by Alissa York
The Tracker is suddenly cold, the whirlwind wife touching down for the briefest of instants, looking over his shoulder into the dead woman’s eyes.
He cannot know for certain if the knife was his. He did slit throats—they all did, true Indians and painted Mormonee alike. Leapt from the thin cover and cut the women and walking children down, just as Yauguts and the other captains had planned. He recalls only skirts against his bare ankles, hair in his fist—one head dark like hers, another dead-grass pale, yet another red and glaring in his eyes.
Blood ran hot in those abandoned moments, washing over his hands, surging through him in hateful, joyful waves. The veins danced in his skin, full to bursting with his own red share and that of Younger Brother too—Small Sister a third pulsing presence, wherever her body might be.
It was only afterwards, when all but the very young of the Mericat camp lay quiet, that the Tracker felt his blood begin to cool. He moved among the bodies in the company of both Indian and Mormonee. Stripping the dead made sense—their belongings were nothing to them now.
White women’s clothing was a puzzle to the fingers, so many layers in that heat. It took him an age to work the dark-haired woman free of her blood-wet dress. Further fumbling loosed her undergarments, revealing pasty, smeared breasts, nipples that had known a child. The patch of hair, so black against the fish-belly sheen of her thighs, seemed an opening, a triangular gateway to the night. Another darkness lay a hand’s breadth further down—a book like a brown fungus, fixed to the top of her leg.
Yauguts had driven out of sight with the children, but the other white captains had been perfectly clear—any writing, any book or paper, was to be delivered up to one of them the moment it was found. The Tracker glanced about him. More than one Mormonee crouched close at hand, but each was blind to him, engrossed in his grisly work.
The thrice-looped knot held tight. He worried at it for several breaths, then slipped his knife from its sheath and made short work of the job. He held the book close, opening it in the shadow of his own chest. To his surprise—his delight, sharp and strange though it seemed in that desolate scene—he found not the baffling insect tracks of the white man’s words, but a horizon of woolly humps and gleaming horns.
A second sweep about him revealed not a single gaze trained his way. Sucking in his belly, he opened a gap down the front of his trousers and slipped his find away.
Returning home from the blood-soaked valley that day, the Tracker knew Younger Brother’s woman would take him in. It was possible she would have accepted him while her husband still lived. Younger Brother would have agreed—it was in his nature to share—but a portion of her would have been worse than no part at all.
Now it was the Tracker’s duty to become her husband. His duty, his guilty reward. His heart leapt when she looked up at him from the weaving in her lap. He took a step closer, the picture book pinching where he’d tied it. Still she didn’t rise. And when she lowered her head again, he saw there would be no need to speak the news aloud.
His eyes, greedy even in that moment, sought her lovely hands, motionless now, fingers frozen against the warp. Only then did he take in the shape of her design. Cradle. His joy was so terrible it threatened to separate his soles from the earth. The child would be Younger Brother’s issue, but it would be down to her new husband to stoke the coals of her hotbed as she lay recovering from her labours. It would be the Tracker who would watch over her—not from afar this time, but lying beside her, joining her in the forsaking of salt, cold water, meat.
Looking through her fingers to the cross-hatching of willow below, the Tracker flashed on a story of himself. He saw a proud father walking with the stump of the baby’s cord curled in his hand, carrying it high into the hills. Stooping down, he placed the precious object not on the track of a mountain sheep but in the hole of a pocket gopher. Despite himself, despite the heavy news he had come bearing, the Tracker smiled. The child would be a girl. Not a return of Younger Brother to haunt him, but an echo of the woman they loved.
— 22 —
GILLESPIE’S WASN’T the sort of hotel to send word up to a guest’s room. The desk clerk told John James the number and let him wander the dank halls. Three raps and a man’s voice bid him enter.
The yellow top hat sat at a forward tilt, obscuring the ringmaster’s gaze. His legs were golden stems outstretched. “Dan Pitch.” He didn’t rise, didn’t even extend his hand. Nothing of the barker’s singsong now.
John James flicked a glance about the room, scanning for bottles—whiskey-large or laudanum-small. He found none. Melancholy then, or plain fatigue. He stepped into the cramped room, drawing the door closed behind him.
“What is it you seek?”
John James would soon grow used to the ringmaster’s peculiar mode of speech, but that first night it put a chill through him. At a loss for words, he turned side-on and widened his stance. Snaking his hands back between his legs, he followed their lead until his head, shoulders and a good part of his rib cage were through, armpits hooked at the backs of his knees. Craning his neck, he peered up under the yellow hat rim into the ringmaster’s eyes.
“Well, well.” Pitch sat forward, his face suddenly plain. He was all wax and hollows, an unlit taper of a man. “What shall we christen you? Rubber Boy? Rope Man? The Human Knot?”
John James released himself, swinging up tall. As the blood rushed from his skull, a face rose up to fill the void. Red Meg was pure memory now. Like so many of the city’s females, she’d lost her looks, then her mind and finally her life to the plague of her trade. He’d caught sight of her from time to time over the past few years. Like standing vigil while a champion swimmer drowned.
“Bendy,” he said, turning to face his new boss.
Dan Pitch nodded. “Bendy it is.”
The tent was daunting, a giant bone-white molar set up two short blocks from the hotel among the ashy ruins of a warehouse fire. It sat back from the street, a long flap quivering in place of a door. Bendy called hello. Nothing. He felt foolish, entertained a moment’s fantasy of retreat. Then took a breath, caught hold of the flap and gained the tent’s white world.
Light like a thin cloud cover, trembling, diffuse. In the far corner, one of the wheeled cages stood alone, draped in plum-coloured cloth. Beside it, a minor mountain of straw bales. No sign of the ringmaster, but the clown stood dead centre in the ring. His back was turned, his arms outspread, heavy with birds. His head wagged slowly, side to side. He was chattering to them, a soothing cipher of whistles and words.
“Pardon me.” Bendy felt the words sucked out of him, drawn upward into the hum.
The clown turned to reveal a row of faces—the fulcrum human, avian along either wing. Cleared of paint now, his features bore some resemblance to the ringmaster’s. Slacker, though, underscored by a pouch of jowls.
“Show opens tomorrow night,” he said, keeping his voice even, his flock calm.
“Oh, no. I’m J—I’m Bendy. Bendy Drown. Mr. Pitch hired me last night.”
“Not this Mr. Pitch.”
Bendy shifted on his feet. A long moment passed before the clown let him off the hook.
“You’ll mean Dan.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m the brother. Camden.” Again no hand came forward in greeting, though, to be fair, he hadn’t a hand free. “He hasn’t shown himself yet. Likely won’t for a time yet.” His gaze flipped inward then, as though in answer to a striking thought. He inclined his head toward the bird on his left shoulder, a lizard-footed brute with a flexing yellow crown. Letting a burbled whistle escape his teeth, the clown murmured, “Yes, Cocky. That so?”
Bendy jammed his hands into his pockets.
“Bendy.” Camden Pitch came out of himself. “That your act?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Contortionist.”
“Sir?”
The clown gave a high laugh, setting both lines of birds squawking. “That’s a word you’ll want to know. Hush
now, lovelies, hush.” He pursed his lips and blew a stream of breath along each arm—ruffling feathers, quieting nerves. “You can work over there till he comes.” He gestured with his chin to the crowded far corner. “Keep clear of the ring for now.”
“Sure.” Bendy followed the undulating wall, turned a sharp right angle and carried on to the hill of bales. Setting his pack down on the ground, he began limbering up.
Balance was key. It was one thing to tuck a foot behind your head while seated. Onlookers, put in mind of their own hips and hamstrings, might respond with wondering groans. Do it while standing on one leg, however, and they’d think not of their own bodies, but of trees made flesh and bone.
It wasn’t easy to support the whole of his weight on one foot while he flung the other one up and back. He toppled backwards, hit hard-packed, sandy soil, untangled himself, rose and toppled again—half a dozen tries before he was blessed with an idea. Drawing the stubby knife from his boot, he sawed open a pair of bales and scattered himself a bed upon which to land. Knowing it was there behind him helped. On the next attempt he held steady for a full ten seconds before swaying and buckling back.
He sat up to find her watching him. Her cage door gaped, the purple drapery pushed aside. Dropping her left haunch to the cage floor, she slid her knees out from beneath her and dangled her feet out the open door. She pointed her toes as though stretching to dip them in a stream. This time she was clothed. Barely. A nightdress of sorts, but shorter, petal pink. Exposing the long pelts of her legs.
“Bendy, is it?” A low voice, softly mocking.
He nodded. For a second he considered adding John James, but the syllables seemed all wrong. A single turn of the clock and already his given name had the feel of a lie. He glanced over his shoulder to find Camden paying them no mind. The clown was balanced on a pair of short stilts, a monkey perched like a trapper’s hat on his head.
“I’m Philomena. Pitch lopped off the Philo the day he took me on. Too much of a mouthful.”
It was strangely thrilling to hear human speech issue forth from all that fur. Bendy realized he was staring. “You didn’t mind?”
She smiled. “Small enough price to pay.”
“For what?”
“What do you mean, for what? You just joined. You ought to have some idea.”
He nodded again, though the force that had carried him to where he sat now was nothing so well formed as an idea. They watched one another for a long moment before she spoke again.
“Before he took me on, I was in a room. One room. Door bolted on the outside, one window, no curtains. You can part a curtain and peek out, and while you’re doing that somebody might just chance to peek in. I had shutters. Shutters my daddy nailed shut.”
Bendy swallowed. “All alone?”
“Not always. My mother brought me food, books. Sometimes we played cards.” She paused. “Pitch got wind of a hairy girl and worked a deal with the old man. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. I was thirteen when he sprung me. Been with the show three years.” After a moment’s silence she brought her hands together in a clap. “Try that trick again. Twelfth time’s the charm.”
Her regard made him worthy. His supporting leg became a pylon. An unseen plumb bob dropped from the tail of his spine. The bent leg swung up sweetly, heel cresting skull, hooking and catching hold. A single, tapering tremor and he had it. She smiled. He was rock solid. He could hop on the spot if he so desired. Maybe he’d try that next—he might even make her laugh.
Just then the narrow strip of tent that lay between them—between straw mountain and cage—parted. A hand came first, followed by the same bare, knotted arm Bendy had seen stirring the monkeys in their cage. Then a face. Again the Pitch features, but youthful and somehow flattened. The cageboy looked from Philomena to Bendy, his gaze grappling along the sightline they shared.
Bendy’s balance left him. The topknot of torso, head and leg sprang open upon impact. His wind was gone. The back wall of the tent healed over as Pitch the younger stepped all the way inside.
Bendy gulped and got nothing. Gulped again, caught purchase and hauled in a breath. One more, and he could manage a shaky sit. Raising his eyes to Philomena, he took in her terrible stillness, the hands gripped tightly in her lap.
The cageboy approached, each step a narrow lunge. He stood over Bendy, thrusting his groin out as though it were a chin or a kneecap, rather than a clutch of tender organs worn on the outside. He was making the most of the moment, his temporary advantage in height. Bendy contemplated rising, maybe even shooting up fast, but a twitch of dull wisdom made him wait.
“Stanley Pitch.” The cageboy surprised him, reaching down a hand. Until Bendy realized that to take it would be to take a hand up.
“Dan Pitch’s son,” Stanley added, and Bendy saw then he had no choice. The cageboy’s palm was rutted, his fingers blunt. In the sharp up-haul to standing, Bendy got a taste of his rival’s strength.
It was full afternoon by the time Pitch finally showed. Stanley had long since disappeared through the tent’s back flap with Philomena. Bendy had stretched himself sore and was lying on the scattered straw. Camden had his birds back in their cages and was arranging his props in a coffin-sized crate when the ringmaster shoved the front flap aside.
“Ah, you’ve come.” He strode forward, high-stepping over the circle of mounded-up dirt that defined the ring.
“Yes, sir.” Bendy rolled up onto the balls of his feet and walked to meet him.
“European tent.” Pitch swept his arm in a loose circle, a gesture that encompassed the single ring, the four corner poles.
“Two-bit, he means,” Camden added, grinning clear back to his puffy gums.
“My brother jests.”
Looking around, Bendy found a single ring to be more than enough. As a child, he’d gotten used to gathering a crowd about him like a blanket, close enough so every comment stood clear—here the brash twang of a Sydney Duck, here the red tongue of a Chileno, laid haltingly over English or let slide down the grooves of its own design. Smells, too. No man could be a miner who hadn’t made his peace with dirt, but dirt was the least of it, the cleanest. Their bodies were left to run on scraps and camp coffee for months of sweating blood, then dragged to town and gorged on whiskey, fried potatoes and fatty steak. Some managed to distinguish themselves, one man reeking of peppermint, another of hair oil, another of some putrefaction trapped deep inside. There would be no such discerning under the high white tent. His audience would be miles away.
Pitch flung his arms out wide. “A lot of space for a skin-and-bones lad to fill. Think you’re up to it?” He rolled on before Bendy could answer. “You take me, for instance. You could lose sight of Dan Pitch if he turned sideways, but out here I’m a giant. Ever seen a cat backed into a corner? Puffs itself up double. Doesn’t matter how you get there, terror, pride—point is, a man’s as big as he believes.”
This last elicited a grunt from Camden, laden with wire cages, crabbing sideways out the backstage flap.
Pitch stepped in close. “It gets to where you feel you could touch them, each and every one. Reach out a fingertip—” He grinned. “—or in your case a toe-tip, and lay it on whomever you please.”
The ringmaster put him through his paces that day. They were a good hour into their rehearsal by the time the cageboy returned alone. Neither father nor son made a pretence of greeting the other. Pitch said only, “Bales, Stanley.”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
The ringmaster waited a beat. “No idea.”
Bent over between two straw bales, his fingers worming under twine, the son stiffened. “Bales. I’m doing bales.”
Another beat, this one a hair longer. “I can see that, Stanley. It’s quite plain.”
Stanley straightened, his face working, wine-dark. Bendy averted his eyes. There was a moment’s standoff, during which the monkeys struck up a muffled chorus beyond the sailcloth wall. Pitch ended things abruptly with a neat half tu
rn on one heel. Over his shoulder he said lightly, “Well, get on with it.”
While Pitch talked Bendy through pose after pose, Stanley worked at dismantling the golden pile. It took several slant-eyed glances for Bendy to determine the cageboy’s purpose. Why cart heavy benches from venue to venue when even the most primitive mining town was sure to have a supply of straw? Stanley was laying the bales out in concentric circles beyond the dirt ring—staggered with sightlines and minimal legroom in mind. Once he got his head down, he proceeded like a Clydesdale, shoulders straining, eyes fixed and dull.
Bendy unwound himself from a particularly trying position in time to watch the cageboy drop the last pair into place. The mountain had shrunk considerably, to perhaps a dozen bales squared. It stood between Bendy and the tent’s back flap. Watching Stanley duck out of sight behind it, he saw that it was meant to act as a sort of blind—performers appearing from behind a bright edifice rather than squeezing in through a fluttering slit.
Letting his gaze wander, he found the tent transformed. Light shimmered off the yellow seats, warming the ghostly walls. He felt a rush of promise in his watery limbs.
“Can you ride?” Pitch asked out of nowhere. “I could use a second in my act.”
The question tipped Bendy back a little on his heels.
“Stanley used to manage it, before he got so thick through the chest.” Pitch narrowed his eyes. “His mother’s people, thick-chested, every one. Well?”
Bendy steadied himself. “I can ride.”
— 23 —
May 21st, 1867
Dear Daughter
It is late and after much trouble I have managed to light the candle and dip my pen. I was roused by one of Mr. Burr’s cries. You will not have forgotten his habit of screaming himself awake from time to time. I will not sleep now with my heart stuttering and him fussing on the far side of the wall. He was not always such a man. The Lyman Burr I married had many parts but life will draw out some and beat down others. I was left with his weaknesses. For a time they made me strong.