The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (17 page)

That night, Louis Roth invited me to dinner.

I'd never seen a man eat so precisely. He cut each piece of roast with a
sawing rhythm that lasted exactly eight saws, even if it took only six to
get through, the last two squeaking against china. He'd then lay his
knife at a forty-five-degree angle across the top of his plate-carefully, so as not to make a clatter-before returning his fork to his right hand and then putting the morsel of food into his mouth. Then he'd
chew exactly eighteen times. Count, I did, for he wasn't a man who
needed to hear the sound of his own voice, or the voice of anybody else
for that matter, meaning there were pauses in the conversation. Every
third bite he'd take a swallow of red wine, which he drank too much of,
more than a bottle and a half, though you'd never know he was drunk
except his accent thickened and his movements got a little less darting.

Otherwise, the meal was businesslike as businesslike gets, Louis
willing to discuss only tigers and what my plans with them were. So I
informed him I wanted to go straight to the top, and he told me the top
was a good place to be if you could wrap your head around the fact
there was only one place to go afterwards. I had soup, salad, fish and
potatoes, and a slice of chocolate cake. Later that evening he dropped
me off at the St. Mark's before heading back to his own car on the lot.
He didn't try to kiss me, there being nothing during dinner to predict
it, our first touch being a handshake on the street outside the lobby, my
fingers disappearing in a big sinewy hand that looked out of place on
such a wiry little frame.

"Good evening" were his last words before heading down the
darkened street. I was left puzzling, though over the next few days I figured out that dinner had been his way of saying he was going to take
me on without actually out-and-out saying he was going to take me on.
Once it sank in that Louis Roth was going to mentor me, and maybe I
was finding myself out of the mess my life had been for ten years ...
well. The sheer relief of it. Was a feeling infected everything I did over
the next couple of days. Sometimes I'd look at myself in the mirror and
see how happy I was and I'd actually say, "Can't you wipe that grin off
your face, Mabel? Can't you? Go ahead, try," and there I'd be,
wrestling with my mouth muscles, the lunacy of which would make me
break out laughing, and I'd be giggling at nothing but my own reflection and it'd occur to me, Jesus Mabel, you really are crackers and it'd be
this thought that'd sober me up quick. (The worst part of being sent to a nuthouse? For the rest of your days, every time you have a purity of
emotion, you worry, Uh-oh here Igo again.)

My education started the very next day, around eleven. And what
an education it was. Remember, back then Pavlov hadn't yet been
invented, so no one was really sure what it was made an animal do anything. Most trainers got their way by battering the animal until it did
what it was supposed to, the reward being if the cat stepped on the
pedestal he'd stop getting his hind end flogged with a cane whip.
Problem was, the animal didn't learn much more than how to get out of
the way, the tricks full of miscues and inaccuracies and those errors in
movement trainers call splash. Plus over time the animal usually developed a keen interest in killing his trainer, which is a foolhardy relationship to have with any animal that kills by seizing your shoulders and
pulling you on top, at which point anything not protected by rib cage
gets torn out by a single swipe of hind-leg claws. You die watching the
tiger feed on your mess. It isn't even particularly quick.

It was Louis who figured instead you should give the cat something good when he did something right. He called his method "gentling" and it was "gentling" he taught me throughout January and
February. Whenever King or Toby or Queen did what I wanted, or anything close to it, I'd hum, "Good little kittie," or scratch their throats or
drop a piece of horseflesh at their feet or purr in their ears until they
started purring right along, a sound like a motor idling. I worked this
way with the tigers for five weeks, rewarding every time they came
close (and then closer) to doing what I wanted, giving them a wake-up
smack if they got ornery, jumping out of the way whenever my sixth
sense flared. If I made a mistake Louis let me know about it pretty quick.
He was good at that, though after a while it also got so if I did something
good his jaws would flex and he'd say, "Yess yess, that iss it."

By the end of that time Toby could do a sit-up and a rollover, and
the three cats could lie side by side without slashing at each other. For
a finale, they'd move into a pyramid in the middle of the ring, Toby on the high pedestal, wearing an expression that looked like pride but was
actually a cat waiting for a hunk of meat and knowing he was going to
get it. Seeing this, Louis not only said "Yess yess, that iss it," but
grinned while he said it, for putting three tigers in a pyramid was what
passed for something in 1913.

One night about two weeks prior to the start of the season, Toby
started convulsing. For the next half-hour, I held his head in my lap
while I spoke softly and stroked the spot low on a tiger's belly where
they feel a keenness of pleasure. He was so sick he didn't even try to
bite or claw, normally the first thing an ailing tiger will do. Finally he
arfed weakly and his body shook and a film of white spread over his
eyes. I bawled like a little girl, Louis and Al G. and Dan standing off to
one side with their hands in their pockets, feeling bad and wondering
what they were going to do vis-a-vis the photo of newcomer Mabel
Stark and her "Pyramid of Fearsome Feline Ferocity!!!," which was
now on Barnes circus paper all up and down the West Coast. This'd
been Al G.'s idea, his opinion being nothing but nothing styled a tiger
act like a blonde, especially considering how everyone knew the last
woman trainer on the Barnes show had been pulled down forward and
fed on. Only problem was, all the styling in the world wouldn't make a
pyramid out of just two cats.

Was it my bawling? Was it the gravity of the situation? Or was it
that Louis Roth took this moment to notice his protegee was young and
lithe and looked at him with crossed eyes through curly blond bangs?
All I know is when Louis Roth, a man not know for kindnesses or
human considerations, offered up his two best lions for a mixed act, I
could only blink a few times and think to myself, Hmmmmmmmmmm.

We started by putting King and Queen in a cage next to Humpy and
Bill so they could get used to the sight and the smell of each other. This
phase lasted a week, though longer would've been better. Then we put
them all together in the cage, the lion pedestals and the tiger pedestals as far away as the cage diameter allowed. Over the next week, we kept
moving their seats closer and closer, rewarding every time they took
them, until the day came when we flanked the lions with King and
Queen. No one liked this but Louis and me; the lions roared and pawed
and growled and put on all the fake bluster lions are famous for putting
on. The tigers went silent, which was worse, for if you looked carefully you could see their muscles were tensed and their ears were shifted
backward ever so slightly.

I needed the twisted willow that day, along with a lot of imitation
purring and "Good kitties" and lower-belly scratching. I threw down a
lot of horsemeat, too. This went on for several more days before I tried
kissing the lions with the two tigers looking on, a move truly nervousmaking for I had to drop my whip to do it and I wondered if the tigers
would interpret this as a signal feeding time had commenced. Louis
advised if a tiger stalked I kick it hard in the whiskers with a boot heel
and then pull back quick so a claw didn't take hold.

We opened March 8 in Santa Monica. Three rings, with thirteen
displays, all of them animal acts. I rode high school in the fourth display, and put on my mixed act in the tenth, a centre-ring attraction
flanked by dog acts in rings one and three and a performing bear doing
a hind leg around the hippodrome. Was a good little act for its time:
after marching the cats around the cage perimeter I got them on their
seats and had King, my performing tiger, run through his sit-up and
rollover. Then I kissed Humpy and Bill and for a finale moved the two
tigers down and close, forming a four-cat pyramid.

The applause? Was like music. Was like the crescendo of an
orchestra. You hear applause like that and for as long as it lasts everything you ever thought about yourself thins and gets blanketed with Hey,
you're a person people clap at. Only problem is, it can and will turn you
foolish: the moment the applause started to dim I was dizzied with a need
to stretch it out, so right off I lost my head and turned my back on those
cats and took a bow, something no one had ever done before in the circus and a piece of foolhardiness that got written up next day in the
papers. Louis was furious, Al G. delighted. A week later, Al G. issued
new paper, his posters announcing "Mabel Stark Subjugates to Her Will
the Most Dangerous Killers Ever Recruited from Mountain Fastness and
Jungle Lair." Was a claim followed by five exclamation points.

Following Santa Monica, we played six days at a Shriners' convention in Los Angeles, a rarity for we mostly jumped every night.
From there we moved into the Mojave and then crossed the Tehachapi
Mountains to get to Bakersfield, Porterville, Reedly, Selma, Tulare and
Coalinga before drifting Oregon way. Houses were good, it being the
tail end of what they call the Golden Age of the Circus, before roads
and cars offered people in small towns choices. When we came to
town, banks closed, as did all schools and businesses. Attendence was
routinely more than 80 per cent of the people in any given town. There
were two shows daily, plus a Tom Mix-style Wild West in place of a
concert after the show. In addition to my horse and cat acts, I rode in
the lion cage during parade, behind bars with four of Louis's gentlest.
Al G. got a new goat trainer and Slide for Lifer, his feeling being that
either act would've destroyed my mystique. Soon I got used to signing
autographs and dealing with reporters, most of the questions having
to do with, Is it true women are more able to soothe the savage beast? or
Do you really hypnotise your animals? or How's it feel filling the shoes of
Marguerite Haupt, seeing as how she got killed wearing them herself?
Imagine what this was like for a little orphan from the homely end of
Kentucky: encircled by men in trench coats, press cards tucked in
Fedora bands, scribbling every word you care to utter, then fighting to
get the next question in.

Well.

Was lovely and exciting and nerve-wracking all rolled into one,
my being a woman who's always found pure happiness a commodity
difficult to deal with. Course, I suppose that's why I was drawn to the
tigers in the first place. No matter how well things're going, you always know it's only a matter of time before a claw catches, or a tooth snags,
or a forepaw lashes, and your contentment feels bearable again.

Here. Let me show you something. This photo was taken November 5,
the final show of 1913. Sacramento, California. The man with his arms
up is Louis. Now, you can look at this photo in two different ways. You
can look at it like a rube would've, and if you do you'll see a little man
making seven adult lions, two of them black-maned Nubians, perform
a simultaneous sit-up. You look at it and think, Jesus Murphy, I'm hugely and mightily astounded.

Or you could look at this photo the way I do. Then, what you'd see
is the second lion on the left slouching, and the far-right lion yawning
and about to lose his sit-up before the trainer wants him to. You look at
this photo the way I do and you'd see splash. You'd also see a man facing
a wall of adult lions, and instead of having one leg slightly ahead of the
other, knees bent and ready for action, he was standing straight-legged,
weight on his heels, the front of his body as open as a can of worms. You
look at this photo the way I do, and you'd get a little nervous. Your palms
would sweat a little, and your breathing would go shallow. You look at
this photo the way I do, and you'd see disaster looming.

We wintered that year up in Portland, Oregon, instead of
Venice, California, the rumour being that Dollie Barnes was divorcing
Al G. and his assets were in danger of getting seized if he set foot
inside California state lines. I stayed at a hotel where they rented
rooms by the week, though Al G. gave me a job at winter quarters,
meaning I didn't have to dance burlesque to make ends meet. One day,
shortly after we'd set up in Portland, Al G. and Dan came up to me
when I was boning out my cages. As usual, Al G. was smiling, so I
looked at Dan, whose expression was generally a more accurate indication of what was going on. He looked bothered, like he had an
abscessed tooth.

Al G. hooked his thumbs in his vest and rocked back and forth on his heels. Then he took a deep breath, like a man who'd just climbed a
mountain and wanted to sample the altitude.

"Ahhhhhhhh. Don't you just love the air up here in Oregon?"

I told him I did, though wearily. Like most people on the show I
was tired of hearing Al G. insist an ugly divorce was not in any way,
shape or form the reason we'd hightailed it out of California. Yet now
that Al G. was on a roll, he wouldn't be dissuaded by body language or
a disbelieving tone of voice.

"Ah yes, Kentucky. I do believe Portland's going to do the Al G.
Barnes Circus just fine. Did I tell you feed up here only costs six cents
a pound? Down in Venice I was paying eleven. Now that's a considerable savings...."

On and on he went, detailing how even the constant drizzle suited him just fine, until Dan noticed my eyes were glazing over and I was
itching to get back to my cages. Was then he did something he hardly
ever did, by which I mean he interrupted his boss.