by Cole Alpaugh
“I have some pills for you.” Bill Wayne would hand them over, explain when and how many to take.
The most unexpected addition to the circus was the new public relations department: a recently unemployed—and possibly wanted by the law—former reporter from the Atlantic County Beacon named Lennon Bagg.
Billy Wayne was not the quickest witted of human beings, but easily recognized what a disaster this Bagg fellow had averted by knocking the gun out of his hands. Shooting the trained bear would have undone every last ounce of faith he’d created by plugging the ferocious tiger. In fact, Billy Wayne probably would have been lashed to a cinderblock and sunk to the bottom of the inlet for the crabs to pick over.
Returning the bear to the circus had also earned the former reporter a tent of his own—albeit slightly smaller than Billy Wayne’s—as well as his own piss-smelling cot. And retelling the story of the Absecon cop’s savage attempt on Graceful Gracie’s life also earned Bagg the protection and allegiance of the circus people.
“What kind of sick bastard would shoot a helpless old bear?” Slim Weatherwax had asked, while a large group had convened for beer and dogs at a fire pit in the center of the hidden common area. Billy Wayne, who had been lurking in the shadows, felt his stomach turn a little sideways at the close call.
The reporter guy had kept his mouth shut. Someone you could trust like that might come in handy for something around here.
Chapter 28
Cops could be trouble.
Aggravated assault on a police officer carried some serious jail time involving mandatory minimums, depending upon the degree. Lennon Bagg had been around cops enough to know any sort of crime against one of their members was inevitably ramped up to the most serious charge possible. In fact, a crime didn’t even have to occur in the first place, if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bagg didn’t have anything against cops in general and, in the course of his job as a journalist, had seen certain ones performing moderately heroic deeds every once in a while. But he also possessed a healthy bit of trepidation over what they were capable of doing to someone perfectly innocent.
On the suggestion of her lawyer, Bagg’s ex-wife had gone to the police on a Friday night and claimed he’d threatened to kill her. It caused them to come knock on what was soon to become “her” front door and not “theirs.”
“Mr. Lennon Bagg?” one of the two officers asked, and Bagg knew immediately that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant visit. Bagg and his wife both loved and adored their four-year-old daughter, but their marriage was a car wreck.
The cops sent to gather up the scumbag, wife-beating lowlife could have been brothers, maybe twins. Both had short black hair, narrow builds and showed a disconcerting amount of teeth even when they weren’t smiling.
“I’m Bagg,” he admitted, backing away from the door as the officers pushed forward and asked him to turn around and put his hands behind his back, next to the kitchen table where the Bagg family sometimes ate dinner. They had explained the handcuffs were for everyone’s protection.
“Did you threaten to kill your wife tonight, Mr. Bagg?”
“Not out loud,” Bagg said.
“You think that’s funny?”
“Well, I did think you two might have been a strip-o-gram,” Bagg said. The cop tightened the cuffs.
“These feel real?” the cop hissed in his ear, breath hot and moist. Bagg was able to smell a mixture of cigarettes and Juicy Fruit gum.
“I didn’t threaten to kill my wife.”
“She told us a different story.” One cop bent him over the table to rummage through his pants, while the other rummaged through the kitchen cabinets.
Bagg pictured Jennifer leading Morgan into the police station, having deviously prepared her for any questions by reminding her how Daddy sometimes yelled really loud and how frightening he could be. Jennifer would have planted terrible seeds by telling Morgan how bad Mommy felt when she made Daddy angry, and how she hoped Morgan had never overheard him hitting Mommy. Bagg could picture Morgan searching her memory for a time when something sounded like a slap from the next room. Bagg cringed, knowing for certain what Jennifer had done and how she’d done it. How easy it was to corrupt the mind of a little kid. Bagg knew he would hate Jennifer for the rest of his life. Whatever fucking around she’d done was irrelevant, and he couldn’t have cared less. The initial pain of disloyalty faded quickly when you realized you didn’t love someone. She’d kept it from him, so he assumed she’d also kept it from their daughter. But poisoning the thoughts of their little girl was beyond evil.
“Your daughter’s in safe hands now that’s she’s away from you.”
“You asshole.” Bagg’s cheek rested on the kitchen table, giving him a good view of the sugar Morgan had spilled during breakfast.
“Please don’t put sugar on your cereal, honey.” Bagg had slid the sugar bowl from her reach. Bagg didn’t usually work Fridays, so he had been delivering Morgan to her morning pre-K.
“I didn’t put it on my cereal, Daddy.” Her tone indicated the thought would never have crossed her mind. She put her spoon down and carefully opened the little pink sweater pocket over her hip to display the two or three teaspoons worth of sugar she’d hoarded. Then, leaning with both elbows on the table, she said in a hushed voice, “It’s for Pippy.”
“Who’s Pippy?” Bagg lowered his voice to match her whisper.
“I don’t think you want to know, Daddy,” Morgan whispered back.
“Why not? I like to know things.”
“You said that stories about dragons give you nightmares.” Morgan shook her head and reached a hand out to comfort her father with gentle pats. And it was true that he’d said it, although he’d only been intending to steer Morgan away from certain violent looking books on a visit to the library.
“Yes, dragons scare me, but what about the sugar?”
“It’s my turn to feed Pippy,” Morgan said. “Let’s just not talk anymore about it, okay?”
“Okay.” Bagg let her keep the pocket of sugar. Maybe sugar wasn’t bad for dragons, he decided.
“You have the right to remain silent …” one of the officers in dark blue began, as Bagg rolled his head on the hard table, tiny grains of precious dragon food sticking to his forehead.
Making the Friday night claim of abuse had become a popular tactic among New Jersey family law attorneys, according to a recent story in Bagg’s own newspaper. The so-called victim would get the house and car keys, as well as the credit cards and access to the bank accounts on Saturday. The soon-to-be ex-husband would get a weekend of cold McDonald’s hamburgers and fries shoved through a narrow slot in the cell door and then get a first appearance in front of the judge sometime around noon on Monday. He’d emerge blinking at the sun with bloodshot eyes, hair all dirty and crazy, like a night-zombie caught out after sunrise. Some lawyers referred to it as the Friday Night Blitz Play, Bagg would later learn from the fathers’ support group he attended on a single, depressing occasion.
The cops who hauled Bagg away hadn’t particularly mistreated him. Bagg assumed it was routine to be made to strip naked and grab your ankles while a flashlight was shined up your ass. And if he hadn’t had Morgan to think about, it probably would have been prudent to require Bagg to turn over his shoelaces. Had there been no little girl to worry about, hanging himself with his shoelaces might very well have become a reasonable option.
Was it any surprise how evil Jennifer Bagg could be? Bagg had thought about the real estate developer who had hired her small interior design firm to furnish a dozen or so model homes, part of a three thousand unit community under construction. They were also contracted for the interior design of the fitness center and property owners’ association buildings. This meant big bucks for Jennifer’s three person office. And it wasn’t just the money now, but all the future jobs that would come with the new contacts they’d make, she explained.
To Bagg, Jennifer had never seemed happier.
He noticed new dresses, and she left for evening meetings with impeccable makeup, reeking of a new perfume that smelled awful and expensive. Jennifer was a serious, driven woman. Thin and in her heels nearly as tall as Bagg, with hair pulled back to reveal the sharp features that would work well for a fifth grade school teacher sidled with an unruly classroom. One cold glare from Jennifer Bagg reached right into your soul and sucked the cheer right out of your most joyful moments.
This new Jennifer was sometimes giddy, and Bagg took advantage of her unusual playfulness at first. They’d had sex twice the previous month, and she’d even asked him to kiss her “down there.” A good five minutes passed before she complained he was slobbering too much. Jennifer talked about getting away for a long vacation after the designs were finished—the designs she had to pore over with the developer on a more and more frequent basis.
One warm September night, Bagg was once again on his own, putting Morgan to bed. Their regular routine involved going potty, then a quick tubby with dozens of floating dolls and sea creatures. Morgan would turn herself into a unicorn with baby shampoo suds and stand still as he turned on the shower and rinsed her shiny little body. She had recently turned four, and most of the baby fat had given way to reveal a skinny physique, with a roadmap of tiny blue veins just under her pale skin. She was looking more and more like her mother, Bagg had thought, as he toweled her off.
“Mommy is on a date tonight,” she said, as Bagg held out her underpants to slip one foot in.
“Mommy’s working.” In the steamy bathroom, an icy shudder passed through Bagg.
“No, Mommy has a boyfriend and she loves him, Daddy.”
Bagg wanted to question his little girl, but there was still a tiny piece of him that didn’t want to know.
Bagg helped Morgan into her princess pajamas and grabbed the brush from on top of the toilet.
“I heard Mommy say she loved him on the telephone, and that she couldn’t wait to see him tonight.”
“Tonight?”
And then Morgan reached up to her kneeling father’s face and took his head in her hands, looking at him with the most sympathy she could muster. “Don’t cry, Daddy. I love you with my whole heart and I promise I always will.”
“I know, sweetheart.” Bagg swept her in tight for a hug.
The little girl consoled her father, patting his back lightly. “And I promise I’ll never, ever leave you alone.”
But a couple of months later, Morgan’s promise had been broken.
Chapter 29
Bagg decided a muddy island along the Jersey Shore was as good a place as any to lay low for a few days. It wouldn’t take long before he’d know for sure what charges he was facing and whether he planned on facing them at all.
He laid back on his gamey-smelling cot, the tent flap closed, listening to the hustle and bustle of the circus being erected around him. His temporary home reminded him of a fortune teller’s tent he and Morgan had strolled past at a carnival, what seemed like a hundred years ago.
“That’s a gypsy lady,” Morgan had informed him, pointing to the woman seated behind a crystal ball she was polishing. The Romani wore a long purple robe, with a wide bandana across her forehead, and gigantic jewelry dangling from her ears, arms and throat. “Elmo says they can predict the furniture.”
“I think Elmo meant they can predict the future.”
“I can predict the future.” Morgan turned her face up at her father with a look that told him her legs were tired from walking and it was time for a ride.
“How’s that, honey?” Bagg scooped her up, spinning her onto his shoulders.
“I predict I’m going to be a gypsy fortune teller for Halloween!”
“I thought this was an all Toy Story year. I already bought a six-shooter and cowboy hat. I’m gonna be Woody and you’re gonna be Jessie.”
“Mom didn’t like when you said she could be Stinky Pete.”
“I was just kidding.”
Morgan leaned forward on her father’s shoulders, cupping her hands to his right ear to tell a secret. “Mom didn’t think it was funny, but I did.”
That was what Bagg missed the most. Not really what was said, since most of the things shared were just silly bits you forgot in an hour or a day. The act of a little girl telling her father a secret. Of sharing something closely—the cupped hands to the ear, the warm breath, the immediacy and the emotion. Time seemed to stop when a little girl was sharing a secret with her father.
Bagg closed his eyes and lay back on the foul smelling cot. He worried what the cops would do when they broke into his apartment. Would they tear through the shrine that was once Morgan’s room, looking for him in a place he hadn’t dared set foot inside for years? Bagg imagined them pushing open the sliding door closet which he and Morgan had turned into her cozy hiding place, with layers of fluffy blankets and pillows and a reading light. There were four framed Disney posters along the back wall. Bagg knew they’d smash the light and picture frames, pulling out and stomping all over her delicate bedding. That’s what cops did when you hurt one of their own.
“Stop it,” Bagg said to the ceiling of his tent, and it seemed to work. He went back to concentrating on the sounds of the circus around him. At one point, he heard the Hooduk guy timidly ask someone to go run an errand if he wouldn’t very much mind. Hooduk was apparently in charge, although Bagg noticed nobody really listened to anything he said. If Billy Wayne told someone to wash the pony crap off the bleacher seats, the person would eventually have a look for him or herself to see if it really needed to be done. At that point, the pony crap might get washed off, and it might not.
“This is my circus and these are my people,” Billy Wayne had explained to Bagg, right after nearly putting a slug in the overly-excited and extremely affectionate bear. And it was fine with Bagg, despite it only being mildly acceptable to the actual people of the circus. “They listen to me,” Billy Wayne added.
It seemed to Bagg, who could clearly hear most of the confessions taking place in Hooduk’s tent behind him, that Billy Wayne did most of the listening while these folks did all of the drinking and screwing around.
Bagg’s other nearest neighbors included Pinhead, Veronica the Fat Lady, and Primo, who was billed as the World’s Strongest Old Man. These people were touted as Freaks of Nature, although they would have barely stood out on the Atlantic City boardwalk. They occupied the tent directly to the left of Bagg’s.
The tent to his right housed a more interesting pair, as far as Bagg was concerned. Very amiable guys named Pete Singe, aka Lightning Man, and Skip Kitt, aka Flat Man. Singe’s job was showing and telling stories about his horrific burn scars from being repeatedly hit by lightning. He wore a robe over nylon running shorts and would display one terrific scar after the other. He’d show off the bright red zigzag beginning at the nape of his neck and running to his waist. He’d tell stories about the missing toes of his right foot, where one of the bolts of electricity had exited.
Singe spoke slowly of his injuries to anyone who’d listen, paying or not. He was just a storyteller unraveling good tales. He’d collected his injuries from above while employed as a commercial fisherman, park ranger, golf course groundskeeper, and lifeguard. He’d also spent ten dangerous years as a lineman for Florida Power and Light.
“Probably the worst hit was just a couple years back,” Singe had told Bagg. “Rich guy I knew from the marina owned a big-time tuna boat, talked me into learnin’ how to scuba dive. We went down to this spot in Honduras, lugging gear off the trucks, and headed down to these caves. Wouldn’t you know what was comin’ next? Storm rolls in and we’re just about to climb down this ladder when a bolt comes zippin’ out of the sky. Took the top off some hundred-year-old tree, ran along the wet ground, and shazzam!”
“That’s incredible.” Bagg had sat mesmerized.
“You know it. Imagine how hard that bolt of lightning had to search to find me in the middle of a jungle, just about to climb down into a cave?”<
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In all, Singe had claimed to have been struck twelve times, which would easily be a world record, although some of his burns couldn’t be confirmed as lightning induced.
“It’s all politics.” Singe winked at Bagg. “And who am I to mess with the memory of that poor sap with the official record of seven strikes—may he finally rest in peace underground. He even got hit in the head twice and had his hair catch fire.”
“Lightning killed him?”
“Nah, it was his own hand that killed him, not the lightning. Story has it, his woman ran off with another guy. Hard to hold on to a decent woman when you keep gettin’ zapped by a hundred million volts. Makes everybody around you real nervous whenever it clouds up.”
Singe’s tent mate was the reason for installing the special flooring. Flat Man lived with a dire fear of gravity and the expectation of being slammed to Earth should he rise more than a few inches. He passed the time on glossy, snapped together laminate flooring. The smooth surface allowed Flat Man to display his debilitating phobia by performing mock household tasks. He’d dry dishes in a rack on the floor and use an old-fashioned feather duster on a picture frame and lamp. It was a pretty campy display, but the lamp also provided light for the hours and hours he passed the time reading.
“My job is nothing much more than acting like a museum painting,” the barophobic named Kitt told Bagg. “People pay, then look at me for a couple minutes, then move along. I don’t have any stories to tell. Not like Singe.”
“And you can’t get up?”
“No, but it ain’t so bad. And look at all the crappy things that came raining down on this guy for spending so much of his life up on ladders?”
Singe gave a half-smile and shrugged in agreement. “He’s pretty safe from lightning down there.”
“Mind losin’ the shoes?” Kitt slowly extended his arm along the floor to point toward a hand-painted sign above a rack asking all visitors to remove their shoes.
“Sorry.” Bagg slipped off his North Face running shoes and placed them on the rack.