THE Strong Woman’s death had a gloomy effect upon me. Slug Finnerty and Cameron had discovered her. A mark was seen on her throat, as though the string which held her grouch bag had been torn from it. Money, jewelry, finery, everything of possible value had disappeared. We always felt that Cameron and Finnerty had robbed her.
“They’d of skinned her if they could, the measly crooks!” sneered Jock. “Talk about fallin’ among thieves.”
The coroner was called, and signed the death certificate. There was no money with which to bury her.
“It’s a lucky shot for me,” said Silver Moon Dugan, “I owed her fifty bucks I won’t have to pay. She was a funny dame.”
The Moss-Haired Girl said to me after the coroner had gone, “It sure is awful to die in Arkansas with this circus, but then she’s just as well off. She was just in wrong, that’s all.” She walked with me to where the Baby Buzzard sat in front of the musicians’ tent.
“Well, she’s gone,” said the Baby Buzzard as we approached.
“Yes,” was Alice’s answer.
“It’s a hard loss for Bob. She drew a lot of money each week.”
“Yes, it’s too bad for Bob. Poor Bob, he does have the hardest time,” smiled Alice.
“Yes indeed he do,” responded the Baby Buzzard, missing the Moss-Haired Girl’s tone of mockery.
“But she has to be buried, you know,” continued the Moss-Haired Girl. “There’s too much of her to keep above ground. We’d better take up a collection for her. I’ll start it with twenty dollars.” Just then Cameron appeared. “What will you give?” Alice asked him.
“Well, I think five dollars each among twenty of us will be enough. After all, we can’t get a coffin big enough in the town, and it don’t matter anyhow. I’ve got two of the boys makin’ a big box and linin’ it wit’ canvas. The coffins fall apart after three days in the grave anyhow. Them undertakers are the original highway robbers.” And Cameron fingered his Elk tooth charm.
The Baby Buzzard disappeared and returned with her glassful of half dollars. She counted ten of the coins and handed them to Alice, who turned them over to Cameron.
“These’ll pay her way through purgatory, or start her soul rollin’. That’s more’n she’d do for me if I croaked. People ’at croak ’emselves should bury ’emselves. Them’s my ways of lookin’ at it. I ain’t never seen a man yet I’d bump myself off for. You can’t do ’em no good when you’re dead,” half soliloquized the Baby Buzzard.
“May be not,” returned the Moss-Haired Girl, looking from Cameron to the Baby Buzzard, “but we can at least shut our mouths and let her rest in peace. Somebody’s stole everything she had. Even her silk underwear’s gone. And who in the dickens with this circus can wear that?”
“Maybe Goosey stole it to put on the elephants,” sneered the old lady.
“Maybe so, but the elephants wouldn’t wear it if they knew it was stolen. They’re above that.”
“Well, well,” and Cameron now became reverent, “it’s all beyond our power.” He pointed heavenward. “He who is above us has called her home.”
“He may have called her, but He didn’t send her carfare. He probably thought she could bum her way,” dryly commented the Baby Buzzard.
“That is not for us to judge,” replied Cameron solemnly, “for who are we to question the Great Taskmaster’s laws? It is best that we bury her before parade so as not to disturb the even tenor of our ways. I will say a few words and have the band play and sing a few songs. And then we shall take her to the graveyard in one of the elephant’s cages. Buddy Conroy is there now makin’ arrangements. The wagon with the cage can follow along with the parade, and no one will be the wiser.”
The Strong Woman was placed in a square pine canvas-covered box with her blonde head resting on a huge red pillow trimmed in green. Her heavy hands were folded. Her mouth was puckered in a half smile which helped to conceal the cyanide scar at the edge of her lower lip. Her head was buried in the pillow. Her large breasts rose high above everything.
Fourteen men lifted the box.
Cameron’s showman instinct prevailed at the last. The calliope was called into service. A man stood upon its platform and played as weird a tune as was ever concocted by the most fantastic human brain.
It seemed to my boyish mind to have been blended with wild wails and screeching laughter. It was followed by:
I had a dream the other night,
Floating on the River of Sin,
I peeped inside of Jordan bright,
Floating on the River of Sin,
And another place I seen inside,
Floating on the River of Sin.
A place where the devil does reside,
Floating on the River of Sin.
Freaks and thieves, trailers and clown acrobats and stake-drivers gathered in front of the Strong Woman’s tent.
“Come on now, men, we’ll make it snappy,” said Slug Finnerty. “Join in the song with the calliope.”
He waved his hands.
I seen a band of spirits bright,
Floating on the River of Sin,
Holding church by candle light,
Floating on the River of Sin.
A great big chariot passing by,
Floating on the River of Sin,
Come so close they had to fly,
Floating on the River of Sin.
The crude heavy voices were drowned out by the wail of the calliope.
They drove the chariot down below,
A spirit fell down and hurt his toe,
Floating on the River of Sin.
Then singin’ and shoutin’ way out loud,
Floating on the River of Sin.
They took her to heaven in a great big cloud,
Floating on the River of Sin.
When the song had died away Silver Moon Dugan, the Boss canvasman, commented.
“Gee, if she ever falls outta heaven there’ll be a splash.” A few roustabouts laughed. Then Cameron stood before us on a pine box.
“Fellow travelers with Cameron’s World’s Greatest Combined Shows,” he began, and paused—“it is my sad duty to say a few words here. I wish it understood that I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise her. She is beyond us now, stripped of everything before God, who takes care of the weary and the worn and calls the wandering lady here home.
“We talk of worldly splendor, yet Solomon in all his gorgeous glory was not arrayed as one of these. She who now lies here before us once held our little world in awe. Now none of us are too procrastinatin’ an’ poor to show our irreverence, and she recks not at all of it. It is not ours to judge, for we are ever in the Great Taskmaster’s eye, and if he should ever blink it ever so slightly we would crumble like the atomic mountains that rise outta the sea.
“Ours is but a little stay here, full of sound and fury, and, if you will pardon the blasphemy, signifying not a hell of a lot.
“It all reminds me of that well-known poem made immortal by Browning, than whom there was no more profound student of the human heart:
There is so much good in the best of us,
And so much bad in the rest of us,
That it little behooves the best of us
To talk about the rest of us.
“Those lines to me have always been a welcoming tocsin. When tired, when weary with the troubles of Cameron’s World’s Greatest Combined Shows, I often retire to my humble car and solicitate upon them. Feeling the full majesty of them, I have naught but love and understanding for those members of my circus who would fain be ungrateful.
“For are we not the same that our fathers have been? Do we not see the same sights and view the same sun and run in the same blood where our fathers have run?
“A great object-lesson can be received from this. As I have said in preceding, we are ever in our Great Taskmaster’s eye. He who rolls the mountains is watching over us.
“God is ever on the side of justice, or as General Robert E. Lee so well said, God marches at the head of the heaviest battalions; and those battalions are imposed of justice and mercy and undying truth.”
Cameron took a large red and white kerchief from his pocket. He unfolded it deliberately, then wiped his forehead and eyes, cleared his throat and resumed:
“We have labored in the vineyard with our sleeping friend here—and that reminds me that she is not dead, but sleepeth.” Cameron looked at his audience as one will who feels he has uttered a profound truth. He wiped his eyes again. When he removed the kerchief they suddenly filled with tears. His whole manner changed. “Oh it stabs my heart, this grief before me. He who has loved and has run away may live to love some other day. But what about the victim of this dastardly attempt at liason? I adjure you …” His frame shook, his kerchief rubbed wet eyes. The audience looked bored with piety. Cameron’s right hand, holding the kerchief, rose high in the air. He stood on tiptoe. “But friends, do not despair. In that vast circus ground in the other world we shall meet the lady who lies here with folded hands forever.”
The crowd dispersed. The Strong Woman was placed in the elephant cage while the calliope played:
Room enough, room enough,
Room enough in heaven for us all—
Oh don’t stay away.
It then shifted:
At the cross, at the cross,
Where I first saw light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
Rolled away—
It was there by faith
I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day—
All the day.
The ringmaster’s whistle blew. Wagons began to move. The Strong Woman started on her last parade.