Ruby trains her skinny arm toward the target and knocks another pock-holed can off the wooden crate onto sandy ground. She has hit seven out of nine cans so far today, a sight better than yesterday, when she only hit four of ten and was in a pouty mood all day.
“That’s better, Ruby.” Big Burl reaches from behind to steady her hand.
Ruby feels the warmth of her father’s breath in her ear. She raises the pistol. “It’s heavy, Pop.”
“It’s not a toy, Ruby. One more try now.” Big Burl steps back and crosses his thick arms over his barrel chest.
Ruby aims, shoots, misses. She grimaces and drops her arm. She rubs her forearm with her other hand.
Big Burl wraps Ruby in a grizzly bear embrace. He smells of leather and whiskey. “No long faces, Ruby,” Big Burl says. “Practice, practice, practice. One day, you’ll be wheeling around the ring and not miss a one. You’re a natural.” He ruffles Ruby’s blonde hair, hitches up his trousers over his large mid-section, and tweaks his hat. “Off you go, then. Save me a seat at supper.”
Ruby meanders toward Divina’s tent. She chases a toad, picks up a penny. At the corral, she stops to pet Major, Pop’s favorite horse, a white stallion worth more than all the other horses combined, or that’s what her pop says. Ruby slips Major a carrot from her pocket and nuzzles his face. Down two wagons, cut across, down two more. At the costume wagon, Ruby lifts the flap, waltzes in, and flops on a cot.
“Well, if it isn’t Little Miss Pip.” Divina’s needle flies through cotton and velvet and suede as she mends costumes and headdresses, a never-ending job in the ever-changing carnival business.
Ruby sucks on a carrot and tries to bend her skinny legs and arms into a pretzel shape, like she’s seen the contortionist do. Three times she attempts to hook her leg around the back of her neck. She grunts and pounds the mattress. “I can’t do it.”
Divina sets her needlework down and grabs for the side of the wagon to heft herself up. “Here, let me. Sit up.” Divina bends Ruby’s neck forward and grasps her leg.
“Ow!”
“Well, then, we’ll just have to try again tomorrow.”
“That’s what Pop said.”
“How many today?
“Seven, but it shoulda been eight. I nicked the last one and it went all wobbly.” Ruby shakes her body from left to right.
“Practice, practice, practice. Only way you’ll get better, Ruby.”
“How come you and Pop always say the same thing?”
Divina smiles. “Because we know what’s best for you, me and your pop.”
Jean Parker Perdue, Divina’s given name is. She’s a big woman—always has been—folds and folds of flesh that cascade from her chin to what should be her ankles. Her dark hair is pulled back in a bun, accentuating her thick neck. She wears a black dressing gown and a small pince-nez on her prominent nose. Her blue eyes spark from beneath manicured eyebrows.
Young Jean watched her mother read tarot cards on their back porch in upstate Illinois every night for extra cash, a halo of cigarette smoke and mosquitoes circling her head, and men in and out of her mother’s tiny bedroom. When her mother abandoned Jean and left her with a crotchety maiden aunt downstate, Jean took in sewing to help pay rent. She was never asked to a dance or courted or kissed. So it was no surprise to anyone (and heartily encouraged by her aunt) when Jean hooked up with a handsome shyster come through town who needed a button sewn on.
Jean wouldn’t be the first or last to run off with the only prospect in sight. Her lover’s suits were always washed and pressed, and never a button missing. A year later, they still hadn’t married. He spun one excuse after another, but soon, he promised, soon. It wasn’t long before Jean got wind that her suitor had other intentions. On a hot Texas night, her knight in not-so-shining armor never came back to the Golden Hotel, where they were lodging after attending the breath-taking Triple B Traveling Carnival and Wild West Show.
The next morning, the proprietor kicked Jean out of the hotel without breakfast. The bill wasn’t paid, the proprietor said, sorry, ma’am. Business is business. Flat broke and hungry, Jean approached the owner of the carnival outfit as the show was shutting down for the day. Stopped in her tracks, Jean was love-struck when she laid eyes on George Burlingame Barstow. She found her tongue and asked the showman—he was as large as she was, or maybe larger, and much more handsome close up than in the carnival ring yesterday—to take her on, good with a needle she was, after all. It wasn’t long before Jean put her mother’s tarot readings to good use, too, and started reading palms. She was never Jean after that; the name Divina was born in a hot dusty town in west Texas that was forgettable, except for that.
Divina followed George Burlingame Barstow like moth to flame for years on the traveling circuit all over the west as he plowed into town after town commanding nickels and respect. Divina loved Big Burl with a heart exploding. Big Burl loved Divina in every way except the way Divina wanted to be loved.
Divina sits on the cot where Ruby is sprawled out and pats the girl’s tummy. “Five days old you were, when your pop brought you up from Tucson. First time I saw you, you were madder than a cut snake. All legs and arms. And a soaking diaper. Your pop didn’t know what to do with you.” Divina smiles. “Most babies are fat, like me.”
“Was I always skinny?”
“Skinnier than a pole cat. I don’t know where you put away all that pie.”
Ruby jumps up from the cot. “I’m gonna go get some.”
“It’s not even suppertime,” Divina says. “But I bet if you go to the back of the mess tent, you might get lucky.”
Ruby stretches and leaps off the cot. “See ya, Divina.”
Ruby wends her way to the back of the mess tent and watches shadows creep up the side of the canvas. Big Sue comes out from the tent and stands, back against a tent pole, and lights a cigarette. That women smoke or drink or swear (or even spit) doesn’t surprise Ruby any more than the sun working its way up over the horizon every morning.
“Well, if it isn’t Miss Ruby,” the cook says, as if seeing Ruby there is any surprise. “You’ll be wanting more pie?”
Ruby nods, “Yes’m,” and quick as the toad Ruby had chased minutes before, in front of her there’s a plate heaped with blackberry pie and a big-person fork.
“I do believe you could eat a whole pie,” Big Sue says. She blows smoke rings in the air. “But where you put it is beyond me. You weigh less than a mouse.”
Between mouthfuls, Ruby nods again. “Yes’m.”
Stick comes up beside Ruby. “I’ll take a slice too, if you’re offering.” Big Sue smacks Stick’s arm, but not before he gets a peck in on her cheek. Stick is the tallest man Ruby’s ever seen, and taller still when he’s on stilts. He bends over and pinches Ruby’s bottom under her dress. Then he plucks a nickel from Ruby’s ear. “Well, what did you have hiding there, young lady? I do believe you’re a nickel richer.”
Ruby smiles through blackberry teeth. She reaches for the nickel.
“Not until you plant a big one here on Stick’s cheek.” He lowers his head so Ruby can kiss him through a mass of whiskers.
“There’s a good girl,” he says. “Now you run along. Big Sue and I got some business we got to attend to, don’t we, sweetie?”
Ruby hands her plate to Big Sue and nods, crushing the nickel in her palm. With this she can buy popcorn or a bag of peanuts.
“Don’t let anyone pinch that nickel, you hear?” Stick says to Ruby.
Ruby ambles though the carnival grounds and swipes a bag of peanuts from the concession wagon. The door was unlocked, so why not? She’s still hungry, and now has Stick’s nickel for popcorn in her pocket for tomorrow. Ruby sits on a stack of lumber, her legs dangling, and watches the set-up crew hammer up the grandstand, a big U-shaped arena where two days from now crowds will erupt in earsplitting applause. When she finishes the peanuts, she curls into a ball and uses her arms for a pillow. She closes her eyes then, hammers clanging and men shouting and animals making the most god-awful noises a girl ever heard.
FIFTY CENTS FOR YOU, SIR, and yes, the same for the missus. A quarter for the kids, and here, take a program. That’ll be another nickel, sir. Right this way. Popcorn?
Barkers stand at the entrance to the carnival show, voices louder than a thousand dogs. Come one and come all, now’s your chance. Three days only! A new show every day! Step right up, there you go, young sir, little missy, what a fine looking family you are! The photograph booth is just beyond the entrance, first tent on the right. Yes, sir, that’s correct. Just two bits for a portrait of your lovely wife and the young’uns. I can see it now on the piano, your beautiful missus looking like the first bloom of spring. In you go, then. Next!
Families scramble up planked steps and root around like rats to find suitable places to sit, spreading blankets on splintery boards to save a spot. Flags fly on stanchions set fifty-feet apart, reds and blues and yellows fluttering in the breeze above the high-sided arena. At the closed end of the showground, hidden by a large trompe d’oeil desert scene, a large pen houses twenty horses. Smaller pens hold sheep and calves, and in a large cage, a dull-eyed bear. The cowboy band sets up in a box just to the right of the entrance—better to sit a ways away, if you’re there early enough. Those trumpets can get inside your head.
There go the Mexicans, a dozen of them, and a posse of white men dressed in full regalia, parading around like they are native as dirt, painted chests and beaded clothing, deerskin moccasins and feathers. No one seems to notice or care. It comes with the territory, gamblers and gunslingers and swindlers and tramps. What’s a little artful deception? No one’s the worse for it.
And there, in the center of it all, clad in beaded buckskin and velvet and fur, his Concho-jangling boots thigh high and dark curled hair to his shoulders (and a huge gut in between) is Ruby’s pop, the legendary Big Burl. Feathers sprout two feet into the air from the brim of his enormous hat. It can be hot as Hades and Big Burl wears the same get-up every show. There’s a reputation at stake here.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” he crows. “Have we got a show of shows for you today!” There’s humor and offhand comments and a rundown of acts, peppered with cheers and waving of handkerchiefs. And then the Grand Entry, the whole costumed entourage making one big sweep of the carnival grounds.
“On your mark, get set, go!” Big Burl’s voice rumbles across the fairgrounds. In the center of the arena, large poles sprout from dirt. In the first act, cowboys outdo one another in feats of horsemanship: bronco riding and rope handling and barrel races. After the first intermission, gunslingers take to the arena, their litany of tricks a mile longer than the cowboy’s. Ever see someone shoot a coin out of another man’s hand? Or extinguish a lit cigar hanging out of another’s mouth with a single bullet? Knock an apple off a trained dog’s head? Or (the kids love this one), aim straight through a chicken’s neck and then watch the poor thing dance around the arena without its head? The crowd roars in applause.
Between acts, Ruby loves to watch other kids, she doesn’t have many to play with in the carnival. A little boy tugs on his father’s sleeve. “Look, Pop! Lemonade!” An older boy jerks on his father’s other sleeve. “Games! Just a nickel, Pop. You should do it, try to hit that colored in the head! You got three chances! Can I do it, too? Please?”
Ruby wanders from tent to tent, coins clinking at the entrance. She peeks in through the back of the contortionist tent just in time to see the woman wrap her legs up around her neck like a pretzel. How does she do that? She skips the dwarves today, stops for a minute to listen to the musicians. At Divina’s tent, a line snakes around the back of the tent. Ruby hears Divina’s low voice from inside the tent and wonders what she’s saying. Maybe someday, she’ll read Ruby’s palm.
After the long second intermission, the audience cheers for the shooting contests. It’s louder than before, deafening almost, the thunder of firearms and drumbeat of hooves. A girl wonder rides a horse three times her size and shoots glass balls with a flashy show piece, once hitting ninety-eight out of a hundred. Smell of gunpowder everywhere. Ruby wants to be her.
In come the fancy riders, western women in jingle-jangles and bared legs between split skirts and boots. They ride haywire around the arena, barely missing one another as they pluck hats and hankies off the ground while lunging off the sides of their mounts.
And then there’s the finale, and, as if it couldn’t get any louder, the arena erupts into applause as the so-called noble savages chase women and children in a wagon careening around the arena. In come the cowboys, rescuers all, who pretend-shoot the marauders one by one. Down they go, good for ticket sales.
When Big Burl steps into the fray and fires his rifle into the air, the crowd quiets for one second, and then, as the entire ensemble takes their final bows, the crowd erupts in cheers.
“RUBY!” BIG BURL TAPS RUBY on the shoulder. Ruby sits up in a daze, peanut shells exploding from her dress. Her father and Divina are standing over her.
“We looked everywhere for you,” Divina says. “Catching a cat nap, were you, after all that pie?”
“I was just dreaming …”
Big Burl lifts Ruby up and tosses her into the air. “It’s not like you to miss supper.”
“I missed supper?” Ruby’s eyes fill with tears. Her lip quivers.
“Let’s see if we can rustle up a plate for you.” Big Burl hefts Ruby to his shoulders and she grabs onto his long hair. “Hold on, Ruby!” he bellows.
From this vantage point, Ruby can see the whole carnival. Through a maze of tents, lumber, and animal dung, Big Burl deposits Ruby at the back of the mess tent, where she just had pie a few hours earlier. Her tummy grumbles.
“Sue!” Big Burl’s voice rumbles through the tent opening.
Big Sue pops out from the tent, her hands soaking. “Saved you a plate, Miss Ruby,” she says. Sue disappears in the folds of the tent and returns with a plate heaped with roast and potatoes and gravy. “Sit right here,” she says, pointing to a stool just outside the tent flap. “I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”
“Dig in, Ruby,” Big Burl says. “And see as you’re back to the tent before dark, you hear me?”
Ruby nods, her mouth already full.
“I’ll keep an eye on her, Burl,” Divina says. “How’s that, Ruby? Good?”
Ruby nods again.
“We’ve got to fatten you up, Pip. Go on, finish it all.” Divina sits on a campstool next to Ruby, her skirt puddling on the ground.
“Where are we?” Ruby asks, between mouthfuls. “Still in Colorado?”
“Right here.” Divina reaches for a tent stake and draws a map in the dirt. “Lubbock, Texas.”
Lubbock is the halfway mark, all of Colorado and most of Texas behind them, as they journey southwest toward Odessa, a hundred and thirty-odd miles over rough country. Unlike Buffalo Bill Cody, who travels all year round, Big Burl’s entourage travels the “The Golden Circuit” for shy of four months, starting each May in Globe to get the kinks out and then meandering clockwise from Arizona Territory into Colorado and then deep into Texas over scrubland and malapais and sand dunes, in towns big and small, even stopping in backwaters like Cuckleburr and Foolsville, anywhere there’s a nickel to be made. When they use up all their goodwill in one town, they move on, stripping down and loading freighters in a quarter of the time it takes to set up.
After Texas, it’s on to New Mexico Territory, the hottest place Ruby has ever passed water. In Las Cruces, her pee hisses on the ground and evaporates before she finishes her squat. After rip-roaring shows in Albuquerque, Silver City is next, and then into familiar territory, all eighteen wagons of the outfit rumbling into Bisbee and Tubac before the last hurrah in Tucson, where the entourage showers local kids with pennies as they leave town. There, performers part company for other jobs: ranching or mining or other shows until May rolls around again and Burl expects them back again, ready to go in Globe.
“When will we be back home?” Ruby asks Divina.
“Not for awhile, Pip. Texas is a big place, and then we have all of New Mexico. But don’t you worry, we’ll be back in Jericho in time for school.”
Ruby doesn’t much like school; she can’t sit still. All the readings and recitations and arithmetic come to her fine enough, but why be inside when the sun is shining? When there are bottles to shoot and ponies to run? Ruby’s dresses are always ripped or stained, much to Divina’s displeasure. And Ruby’s knees, well, they never heal up. In absence of a mother, Divina washes and dresses Ruby’s wounds and covers her own heart in bandages again when Burl takes up with a local Apache woman every winter.
So one year turns into another, and another, and another, and at the end of the season, it’s always home to Jericho. Not that anyone much crows about Jericho. But when it’s the town you lay claim to, the one you’re born in or find yourself in or stay because, well, just because, you fight for it—and everyone in it—until your last dying breath, or until the walls come tumbling down.