Riding down the highway in a car beat the hell out of taking the bus, so when I was finished with the boys, the car came with me. Oh, I’m not quite dumb enough to think it wouldn’t be reported, but there were a few hours at least before that became a serious problem. I’d stashed the bodies in the trunk, and I knew enough to understand that the world hadn’t changed completely in the fifty years since my death. Kids still broke curfew and their parents still let them.
I would try the girl’s address soon enough, but before that I wanted to see what Millie had left behind in her storage room. I wanted to know my sister.
I can’t lie and tell you I cried when I heard about her death. I’d been prepared for that, you know. I’d been dead before. I knew what was out there, or at least some of it, and I knew she was probably at peace. If not, I also knew there wasn’t much I could do about it without help. It’s one thing to get away from death yourself, and quite another to help somebody else escape from beyond the grave.
I thought about that a lot on my way to the storage place. I had the time, because I got lost for almost an hour. Little towns might be little, but they can have their share of secrets. In this case, I couldn’t find Everett Street to save my life.
So I thought about my death, and I hoped Millie’s was more peaceful.
And I thought about life after death and wondered if Millie would want any part of it. I didn’t know. I guessed then and still believe that a lot of that would have depended on the life she lived.
See, mine was cut short. I died badly, burning to death while some of my dearest friends screamed and burned with me. It wasn’t my time. I didn’t get to live a long, happy life. I didn’t get to settle down with the girl of my dreams and have a few kids and watch them grow up while me and the missus grew old together. I got robbed.
I didn’t want that for Millie. Not ever. I had to know if she had a good life. A good death. A happy existence before the final bow and curtain call. Then, maybe, I could accept her death.
And if not, if someone hurt her and she left evidence of that pain anywhere among her worldly possessions, well, then something could be done about the situation.
After stopping at three different service stations, I finally managed to find the right street, a little two-lane road that rolled along for almost five miles before I found the storage units.
I didn’t bother with the office manager. I just went back to unit number 712, the one that Mr. Walker said held Millie’s life within its confines. The place was snazzy as far as a storage place goes. Two stories tall and “environment controlled” according to the sign out front. Turns out that meant the building was air-conditioned. It was also locked tight, with steel doors and padlocks on every single unit.
Okay, here’s the thing: The principle for escaping from a confined space isn’t that different from the one used to gain entry. I had the lock picked inside of twenty seconds after I first held it in my hand. After that, it was just a matter of building up the nerve to see what my sister had left behind. I’d last seen a ten-year-old girl. Now, I was about to look into the other fifty odd years of her life and the idea scared me a little.
Mostly, I could overlook the things that had changed in the world since I died, but this? Might as well ask me to get over being murdered. Some things aren’t as easy to shrug off as others.
The storage room was what you’d expect: furniture covered with boxes and then buried under more boxes. Mounds of cardboard stacked to the ceiling. The only good news was that someone had taken the time to label all of them. I started with the ones labeled “bedroom”, and moved on from there. The clothes were set aside carefully, reverently, and as I sorted through them I caught the first scent of my sister’s cologne. Every person has his or her own smell, I suppose. She smelled of old woman, and that sent the butterflies moving in my stomach. She was supposed to smell of summer and youth, not of age and ointments. She was supposed to be ten, maybe as much as twelve, but no more than that.
I’d been robbed of my sister as surely as I’d been robbed of my life. I took my time, carefully examining the world my sister had made for herself, an archaeologist sifting through the sands of time to find out everything I could about Millie. I had to move carefully, not because the room was cluttered, which it was, but because if I lost control then, I’d have set the entire building ablaze and I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of rage.
After the bedroom boxes, I moved through her bathroom toiletries—neatly layered into two boxes of perfumes and powders and slightly musty towels, and from there into the remains of her living room and family room. I spent most of the afternoon and into the early evening staring at the items she’d found significant, and alternately holding them close or shoving them away.
I held them close because they were Millie’s. I shoved them away because they belonged to a woman I’d never met. Still, I kept sorting the treasures until I grew too tired and had to rest. I made a nest of her bedclothes and slept where she had slept before. And I dreamed as I slept. I dreamed of summer fields and Millie’s voice as she laughed and as she cried. I heard her challenge as she coaxed me on when I wanted nothing but to surrender from the challenges of the ropes and canvas traps she’d built around me. I’d forgotten how many times I wanted to give up on my dream of being the next Houdini, how many times she’d been the sole purpose for going on even when I felt like casting my ambitions away.
Then I woke and sorted through the rest of her life.
There were things missing. Small things, mostly. I could have convinced myself that Millie’s daughter or granddaughter had taken them. I could have made myself believe that no one in this world would violate her memories, but the things that were missing weren’t always what should have been taken by a grieving loved one.
Her jewelry boxes were there; simple wooden cases that still held sentimental treasures, items collected through the course of a lifetime, valueless to thieves, but priceless to loved ones. One piece in particular caught my attention. It was a golden medallion on a simple golden chain. I would have thought nothing of it, but I could see where someone had bent the piece, scratched at it to check if it was really gold or simply gold-plated. It was plated. I swear to you, there were tooth marks in the metal. Other pieces had been cast aside in the bottom of the box where the jewelry rested. A strand of plastic beads with Mickey Mouse’s head as a centerpiece and several other pieces of cheap sentimentality lay on the bottom, cast aside instead of placed with reverence inside the boxes. Whoever had packed everything in the boxes had been careful, I could not believe that they would have only been careless with the things my sister held as special in her world.
I felt a nervous tick in my eyelid, felt my lips peel back from my teeth. Still, I kept looking. In the farthest corner of the mountainous stacks of neglected belongings I came across a box that had been opened and tossed to the side. It only took one look at the contents to make me strip away the face I normally show the world.
The box contained photo albums. The tape had been torn off of the treasury of my sister’s life and then been discarded as rubbish. No care was taken to replace the books and memories. No slight effort taken to make sure the contents were safe.
Trash.
Garbage.
My sister’s life!
I managed one last time to calm myself. I carefully gathered the books and placed them back in the box, finding along the way a large stack of letters and three separate diaries.
I wanted to stop and look them over, but it wasn’t the right time.
First I had to pay a visit to the proprietors of the Safe and Sound Storage Facilities.
I checked on my way out of the storage room. I looked carefully at the lock I’d picked to gain entrance, and at the locks on neighboring units. They matched. They were all from the same company, and had the Safe and Sound logo on them.
I always double check. I’d have felt bad about killing the wrong people.
The office was at the front of the compound in a small house. I knew the type. The odds were good that whoever ran the place also lived in the upper floor of the building. I was a little too early for the place to be open, so I let myself in.
The stairs were creaky, but I didn’t let that bother me. I doubt the people in the rooms above would have heard me anyway, because whoever was up there snored louder than an elephant breaks wind, and that is not a sound you easily forget, believe me.
I found two people sleeping in the same room on the upper level apartment. Both of them were in their early forties at a guess and between them they must have weighed in at close to seven hundred pounds. Unfortunately, they also believed in sleeping in the buff.
Despite a desire to run screaming from that much bared flesh, I stood my ground.
I saw myself in the mirror on the front of the closet door. My clothes were still the same, but my face had changed.
When I came back from the dead, I discovered that Rufo the Clown was the one who mattered most to my benefactor. The makeup I’d worn professionally was part of me now, and very permanent. Oh, it’s easy to hide, but sometimes I don’t much feel the need. There were a few modifications. I didn’t have a big red nose, just a red dot that showed up sometimes and now and then didn’t. That was the only part that changed regularly. It wasn’t present that day. But the dark blue triangles above and below my eyes, the red dimples and the red smile were where they belonged. The white of my face, as stark as freshly fallen snow, almost glowed in the light of the rising sun that came through the window. The markings on my face were highlighted enough to see that they’d been cut into the skin. I let my fingertips dance over them, feeling the deep wells where flesh should have been.
I must have been particularly angry that day, because I wasn’t well fleshed out at all. Another odd side effect of resurrection; sometimes I look healthy and others I look like I’ve been dead for a while. I could see the angles of bone under skin that felt too tight. I could barely see my eyes past the deep shadows that still marked me.
My smile was in place.
It was show time.
“Hey, rubes….”
The two slobs in the bed in front of me didn’t move, though the man doing the snoring snorted and stopped his loud musings.
“Hey, rubes…”
The woman opened her eyes and blinked in confusion. She looked to the man she bedded down with and saw he was asleep before she looked my way.
I felt my smile spread across my face. It wasn’t a happy smile.
She sat up fast, gasping, and slapped at her man to get his attention. For a moment he fussed and tried to brush her away, but finally he woke up and then sat up on his bed amid a chorus of groaning springs.
“What the fuck? Who are you?” His voice was slurred by sleep, but alert in tone.
“I am Rufo the Clown, and at least one of you has been naughty.”
“Mister, you better get yourself out of here before I call the police!” The woman’s voice was shrill and nervous and she tried to cover her ponderous breasts with her flabby arms, as if there would ever be a way I could find her attractive. She could have been the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and she would have remained vile and repugnant to me after what she had done to Millie’s possessions.
“I’ll leave as soon as you tell me what happened to my sister’s jewelry.”
“What?” One word from her, but I could see the shift in her eyes, the sudden guarded expression that fell over her face. That was all the admission I needed, but I have always liked a little amusement.
“Unit 712. Somebody broke in and took my sister’s valuables. Then they locked it up nice and tight with a lock provided by you.”
The fat man stood up, not even bothering to cover himself. “That’s it. Susie, you call the goddamn cops. I’ll take care of this.”
Susie reached for the phone. Porky reached for me.
I grabbed the fat man’s wrist as I avoided his clumsy grab, and then I twisted and pulled. Several wet reports followed, meaty popping noises that told me I’d broken a few vital connections inside his hand as easily as his scream did.
Some people react differently to pain. In Tubby’s case, he got angrier and pushed forward. I could respect that. I could understand it. That didn’t mean I was going to be any nicer about how I handled it. He was already off balance as he came my way. I merely helped him into the closet door and the mirror it held. The door collapsed inward, breaking under his weight. The mirror broke too, and lacerated his face in the process. Broken glass, wood and oversized man all fell into the closet in a heap.
Before he could rise, I was on him, my fingers grabbing his skin and drawing back the heavy flesh hard enough to tear it. The man screamed, bucking wildly, and I stepped back as he sought to stop the blood flow spilling from the back of his head.
The fat woman screamed and dropped the phone she’d been dialing as I moved closer to her. I knew the man would be up in a minute and ready for another chance to kill me. That only left me a few moments to get to the woman and I intended to make the most of them.
I jumped onto the bed and leaned down over her, smiling brightly as I reached for her face.
“Tell me where the jewelry is and I’ll go away.”
The woman blubbered, her face collapsed into a wailing mouth and eyes that were squinted almost shut with fear. For one second I thought I was wrong, that I shouldn’t have attacked these people and demanded back what had been stolen.
“We pawned them! We sold them for money!” Her voice was shrill, her breath stank and spittle from her fat lips touched my hand.
I thought of Millie.
The rest was easy.
“Possible Serial Killer. Eight bodies found in bizarre murder case.” Brad Lowman read the headline and tsked. “What the hell is the world coming to, anyway?”
He was supposed to be assembling the stage units for the Ice castle, but there was no hurry. The show didn’t start again until the next day and there were plenty of extras these days, including John Booker, who was working his ass off hard enough for both of them.
Booker looked down from the post he’d scrambled up and tilted his head quizzically. Brad sighed. The kid was always curious. Served him right for reading aloud.
“Okay, let’s see…`Eight bodies were discovered yesterday morning at the home of Martin and Susan Burke, the proprietors of the Safe and Sound Storage Company in Lakewood Shores, Illinois. In addition to the owners of the rental facility six additional bodies have been counted and added to the list.’”
He cleared his throat and took a sip of his flat cola before reading any more. Booker had climbed down to the ground and was listening, his long face almost expressionless.
“’Police Chief Floyd Heedner of the Lakewood PD was speechless at first, but in a candid moment told reporters that “It might take a little while to identify the bodies, they’d been mutilated. The nature of the mutilation is unknown as is the motive for why the individuals in question were killed. Sources inside the Lakewood PD have let slip that the remaining six people were believed to be from around the area and might be a group of young men who where reported missing almost two weeks ago.’”
Booker shook his head and shrugged before heading back toward the ladder.
“What kind of sick fuck kills eight people, and six of them kids?” Brad shook his head.
“World’s full of sick people, Brad. You should know that.” Booker’s voice was a little teasing, but held no accusation. Still, Lowman felt his skin go red. Booker had caught him scrawling the Internet for under-aged porn earlier in the week, but had said nothing to anyone about it. He might not have just sent Brad a verbal bitch slap, but then again, he might have.
“Whattaya’ mean by that?” Last thing he needed to do was take shit from some little asshole.
“It’s not a new thing is all. I’ve seen bigger body counts on the news. Think about it. We’re setting up the stage for a show about what happened to fifty-seven people who disappeared from the face of the earth.”
“Fifty-seven?”
“Yeah. That’s how many people were in the Halston circus.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was there.”
“Bullshit!” Brad laughed. He knew when someone was yanking his chain.
“Well, there might have been a few more, but it was fifty-seven that died in the fire.”
“What fire?”
“When the circus was destroyed. Pay attention, Brad.”
“Are you fucking high?”
“No.” Booker climbed out on the thick cable that held the pieces of the stage set together. Brad watched him and felt his balls try to shrink away. He hated heights and could never understand how anyone who was sane would willingly walk across a piece of one-inch thick cable suspended thirty feet in the air. Okay, maybe only fifteen feet, but still, it was a terrifying notion.
“Jesus, be careful!”
“I’m fine, Brad.” He looked around from his bird’s eye position and then hunkered down on the wire like it was solid earth instead of a metal cable high enough up to cause broken limbs. “Listen, what you were doing the other day…does anyone else know about it?”
Brad thought his face would catch fire he flushed so hard.
“No, and please keep it like that, okay?”
Booker smiled. “No worries. I was just curious, have you ever…?”
“You mean with a girl that age?” Brad licked his lips and looked at the man up above him. The answer was yes. He had. He didn’t mean to, not really, but the opportunity presented itself and he took it. The girl never told anyone and he hadn’t either. But looking at Booker, he was beginning to think he’d found a kindred spirit, someone else who understood the beauty of making love to a little girl.
Booker nodded.
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
“What was it like?”
Brad smiled softly, his skin flushed again but for a different reason. Remembering the feel of her soft skin, the sounds she’d made, was getting him aroused.
“Like magic. The most amazing feeling in the world.”
Booker moved a few more feet to his left and looked down at Brad. Lowman was almost directly under the man’s shoes and started to get up. If he fell from that height, he’d kill them both.
Booker stood up and stepped away from the wire that held him in the air.
“John! Watch out!”
Booker came straight at him and moved too fast for Brad to get away. The man’s shoes slammed into his face and drove Brad into the floor with the force of a falling anvil. The impact didn’t kill him, but it left his spine ruined. Agony flared in his neck and head but didn’t seem to make it down to the rest of his body. Not far away, Booker was standing up, brushing himself off.
He moved closer and squatted next to where Brad lay on the ground, wanting desperately to move and failing.
“I had a little sister around that age once, Brad. And I saw a few little girls who ran into the wrong sort of man.”
Brad tried to speak, but he couldn’t get his mouth to move the right way. It felt like his lips were doing their own thing and that didn’t involve listening to his commands. Also, there was blood spilling down the side of his face and running into his ear.
“I’ve done a lot of bad things in my time, Brad. Probably more than you ever did, but that? To a little girl?” Booker’s hand reached out and blocked off Brad’s mouth and nose. Something must have been wrong with his vision, too, because Booker was all pasty white and looked like he was wearing makeup. “Nothing personal, Brad. But you disgust me.”
Brad would have fought the suffocation if he could have, but he couldn’t even move his head. He could only watch the face of the man above him as he was smothered to death.
Everything had been going well and apparently for a little too long. It was inevitable that something go wrong. Still, Tia hadn’t expected murders to be among the issues.
One of the stagehands found two bodies hidden in the corners of the set. That was on the Tuesday afternoon, as the stages were being disassembled. Gary Peck, the narrator, was one of them. She’d met him briefly and he seemed like a really nice guy, but beyond that she knew nothing about him. And also a stagehand, one of the small army that had to make everything run smoothly. Both of them were as good as strangers to her, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept.
People were dying on the sets, at least three that she knew of, and it was scary stuff.
More importantly, it was going to slow down the show. There was a small army worth of men in police uniforms looking the place over, and she doubted they’d be allowed to leave before the entire group was supposed to be in the next town; Philadelphia in this case.
Somehow the media had been left out of the picture, but she doubted that could last for very long. Sooner or later the same people who’d showed up for the press party were going to come back and start asking questions.
Which was why the entire staff was sitting in the auditorium seats and listening to three suits talk about how to avoid getting trapped by the reporters. They were also being told what would happen to their job security if they did talk. From what she was gathering, it would be a very bad move for her career if she talked to anyone without permission and got caught in the act.
The orders had been given and now it was down to people asking questions, a few of them obviously trying to find out if there were loopholes that would let them get away with speaking to reporters. Tia had already decided she liked her new job too much to risk it for any reason. She felt herself starting to drift, her mind wandering away from the morons who wanted to find ways to get fired, and slipping back toward the rumors about the bodies they’d found earlier.
“So, once again, no one talks to reporters or anyone but the police about the unfortunate incidents. Anyone caught doing so loses his or her employment, and any and all bonuses that have accrued. It’s in your contracts, people. Don’t think we won’t enforce the contracts, because we will.”
Tia sighed and flushed with guilt simultaneously. Yes, it was frustrating having everything put on hold, but two people had been murdered and she’d have to accept that things were going to be delayed.
Next to her, Leslie shook her head and muttered for a moment before brightening. “Hey, at least we’ll have a few more chances to practice before Philly, right?”
Tia smiled gratefully. “Yeah! I need it, too!”
“Jamie says you’re doing great.” Jamie! That was the choreographer’s name. “Besides, I can always use the practice myself.” Leslie shook her head. “I don’t know how some of these guys do it all.”
Tia knew what she meant. There were several of the performers who had to move between scenes and change every aspect of their appearances. It would have been possible to have a cast of three hundred with as many small roles as there were, but in the long run it made more sense to have some of the bit performers switch costumes. The only problem was, that meant more than a change of clothes, it also meant a change in demeanor and the nature of their performances. One of the men she’d met, Brandon, was on stage as much as any of the leads, but in ten different costumes and doing ten different things. He juggled, he climbed on a high wire—well, relatively high, it was only fifteen feet off the floor, but still—as well as several dance routines that were complex enough to make anyone panic.
“Has anything like this happened before?” Tia asked the question without thinking, and a second later felt herself flinch at the idea that the big bosses might have heard her. They’d just had a long speech about not starting rumors and what was she doing?
But Leslie shrugged it off. “People quit sometimes, but nothing like this. I mean, you know how hard the routines are, Tia. Some of the performers can’t keep up with the drill, so there’s always a couple of them that end up walking away.”
“Not me, not ever.”
“Same with me, but you know what? I’m probably going to take a few days off after Philadelphia, because I can feel it in my ankles.”
“Really?” She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. If Leslie took time off, she got to be on the stage.
“Seriously. I was talking with Jamie about it. He said you were ready, and he’s with me, no reason to kill myself if there’s a back up ready to go, right?”
“What if I freak out?” Her stomach sank at the idea.
“So the first couple of times, I’m there and ready and if you can’t handle it, I step in.” Leslie shrugged. “I did it for Liz a couple of times, too.” Her face wrinkled into a smile and she winked. “What? You think this week was the first time I ever went out there? I’d have pissed myself.”
“So we have until after Philadelphia and then I go on stage?” She wanted to make sure she was hearing the words properly. That meant there was a real chance she’d be able to perform for her family, not just sit on the sidelines and let everyone else have time to shine.
“New York City, Tia. That’s when you get on stage and I get to go out shopping.”
At least fifteen uniformed police officers moved into the room, ready to take statements from every single member of the show.
Tia watched them and felt her heart sink again. “Yeah, we just have to get there first.”
One by one, each member of the troupe was taken aside, moved to a different part of the massive auditorium, or even back stage, where the props that could be packed away had already been taken care of. Each of them was asked questions and then signed off on statements.
Most of them had a longer interrogation than Tia, who had only been with the show for a week. For the most part, the people in the room cooperated. The few that tried to be funny about things or that had something they wanted to hide soon discovered that a forgotten speeding ticket was hardly a good reason to argue with the local police. Several people were dragged away in hand cuffs.
The end result of the investigation wasn’t known, but that the delays would be substantial was becoming more and more obvious by the dragging moment.
And all Tia could think about the new changes was that they were good. The more the next show was delayed, the better her chances of having the part down perfectly when they got to New York.
Life on the Road: Part Five
You don’t think much about circuses going year round, but in the case of the Halston Circus, that’s exactly what happened. We started off in Illinois, and moved east until the weather started going sour. Then we were on our way to the south, and whatever towns Halston arranged for us there.
The road never lost its magic for me. A lot of people in the troupe hated the traveling, but I thrived on it. There were always new places to see and new people to meet, though in truth, I’d met the one woman I was certain I would someday marry.
Her name was Doreen Miles, and according to the signs, she was a succubus. It took me a while to find out what that meant. She was supposed to be a demon from Hell, one that specialized in seducing men into willingly giving up their souls. I have to tell you, I think I would have been tempted if she’d ever asked any such thing of me.
I wish I could tell you how she looked, but unlike most of the people I traveled with, I only remember Doreen a few features at a time. Her hair was dark, though I couldn’t say anymore if it was blond, brunette, or even red. I just know it was dark. Her eyes were hazel, except sometimes they were green. Her nose was small and straight and fit the rest of her face perfectly. Her lips were perfect.
Want to know the scary part? No one else who met her could have told you what she looked like very well, either. I know, because its one of the things my roommates and me talked about sometimes, late at night when we were riding the rails.
I met Doreen in the Freak Show. Last place I would have expected to meet an angel, but you never know what life has cooking, do you? I’d gone past the scariest dog I’d ever seen, almost as tall as I was and that was while it was sitting down, with eyes that glowed green and steam coming from its nostrils every time it breathed. I’d gone past the fat lady and the strong man—both of whom I’d already met, by the way—and I’d made it past the snake man, who really did have a human torso and the long sinuous body of a snake. I thought I was done until I saw the crowd of men staring at one last cage, a heavy affair with thick steel bars and a lock that would have taken a few shots from a cannon before it gave out. The men stared raptly, and it took the brute next to the cage poking them with sticks to get them to move on to the curtains that put them back in the main tent. I think some of them would have protested even then, but he always reminded them that their wives and girlfriends were waiting outside. That normally did the trick.
Finally I looked at what was the source of so much attention, and I understood why they might want to fight.
At first there was only the darkness in the cage, and a scent like lilacs, and then the light above the cage grew brighter and revealed her to me, one secret at a time. Perfect face, perfect body, supple wings that stirred in their own gentle breeze, and horns that rose from above her perfect eyebrows and curved gracefully back away from her face.
I blinked, and the wings and horns were gone. I shook my head and they were there again, but only for an instant. She looked into my eyes, and I saw her sweet, full lips play at a smile.
Again, she was beautiful. I couldn’t tell you much more than that to save my life, but she was enough to make me hold my breath and stare. I was afraid that if I exhaled, the gust of wind would make her evaporate like a mirage.
Her eyes spoke to me, promised me a hundred pleasures from holding hands, to kissing to so much more. The bars between us annoyed me, and I reached for them, determined to bend them, no matter what, so that I could hold her in my arms.
The feeling of wood cracking my knuckles brought me back to the real world in a hurry. I looked away from the girl and toward the oversized fat man who held the stick and for one moment, I swear I was ready to snarl at him.
He smiled and winked. “Time to go back to work, lad, before Alex decides to cut your wages.”
Reality came back to me then. I looked into the cage again, but the light had gone out, and there was no sign of the girl.
The rest of that night seemed rather pale in comparison. I went through the motions, but my mind was always on the woman I’d seen for only a few moments.
Later that night, I talked to Dexie and the rest of my roommates about her. She seemed to have that affect on every man she met. At least I wasn’t alone in my misery.
We moved on, and while I enjoyed the travel time, I kept thinking about the girl. When I couldn’t stand it any more, I asked Carter about her.
Carter smiled knowingly and stuffed his cheap pipe with tobacco from a pouch. “Doreen Miles, the Succubus,” he chuckled. “She is a beauty, isn’t she?”
“Why do they keep her in a cage?”
“They don’t.”
“But I saw her.”
“You saw her act, Cecil. Her routine. She stays in the cage as long as you stay in your greasepaint.”
I stared at him, having trouble believing what he’d just told me.
Carter laughed and patted my shoulder good-naturedly. “Relax, boy. She’s not a prisoner. None of the freaks in the tent are prisoners. They’re here by choice, same as you, same as me.” He winked. “Still, if there was ever a damsel worth saving, eh?”
“Where does she hide when she isn’t in her cage?”
“She has a trailer, same as you and me. Only hers is a little better decorated and a lot more private.”
I had no answer to that, so I sat in silence for a while. Later, when his pipe was snuffed and I thought Carter had long since drifted off to sleep, he spoke softly to me. “The only way you’ll get to know her, my boy, is if you approach her.”
“I could never…” I trembled at the very idea.
“Why on earth not?”
“She’s…”
“Too beautiful?”
I nodded my answer.
“How lonely the rose that sits on a hill unadmired.” Carter sat up and cast a wink in my direction a second time. “She spends all of her time in that room, and almost never speaks to anyone. But she’s been known to pass the time with me and do you know why?”
“No. Why?” I asked because I was genuinely curious.
“Because I take the time to say hello.”
That was the last he said about the matter. It was the last he had to say to make his point to me. I made plans to talk to her, if only to say hello, when we reached the next town.
Of course, there were other things to do first, like pitching the tent, gathering my supplies and preparing for the parade through town. I’d sewn extra pockets in my jacket and hidden a few inside of my shirt as well, the better to do a few tricks for the crowds, and it took time to make sure everything was concealed the way it was supposed to be and that my make-up was just so. I always spent that time with Burt and Carter, learning from them and now and then teaching them a few simple tricks.
Then it was parade time, and for the first time ever, I noticed the men on the streets and the way they looked at the women around me. More than one looked like he was on the hunt.
The shows went well, and two things happened that changed my worldview. The first was that Halston got himself in trouble. The second was that one of the girls, Miriam, the Snake charmer, got raped.
It was at the end of the second night when we heard Miriam screaming. Listen, whether people want to believe it or not, there’s a real sense of family in the circus life. You work with the same people every day, you sleep in the same room with a few of them and you even share meals when things are rough. After a while they become a part of your world. I know for a fact that everyone was exhausted, because we’d done three shows to handle the crowds. That didn’t mean a damned thing when we heard Miriam.
I was off my cot in a flash and I was slower than Carter and Burt, both of whom were out the door by the time I was halfway to the floor of our trailer.
By the time I got outside, half of the crew was already there, and Halston was standing in front of a man who was quivering, his pants around his ankles and his arms wrenched behind his back by Walker Kincaid, the strong man of the circus.
The man was a blubbering idiot and he had a good reason. Alex was holding a knife with a blade that was at least a foot long and aiming the point directly at the man’s erect penis.
Miriam was trying to cover herself and several of the other women were surrounding her, shielding her from any more harm.
Alex spoke softly, but he was heard very clearly by everyone.
“Miriam said ‘No’. That should have been enough for you.”
The man in question was a slob, dirty and drunk. I could tell by the clothes that he was probably a well-respected member of the town, and I could see the wedding ring on his left hand. It didn’t take much to connect the dots.
“I paid her! I gave her five dollars!” The man was trying to sound indignant, but it wasn’t working out very well.
Alex smiled and I have to say, that was the first time in my life I understood that a smile could be filled with hatred. “So, if I have Walker here fuck your ass and give you five dollars, that makes it okay?”
Oh, how that man paled at the thought. “No!”
“Well then, why don’t we just give Miriam her pound of flesh?” He jabbed at the man’s penis with the knife and the man soiled himself. All around me, the people I’d come to know laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound at all, but more like the low warning growls of a pack of feral dogs.
I should have stayed put, but I couldn’t. “Alex! Let the sheriff take care of this.” I was pleading, because I knew where they were going with this and I didn’t want us in trouble with the local law. I didn’t want to see the people I was growing attached to thrown in jail cells.
Halston looked at me, his hawkish nose wrinkled up like a wolf’s muzzle. “Cecil, you’d do well to keep your tongue.”
“Report him to the sheriff! Let the locals take care of their own, and let’s just go on.”
“Ask Miriam if she wants to let it rest!” Alex’s face was livid. He pointed with the knife, the edge of the blade inches from the throat of his chosen prey. “You ask her how she feels about this sick fuck walking away from here with his cock where it belongs!”
Miriam collapsed in tears, and tried to make herself smaller than she already was.
I should have fought harder, I suppose, but he got me with that comment. Miriam was a good woman, and didn’t deserve whatever the local had done to her.
Alex nodded when I looked away. The stranger was uncircumcised when Alex swung the blade. He could have been Jewish by the time Alex was done.
They let him go after that, and he did his best to run away, one hand over his penis and the other trying to pull up his pants, even with the shit he’d soiled them with.
No one laughed, no one cheered.
The women took Miriam with them as they went back to their tents and trailers. The men stayed behind, and without a word, several of them prepared for whatever the night might bring.
It brought the police around the same time that the sun rose. And after a very brief conversation, the police left, taking Alexander Halston with them.
As they were taking him away, Halston looked at me and said with his expression that he knew I was right, had known it all along, but that he could not, would not, let the rape of one of ours go unpunished.
They’d taken him most of the way to the squad car before they stopped. After a moment’s conversation Halston called out to me and I went over, half expecting to be locked in chains myself. I’d done nothing wrong, but I felt the guilt just the same, perhaps because a few of the people around me might have thought of me as a traitor.
“Cecil, I’ll be occupied through the rest of the day. No one in town has heard about what happened, and it’s likely to stay that way. We’re going to have business and the show must go on and all of that nonsense.”
I nodded my head, but had no idea where he was going.
“I need to you to lead the show for me. Be the ringmaster.”
“What? Me?” My heart was in my throat.
“You.” He shrugged as best he could while wearing handcuffs.
“Why me?”
“You have a decent voice and a good sense of showmanship. Also, you can fit in my tux.”
He left a moment later, and I stared long and hard after the police car had gone.
Later, as I was trying to get myself into costume, Carter explained the facts to me.
“Alex will be out in a couple of days.” He looked at my reflection next to his as we both put on make-up.
“You think so?”
“He didn’t castrate the man. He just cut a little skin and made the asshole know not to try anything else that stupid.” Carter shrugged. “It’s not the first time he’s done it and it won’t be the last.”
“So what? They’ll just let him go?”
“They won’t have a choice. They won’t like it, but they’ll let him go.”
“Why?”
“The man he cut will drop the charges.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Of course it is. He either drops the charges, or he has to tell everyone what happened to his dick and why it happened.”
I thought about that and slowly nodded. That made sense. If he had to go to court, the circus had to go to court. His word against one man might not mean much, but his word against twenty or more people who say that he raped a woman, shit himself and got his dick sliced open? That’s a different story. Especially when you considered that he had a wife at home, and maybe even a few kids. Divorce wasn’t a regular thing back then and believe me, most of the smaller towns looked at a divorce as a scandal.
I nodded again and looked at myself in the mirror. I took off the bulging red nose. It didn’t look right with the tuxedo and top hat.
I thought I should have been nervous, but the make-up helped. It wouldn’t be me talking to the rubes when the time came. It would be Rufo the Clown.
Ten minutes later, I headed for the center of the main ring and squinted a bit as the spotlight glared down at me.
I smiled and listened as the audience grew still.
Alex used a microphone and I used the very same one as I spoke. “Layyydieees and Gentllllemennnnnn! Boyys and Girrrrrls! Welcome to the Alexander Halston Carnival of the Fantastic! My name if Rufo, and I’ll be your host tonight!”
They ate it up. I could barely see the crowd out there, but I could hear them as they started to clap and stomp their feet.
They wanted to be entertained, and that was what we were there for.
And like the boss man said, the show must go on.