The Circus in Winter

by Cathy Day

  "Yes, it's..." Stella tried to find her own word, but couldn't. "Different," she said flatly.

  "It is indeed," he said with a laugh. "Mind if I check out the barn?"

  "You must be a Tony Colorado fan, too."

  In the barn, Mr. Miller stood with Stella in front of Bullet's old stall. "Back in the day, I used to drink with him, you know."

  "From a trough?" Stella joked, surprised at her quip. Normally she didn't have much of an edge, but lately, it popped up when she least expected it.

  But Mr. Miller, a stranger, simply thought she was being funny. "Yep, me and Bullet put back a few." He laughed. "No, I mean me and the cowboy. I had a room at Robertson's Hotel. Played piano in the bar there some nights. He was quite a fella."

  Stella looked at Mr. Miller's big knuckles and thick fingers, trying to imagine them spanning the keys. They looked like the hands of a farmer. "Is it true that he had a high-pitched voice? That's why he couldn't break into talkies?"

  "Yep, that's right. Poor guy." Mr. Miller took a drink of his lemonade. "Ladies still buzzed around him like june bugs, though. Didn't have no trouble there."

  "Really?" She remembered his photograph from the magazine. The Lone Star Cowboy hadn't struck her as particularly handsome. "How so?"

  Mr. Miller looked around, as if someone was watching. "Well, I shouldn't speak of things like this to a lady, but in his room, he kept track of 'em. Said he made a tally mark for each one on the wall behind his bed. When he checked out for good, I went in there and saw 'em all."

  Stella paused, considering. "Twenty?" she asked.

  "More like a hundred."

  She laughed through her nose. "Where'd he find a hundred women in a little town like Lima?"

  Mr. Miller couldn't look her straight in the eye. "This town used to be hoppin', Mrs. Garrison. All sorts of women come through here at one time or another."

  That night, Stella played the piano for hours. She'd found the sheet music to some Cole Porter songs in the abandoned piano bench, and the boys requested "Don't Fence Me In" over and over. They knew all the words, and pointed to the walls—the winter fields and trees and horses and giraffes—as if the murals had been painted just for them, just to provide a backdrop to their song. After a while, Stella knew the notes well enough to play by heart. Although her eyes remained fixed on the sheet music, she wasn't in her living room anymore, not even in the landscape of the murals. She was walking down the streets of the old Lima alongside the aerialist painted on the wall upstairs, Miss Bloody Wrist, who wore a red feather boa. Stella kept her eyes on the plank sidewalk, feeling hard and plain in her wash dress. Every time they passed a man, Stella could feel his eyes following Miss Bloody Wrist. They paused outside the old Robertson Hotel to watch Ephraim Miller bent over the piano, playing ragtime. Tony Colorado sat at a table surrounded by stockinged legs and red lips. Miss Bloody Wrist sauntered up to Tony Colorado, who rose from his chair and kissed her hand. The other women faded away, but Stella stayed, watching the two of them walk upstairs together.

  In bed that night, Stella didn't wait for Wayne to touch her first. She kissed him deeply, running her hand down the length of his chest. Afterward, Wayne lay quietly. "What's gotten into you, Stell?" He sounded a little scared.

  "Nothing," Stella said, staring at the blank walls of her bedroom glowing blue with moonlight.

  THE MURALS, Stella decided, must have been painted in winter. The windows and walls showed almost the same picture, as if she wasn't even inside her house at all. The stark landscape around her hadn't changed much in fifty years. Same yellow and white animal barns. Same snow-stubbled fields. Same dirty river. Same naked trees. Only the circus animals were gone, replaced by simple milk cows, horses, and the occasional deer. She wondered who painted the walls, a man or a woman. Sometimes Stella imagined a woman, someone with an empty heart and long winter hours that needed filling. But what woman would let such ugliness into her house? Stella decided the artist was most certainly a man, one with too much time and, like her, too many dark thoughts.

  That winter, once Wayne had driven into Lima for work and the boys were at school, Stella played Cole Porter songs. She remembered her father's piano lessons as a child, and her mother's warnings after. "A woman plays piano for her family," she'd said. "A happy home is filled with pretty things. Good smells. Nice music. Doilies under every lamp." Sitting on the piano bench by herself, filling the empty house with music, was a guilty pleasure. Stella never played "Don't Fence Me In" when she was alone. She preferred the plaintive songs like "Night and Day," "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye," and "Miss Otis Regrets." Underneath the words and the notes, Stella felt a great sadness that made her heart hurt. Stella sang the same songs over and over, as if they were written in a code she needed to break.

  When she tired of playing piano, Stella knit. Actually, she watched a great deal of television, which seemed less wasteful and wanton when it produced an abundance of sweaters, blankets, and scarves. Always, Stella flicked the television off fifteen minutes before the boys got home, and always, the first thing they did was turn it back on.

  "Why don't you guys play in the barn today?" She almost hated herself for suggesting it.

  "Too cold," they said in unison.

  That winter, Ray and Ricky fought constantly. She found them locked in closets, tied to their bedposts. They rose each morning for school with hollow eyes and fresh bruises. Stella tried separating them, putting Ricky's bed in the Japanese acrobat room, but in the morning, she found him curled up next to Ray in the narrow bed, bandannas tied over their mouths like bank robbers.

  Her worry for them flamed a bit higher, but Wayne didn't want to talk about it. He'd started working extra shifts, and even when he was home, he delayed going to bed as long as possible, watching television or listening to the radio alone with his cigarettes. In the mornings, he rose before sunup and walked the fields hunting rabbits in the underbrush. Stella's only proof that they occupied the same bed was the smell of aftershave and cigarettes on the pillows. He said it was work, the new house, and new bills to pay. "And it's winter, Stell," he said. "You know I hate winter."

  Stella told herself that was their problem—another long Indiana winter. Like the sky and snow, people turned gray inside and out.

  FINALLY, IT WAS APRIL. Winter had clung to March like a desperate bird, but one Saturday, its grip loosened. Stella threw open all the windows even though it was still too chilly. She felt as though she'd been breathing stale air for that whole year, as if she'd just woken up from a long, dark sleep. Ray and Ricky were in the barn—finally, it was warm enough to play in, and Stella was glad to have them out of the house. In the kitchen, she made sandwiches and cookies. Wayne was still in town, getting a haircut at Smithy's Barber Shop, running errands. When he returned, they were going back into town for a picnic at the park. To pass the time, she sat down to play "In the Still of the Night," and Stella realized during the second verse that she felt happy. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt anything so close to joy.

  Stella saw herself walking down the streets of old Lima, alone this time. She entered the Robertson Hotel and took a seat at the bar. Again she wore the wash dress, but this time proudly, like a black eye or a brave scar. A small suitcase sat at her feet, and a train ticket to Chicago peeked out of her purse. Stella barely recognized herself, this woman drinking a cool beer, staring at Tony Colorado. He left the flashy women at his table, crossing the room with a swagger, and took the bar stool next to her. Later, when they stood to go upstairs, young Ephraim Miller gave them a wink. In bed, Tony Colorado moved above her, still wearing his white cowboy hat. She woke before dawn, dressed quietly, and with a hotel pen, added herself to the Lone Star Cowboy's tally. Number seventy-two.

  And then she was on the train to Chicago, which stopped at little towns where more people in wash dresses and cheap suits would board the train. Stella studied their hard, hungry eyes, which were her eyes, full of light. She saw it all so clearly that a
t first, she didn't think much of the noise: a slightly muffled crack. Both Stellas heard it, the one sitting in her house, playing "In the Still of the Night," and the one sitting on a train bound for Chicago, watching the moon grow dim on the rim of a hill. The sound worked its way inside her head. A barn door slamming in the wind. A tree limb breaking. A neighbor shooting bottles lined up on a fence. Her boys playing trick shooters, Ray aiming for the quarter between Ricky's fingers or the tin can balanced on his head.

  The train disappeared, and very calmly, Stella stood up from the piano. She threw on a shawl she'd knitted that winter, forcing herself not to run. When she reached the barn doors, she heard screaming, and inside, she saw the boys. One lay prone, a circle of blood widening on his T-shirt. The other boy stood over him, holding Wayne's .38.

  Which one? she thought, ashamed of herself, both for thinking it and for not already knowing.

  She bent over the bleeding boy, listened for breath, felt his chest, but there was nothing, nothing but blood on her hand. The other boy tried to jam the .38 into his toy holster. Stella's voice shook. "Give Mommy the gun, sweetie. Careful."

  "We were playing," he said, crying now.

  "I know."

  "'Cause you said cowboys don't always win."

  Stella paused, remembering, and then knowing. "Ricky, please give Mommy the gun."

  "I didn't mean to." He set the gun heavily in her hand.

  "I know," Stella said. "Now, I want you to listen to me. You didn't do this. You did not do this. Say it, sweetie."

  Ricky nudged his brother with the toe of his shoe. "I didn't do this."

  "You didn't."

  "I didn't."

  Stella wrapped the gun in her shawl. "Now, run up to the house and call the ambulance. Like I showed you."

  Alone then, Stella lifted her son's body and held him. He was cold, and his blood filled her lap.

  THE CORONER SAID that death had been instantaneous. "I know it's not much, but it's something, something to ease your mind," he said to Stella on the phone. She thanked him and hung up. The police called to inform her they were calling Ray's death an accident, even though Ricky said he couldn't remember anything. Stella thanked the officer and hung up. Their family doctor said that in cases like this, Ricky would probably never remember that day in the barn. "Actually, it's probably for the best that he doesn't," he said to Stella on the phone. She thanked him and hung up. Then she unplugged the phone.

  Stella knew Wayne blamed himself. Because he forgot to unload his gun after his morning hunt through the brush. Because he'd told the boys about the big scene in Tony Colorado's movie Saguaro Showdown where the Lone Star Cowboy shoots a knife out of the villain's hand. The day after the funeral, Wayne hauled all the Western props out of the barn and burned them. A newly hired reporter from the Lima Journal was driving by and took a picture of Tony Colorado's stagecoach consumed by flames, buckling like a falling horse. The reporter asked Wayne, "How does it feel to burn a piece of circus history, Mr. Garrison?" Wayne belted him good and told him exactly how it felt. The reporter apologized profusely for not putting two and two together, and Wayne offered to sell him his gun collection for fifty dollars. The reporter accepted, even though he'd never shot a gun in his life.

  The piano went next. Stella couldn't stand to see it sitting there in the living room. Ephraim Miller came to the house with a truck and two movers. "I'm sorry about your boy, Mrs. Garrison."

  "I was playing it," she said. "When it happened."

  Mr. Miller nodded. "I see."

  "It's like..." Stella paused, knowing the word she wanted to say, but not wanting to say it. "I feel like I'm playing a coffin."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  When they took the piano away, Stella felt no better. The music still hung in the silent house like fog, and she started leaving the television on all the time, filling the house with canned laughter and commercial jingles. A month went by. One morning, Stella walked into the now half-empty barn. She remembered the day they'd first seen Bullet's sign over the stall. She remembered the near scalping in the barn. The day Mr. Miller came to tune the piano. The Robertson Hotel and the Lone Star Cowboy's bed. She wanted to blame the murals, the barn, the piano, even Wayne, but Stella knew that the accident had been all her fault. She couldn't tell real from imagined any more than the boys could, and perhaps she'd cursed them with her dark fancying. Or maybe her responsibility went back even farther than that, to that split second in her womb when they had been one boy, when she'd failed to hold them together.

  Stella went into the house, got her purse, and started walking down River Road. It was early this time, not yet nine. At Parson's Hardware, she bought two buckets of white paint and started the long walk home, swinging the buckets in long arcs to keep up her momentum. Halfway home she remembered the toaster was still plugged in. Despite her vow to start fresh, to keep her mind as white as the walls she'd have soon enough, Stella couldn't help but see the house and the barns all burning, paint melting, everything turning to ash. She saw the three of them in the Oldsmobile, and she was ashamed at how quickly they'd become three, not four, in her heart. Wayne was driving on a highway, and they were all singing." I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences; gaze at the moon till I lose my senses. "Mountains formed on the horizon. They were going to a new home, a house of her choosing; its walls would be painted the buttercream of fancy paper, waiting for the ink of a happier story.

  But when Stella rounded the curve, she saw the house standing there just as she'd left it. She felt surprised and disappointed, like she did on winter mornings when she woke up sensing snow, anticipating a new, white world, only to rise and find everything just as brown as the day before.

  THE JUNGLE GOOLAH BOY

  Preface

  So Many Stories Begin Just Like This,

  on a Ship Sailing to a Place That's Not Yet America

  Carolina Gazetteer, May 9, 1725

  Just imported in The Empress, Capt. Carron, directly from the Sierra Leonne region, a cargo of SLAVES, healthy men, women, and children, to be sold to the highest bidder on Monday, May 16. Credit will be extended till the first of December with proper Security. By Reese & Andrews, Charles-Town.

  Chapter the First

  The Jungle Goolah Boy's Family Tree,

  According to the Tree's Proprietors

  Journal & Ledger of Curtis Grimm, Eastwater Plantation, May 17, 1725

  Weather remarcably pleasant. Doctor Wrigley arrived by Ferry to see Mrs. G. who apeers better today.

  House neerly compleat & clearing 40 more aceres for Rice. Yesterday I perchased 4 Men, 1 Woman (with child) & 2 Children. Names & ages (aprox): Cassius—30; Luther—25; Nero—20; Marcus—17; Cordelia—19; August—10; Helen—13. Paid 350 pounds. For the Journy from Charles-Town, Mister Plane administerr'd Spirits to induse Dosility.

  Grimm Family Papers (Section A: 1715–1754)

  July 7, 1726

  TO:Mister Curtis Grimm, Charles Town

  FROM: Arnold Plane, overseer, Eastwater

  Dear Sir—

  I hope this lettre finds you well and the Climate of Charles Town more agree-able to Mrs. Grimm than the malarial aires of Eastwater. The Slaves perchased by you May last are performing theyre Dutys well, only August still requires leg irrons and the threat of the lash to keep him to his task. He may be Angolan which would account for his stubbornness. The other Males are good at irigation and pounding with morter and pessle. Cordelia and Helen make fine fanner baskets from sweetgrass for winnowing the chaff. My 23 years xperience taught me that one should not buy Slaves of the same species—when able to talk amung themselves, they take longer to learn theyre tasks and are apt to Revolt. But the choice to perchase Slaves ready equipped to grow and harvest Rice will prove both Wise and Proffitable. While in Charles Town, perchase more Slaves from Sierra Leonne or Gambia, if Opportunity arises. The Hausas are worth the price as the Males are of keen inteligence & the Females are handsome & merry. Avoyd if possible the
Ibo, as they are prone to suicide and meloncolie.

  Faithfully,

  Arnold Plane

  Carolina Gazetteer, October 8, 1727

  ESCAPED

  Run away from my plantation, Eastwater, in St. Augustine parish. A New Negro male named AUGUST. Wearing negro cloth jacket and breeches. August is a tall young fellow with scars on back and legs & speaks good English. Whosoever shall deliver said negro to me in Charles-Town or at my plantation to Mister Arnold Plane shall receive a reward of Ten Pounds, currency or goods. CURTIS GRIMM.

  Journal & Ledger of Curtis Grimm, Eastwater, October 12, 1727

  Clowds today. Paid Dolly one yd. Indigo cloth for her fine Tobacco. Mister Plane returns with August who got to Cooper River before he was fownd. This being his 2nd escape, Gus receiv'd a branding of a "R" on his cheek, as new Law dictates. He seems at last resined.

  Grimm Family Papers (Section B: 1755–1804)

  August 15, 1773

  To Robert Vine, overseeer of Eastwater

  Sir,

  In Anticipation of my family's return from Charles Town week the next, please direct Berty to ready the house. Last year she was still preparring the house when we arrived, so I ask that this year she have any help neaded. With all speed please issue this seasons alotment of Shoes, Negro Cloth, Blankets, and Provisions. Also I instruct you to select whichsoever wench and buck you think most suitable for sale, as my brother in law in Beaufort is curently in need of more hands. I had thought of Rainie's girl, the mullatoe Pearl, and Berty's Caesar, the Hostler, both Trustworthy Strong, but whose sale would surly provoke many Lamentations. Therefore upon further Reflection I instruct you to select those whose sale will least effect the Harmony we enjoy with the Negroes.