The School of Beauty and Charm

by Melanie Sumner

  “’Scuse me!” called Lollibells in falsetto. Then he pranced through the crowd on stilts, dressed as a nun. “Oooh, you bad boy!” he said, bending down at a terrifying angle to slap Arthur’s head. “Don’t look up my dress!” Warren danced on his stilts, raising a leg high to poke a man in the ribs, then to remove a child’s hat. He hopped on one leg, then on his hands, revealing a pair of Satan-red underwear, and then on one hand. “Oooh, sword swallower,” he called out. “Here, dragon! Here, kitty kitty!” Then he leapt into the air and did a back flip, landing on Zane’s table, perfectly balanced on the stilts.

  “What is normal?” continued Arthur after he had chased Lollibells off. “We all know that it’s not normal to lay a hand on a hot object, such as an iron, but wetting a finger to check an iron is normal, isn’t it? Sticking pins in one’s body is not normal, but diabetics do it every day. Sword swallowing is done every day in hospitals when an anesthesiologist inserts an airway into a stomach tube. If you take a bead, say a pearl, and feed a piece of string through it, you’ll find that you can easily snuff it up your nose, catch it at the back of your throat, and pull the whole string out of your mouth. Now, if you tie the ends of the string together, you can make a loop; you can run it around and around, into your nose and out of your mouth. In India, this is the way people clean their nasal passages. To them, it is normal. I see this young man eyeing his mother’s necklace; please don’t try this at home.

  “What is abnormal is to find men and women with the courage to pursue these talents. I have found such a man. May I introduce to you, the fire-eating, sword-swallowing, ultimate wonder of the Arthur Reese Traveling Show—the Human Dragon, Zane Wilder!”

  Zane stepped into the spotlight, hair braided, spangled vest open as usual over his washboard belly, pirate earrings glinting. Silently, he put on his white gloves, dipped his finger into the pan of lighter fluid, and lit it on the votive candle. He put the flame out in his mouth. By the time several rubes had concluded, in stage whispers, that the glove was the trick, Zane removed it and lit his finger. He used the flaming finger to light his first torch. Even though he had told me that only vapor burns, I cringed as he put the flaming torch in his mouth. Next, he lit a cigarette, pumping it until the head was red hot, touched it to his tongue, and then held it out with his finger on the glowing red cherry. Lollibells had said something about an insulator cap created by the wet tongue, but this only lasted a few seconds. I held my breath until he bit off the cherry.

  “Eat a lightbulb!” yelled a mark, and I glared at him.

  Zane moved with the rhythm of a sleepwalker as he lit one torch, and then another, and began to pass them back and forth from his mouth, lighting one with the other. I almost missed the sleight of hand when he squeezed some lighter fluid onto his tongue. Holding his chin high, with his legs spread for balance, and his mouth partly open, he exhaled softly, producing a fountain of fire.

  He lit the next torch from the fountain of flame at his mouth. Again, he lit his tongue and lit a torch from that flame. The rubes were clapping madly, and Arthur Reese smiled. Zane threw the torches to the ground, stomped them with his feet, and bowed.

  Then he turned his back to us, a smoking statue with a single braid down his back. People began to shuffle and whisper; to my horror, someone coughed. “One cough and I’m a dead man,” Zane had told me.

  When he finally turned around, he held his grandfather’s Civil War bayonet. It was eighteen inches long. The nickel plating he’d added to it to make it glide more smoothly glimmered. He spread his legs, tilted his head back, opened his mouth. Slowly, with his eyes shut, he inserted the point of the blade into his throat. Down it went, behind the gently bobbing Adam’s apple, down, down, down, until he held the hilt between his strong white teeth. It was all I could do not to cough.

  After the show, while I was having a glass of red wine outside the tent, Lollibells stepped out from the shadows holding a white rat by the tail. I screamed.

  “Oh you hush,” he said. “I been watching you, girl; you ain’t afraid of nothing! You waltz in here telling everybody you’re a clown! Right in front of ole has-been Lollibells! Now that is funny.” He dangled the rat in front of me. “You want to be with it. Don’t fib to me. I seen it in your face. You have made the foolish decision to go on the road with the Arthur Reese Traveling Show. You already sleeping with Smokey the Bear, bless yo little pea-picking heart. Ain’t that what they say back home, Georgia peach?”

  “Georgia roadkill.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what Zane called me.”

  “Tsk, tsk . . . that little firecracker. Well, I cannot speak for the Human Dragon, but immodest mockery of those I love is one of my defects of character.”

  “Love is pretty cheap around here.”

  “Take it or leave it.” He held out the rat.

  Gingerly, I grasped the tail between two fingers, flinching as the thing jerked. “See what I tole ya? Courage. That lil ole hook-wormy thang from Louisiana ain’t got nothing on you. Now you run this mouse over to Madge Olinick. You ask her real nice if you can feed it to Percy. Be sweet now. Girl, if Madge don’t like you, you ain’t going nowhere.”

  I turned away.

  “One more thing . . . there’s a gentleman here to see you. A fine-looking colored gentleman from Georgia. He’s having a hot dog.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “I HAVE TO feed this mouse to a snake,” I explained when Jeremiah offered to buy me a hot dog.

  “Well, I won’t keep you. I was just in town and thought I’d drop by. You working here now?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I see.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin, threw it in the garbage can, and then put his hands in his pockets and leaned back on his heels. Except for some distinguished streaks of gray in his temples, he looked the same as he did two summers ago at Southern Board. “Looks like you caught you a rat,” he said, smiling.

  “I think it’s a mouse,” I said, dangling it by its tail. Around us, barkers shouted, children shrieked on rides, and the faint strain of “Le Sabre” played from the merry-go-round.

  “Your mama and daddy are looking for you. They been right worried. Got all the police in Wapanog County out looking. Your daddy got him a police radio. Listens to it all the time. Figuring you might be kidnapped.”

  “Did they send you after me?”

  “Naw.” He took a toothpick out of his pocket and began to suck on it. “I just brought my family down here for a little vacation, and I saw that Ferris wheel and got to thinking.” I looked around for his family, but he was alone. He was the only mark on the lot who looked like he couldn’t be cheated. He looked like Henry.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I have to feed the snake.”

  “Caught you a rat after all, didn’t ya?” He put his broad hand on my shoulder. “Now I want you to do something for me. I want you to get to a phone and call your mama and daddy. I imagine they’ll take it collect.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “You not the only chile that ever ran off to the circus. I tried it myself once.”

  I STOOD BESIDE Madge as Percy followed the mouse around the bottom of her bathtub. It took over an hour for him to open his jaws and swallow the shrieking rodent, and by that time I was ready to faint. Madge and I watched the snake swallow, slowly squeezing the mouse down its long yellow body. Finally, she said, “I forgive you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. That night I dreamed of the fire and snakes and Jeremiah, who kept saying, “You ever seen a cat catch a rat?”

  THE NEXT MORNING, on the way out of town, the caravan stopped at a gas station, and I called home.

  “Living with whom?” asked Florida. I shifted the receiver to my other hand and took a drink.

  “With a friend,” I said in a small voice.

  “With a black man? What did you say? I can’t hear you? Where are you?”

  “South Carolina. We’re on our way to Rock Hill this
morning.”

  “We’ll see about that. You ask your father. He turned this town upside down looking for you. I told him you’d taken the bus. Or hitchhiked. Rebelling against your mother. You could have been killed or mauled. I’ve lain awake every single night. Had nightmares. I guess that doesn’t concern you, does it? You just please yourself. Mark my words, one day you will be sorry. Here’s your father.”

  I heard her murmur, “Living with a black man in North Carolina. She said something about somebody with three legs. I don’t know what-all. Circus, it sounds like. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

  There was a silence on the phone. Then Henry said in a deep, steady voice, “Hello, Louise.”

  “Hi.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “I’m doing all right, honey. You’re mother’s been worried to death.” In the background, over the clatter of dishes, I heard Florida’s monologue: “Didn’t hear a peep about college. Guess she gave up on that, too. Does she have any money? Oh, I could just wring her neck. I’m going to get my purse and go to the car.”

  “Sit tight, Florida,” said Henry. “I’m talking to her.” In a professional voice, he began to ascertain my situation. First, he took down the number of the pay phone, in case of disconnection. Then he asked for my address.

  “Dad, it’s the Arthur Reese Traveling Show,” I said impatiently. “We don’t have an address.”

  “He must have an address. Everybody in this country has some kind of address. How does he pay his bills? Spell his name for me.”

  “He has a patch man to pay his bills.”

  “A what?”

  “A guy who pays people off.”

  “What’s his address?”

  Florida picked up on another extension to ask if I wanted her to reschedule my dentist appointment. “The Good Lord has answered my prayers,” she said. “I thought you might be in pain.” She began to cry.

  “I’m trying to talk,” said Henry.

  “Is there a law that only one person can talk? I have something to say, too. I’m her mother. Boss, boss, boss, that’s all you do Henry. I’m going to the grocery store. You all are driving me crazy. Bye.”

  “Yes, he went to college,” I was saying when Zane walked out of the gas station and handed me a fresh beer. “He probably got a degree. I don’t know.”

  “I went to all the colleges,” said Zane, popping open is beer. “I can count to ten backwards, but I only do it for cops.”

  “Would you like to talk to him?” I asked Henry.

  “Not right now,” he said, but I handed the phone to Zane. Then, with a mixture of wonder and shame, I looked at the caravan lined up at the Texaco pumps. Arthur’s limousine had been obtained, somehow, from a funeral home in Texas. Eva had replaced the black curtains with purple and gold ones, but you can’t hide a hearse. Most people maintained a respectful distance, but while I was standing on the curb I saw a child edge toward the window. Then he fled, screaming “Snake! Mama, they’s a snake in that car!” Madge claimed that Percy could not get comfortable anywhere except in the back seat of the limo, and Arthur, who had in fact traded in her mountain lion for a couple of hot dog stands, felt guilty enough to ride with an albino python for the rest of his life. Spencer and Daisy rode in Jungle Jim’s trailer. Theoretically, they were in car seats, but they’d managed to unfasten each other and dash into the store. Daisy came out first, waving a fistful of lollipops, and was followed shortly by Spencer, who was chased out by the cashier. Someone screamed, “Call the police!” drawing a crowd around our sputtering rigs and the rusty, patched-up trailer homes we pulled behind them.

  “You get them stinking gypsies outa here.”

  “Gypsies and niggers and monkeys, too.”

  “What’s the damn difference?”

  “Don’t you leave that register, Brittany. Them folks are dangerous. I had my cousin Peewee out here one Sunday on the morning shift, and one of them circus ladies give him the evil eye. She snatched twenty dollars clean out of the drawer. Didn’t touch nothing. Did it all with her eye.”

  “He tell you that?”

  “He stood right there where you are.”

  On the pay phone, Zane was slowly repeating a phone number he had made up.

  ON THE RIDE to Rock Hill, squeezed between Zane and Lollibells, who had snatched some Valium from Arthur and was snoring quietly, I asked Eva about her third leg. Until now I had been too bashful to ask, but since it was hanging over my shoulder, and everybody was in a good mood, I risked it.

  “All of Eva is real,” she said. “No rubber parts. Right, Zane?” She tickled him with her toes.

  “You bet,” he said, tossing her a handsome smile.

  “Here, Louise. Give me a foot massage. My feet are clean. I am not like Tic Toc. It is how long since he has bathed, Zane?”

  “He got caught in the rain a few years ago.”

  “A little harder, dear, yes, there, that’s it.” I rubbed her foot, which was small, smooth, and white, with blue polish on its little toenails, like Puff LeBlanc.

  “She’s nice! Nice hands, huh Zane? You have the hands of a lady—Eva’s hands. We should have many of these fine hands; two is not enough. Do you know what a famous man with three legs, four feet, and sixteen toes said when he was asked how he coped in the world?”

  “Lentini!” shouted Zane. “I love him!”

  “He answers to this man, ‘If you lived in a world where everyone had only one arm, how would you cope with two?’”

  “So you weren’t really found in a Dumpster?”

  “No, I was in a convent, which is much, much worse. I did not eat chicken. I ate—how do you call it? Cruel.”

  “Gruel.”

  “Yes, that. And at night they locked me in a closet. The sisters said my parents have sinned—so I have three legs. Some of them thought I was a devil. They were afraid I would get out of the closet at night and eat them up. That was correct.” Clenching her jaw, she snapped her teeth and growled. Her eyes were dark corridors.

  As we crossed the Catawba River, she brought up the subject of Sunny. “You can tell it’s the end of the season when nobody will ride with nobody else,” she said as we bounced along the rutted road. “Sunny wants to ride here, with Zane, but Zane cannot let her because here is his new wife, Louise Peppers.”

  “We’re not married,” I said pointedly.

  “And you,” continued Eva, “you hate that girl, no? You want to scratch out her eyes?”

  “I could take her or leave her.”

  “Leave her to the wolves!” she cried, poking me with her foot. “All night you lie in his arms, thinking, Did she hold him like this? Did he like her smell? Is this her smell on the pillow?”

  “Let’s change the subject,” said Zane.

  I lit a cigarette for courage and asked, “Did you go to their wedding?”

  “Oh, yes! It was a carnie wedding on the merry-go-round, in New Orleans. The horses were in better shape back then; they had shiny new paint and most of their teeth. Sunny’s father bring his band to the lot, and they play beautiful music; everyone is dancing and drinking champagne. We make toast. Sunny, she is throwing up. We are joking with Zane—Is she pregnant? Because why else would he have married such a trumpet?”

  “Strumpet,” I corrected, watching Zane from the corner of my eye. He was mad. Eva didn’t seem to notice.

  “You see, Louise, he come to me the day before and say, ‘Eva, Potrebbe mi aiutare? Can you help me? I think maybe I make a mistake.’

  “I say to him, ‘Ferma! Stop! The marriage is not . . .’ andato e ritorno, how do you say in English?”

  “Round-trip,” mumbled Zane. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “So don’t talk,” said Eva, opening a beer. “I am talking because I tell the truth, and this girl who leaves her family to join us needs to know the truth.”

  “That’s very Italian, or something,” said Zane.

  “How
do you know? I am a woman. This is what I know.” Turning to me, she said, “I love Sunny. She is like a daughter to me. Her father—what music he plays! When I hear him, you understand, I am flying. But she is not the woman for Zane. She is too afraid. Afraid of everything. Always pushing people. Trying to be the one, as you say. Not like Zane. He dreams big dreams, like you. He loves. Sunny’s father love only his music. Her mother love only her wine. Poof. Not like your mama, no? I see her now; she is hurting in her heart for you.”

  “Here comes the fortune,” said Zane. “Give her a dollar, Louise.”

  Eva took my hand, running her fingers over my palm. “No money this time. Next time. This time, I am talking to you as a daughter. I see fire in you, a terrible hot fire you cannot put out with whiskey. It gets hotter and hotter. Big, big fire. Zane cannot swallow this fire. The dragons across the sea, they run from you. Inside, you are burning, burning, burning. Nothing can stop you. You are crazy. Do you understand what I am saying?” I looked into her eyes. She hissed, “Il cotella!”

  “Give her a dollar,” said Zane.

  “You insult me,” replied Eva.

  “I try,” he said. He rubbed his eyes and stared tiredly at the road. The birds were flying south in unwavering black V against the blue sky. At dusk, we drove through a town where the houses sat close together behind neat picket fences, and I looked at each softly lit window, wondering what they were doing inside, if anyone was thinking of joining the carnival.

  IN ROCK HILL, I received a real letter from Florida:

  Dearest Louise,

  I am sending this General Delivery and don’t know if you will get it or not. Please let me know. Your father and I do not like it that we cannot reach you. We might have an emergency, and no one would know where to find you. We are trying to let you be “independent” but you will have to prove that you are capable. Mature. Please call us collect. Henry wants to know if you got your check.