“Why the change?” Ernie called out.
“Folks, this isn’t coming from me,” Renoir said, touching his chest with a stab of sincerity in his voice. “This comes from the men at the top. Investors. All on the dead quiet. Johnny Pepito, our advance man, is already on the road, setting things up. He’ll wire our new schedule as he gets our bookings. It will be posted as soon as it’s ready. Okay, that’s all. Go back to your breakfast. Train pulls out at ten.”
He hopped down from the bench and left.
The clamor began again.
Too large for the bench, Babe sat on a large wire spool at the end of a long table.
Rosa waited until Renoir was gone, then turned to the ladies. “Investors my foot! If you ask me, we’re down to scraps and bits because he doesn’t have any so-called investors. When was the last time you saw a supply wagon pull up?”
“Oh yes, he does have investors,” Serena said, leaning into the conversation. She looked around, then continued. “Mina and me, well, maybe it was Tina, anyway, we were talking a few days ago. Anyway, Mina said she found a telegram on Renoir’s desk when he stepped out for something. You know what snoops those girls are.”
“And?” Lucretia asked, taking a pull off her cigarette balancing in the cradle of her two large fingers.
“It was from his investors back east and it said, ‘No More Cash! Stop!’”
“Is that all it said?” Rosa asked.
“No,” Serena went on. “Then it said, ‘Profits or else! Stop.’ If you ask me, we’ll all be working for other outfits in no time.”
“Well,” Lucretia said, “that Carlotta and her elephant might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. What was Renoir thinking, bringing on that eating machine and that little snip . . . Ow!”
Rosa smiled sweetly as Lotty entered the tent. Lucretia rubbed her shin.
“Well, look who’s here. Little Carlotta,” Serena said. “On what auspicious occasion do you grace us with your ecumenical presence?”
Babe didn’t understand the big words, but she understood the tone of Serena’s voice.
“Someone said Renoir made an announcement,” Lotty said.
“Yeah, he announced your elephant is eating us off the circuit!” Lucretia said.
“Lu,” Rosa said. “Don’t be cruel.”
“Sorry.”
“Here, sit, dear. Join us,” Rosa said, patting the bench next to her. Lotty looked at it, then struggled to climb up. Babe recognized the rise of embarrassment in Lotty’s expression. “Here. I can help you.”
“No, thank you, I can do it. I can . . .” She grasped the bench, pulled herself to her stomach, grunted as she swung her legs around, then sat upright. Her chin barely reached the table.
More laughter, now from the others in the troupe, watching from their tables. Babe looked around, saw a box, and dumped the cans out of it. She placed the box on the bench. “Here, Lotty. You can sit on this.”
The snickering stopped. “Thank you.” Lotty climbed on it and sat down with as much dignity as she could summon.
“Coffee?” Rosa asked, reaching for a pot in the center of the table. She poured some into a heavy mug. Lotty looked at it.
“Someone get her a little girl’s tea party set!” a roustabout said as he walked by.
“Mind your own business!” Rosa said. “I’m sorry, Lotty. I wasn’t thinking.”
Lotty kept staring at the mug. “You don’t have to kid-glove me.”
“You mean kiddy-glove?” another wrangler said, laughing with his buddy. Babe stood in front of them, making them walk around her, then took her seat again.
Lotty looked at each woman, her face crushed, and her lip quivering. “Look, I know what you think of me and my Egypt. Why do you think we came so cheap to begin with?” She dotted her eyes with her hanky. “Don’t think we haven’t been through this before. Egypt might as well be a white elephant.”
Babe’s face asked the question, which Rosa answered. “A white elephant is something you don’t need and can’t get rid of.”
“That’s us. White elephants,” Lotty said, fingering the corners of her hanky. “I was hoping things would be different with this carnie. It’s not. It’s worse.”
“Look, Carlotta, I didn’t mean to make you cry. But we have big problems in this outfit,” Serena said.
“Money problems,” Lucretia added. “Might be time for . . .”
“Picture postcards?” Babe said, nodding her head and catching Lotty’s eyes.
“What do you think, girls?” Lucretia asked her hands. “Renoir said all the famous freaks are getting photographed these days!”
That eased them into a more gentle laughter. “Same thing he told us,” Lotty said.
Rosa looked at Babe. “You too?”
“Don’t think he’ll be coming around with his photograph men no more,” Babe said, taking the loaf of bread off a plate. “Or he’ll get this!” She ripped it in half with a twist and a tug.
15
“Where are we now?” Babe asked, pulling out the revised map and list of stops. She looked out over the countryside from the train window.
Lotty turned the hand-drawn map around and read, “Let’s see. June fifteenth. That makes this Cheyenne, Wyoming. It’s just a one-night stand.”
“I hate those. Nothing but ‘hurry up, set up, hurry up, take down.’”
“I know. But back east the towns are so much closer together, they weren’t so hard on everyone. But we’ve been traveling two days just for a one-night stand? What about all those little towns we blew right on through?”
“I think them towns we played don’t welcome us back. Renoir says he wants to spread the show around, but Rosa says he’s got warrants and debt hot on his tail,” Babe said.
The train seemed to list, then lunge, going around a corner. Lotty grabbed the seat armrest.
“It’s okay, Lotty.”
“I know. It’s just I hate it when the train lurches like that.”
“These trains stick to the tracks like glue.”
“Not always. I was in a train wreck once.”
Babe looked at her. “For true? When?”
“It’s been, gosh, three years. I was with the Walter H. Main show. We were traveling through Altoona, Pennsylvania. Our train jumped the track and went down an embankment.”
“Lotty, no. Was you hurt?”
“Yes, but not bad. What really hurt was seven in our troupe were killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Still worse was . . . Egypt. She was pretty banged up, but more than that, she’s never been the same. That’s how I know elephants never forget. Any big loud noises and she’s reliving that horrible day. And I think she’s always been in mourning. You see . . .” She paused and looked outside, a tiny tear visible in the window reflection. “You see, we had to use her to help move the rubble and cars and . . . so many dead horses. So many.”
“Don’t say no more, Lotty. You don’t have to tell me more.”
Lotty took a deep sigh and tried to smile.
“You okay?”
“Yes. I just hate remembering but I’ll never forget it. Egypt won’t, either.”
16
Keeping true to his warnings, Renoir sacked several of the roustabouts, mess-tent workers, vendors, and wranglers, and then asked the performing troupe to pick up the slack and pull together in double duty. Rosa had to work in the mess tent, Serena worked the beer garden, Lotty sold tickets, and Babe put her shoulder to the lifting, moving, and other grunt work. Gossip ran from backstage to mess tent—the outfit was in trouble. Big trouble.
Adding to the strain, Renoir framed new acts for nearly everyone. Roustabouts became barkers, wranglers became candy butchers and slum pitchmen. Madame de la Rosa added a mind-reading act, Lucretia donned an outfit similar to Ina, Mina, and Tina’s and the four had a comic dance act.
Lotty and Babe didn’t escape Renoir’s new schemes:
THE WORLD’S TALLEST AND SMALLEST
GIRLS!
WILL SING AND DANCE THEIR WAY INTO YOUR HEARTS!
Babe’s voice was low, gravelly, off-key, and clashed with Lotty’s high soprano. Nothing was more clumsy than a dancing giant with an awkward dwarf ducking in and out of her legs and being tossed in the air. They didn’t trick or quip their way into anyone’s heart but were the brunt of boos, hisses, mockery, and lettuce heads.
After every last show, Lotty and Babe had a late dinner in the dressing tent, away from the annoying crowds and other carnival folks. Babe opened her sandwich and gingerly lifted something resembling meat pasted down with ooze. “Look there, Lotty. That’s shortening, that’s lettuce, and who knows what that meat is? We missing a mule in our stock?”
“No, but I saw a wrangler bringing in some rabbits and God knows what else.”
“Can’t wait to get back to river country. Wait till you taste salmon, Lotty. Indians stand on platforms and spear it right out of the rivers!”
Lotty lifted the corner of her sandwich. “Sure is skimpy. I don’t eat so much, but, you, Babe. You must be starving all the time.”
“Thought all our extry work and such we’d see a betterment, but this is getting worst.”
“I know. I asked for better hay for Egypt, and Renoir just said elephants do better grazing and shouldn’t have baled hay. How would he know? My Egypt needs good feed. She’s no spring chicken. I’m tired of finding a field for her every stop we make and I’ll tell you, farmers don’t take kindly to their trees getting trimmed. Remember a few stops ago and she found an orchard? Someday someone’s going to take a potshot at her.”
They stared into the lantern flame flickering between them on the table. Babe broke the silence. “Sometimes I wonder why the hell I’m doing it, Lotty.”
“Doing what?”
“I mean, don’t you ever ask yourself? Ain’t there more? On display and making fools of ourselfs and . . .”
Lotty sat up a bit straighter. “Well, I don’t exactly think of myself a fool, Babe.”
“I’m sorry. I just mean me. You’re sweet and pretty and dainty and ladylike and all. Folks want to cuddle you and take care of you. But me. Folks want to just take me on.”
Lotty stared into the flame. “Well, getting cuddled isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m more young woman than old child. And yes, sometimes, well, maybe . . .”
“Maybe what?”
“There might be more. But everything, everyone, out there is so . . . big. It scares me, Babe. But you, what’s out there to scare you?”
Babe stood up and walked over to the mirror hanging from a pole. She stood there for some time. “This scares me, Lotty,” she said. She flexed her biceps, which bulged out the tattoos of a three-mast ship on each bicep. “Why’d I let Renoir talk me into these damn tattoos?”
Lotty walked over and looked in the mirror. “Because he told you how much the kids would love it, and you do make them laugh.”
“Yeah, but now I got me a permanent reminder of being Magnifica. And there’s something else, Lotty.”
“What?”
Babe bent down and showed Lotty the seams of her Magnifica costume. Popped out, mended, patched over. “Everything’s hanging tighter. My dress hems is shrunk, too. I’ve growed. That’s what scares me.”
“I know. But, Babe, think about it. You’re getting famous now that you’re Magnifica.”
“Sometimes I think about something Madame de la Rosa said to me when I first come to the carnie.”
“What was that?”
“She said folks here is all old carnies doing the only thing a old carnie can do. Ever look at their eyes and faces?” She chuckled and pointed at the mirror. “Criminy, looking in mirrors is hard enough for me. Sometimes they crack looking back.”
Lotty laughed, then her face became serious. “But we’re not old, Babe. We’re just kids, and there’s lots left to our lives.”
“Even my critters. Even your Egypt. There’s something in their eyes that’s sad and worn down and beat-up. Alls I know, Lotty, is I don’t want to ever see them things in my face reflection.”
“But where would you go? Trust me, all carnies are the same. You’ll only get the same or worse somewhere else.”
“My bones is beginning to hurt, Lotty. Being big hurts. Fighting and tossing off men in my act don’t help.”
“Guess I never thought of it that way.”
“Well, when I’m hurting so’s I can’t sleep I start to thinking. I ain’t no little girl.” She grunted a little laugh. “I ain’t never been a little girl. But I think maybe I best get out and get on with gettin’ on.”
“I remember thinking that, too. Back when I was in the orphanage.”
“I heard once how them orphanages is hard living,” Babe said. “Was it? Bad?”
Lotty smiled. “Sure. But not all bad. For a while, I was everyone’s baby with my sweet little-girl voice that will never change. A real living doll who’ll never grow up. I remember this one girl—well, I remember her face. She’d been in a fire. Oh yes, Andrea was her name! She and I were the only ones different—I mean, really different.”
She fiddled with a cookie, breaking it into tiny pieces as she talked.
“We had this . . . comedy act. Andrea found some black scarves she draped over her head. Wanted to look like a woman in widow’s weeds. Well, it was to cover her face. You know, the burn scars and all.”
“How’s that funny?”
Lotty’s smile became a snicker. “Well, we had this baby carriage. I climbed in and we put a blanket over me. Then, we’d go out walking through the streets. Andrea held a tin cup, weeped up a storm. ‘Pennies for the poor! Help my fatherless baby!’ she’d cry out. Ha! I can still hear the sound of the coins dropping into that cup! Then, when someone asked to see the poor, fatherless baby, the blanket came off, I sprang up holding a cigar and said, ‘Say, lady, got a light?’”
The girls gushed in laughter. “Lotty, no!”
“Andrea sure could run that carriage!”
“Least you had some fun.”
“Yeah,” Lotty whispered, looking down at the pile of crumbled cookie. “The nuns finally got word of our flimflam. Got me kicked out. I wonder what happened to Andrea.”
Laughter from the beer garden reminded them of the hour. Lotty stared past the mirror and out onto the brightly lit carnie. “I’ve seen this before. Egypt and me. These cheap, two-bit, ragbag outfits can’t take us on. We’ve been through so many owners, I forget where we even started out. Trust me. I know all the signs. Renoir’s coasting on his eyelids.”
“What’s that?”
“Going belly-up. Out of business. Dead in the water. Everyone says so.”
“What’s that mean for us? Don’t it mean we’re out of this carnie?” Babe asked, looking down at Lotty, a hopeful smile on her face.
But she didn’t smile back. “I don’t know. I’m contracted just like you. He can sell our contracts any time. Sometimes I feel more like a slave than a performer. Makes me sick. It really does. But look at us, Babe. We don’t have many other choices.”
“Sssh. Someone’s coming,” Babe said.
Babe took off her apron and looked at herself again in the mirror, her Magnifica costume worn, tired, and thin. Just like she was feeling.
“Well, there they are. The stars of the show—from the sublime to the ridiculous. You two can argue which is which,” Renoir said, chuckling. “Sit down, both of you. I have something to tell you.” He took off his silk hat and spun it upside down on the makeup table. “I want you to know, I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I’ve put the call out and no one, not anyone in any outfit on any circuit in these whole United States, wants to buy them.” He ran a pocketknife under his fingernails.
“Who’s them?” Babe asked.
“The show stock. Well, not the show horses or the baggage stock, but the bear, the chimp, and that damnable elephant.”
“Buy them?” Lotty said, setting her jaw and glancing at Babe.
“What’s your only option?” Lotty asked.
“It’s the only solution. I’m going to have them . . . Jupiter, Euclid, and . . . Egypt . . .” He hesitated, took a step back and concluded, “Stuffed.”
“Stuffed? As . . . as in . . . taxidermy?” Lotty asked, barely able to get the words out.
“Ding ding! Hand the little girl a dolly!” Renoir said, pointing his knife at Lotty.
She stood on her box and screamed, “No! You just can’t!”
“Now, the way I figure it, Jupiter can be made into a nice roaring mode and then I’ll have a rolling, fierce bear to put on display. I’ll have some long, shiny bright teeth made and some scary eyeballs spitting fear. I know! Maybe let the kiddies sit atop him and get their pictures taken for a buck a pose.”
“Like hell you’re doing that to my critters!” Babe hollered.
“Or my Egypt!”
“Need I remind you, those animals aren’t yours, they’re mine. I own every gray hair, every flea, every claw, every ear, every tail and every tooth in their heads. I even own the hide and the holler.”
Lotty started weeping into her hands.
“Oh come on, now, Carlotta, don’t be sad. Even you have to admit how feeble that old girl is getting. She’s got to be, what, thirty, thirty-five? Why, she’s old enough to be your mother!” Renoir went on. “What happens if she falls down and dies in the middle of your act or parading through town? What if we had to shoot her right on the spot? How would it be for all the children? What the hell am I to do with a dead elephant in the middle of some one-horse town?”
“Maybe if she got fed proper,” Lotty said, her face hot and wet with tears.
“Well, I can’t afford to feed her proper. But once she’s stuffed and on wheels, she can stay in show business forever. Just like ol’ P. T. Barnum’s elephant Jumbo. Why, he’s been dead, what, a dozen years. Still out and about and getting cheers and still making P. T. a pretty penny.”
“It’s murder!” Lotty screamed.
“Not to mention Egypt’ll be a heck of a lot lighter and easier to get in and out of that railroad car. Push her in, roll her out.” Then, he turned to Babe. “And Euclid. Well, that old ape’s older than dirt, too! He doesn’t even do anything to make himself an amusement anymore. Used to be he’d do his counting trick act and make folks laugh. Now he just makes folks mad—those obscene gestures, spitting, and blowing those raspberries you taught him. And those farts!”
Professor Renoir's Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights Page 10