July 1935
Northern Wisconsin
On the third of July, in Ashland, Wisconsin, Cecily found a tiny note tucked under Prince’s bridle with a single word on it: Conspiracy! She had no idea what it could refer to, but she knew it was from Lucky, because she recognized his handwriting, the thick strokes of his pencil. But conspiracy was definitely a five-dollar word, and sounded nice, besides, so maybe he was starting a word game, or another poem. They hadn’t had a chance to talk at all yesterday—someone had always been around—so maybe he was trying to say he was sorry for turning his back on her the other day, to start up the conversation again.
She tracked down a pencil, flipped the little note over, and wrote a word that had always been one of her favorites: Delicious! Sure, it wasn’t that unusual, but, when you really listened to it, it sounded so nice. She slid the note back under Prince’s bridle and went over to practice with Isabelle.
“No, no, no!” Tebow said, and Isabelle, standing on Wyatt’s back, where Cecily had failed to land, said, “Come on, try again.”
Cecily limped back to her starting point. She had tweaked her knee just now, as Wyatt had shifted just as she was about to leap onto his back, and she’d stopped herself short to avoid a larger disaster.
But the pain in her knee was going to make the whole day, her two performances, almost impossible, she could already tell.
She saw that Lucky, over in Prince’s stall, was peering around Prince’s neck, watching her, looking worried. She wondered if he’d found her note, the word delicious. She liked thinking about that little note far more than she liked thinking about her knee, or the storm that threatened in great, haunting swaths out over Lake Superior, or Isabelle’s peevishness, or the look on Tebow’s face, which was of a man watching everything he owned dissolve before his eyes like a pile of sugar in a pounding, warm rain.
“Go!” said Isabelle from Wyatt’s back, and Cecily ran, leaping as her hands met Wyatt’s sturdy flank behind where Isabelle stood—and Wyatt stepped aside.
Cecily fell, hand then hip slamming the ground, raising dust that burned her eyes. Quickly, she scootched out of range of Wyatt’s hooves. “Oh, Wyatt, sweetheart!” said Isabelle.
Cecily scooted over to lean against a hay bale, trying to catch her breath. She knew she was supposed to bounce right back up after any fall, but her knee was screaming—she’d twisted it much worse than last time—and her wrist was, too.
“What is wrong with that horse?” Tebow yelled.
“There’s nothing wrong with the horse,” Isabelle said, sliding down off Wyatt’s back and going for the carrots.
Cecily’s knee was swelling. She held her aching wrist, struggling not to cry. Why didn’t Isabelle seem to care that she was hurt? And how was she going to do her act today at all now? The hay bale behind her back poked and scratched her through her costume, but that was the least of her pains.
“Goddamn it!” Tebow said.
Lucky came out of the stall. “Want me to get some ice for her knee, sir? I believe it would help.”
Tebow frowned. “Oh, are you a doctor now?”
“Saw my grandma fix up plenty of injured folks.”
“Fine, fine,” Tebow said, making a brush-off gesture, and Lucky ran.
“I told you we shouldn’t have tried this without safety equipment,” Isabelle said primly, holding out a carrot in the flat of her palm for Wyatt, and Cecily started to cry, just a little, though she tried to hide it.
When Lucky got back carrying a pie pan containing three large shards of ice from the cookhouse, he crouched beside Cecily, wrapped one in the handkerchief from his back pocket, and held it out to her. She pressed it to her knee, using the wrist that was injured, too, to hold it in place. It did help lessen the pain, almost instantly.
“Tried to warn you,” Lucky whispered, which made no sense to Cecily, but, when she cocked her head, he just shook his in return, pressed his lips together, and got to his feet. He stood beside her with his arms folded, his attitude that of a soldier guarding a castle door.
Tebow came over from where he’d been arguing with Isabelle. “You’re in charge of Jackie,” Tebow told Lucky. “We need her in the parade, she needs to get to her meals, she needs to rest between shows. She needs to be on Prince’s back for those two shows today. I’m going to try to get a doctor for her. Meanwhile, if she can’t walk, you carry her. Got it? Can you do that and take care of the horses, too?”
Lucky’s mouth thinned, but he said, “Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’m counting on you.”
In the distance, thunder boomed. The sky opened. Rain fell in fat drops outside the stable tent, faster, faster, till they poured like a bucket overturned. “Goddamn it!” Tebow yelled, and ran out into it, fading away into the blur as he rushed toward the Big Top. Cecily didn’t know what he imagined he could do about any of it, and, when she looked over at Isabelle, she wondered why Isabelle had such a look of satisfaction on her face, and an almost hatred, as she watched Tebow disappearing.
Lucky led Prince out into the rain to line up for the parade when it was time, then came back and helped Cecily up from where she sat on the ground. “Don’t put any weight on that knee,” he advised. “Want me to carry you, or do you want to hop?”
Her face heated up. “I’ll just lean on you.” She should’ve ridden Prince out, but she never did that—Lucky always led him out, and Cecily walked out behind them—so it was just stupid old habit that had caused her not to.
Lucky’s expression was impassive. He nodded and moved beside her. His hand was warm on her waist; he crouched so she could lean on his shoulder.
But, out in the cold rain, her satin slipper sank into the mud with each pathetic hop she made.
“You’re gonna slip and fall,” he said.
She blinked up at him. She didn’t mind seeming helpless, just this once. “Then carry me.”
He gave another stern nod. As he bent, she looped her arms around his neck. He lifted her easily, cradling her, and began to walk. His face was smooth and handsome, dappled with raindrops, and very serious, his eyes narrowed, his mouth thin. She had never been so close to any boy before, at least not in a way that had made her take notice like this. The rain was making his shirt stick to her leg, his arm stick to her costume behind her back, so that it almost seemed she was melting into him, or the other way around. He was warm, and the side of her that wasn’t touching him was cold—
She caught herself. She should be thinking about the show. Her livelihood; her whole life. This rain was a disaster. If it kept up, few Ashlanders would come out to the parade, even fewer to the show. The rain would make hands and feet, trapezes and ropes and animals, slippery—make everything the performers did even more dangerous than usual—but to cancel would mean losing an entire day’s ticket sales, which Tebow clearly couldn’t afford. Also, with her knee, Cecily wasn’t going to be able to put on a good performance, if any at all, and she could hurt herself worse by trying—
So why was she so unaccountably . . . happy?
Her side was warm against Lucky’s shirtfront, his arms warm around her. She could feel the rise and fall of his breathing as he carried her along the line of the parade, the other performers exclaiming and swearing over her swollen knee.
Reaching Prince’s side, Lucky set Cecily down on her good foot. Mud engulfed her slipper. He circled her waist with his hands and lifted her quickly onto Prince’s back. Prince shifted underneath her; he did not like the rain. She stroked his wet mane and tried to straighten his headdress. Without Lucky’s heat pressed against her, she was suddenly so cold that her teeth began to chatter. Her hair was plastered to her head, and she’d have to sit sidesaddle on Prince’s back, not stand, as she usually did in the parade. She wasn’t going to be too impressive, in other words, nor much of an advertisement for the show.
Lucky frowned, looking hard at her swollen knee, rain-soaked with the rest of her. “You should keep ice on that.”
Despite everything, this (the seriousness of his concern? his investment in her experience of her pain?) made her so happy that she laughed. “Now, that wouldn’t look right at all! In the parade?”
A sudden smile broke across his face. He tugged his cap brim, wiped the raindrops from his cheek. “I’ll be here when you get back,” he said.
That night, after the show, the rain had finally stopped, leaving cool, steaming mud behind. Most of the animals and wagons had been loaded, and those folks not already aboard the train were drifting toward it. At the bottom of the caboose’s vestibule steps, Cecily was in Lucky’s arms, one hand at the back of his neck. Over her other arm was looped a pair of wooden crutches the doctor had given her that afternoon.
She’d used the crutches all day for short distances, but they hurt her under her arms, and were the wrong height, and slipped in the mud. So, after the show, while the circus was taken down around her, she’d sat on a hay bale, waiting for Lucky to get the horses put up in their railcar and come back for her. Her knee was swollen to twice the size it had been this morning, despite how the doctor had wrapped it.
But she had done her entire act, and done it without falling—both shows, and despite the wet mess of the rain. She didn’t know, really, how she’d managed it, and now her teeth were chattering, and she couldn’t tell if she was just cold or in shock of some kind after the long day in pain.
Lucky looked around, as if to see if anyone was coming—no one was—then looked down at her. “Can you use the crutches to climb up?”
She bit her lip and blinked. Her knee was screaming. “I don’t think so. Can you carry me up?” He’d done so this afternoon, setting her gently down on the vestibule. She didn’t know why he was hesitating now.
Slowly, he nodded. He took the crutches from her and reached to slide them up onto the vestibule. Then, turning sideways so as not to bump her feet or head, he carefully stretched his leg to reach the bottom step. He got his footing with one foot, then hoisted up the other, jostling her as they landed. He shot a grin down at Cecily, like he was surprised he’d made it, and she beamed back up at him.
Up one more step, then another, and they were on the vestibule. She wished he didn’t have to set her down.
Of course he did, though—and soon she was situated on her crutches, looking up at him.
“You gonna be all right?” he said.
She tried to smile. “I think so. Will you come for me in the morning? To help me to breakfast?” They would be in the next town by then.
“Sure thing.” He touched his cap brim.
“Thank you,” she said, wishing she could think of something more, but the pain in her knee seemed to drown out thought.
Down the line came the shouts of men boarding the train. The whistle blew, and Lucky glanced in the direction of the noise. “’Night,” he said, then bounded down the steps and ran toward the flatcars. She watched as he disappeared into the darkness.
The next night, in Superior, Wisconsin, when Lucky set Cecily down on the vestibule of the caboose, her head was full of images of the day. Sitting sidesaddle on Prince’s back at the tail end of the usual Sax & Tebow parade, which today had trailed behind the town Fourth of July parade, the fire engines with their blaring sirens, the marching band playing “Yankee Doodle” and “Over There,” the decorated floats and tractors. Many in the crowd had been waving tiny flags, as larger flags fluttered from front porches and banners from streetlamps, everyone trying to shake off the dust of the hard times and get in the spirit of the holiday. There’d been two sold-out shows. Cecily had managed again, during her act, not to fall, and to keep smiling through excruciating pain, and perhaps the day’s ticket sales had been enough to make up for yesterday’s near-rainout. At least, Tebow had seemed in a much better mood, as if something had suddenly lightened his load. A thick morning fog had burned off to picture-perfect blue skies.
Now the night was clear and warm, and Cecily’s knee was swollen to the size of a melon. It hurt so badly that she almost couldn’t feel it; she had turned off that part of her brain. She had also—almost—succeeded in turning off the memory of Isabelle glaring daggers at her all day, as if Cecily were doing something bad just by existing.
“I tried to get you some ice, but they won’t have any till morning,” Lucky said. He had been with her for almost every step, these last two days. He had lifted her on and off of Prince, on and off the train. He had followed her to meals, watching to be sure she was managing her crutches all right, filled her plate for her and brought it to the table, then followed her away again when she was done eating. Little Red had joked that the two of them could have their own sideshow tent: “The Black-White Boy-Girl: One Body, Two Heads!” Isabelle had shot another glare, while Cecily blushed.
Now, in the distance, a red firework exploded across the sky. “Oh, look, it’s started!” Cecily pointed, and Lucky turned, smiling as the bloom faded down.
Tonight, the Sax & Tebow train had only to cross the bridge over the big St. Louis River to Duluth, Minnesota, and that wouldn’t take longer than an hour, so the train (though of course they could never plan exactly, traveling fourth-class freight and having to fit in among the other trains) would likely not leave until past two in the morning. There was plenty of time to enjoy the evening. A lot of the circus folks had even gone into town.
Another firework burst. “You know where we could see best from?” Cecily pointed to the ladder that led to the roof of the caboose.
Lucky raised an eyebrow. “How are you gonna climb that thing?”
She scoffed. “If I can do a somersault on the back of a cantering pony, I can certainly climb a ladder.”
Not that it was easy. She couldn’t bend her leg, so she had to mostly pull herself up with her arms, swinging out her rear end at each rung to hop her good foot up to the next. Lucky waited at the bottom, pretending not to watch, but startling slightly each time she made a sudden move. When she got to the top, she scooted backward across the red roof to lean against the cupola, and Lucky climbed up after her, staying low, looking around to make sure no one was watching. Some folks were on top of the bunk cars in the distance, beyond Tebow’s private car, but they were focused on the fireworks, oohing and ahhing as explosions lit the sky. Besides, people had gotten used to seeing Cecily and Lucky together, these last couple days. And, if Isabelle saw them—well. Cecily, in a private fit of rebellion, told herself she plain didn’t care.
“Guess there’s no stopping you from anything,” Lucky said, and she smiled and gestured for him to come sit next to her. He considered the idea for a moment, then did it.
With him beside her, she felt the world had a new clarity; that all the parts of her had been rearranged to an order they had always been meant to go in. He gave a big sigh, and seemed to relax, and only then did she realize she had never seen him relax before. That he’d always been worried and watchful about who might be watching him.
In the distance, the fireworks bloomed. She settled back to watch, happy that he felt he could be at ease with her.
Shifting her position slightly, she drew in her breath at the pain in her knee.
Lucky looked down at it, and his gaze had a weight that was almost a touch. “Wish I could make it better.”
You do, she wanted to say. Instead, she laughed and said, “It’s ridiculous.”
He frowned. “What is?”
“Being injured! I hope you aren’t going to put this in our poem.”
He smiled, then sighed again, leaning back against the cupola and lacing his hands together over drawn-up knees. For a moment, they watched the fireworks exploding, then he said, “I’ve got to tell you something.” He turned to her with serious eyes, as the worst possibilities—he hated her, he was going to tell Tebow tomorrow he wanted nothing to do with her!—ran through her mind. “Listen,” he said, “you know those boys’ll do anything she tells them to, right?”
It took Cecily a second to set aside her fears and catch on. “Isabelle?” she blurted. “You think Isabelle told Wyatt to step aside so I’d fall? That’s impossible. She’d never do that.”
Lucky spoke in a low tone. “I heard them talking, day before yesterday. Her and Tebow. They don’t notice me when I’m around. He told her Cole Brothers made an offer to buy us, and he’s haggling with them for better terms, but right now they want you and not her. Said they don’t need two bareback acts. And she was angry.”
“What? That doesn’t even make sense. Tebow would never sell to Cole Brothers! And Isabelle wouldn’t—! Anyway, even if all that was true, why would Cole Brothers want me and not her? Her act is much more impressive!”
Lucky’s mouth was thin. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“I don’t doubt you, Lucky. But . . . you must have misunderstood! Isabelle would never try to hurt me. And I don’t think Tebow would ever sell! Especially not to Cole Brothers!” Cecily shook her head quickly, dismissing the whole impossible notion, then smiled and changed to a far more pleasant subject. “Anyway, I’m just glad he assigned you to look after me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Instantly, she bit her lip; there’d been more longing in her voice than she’d intended to reveal.
He gave a quick, fleeting smile, though his eyes were more serious than ever. “Cecily,” he said, drawing out the last syllable, as if she were in some kind of trouble, or as if he were asking a question.
She couldn’t help smiling, embarrassed as she was. Anyway, whatever the question, she thought her answer was yes, and she realized that the fact of that didn’t frighten her; it made her feel brave. Slowly, she reached out and brushed her fingertip against the back of his hand. He glanced at her sideways, almost suspiciously, then looked back down at their hands. Slowly, he turned his hand over, and she folded her fingers inside his palm. It was as if there was nothing else she could do. He kept his fingers stretched out flat, and, after a moment, she traced one finger along his palm like Annie Sullivan passing a message to Helen Keller, and she thought he would know what it meant, and perhaps he did: She heard him breathe in sharply once, then, after a second, sigh. When she looked up at him, he was gazing at her the way you’d look at a newborn lamb.
“Cecily DuMonde,” he said gently, and it was as if now he’d decided to answer everything she might ever ask.
“Moses Washington Green,” she answered, pronouncing each syllable carefully, and the pleasing sound of his name, and the soft way he was looking at her—as if she were a place he’d like to live in—made a tear well in her eye. It trailed down her cheek, and Lucky watched it for a moment, then, with his thumb, brushed it gently away. At the sweetness of his touch, another tear fell. As he brushed this one away, she noticed, as if for the first time, the beauty of the details of his face—the sweet slope of his upper lip, the width of his handsome nose, the short dark lashes over his eyes—and she knew then that she loved him, and that it was the first real thing that had ever happened to her in her life. She felt a rush of exhilaration, then of sudden terror: What if she could never make him hers? What if he didn’t love her back? She’d be shattered. Lost.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said softly, as if he could read her mind, as if her face were as transparent as glass straight all the way through.
“Do you know that feeling,” she said, and it was both difficult to breathe and the easiest and most satisfying it had ever been, “the one where you know you’ve found where you belong?”
He drew back, and her heart squeezed in on itself. He folded his arms and shrank from her. In the distance, another firework boomed, followed by the sounds of cheering. “You shouldn’t say that, Cecily.” He was watchful, tense, again. “Anyway, you know it isn’t true.”
She blinked. She remembered Tebow watching her walk the rail at the Home. The trick to not falling was to move fast. “Moses Washington Green,” she said. “You know it is true.”
He was looking off into the distance, where fireworks were exploding, one after another after another in a grand finale, and the circus workers’ cheers grew louder, their relief at not being the spectacle making them boisterous and almost drunk on the high of the release of all expectation, and Cecily touched Lucky’s arm. “Please,” she said.
He turned to her. “You’re a fool, Cecily.”
“But you know it’s true as well as I do. I know you do.”
He looked at her another moment, then sighed and relaxed again, with a slight shake of his head, and he leaned in and cupped her face in his hand, and his breath was warm and sweet in the second before his lips touched hers.
And with the warmth of that touch, all the possibilities of the world tumbled and strained and broke open, and Cecily’s tears flowed freely and were a relief and a joy, because in this moment she finally knew what it meant to be a human girl—not a performer, not an orphan, not someone trying desperately to prove her worth. She was just a human girl, full of frailty and doubt and hope and striving, and if all the forces of this same world would be stacked against her soon, she didn’t care; just right now, she didn’t care at all.
“Yes, I know it’s true,” Lucky whispered, his lips brushing hers, the warmth of his hand on her face a comfort she had never known. “God help me, Cecily, I do.”