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A lot of the carnies from Midstate Carnival and all the sideshow performers spent the winter on the Florida Gulf Coast in a flyspeck town called Gulf Town, or Gulfy, for short. Back in the 1940s, Gulfy was home to mostly shrimpers and a few fruit growers, but in 1951, a couple of sideshow performers known as Jonah the Skeleton, a thin man, and Sweet Chenille, a bearded lady, traveled through one winter. They liked the look of the town and the rhythm of the Gulf waters so much that they decided to retire there. As the word spread among the carnies, more and more of them poured into the town to spend the winter, with many settling there on a permanent basis.
Little Freddy, in particular, was anxious to get away. “It’s a great place, Lo-Lo,” he said. “Sideshow folks like you and me can really relax there and get a break from all these normals pointing and laughing. Did you know the post office even has a section of low counter for the dwarf performers, and some of the barstools at the Showstop have steps up the side?” Little Freddy, Ike, Gigi, and I were all sitting together to eat dinner on our second-to-last night in Onalaska, our final gig of the season.
The evening air had the smallest nip of cold to it. I closed my eyes, seeing a big expanse of water like I had never seen and a Christmas without snow. A warm winter, instead of one spent staring at the wall, wrapped in blankets, waiting for something to happen, for my real life to begin. Back then, I had imagined a university education or maybe a glittery literary career or a gentle husband. I understood at last that those dreams had never been plans for the future but rather devices to move me from one day to the next, to keep me steady while I inched my way along the canyon’s edge.
Making money also helped. Having grown up with no luxuries other than food, the sensation of cash in my hand was extraordinary. I developed a certain taste for items, like makeup and shoes and slippery lotions and snowflake-light scented powders for my body, items I had never coveted or even considered before then.
The trip down to Gulfy took about four days, with Jim driving the truck and me riding in the trailer for most of the way. We could have made it sooner, I was sure, but traveling south offered a type of interval to switch from the frenetic pace of the carnival circuit to the calmer air of the offseason. When we stopped for the night, parking the truck and trailer at some campground, it seemed there was never a shortage of old or new friends or at least acquaintances with whom we could drink and sit around the campfire, exchanging stories about events that seemed better in the retelling.
On our last day of the trip, I sat next to Jim in the truck cabin so I could see Gulf Town as we approached it. “What’s that smell?” I asked, rolling down the window to better catch the complicated scent, a murky saltiness, sharp and fishy, that I had never experienced before.
Jim laughed. “That’s the gulf, baby. We’re almost there.”
When the water finally came into view, Jim pulled to the side of the road so I could stare at its expanse from the window.
“It’s amazing,” I said in a quiet voice, and Jim kissed the side of my face.
The town itself enthralled me, smallish with two gas stations, if you didn’t count the pumps at the docks that the fishing boats used, and a grocery store where I could wheel my cart through aisles where no one would point or stare. There was also a drugstore with a lunch counter, a small diner, a post office, and an eclectic department store that somehow managed to sell everything despite its reduced size. Of the handful of bars, we liked to gather at the Showstop, where Gigi and Jim were good friends with the owner, Lonny. I understood right away what Little Freddy had meant when he described Gulfy as the perfect place for a sideshow freak. In an area populated by carnival folk and human oddities, like the man and his sons whose fingers were fused into claw shapes and who earned their livings as Lobster Man and the Lobster Boys, I had found my place. In that conglomeration of outsiders, I was where I belonged—on the inside.
I assumed that Jim and I would simply park the trailer somewhere in Gulfy, but to my surprise, he rented a nice white house for us close to the gulf, where a lovely slice of water could be seen from the front window. “I have half a mind to go on and buy this place, if I ever get around to retiring,” Jim said.
The house was probably only a bit larger than the one I had grown up in. It even had the same division of space—two bedrooms separated by a bathroom down a short hallway, a living room with a big bay window facing toward the gulf, and a largish kitchen. After living with Jim in the trailer for two months, though, the space appeared cavernous, an open area where anything could happen. “I love it. It’s perfect.”
Jim kissed my lips. “It is nice, isn’t it?”
I had set my mind to learning two things that winter—how to drive and how to contact Mrs. Schendel and make her believe that I was in fact living in New York City, with my grandmother, maybe. The first part was a simple matter of getting some lessons from Jim and Gigi in his truck. In fact, the two of them were happy to have me practice my driving on the way home after drinking at the Showstop because they always drank more than I did. My body spread so far out on the driver’s seat that Gigi would sit on Jim’s lap and play endless stupid jokes, like covering my eyes with her hand or screaming at me to look out and holy shit what was that in the middle of the road. In the mornings, I liked to take the truck down to the parking lot by the dock to look at the water, where I would sit motionless for long stretches, my body swaying with the roll and pull of the soft waves.
Jim told me to cut the tie with Mrs. Schendel, that whatever good she could provide me in terms of information about the events following Jared’s death was outweighed by the risk of my revealing too much or of her not being able to keep a secret. I ignored him, though, in part because he didn’t know anything about Mrs. Schendel, a hard worker who had carried on a quiet affair with a married man in broad daylight with such discretion and tight-lipped aplomb that I hadn’t noticed, even though I lived in the same house where it took place.
As it turned out, getting a letter stamped with a postmark from another place was a pretty easy thing to do. Paul at the Gulf Town Post Office, with its low counter for dwarves just like Little Freddy had described, explained the whole thing to me. You put your sealed letter in a second envelope addressed to General Delivery in whatever city you want—New York, in this case—and the letter goes to the post office, where a postal worker opens it. He discards the outer envelope and processes the sealed and stamped interior letter addressed to an Ursula Schendel with a New York City postmark. The same steps could have been applied in reverse to receive letters from Mrs. Schendel. She could have mailed her letters to General Delivery in New York. I suppose I could have then filled out a form to have my mail forwarded to a post office box in Gulf Town, but that would have created a paper trail. Though I didn’t have a tremendous amount of respect for the investigatory prowess of the police from my town, likely I was better off relying on Mrs. Schendel’s discretion than on their incompetence. So I told Mrs. Schendel to send the letters to me at a post office box in Gulf Town, under the name of Dolores Barnes—Barnes like the Schendels’ dairy barn outside the back window of my old house, and Dolores, a legal, formal version of Lola.
***
February 6, 1977
Dear Sarah,
Thank God I got a letter from you! I’ve been worried to death about you ever since you left, not even knowing what to think half the time. I did like you asked and told everyone that you’re living in New York City now. I know for a fact that some people, Missy especially, didn’t believe me. Truth be told, Missy has been saying a lot of ugly things ever since Jared died. She was the one who found his body. When I saw the rescue squad in your driveway that morning, my first thought was that maybe you had fallen, and Jared had called for help to get you off the floor. When I opened the door, Missy was crying in one of the kitchen chairs with poor Jared lying there on the floor.
I asked where you were, but no one could tell me anything. Missy had this blank look on her face when I mentioned your name, like she had never even stopped to wonder what might have happened to you. I looked around your bedroom, trying to figure out what was going on. Your clothes all looked like they were still in the closet, but when I started flipping through them, I realized that your good skirt, the one with the tiny checks, and the two blouses we had just made were missing. That made me think maybe you had packed those things yourself and left under your own steam. I searched your dresser and bedside table and even under the bed, thinking you must have left me a note to say what was going on.
Right about then, when they were wheeling poor Jared out on the stretcher, Missy jumped to her feet. “Your precious Sarah did this because she hated Jared when he was never anything but good to her,” she said.
You could have heard a pin drop. I told her to shut her mouth and that she couldn’t say such terrible things, no matter how upset she was.
Rick Wilkins, that nice boy who helps Luther buck hay sometimes in the summer, was one of the rescue volunteers. He told me not to worry because you were sure to turn up soon and that they had already radioed for the sheriff to come check out things. I didn’t know what to say, but I thanked Rick anyway.
Missy rode along to the hospital with Jared’s body. After everyone had left, I searched every inch of the house for some kind of message from you. Then I set about cleaning and ordering all the rooms because I had no idea who would do that. Just so you know, I made sure the kitchen and stove really sparkled. I scrubbed the dishes and bleached down all the cooking pans and surfaces.
The sheriff came by just as I was closing up. He informed me that Jared should have been left where he was because his death looked suspicious. He also said that I shouldn’t have been allowed to be there in the house by myself. He wanted to know where you were, too, and I said I would let him know as soon as I found out anything. Right after you called me, I stopped by to tell him that you had left to live with your grandmother in New York City. I also mentioned, just like you wanted, how you and Jared had parted on good terms and how, even though you were sad about Jared’s death, you didn’t have the money to travel back home so soon after paying your way to get there.
Your father bought a four-plot parcel over at Maple Lawn, and Jared is buried there with him. We took a collection at First Lutheran to pay for the rest of the funeral expenses. I was there for all the viewing hours and for the burial. All the mourners, even Missy and her family, came to my house afterward for a luncheon.
There was some ugly talk—and not just from Missy either. People wanted to know where you were and why you weren’t taking care of things yourself. The important thing, though, is that, in the end, Jared was laid to rest, and he’s at peace now.
When I got your letter, I took that to the sheriff also. I especially wanted him to see the New York City postmark on the envelope, but I’m not sure it made much of an impression on him. He says Jared’s death is still considered suspicious and that you’re a person of interest and that he needs a concrete return address so he can find you. “Of course,” I told him. “I’ll do my best to get that to you.”
Anyway, Missy must have a friend down at the sheriff’s office who lets her know if there’s any news about the investigation of Jared’s death because I took your letter to show the sheriff just the other morning, and by afternoon, Missy had shown up at my house, all dirty from working in the sty, talking like a crazy person. She said that she didn’t believe a word about you being in New York City with your grandmother and that she thought you ran off with the carnival.
Honestly, I barely even recognized her at first because every other time I’ve seen Missy, she’s had makeup painted up to her eyebrows and enough lipstick to choke a horse. I told her she had to give up those awful ideas and to move on with her life because that’s what Jared would have wanted. You know I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead, but I reminded her of how Jared drank almost every day and how careless and sloppy he could get.
I don’t know if she’ll take my advice and forget about this or if she’ll keep trying to find you. Thank you for sending me your address. I miss you a lot, and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t wonder how you’re doing. To tell the truth, though, I think you’re smart to stay away.
I owe you a big apology, Sarah. After your father died, I worried about you and Jared living alone together in that house from the very beginning. I tried to see you every day or get you to try and visit me. At least that’s what I did at first. And then maybe it was every other day. I let myself think that things weren’t as bad as they were between you and Jared because that’s what I wanted to believe. I hope you can forgive me.
Anyway, Luther is laid up sick, so I’ve got to go make his lunch, a light soup probably that won’t be too hard on his stomach. You know I’m not one to complain, but I do wish that he’d get up out of that chair. I’ve certainly done my fair share of work while I’ve had aches and pains.
I hope this letter finds you well and that you’ll write back soon.
Take care of yourself.
Love,
Ursula (Mrs. Schendel)