WE reached ———, Missouri, in a worn condition. The news of our battle had preceded us in the newspapers. Cameron was unable to leave his bed. Finnerty’s one eye was completely closed. He could not see for several days. But his spirit was indomitable. He was the first to appear on the new lot.
We dispensed with the parade until mid-afternoon and spent the morning mending the main tent. After buying all the half-inch rope that could be had in the town, we again painted the tents with paraffine to make them waterproof. The canvas was two seasons old and had begun to leak.
When all was nearly ready for the parade, a deputation of citizens arrived and asked for the proprietor. Upon being shown to his car they informed him that he was forbidden to show in the town. We were billed in the place for two days. Cameron used all his eloquence and tricks on the men. They remained firm. Telegrams from the Oklahoma city gave reports of our hey rube fight with biased detail.
The performers and other aristocrats with the show were indignant at such treatment by the rubes. But we who had the hard work to do were glad. Our next jump was one of four hundred miles on a third-class railroad. The trip would consume the better part of two days and nights. It would give us a respite in the incessant round of toil and turmoil.
But Cameron found work for idle hands to do.
We spent the first day mending the tents and seats and in rubbing pained black and blue spots on our bodies with arnica and liniment.
There was a gash in Rosebud’s body which had been inflicted when he fell on the edge of his drum. He sat with a heavy bandage around it, while he polished his drum sticks and cleaned his other musical contraptions. Late in the afternoon he walked wearily into the town with his broken drum.
With Jock’s consent I divided my time between Cameron, Finnerty, the Strong Woman and the Moss-Haired Girl. The latter had been struck by a flying club which had fractured her rib.
As she shared with the Strong Woman the honors of being Cameron’s most valuable freak, she was treated with consideration.
“Why don’t you sue the broken-nosed old devil?” Buddy Conroy, who operated the loaded dice game under Finnerty, had asked her.
“No, no, I wouldn’t do that. The old faker has troubles enough. Besides, I’m of age. I should have kept out of the way of the club. Anyhow, he was blind when he threw it.”
“Maybe Finnerty threw it because he couldn’t never make a date with you.”
“No, he was just blind, that’s all,” was Alice’s rejoinder.
I worked about the tent until Conroy left.
Then the Moss-Haired Girl turned to me, saying:
“Heavens, I’m glad he’s gone. He gives me a cold feeling—like a dead fish.”
“Yeap,” I said, “he’s as bad as Finnerty.”
The girl laughed. “No, he’s not that bad. There’s nothing as bad as Finnerty—but then—maybe we don’t understand.”
Few people knew the Moss-Haired Girl’s real name. To the circus people she was known as Alice Devine. Her mother had been Swedish, her father Indian and Irish. She was the most superior person with the circus, and the weirdest. She converted her hair, which was between blonde and brown, and long, into a tangled heap of moss by washing it frequently in stale beer, which she tinted green with herbs.
Cameron gave her seventy-five dollars a week and all expenses, and billed her as “The Moss-Haired Girl.” The women flocked to see her in every town. She also earned about fifty dollars a week by selling portraits of herself.
Her eyes were a deep blue, her complexion dark, her body graceful, her face beautiful.
She read a great deal, and often loaned books to the Strong Woman and the Baby Buzzard.
The Moss-Haired Girl talked to me often. Her life was as empty as an unused grave. But, with many opportunities, she seemed to desire no change. She did her washing twice a week. She always left silk underclothing and dresses to be cleaned and expressed to her in the next town. She would arrange each week about the buying of beer, which she allowed to grow stale. She bought many different magazines.
Looking back on her now I realize that she was repressed but deeply emotional. She loved all that pertained to life and hated philosophy. “It’s all rot,” she used to say. “None of them know a bit more about things than I do.”
Now that the fogs of twenty years have cleared away, I see much that I have lost and little that I have gained. Then, I was but a day or two from hunger and destitution. Now they are years away. But something else has happened. The brain has grown tired. The ennui of life is everywhere. Adventure lurked around every corner then, and life was wild and free. I often went to my canvas bunk with muscles that ached and legs that dragged wearily. But each morning opened on a new world—and many tales were told.
The Moss-Haired Girl, the Strong Woman, Aimee, the Beautiful Fat Girl, The Lion Tamer, Whiteface, Lefita and Jock are people that I shall never meet again. But I would trade the empty honor of a writer’s name to be once again their comrade.
There was something in the girl which I was not mature enough to fully appreciate at the time. Her eyes squinted often, as the eyes of people will who have spent early years in a desert country. She had reverted to the lethargy of the Indian and loved to live in a tent. Her cleanliness of body must have been derived from her Swedish mother.
The Moss-Haired Girl had been born in a little desert town of Arizona. Her father was a railroad engineer who fell in love with a brakeman’s wife and ran away. He was never heard of again. Alice was five years of age at this time. Her mother struggled through and managed to live by running a small restaurant.
When Alice was seven her mother became converted to Catholicism, and within a year the small daughter began her life at a convent.
An old nun, part Indian, became fond of her. The little girl fell in with the routine of the convent, and with stoical silence absorbed everything. The aged nun was in charge of the linen department, and Alice spent hours with her in the sewing room. It was her duty to thread the needles for her old friend, whose eyes were watery and weak.
The nun’s black habit hid her sparse grey hair and projected two inches out from her forehead. Her mentality was hardly above a child’s. She owned five rosaries and spent much time in shining the naked brass bodies of Christ which hung upon them.
Always she talked of Christ as though he had been an Indian. She called him the Great Fire-builder. Some day he would come and burn to cinders all the Irish in the world. For they were the people who in her opinion had crucified Christ. There were several old Irish nuns in the convent who gossiped a great deal. Sister Marie did not like them.
Often, when the little girl had threaded the needle, the decrepit black-hooded woman would hold it aloft and talk of the Great Firebuilder.
“He come down—way down—and stay on top o’ San Francisco mountain—he throw a torch and burn all up but you an’ me an’ Indian people like us … he give us back America an’ all the fish in the sea—an’ never no more houses and things, but like birds we be free. An’ Gabriel’ come back o’ Jesu’ and blow big horn an’ all people go right in fire an’ they’ll all go. ’Oh blesse’ Jesu’ she burn an’ burn—an’ the big voice roll down the moumtan an’ scare the eagles an’ it’ll say, ‘This is but water compare to the everlastin’ fire. A million times hotter it be—so hot—the desert is cool in July’—Then the fire will go out an’ big green trees and water in brooks and little white birds will be all aroun’. Then camps’ll be an our people livin’ in them.”
Then in a moment of exaltation she would clasp the little girl in her arms and squeeze her so tightly that Alice felt like screaming.
Alice often cried in the night when she thought of the Irish people being burned up. She thought, of course, that there were only two classes of people in the world, the Irish and the Indians.
Once the old nun gave her a huge and beautiful wax doll. She slept with it five months and smoothed its blonde hair and washed its immense blue eyes every morning and evening. She called it Lullaba-lie.
One Friday she was called quickly for noon-day devotion and left the doll sitting with perfect poise at the end of the arbor. In fifteen minutes, as Alice prayed, the sun crawled around the arbor, and the wax doll melted like the Irish in the Great Fire-builder’s flame.
Alice ran away from the chapel in the direction of her doll. Two little marble-blue eyes and a yellow wig were all that was left. The child stood for a moment, then clasped its hands, started to cry, held the tears back and sank down near the heap of wax. The sun burned her bare arms, but she sat for a long time, as still as a beautiful little female Buddha.
Something drove something out of the little girl’s soul at this moment. What it was I do not know, and neither could she ever explain. She was an Indian and a Swede, and to explain it one would be forced to explore long damned-up and century-old rivers of emotion. Her finely chiseled little mouth went tighter. She rose, and absentmindedly tried to pull a skirt over her knees. She wore bloomers at the time, but she obeyed a habit imbedded in her by long dead female ancestors.
She picked up the little blonde wig and dropped it. She then picked up the little blue eyes. They rattled in her hand. She kissed them all over, then placed them in her waist pocket over her heart.
She walked slowly under the blazing Arizona sun toward the sewing-room. The old nun was polishing the largest figure of Christ she owned. The little girl staggered half blindly toward her and held out the two marble blue eyes.
Not a word was said for a long time. Then the old lady held the little girl’s face in her wrinkled hands in such a manner that all that could be seen of it were the red lips and the small pearl upper teeth. She leaned down and put her leathery mouth against the girl’s and sobbed:
“O Jesu’, Jesu’, Jesu’—you take Lullaba-lie all home.”
Alice said no word. She put the marble eyes back in her pocket. That night she placed them in a little pine box, wrapped about with cotton. Each morning she would open the box and look at them. She carried the marble eyes for eighteen years.
When she was twelve years old Alice knew nothing of her body. When nature worked a change in it she was dreadfully frightened. She washed her clothes in cold water and put them on again hurriedly. Pneumonia developed and for three weeks Sister Marie nursed her day and night. She passed the crisis in the fourth week and slowly recovered.
Out of her head six days, she heard Irish bodies sizzling in a fire built by a red-headed man thousands of feet high. She saw him blow clouds away from his eyes that he might see.
The convent would sail through the air for hours at a time.
Sister Marie had changed into the most beautiful of young angel women. She flew constantly about Alice’s head.
Sister Marie broke down when Alice became convalescent. When Alice became strong again, the old nun died.
Alice heard the news. Her lithe young body went rigid and fell.
In three days Sister Marie had five rosaries wrapped about her worn and scrawny hands. She was placed before the cheap gilt altar in the chapel.
A nun stood on each side of Alice as she looked at the body of her friend. There was a faint smile on the old nun’s lips, as though she saw the Irish burning. The gossipy old nuns were now tearful.
The priest told of God’s work, while sun shadows danced across the chapel and burned the lamp of the sanctuary a rubier red.
The pensive girl listened, and as the priest talked her mood turned into one of whimsical sadness. Above her red and blue angels flew around the mighty figure of God seated in a chair which was enveloped in a white cloud. Sister Marie was with him, and after all she was happier. And Alice half wished she also were up with God.
The high chapel ceiling, painted by a rustic artist to represent God ruling the starry heavens, was a never-failing source of wonder to Alice.
Sister Marie had told her about the man who had painted the ceiling. “He had a long white beard an’ he talked like a German an’ he worked up there weeks an’ weeks an’ weeks an’ once they came in the chapel an’ he was kneelin’ down in front of the great figure of God—us sisters all thought God’s face looked sadder in the picture after that.…”
The priest’s voice brought Alice from revery. The priest, a powerful man, held his arm high. Silver and green embroidery glistened under his white surplice. That hour was burned forever in the memory of Alice. The priest remained a symbol of all manhood to her. She confused him with God—and held ever afterward the blending of the two as her great unknown lover.
At twenty-seven, in spite of vicious environments, save for rough repartee now and then, she was still clean of heart and mind—as virginal as Sister Marie. The old nun had often talked of being “married to God.” Years later the Moss-Haired Girl said, “He’s really the Great Lover—no worry of children or sickness—and never any desertion—and always understanding—and if you lose in the end—and He’s only an illusion—you’ve had the fun of kidding yourself a whole lifetime—that in itself is God!”
The sermon ended, the priest threw holy water over the long sleeping Sister Marie.
The body was borne out of the chapel, the convent girls following, and then the nuns, and then the priest and his altar boys. The palms of all hands were pressed tightly together, the fingers pointing upward, while the priest’s heavy voice could be heard above the musical girlish voices of Alice and her comrades in the beautiful Te Deum.
Sister Marie was placed in a square black hearse while her friends followed in dilapidated busses which rumbled over the yellow sand to a slight elevation dotted with palms, sagebrush and cactus. Far away the tops of mountains glimmered radiant white in the sun.
It was early spring on the desert. The immense yellow valley seemed a shining mirror upon which was painted green, yellow, red, and gold patches of wildflowers, soon to fade like Alice’s doll under the sun’s torrid flame. The vastness, the immensity, crept into Alice, which, combined with her repressed grief, made her silent for days—and gave her, for the rest of her life, a touch of greatness and understanding.
The priest looked about when the desert sand had finished rattling on Sister Marie’s coffin. Alice rushed up to him, breaking the stillness of the desert with a wail. “Father, father—she’s gone—oh, oh—she’s gone …” She sobbed violently, her cheek against his surplice.
The kindly and good man brushed the grey hair out of his eyes, as Alice, still sobbing convulsively, her beautiful young body shaking, now knelt before him.
Wind and sun-tanned nuns and girls budding into full life gathered about the two.
“It’s all right, Alice dear,” the gentleman said, “lean on me as you would on your Heavenly Father. She is not gone—all the rolling seas cannot wash her memory away—she is no more gone, Alice dear, than you are gone—that which God has made to live and breathe can never disappear. You see, dear child, we are merely serving Him here for a little while—then we too shall go away to take up our work elsewhere—with more love for beauty and service—on and on and on—eternally serving in our Master’s cause.” He placed his hand on Alice’s head. She rose with wet eyes and clung to him.
All silently returned to the convent.
Looking back in the direction of the cemetery Alice saw a great ship sailing high in the desert air above Sister Marie’s grave. A beautiful city and a golden port stretched miles to the west. Another and another ship joined the first. In each vessel were beautiful angels with faces pink and white, clear cut as cameos, and garlanded with flowers. And as she looked, another city formed in the sky. The streets were an indigo blue, and all the people, plainly seen, were more beautiful than the finest illustrations in her fairy books.
Immense trees grew everywhere and on their branches hung roses of every shape and color. Birds larger than condors, brilliant and many colored, flew lazily and majestically above the golden-green and blue cities.
And as Alice gazed, the birds formed in squadrons and darted downward to Sister Marie’s grave. It opened wide and there emerged a beautiful Indian girl a few years older than Alice. It looked to the girl like Sister Marie must have looked in the long ago.
Her limbs and body were as shapely as the statue of Saint Teresa in Father Maloney’s study. Her eyes were as radiant as the sun and her hair, a bluish black, rippled as though fanned by the wings of larks.
The girls waited until the young Sister Marie raised her arms. She was lifted suddenly and gracefully into the air and rested on the back of the most beautiful bird of all. Each bird stretched out its wings and made no other motion. Sister Marie, on the large bird in the centre, sat upright and waved her hands at Alice as all the birds, wings outstretched and motionless, sailed swifter than light above the streets of the golden cities.
“Father, Father,” exclaimed Alice, “I see Sister Marie! … she is very beautiful.”
The priest caressed the girl. “That is her soul, dear child, going back to God.” Then slowly, “The soul of Sister Marie was always beautiful.”
Alice no longer loved the convent.
Sister Marie had always been fond of Alice’s hair. She tried every method she could contrive to make it more beautiful. It reached to her knees.
At an amateur theatrical after Lent, in the convent, Alice appeared as the Moss-Haired Girl. The aged nun knew the nature of many herbs and wildflowers. By a process of her own, she had combined some concoction with two bottles of stale beer which the priest had discarded, and washing Alice’s hair with the solution, it was made to resemble moss. The other girls were mystified. Sister Marie gave the secrets of her formula to Alice who had occasion afterwards to use it often.
Alice always enjoyed seeing beautiful hair. Once, in the convent, after a young woman had taken her final vows, Alice climbed on a ladder and saw two nuns cutting away long strands of sunny blonde hair. Alice felt sad for days.
Two years later Father Maloney’s soul was borne away by the birds.
Alice left the convent and grew tired of her harsh mother in two months. More and more as she grew older did she revert to the ways of the Indian. With a good singing voice, she joined a carnival company. Life in a tent appealed strongly to her. Once, when too hoarse to sing, she washed her hair with the solution and became the leading attraction with the carnival.
And thus was born the beautiful Moss-Haired Girl, who delighted thousands of women twice ten years ago.