Burntown

by Jennifer McMahon

  “Friend?” Necco’s head is pounding. She doesn’t like where this is going. Not one bit.

  “Hermes. He came to see me last month, asking questions about you and your mama. He wouldn’t let it go. He was determined to find out what really happened to your mother. To your father and brother as well. He’s the one who was killed last night, right?”

  “Yes,” Necco says, just as a terrifying thought comes to her, catching her by surprise, nearly knocking her over with its force.

  “Maybe they were all killed by the same person. My father and Errol, Mama, and now Hermes.”

  Miss Abigail looks up at the bridge.

  “Could be,” she says.

  “Is it Snake Eyes?”

  Miss Abigail looks at Necco knowingly, but doesn’t answer.

  Necco stares into the brown, swirling water and thinks back to the warnings her mother gave her: how Snake Eyes was out there, after them. That he was responsible for the Great Flood, for the deaths of Daddy and Errol. She even said he was to blame for the accident that killed Daddy’s parents.

  Necco looks up from the water now to the old woman before her. “Miss Abigail, I never believed my mother. I never thought we were actually in danger. I never thought there even was a Snake Eyes. Maybe if I had—”

  It’s like a cannonball in the gut—this new knowledge. If she’d only believed her mother, believed they were really in danger. And Hermes, his death was all her fault. If she’d known the truth, she could have warned him.

  “Maybes do no good, child,” Miss Abigail says. “What’s important is that you know now. What’s important is what you do with this information.”

  Necco nods, realizing that her own past is the key to all of this. Everything came back to the events on the day of the Great Flood, which her mother said Snake Eyes was responsible for. If she could remember what really happened that day, she might have a clue.

  “What should I do?” she asks Miss Abigail.

  The old woman thinks for a minute, gazing up at the pigeons who are returning to the bridge, like the answer might be there in their soft murmurs.

  “You should go to the Winter House. You’ll be safe there. You go and stay out of sight. Tomorrow night, when the moon is full, you come find me. We’ll ask the snuff for guidance, to show the path you’re meant to take.”

  “Okay,” Necco says. She pulls on her boots.

  “You hurry now, girl,” Abigail says. “You run like it’s the Devil himself on your trail.”

  Pru

  Her father always told her, You, Prudence Elizabeth Small, my tiny elf child—you are going to grow up to be famous. And she came to see he was right. He was a clever man, a cobbler with a gift for predictions. Ronald Small died when Pru was nine, so he didn’t get to see his little girl all grown up and the star of the show, but she pictures him sometimes, watching her from way up in heaven. She imagines he is one of those bright beams of light shining down from the peak of the big top, fuzzy with smoke and dust, a ray straight from God. She hears her daddy’s voice mixed in with the applause and oohs and aahs when she comes out to do her tricks. The audience’s voices shake from the thrill, the strange rush she gives them.

  Rapture she calls it. The experience she gives them is something close to divine, and she controls every detail. Even when they laugh, it’s because she means for them to. They’ve never seen anything like her, Pru Small, and she knows her daddy would be proud.

  She hears him say, Good girl. You made the big time.

  When Pru does the hula hoop dance, she stands on tiptoes like some tiny ballerina, spinning and spinning until she’s dizzy; dizzy with that sawdust, elephant shit, lion piss smell that’s all mixed together with greasy popcorn, roasted peanuts, candy apples. It’s the smell that keeps her coming back, brings her out, night after night, all ruffles and sequins. Sometimes she thinks she could live off it. She thinks she could live forever all alone on some desert island somewhere, no food or drink, if she just had some of that smell captured in a little bottle she could wear around her neck and pull the cap from now and then, just a little whiff to keep her going.

  Some people think the star of the circus is the ringmaster, the lion tamer, or the lady who swings from the trapeze. But in Pru’s circus, it’s none of those people. In Pru’s circus, she’s the one who keeps them coming back for more. Her: the fat lady, Queen of the Big Top. When she puts on her pink tutu and sparkling silver tights, she knows the whole thing revolves around her, Pru Small—the brightest star, the sun in this solar system of her small traveling circus.

  The irony of her name does not escape her. She thinks that being born with the name Small was just a challenge to grow large. To be as big as she could. Her name is a constant taunt that reminds her to never stop growing, to be her own force of nature. A woman so big that there’s always the threat that she might just gobble everything up: the tiny bright clowns, the kids in the audience sucking candy apples, the lady who hangs by her hair. One good suck, and they’d all disappear somewhere deep inside of her and there’d be nothing left at all. She thinks she’s like that small, bottomless car the clowns get out of; they just keep coming and coming, carrying suitcases, dogs, picnic baskets, even the kitchen sink. She knows she is limitless. She can never be full.

  The elephants are lined up behind her swaying their trunks, smelling pleasure. Mr. Marcelle, the strongman, with his striped suit and handlebar mustache, is right beside her, and when she stops her ballet spin, he takes her hands in his and they dance, move together across the center ring. With him, she feels weightless. There is no such thing as gravity. He knows he is lucky to be touching her, he whispers how beautiful she is, how she is more woman than any man could possibly deserve, could ever hope to hold. They lean this way, then that, and the crowd is laughing, like the whole thing is a joke, not synchronized perfection, not love at its finest.

  Wayne, the ringmaster, all decked out in his tailcoat and top hat with a red bow tie, is blowing his whistle to announce it’s time for the parade. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, welcome to the magic that is the circus! A world where anything is possible.”

  Mr. Marcelle doesn’t let her go but leads her over to Sophie, her favorite of the elephants, and up the ramp she climbs onto Sophie’s back and you’d think she’d be too fat for the elephant to carry, but Sophie never seems to mind.

  Up jumps Emmett, the trick dog, into Pru’s arms, and when she sets him down, he does flips on Sophie’s great gray back, a ruffed polka-dotted collar around his neck, something Pru herself sewed for him, for in addition to being the fat lady, she is seamstress of the circus. It is just one of the many reasons she knows they could not go on without her. She is indispensable.

  The big gray elephant leads the parade around the ring, Pru on her back, waving and smiling like a glamour girl—Miss America, Miss Universe—but she is so much more than those girls. She is the lady who swallowed them for breakfast then belched them out because she didn’t like the taste. Skin and bones, they know nothing of life. Of this life; her life of fresh-baked pleasures: a soft buttery loaf of bread for breakfast, another for lunch, a third for dinner. Those girls are hard and dry as melba toasts.

  In the circus it is possible for fifteen clowns to get out of a tiny car, for a man to put his head inside the mouth of a lion, for a 350-pound woman to be a star.

  The children line up in the cafeteria for lunch, and Pru tips them each a circus wink as they come through. “How are my little acrobats today?” she asks them. The little boys want to run away with the circus. The little girls want pink tutus and silver tights. Gravy on their mashed potatoes. Some want more, others less. She’s not supposed to give them a choice, all plates are supposed to come out the same, but Pru Small understands hunger. She’s learned that hunger is like the biggest, most dangerous lion in the cage. You think you can tame it, you think you can make it your friend, but it’s still a wild beast, a thing of its own. Her stomach grumbles as she pl
aces perfect round balls of mashed potato on plates using an ice cream scoop. Ladles the beef and gravy over the top. String beans on the side.

  Sometimes it’s a game the children play, to see how much food she will give them. They ask for more, more, more, a Pru Small–size portion, and she does not disappoint. She holds nothing back. There is always plenty and plenty more where that came from.

  Pru Small has worked at Our Lady of Hope Catholic School for twelve years now. She is the lady in charge of the cafeteria. They call her Mrs. Small, although she has never been married. Some of the teachers they call Miss, but her, she’s a Mrs. to them and she’s gotten used to the title, and to the secret life they must think she leads with Mr. Small and all their kids, like the little old lady who lived in the shoe. Different from her life at school, where she plans the menus. Cheeseburger casserole. Fish sticks on Fridays. She places the orders for cases of frozen meat, huge cans of wax beans. She makes sure they stay within budget. Makes sure there is always enough.

  Some of the children know her secret, although others go through all thirteen years without knowing. Some learn in the first week of kindergarten, when they come to lunch in tears, crying for Mommy, wanting to go home. Pru brings them an extra cookie, leans down, and whispers in their ears, “Do you want to know a secret?” And they give a sniffly nod.

  “I come from the circus,” she tells them, and the crying stops, the child looks up at her with wonder in his eyes as they are both transported to a place where magic can happen. Pru tells a circus story, and soon the child is smiling, smelling the popcorn and elephants, holding his breath as the tightrope walkers dance overhead. The circus is a universal language, and Mrs. Small is gifted in its tongue. She describes Mr. Marcelle, Emmett the trick dog, the lady who swings by her hair. She talks and talks until it’s time to go back behind the counter, back to cleaning up the hot table; restocking the bins for the older kids, who come during second and third lunch period; refilling the potatoes and meat gravy, the green beans that none of the kids seem to like.

  Pru’s plate is piled high, mountains of potatoes with firm, sculpted peaks. The gravy is good today, salty and full of fatty meat. The doctor tells her to lay off the salt, to stay away from all these potatoes, all this bread. Carbohydrates are death to the dieter, he tells her, but she butters another slice, sops up the gravy. The fat lady’s got to eat to stay in business. The circus would fail if the fat lady got thin. Pru’s secret goal is to reach five hundred pounds. Her plan is to eat a little more each day. To keep going even after she is finally full. To take just a few more bites.

  Her doctor prescribes blood pressure pills and inhalers for her asthma; he suggests thick black elastic socks for her swollen ankles and feet, and hands her page after page of photocopied menus full of fresh fruit, black coffee, cottage cheese, and melba toast. He is a good man. He means well. He just misunderstands. Underestimates. It is clear that he is a man who has never been to the circus.

  Still, she has been tired. Leading a double life has taken its toll. But she’s found the cure. A magic pill to help get her through her days, put a spring in her step, give her plenty of energy for the circus after being on her feet for eight hours in the cafeteria. It makes her feel like a teenager again. One of the senior girls, a girl with a kind face and a lovely old-fashioned name—Theodora—has been getting them for her. Five dollars each. “The cost of a good latte,” Theodora had pointed out.

  “But what are they exactly?” Pru had asked.

  Theodora had looked at her and smiled. “Special vitamins.”

  Pru had nodded, knowing these were no vitamins. But it didn’t matter. Pru didn’t care if they were the ground-up horns of the Devil himself—they made her feel better. They helped her forget her pain, move beyond it into a place where she could be the circus star she truly was.

  The only trouble is that she has been out since yesterday and her body feels it, hurting in all the familiar places and some new ones as well. Theodora was supposed to bring her more today, but Pru hasn’t seen her at lunch.

  “Pru! Where are you, Pru?”

  It is Mr. Marcelle coming through the back door, wheeling in boxes on his dolly. She wipes the gravy from her lips, pushes herself out of the wide chair, and walks as slowly as she can, not wanting to give him the impression that she’s hurrying. She wants him to think that she doesn’t even remember today is Thursday, that she hasn’t been thinking of it, planning for it all week. That she doesn’t think of Thursday as Mr. Marcelle’s day.

  The navy jacket he wears says PAGLIERI & SONS FOOD SERVICE and underneath that, his name: FRED MARCELLE. Pru has never called him by his first name. It wouldn’t be right somehow. He is Mr. Marcelle, a large man; stocky some would say. He’s shaved bald under his stocking cap, but baldness becomes him. She would tell him this if she didn’t think it would be rude.

  He gives her a wink as he rolls in the frozen tubs of ice cream, and boxes of hamburger patties. Her heart flutters in her chest like the largest of butterflies.

  “How’s Pru today?”

  “Fine, Mr. Marcelle. I’m just fine.” She dabs at her forehead with the back of her hand, and watches as he slides the boxes off next to the freezer before turning back toward her.

  “I heard there was quite a commotion across the street this morning,” he says.

  She nods. The homeless girl is all anyone’s been talking about. “A terrible thing,” Pru says, lips drawn up tight.

  “I guess the kid she murdered turned out to be the governor’s son.”

  “Really?” Pru says. She’s been so concerned about trying to spot Theodora, about getting more vitamins, that she hasn’t been paying much attention to what people have been saying.

  “Yeah, the governor and his wife have been on TV. They’re offering a reward for anyone with information leading to the capture of the girl. Ten thousand dollars. My brother’s been doing some poking around, asked me to give him a hand.”

  Mr. Marcelle’s brother is a private investigator, and Mr. Marcelle works for him on weekends and some evenings during the week. “Mostly I’m just the muscle,” he’s told Pru. “If there’s an ugly case he sometimes needs someone to watch his back.”

  It sounds terribly exciting, working for a private investigator. But Mr. Marcelle says it’s mostly just a lot of sitting around watching people, waiting for them to do something interesting. Most of their work involves trying to catch unfaithful spouses or untrustworthy employees.

  “Will you?” Pru asks now. “Help look for the girl?”

  Mr. Marcelle shrugs. “I don’t know. Depends what he asks me to do. Ten thousand dollars is a nice chunk of change, even split with my brother.”

  “Yes,” she tells him. “I suppose it is.”

  “You don’t know anything about her, do you, Pru? Do you think she’s a kid who used to go to this school?”

  “I didn’t even know she was living out there until all the commotion this morning. It’s sad, though. The idea of a girl with no better place to go than an old stripped-down car.”

  Mr. Marcelle looks a little disappointed, and Pru is truly sorry she doesn’t have anything to tell him. She thinks of making something up, some invented bit of gossip, the girl’s name maybe—I heard she was called Anne—but lying to Mr. Marcelle is out of the question.

  “I’ve got something special for you today, Pru.” He gives another wink, wheels the dolly back out to his truck.

  They give each other little gifts, Mr. Marcelle and Pru. Circus gifts. She gave him mustache wax and a little comb, and now he wears his mustache curled at the ends, just as she once suggested. Maybe he wears it that way only on Thursdays. Maybe he gets in his truck after this delivery and cleans it off, smooths it back down. She isn’t sure. She thinks maybe it’s only something he does to please her. Humor the fat lady. She tries to imagine him curling his mustache each morning in the mirror like he’s getting ready for a big-top show. Sometimes, she thinks of this as she is at home, standing befor
e the mirror herself, getting ready for her own day. She thinks of her strongman curling his mustache and smiles.

  Sometimes she saves him a sweet: a cupcake or an extra-large cookie. A comic strip cut from a newspaper that she thinks he’d enjoy: Peanuts, Garfield, The Wizard of Id.

  And what does he give her? Things for the circus, of course. Bright-colored papers, tin cans with pictures of Chinese fruit, bits of wire and string. She’s told him what she needs and he understands, though he has never seen. He brings her empty spools of thread and fruit packing crates with labels from South America. The words are in Spanish, the weights metric, and pictures of cartoonish, lizard-green avocados smile in the sun: aguacates.

  He’s got something extra special for her today. She can tell by the way he fiddles with it in his pocket while they talk. She looks over the invoice, checks off all the items that have been delivered. Cartons of saltine crackers in little plastic packets, cans of beef broth, boxes of instant potatoes.

  He asks her what’s new at the circus, and she smiles at him over the great wealth of food, the neat stacks of boxes he’s left. She’s aching to tell him. She describes the new girl who spins plates, tells him about the bear who has learned to ride a unicycle. All the while he’s working this gift around in the pocket of his navy jacket, smiling wistfully like a little boy because you’re never too old to forget circus pleasures.

  Finally, he pulls his closed fist out of his pocket and holds it out to her. His hands are large and covered in wiry black hair like the man is part bear. She smiles at the thought of Mr. Marcelle on a unicycle as he unfurls his fingers to show her his surprise.

  “Ooh,” Pru says, but it comes out as more of a gasp than a word. Mr. Marcelle has a small golden elephant in the palm of his hand. Pru just stares at first, not quite daring to touch it. She studies the way it glows, even under the kitchen’s flickering fluorescent lights. When she reaches out to touch it, she finds that it’s still warm from Mr. Marcelle’s body heat, and a little moist, too. Made of metal, most likely brass, it has a little loop at the top that suggests it was once part of a piece of jewelry. It’s been polished to a shine.