Escape
It had been drizzling all day, and there was still all that water in the air that couldn’t quite make itself into rain. It caught on Portia’s coat and her hair as she moved through it. It stowed away.
Caroline’s blue suitcase was strapped on the back of the bicycle. Portia had kidnapped Caroline’s belongings, knowing that they would likely never be retrieved by her neglectful mother but would instead be relegated to the collection of discarded items left by other girls over the years. She could not stand to think of Caroline’s things in that trunk, gathering dust and the hazy scent of mildew. From underneath the blanket of torn letters, she had carefully extracted the good-girl books (repellent things) and pushed them underneath the dresser in her room. Her own clothes remained in its drawers. This was her exodus, her new beginning, and it seemed fitting for her to take whatever she could of Caroline along.
Perhaps, Portia thought, it might count as a kind of penance. She hoped it would not be considered grand larceny instead.
She had her little cloth bag in the bicycle’s basket, with some stolen food, her stolen ledger, and Caroline’s letter scraps. She wasn’t going to leave them with Mister. He didn’t deserve to keep them. Even if he didn’t know he had them.
She had a trowel from the garden shed.
She had a stop to make before she left town.
She was leaving later than she had wanted to because Mister, usually a creature of habit, had changed his evening routine and demanded coffee in the parlor before he went upstairs to bed. Portia stood in the hall and waited, watched the minutes shudder past while he sipped from his mother’s best china cup and set it into its matching saucer. Sip. Clink. Sip. Clink.
It was maddening.
Finally, he set cup and saucer on the tray next to his chair and waved his hand once, signaling Portia to retrieve everything and take it to the kitchen. She left the dishes in the sink. By the time Delilah got up in the morning, Portia thought, she’d be miles away and out of earshot. Delilah could yell all she wanted about having to do Portia’s work.
When she walked back down the hallway and peeked into the parlor, Mister was gone. She hadn’t heard his feet on the stairs, but that wasn’t unusual. The house had a way of swallowing sound, turning its inhabitants into silent apparitions. Portia looked around at the dark wood walls, at the worn floors, at the stairs that sagged in the middle. She knew every squeaky spot, every knot in the wood, every dull patch where the finish had worn off under years of thoughtless assault by feet and hands. She was surprised to find herself feeling a twinge of something—regret? longing?—as she readied herself to leave.
But there was no time for that.
She ducked down the hall to the kitchen, where she had hidden her belongings under the sink earlier that morning. She made her way to the back door, opened it carefully so it wouldn’t cry out and betray her, and slipped into darkness. Down the steps. Around the corner of the house. The bicycle was waiting.
It was all so simple.
Except for this:
As Portia pushed off and began to pedal, as the gravel crunched under her wheels and she felt the first rush of motion toward her freedom, one lone shaft of moonlight touched her path and revealed her, just for a moment. And Delilah, watching from the upstairs window, saw her go.
Something about a place where no one has ever been happy makes you pedal extra hard to get away.
Because of the fog and because the shadows were deep, Portia had to feel her way into the cemetery, along the stone wall, to find the gate, down the gate to find the latch. It lifted easily. This gate, unlike others in town, was never locked. Maybe because it was like an extension of the church and God’s door was always supposed to be open. Not a door Portia had ever knocked on before, but for Caroline, she made an exception.
She could see just well enough to find the outline of Mister’s family mausoleum, where generations of ill will were buried. Caroline’s grave was behind it, under a plain slab with a plain engraving Portia traced with her index finger.
CAROLINE ELIZABETH SALES
JANUARY 10, 1922 – MAY 22, 1939
RESIDENT OF THE MCGREAVEY HOME
It had always been easy for Portia to forget that Caroline was three years older—she had been so fragile, so quick to shatter. But seeing the numbers etched in stone, Portia could not help but think how quickly she would surpass Caroline’s final age.
The last line, in smaller type than the rest, was the evidence of Mister’s concession to bury Caroline among his family members. He had, of course, refused her admission into the mausoleum itself but agreed to house her on the McGreavey plot. Caroline’s family had requested this, for they did not want their own land sullied by suicide.
Portia wished for a sharper tool, something that could scratch Mister’s wretched name off Caroline’s grave so she wouldn’t have to spend eternity pinned underneath it. But there was only the trowel.
And she could not afford to spend the time, precious currency that it was.
Portia began to dig. The dirt was still loose at the base of Caroline’s headstone, and it was quick work to fashion a pocket in the ground just large enough to hold the collection of letters that Caroline had torn so thoroughly apart. Portia couldn’t have said why, exactly, she felt that this was the correct place for them. It was entirely possible that Caroline would be angered by this and come back from the Great Beyond to nag Portia unceasingly.
Portia almost hoped that she would.
Perhaps she was simply tempting fate.
Her task completed, she patted the soil back into place, tucking in a few errant strands of paper that peeked out of the dirt like curious insects. She decided against taking the trowel with her and looked around for a good spot in which to leave it. It was only then that she noticed the other headstones.
Twenty or thirty of them, set even farther behind the mausoleum than Caroline’s lone monument. They were arranged in two long rows, like chess pieces. Portia pulled her coat more tightly around herself and stepped closer, close enough to read a name.
RUBY LEDWITH
The cold she felt now was nothing to do with the rain, or the graveyard air. She peered at the marker next to Ruby’s.
DAISY SINCLAIR CREAMER
And the next.
HAZEL DANFORTH
There were names that were new to her as well, but most of them were familiar. She did not need to check her notebook; she had read the names so many times that she knew them as well as if she had known the girls themselves. As if they all had been friends once, instead of just coincidental passengers on the same nightmarish vessel. And here they were, her imaginary friends.
She had wondered, hadn’t she, what had become of them?
Now she knew. Mister was worse than what even she had imagined. He had recognized something in her, she thought, after Caroline died. Another killer. A kindred spirit.
She sat down, hard, on the damp grass.
She sat there for a long time.
Portia could not see Mister’s house from where she sat, but she felt it there, gazing down at her from the hill, sending its dank breath through the fog to surround her. Finally, shaking, unsteady, she made her way back to the bicycle, took her place on its back, and began to move.
PART TWO
Welcome to the Wonder Show
Portia’s legs ached, but she kept pedaling. Her toes were numb, and her feet were burning and swollen in her shoes, but she kept pedaling. She kept going until she found the circus.
The rain had finally stopped and her clothes were nearly dry, but parts of the road were too muddy for riding, and she had to walk the last mile. She kept her eyes forward, trying not to think about the small army of headstones in the graveyard, the girls pinned beneath them like butterflies under glass. When she saw the tips of the huge tents piercing the dawn-streaked sky, she almost wept with relief. Before she arrived at the foot of those canvas peaks, however, she found herself surrounded by a smaller clu
ster of trucks, trailers, and tents that were dwarfed by the rest.
There was a boy sitting in the back of a pickup truck, shaggy-haired and lanky, his face pink with sun. He was reading as if the whole world around him were nothing more than a painting. But he looked up when Portia stopped in front of him, and she just started talking, before she lost her nerve.
“You work here?” She tried to keep her voice even, but she was breathing hard, and she had to squint because the sun was behind him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Are you the boss?”
“Only of myself.”
“Well, is there a boss for everyone else?” She was getting a headache behind her eyes, and her shoes, still damp, rubbed at the edges of her feet. “Someone I can talk to about a job?”
“That’d be Mosco,” he said.
The boy folded the page corner down, closed his book, and climbed out of the truck. Closer up, he looked older than Portia had thought. And taller, too. She had seen young men on her trips into Brewster Falls, but those boys had seemed like paintings, part of the scenery, separated from her by great expanses. They met her eye only occasionally, by accident, and they never exchanged words or held her gaze. This boy did. Embarrassed that he might think she was staring, Portia diverted her eyes to the truck and saw that it was red.
“Is this your truck?” she asked.
“It’s the truck I drive.” He grinned and pointed at the red bicycle. “Your favorite color?”
She wanted to ask about the slip of cardboard, the one with the dates and towns that had seemed so much like a secret message meant just for her. But she knew it would sound strange, possibly even crazy, so she asked instead, “Can you take me to Mosco?”
Neither of them spoke as they wove between the fading painted trailers, ducked under half-empty clotheslines, passed through the temporary town the circus became when it was settled in place. It seemed so familiar, this progression of shapes and structures, like the set of a play Portia had seen before. She kept both hands on her bicycle, leading it beside her as if it were a dog that might try to run away. When they came to the midway, Portia saw a bigger cluster of trucks and trailers on the other side, like a small city, and heard the strange calls of animals through the heavy air. Brawny roustabouts roamed the slim spaces between everything else, hoisting coils of rope, bales of hay, equipment, toting all of these things like ants carrying crumbs to their colony.
“That’s the circus,” the boy told her. “You want a circus job, gotta talk to the ringmaster. You want a carnival job, you talk to Mosco.”
She wasn’t about to admit she didn’t know the difference. “Lead the way,” she said.
Mosco turned out to be a squat, bulky man with the most perfectly bald head Portia had ever seen. He was holding a huge iron ball in both hands, curling it toward his chest and back out again. The muscles in his arms looked like the ropes that staked the tents to the ground. He looked, Portia thought, like a man made of fists.
The boy cleared his throat, and Mosco dropped the iron ball on the ground with a satisfying thud. He put his cap on and said, “Gideon.”
Portia realized then that she hadn’t known the boy’s name or told him hers. She still had the chance to make up a new identity for herself, a fake name, a tragic story. But she was unnerved when Mosco suddenly removed his hat again to wipe his forehead. The sun shone off his bald head like a spotlight, and when he growled, “Who’re you?” she blurted, “Portia Remini, sir.”
“Whaddya want?”
Gideon cut in. “She wants a job. Maybe she could help in the pie car.”
“What is she, your girlfriend or something?”
Gideon blushed violently. Portia fought the urge to laugh.
“I can make pies,” she said. “Apple, cherry, whatever you want.”
“Pie car’s not for making pie,” Mosco grumbled. “Ain’t even a car since we went back to being a truck show.”
“The pie car’s the kitchen,” Gideon explained.
“I can cook. Just about anything. My Aunt Sophia taught me all her recipes . . .” She could hear the desperation in her own voice, and it made her feel itchy.
Mosco grunted. “Can you make chicken-fried steak?”
“Of course,” she said. “Best you’ve ever had.”
He put his cap on again.
“You’re hired,” he said. “For now. But I want chicken-fried steak for dinner tonight, and if it’s no good, we’re leaving you here when we pull up stakes.”
“Fair enough,” Portia said.
“She can stay with Violet,” Mosco told Gideon. “Waste of space, that girl having a trailer all to herself.”
“Right,” said Gideon.
As they walked away, he asked, “Is your chicken-fried steak really that good?”
Portia shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve never made it before.”
“Oh.”
“How hard can it be?” Portia heard the faintest note of fear in her voice. She hoped Gideon hadn’t detected it.
“Right,” he said again. Then, nodding at the red bicycle, “Can I take that for you?”
She was surprised to find that she did not want to hand it over. Her grip tightened on the handlebars, and she stopped walking. “Maybe you could show me a safe place. Where I could keep it.”
He nodded, paused. Waited until she moved again. He did not rush her.
Violet Lucasie did not look like a carny.
She looked, in fact, like many of the girls from The Home— she wore an expression that was a mixture of hope and weariness, that said she was waiting for something better to come along but wasn’t holding her breath.
Portia knew that look, and she was almost relieved to see it. It meant that maybe she was not in a completely foreign place after all.
Violet was sitting in a beach chair outside a trailer with chipped wood paneling, wearing huge sunglasses that were, Portia supposed, meant to look glamorous. She was reading a movie magazine and teasing one molasses-black curl with her index finger.
Gideon cleared his throat. “Hey, Violet.”
“Hey yourself,” said Violet, still looking at her magazine.
“I brought you something,” Gideon said.
Portia wasn’t fond of being referred to as “something,” but for all she knew, this was common custom in the carnival world. She hid her annoyance and extended her hand. “Portia.”
Violet rolled her eyes up slowly and looked at Portia over her sunglasses. Portia’s hand stayed up, and after a long minute Violet reached out and shook it.
“You staying with me?”
“Guess so.”
“Mosco said,” Gideon added.
“Fine by me,” said Violet. “It’ll be nice to have another normal around.” She bit into the word like it was a tough piece of meat.
Gideon didn’t take the bait. “You’ll bring her to the pie car later on?”
“Sure. She can help me with the dinner shift.”
Gideon nodded, tipped an invisible hat to Portia, and walked off toward the midway.
“What’s a ‘normal’?” Portia asked, as soon as he was out of earshot.
“I am,” Violet said. “And Gideon. And you, unless you’re hiding something.” She winked.
Portia said nothing.
“Don’t you know where you are?” Violet asked her.
“Youngsville?”
“God only knows. I don’t mean the town.” Violet twirled a finger at the trailers, the dead-grass midway, the tents, the thick smells, everything. “I mean this.”
“The carnival?”
“This is no ordinary carnival, darling. You’ve signed on with Mosco’s Traveling Wonder Show.”
Portia still felt itchy and hot. “Sounds fine to me.”
Violet smirked. “Then clearly you’ve never been through the ten-in-one.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered, “Step right up! Behold the terrible wonders of nature! The Fattest Woman in the World! The Lobste
r Boy! The Dreaded Albinos of Darkest Africa!”
Portia’s sleeping memory stirred again, revealing a stage, the view from a stranger’s shoulders as she watched The Pinhead playing the accordion. The man in the white suit. The sign that said STRANGE PEOPLE. She remembered Aunt Sophia’s hand pulling her away. It’s not appropriate.
Violet stood up and stepped close so her mouth was almost touching Portia’s ear. “Welcome to the freak show, little girl.”
And despite the heat in the air all around her, Portia shivered.
The Pie Car
Violet never stopped talking. She talked while Portia unpacked (which wasn’t really unpacking because she had so little and also because she didn’t want to get too settled, in case Mosco left her behind after the chicken-fried steak test). She talked through the trailer door while Portia changed into her other dress, the one that wasn’t covered with dust and sweat from riding a bicycle across the prairie. She talked all the way from the trailer to the pie car and kept talking while she and Portia sliced a crateful of carrots and another of potatoes. They all went into the biggest pot of boiling water Portia had ever seen—or perhaps it seemed big only because the kitchen was so small. It was in a converted trailer, which, like all the other trailers that belonged to the carnival, was about half the size of a school bus. The inside had all sorts of shelves and cabinets that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, and the aisle down the middle was just wide enough for Portia to stand back to back with Violet, which meant she could pretend to be listening and didn’t have to nod or make eye contact to keep up the charade.
“Mosco contracts with small-time circuses, shows with trick riders and dog acts and a tightrope walker or two. Maybe they have a menagerie with a few old elephants and patchy tigers. This season’s show is better than most—the troupe of clowns has a first-rate act going. But you’ll never see them on the midway.”
Wonder Show Page 6