a few boys eager to develop a similar build. Saving a young lady for his traveling companion was no hardship. And he couldn’t have dreamed of a more dedicated interpreter to bring the stories from his land of snow to life.
“Do you have a wife, Horse?”
The fateful question slipped out of Floria like a belch and amused the crowd no end. Bracing themselves for disappointment, they expected the Canadian to reply that he was married and to pull a miniature tutu-wearing French Canadian out of a hat for them. They laughed nervously. What could Louis Lamontagne’s wife possibly look like? What Delilah of the North had managed to tame this Samson? Without letting the crowd stew too long, Podgórski delivered the sweetest word in the world to the ears of Floria and Beth: unmarried. The word brought with it hope and promises of better tomorrows. He was young, of course, but didn’t they say that Catholics went about nature’s duties with the utmost diligence? It was conceivable that, despite being only twenty years old, Lamontagne had already sired lots of children. The truth was not far off, but Podgórski knew only the truth that Lamontagne had chosen to reveal. He strongly suspected that his Canadian pal had, just like him, left more than one kid behind along the way, and twice already, in the space of eighteen months spent wandering America, he had witnessed the same scene: a tearful woman would find Louis after two or three months of desperate searching. Show up at an event with the longest of Lent faces. Wait patiently until the very end of the contest, then ask to speak to Louis in private. Would sob. And would leave, defeated. Teal-colored eyes in Ohio, Iowa, Michigan . . . And soon in New York, too. Podgórski, born in similar circumstances and himself father to a multitude of little American bastards, found nothing reprehensible about the matter. The sisters of Warsaw had always told him he was a child of God, and for this simple reason he had nothing to fear from men or their judgment.