The Language of Elk

by Benjamin Percy

  That January—after the finalized divorce papers were signed by Buddy, signed by Pamela, and notarized by the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit, Marion County—the twins lit a bonfire.

  For the past few weeks Gordon had accompanied them, door-to-door, all over Central Oregon, collecting Christmas trees for five dollars, for their ever-expanding college fund. “Zip up your coat and button your top button,” Lynn said to Lori when they rang a doorbell in Redmond. “You look like a tramp.”

  “Do you want to make money,” Lori said and unzipped her jacket another inch, revealing a canyon of cleavage, “or do you want to make money?”

  They made money all right. Even those without trees—the Rosenberg family, the Dewans, the Foos—donated five dollars, twenty, money that gained them admission to the bonfire party, which turned out to be quite the spread, with steaming caldrons of cider and hot cocoa, plumped bratwursts and venison sausages stacked on platters, buckets of beans, bowls of chips—and at ten o’clock sharp the twins sparked a match and brought fire to the pyramidal mound of trees, over thirty feet tall and fifty feet wide.

  The fire started with a sizzle that rose into a popping roar, the fingers of flame reaching up and up and up, through the branches, scorching the needles into ash the color of snow, until a great orange whip snapped at the night’s ceiling and made the air so hot your skin seared, your eyeballs dried out, and the whole world felt made of fire. All snow within a fifty-foot radius vanished and Lazarus darted in and out of the creeping darkness as if simultaneously drawn toward and afraid of the light. Children chased him and laughed and the branches glowed red and cinders tornadoed into a black sky flecked with stars. Pockets of sap lit up and popped like flashbulbs, crackling out the smell of Christmas.

  Gordon couldn’t help but wonder at the violence of it all. It was if, he thought, each tree were filled with a hidden menace just waiting to get out.

  All around him people were cheerful and joking, and he walked among them, brushing against their bodies, listening to their conversations, smiling when he passed his mother, who carried a tray of ciders. Beyond her, on the other side of the fire, stood her counterpoint, Aunt Verna, who in many ways was beginning to feel like more of a parent than he had ever known. She absentmindedly petted Lazarus while admiring the flames.

  Gordon discovered it was possible to squint into the flames and at the same time see Verna haloed with light, and as the fire grew hotter the night grew brighter and brighter still, as bright as day, and the air burned so you would have thought spring had arrived, and with it, the Chinook winds, which would one day rot the snow blanketing the ground, exposing the brown grass that would grow greener as the holes grew larger until finally all the white would evaporate in gentle heat waves that would reorganize into puffy white clouds that would look, to Gordon, like some part of Heaven.

  The Bearded Lady Says Goodnight

  The Bearded Lady is dead.

  I pressed my finger to her wrist and neck, both, and found no pulse. I even touched her eyeball. Nothing. I called the police, I answered their questions, I showed them the pale body in the tub and listened to them laugh when they hoisted her up, the water streaming from her naked body. I watched a pine casket lowered. I heard the first shovel of dirt slap its lid, the saddest sound in the whole world.

  She was my sweetheart.

  It’s complicated. First there is her sensitive disposition. Yes, she often squinted cruelly, smoked aggressively, and yes, her biceps were as round as cannonballs. But don’t let any of that business fool you. She wasn’t all beard.

  I try to focus on the nice things. Like the pink dress hanging in the closet, the silk panties I take with me to bed, the daisies woven in her hair and the baby powder perfume that lingers long after she’s gone. What else? She had good pillow talk. Sometimes she hugged me so tight she stole my breath. That was The Bearded Lady I loved.

  She was my sweetheart, but we were complicated. If I am certain of anything in this world, it is this: bearded women are a dangerous and unpredictable lot.

  My girl, she had a right hook that could turn me off, knock me in to some black place for hours. But I tasted her tears as often as I felt her knuckles. Her moods swung wildly. If I looked at her funny, she might fall to pieces, or else crush me in to a headlock that burst the capillaries in my eyes.

  Unpredictable.

  When the carnival came to Deschutes County, I went for the roller coaster, to eat some funnel cake and wieners and cotton candy, to try my hand at the ring toss and maybe win a goldfish or a stuffed panda. But I discovered love instead.

  George—he’s my friend and has fabulously buck teeth—he was there, too. We’re a pair of nobodies who work as horsemen down at the Lazy H ranch. Our stallion, Oregon’s Organ, is a golden buckskin, durably built with gentle temperament and much breeding potential. He is the pride of Lazy H. He will be a legend one day. Already we have shipped his fluids as far as Texas.

  Most of our days are spent grooming, forking straw, breeding quarter horses and various other ranchero what-have-yous. I consider the work respectable, pretty much, though sometimes we work with the Mexicans, cleaning stalls for example. We don’t complain. The pay is enough to swell my belly with buffet food. Most of our nights disappear into playing pool, sucking beers at this tavern called Wounded Soldier, where occasionally we ride the mechanical bull.

  George can barely pinch his lips around his teeth. That’s how bad they are. His upper lip is constantly quivering, as if he is preparing to whistle. When his teeth slip out, he pulls at his lip like a window shade, tugging it down.

  By twilight we had done the roller coaster four times and the two of us were dizzy from all the loops and dips. We gorged ourselves on wieners. We visited the beer garden. We threw baseballs and made this girl in a striped bikini fall in a tank. George bought ten balls and dunked her every time but once. He said he liked the way she looked at him, just before he threw the ball. She had the flattest belly I have ever seen.

  Everything glowed like Christmas. Everybody’s boots made dust get in your nose. It was my birthday. We thought about taking a spin on the Ferris wheel but decided that would be queer. I bought myself a nice cotton candy.

  The sideshow barker looked like what you’d expect—wearing some old top hat, a red coat with a forked tail, his mustache curled at the tips with ear wax—but he lacked the theater expected of his trade. He leaned against a podium, his chin in his hand, his eyes half-shut with boredom. The posters behind him advertised many things including the world’s smallest horse and the world’s biggest hog, plus a savage beastman from the jungles of Tanzania, and so on.

  Then there was my Bearded Lady.

  The picture was crude, cartoonish, nothing to take note of, except those lips. The thought of them still makes me sweaty, their lustrous red color and eely feel, so carefully lipsticked beneath her whiskers.

  God!

  We walked up and slapped down the entry fee and I asked, you really got yourself a bearded lady, and the barker nodded and disappeared our money and we squared our hats and pushed through the dusty flap.

  The tent smelled somewhere between the hot stink of a noonday stall and the musk of a woman. I felt all of a sudden hungry and took several bites from my cotton candy. It was so sweet my teeth throbbed.

  The world’s smallest horse was a pony standing in a hole. It had not been properly groomed and I shook my head with pity for the thing. As for the hog, it was big, but there were two small chairs in its pen to make it look bigger. “What’s a hog need a chair for?” George said.

  The manbeast was a filthy ape suit crouched in a cage. I picked up a hunk of sawdust and pegged its head and its head fell off to reveal straw stuffing.

  Right then I lost my trust. Everything was phony—a lie – a waste of our time and quarters. Everything but The Bearded Lady.

  Yes, she later committed sordid indiscretions. Yes, there is a dead peanut of a child nested inside her belly, and, no, it is no
t of my get. I know this because we never performed such acts. It is not that I did not feel desire. My circulation is to blame, so poor my feet get cold and require wool socks, even come summer. I could not stiffen and serve her. And she had needs. A woman of whiskers is a woman of passion and impulse. I cannot blame her. In spite of what happened, I still love her, and I believe she loved me more than life, beard to bones.

  They called it an aneurysm. It happened in the bathtub. It happened because of what she did, to me.

  I saw her legs first. They were crossed, scissoring, as if impatient or in need of urinary relief. Her calves reminded me of a club a caveman might carry. She sat on a stool and wore a skirt, a short white one with a mess of red polka dots.

  George and I, we were enraptured. George forgot about his teeth and they slipped out to gnaw his bottom lip. I could hear the noises his tongue made, crackling and popping, the same noises it makes when we hit the buffet. We removed our hats in reverence.

  Our eyes traveled up her body and finally zeroed in on her beard. It was a full beard. It was blond and curly and she had woven daisies into its ringlets. That was a sight. I correctly guessed she shampooed and conditioned her whiskers. I then discerned, within that nest of hairs, pink and moist, obscenely so, her lips. They gripped a cigarette. I was driven mad by the sight! I wasn’t sure if I wanted to crawl in my pocket or melt her down and take a sip.

  What happened next is telling—George stepped forward. I would have, but instead took many wolfish bites from my cotton candy.

  Since her death, I have revisited the past many a time. This is one moment I attribute to the double crossings to come. George took two steps, three, until he was abreast of the velvet rope that separated her from us. He had a wild look about him, an almost homicidal urgency.

  I don’t blame George.

  She looked at him, did a wink thing, looked over at me, released a cloud of smoke and said, “Hello,” in a nectarous voice.

  George swallowed and his throat-apple slid around. He motioned at me with his thumb and said, “It’s his birthday.”

  The Bearded Lady said, “Good for you, honey.”

  I pressed the cotton candy hard against my face, hard so that the paper cone dug into my lips. I could feel the fibrous sugar melting, sticking to my cheeks. I imagine now what I looked like then: me, with the apparition of a pink beard.

  Perhaps it was this that kindled her original fancy?

  Regardless, she chose me.

  Courting a bearded lady is a challenge. She might flirt with someone on the street, at the buffet, in the bar, bat her eyelashes or lick her lips, just to see how you will react. I could not bear this and ended up in a handful of fistfights. Which pleased her greatly.

  Piece of advice: if courting a bearded lady, do not allow yourself to become the victim of her constant physical challenges. She is stronger and faster than you. Never arm-wrestle or engage in foot races with her. You will lose.

  Above all, a bearded lady is sensitive about her whiskers. I once made the mistake of recommending a trim. I don’t think she ever forgave me. And I worshipped her beard, I adored it, but it was getting a little too ZZ Top. She wept for a whole day and when I said, “What can I do to make things better?” she said, “Stand still. Don’t move. Close your eyes.” I did as she said and she punched my lights out with a fist to the temple.

  When The Bearded Lady first visited my trailer at Lazy H, she was appalled. “Won’t do,” she said, walking around with her hands folded behind her back like some sort of inspector. “Thought you were a better man than this,” she said. “Smells like a barn,” she said. She said if she fell asleep here she’d feel sorry about it in the morning.

  I admit it’s no Shan-Gri-La.

  I showed her around the ranch, showed her Oregon’s Organ. She referred to him as a mighty steed. I agreed and told her about his fluids, how we had shipped them as far as Texas. She asked how exactly we extracted these fluids. I told her that was George’s gig—not mine—but if she absolutely had to know—and she did—you sprayed a sawhorse with hormones and from the sawhorse hung this big rubber oven-mitt thingy into which the horse stuck his doodad.

  She said, “You’re kidding?” in a voice you wouldn’t use unless truly excited.

  I said, “I am not.”

  We held hands some, and though she stepped in dung and complained about the black flies, I could tell she liked it here. Another week, she quit the carnival and moved in for good.

  There were many things I did to profess my love. I bought her things, things like dresses and fancy undergarments and expensive fruits from the grocery store. Too many things. We were together only five months, and during that time my bank account clicked down to zero.

  For her, I tried to grow a beard. It was a miserable failure of a beard. This brought her great pleasure. She sat me down and counted all of my whiskers, sixty-three, most of them along my upper lip. She said I was no better than a Chinaman. She slapped me on the shoulder when she said, “Chinaman.”

  That afternoon, as if excited by my beardlessness, she forced me to attempt love acts. Nothing came of it.

  She made me want to be virile, for her. For me, pillow talk was good enough.

  Things got tense at Lazy H. Whenever The Bearded Lady sauntered by, twirling her sun umbrella, or brought me a Pepsi and a ham sandwich, I could practically smell George’s frustration. His breath became asthmatic and he started chucking hay bales around as if they had insulted him. He wanted her, is what it came down to. He wanted her bad.

  I kept expecting him to want to talk about it or fight about it, but he stayed silent and I minded my Ps and Qs, a little anxious, I admit, about the way he eyed me when handling a pitchfork.

  We split up the chores. He spent a week breaking horses with these caballero Mexicans and I rotated the irrigation, I shoed up the bays, I brushed the golden coat of Oregon’s Organ and collected his junk in a bowl to put through a sieve to put in a bottle to stick into the fridge, next to the Michelob, where it cooled.

  George was pissed because A) She chose me, and B) I didn’t visit the Wounded Soldier anymore. I felt bad in both respects and so one night proposed we all go out for a game of eight ball and a nice cold pitcher. He replied with a nod and a yep, and it was a brightly tuned yep, so I knew he looked forward to our little date.

  He is not a bad man.

  The Wounded Soldier used to be a grange hall. People still dance and go yip-yeehaw, but mostly it is a place to rack pool balls and slam shots and guzzle beers. Bats hang from the rafters and their guano mixes with the spit and spilled beer polishing the floor.

  We walked in like so: George and me and The Bearded Lady, The Bearded Lady wearing this pretty risky silk dress I bought her from the mail-order catalogue. It didn’t get quiet or anything, like you’d expect, but many eyes trained in our direction and crawled all over her. I expected such. Of course there is the beard. She also had an ample bosom and liked to showcase it.

  Things started off fine. George and I are friendly with most. A few mustached horsemen floated over to handshake and shoot the shit and we made introductions. They said it’s a pleasure to meet you to The Bearded Lady and she said the like. We gathered up some frosty mugs and a foaming pitcher. We chalked our sticks and played a game.

  George was in high spirits. He downed one whiskey and then another and chewed his way through the foam in his beer and even laughed a few times, showing off his teeth. When The Bearded Lady sank four stripes on the break, he shook his head and said, “What a woman!”

  Her beard matched the color of the beer she downed in fast gulps. Her private hair was of the same shade.

  A gang of men huddled near the pool table, intoxicated by her bending over, her handling of the stick. They spied her beneath the shadows of their broad white hats.

  The Bearded Lady was perfectly aware of all this. Could be all that staring reminded her of her time working the carnival. She liked it. I could tell. She could have shot the nin
e-ball sure and clean, but chose a terrible angle instead. She wanted them to see. She bent over and raised her rear.

  Just like that, one of the cowboys floated in and grabbed her. He had a small pretty face. When she spun around and faced him, several inches taller and broader, he just stood there and didn’t know what to do.

  From the look on her face, you would have thought she wanted to kiss him. Instead, she cocked her arm and swung with all her might and he went down, his mouth a great black O. Then she looked at me. There was something cheerful and expectant in her eye. I have never been a violent man, but she made me into one. I used my boots on that pretty man’s pretty face—and when I broke his nose it made a sound like the snap of a pistol’s hammer.

  I told her the truth, but The Bearded Lady would not believe my circulation problems. She accused me of finding her frightful and disgusting. I said, “Then why am I with you, for Christ’s sake?” First she wept, then she took to throwing fists and overturning furniture.

  After we fought, as if it were a sort of sex, she smoked and we reconciled tangled in each other’s arms, whispering sweet things to each other. Her smoking always worried me. What if her whiskers were set aflame? Her breath, seasoned with tobacco, reminded me of toast. I like toast a lot and when I went to kiss her she shoved me away and said she didn’t want somebody to kiss, she wanted somebody to sex her like an animal.

  I said, “Jeez.”

  One time at the Wounded Soldier, I returned from the toilet and discovered George and The Bearded Lady holding hands. I watched from a short distance, hating and loving them both. Then I coughed to announce my presence. George tried to pull his hand back, but she kept it firmly in her grasp. She was unashamed. She announced she was reading his palm. I pretended and wanted to believe this. She said George had a good soul and predicted a future gifted with love and wealth and happiness.

  Her predictions proved false.