October 1927
Belvidere, Illinois
The train clanked and groaned to a stop at Belvidere with a long, slow squealing of brakes that reminded Cecily of when Horace ran his fingernails across the chalkboard, making the other kids shriek and Miss Oversham rap the desk with her yardstick and shout, pink-faced, “Children! Children!” Cecily was sad to think that she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to Miss Oversham, and that sadness lodged, humming, underneath her nerves and discomfort. (She needed a toilet, but she didn’t want to say so to the man.) “Ready, kid?” he said, folding his newspaper under his arm, and she just nodded, and stood when he did. He looked like he must ride the train a lot, and she wanted to seem like she had experience, too.
The Belvidere depot was made of red brick and had a wide platform with a long roof running the length of it, to keep everybody dry, Cecily guessed, as she hopped down the grated iron steps behind the man. She had realized two facts about him so far. One: he was always in a hurry. Two: he had confidence in her, though she didn’t know why.
He turned and handed her her suitcase, which he had carried down for her. “You hungry, kid? I bet you are. It’s gonna be a while before we eat, sorry to say.” He started away, and she followed. There wasn’t such a crowd here, only a few folks scattered across the wooden platform. Today, the broad roof was just providing a too-cool shade, when the sun would’ve been nice to feel.
The man led her inside—he seemed to know she needed a bathroom without her saying so, and she was grateful. She used it quickly and washed her hands carefully. When she came out, he was sitting on a bench, and looked at her like he wondered if she was going to be more trouble than she was worth. It was only half past ten in the morning. He left the newspaper on the bench, and they went back outside and around behind the building, where there were more sets of train tracks.
They walked a long way, down between two lines of cars, flatcars on one side, boxcars on the other. The man slowed so she could walk beside him, and he put his hand on her back, looking around watchfully now.
Cecily, struggling with her suitcase, heard a frightening roar in the distance, then the blat of some kind of horn, and laughter. The man just kept walking.
Now there was a stock car with its slats painted bright blue, the words sax & tebow circus emblazoned on the side in yellow. And now a green car with a painting of a larger-than-life tiger: sax & tebow circus big cats. One in red with a clown: sax & tebow circus clowns. On and on, as they walked, Cecily’s shoes crunching rough gravel, each car was illustrated with something new: egyptian camels. zebras. monkeys! liberty horses. aerial daredevils. bareback riders. Even the passenger cars were painted this way.
The orphanage had had a picture book about a circus, but Cecily had never dreamed she’d see one. Was the man taking her to one before he even took her home to meet his family?
By the time they reached a little white caboose, on which was painted a giant, red-nosed clown in a derby hat with a purple flower, her heart was pounding. In the distance, she heard breathy, screechy fast-paced music, reminding her of when she and her friends had tried learning to play the recorder after a well-meaning Samaritan had donated a few to the Home, before Mrs. H. declared she had a permanent headache and stowed the instruments away “for good.”
“We’ll throw your suitcase in here for now,” the man said. He opened the door to the caboose, snatched Cecily’s suitcase and tossed it up inside, alarming her. Then he grabbed her under her arms, lifted her onto the step, and said, “Wait here. Don’t move a muscle.” He disappeared into the next car.
Well. What else could she do?
So, she waited, tapping her foot with nerves, listening to the distant music, the occasional shouts and screeches, the banging. The air smelled of roasted peanuts and popcorn, hay and grain, dust and manure, roasting meat, sweet taffy. Her mouth had started to water, her stomach to rumble.
The man came out wearing a red tailcoat, white shirt, red vest, white jodhpurs, and a top hat. His black boots gleamed. “Come on, kid,” he said, as he headed for the noise, adjusting his white bow tie. “Keep up.”
After the white caboose was a plain red caboose, and that was the last car of the train. The man led her around the tail end of it, where the screechy music grew louder. Some distance ahead in a wide-open field was a massive dirty white canvas tent. Other, smaller tents were off to the side. And lined up in front was a whole parade! A hundred or more people in bright costumes; at least a dozen vivid wagons pulled by matched teams of two or four or six gray or black Percherons; two dozen sleeker horses in plumed headdresses with riders, men and women both, in Arabian-style dress; a dozen made-up clowns on foot in big red shoes and baggy patched pants. In one wagon—just a large cage surrounded by red and gold filigree—paced a pair of tigers, while a dark-haired woman in a short pink dress paced atop it. In another wagon-cage was a sleeping lion, and a handsome man with a whip stood above it, smoking a cigarette. A beautiful young woman in a short red sparkling dress stood on the back of a gorgeous white Percheron, one of three lined up wearing red plumed headdresses. On top of another wagon stood a very tall man, beside a seated fat lady, plus a woman in a flowing satin gown who seemed to have a snake around her neck—could that be? Five men in sequined green suits were stretching and unlimbering themselves. Four zebras draped in gold-rimmed purple silks shook their manes. A man placed a monkey in a purple hat and vest on the back of one, and the monkey screeched and grinned. Two camels draped in red chewed their cud like they were bored by the man who held their leads. On top of another wagon, a seal barked and, when a clown set a ball on its nose, held it there, balancing. A chimpanzee in a blue vest pulled a child’s wagon with a braying goat inside. The smell of the animals was very strong.
“Come on, kid,” the man said, his long legs stretching toward the front of the parade. “You’re gonna ride with me.”
The man led her to the front of the line, then, without warning, lifted her up onto a huge, brilliantly white horse, placing her ahead of the saddle. He climbed up behind her and grabbed the reins, just as that breathy, screechy music stopped. “This is Blanco,” the man told Cecily. “Hold on to his mane.”
Cecily grabbed the coarse hair just in time, as the man clicked to the horse. The lurching of the horse’s big muscles was a shock and a thrill. The gathered crowd, cheering, opened for them to pass through, and Cecily glanced back to see that all the wagons and animals and people were pitching into motion, and the motion was rough and chaotic at first, as the many parts began to merge into a whole. The wagon directly behind the man and Cecily was the bandwagon, and, with a motion from the red-coated conductor, the brass band burst into quick, cheerful music. When Cecily glanced back again, she and the man had become the bow of a long, beautiful boat, all flowing of a piece.
“Wave to the crowd, kid,” the man said, and Cecily did, and people on the ground cheered and pointed and laughed, and she laughed back, as Blanco’s beautiful ears seemed to twitch to the music, and Cecily clutched his mane with one hand and waved and waved with the other, still wearing the little yellow sweater Mrs. H. had given her that morning.
“That’s right, help yourself!” the man said, laughing as Cecily stood on tiptoe to heap scoop after scoop of mashed potatoes from the steam table buffet line onto her plate. “You poor starving kid!”
They’d led the parade through the whole town, across the river and through the orange-tinged trees, past the brick facades of the downtown shops and restaurants, and back again, what must’ve been a mile or more, and all along the route the crowd was a dozen deep and cheering. All together, it was more people than Cecily had ever seen, and they’d all been cheering for her. Flip and Dolores were never going to believe it.
Back at the circus lot, the man had helped her down from Blanco and led her straight over to what he called the cook top—another large white tent—where she was first in line for lunch. The wonder of the mounds of food was almost enough to blot out all the other wonders of the day. She loaded roast beef and gravy on top of the potatoes, said why not to the little logs of steamed green beans. There were side dishes of stewed tomatoes, small plates of peach cobbler, plus coffee with cream that the man poured for Cecily, saying she might as well start drinking it today, now that she was in the circus.
“What do you mean?” Cecily said, but the man just led her over to one of a dozen long tables covered in red-checked cloths—a carnation in a bud vase adorned each—and bid her to sit down. The performers were streaming in, lining up and loading their plates, the men in sparkling green, the tiger lady in pink, the very tall man, the fat lady, the clowns.
“Howdy, Mr. Tebow,” said one of the clowns, and the man nodded at him, then tucked his white linen napkin into his collar and told Cecily to dig in.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the man—Mr. Tebow—shouted through a megaphone two hours later in the center of the packed Big Top. Cecily bounced in her seat, which was a white-painted folding chair next to the backstage entrance.
Cecily had been scraping her plate clean, while many of the performers were still lined up to fill theirs, when Mr. Tebow had pushed back his chair and told her, “Come on.” He’d led her through the maze of backstage tents, where a group of men stood on each other’s shoulders, horses waited to have their shoes replaced, and the chimpanzee fed the goat a head of lettuce. Finally, Mr. Tebow flipped up a secret flap in the Big Top, pointed to the folding chair, and again told her, “Don’t move a muscle.”
So, from here, Cecily had watched everything: workmen wedging extra folding chairs into all the rows, watering the dust with a hose, placing props and putting final touches on the ring and animal cages as the acrobats in green checked the ropes and lines above.
And then the crowd had begun pouring in, finding their seats, munching popcorn, looking up wide-eyed at the scale of things. “You’re about to see the most spectacular show on earth!” shouted Mr. Tebow now, and the clowns came streaming from the entrance beside Cecily, walking oddly in their giant shoes and playing tricks on each other as they came, so that already the crowd began to roar with laughter.
There was too much to see, really, though it was just a one-ring circus.
The clowns juggled hoops and balls and bowling pins, and knocked each other down. One balanced a ladder on his chin. There were pies in the face and tricks on ladies in the front row and on Mr. Tebow, who pretended to be very offended. Cecily had never laughed so hard. Next, the lion, all power and grace, stalked past Cecily to get into the ring, where he walked a wire, then yawned, showing giant teeth; when the handsome man cracked a whip, the lion reared, pawed the air and roared, drawing shrieks from ladies in the crowd, then yawned again and got down and padded out of the ring, right back past Cecily, his tamer drawing dust behind him with dramatic cracks of the whip. The Arabian riders thundered in, a mass of noise and glamour and dust that gave Cecily goose bumps as they galloped round and round. The five men in green ran in doing flips as they came, then climbed to the top of the tent and swung from the rafters, twisting and dropping and catching each other, making pyramids and loops. Cecily sat stock-still, mesmerized. The clowns came in again, and this time they brought the seal with them, and it balanced a lamp on its nose.
The brunette in the bright pink dress walked in with the two tigers, snapping a whip to get them to climb ladders and leap through hoops. One of the men in green climbed to the rafters again, this time with a lady in a sparkling dress of a lighter green hue, and they swung and dipped and twisted—they spun like tops, hanging just by their teeth—to the gasps and cheers of the crowd. Seven sleek black horses—“Liberty horses,” Mr. Tebow announced them as—trotted into the ring and bowed and danced and maneuvered to the slight gestures of a man dressed all in white, his hair sleek and black like the horses. A lady in gauzy blue introduced as Catherine LeGrande climbed to the rafters and swung prettily on the trapeze, then dropped toward a man swinging violently opposite her, and he caught her by her feet and kept on swinging.
Then Mr. Tebow shouted into his megaphone: “And now, straight from her home in Paris, France, here she is, the incredible Isabelle DuMonde!” Curtains at the back of the tent parted, and the three white Percherons trotted past Cecily and into the ring in a majestic line, the tall red feathers on their elaborate headdresses bobbing in time to peppy music the band played. On the back of the rearmost horse stood the beautiful woman in the sparkly red dress. She seemed to have no trouble balancing—just stood there gracefully, arms out like wings, smiling like she was meeting a prince. She somersaulted to the ground, and, before Cecily could blink, leapt up onto the back of the next horse. The crowd roared. The woman hopped into the air and landed again on the trotting horse. She did a handstand on its back. She flipped to the ground and vaulted up onto the first horse in line, as all three kept trotting in a regular rhythm around the ring, and the woman held out her arms again, basking in the cheers of the crowd.
“That’s Isabelle,” the man said, startling Cecily, who hadn’t noticed that he’d come to stand beside her. “She’s going to teach you to do that.”