Effigy (31 page)

Bendy jammed his hands into his pockets.

“Bendy.” Camden Pitch came out of himself. “That your act?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Contortionist.”

“Sir?”

The clown gave a high laugh, setting both lines of birds squawking. “That’s a word you’ll want to know. Hush now, lovelies, hush.” He pursed his lips and blew a stream of breath along each arm—ruffling feathers, quieting nerves. “You can work over there till he comes.” He gestured with his chin to the crowded far corner. “Keep clear of the ring for now.”

“Sure.” Bendy followed the undulating wall, turned a sharp right angle and carried on to the hill of bales. Setting his pack down on the ground, he began limbering up.

Balance was key. It was one thing to tuck a foot behind your head while seated. Onlookers, put in mind of their own hips and hamstrings, might respond with wondering groans. Do it while standing on one leg, however, and they’d think not of their own bodies, but of trees made flesh and bone.

It wasn’t easy to support the whole of his weight on one foot while he flung the other one up and back. He toppled backwards, hit hard-packed, sandy soil, untangled himself, rose and toppled again—half a dozen tries before he was blessed with an idea. Drawing the stubby knife from his boot, he sawed open a pair of bales and scattered himself a bed upon which to land. Knowing it was there behind him helped. On the next attempt he held steady for a full ten seconds before swaying and buckling back.

He sat up to find her watching him. Her cage door gaped, the purple drapery pushed aside. Dropping her left haunch to the cage floor, she slid her knees out from beneath her and dangled her feet out the open door. She pointed her toes as though stretching to dip them in a stream. This time she was clothed. Barely. A nightdress of sorts, but shorter, petal pink. Exposing the long pelts of her legs.

“Bendy, is it?” A low voice, softly mocking.

He nodded. For a second he considered adding
John James
, but the syllables seemed all wrong. A single turn of the clock and already his given name had the feel of a lie. He glanced over his shoulder to find Camden paying them no mind. The clown was balanced on a pair of short stilts, a monkey perched like a trapper’s hat on his head.

“I’m Philomena. Pitch lopped off the
Philo
the day he took me on. Too much of a mouthful.”

It was strangely thrilling to hear human speech issue forth from all that fur. Bendy realized he was staring. “You didn’t mind?”

She smiled. “Small enough price to pay.”

“For what?”

“What do you mean, for what? You just joined. You ought to have some idea.”

He nodded again, though the force that had carried him to where he sat now was nothing so well formed as an idea. They watched one another for a long moment before she spoke again.

“Before he took me on, I was in a room. One room. Door bolted on the outside, one window, no curtains. You can part a curtain and peek out, and while you’re doing that somebody might just chance to peek in. I had shutters. Shutters my daddy nailed shut.”

Bendy swallowed. “All alone?”

“Not always. My mother brought me food, books. Sometimes we played cards.” She paused. “Pitch got wind of a hairy girl and worked a deal with the old man. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. I was thirteen when he sprung me. Been with the show three years.” After a moment’s silence she brought her hands together in a clap. “Try that trick again. Twelfth time’s the charm.”

Her regard made him worthy. His supporting leg became a pylon. An unseen plumb bob dropped from the tail of his spine. The bent leg swung up sweetly, heel cresting skull, hooking and catching hold. A single, tapering tremor and he had it. She smiled. He was rock solid. He could hop on the spot if he so desired. Maybe he’d try that next—he might even make her laugh.

Just then the narrow strip of tent that lay between them—between straw mountain and cage—parted. A hand came first, followed by the same bare, knotted arm Bendy had seen stirring the monkeys in their cage. Then a face. Again the Pitch features, but youthful and somehow flattened. The cageboy looked from
Philomena to Bendy, his gaze grappling along the sightline they shared.

Bendy’s balance left him. The topknot of torso, head and leg sprang open upon impact. His wind was gone. The back wall of the tent healed over as Pitch the younger stepped all the way inside.

Bendy gulped and got nothing. Gulped again, caught purchase and hauled in a breath. One more, and he could manage a shaky sit. Raising his eyes to Philomena, he took in her terrible stillness, the hands gripped tightly in her lap.

The cageboy approached, each step a narrow lunge. He stood over Bendy, thrusting his groin out as though it were a chin or a kneecap, rather than a clutch of tender organs worn on the outside. He was making the most of the moment, his temporary advantage in height. Bendy contemplated rising, maybe even shooting up fast, but a twitch of dull wisdom made him wait.

“Stanley Pitch.” The cageboy surprised him, reaching down a hand. Until Bendy realized that to take it would be to take a hand up.

“Dan Pitch’s son,” Stanley added, and Bendy saw then he had no choice. The cageboy’s palm was rutted, his fingers blunt. In the sharp up-haul to standing, Bendy got a taste of his rival’s strength.

It was full afternoon by the time Pitch finally showed. Stanley had long since disappeared through the tent’s back flap with Philomena. Bendy had stretched himself sore and was lying on the scattered straw. Camden had his birds back in their cages and was arranging his props in a coffin-sized crate when the ringmaster shoved the front flap aside.

“Ah, you’ve come.” He strode forward, high-stepping over the circle of mounded-up dirt that defined the ring.

“Yes, sir.” Bendy rolled up onto the balls of his feet and walked to meet him.

“European tent.” Pitch swept his arm in a loose circle, a gesture that encompassed the single ring, the four corner poles.

“Two-bit, he means,” Camden added, grinning clear back to his puffy gums.

“My brother jests.”

Looking around, Bendy found a single ring to be more than enough. As a child, he’d gotten used to gathering a crowd about him like a blanket, close enough so every comment stood clear—here the brash twang of a Sydney Duck, here the red tongue of a Chileno, laid haltingly over English or let slide down the grooves of its own design. Smells, too. No man could be a miner who hadn’t made his peace with dirt, but dirt was the least of it, the cleanest. Their bodies were left to run on scraps and camp coffee for months of sweating blood, then dragged to town and gorged on whiskey, fried potatoes and fatty steak. Some managed to distinguish themselves, one man reeking of peppermint, another of hair oil, another of some putrefaction trapped deep inside. There would be no such discerning under the high white tent. His audience would be miles away.

Pitch flung his arms out wide. “A lot of space for a skin-and-bones lad to fill. Think you’re up to it?” He rolled on before Bendy could answer. “You take me, for instance. You could lose sight of Dan Pitch if he turned sideways, but out here I’m a giant. Ever seen a cat backed into a corner? Puffs itself up double. Doesn’t matter how you get there, terror, pride—point is, a man’s as big as he believes.”

This last elicited a grunt from Camden, laden with wire cages, crabbing sideways out the backstage flap.

Pitch stepped in close. “It gets to where you feel you could touch them, each and every one. Reach out a fingertip—” He grinned. “—or in your case a toe-tip, and lay it on whomever you please.”

The ringmaster put him through his paces that day. They were a good hour into their rehearsal by the time the cageboy returned alone. Neither father nor son made a pretence of greeting the other. Pitch said only, “Bales, Stanley.”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

The ringmaster waited a beat. “No idea.”

Bent over between two straw bales, his fingers worming under twine, the son stiffened. “Bales. I’m doing bales.”

Another beat, this one a hair longer. “I can see that, Stanley. It’s quite plain.”

Stanley straightened, his face working, wine-dark. Bendy averted his eyes. There was a moment’s standoff, during which the monkeys struck up a muffled chorus beyond the sailcloth wall. Pitch ended things abruptly with a neat half turn on one heel. Over his shoulder he said lightly, “Well, get on with it.”

While Pitch talked Bendy through pose after pose, Stanley worked at dismantling the golden pile. It took several slant-eyed glances for Bendy to determine the cageboy’s purpose. Why cart heavy benches from venue to venue when even the most primitive mining town was sure to have a supply of straw? Stanley was laying the bales out in concentric circles beyond the dirt ring—staggered with sightlines and minimal legroom in mind. Once he got his head down, he proceeded like a Clydesdale, shoulders straining, eyes fixed and dull.

Bendy unwound himself from a particularly trying position in time to watch the cageboy drop the last pair into place. The mountain
had shrunk considerably, to perhaps a dozen bales squared. It stood between Bendy and the tent’s back flap. Watching Stanley duck out of sight behind it, he saw that it was meant to act as a sort of blind—performers appearing from behind a bright edifice rather than squeezing in through a fluttering slit.

Letting his gaze wander, he found the tent transformed. Light shimmered off the yellow seats, warming the ghostly walls. He felt a rush of promise in his watery limbs.

“Can you ride?” Pitch asked out of nowhere. “I could use a second in my act.”

The question tipped Bendy back a little on his heels.

“Stanley used to manage it, before he got so thick through the chest.” Pitch narrowed his eyes. “His mother’s people, thick-chested, every one. Well?”

Bendy steadied himself. “I can ride.”