The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (18 page)

"Tell her, governor."

Al G. stopped talking and for a second looked chastened. Then he
obliged, his demeanour going solemn.

"Kentucky," he said, "it's about Louis."

I looked around, checking we were alone. I didn't want anyone
else to hear what we were about to talk about, even though Louis's
problem was known to everyone from the dwarf tumblers on down to
the dog-eating sideshow freaks.

"What about him?"

"Now you know and I know Louis is the greatest trainer ever to
appear in the American circus. Or any circus, for that matter. Better
than Bostok. Better than Van Amberg. I've never seen a man read an
animal's mind the way he can. But he drinks. And he's drinking more
than ever. It's only a matter of time before he hurts himself and there's
no way I'll be able to replace a man like Louis Roth."

I looked at him, blinking and maybe saying something naive, for Al G.'s eyes widened and he said, "Kentucky, you do know why he's
hitting the bottle, don't you?"

"I figured it was just his way."

He shook his head.

"Well, it is and it isn't. It's you, Kentucky."

"Me?"

"You."

"I don't think so."

"Kentucky, please. Let's have a look at this as though you weren't
one of the people we're talking about. He let you put his two best lions
in with those ill-mannered tigers of yours. Do you have any idea what
those lions are worth? Thousands and thousands, Kentucky. Maybe
more. Plus lie's shown you about all he could show you in the time
you've been here. Plus he invited you to dinner. What's the man have
to do? Put an announcement in White Tops? Kentucky, the man has
gone moony over someone and that someone is you."

This was a lot to digest, there being a big difference between suspecting something and having it confirmed. Mostly I was waiting for Al
G.'s plan, Al G. being a guy who always had one. His expression perked
up, as though an idea had just occurred to him.

"Tell you what. You want yourself an all-tiger act, right? Well
then sidle up to Louis. Make him forget the bottle and I'll owe you
a favour."

"Can't," I said. "I never see him anymore."

"Oh no?"

At this Al G. gave his all-purpose smile, the one he used whenever he had an idea or was about to slip his hand under a woman's skirt
or was just plain disguising the way things really were. What irked me
was I looked over at Dan and saw he was smiling too. Obviously, they'd
cooked up something and they'd cooked up something that was going
to have a less-than-subtle effect on the life of yours truly. By the time I
put this all together, Al G. was on another damn tangent, something about how much he liked Portland's mountain backdrop, and throughout he kept looking at Dan and saying, "Am I right?" to which Dan
would reply, "Surely are, governor. You surely are."

The very next morning I spotted Louis coming toward me, a forefinger
bent and gesturing for me to come. I put down my tools and followed
him out of the menage tent and across winter quarters. At the door of
the training barn I kicked mud and tanbark off my boots while Louis
sat and scraped the undersides of his with a stick until they were as
black and new-looking as the tops. He stood and said, "Come viss me,"
and I followed him into the middle of the barn, where Red was standing next to a big male lion. We pulled a little closer, and I saw the lion
was Samson, a cat too old and docile to do tricks. Louis mostly used
him to warm seats in his finale.

Louis stopped about a half-dozen feet from the cat, and I pulled
up as well. We both stood there looking, Louis silent, letting me figure
it out. The lion was sitting on a platform cornered by ropes, and all four
of those ropes were looped over a single pulley rigged to the top of the
barn and then connected to a winch on the barn floor. Turning the
winch would've lifted the platform straight into the air, and it hardly
took take a genuis to figure why a winch, a lion, a platform and a young
blonde might all be in the same barn at the same time.

I walked over to the lion and stood beside him and patted his
mane and said, "Good boy." Instead of throwing my leg on over, I
went all girly and extended my hand for support; when Louis took it, I
gave his hand a little squeeze that wasn't exactly necessary. I threw my
leg over sidesaddle, hoping this would be another reminder I was a girl
and an unwed one at that. I stood for a second, weight on my feet,
before lowering myself. Meanwhile, old Samson panted and looked
around and belched raw horse. When I put my full weight on his back
he became a lion again, for he turned his head right around and looked
at me. At the same time, he made the rumbling full-throated growl only an animal with a larnyx the size of a ham can make. I could see teeth
and the pink cavern of his mouth.

Louis purred at the cat, saying, "Good boy, good boy. Zat is it,
good boy." This calmed him, and I lowered my weight again, the lion
growling and generally getting ornery until Louis hugged him around
the forequarters and kissed him on his nose. I settled my weight again
and this time the lion was a little better, for instead of growling he
stayed still, hissing. Louis said, "Good baby," and gave him a generous
lump of horsemeat. Red walked over to the winch and started turning
so that little old Mary Haynie from the tobacco fields of Kentucky was
lifted into the air while seated on a six-hundred-pound lion. The whole
time Samson trembled so bad he wasn't a danger to anyone or anything
with the possible exception of his own heart. At about ten feet, Red
stopped winching. After letting us sit in mid-air for a half-minute, he
lowered the lion and me back to earth, and again I held out my hand so
Louis could come and take it and sample its warmth.

"Vass good," he said, though to toast that morning's work he
pulled a flask out of his jacket pocket and had himself a sip of
Tennessee's finest.

The next day, we practised the balloon act again. (Even though
the winch was in plain sight, the audience was supposed to think
Samson and I were being lofted into the air with balloons, a denial of
reality that only seems to work when people are in a tent and have paid
to see a circus.) We went up twenty feet that day, Samson trembling
every second. Somehow I'd forgotten to do up the top button on my
blouse, so when Louis took my hand and I leaned over to get off the
lion, he saw a mixture of shadow and flesh. Next day, we went up thirty
feet. This time, when I stepped off the lion, hand extended and blouse
drooping like a hobo's pants, Louis said, "I sink ze lion he likes you."

Figuring this was as close to a joke as Louis Roth was ever going to
make, I laughed and with my free hand touched his elbow and said, "Oh
go on with you," which any man with half a brain would've translated as I am a woman and I am touching you in not one but two places and you're
now formally invited to figure out what this might mean.

Was then it hit him-what all my handholding and shadowexposing and weak-joke laughing of the past few days might actually
have meant. His eyes went wide. His face drained of colour. He licked
his lips. Before recovering, he said, "Tomorrow vee vill continue."
Then he bustled off.

This went on and on-my giving him little glimpses of flesh and having him touch me at the slightest call and laughing at jokes that were
barely even jokes. Nothing happened. No dinner invitations, no professions of love, no inappropriate fondlings. Nothing. Around the time
we perfected the balloon act I decided the whole thing was hopeless,
that Louis Roth was the type of man who preferred a state of misery to
one of happiness. (A lot of men are like that, for it gives them an excuse
to act mopey and boy-like. Plus it makes drunkenness feel noble, and
over the years a lot of men with the weakness have told me noble
drunkenness is the best kind of drunkenness there is.)

I went to practise the next day and got on the lion the way I would
a horse. This time my blouse stayed fastened to the top and I barely
spoke a civil word to Louis. I generally acted like we were having a
lovers' spat without ever having been lovers, which I realized was a case
of putting the cart before the horse but having run fresh out of ideas I
figured at the very least it'd make me feel better. That day, old Samson
and I got hauled to the top of the tent and I set off the battery charge
with my foot. Fireworks went off all around us, blue screamers and red
shooters and frog-green twirlers and orange nightriders, all exploding
against the top of the tent (which for some reason never struck us as a
stupid idea seeing as the tarpaulins were waterproofed with paraffin
and couldn't've been more eager to catch fire).

Those fireworks kept screeching and screaming, Samson kept
trembling and hissing, and throughout I felt like a pillow that'd been torn on a bedpost. I came down with an emptiness inside. I stepped off
the lion. As I passed Louis he said, "Vood it hurt you to smile?" to
which I said, "I dunno, Louis, would it hurt you to kiss my ass?"

I spent the rest of that day sulking and keeping to myself. The
day after that, we opened in a place called Roseburg, Oregon; was April
9, almost a full month after the Barnes show normally opened, everything having been delayed by Al G.'s legal troubles down in California.
Was a straw house, meaning we had to put down bundles of straw for
the overflow crowd to sit on. That morning Louis had given Samson a
bath and a blow-dry, which was accomplished back then by washing
and towelling the animal and then waving a piece of cardboard until the
cat fluffed up like a show animal. Some animals don't like it, though if
Samson was one of them he didn't show it; he even purred a little as I
led him into the lights and the noise. I put him on the platform, and as
we lifted into the air he commenced with tremoring, which didn't bother me as this was just his way of saying he didn't particularly like the
act but would do it for the horse hock he got after.

We reached the top and I kickstarted the fireworks. A second
later I heard it: rasping, like a needle scraping the end of a cylinder, a
much higher-pitched sound than a lion'll usually make and scarier
because of it. Immediately, I realized the rubes were making him
nervous, and I cursed myself for not practising the act with some
groomers watching and making as much noise as possible. My heart
started to pound, seeing as I was stuck forty-five feet up with a panicking cat, a flaw in the design of the act I was amazed I hadn't considered previously.

As those damn fireworks kept firing and those damn rubes kept
applauding, I called up every gentling technique in the book along with
some that hadn't yet been invented; luckily, Samson was glued to the
spot, so I had the opportunity to apply them. I told him he was a good
kitty, and I purred in his ear, and I scratched low down on his belly, and
I promised him all the meat in the world if he didn't make me die face to face with the top of a centre pole, with people watching and music
thundering and fireworks going off to make the event more memorable
still. He seemed to listen. The fireworks stopped and we started to
come down and the only thing left was some weak applause and the odd
powder burst. His rasping faded, and when we reached tanbark his
shivering lessened as well, both of which I was mighty thankful for. I
swung my leg over and a razorback came running up with Samson's
leash, which I snapped onto the collar he wore around his neck. (This
was for the benefit of the audience only, there being little a hundredpound woman can do should an adult lion decide to make a run for it.)

I took a step. I waited for Samson to walk off the platform. I took
another step and felt the leash go tight. I turned, looked at Samson and
it happened: a paw snapped out and took hold of my arm. The whole
thing happened so fast I never even saw it coming.

The pain was sudden and spectacular though tempered by the fact
that things were about to get much worse. The rubes, meanwhile, were
howling, thinking this was the funniest thing they'd ever seen, a lion resting a paw on his trainer's forearm as if he didn't want to leave the ring.
Course, what the rubes didn't realize was Samson had latched his hooks
good and deep into my arm, the blood flowing free and warm down my
sleeve and pooling where the sleeve bends at the elbow. We just stood
there, Samson and I, looking at each other, though I knew very well what
was about to happen: he was going to yank my arm so sudden and hard
he'd pull the ball out of joint until nothing but skin stretched thin as
paper was holding it in place. Then, because it's fun, he'd swipe it off
with his other paw, in effect showing me what would happen if I or anyone else tried making him go up on that damn platform again. Wasn't a
doubt in my mind this was going to transpire; I even started wondering
if I could learn to handle a whip with my wrong hand. The only thing I
resented was it taking so long, and that four thousand rubes were being
entertained by it. Meanwhile, Samson kept peering into my eyes and
panting lazily, obviously enjoying himself, stretching both my arm and the moment, the weight of his paw making a statement on my sorely
stretched shoulder joint, when a thing can't happen, happened.

Samson pulled three of his claws from my arm. Now this is a
move requiring a dexterity lions don't have, but one I can prove did
happen by the oddity of those particular scars on my forearm. My arm
was now hooked by only a pinky; his paw looked like a society lady's
hand holding a cup of tea. I glanced back up into those gleaming golden eyes. While tigers can't smile, a lion can, and he gave me a big one,
something made the audience start laughing harder still. He dug the
single claw in deeper, through the cutaneous and subcutaneous layers,
reaching where the body gets pulpy and blue. Then he ripped. Pulled
open my arm as slowly as you or I'd open a letter, neatly dividing cloth,
skin, muscle and sinew, leaving a clean straight tunnel. Just before the
wrist, he calmly stopped, extracted his pinky nail and smiled, and as he
smiled it occurred to me he clearly thought he deserved a reward for
not tearing my arm off. He was actually just sitting there grinning,
waiting for me to pat him on the head and say, Good kitty.