Wonder Show

by Hannah Barnaby

  He hopped back to standing and said, “Apology is good for the soul. I try to apologize at least once a day.”

  “Have you ever tried not doing anything you’d have to apologize for?”

  “Absolutely not. Now, about your little vocal problem . . .”

  “What about a microphone?”

  Jackal shook his head vehemently. “No, no, and no. It distorts the voice, and it is a scientific fact that speaking through an audio device makes you fifty percent less trustworthy in the eyes of your fellow man. You must speak directly to the ears of your audience, nothing between you.”

  “Nothing except a bunch of stories that are barely true.”

  “Barely true is still true enough,” he said. “Now be quiet so I can think.”

  Quiet was not much of a possibility on the lot. There was always a symphony of sounds, even between shows: voices everywhere, truck motors and the hum of the generators, hammers pounding tent stakes, horses, elephants, tigers grunting in the heat, circus mothers calling circus children, the bell from the pie car pinging faintly in the wind, music from dozens of radios, layering into one another, clustering like leaves on a branch. A steady combination of noises that equaled quiet, the ever-present purr in the background.

  And right now it was the sound of Jackal deciding Portia’s future.

  She waited.

  Jackal paced.

  She waited some more.

  “Good girl,” he said finally. “I think I’ve got it.”

  “And?”

  “We’ll switch places,” he said. “You’ll be the inside talker and I’ll do the bally. It’s perfect, actually—I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I bring them in, you lead them through, and I meet you at the other end for the blowoff.”

  “But what do I have to do?”

  “The rubes will adore having a girl in there with them, a soft voice, making them comfortable.” Jackal was hopping around like a boy on Christmas morning. “Oh, the contrast! Between you and the ones on stage! We’ll have Mrs. Collington make you a new dress. A white one. Oh, I’m breathless with the perfection of it! I think I need to sit down.”

  “Jackal, what will I say?”

  “Just what I taught you. Same sad stories, only now you’ll be standing right in front of the freaks.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call them that.”

  Jackal smirked. “What should I call them? The talent? The artists?”

  “They’re people.”

  “Darling, we’re all people. That is not the point. There are three parts of the Wonder Show: the human marvels, the freaks, and the talkers. We all know who we are in the show, and who we are when the show is over.” He jabbed a finger at the bally line. “This is the show, and this show has freaks. You see?”

  “Yes, I see.”

  Jackal shook his head. “No, you don’t. Not yet. But you will.” He leaned in and tapped the tip of her nose. “Once you’re inside.”

  Resisting the urge to slap his hand away, Portia smiled sweetly and did not move. In her time with Jackal—indeed, in her time with the entire show—she had learned that it was better to conceal her thoughts until the right moment. She was a guest here, a temporary passenger, and she could not leave too large a mark. Mister had surely sent someone to fetch her by now. She could not risk offending those who were willing to help her hide.

  Even if they didn’t know, or want to know, whom she was hiding from.

  Just a little more time, she thought as she made her way to the pie car. I’ll find Max, I know it. I just need a little more time.

  Fortunetelling

  In Portia’s dream, she had sisters, and their parents were missionaries who took them to live in a warm place. There was a monastery nearby. It was a country made of hills.

  There was a family who had sons, and it was decided somehow that the boy called Everett was intended for Portia’s older sister. But when he came, he didn’t want her. He wanted Portia.

  She knew she would have to leave her family in order to make things right. It was the first dream Portia could remember in such a long time that she asked Doula about it.

  Doula shrugged her left shoulder, which meant she had an idea but didn’t want to say. A right-shoulder shrug meant she really had nothing to tell. Portia knew the code only because Jackal got mad at Doula one day after he asked her for the winning horses and all she told him was to quit gambling. Like a child having a tantrum, he told Portia the only one of Doula’s secrets he knew. This was the first time it had proven useful.

  “Doula,” Portia said. “Please.”

  “Maybe . . .”

  The world paused under her feet.

  “Maybe you know is time for you to go.”

  “But I don’t want to go,” Portia said unevenly. “I just got here.”

  Doula tapped her glass, and Portia poured more vodka from the bottle on the table. “Why should you get to choose? The rest of us, we go where someone else tells us. We follow circus, circus follows route card, route card is made by some big man in New York City. We don’t choose.” She tossed her head, and her earrings sang. “You will learn if you stay here. You will see.”

  “Can you tell me anything else? About my dream? What it means?”

  Doula emptied her glass with one practiced flip of the hand, set it back on the table, and leaned back in her chair. “You think you are the first orphan to dream about family? It means you miss them. It means you are looking.”

  “I’m not an orphan,” Portia said. (She hoped it was true.)

  Doula shrugged both shoulders. Portia didn’t know what that meant.

  “Do you . . .”

  “What?”

  “Do you think I’ll find them?”

  Doula shrugged. “Sometimes, is a very big world. Sometimes, very small.”

  It was the kind of answer that wasn’t an answer. But it was all Portia would get that day.

  The bottle was empty.

  Doula

  I know what Portia want, sure. Want someone tell her what to do. Maybe she don’t know why she come back to me day after day, asking questions. She don’t ask one question, most important question, see? She ask around the question. Getting close, maybe. I don’t push.

  I learn that a long time ago, was something my grandmother told me. She said these people, they think they want to know the future. They come in, pay you money, ask, “Does he love me? Does she miss me? What will happen?” But who wants to hear the truth? No one. Is only not knowing the truth keeps life interesting. Makes life possible to go on.

  So I don’t tell her what I see around her.

  But she got a ghost. A girl. I see this girl all around Portia everywhere she is, close to her side every day. I don’t tell her. Maybe Portia know this girl is there. I think she can feel her, and this is why her dreams become strange.

  The ghosts, they don’t need to sleep. They wait for their people to sleep, and the door between the worlds, it opens then, and the ghosts send their messages. Their people don’t always listen, but the ghosts will not give up.

  They got nothing but time. They got nothing else to do but try to make themselves heard. And this girl ghost, she is not done with Portia yet.

  I will tell Portia this, sure.

  If she ask me.

  Dining, Carnival Style

  They ate after the roustabouts and the circus performers. One group did not mix with another, and everyone had their own opinion on why that was.

  “They can’t stand to look at us,” Jimmy said, as sourly as he said most things.

  “That’s not why,” Anna said softly.

  “Aw,” Jimmy snapped, “what do you know? You’re normal-looking.”

  “Except when she’s getting knives thrown at her,” Polly pointed out. “That’s just plain scary.”

  Pippa rolled her eyes.

  It was the breakfast shift. They were all sitting around the long wooden table on the long wooden benches that often put splinters in thei
r backsides. The air in the meal tent was hot and heavy with the smell of fry oil. No matter what she and Violet tried to do, everything that came out of the pie car tasted as if it had been deep-fried. Even the scrambled eggs.

  “I think,” Marie said, “they don’t care what we look like. They are used to looking at us by now, yes?” She directed the question at Mosco, who was sitting opposite her and apparently eating his eggs without chewing.

  Swallowing hard, he said, “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, circus folks don’t care what anybody looks like. Far as they’re concerned, they’re the only ones in the world.”

  “Is that true?” Portia asked Gideon quietly.

  “Course it’s true!” Mosco bellowed. “Don’t bother whispering around me, girl, ’cause I got ears like a bat and I hear everything.”

  “You got eyes like a bat, too?” Portia retorted.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Marie laughed. “She means you are blind, Mosco. She means you don’t see what’s right in front of you.”

  “I see plenty,” Mosco said. “Like right now, for instance, I see the whole bunch of you sitting around a table like you’re on vacation or something.”

  “All right,” Gideon said. “We’re going.” He grabbed Portia’s arm and pulled her away from the tent.

  “Hey!” she yelped.

  Gideon ignored it. “If you’re smart, and you seem to think you are, you won’t bait Mosco like that.”

  “I wasn’t baiting him,” Portia said. “I just don’t like being treated like a child.”

  “Well, this is how it works around here: you’ve got to prove you’re not a child before anyone will treat you like anything else. In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re the youngest one here, except for Joseph. And you can’t expect to show up on your little red bicycle and have everyone think you’re a grownup.”

  She glared at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “Now you’re doing it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Good,” she said. “And none of you know a thing about where I come from, so you can just stick it in your ear.”

  “Real mature,” he called after her, as she stalked away.

  She knew he was right. That was the worst part, really. She couldn’t afford to be singled out or, worse, told to leave. Did that happen here? Did everyone get to stay until they wanted out, or could they be banned from the kingdom? Where would she go?

  She was so preoccupied with the noise of these questions, she did not hear Gideon coming, catching up just as she reached her trailer. The short walk through the heavy humid air had, lucky for him, taken most of the fight out of her. Now she just felt limp.

  “I’m sorry,” he started, but she waved it away.

  “You don’t have to,” she told him. “You were right. I should have kept my mouth shut.” She smiled ruefully. “That has never been one of my talents.”

  He ran one hand through his shaggy hair, then did it again. “How about a haircut? Is that one of your talents?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done it before.”

  “Be right back,” Gideon said, and trotted off, returning after a few minutes with a pair of scissors, a comb, and two small mirrors. “So I can check the back,” he said, holding them up and smiling. “Keep an eye on you.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Portia asked him. “You trust me to do this?”

  “Any reason I shouldn’t?”

  I killed my best friend, she thought. How about that?

  Then she shook her head and held her hand out for the scissors and the comb. “None that I can think of. Sit.”

  She perched on the trailer steps, and Gideon plunked down in the dirt in front of her. His hair had always just looked brown, and often dusty, but now she could see strands of gold running through it, glinting in the sun. The back of his neck was smooth, vulnerable. She was tempted to rest her fingertips there, just for a second; instead, she brushed her own hair away from her face with the back of her hand, flicked the comb into place, and began to trim.

  For a few minutes, the only sound between them was the raspy voice of the scissors. Portia was cautious with her cutting, though she suspected Gideon wouldn’t care if his hair was even or not. It looked as if he had performed his last haircut himself.

  “So, any luck?” he said.

  “I think I’m getting it,” she answered. “It’s kind of a mess back here.”

  He laughed. “Not my hair. Finding your father. Any luck so far?”

  “Oh.” Her scissors paused. “No. Not yet.”

  “Well, you’ve got time,” he said reassuringly. “Plenty of stops left before the show heads south for the winter.”

  Portia wasn’t so certain. She had seen other girls, other runaways, return to The Home in the custody of expressionless men in dark suits, driving dark cars. Had seen Mister giving them money and shaking their hands, thanking them for bringing back his charges. He did not take kindly to girls leaving his house without permission. And the girls who were brought back had a way of disappearing again. In her bunkhouse stories, Portia had made Mister into Bluebeard, a secret killer. After what she had seen in the graveyard, she wondered if she had been closer to the truth than she’d meant to be.

  But she did not say any of this to Gideon. She did not say anything.

  He held one mirror over his shoulder so she could see his eyes and she knew he could see hers. “Don’t give up,” he said. “This can be a magical place.”

  “Now who sounds like a child?” she said, and pushed his hand away.

  From the Notebook of Portia Remini

  Where We Have Been What I Am Tired Of

  Dixon Potatoes

  Freeport Driving

  Dubuque Dust

  Maquoketa Waiting

  Davenport

  Muscatine

  Macomb

  Angry

  Jimmy hated everything. Or so it seemed. Since Portia had met him, he had expressed a biting hatred for Hollywood, televisions, telephones, sewing machines, women with red hair, men who wore cowboy hats, children, the smell of cigar smoke, steps, ladders, heat, working indoors, sleeping outdoors, cats, dogs, elephants, horses, and clowns. It was a matter of course that he hated some of these things, like the steps, which presented a struggle on a near-daily basis. The rest made Portia wonder why Jimmy stuck around the carnival.

  Perhaps because there was a steady supply of the only things Jimmy didn’t hate, which were cigarettes and whiskey and Jim.

  The dwarf and the giant went everywhere together. Jimmy had finally conquered Jim’s habit of offering to carry him around—he appreciated how much easier it would have been to get around, but he couldn’t abide people staring and pointing, and after their picture appeared in Billboard with the caption IRISH GIANT AND SON, Jimmy told Jim he’d walk on his own feet or stay where he was.

  Jim pointed out that the photograph had been an honest mistake, probably due to the fact that they were wearing matching pants. (They often ordered trousers made of the same fabric so that after Jimmy cut the legs off his, Jim could sew the extra material onto his cuffs and have pants that were nearly the proper length.) Nevertheless, Jimmy’s pride had been wounded, and like the elephants he detested, he possessed an extremely long and accurate memory. It kept his pain fresh. It did not allow him to forgive.

  He preferred it that way.

  Portia knew how to recognize the faces of the wounded, and she knew how to steer herself around them so they did not notice her. Living in Mister’s house had cultivated that skill. Being in the orbit of an unpredictable planet, one that could explode or veer off course at any moment, had taught her to feel for the energy in a room before she entered it. If the room felt hot, she would step carefully as if walking through a minefield. If the room crackled and hissed, she would not go in at all.

  The carnival was just like any other house, really. The trailers were the bedrooms, the pie car was the kitchen, the outside spaces in bet
ween were the hallways and the alcoves. The bally was the front porch, and the sideshow tent was the parlor where guests were received. Portia could feel the energy of each part of this house, just the way she had navigated her way through Mister’s. And she felt the energy of the inhabitants as well.

  So she sidestepped Jimmy, until he cornered her and demanded to know what her problem was.

  Portia was genuinely flummoxed. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ah,” Jimmy spat, “you never begged for anything in your life.” And apparently he considered their conversation finished, because he walked off in the direction of his truck.

  Portia, however, had spent several days intermittently working with Jackal and peeling potatoes until her fingers pruned, and she was in no mood for Jimmy’s hit-and-run abuse.

  “Get back here!” she hollered.

  He didn’t even slow down. So she strode after him, but somehow, despite his lack of stature, she couldn’t manage to catch up with him. It was as if she were in one of those dreams where she’d forgotten how to walk and every step was a concerted mental effort. Jimmy didn’t stop until he got to his and Jim’s truck.

  They’d pooled their money to buy it, and modified it themselves so they didn’t have to rely on anyone else to drive. The truck, like Jimmy, seemed designed to repel anyone curious enough to come near it. It was spotted with rust, and the windows were thoroughly scratched, as if the previous owner had regularly massaged the truck with sandpaper and handfuls of gravel. Jim and Jimmy liked it that way. They knew it wouldn’t get stolen, and the truck being in the condition it was, they hadn’t felt any guilt about cutting the front seat in half.

  The passenger side of the front seat had been discarded. Jim could sit in the back and stretch his legs clear through. He could easily have reached the pedals, if the absent half of the seat had been on the driver’s side, but Jimmy was convinced Jim didn’t have the attention span to drive (even though Jim had patiently tailored every one of Jimmy’s suits). So he strapped wood blocks to the gas, the brake, and the clutch and brought the remaining half of the front seat as close to the steering wheel as it would go. He got himself a thick soft cushion so he could see over the dashboard, and it was this cushion he settled into now as he blatantly ignored Portia’s attempts to get his attention.