BO WANDERED THROUGH the tent city and the labyrinth of caravans, knocking on doors. He did this for an hour and was about to give up when Max opened the door of the trailer Bo had been hammering at.
“Hold up, kid.”
“Max.”
“I was resting, kid. I have a bit of a migraine too.” It was true he was red-eyed, dishevelled.
“Where is she?” Bo was already pushing into the trailer.
“What gives you the right—?”
“What doesn’t?”
Max kept his arm extended and shoved hard to keep Bo back. It was like an act. Bo scrambling, trying to take a swing but just windmilling the air.
“Calm down, so as we can talk,” Max said. “I know you hate me. I get that. But you don’t know the whole story. You want to talk man to man?”
He wore a dressing gown over his trousers. Black patent leather shoes poked out under the cuffs—the man dressed like it was 1940, like he was a gentleman. Bo knew better.
The trailer was a different one from before, newer, brighter, bigger, but the same framed freaks were on the walls, the oddities and stage shots. He looked around for the glossy of Orange but did not see it. Max held the door open, the dressing gown flapping wide to reveal his muscled chest. He rewrapped the silken gown and then rummaged in a pile of paper on the counter on the other side of the door. He pulled out a small envelope that looked like it had seen better days. He handed this to Bo.
“What is it?”
“She would have wanted you to see it.”
The air around the envelope seemed to shimmer with energy. “She” was his mother, his dead mother, who had hung herself in spite of how much she should have known he needed her. Bo’s cheeks twitched like little creatures were crawling under his skin. He wanted to drive his body through Max’s to get to the other side of this bad feeling. But even as the thought crossed his mind, the fight went out of him, like a thick hard wind. He watched his own hand reach out and take the envelope.
He wasn’t sure he could read what was inside it and then he wasn’t sure he couldn’t. The glue on the envelope had never been licked and had turned brittle and yellow. How long does that take? he wondered. Or maybe it had been old and brittle even before she’d tucked her note inside. It contained only a scrap torn off some larger piece of paper.
It read: I’m done. Tell Bo I loved him. Rose.
In pencil, as if it wasn’t important enough for ink. Bo read it and then reread it, but there was no clue, no subtext, no way to read it except how it was meant to be read—I am done. How simple to be able to write that and then act upon it, as if the thought manifested the action directly. As if there weren’t other people to consider. As if he meant nothing to her.
Bo looked up and there was Max shaking his head, his eyes so screwed up, it took a moment before Bo realized he was crying.
“I loved her,” Max said. “I made promises to her. That Sister be kept inside. Heavens, what a promise to have to make. I don’t make such a promise lightly.”
Bo thought if Max had loved Rose, she would not have killed herself. He watched Max raise his palms to his face.
“Sure,” Bo said. “The world’s a stage.”
And Max snarled, “This is not theatre.” Then softened, pleading, “Look, why don’t you just come in. It’s private, and we can talk.”
Bo thought that he would sooner drop dead than step foot in this man’s home, but his legs carried him up the little aluminum pop-out stairs and over the threshold. The trailer smelled of floor cleaner—citrus and detergent, of his mother when she had worked at the hospital.
Max poured something amber into a glass tumbler and handed it to Bo. “Twelve-year-old single malt.” Then he poured one for himself.
“Okay,” said Bo. He’d never had a drink in his life. He smelled moss and earth and sour, and sipped the fire of it. It was like smoked grass going down.
After a time the quiet got weird, a kind of strangling quiet, and then Max said, “She was sick on and off all summer. We got married, you know?” And here he raised an eyebrow, as if to ask what Bo might think of this. “I loved her.”
“She drank,” said Bo, looking at his own glass. He wondered whether his mother really had married Max.
“No. Just to cope. We all do that,” said Max, gesturing at the tumblers. “She’d been sick a long time. But she hid her illness from you. She didn’t want to worry you, you see.”
And Bo stared at the man. The sorrow, or the act of it, had given Max a purged look—he seemed goodly all of a sudden, even if Bo knew better. He spoke without thinking.
“She abandoned Orange to you,” Bo said.
Max grimaced. “She thought you’d be better off without the burden.”
“Orange is my sister.” Bo slammed his palms down on the Formica table. But he had forgotten about her in the forest of High Park, he hadn’t searched for her.
“Oh, hush,” said Max. “Listen, people make all kinds of choices.”
“She made a bad choice.”
“Bo, she was—Listen, what made your sister like she is, the dioxins, they came from your father and your mother.”
“Shut up!”
“Thao wasn’t a drunk.”
“Yes, she was.”
“No. She was dying. I brought her to doctors all over the place, and they couldn’t do a thing for her. They wanted her to stay in hospital, to die there. I didn’t let that happen. She loved me and we got married. It’s very simple, Bo. You’ve a very thick skull, but it’s really very easy to understand. It’s like her letter says. She was done.” And then he thumbed a small photograph from his wallet, of his mother and Max, arm in arm leaning against the trailer, smiling. It was so rare to see his mother smile.
“She was beautiful, Bo.”
Anger coursed through Bo’s chest and up behind his eyes—it was unbearable. “She could have told me,” he said, swallowing air, trying to slow it. He would spurt tears soon, he knew.
Max watched him struggle with it. And there was this between them, shooting back and forth in the space of the trailer. Their unspoken thoughts just hung dead everywhere.
Bo looked around for the letter, which he had let drop. Max saw it, picked it up and tucked it under the Scotch.
Max finally said, “There was no medicine that could cure her. It was hard to watch and be so—helpless.” And then Max told Bo what Rose had never told him. “She had sores,” Max said. “They gave her horrible pain,” he said. “She wanted to protect you.”
Bo wanted to get up and find someone to fight, to hit until he felt better, but it was too late. He was sobbing, blubbering that he needed his sister, and where was she?
“She’s been sick for the last few days,” said Max. “But of course you should see her.” And then he brought Bo past the kitchenette and the toilet, pushed a door with curved corners open, and there she was, sleeping, sheets and covers nesting her so that he could hardly see even the pink of her skin: Orange.
She was here, safe. There was very little space around the bed, six inches at the most, and as Bo edged closer to her, his knees banged the bed frame. She breathed; he could see her body rise and fall. He wanted her to wake and see him, wanted to snuggle into her. He wanted to wake her.
“Does she still hit and bite?” he asked, looking up at Max in the doorway.
“Sometimes,” Max said.
Bo sat on the edge of the bed. He heard the door close and looked up to see that Max had gone. It was a while before Orange woke up. She did not start when she saw him. She pushed the covers off with her feet, her body all sweaty, red with fever, the flame of sores along her torso.
“Orange,” he said, and she shook her head. And filling the unspeakable space between them—their mother, Max, time, Bear—she began to move her hands, making strange shapes with her stubby fingers. Bo watched, baffled. She signed for a very long time, forever, and he did not understand any of it. Where was the Orange who threw herself into walls? Where was his sister bashing her face, her fists? Bo got up and pushed the bedroom door open.
“Max!”
Max stood up, beaming. “She can talk a bit. With her hands. She’s learning fast.”
“What do you mean?”
“American Sign Language.”
“For deaf people?”
“She’s much happier now she can communicate.”
“I’ll take her to my tent. I’ll look after her now.” He wanted her with him so badly, knew Max wouldn’t like this, but still.
“Well, it’s like this, kid,” Max said, shaking his head. He took a sip from his tumbler to postpone the next bit. “When I made that last promise to your mother, I meant it. I told her I would look after Orange. I swore on my heart and on my own mother’s grave I’d keep her safe. You wouldn’t want to make me a liar, now, would you?”
Orange was hitting the mattress to get Bo’s attention, and when he looked back, she began to sign.
“What’s she saying?”
“Beats me, kid,” said Max. “She goes too fast.”
And then Bo asked the question that had been plaguing him. He said, “Did Orange see?”
“See what?” Max said, before he realized that Bo meant had she seen Rose, and then he bit his lip, said, “No, kid. God, no.”
BO FOUND GERRY washing down Loralei’s cage, the animal circling a stake off to the side, worrying the chain with a batting paw, making a game of it. Gerry aimed the nozzle at a spot caked with bear crud and fur, and opened fire.
“Loralei’s getting so ugly, soon she’ll be useless. The hairless bear,” he muttered. “Alive!”
“Did you know my sister knows sign language?”
“Yep,” said Gerry.
“Who taught her?” Bo felt like shit for not having taught Orange himself, for not thinking that she might be taught, for not knowing there was such a thing as sign language—it was so obvious now that he knew—and for thinking she was in any way smaller or lesser than she really was.
Gerry said, “Calm yourself,” and walked off.
“What?” Bo called after Gerry. “Why can’t I know?” He glared at Gerry’s back. “Gerry, come on, tell me.”
Gerry turned, his face creased up in a temper, and gestured at Bo. “You’re getting too close to the bear, boy.”
He was. He’d moved in far too close to Loralei, her snout near his feet. Bo waited for Gerry to turn back to his work, so that he could touch her muzzle.
“Loralei’s not as easygoing as she used to be, Jangles. Be careful.”
“She’s fine.”
“Sure. But move away, will you?”
Bo shifted out of range, squinted at Gerry. “Orange is my sister.”
“Oh, for Chrissake. That teacher of yours bought a book, then hired some kid to teach her the basics. Back in October. What’s the big deal?”
Bo stared at him until he turned back to his task, water ricocheting in all directions off the cage. The crud melted down the bars, Gerry coming in closer for the bits that clung, then spraying so wide he misted both Loralei and Bo. When the crud was blasted away, Bo could see that the floor of the cage was scratched in places, buffed in others. Painted steel. It had once been red, still was in the corners. Loralei watched the water arc, casting a rainbow in the air. She seemed to look lovingly at her cage. She pushed up and wandered to the end of her chain, tugging, then acquiescing, pulling back her lips, nostrils flaring at the reek of the cleaning session.
Gerry poured a cup of bleach into a bucket of warm sudsy water and sloshed that over the cage floor. The bear started at the noxious smell. “She doesn’t like bleach, much,” said Bo.
“No. She prefers the smell of her own fecal matter.”
Gerry sprayed again, rinsing off the bleach, and then edged toward Loralei. She reacted with bearish joy to the water and light playing just out of her reach. She swatted at it, head rolled toward Gerry. She bobbed like a great brown seal does for fish treats from its trainer.
“Hang on,” Gerry said to her. He went over to his trailer and inside, disappearing. Bo heard him call, “Beverley.” No one answered. He came out again with a tin of tuna fish. “Here, kid, open this for her.”
He tossed the can and a flimsy opener at Bo.
“I want to learn so I can talk to Orange too,” he said as he cranked open the tin.
Gerry said, “Ah.”
“Don’t hand-feed her. Jesus, kid.”
“How else am I gonna give it to her?” He tossed the rest of the contents in Loralei’s general direction.
“I was going to use it as bait to get her back in the cage.”
“Oh,” said Bo. “Sorry.” Loralei finished up the tuna, and swiped her tongue along her lips, seeking out the last traces.
“If I could talk to her,” said Bo.
“You’ve been talking to her for years.”
“Sure, but I haven’t understood a word of it.”
Gerry thought that was funny. “Hang on.” He went back in the trailer and came out with a book. Picture Dictionary of Signs for the Deaf. “Here,” he said. “I can’t hold onto any of it. I’m as stupid as I ever was. She’s only, what, four? Five? And she goes too damned fast for me already.”
“You’ve been trying to learn?”
“Yeah, well. I thought there might be something in there for the bears.”
“Sign language for bears?” Bo laughed.
Loralei looked over, and then went back to delicately licking fish oil off single blades of grass. Then she ambled toward Bo. When she got to the end of her chain she hunkered down and made soft eyes at him. Begging.
“I got nothing else, Lora,” he said. He looked down at the book, only half listening to the bear chirr for more. Gerry had gone in to get another tin, to use to get her back in the cage.
Bo flipped the book open, stared at the drawings of hands fluttering. He would learn this. Go. Me. You. Love. Down. Up. He tried one out, realized that speaking this way moved the air, sliced through it. Nice. Loralei watched him: cut, swoop, finish.
“Girl,” called Gerry. “Come on.” And she did, veering away from Bo so fast he was shocked at her speed. “Let her loose at that end, would you?”
Bo unhooked the chain from the stake, and she bounded straight into her cage. The second can of fish wasn’t all the way down her gullet and she was rubbing, rubbing.
“Jeez,” said Bo. The book fell. He picked it up from its sprawl, saw a name and number printed on the inside cover: Emily. He looked up. Gerry had seen him seeing it. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”
Gerry shrugged. He closed the door of the bear’s cage, but Loralei didn’t care. She was lost in a bear dream, licking her lips, rubbing her ass fur off. Bo couldn’t watch. He pocketed the book and went back to Max’s trailer, banged on the door until Max opened up.
“Kid,” said Max. “What the—?”
Bo waved the book and pushed into the trailer. “Orange,” he said, once he got in her room, and smiled at her. Then he fumbled through the pages. You, he signed.
Me, she said. Then something he did not catch. And she was off and he was helpless. She spoke so quickly.
THE NEXT MORNING, after exercising Bear along the back perimeter fence, Bo coaxed her into the crate and cooed, lying down beside her outside the grille, until she fell asleep. He loved listening to her suck her tongue and chirrup as she drifted off. She became a cub again.
When she was asleep, he headed west, out the Dufferin exit and then north, up Strachan, the book tucked into the back of his jeans. He had until noon, when he and Bear were set to perform again.
He noted the change in air quality from butter, cotton candy, animal, to fume and asphalt. He turned on Queen and then up Roncesvalles, through various neighbourhoods, their differences marked by how much junk accumulated on their front porches, how much garbage rolled down the gutter along the curb. It was already hot at 8 a.m., salty trickles sliding down his belly, wicking into his clothing. At Bloor, he turned west, climbing the hill at High Park toward Clendenan.
The park looked tired, summer weary. Bo half hoped to see Soldier Man guarding the periphery, but in this hope he was disappointed. He saw a fox, ears pricked and watching, then gone. He decided he would walk back through the park. Maybe he would find Soldier Man then, see how he was doing.
Clendenan, Annette, Laws, its ravine-hugging curves, and then St. Johns and he was right outside Emily’s house. It took him several minutes to work up the nerve to climb the porch stairs, and then he was listening to the trill of the doorbell on the other side of the door, and the sounds of someone stumbling down the stairs. Moments later Emily stood in the door, the breeze whirling her hair in an impossibly beautiful pattern.
“Hi,” she said.
He pulled out the book from his pocket. Picture Dictionary of Signs for the Deaf. Held it up. “Teach me,” he said.
She took a short step back. “Come in.”
Bo’s step over the broken weatherstripping and into the foyer was like a caught breath. He was a freak. He belonged here the least of anyplace he had ever been. “Maybe not,” he said, and made to step back out. “How long were you teaching her?”
“Whenever I babysat. I thought you might get angry with me.”
“Why?”
“I thought you might not want her learning to sign. And I knew your mother wouldn’t like it.”
Bo felt sick. “I just never thought of it,” he said.
“It was Miss Lily’s idea. When she found out I could sign, she thought of it. But I didn’t do it just for the money. I did it for Orange. You know that.”
The door slammed shut behind him and she stood in front of it, not barring his way exactly, but making a quick exit awkward. She put her hand out and it took him a little too long to realize she wanted him to hand her the book.
He gestured with it. “Is it hard to learn?”
“I’m not that good,” she said.
He handed it to her, and she riffled the pages, so that the illustrations seemed animated, hands opening and closing, in a language he did not know. A flip book in sign language.
She found the page she was looking for, and put the book down on the radiator in the hallway. “Do this,” she said, fisting her hand and bringing it to her chin, then dropping her hand to meet her other hand, index fingers extended and touching.
Bo did it.
Then, she took her right palm and touched her forehead, dropped that hand to meet the other one, again with index fingers extended, touching. “Do it.”
“Again.” He shook his head. He had not marked it well enough.
“Do this and then this.” She showed him.
“What does it mean?”
“First learn it.”
The foyer smelled dusty, old, brittle. Emily wore a pink blouse with a little lacy collar. He realized he wanted to kiss her. But instead he fisted his hand and made the first sign, and then unfurled it and made the other sign.
“Faster,” she directed. “More emphatically. Not so sloppy. Make the motions distinct.”
He began to stand taller, felt his muscles pulling along his belly, his butt, his thighs. He felt strong, in a way he didn’t ever feel unless he was whacking someone, or wrestling.
“Again,” Emily said.
And when he had done it over and over many times, she grabbed his hands in hers, stopping him, as he recalled doing to Orange to contain her, to hold her energy inside of his own energy.
“Enough,” she said.
“Did I get it right?”
“You got it,” she said.
“So, what does it mean?”
She handed him the book, open to the leaf for the visual of what he’d been signing. Sister. Brother. He had signed sister and brother over and over so that they rolled into a wave of thought.
“Will you keep teaching me?” he asked.
“The book can do that, can’t it?”
“No,” he said. “Can you?”
“Sure,” she said. “But Orange learned from the pictures in the book mostly. She wanted to communicate really badly.”
“I should have known she wanted to speak. I’m an idiot. I wasn’t paying attention.” But it wasn’t that. It was worse, he knew. He had assumed she was stupid. Assumed her inside was as awkward and ugly and dumb and wrong as her outside. He was no better than anyone else.
“How could you have known?” said Emily.
“With all the hitting, I should have figured it out. But I didn’t think she thought like I did.”
They moved from the foyer through the house to the back porch, sat on aluminum chairs. Emily taught him to build some signs into sentences. I am your brother. You are my sister. After a while, Emily went inside to get them each a glass of lemonade. Bo looked out over the swimming pool, the shimmer of green. His father was everywhere and nowhere, death lurking in every flick of insect on the surface of the water. He shifted his gaze to the plants growing up the backyard fence, trying to stop these thoughts. And another memory: his father squatting with a gun, cleaning it, smiling at Bo. “It will all be over soon,” his father said, “and we will be safe.” The recollection was so awful, Bo went back to staring at the water’s surface.
Emily had come back out of the house with the drinks. “What are you scared of, Bo?” she said.
“Nothing,” he said, but thought this: when the man in the boathold had let him free, and he’d gone up to the deck, his mother had tried to shield his eyes, to turn him away, but in the end, by her frantic attempts to try to protect him, she had drawn attention to the fact that off in the distance sharks were feasting on something. There were plumes of blood. “What is that?” he asked his mother, and she told him to hush. But she was holding her belly, crying. And by this he knew it was his father’s corpse.
Bo watched the wind unsettle the surface of the swimming pool. He blinked. He said, “I’m afraid of sharks.”
Emily looked at the pool and laughed. She said, “Okay.”
“You should come to the Ex,” he said. “Give me some lessons.”
“Okay, okay. I will.” Emily’s face screwed up. “I heard about your mum, Bo. Father Bart said a mass.”
Bo looked away.
“It’s shitty.”
“Yeah.”
Emily nodded, stared at the pool too. “If you ever need a place to stay,” she said, “my mother takes in any odd stray, you know.”
“No,” Bo said.
“It’s not pity,” she said. “It’s that I like you.”
In the end, Bo did not go through the park on the way back, but skirted it, not wanting to see Soldier Man.
BO SNAPPED THE WHIP and let the crowd think his bear was cowed by it. The little whip was a prop and nothing more. He never struck Bear with it. Bo was alone with Bear onstage. Mino had ducked out early. “You’re fine, anyway,” he had said. “I just stand there. It’s boring.”
He didn’t need Mino. Bear did everything he asked her to. The trick, Bo was learning, was to guide her sightlines with the whip so she didn’t get interested in anything else. We do it so, we do it so, so any worry the animal felt fell away. Bear didn’t like to change direction.
It was the part in the performance when he sang. Bo modulated between a polka and a lament—the main body of the song was upbeat and fast and the refrain pulled down and in. He pumped a toy accordion along to the song and stomped his foot as Bear danced. She hopped about in the fast bits and swayed mournfully in the slow.
“Ooh-la-la,” Bo called out, when Bear stuck her butt out.
Bo kept his eyes on the space between the whip and Bear’s nose, as she followed it, turning in her tutu. People clapped to the beat of her steps. When Bo was done he kept her moving in a circular fashion toward the trike, which was the focus of their finale. He climbed on the back of it, after she’d settled in, and held an umbrella over her, as she spun them around the little stage for a turn before jumping off. He picked up the accordion again, and played fast, then slower and slower.
Bear was just running out of steam when a yelp of recognition made Bo look over at the crowd. And there, gaping at him, were Ernie and Peter. They were both taller than he remembered. Bo jammed the accordion faster, and Bear sensed him faltering—she dropped to the floor and waited for him to remember his place.
And then, he looked up and saw them jostling one another, sharing a joke. On him? The thought was enough to pull him so far out of the show he might never get back. Bear looked to him for guidance. Bo had none. His left hand let the squeeze-box fall—it made a sighing squeak as it landed.
“Show’s over,” he announced. Bear pulled up onto her back legs, trying to figure out what was wrong. This egged on the crowd.
“What the hell?” shouted someone. “Keep playing.”
“Do something, kid.”
Bo breathed deep and stayed calm for the bear, and she felt that, sat down and waited, head swinging from Bo to the people, and then she sank to the floor and stretched out for a rest.
“Rip-off,” a kid in the crowd yelled.
“Check out the midget show next door,” said Bo, pointing.
He watched the disgruntled crowd disperse, until all that was left were the two boys from his school.
“Hey, Chink,” said Ernie, and all Bo could do was smile a little. It had been a lifetime. They stood opposite each other, just staring.
And then Peter cocked his chin over at the bear. “Where’d you get him?”
“Yeah, but where?”
“My boss.”
“You coming back to school?”
Bo hadn’t given that any thought. School was some far-off story that his character had exited. He shook his head. “Dunno,” he said.
Ernie said, “We missed you this summer,” and they all had a good laugh at that.
“Yeah,” said Peter, eyes shifting. “Emily told us you were here. We came to watch you wrestle bears. When is that?”
“In an hour and a half,” said Bo. He wanted to say it was fakery, but didn’t. “I can get you in.”
They had been hoping for this, he saw. Ernie and Peter nodded.
“Can you hang out?” said Peter, gesturing at Bear.
“Sure,” Bo said. “What’s your plan?”
“We thought we’d get you behind the Bandshell and beat the shit out of you,” Ernie said—but he was joking, Bo saw.
Bo was stronger than he had ever been. No one would be beating anything out of him. “I have to get the bear home so she can rest before the fight. Then, I can take an hour or so.”
He muzzled Bear, tugged at her lead. She hopped down off the stage. He turned to head out the ten-in-one entrance, but the boys wanted to see the Blow-Off so they parted the sea of gawkers, Bear in the lead, and went out the exit.
A huddle of people pressed up to the Airstream. They were so intent they did not notice Bear and so did not move. Ernie and Peter waited at the margins of the crowd for a time and then began to holler for a turn, people shushing, pointing to the sign that asked for quiet. In the end, the boys pissed off so many people that it took longer for them to find a spot in the front of the window and for that dark window to reveal its horror.
Its horror, Bo quickly saw, was Orange.
He could see that she did not know she was being watched. She lay on a bed that had been outfitted like a pond—with a green-blue coverlet and a few cloth lily pads, never mind that toads were land creatures. A couple of fake trees stood in the kitchenette. No expense had been spared to outfit her space, he saw. A tiara had been fitted to her head. She wore a green costume that had been rigged to look amphibious. Her feet were vaguely flippered anyway. Orange rolled onto her belly and used her stumpy hands to flip pages in a picture book.
He watched her shut her book and rock to standing, then lunge-walk to the little kitchen. She opened a fridge and took out a juice bottle that was already opened for her. She was so normal in her behaviour, it was a wonder to Bo why anyone would want to watch her, but then he was used to her bulging eyes and the unnatural bend of her frame, the pressed-back, distorted head, and her warped everything. The fury rising in Bo’s throat was only exacerbated by the groans of pity and shock from the people around him. Bo couldn’t move, or speak.
“What’s the matter, Bo?” It was Peter.
Bo tried to talk, but he couldn’t. His eyes wouldn’t leave her.
“She’s just a fucking retard. Come on,” Ernie prodded him. “Let’s go.”
“Watch it,” Bo said, at last.
“What the hell? Let’s go.” Again Ernie jostled him.
Orange sat splay-legged on the bed. She cocked the bottle and guzzled, rocking a bit like she might begin to hop if she felt up to it. People laughed, pointed. Bo looked to Bear, where she had slumped down. He signalled to her to growl. She looked a bit surprised at this, but began to rumble. The earth under them vibrated with it, and the crowd around the Airstream awakened and turned.
“Bear!” someone yelled, and then there was screaming, and running, and then there were just the three of them—Ernie, Peter and Bo, plus Bear, and Orange, who had set the bottle down and was flipping pages again.
“Wow,” said Peter, nodding to the bear.
But Ernie was a smartass. “What’s the big deal, Bo?” Ernie waved to Orange. “You got a crush or something?” and Bo, furious, was on him.
Peter tried to pull them apart, but failing, stepped back to watch. People coming out of the ten-in-one formed a crowd around them, and Bear, too, gawked, as Bo threw and pinned Ernie.
“Stop,” Ernie kept pleading, and, “It’s no big deal.”
At last, Bo had spent himself. He had a knee on Ernie’s chest and was heaving, his anger giving way to tears.
“She’s my sister,” he said, the awfulness of it gushing out of him. Bo stood and tried the Airstream door but it was locked. He would have kicked and bashed to get in but he didn’t want to scare Orange. He turned back to Ernie and Peter. “Toad Girl is my sister.”
“Jesus,” said Ernie. “Jesus Christ on a stick.” He held his hands up then and said simply, “Cool, man.”
BO HAD ONLY FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to get himself to the ring, not enough time to hang out with Ernie and Peter. Still, they followed Bo as he led Bear down Princes’ Boulevard to the carnie tent village. They told him they would wait for him, when the security guard held them back from entering. Bo left them there and went to his tent, where he linked Bear’s leash to her cage, giving her the choice to go in or stay out. She did both, before curling over onto her back and falling asleep.
Bo’s deepest impulse was to find Max and kill him. He sat on the bed to think, to let the vision of his sister degraded in that display slide away. He rocked a bit, staring at the tent floor.
“There you are.” Max’s shoes glittered as if they never touched the earth; the piped legs of his trousers were pressed to a razor-sharp seam. Max wagged a finger at him.
It struck Bo that Max was not handsome at all, but pretty. His eyebrows arched perfectly over his wide-set, grey eyes. Slight, tall, exquisite, and furious with Bo for walking out of the ten-in-one and upsetting paying customers in front of the Blow-Off. “You do that again, I’ll fire you, my boy. You’ll never see that bear again, except in a zoo, or being struck by the whip of the trainer I hire to replace you—or stuffed! After all I’ve done for your family—”
Bo sucked in a thin long whistle to wake Bear as he rose from the bed. He was so mad he was shaking. “My sister,” he managed.
“What about your sister?” Max protested. “She’s happy.”
“She’s not.”
“How would you know?” Max said. “You, who hides in the forest when things get tough. You, who—”
“You took them away from me,” Bo yelled. “And Orange. She’s not—” and here Bo floundered for the right word. “She’s not—yours.”
Max grinned the grin of a man who knows he has won. “The law is on my side, Bo. To be precise, according to the law, son, you are also mine.” Max waited a breath to let this sink in, and then turned and walked out.
Bo signalled Bear to lunge and snarl, but the leash held her back and her attack was more comic than frightening.
WHEN BO RE-EMERGED from the tight corridors between the caravans and tents with Bear, Ernie and Peter whooped, delighted in their new alliance, the way boys’ friendships can turn on a dime.
Bo pointed southwest at the back of the Arena. “Meet me there,” he called, but they preferred to follow along the other side of the fence that secured the carnies’ homes.
“Can we pet her?”
“Better not,” said Bo. He thought his teeth might crack from clenching them. “Maybe later.”
Bear knew Bo was upset, and her gait suggested she was agitated too. Bo didn’t want to risk her misbehaving, her weight a danger to anyone who might get in her way. She did not seem to even notice the boys, except to lift her snout briefly to scent them, mark the fence with a long splashing piss, and continue in the direction of the ring. She wore her sequined leotard, which Bo had struggled to clothe her in. It sparkled in the afternoon sun. She looked both beautiful and ridiculous. It was sure to get a laugh, even if it clearly upset her to wear it.
“It’s okay, girl. Shh.”
“She looks like a lady,” said Peter.
“A hairy lady,” Ernie qualified.
“Yeah. Nice.”
And then they were inside the wrestling tent, and Bo had the creature sit, watched Gerry push through the crowd to him.
“Where the hell were you?”
“Gerry, I need to talk to you.”
“Yeah, okay. Later. Let’s get this going.”
Gerry knew what he wanted to talk about. Bo could see it all over his face, the guilt, the excuses, the tiresome human weakness. So weak he would avoid it all if he could, and then he did. Gerry turned and spread his arms and shoved the people back, strung up velvet ropes to demarcate the ramp. Little kids tried to climb into the ring and Gerry shooed them away. Bo saw the telltale black bowler at the back of the room. Max was watching. It wasn’t over, and Bo was on edge.
Bo signalled Bear to rise onto her back legs and then he walked backwards up the ramp, facing her, while she bounced from one foot to the other in a wayward dance, her sequins glinting, drool rolling from the corner of her mouth. He could see how concentrated she was, but also how vacant her eyes were, as if she were not really here at all but rather sunk deep in the glory of the crowd’s scent—sweat, fear, excitement, and whatever else he hoped she might be able to locate: the lake, earth and its wormy prospect, clean air under it all, nature.
A part of Bo begged whatever powers there might be, God, gods, goddesses, that Bear could smell that too. That she could still smell the real of it, High Park, the past. Then they were in the ring.
Bo let Bear drop to all fours. There was a trike at centre ring for her, which she mounted without being told. Bo helped her paws find the pedals. He led her around the ring, around and around. She looked like any huge kid, rotating clumsily, fighting gravity and winning, and losing, and winning.
The crowd roared but Bear didn’t care. She kept pumping around and around. When Gerry gave him a look, Bo slowed her down by lowering the lead, reminding her he was there. She glanced over at him and seemed to remember where she was, then shut down the pedalling. She fell off the back of the bike like a fast crap. That had them laughing. The referee pulled the trike out of the ring and sent it scuttling down the ramp to a carnie who was waiting for it.
“Bear!” shouted the announcer over the PA. “Bear and Bo! They found each other in a village in Vietnam and have never been separated. They are the most unlikely siblings. They understand each other perfectly, Bo having mastered the tongue of bears, and Bear learning enough English to make her the smartest bear in captivity. But, folks? This does not make her tame. Notice, if you will, the nasty wound along the boy’s cheek!”
Bo flashed his face in each direction, to show them a tiny cut from the scuffle with Ernie, a scratch. He had learned to roll with the white lies in the carnival circuit. The announcer embellished the wound a hundred ways, all of them inflicted by Bear. “Sixteen stitches, inside and out.” Any moron would know it was a lie, but any crowd was less than a moron. The crowd had paid, it leaned in, it wanted a story, wanted to be lied to.
He saw Ernie and Peter at the ring edge, their eyes on Bear’s paws as she hopped. Bo gave them the thumbs-up, and first Ernie and then Peter gave a thumb back to him. The referee moved toward Bo and leaned down to fake-whisper. Then he turned and crouched to talk to Bear. Muffled laughter. Bo held his hand up in the air and Bear’s paw rose. She linked her claws through his fingers. He could hear the crowd sigh—a breath of disbelief—as they collectively fell in love with the animal.
The ref held his arms out angled skyward like a priest readying for a sermon. Then he dropped them, indicating the fight should begin. Bear did not hesitate, and caught Bo off guard. He flew backwards onto his head as she hit him, to great audience approval. It was possible to see stars—Bo saw them now. Bear ambled over and licked the salty sweat from his knee. To the crowd it looked empathetic. But they had not practised this. It was all Bear.
Bo let her lick him long enough to catch his breath and get himself up again. He swayed there, a drunk puppet, barely conscious, trying to find his balance, his vision, himself. The fight with Ernie hadn’t done him any favours, he thought, and saw Ernie smiling at him, mouthing, Wake up. Was it that simple? The bear was mid-ring, sitting, scenting up into the air, off in some smell reverie. Blissful.
Bo fell into her, cupped her under her armpits, made it looked like he had half a chance of jostling that great thing. Her hundreds of pounds were immovable, but her mind was agile, surprised by his sudden move.
She threw him again. He was a rag, but one that hung onto her for dear life. She shook and he was shaken. The audience thought this was pretty funny. His sweat arced into the crowd. Bear stilled, and licked him some more. There was some screaming at this, and in his peripheral vision, Bo saw Gerry looking concerned. He wondered whether this was, in fact, dangerous, decided it wasn’t, and clutched Bear tightly. She was his mother, he thought. He was delirious.
“Go. Go. Go,” the crowd was shouting.
His body wanted only to obey. To go forward. To do something. But what? He let Bear decide. His body became hers as he just held on, the bear trotting around the ring with him lurching alongside, clinging to her. The ref looked concerned too.
This was not right. He was having a hard time keeping a hold, had to press down under the leotard. There might have been a rip, he could not be sure, but one thing he did know for certain: the crowd was mesmerized. He might be in trouble but it did not matter. He watched their faces shirr by, a blur of colour, this one and then that one, pink, red, brown, and they were rapt. Go. Go. Go.
“Bear,” he whispered. “Bear, save me.”
But she did not stop. She kept on and on, even when Gerry shouted and the referee shouted, and the audience rose to their feet in alarm. Something was going wrong, he knew. Bear would save him from it. Gerry was crouching with a can of soda but Bear did not seem to notice. She was following something. A smell. A need.
“Goddammit,” Gerry said.
“Stop her, for Chrissake.” Was that Max?
“Jesus,” said Ernie.
Around and around. Now they were opening the ramp, and there was screaming. His body thumped up and down as she ran down the ramp and he smelled the sick-sweet smells of the carnival, shit and bodies. Then it was only green, swaths of grass slipping beneath them, and then she stopped and he fell, hard, onto the ground. Above him, Bear was panting, a line of spittle running from her tongue to his face. And then Gerry was behind her.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
Bo grunted and turned. It felt like a truck had driven over him.
“Well, she sure as hell wasn’t ready for that bout,” Gerry said.
“She was scenting something.”
“She could have killed you.”
Bo let the gorgeous smell of the earth go in and out of him. He had never known how varied the earth was in its odour. It held decay, and wetness and dryness, and next year and last year. He breathed it in and out while Gerry muzzled Bear, who shied away from his roughness. Bo watched him lead her away, but he did not move for a while, waiting for his mind to come back to his body.
“You okay, Bo?” It was Ernie. Peter and Max loomed behind him.
He closed his eyes.
“Shit, man.”
“Yeah,” Bo said.
“We brought you something.”
The boys set it down in front of his face, too close for him to really focus on it, and so it took him some time to see what it was.
“A beer. How’d you get that?” He reached for it, his neck muscles pulsating.
“Some guy who watched the fight felt sorry for you.” The boys plunked themselves down in front of him. They each had one, and were laughing at their luck.
“Can you sit up?” Peter asked.
“Yep.” He tried and got halfway there. “Nope.” And sank onto his back again. “I’ll be okay.”
“Your bear,” Ernie said.
“I trained her myself.”
“That’s a good one.” They all laughed.
The boys joined three straws together, tucking the end of one into the end of the other to make one long straw, then bent it from the beer into Bo’s mouth. The fizz and the cold felt good going in, and he sucked it back.
He hadn’t wanted to look but he did. Max still stood there, worried.
HE WOKE UP IN MAX’S TRAILER, lying on a little couch opposite the table. He looked around, recognized the photographs, the geek show—a plump girl biting the head off a snake. His head hurt—everything hurt. He knew some days had gone by, that he’d been in and out of it. And now he was awake, his whole body wanted to run.
“What time is it?”
Max was sitting at the table. “The freaks are just waking up, kid.”
He tried to shake his head but it was like his brain was going to and fro with it, clanking up against his skull, so he stopped.
Max got a mirror and held it up to him. Not good. It looked like things had been rearranged. “You must have hit the ground on that merry-go-round about twenty times,” Max said.
He hadn’t noticed hitting once, but he saw it must be true. There were welts and cuts all over his face.
“Bear,” he said.
“She’s fine.”
“I mean, where is she?”
“Back in your tent. Morgana has taken over feeding her until you’re better. There’s nothing broken and, as you would surmise, the show—”
“—must go on. Yeah, I know.”
“Here—” Max dangled an ice pack in front of him.
He pressed it along his cheek and gloried in the cold seeping in, nullifying the throb there. An ice bath would be perfect. There was a banging, which he mistook for his head at first and then realized it was coming from the room down the hall. Orange was smashing the door, trying to get out.
“She wants to see you, I expect. You’ve been mostly out of it.”
“I want to see her too.”
So Max went to get Orange and she waddle-dragged her body toward him, her smile skewed but her hands flailing, her throat making grunts not unlike Bear’s chirring when she was happy. He’d never heard Orange make any sound before.
You happy? He signed it for her, his wrist painfully rotating at his chin. He knew all of ten words by now.
She stopped, did a double-take, and made a face like squealing, though no sound came out—just an open mouth, all the energy of it playing out in her eyes.
“How’d you learn that, pal?” Max asked.
“That book. I’ve learned a few words.” The book poked out of a bag of his things someone must have packed and brought over. He gestured to it. “Can you hand me that?”
Max slid the bag over, and smiled.
“We’re not friends now, by the way,” Bo said, not looking at Max.
“I don’t expect so.”
Orange plunked down in front of them, so she and Bo were eye to eye. My, she was ugly, he thought. He thought it with no judgment. She was. She was signing Out and pointing to the door.
“I’m taking her out,” Bo said.
“People will look at her.”
“That’s odd coming from you.”
“Your mother,” Max said.
“Are you serious?”
“I promised she’d stay in.”
“Look,” Bo said. “She’s signing she wants to go out.” He was thinking how this guy lied all the time—his entire life was about lying—so why was he keeping such a promise?
“Tell her people will stare at her. Ask her if she minds.”
Bo just glared at Max. “Why should you care?” meaning the Toad Girl exhibit.
“That’s different,” said Max. “She has no idea.”
“Really?”
“The Airstream is soundproofed. And there is always music playing for her, to muffle whatever sound might penetrate. I call it the daytime trailer. She loves it, hardly ever bangs around in there.” Max shrugged and added, “Though the gawkers love it when she does—the spectacle of it.”
“Eventually she’ll figure it out.”
“I prefer not to imagine that time.”
Bo pulled out the book and flipped through. People, he signed to Orange, then, flipping some more, stare, a lunging V, his head bobbing toward her.
Out, she said. Out.
Bo pushed himself to sitting, ignoring the pounding head. “See?” he said to Max. “She wants to be normal.” Then to Orange he said, “Okay, hold your horses.” He signed, Okay.
She signed something back to him. She crossed her wrists and clawed them at her shoulders. What was she signing? He looked to Max but Max had no idea.
“Never seen that one before,” he said.
She kept at it. Scratch, hands crossed over. Bo pushed the book toward her. “I don’t understand,” he said.
She tried again, making a face, her cheeks wrinkled up with her awful misshapen mouth pursing, and the hands scratching emphatically.
Bo shook his head. “Here—” he said, pointing at the book. “Find it for me.”
He turned the pages and watched her watch the pictures, watched her read! They were well into the book before she banged her hand on the floor in glee, and pointed, jabbing the image. Bear. Bear. Bear. She signed and signed it.
“Bear,” said Max.
Bo signed it back to her. Bear?
Bear. She made the sign: To see. She wanted to see Bear.
Max looked appalled. “You can’t take her there.”
“Why not?”
“She’s never been out.”
“You’ve never let her out. But I have.”
“It’s my decision,” said Max. But he said it in a way that indicated he wouldn’t stop Bo from doing this. He would find a way to turn a blind eye, act like it wasn’t his idea. Well, it wasn’t his idea.
Bo tried to get up but his legs would not obey. He rubbed them and placed them for easier standing. Bo was laughing and so was Orange by the time he got himself up. He would walk through the trailer site with her. He would carry her if she couldn’t make it.
Orange was leaning back, laughing, drawing her fingers into crooks in a crossover in front of her face. Ugly, she signed, and pointed to him.
“Me?” Bo said, and she nodded fiercely.
Ugly, ugly, ugly.
“What’s she saying?” said Max.
“None of your business,” he said. “You coming?”
“I made a promise, and I’m keeping it. If she’s going, you take her.” But he held the door for them.
It took some doing to get out the door, Bo in pain, and Orange never in her life having moved over anything less flat than a floor. Her muscles were untrained to the task. Bo had to catch her to prevent her falling a number of times, steady her, compensate. But they did it. When she got down the trailer stairs, she slumped to the ground, and Bo worried she was hurt, but no.
She caressed the grass, smoothing her fingers over it, letting the blades run through them, playing the grass like she could hear something gorgeous coming out of it. When she looked up at him, he signed Okay and she pulled herself up using his pant leg, letting him help her too.
“This way,” he said.
They moved through the tight alleys between the caravans and trailers, the tents and the laundry. He saw freaks everywhere. Self-made freaks with full-body tattoos, and in clown getups, people who had defined themselves by the carnival’s terms. And the natural-born monsters—the tiny and the giant, the thin and the fat, the conjoined and the limbless, chatting, drinking, joking, being people, and then, like a wave, they turned toward this new sight. He wondered what Orange saw as they gawked at her, at Toad Girl, Max’s prize, whom they had seen only through the darkened glass.
These freaks were being out-freaked.
“Jesus, where’d you unearth that?” the Mule-Faced Woman screeched. She tried to run but Mino held her.
Bo heard his bass rumble, “Respect.”
“Respect.” The word flowed like a sudden acclamation on the lips of the tent city freaks. “Respect,” and “It’s Alive!” and then laughter, even joy.
And then Bo and Orange were in front of Morgana.
“You found her.”
“I found her.”
“She looks worse than in her photographs.”
“I’m sure she’d be happy to know that. She can hear, you know.”
“Well, I meant it as a compliment.”
Orange walk-hopped over to Morgana and stood swaying, looking at her eye to eye. If Orange weren’t so crooked she’d be taller than Morgana. She was signing like crazy and looking back at Bo. She wanted a translator.
Bo felt useless, especially when Morgana said, “What the hell is she saying?”
Bo pulled the book from his back pocket, crouched and drew his sister’s face toward him. Help, he signed. And they went through the pages again.
Tiny, she mimed. Witch, she pointed.
“Oh,” said Bo, and laughed. “She’s calling you a tiny witch.”
Morgana looked pissed at first, then smiled wide and curtseyed. “It’s not the first time I’ve been called that.”
“Hey, kid.” Mino was striding toward them. When he got close he waved his hands over them as if they were his puppets. It was a joke he liked to make. “She okay?”
“So far. You okay, Orange?”
She nodded, twisted her hand side to side. To show so-so. Mino crouched, said something about the air quality down there, and even still he was monstrous beside Orange.
“Little girl,” he said. “Hello.”
She signed her greeting.
“You’re a whole new category,” Mino said.
Orange cocked her head.
Mino swept his hand toward the loose grouping of freaks who had come out to see her. “I’m God-made,” he said to Orange. “Some of them there are self-made, like him and him.” He pointed to the tattooed man and the sword swallower. “You—” he said, and Morgana finished for him, “She’s man-made.”
The freaks nodded, and Orange watched them. To Bo, in that moment, she looked like a baby bird, something almost cute in its crushing strangeness, its wide-open eyes, its purity. She seemed to have given up on talking, having wrapped her fingers around two tussocks of grass. He did not know and could not imagine what she was taking in, but he was happy to watch. To be a part of this. She crumpled to the ground then and rolled, and began to sign Bear.
Morgana patted her. “There, there.”
Bear, she signed, Bear, Bear, Bear.
“She wants to see Bear,” Bo said.
Morgana’s eyes lifted from Orange to Bo. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
“The last time I saw Bear—”
“Ach,” said Morgana. “You never had a bad day?”
Morgana’s response gave him the permission he needed. “I’ll bring her out,” he said. “Hang on.” He peered down at Orange, her signing now frantic and obsessive: Bear, Bear, Bear. “Hang on,” he said. “Hang on.”
He looked sharply at Morgana and then walk-ran, until the pain reminded him to slow down. He found Bear’s snout pressed between the bars. If she could have pushed through on the strength of her desire, she would have, she was so happy to see him.
Bo said, “Field trip.” He pulled out her harness and collar, and opened the cage so he could put them on her. She wanted out. She was chirring with pleasure and gently head-butting, burying her snout in his T-shirt.
“That’s Orange you smell,” said Bo. “You know that, don’t you?”
The bear looked at him, pushed her ears down and proceeded to shove him two feet with the force of her excitement.
“No!”
She sat and bounced, yawning to calm down. She lifted a paw and scratched the air as if by way of apology. Bo thought of Orange signing.
By the time they got outside, he had Bear well in control. She knew to stay calm even if she quivered with the constraint. And then there was Orange, all askew, sitting beside Morgana. The day was clear, a wide pale blue sky and no clouds, so that Morgana and Orange seemed etched into the scene, a picture. Orange signed; she was not calling for the bear anymore, she was acknowledging Bear, showing the creature she had learned her name, that she could now speak to her.
Bear shook to the point she had to sit to calm herself. She raised her paw and held it in the air to mimic Orange. And then she slid to lying and snuffled the grass wherever Orange had been. She rolled and slid her snout along it, bathing in Orange, loving her. Hello, she seemed to say, Hello.
Orange stopped signing. Her body tilted sideways—bearwards—and she looked as if held by a string, but she never fell. She just held herself all bent and wrong and ugly and man-made, and she watched the bear.
“I never,” said Morgana. “Look.” The bear had slid so she could sniff at Orange’s knee.
And then Max was calling to Bo. “It’s time, kid.”
And Bo turned. He watched Max striding over to them.
“Time to get back to work.” Max looked both resolute and pained. He was holding a tiara, twirling it. “The show, kid. The show.”
Bo looked from Bear and Orange to Max, then caught Morgana’s eye and saw the flit of shame in her gaze, and then to Mino, who hunched over the girl and the Bear, and who seemed to be avoiding eye contact. Bo figured it was nine or nine-thirty and the Ex would be opening soon. Max had a point, he knew. It was a job, and for all kinds of reasons they had all signed on; they owed a debt to this work and to this lifestyle too, for making them less freakish, for giving them something like home. But still.
“Stop calling me kid,” Bo said. “My name is Bo.”
“Come on, kid.”
“No,” said Bo, and he spread his arms out in front of Bear and Orange as if by this gesture he could offer protection. He was a kid, he was as good as owned. He had nothing. “No,” he repeated.
Max’s eye twitch turned into a squint. “Bo,” he said pointedly. Then, “Oh, for crying out loud,” and then, “Come on, guys. You owe me better than this,” for behind Bo, the freaks had gathered—Mino and Morgana, and the rest of the midgets, a couple of dwarfs, the sword swallower, the clowns, and even the Mule-Faced Woman. They said nothing. They didn’t need to say anything.
“Oh, cripes,” said Max. He threw the tiara down. “I give up. It’s you oddities yourselves who’ll drive the whole game into the ground, you know that?”