August 1935
On tour with Sax & Tebow
To Cecily, love was like a faucet turning on. A miracle; a release of pressure; gratitude; flow.
She didn’t know if Lucky experienced it the same way. All he would say was that he hoped he didn’t draw attention for bathing so frequently of late, which she thought had to be a joke, so she laughed and kissed him.
They had plenty of privacy now. Her knee was still swollen, and everyone was used to Lucky helping her at meals and walking with her—slowly, as she crutched along—to and from the caboose so he could help her up the stairs. Whenever anyone was around, she’d struggle with her crutches, and wince or gasp each time she even slightly bent her knee, trying to ensure that no one would begin to think it was time for her to start climbing steps on her own.
Lucky insisted on being careful not to act too friendly within anyone’s view. (“We aren’t a tiger tamer and a clown,” he insisted. “We aren’t the same thing at all.”) But, after the evening show, when he walked with her back to the caboose, the cover of darkness let him slip inside. Nobody knew he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. His bunkmates, he said, would figure he was out under the tiger wagon, while those who were used to seeing him sleeping under the wagon would figure he was in the bunk car, if they thought about him at all.
Of one thing, Cecily was certain: Once Lucky made it the four long steps in darkness through the caboose and up the ladder into her bunk, no one would ever find him. The only other person who’d ever come inside the caboose was Isabelle, and she had forsaken it—and Cecily—months ago. (Cecily imagined the scene, if anyone did find him: she would stand before him, shielding him from any possible harm.)
Pressed against his body was the first place she had ever felt at home. She supposed he wasn’t perfect—no one was—but she couldn’t see how. His every muscle and tendon, the soft brown of his eyes, the strong beat of his pounding heart.
Miracle, release, gratitude, flow.
She would fall asleep with her head on his shoulder, and, when she woke up in the morning, he was always gone, out working with his crew. He assured her there was no way he’d be caught sneaking from the caboose in the dead of night as the train groaned into its next stop. All he had to do, he said, was crawl past Tebow’s private car, then stand up in the darkness and walk toward the front of the train like a man who had nothing to hide.
They had three weeks of bliss, and Cecily did not stop to think it couldn’t go on forever. She did not stop to think of the future at all, nor of the fact that the circus was moving in the wrong direction: south.
For three weeks, all she knew was, for the first time in her life, she was loved.
Then, one day, without warning, Tebow came into the stable tent and told Lucky that Janey, broken ankle healed, was returning to the circus from Milwaukee. Lucky’s services as a groom would no longer be needed; he was back on the roustabout crew full-time “starting tomorrow.” Tebow also announced that Isabelle had said that Cecily’s knee was much better, so there was no need for Lucky to help her around anymore. “She’s got her crutches,” Tebow said. “She can manage on her own, starting now.”
“But—But I don’t—” Cecily said, but Tebow was already turning away, and Lucky gave her a quick shake of his head.
After Tebow was gone, Cecily went over to Lucky and whispered, “How are we even going to see each other now?”
He glanced away, then looked down at the hay-covered dust, shaking his head slightly in a way that made her stomach hurt.
“What is it?” she whispered.
He looked up at her with the saddest eyes she’d ever seen, gave one more tiny shake of his head, then turned away.
That night after the show—her stomach had ached all day; Lucky hadn’t even met her eyes again—she crutched her way back toward the caboose, hoping that, if she looked pathetic enough, Tebow might change his mind and reassign Lucky to helping her. Should she stage a fall down the caboose stairs, let out a scream to make sure everyone saw?
But there was no one even around.
All night, she tossed and turned alone in her bunk as the train clattered and clanked toward its next stop. She didn’t allow herself to think of the worst possibilities.
In the morning, Janey was in the stable tent, and, under Prince’s bridle, Cecily found a tiny note which said:
She had no idea what the list of words was supposed to mean, and, if she suspected, she wouldn’t admit it, not even to herself.
She told herself he would find some way to see her. He’d gotten practiced at sneaking away from the caboose. Surely, he would sneak to it, as well. He had to.
But he didn’t come, nor even leave another note for her, and she didn’t catch the slightest glimpse of him anywhere, for three entire, excruciating days.
Finally, in Bowling Green, against all manner and protocol, she got up early, crutched her way over to where the roustabouts were pounding stakes, and found the crew she recognized as his. The dawn was steamy, dripping. The day would be miserably hot.
Seeing that he was not with the men made her stomach hurt worse than ever; she knew then what she still could not admit. She crutched her way closer, interrupting them. “I’m missing one of Prince’s silver brushes,” she said. A complete fabrication. Prince didn’t even have silver brushes. “Where’s Lucky?”
The men glanced at each other. One took off his cap, pressed it to his chest. “Lucky left out, ma’am. We ain’t seen him since Eddyville.”
“Guess he didn’t like the reassignment,” added another.
If Cecily hadn’t had the crutches under her arms, she would’ve collapsed. Screamed. Cried. As it was, she just stood there blinking, a moment too long.
“Somethin’ else we can help you with, ma’am?”
“No.”
“Then we ought to get back to work.”
“Yes, of course. Of course,” Cecily said, and turned away, as the ting, ting, ting of the hammers started up again behind her.
She somehow scraped her way back to the caboose, crawled up into her bunk and curled onto her side. She remembered watching as Catherine LeGrande twirled on the trapeze in gauzy blue, swung toward Buck, then slipped from his hands and was free, flailing as she fell, fell, fell, then smashed and crumpled in the dust.
Cecily could still smell Lucky on her pillow. She thought: How could he?
Why?
She could not show she was bereft, of course. Or, she tried not to. “What’s the matter with you?” Little Red asked in line at supper that night. Cecily was limping through, struggling with her crutches as she tried to manage loading her plate, too. “You look like you been unplugged.”
“A wilted flower,” added Lorraine, wispy beard wobbling as she scooped potatoes onto her plate. She noticed the tiny portions on Cecily’s. “Aren’t you hungry, kid?”
Cecily gave a wan smile. “Not really.”
Lorraine’s bushy eyebrows came together; the long hairs around her mouth twitched. “You haven’t got the flu, do you?”
“No. My knee hurts.”
Lorraine’s eyes shifted, softened. “Aw, you poor kid.”
“What happened to your other half?” said Little Red. He was the one who’d suggested Cecily and Lucky make themselves into a sideshow act. Cecily resented that now.
But all she could do was square her shoulders, point her chin. “Reassigned,” she said, as if it didn’t matter. As if she didn’t know the whole truth of how gone Lucky really was.
She thought of him out there with his old knapsack, the four precious books inside, as she cried herself to sleep. (“We aren’t a tiger tamer and a clown,” she heard him say, to which she cried, But don’t you love me?)
She sneaked off to the library early one morning in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to look up perspicacity. She wrote down the meaning: The quality of having a ready insight into things; shrewdness.
That was certainly not true of her. Was he referring to himself?
And—preemptive: Serving or intended to preempt or forestall something, especially to prevent attack by disabling the enemy.
He had left to protect her, then? Or—to protect himself?
She was almost sure that was what this meant. Someone must have seen them together and warned him (animosity)? He did love her; he hadn’t wanted to leave (bittersweet)?
But what she couldn’t even begin to understand was why he hadn’t asked her first. She would have told him she’d stand up to anything, or she’d run away with him, if worse came to worst!
She was sure he knew as well as she did that they were each the only place where the other belonged.
So, then, she had to wonder: Would he come back?
She began to think: Yes! He surely knew the Sax & Tebow schedule. It was posted inside every car of the train. He was probably following along, just lying low for a while.
She decided to pack her little suitcase. She would run away with him. If there was danger in that, she didn’t care. All she’d need was Anne of Green Gables, Wuthering Heights, a nightgown, street clothes, money. Lucky had been making only a dollar a week, he’d said, so she started taking ten dollars each week of her twenty-dollar salary from Tebow. It wouldn’t do to draw suspicion by asking for the hundreds she was owed—at least not until Lucky had made contact.
Tebow complained about handing over the money, but he did have it, thank goodness. Cecily filed the cash inside Anne of Green Gables and stashed the book inside the suitcase under her bunk, where it would be easy to grab.
And, somehow, she managed to go on smiling and performing. Her knee, by some miracle, healed, and Tebow didn’t bring up her and Isabelle combining acts, and the circus moved from town to town to town and wasn’t bankrupt yet—again, by some miracle, had to be, everyone said.
In Huntsville, on the same day the summer heat and humidity finally broke, leaving blessedly cool air snaking in the windows of the caboose, Cecily thought maybe she did have the flu. She woke up later than usual, and was so nauseous that she barely made it down to the toilet before she vomited. She closed the lid, disgusted—the toilet opened onto the track, so the vomit would sit below the caboose all day and stink up the place—and rinsed her mouth at the sink, then crawled back up into her bunk. Maybe Lucky had come home to Alabama to wait for her, she thought. Maybe today he would come and find her. Though she had no idea if Huntsville was near Lucky’s old homeplace, or if it made any sense at all to think he might’ve returned there, when he’d been gone nearly seven years—or even to imagine he was coming for her at all.
Still, she had to think: maybe. And thinking so gave her the pep to get up and get herself into costume for the parade.
By lunchtime, she was feeling better. Ravenous, even. She piled her plate high with ham and biscuits, stewed okra, collard greens. She went back for a second piece of chocolate pie.
Isabelle, watching Cecily scrape her second dessert plate clean, lifted a sculpted brow. “Better watch you don’t start packing on the pounds.”
It was the first time Isabelle had spoken to her in weeks, and Cecily had the unprecedented impulse to throw the plate straight at her head.
The next morning, she was sicker’n a dog, as the expression went, here in the South.
“Jackie, where are you? What’s going on in here?” Isabelle poked her head in the door of the caboose. “You’re late! We’re lining up!” She stepped inside. “God, what is that smell?”
Up in her bunk, Cecily moaned.
Isabelle was unimpressed. “Everybody gets sick sometimes,” she said, as if she’d never forsaken Cecily, never given her that weeks-long silent treatment; as if they were “sisters” again. “You can’t miss the parade.”
Cecily rode sidesaddle on Prince, waving and smiling at the crowd through her queasiness. By lunchtime, she was starving again. This was one strange flu, indeed.
And, still, Lucky had not returned.
When this had gone on for a little more than two weeks, Isabelle came to the caboose one afternoon in Spartanburg, South Carolina, before supper. Cecily was trying to sleep. She was more exhausted than she’d ever been; she felt about eighty years old. And, weirdly, despite that she was throwing up nearly everything she ate, Isabelle was right that she’d put on a pound or two, and her costume was getting a little tight around the middle. She would have to stop eating so much. Yet, every time she made up her mind to do so, she only felt hungrier and hungrier.
Isabelle shut the door behind her, looked up at Cecily in her bunk, put her fists to her hips, and said, “Jackie, I want you to tell me the truth.”
“No!” Cecily said, as her mind reeled. Was there any chance she could be expecting a baby?
No!
But Isabelle listed the symptoms, ticking them off on her fingers.
“No!”
“Let me put this another way,” Isabelle said. “Did some man stick his thing in you?”
Cecily was shocked speechless.
“Goddamn it, Jackie! I thought I explained all this to you. I thought I told you that under no circumstances were you to allow that to happen! I told you that was how you’d get into trouble!”
“I—I—” Cecily could not remember Isabelle ever saying such a thing, not exactly.
“Who was it? Did he force you? Was it Tebow? God, if it was—”
“Isabelle! No!”
“I’ll kill him. Whoever it was. Or did you think you were in love?” She said the words like they were poison.
Cecily wanted to throw up again. If Isabelle had ever told her outright what she was saying now, Cecily clearly hadn’t understood (into trouble could mean all kinds of things!). Isabelle had never had a baby, and Tebow stuck his thing in her all the time! And all the other people in the circus, and the peep-show girls: Cecily had never seen any of them turn up about to have a baby!
But, if what Isabelle said was true—and Isabelle’s starkness convinced Cecily it was—then she and Lucky had certainly done it enough times that “trouble” could be the result.
And Cecily suddenly knew that, about three seconds from now, Isabelle was going to realize that Lucky was the only boy who’d been around Cecily in recent weeks at all. “It was just a boy who came to a show up in Wisconsin!” she blurted. “It was just a mistake! He surprised me!”
“He surprised you? What does that mean?”
“He—he was kissing me, I let him kiss me, because he was nice and good-looking and everything, and then suddenly he was doing things I didn’t understand! And it felt nice at first, and then, and then it just surprised me! And then he left and I never saw him again, because we were off to the next town! I never—never thought—this!”
“Goddamn it, Jackie, I explained all this to you! What did you need, illustrations? Signposts?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
Isabelle scowled. “Listen, you sit tight. I’ll be right back. I’m going to help you, goddamn it. Capiche?” And she was gone.
Cecily instantly started to cry, out of relief and fear. Isabelle had bought her story! (Pregnant! Cecily was pregnant? She wanted to scream!) But Lucky would be safe! And everything was going to be all right now, wasn’t it? Isabelle was going to help her.
Isabelle would help. The thought calmed Cecily. No matter how nasty Isabelle had been in recent weeks, they were sisters—sworn always to help each other.
A tiny thrill began to whir within her. Lucky. Lucky hadn’t left her, after all. A part of Lucky was growing inside her right now.
She rubbed her belly in a slow circle. She couldn’t feel anything inside there, but there could be no doubt that Isabelle was right.
Could there?
No. Her whole body felt warm, sparkling. For the first time since Lucky’d been gone, she didn’t feel the least bit sick.
“Hello,” Cecily whispered to her belly. “I love you. I love you. Can you hear me? I love you. Hello!”
Ten minutes later, Isabelle was back, slamming the door behind her and holding up a long knitting needle like a conductor’s baton. Cecily scooted backward, shrinking into the corner of her bunk, and every cell of her body was screaming in alarm, without her even quite knowing why.
“I’ll explain to you what to do,” Isabelle said. “I had to do it once a long time ago, to myself. It hurt and bled like hell, but it made it so I never had a problem again, so that’s good, right?” She tried to laugh.
Cecily worked her mouth. “What do you mean?”
Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Do I have spell out everything for you, kid? A. B. C. You stick this up in there and make it so the baby can’t grow, all right?”
Tears sprang to Cecily’s eyes.
“Oh, Jesus,” Isabelle said. “Don’t get sentimental on me.”
Cecily began to cry in earnest. She put her hands over her belly. “No.”
Isabelle stepped closer. The knitting needle in her hand was long and thin and terrifying. “You want to let this ruin your life? Am I going to have to tie you down and do it for you? Save you from yourself?”
“No!”
“You’ve got to do it right away, or it’ll just hurt worse and worse.”
“Isabelle, no!”
“You can’t be a bareback rider and be pregnant, kid.” At that, Isabelle stopped. “I don’t know why I’m trying to help you.”
“You’re my sister!” Cecily screamed. She was backed as far into the corner of the bunk as she could go. “Why would you want to hurt me?”
Isabelle’s face changed, then, and she staggered back on her heels. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Christ. Christ! You didn’t meet some kid in Wisconsin, did you?”
Cecily’s throat closed up. No! God! She prayed: Don’t let her know, please, please don’t let her know—
But Isabelle’s eyes were fire. “I saw you with him! I saw the way you looked at him. The way he looked at you. I told Tebow he’d better start keeping the two of you apart! But I never in a thousand years thought you would’ve actually crossed that line. For God’s sake, you little fucking idiot—do you know what they’ll do to you, if you have a baby that looks like him, especially down here—after everything I’ve done for you, trying to keep you safe, keep you fucking virtuous, God! I should’ve let Tebow have you the first time he wanted you! You don’t know the gyrations I went through—and now to think you gave it away to some—”
“I told you, it was a kid in Wisconsin!” Cecily broke in.
“Don’t you lie to me. You disgust me. You disgust me! And you had this caboose to yourself all these weeks—did you let him in here? You did, didn’t you? Oh, Christ. Christ. I can’t believe I was going to help you. I can’t believe I felt sorry for you. You knew exactly what you were doing! And you lied to me. You are dead to me, Jackie. D-E-A-D. Dead. You goddamn whore.”
And Isabelle whirled and was gone, slamming the door behind her.
It took a long time for Cecily to stop crying. But, once she did, she had to think: Surely, no matter what Isabelle had said in anger, the fact that they’d been sisters for so long would mean she was still on Cecily’s side. She would come around. Apologize. Help. Cecily loved Isabelle; she had loved her for a very long time.
But Isabelle didn’t speak to Cecily that night during the show—not to apologize, not to say anything at all.
Janey didn’t speak to Cecily either, which was unusual, but not necessarily alarming in itself. Because nor was there any disruption to the usual routine, no call to come and talk to Tebow, nothing.
So, Cecily thought, Well, maybe she’s just going to keep it to herself? Let me figure out what to do when the season’s over? They had only three more weeks on the schedule.
Maybe Lucky would still come back.
He had to, now, didn’t he?
The next morning, in Asheville, there was a loud knock on the door of the caboose. Cecily was feeling queasy, but she hadn’t thrown up yet. In fact, she was dressed and ready to go to breakfast, for the first time in almost three weeks. It was as if knowing the truth about what was happening inside her body had set her free. (She was thinking: she could get through the rest of the season, have the baby in the spring, and come back to work again right after.) She had her copy of Sense and Sensibility in the deep pocket of her cardigan, and tucked inside it were the snapshot of Lucky and her Saint Jude card, which she had decided, from now on, she would carry with her everywhere.
Please, she said, imagining somehow it would be Lucky at the door.
But, as she moved to answer it, she heard Isabelle call out, “She’s in there, I know she’s in there, just go in.”
And the door opened and a big police officer filled the doorway, and he grabbed Cecily’s arm and dragged her out the door and down off the vestibule, where Isabelle and Tebow stood. Tebow, at least, had the grace to look regretful, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. Isabelle sneered, “You made your bed, you dirty little cunt, now go lie in it.”
Cecily was shoved into the back of a police sedan that smelled of sour sweat, and they drove her through the downtown streets to jail.
To jail! It was in the back of a gigantic tower of a courthouse, all marble and stone and cold tile.
“We’ve got a place we send no-good girls like you,” the sheriff said, as he turned the big key to lock her inside a damp cell. “Don’t think we don’t. The ole judge’ll fix you up good with a sentence, you better believe.”
“There must be some mistake,” Cecily said, gripping the cold iron bars. She could almost feel the baby, swimming nervous circles in her belly. “I am Jacqueline DuMonde.”
“Frenchie,” sneered the sheriff. “Figures.” He ambled away, keys on his belt jingling.
Alone in the cell, Cecily stood listening until she couldn’t hear the sound of him anymore, then sighed and went to sit down on the hard wooden bench in the corner. She was too dismayed to cry. Isabelle. Tebow. Prince. Her circus family. All the vows Isabelle had made—
Cecily blinked. She couldn’t think about any of that. If she did, she’d start to cry and never stop.
Anyway, she had always deep down believed that Sax & Tebow wouldn’t keep her, so to find herself here didn’t surprise her as much as it might have.
She squared her shoulders and decided: She would only look ahead and not back. She would be strong for the baby. Stewing in anger and heartbreak would surely be bad for him, so she would not do it. (Suddenly, she was certain: the baby was a boy. She would name him Thomas Moses, for her father, and his. Tommy.)
The sheriff hadn’t bothered to search her pockets. She took out Sense and Sensibility, flipping through till she found the snapshot of Lucky, the prayer card.
Please, she prayed, staring at Saint Jude, her vision blurring.
She knew what she was asking for was maybe the most impossible thing Saint Jude had ever been asked for, but she wasn’t going to stop believing. Even if he had never brought her mother to her. No, she would still not stop believing. She would not stop asking, she would not stop praying, she would not stop.
Please help me and Tommy find Lucky. Please keep us all safe. I don’t know how. But please. Make us a family. Help us be a family.
Please!