Professor Renoir's Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights

by Randall Platt

  “Ma’am?”

  She gave a deep laugh, mixed with a cough, and said, “I read palms. You know, a fortune-teller?”

  “For true?”

  “Sure! Here, give me your hand.”

  Babe’s hands were always rough, cracked, dirty, ugly and that wasn’t even considering the warts. “No.”

  “Oh, come on.” The fortune-teller grabbed Babe’s hand and turned it over, inspecting the palm. “What’s this?”

  “Peanut shell, looks like.”

  Madame de la Rosa flicked it away. Babe looked at the woman’s head while she traced the lines of her palm. Her mahogany-black hair was snowy white at the roots.

  “There. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” the woman muttered.

  “Uh-huh what?”

  “Just as I suspected. Long life, lots of love, and many, many, many adventures are ahead for you.”

  Babe pulled her hand away. “Don’t say no such thing. Giants don’t live long. My ol’ man told me.”

  The woman smiled and winked. “Well, in folklore, they do.” She pulled out a leather tong necklace and shook out the charms dangling on it. “For ten cents extra, I sell a juju to make sure good fortunes come true.”

  “What’s a juju?”

  “It’s anything you can hustle—sell—to make a person feel good.” She took one off the tong. “Here.”

  “I don’t got ten cent.”

  “On the house,” she said, handing it to her. “You’re going to need all the good luck you can get with this broken-down outfit. And believe me, I’ve seen them all!”

  The train tooted again. Madame de la Rosa hurried off, calling, “See you in the car! We have to hurry. That train’ll leave us here to walk to the next stop if we’re not on it. By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Fern Marie Killingsworth!” Babe hollered after her.

  “Glad to meet you!” she called back, her long robe flowing behind her.

  “Folks call me Babe!” She smiled down at the juju—a small wooden disk with a frog painted on it—then pocketed it. She tossed some food in the box for the mama dog, closed it, and climbed the hillside toward the train, the box safe and secure under her arm.

  She continued along the side of the tracks, counting twelve cars and a pink caboose. The first car after the firewood car was painted faded red, black, and gold. “Professor Renoir’s Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights” was painted on the side in fancy white letters, chipped and dirty with soot. A painting on another car caught Babe’s eyes. The huge creature had red eyes spitting fire, sharp long tusks, barreling through a crowd of terrified people.

  “Car-lot-ta.” Babe sounded out the writing. She stepped back and squinted while she sounded out “El-e-phant.”

  She glimpsed someone peeping at her through the window at the front of the elephant railcar. A curtain came down with a snap. The back of the car had no windows but narrow slots too high up for Babe to peek into. Sniffs and snorts came from inside.

  People shouting, engine panting, steam hissing—all such foreign, strange sounds. Babe felt her heart pound and her breath come faster. Excitement or fear? Was she really about to climb aboard this train and go . . . where? Her few belongings were already on board, but she had her twenty-dollar gold piece in her boot and her two dogs under her arm. Maybe she could just turn around, walk away. Contracts, Renoir, her father, her future be damned! If she was going to turn tail and run, now was the time, she warned herself.

  A long, shrill whistle startled her as it echoed off the grounds and the train gave a jerk forward. “Hey! Giant! You coming?” a man called as though he could read her thoughts from three cars ahead.

  Was she? The train began to inch away. She looked down on the empty field, back at the pink caboose, up at the engine. Yes, she was coming!

  Babe broke into a bone-jarring trot, then a clumsy lope. Gravel shot up behind her. People on board laughed and pointed through the open windows.

  She finally caught up, and with the help of the man who had signaled her, she pulled herself aboard.

  “Where’s . . . that man . . . with the dogs?” she gasped, peeking inside the box to make sure the dogs were all right.

  “Donny? He’s up there in the men’s smoking car. Bald as a baby’s butt. Can’t miss him.” The man pointed to the car ahead.

  Babe struggled with the railcar’s double door. It didn’t push; it didn’t pull.

  “It slides,” the man advised.

  She looked at the casing, then understood. Like a barn door. She tried it, but it stuck.

  “Got to unlatch it first.” He pointed to the handle.

  She grabbed the handle and slid the door with such a force it came off its tracks, sticking and now only half open. She jiggled it. Still stuck. She tried to edge her way through the door ignoring the sound of men’s laughter.

  Now she was stuck! “No!” Babe growled. Roars of laughter erupted as two men on both sides of the door pulled and grunted to get her and the door unstuck. Finally free, she burst into the car, where a wave of heavy cigar smoke hit her. She looked around through the fog.

  Not one bald man did she see. “Need me that baldy man with the dogs!”

  “Hey, baldy man!” someone called to the back.

  A man walked toward her. “I have the dog act,” he said, smiling kindly at her. “Ignore all those laughing hyenas.”

  “You ain’t bald,” Babe said, noting the man’s full head of hair.

  More laughter came from the crowd that had gathered around them.

  “Oh!” He reached to his head and pulled off his toupee. “Now I am.” Roars of laughter!

  Babe gasped. She knew women wore wigs sometimes, but men? “What’re they laughing at?” Babe asked the short, stout, bald man.

  “Oh, I was taking a bow after my act yesterday and my rug fell off.”

  “Rug?”

  He shook his toupee under her nose, and the car exploded in more laughter, boos, hisses, cuss words. With more voice than Babe figured a man of his size could muster, he shouted, “Shut the sam hill up! Can’t you see there’s a young lady present?”

  More laughter at “young lady.”

  “Who can’t see her?” another man shouted.

  “Don’t listen to them. Come on.” Donny tried to make his way toward the platform between the cars, but Babe was blocking the way. She backed up into an empty seating area. “Yep. You’re the giant all right. Renoir said he was chasing a strong act. So, what can I do you for?”

  “That mitt reader, Madame Something. She said you’d make sure these critters get tooken care of.”

  He opened the box. “Lookee there. Just a wee one and not very old.”

  “Borned just this morning. She had three, but the first two was already goners coming through.”

  “Mama’s a tired old girl. Terrier, I’d say. Smart dogs, terriers.”

  “Maybe you can help her come around,” Babe said, scrunching the dog’s ears.

  “I’ll do my best,” he said, smiling up at her. “Say, you better get to the ladies’ car. Renoir doesn’t like fraternizing while on the road.”

  “Ha!” another eavesdropper muttered, chuckling over his newspaper across the aisle.

  “Reckon mama needs some water. Gave her a few bites of sandwich. Her poor youngin’s had a hard day.”

  He smiled at her. “I know just what to do. You go on.” He nodded toward the car door. “Say, what’s your name?”

  “Babe. Can I come visit them?”

  “Sure. Any time.”

  “You won’t let that boss man, that Renoir, get rid of ’em?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Babe paused, then lumbered back through the car, this time carefully sliding the door open and closed behind her. She stopped on the vestibule.

  “Sure is a wonder,” she whispered, looking back on her first day ever away from home—from helping the mama dog birth her pup, and her father and Renoir barterin
g for her, to the strange people she’d met. And now watching the greens, browns, and blues blurring as the train now zoomed toward whatever—whomever—was on the tracks ahead. “A wonder for sure.”

  4

  “You sleep in there,” Madame de la Rosa said, moving aside the thick black curtains to a short and narrow berth in the ladies’ sleeping car.

  Babe poked her head inside. “What half of me?”

  “Oh,” Madame de la Rosa said, putting a delicate hand to her mouth. “I see what you mean.” Babe gripped a handle to keep her balance as the train waddled back and forth. Madame de la Rosa swayed like a seasoned sailor, her sea legs well under her. “Well, here. Come with me and we’ll set you up in the ladies’ lavatory.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Latrine? Privy? Uh, outhouse?”

  “A necessary room? Here on a train?” She massaged her shoulder, already cramping from bending over in the train’s passageway.

  “Come, dear,” she said, leading the way toward the back of the car. “I’ll show you.”

  The “necessary room” was bright with shiny white tiles reflecting light from the gas lamps. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a lavatory before,” Madame de la Rosa said.

  “Not like this,” Babe whispered, folding herself in half to get through the door. She peeked into the stall. “Got a chain pull and everything.” Babe recalled the only other necessary room she’d seen—the infirmary in Neal, and that was not a pleasant memory, considering the broken porcelain commode. “Can I give it a pull? See the water gush and all?”

  “Be my guest.” Madame de la Rosa smiled as she watched Babe pull the chain, lean over, and watch as the water flowed out and then back in. Another pull and a third. “Sure comes and goes hellity-split. Where’s it all go?”

  “Down on the tracks, of course. But here, here’s a couch. At least you might fit better. Maybe you can hang your legs over the edge. Better than those sleeping berths.” She swiped away some magazines scattered on a long, low fainting couch. “Here. I’ll go round up some bedding.”

  Babe picked up a magazine and sounded out the cover story. “Peo-ple. Who. Are . . . Dif-fer-ent.” She eagerly flipped through the pages. Madame de la Rosa returned with an armload of linens, and Babe put the magazine behind her back.

  “What’d you have there?”

  Babe’s face went scarlet as she handed over the magazine.

  “Sideshow Monthly!” she snapped, tucking the magazine into her belt. “No, young lady, you’re a bit too young for this.”

  “Sorry. I don’t read so good, so I was just looking at the pictures. Them’s my beddings?” she said, quickly changing the subject. “Uh, that couch is nice, ma’am, but reckon I’ll just set me up on the floor.”

  “Okay. But hang on to those pillows and blankets. People around here have a tendency to swipe them.” She winked at Babe.

  “Folks have a hard time swiping anything from me.” Hundreds of times she’d easily hung on to something while three or four others tried to take it away. Babe always won at tug-of-war. She was a team of one.

  “Oh, and the food cart comes along around six. You sure you don’t have any money on you?”

  “For what?” she asked, remembering her twenty-dollar gold piece resting safe and warm in her boot. She wasn’t about to let it cool off.

  “Well, you see, we pay for food on the cart or else Renoir takes it off your pay. No, never mind. I’ll just sign and we can settle up later. You’re so green.”

  Babe put her hand to her face. “I feel okay.”

  “No, no. Green—greenhorn. Fresh fish. Ha! You’ll learn the lingo.”

  Babe’s eyebrows grew together as her face scrunched.

  “The way we carnies speak.”

  “You’re a carnie?”

  “Yes, and you’re one now, too. You’ll catch on. We have a language all our own.”

  Babe rolled out a huge sigh and said, “Got me a lot to learn.”

  “Baby steps,” Madame said, smiling up at Babe.

  “Never once took me one of them,” Babe said, smiling down at the woman.

  Madame de la Rosa threw her head back and laughed. Babe was charmed by her new friend—from the colorful splash of her silk scarves right down to her bespangled wrists. “Don’t worry. You’ll learn.”

  Babe carefully tested the strength of the couch before sitting down full load on it. Her knees rose up to meet her chest. “Don’t do well learning. Quit school after third grade, second try.”

  “Well, what I meant is, there’s plenty of stuff to know about carnie life. Us.” She pulled a cigarette from a silver case. “Cigarette?”

  “No, thank you. It’ll stunt my growth.”

  Madame smirked around the cigarette dangling from her painted lips. She swiped a match along the wall with a dramatic flare and inhaled her cigarette to life. Babe fanned away the smoke as it wafted up.

  “You know, I’ve been with this outfit a few years now, and I think you might be the one and only real performing freak we’ve had.”

  Babe had been called a freak a hundred times, a thousand times! But never a “real performing freak.” “Ma’am? I mean, Madame?”

  “Well, there’s JoJo the Astonishing Pinhead.”

  “JoJo? I met her. Him?”

  “Her. But JoJo doesn’t have an act. She’s what we call a nondescript. She’s not this; she’s not that. She just goes on display and sometimes, if she feels like it, holds up the signs for the next act. Mostly we’re all just fakes here on this circuit. Renoir seems to attract fakes like dogs attract fleas, because he’s just a cheap fake himself. You’ll see.”

  “You got yourself a elephant. That can’t be fake.” Babe recalled the painting on the railroad car of the charging elephant with fire-blazing eyes.

  “No, you’re right. The elephant is real, but that Carlotta! Ugh, what an enfant terrible!”

  “What’s that?”

  “A first-class brat. Anyway, she’s the elephant’s handler, and talk about a no-talent little blister. I heard Renoir say he hopes the elephant will just squash Carlotta flat and then we could get a real handler! One who might stir up some excitement. Anyway, Babe, you’re young and you’re the genuine article. The rest of us, we’re pretty much old, tired, and fake.”

  “You ain’t fake. You’re about as real as anything. The only . . . carnies . . . I ever seed up the mountain was dog and pony shows, magic men, jugglers and such. Punch and Judy puppets beating each other to hell . . . I mean to doll rags. Nothing fake about them. They was puny but not fake.”

  “Honey, there’s something called wool, and this show is all about pulling it over the eyes of people paying hard-earned money just so they can be fooled. Well, plenty of time for that. Nothing wrong about it. It’s the biz. Just saying, you’re . . . you’re . . .”

  “A giant. Don’t that show?”

  “I know, but you’re a real giant.”

  “Excuse me, but how can there be a fake giant? I mean, either you’re a giant or you ain’t. . . .”

  “The fat-woman act,” she said, breaking her off. “You don’t want to end up being that.”

  “You get a act for just being fat?” Babe balanced herself as the train lurched.

  “If you’re really, really fat you do. The fat woman sits in a huge chair, wears a tent for clothes, and tells folks about being fat. How much she eats, how much she weighs. She has to make like she’s jolly and laughing all the time. Then folks usually throw food at her and poke fun. I’ve seen it in other outfits. The fat-woman act is about the lowest act there is. And the fat, jolly woman is usually the saddest one in the whole show. So don’t you ever let Renoir make you a fat-woman act. Now, come with me and I’ll introduce you around.”

  Babe looked down at her own belly, sucked it in, and thought back on what Renoir had told her father. She’ll be among her own kind. If Madame de la Rosa was “her own kind,” maybe things were going to be okay. Even so, she knew she better watch what sh
e ate.

  The air in the dining car was steamy and stuffy. Cigar and cigarette smoke rose to the top and mixed with the aroma of food cooking somewhere, forcing Babe’s stomach to churn. The smells, the movement of the car . . . Babe’s burp was a warning.

  Madame introduced Babe to the performers and crew as they went through the car. But Babe barely had time to say how do, let alone remember names. Every one of them made a comment about her size. Babe ignored it all and was glad to fold herself into a row of two empty seats.

  “Make way, make way,” a man said, wearing a white coat and carrying a tray high above his head. “Dinner for Little Miss Full of Herself! Coming through!”

  His passage was greeted with boos and hisses. Someone hollered, “Aw, let the little snot come eat with us peasants!” Laughter and nasty comments. Several voices clashed together with a singsongy “Car-laaaa-taaaaaa!”

  Babe looked around. “Who’s that?”

  “That’s who I told you about.”

  “The one Renoir wants squarshed?”

  Madame de la Rosa laughed. “Well, she is spoiled rotten. Renoir bought her act a few weeks ago. The kid and her elephant got stranded in Spokane.”

  “Probably paid big money for them!” a man called out.

  “Money he don’t have!” a woman added.

  Another man jumped in. “We get slop and she gets her food made to order and served on a silver tray. La-de-dah!”

  “Car-la-de-dah!” a few others called out, laughing.

  “And talk about a no-talent, sad act! The elephant can dance a jig better’n she can,” another person said.

  Still another person leaned into their conversation, gesturing wildly with what looked like huge lobster-claw hands. “Claims she’s got royal blood. My clawed foot! I’d like to spill some of that blood!” She opened and closed her hands to gesture snapping. Babe’s eyes widened. “Quit staring,” the woman said, flashing her hands under Babe’s nose. “These are just hands. They can do everything yours can do.”