The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (28 page)

"You said three days."

"And how long have we been making ourselves scarce?"

"Five days."

"So we did all right, didn't we, Dan?"

"We did, governor."

"I think maybe Ringling's getting a little old and fat for this
game. It's slowing him down. Let me guess, Kentucky. He offered you
twenty tigers? Each one Bengal and cage bred and as handsome as
Rajah? Plus twice what you're earning here? No. Let me guess. Three
times? Plus your own tent on the lot. A tent with fresh flowers every
day, like Lillian Leitzel has. Is that the deal, Kentucky? Is it?"

Was then I noticed something I wouldn't've thought was possible.
Al G.'s blue eyes and high cheekbones and thin straight nose somehow
weren't adding up to handsome, and it occurred to me he hadn't slept for
some time. Frustration and fatigue had ganged up on his features and it'd
made them plain. He must've realized it, though, for it didn't last long.
Was like he willed it into oblivion, a half-second later becoming the same
Al G. who in just over a decade turned a dog-and-pony into one of the
biggest circuses in America-as big as Cole Brothers or John Robinson or
Hagenbeck-Wallace, all of which had been around since the last century.

"Ah hell, Kentucky, I'm just a little sore. You can't blame me. I
should be happy I'm producing acts John Ringling wants to pirate-it's
a sign of progress. No. Really. I'm glad your time's come. No one
deserves it more than you. Are you leaving immediately?"

"I'll join them at winter quarters."

"So you've got time with us yet."

"Yes."

"Well, then. Let's toast your success. We'll have some Calvados,
imported from France. What do you say?"

"Sure Al G."

With that, Dan got up and retrieved a decanter of greenish liquid
from the sideboard, along with four snifters. For the next while, we all
sat sipping a warm alcoholic beverage that tasted like heaven, Al G.
telling Dan and Leonora stories about how we met. Like a true gentlemen, he left out the embarrassing and compromising parts-like my
being a mental institution runaway and a bigamist and a cooch dancer.
Come to think of it, there was a whole lot he had to leave out, enough
he had to pretty much start making it up: in his rendition I was a talented young dancer with clout instead of a girl earned her living by
dropping her harem top in a Superba tent. Seems he'd wooed me with
promises of riches and stardom and fancy dressing rooms before I'd
even considered joining his woeful little operation.

When Dan offered me another snifter I accepted, and with each
warm sip what'd just happened sank in a little further. Leonora and
Dan each had a second helping as well, Leonora growing flirtatious and
tipsy and even Dan beginning to smile a bit. Just when I thought Al G.
might offer us another, he slapped his palms against the writing pad on
his desk and used the momentum to carry him to his feet. He stood,
hands on his hips, beaming.

"Well. No point staying here, wasting coal. If we turn around
now we might even make those Chicago shows."

The next thing you know old Dan was walking up and down the
car line ringing the big copper bell that was used to signal the cookhouse was open or it was fifteen minutes to showtime or the train was
leaving the station and if you were fixing on coming along now was the
time to get on.

What's more, there was a happiness in the way he was ringing it.

So we got out of Canada and we got out quick. Burnt an entire ton of
lump fuel charging through the northern states. Al G. didn't explain his
lunacy of the past five days to anyone else, but he did apologize by stopping the train in North Dakota and having a huge barbecue with
steaks and beer. A band of Indians formed a curious lineup a little way
off, some of whom were recruited to play whooping parts on the Wild
West. While we were stopped Al G. sat next to me and kept my plate
filled with potato salad. I reckoned it was to prove there were no hard
feelings.

Of course, a bunch of the workingmen ran off, took up with
squaws or got themselves killed in bar fights for all I know, so we had
to stop in Bismarck so Dan could go recruiting in the hostels and clap
wards. Stopped again in the middle of Minnesota to water the animals,
and we all gillied into a local town where Swedish meatballs were on
the menu. Then we chugged straight on through Wisconsin and made
it to Oak Park, Illinois, for two days' worth of shows come the tail end
of May.

After the first matinee I leashed up Rajah and tickled his ears and
said, "You and me and Al G. have something important to talk about.
Something regarding you, my baby. Let's go see if we can catch him
in." We walked through the lot at the same time the rubes were coming
out of the after-show, so Rajah and I attracted a crowd of people trying to get close enough to have a look but not so close they were in danger of getting bitten. Rajah just licked his lips, like he was looking at
breakfast, something that made them all laugh. They followed us past
the freak banners to Al G.'s tent by the main entrance.

Dan was there when Rajah and I came in, so as politely as possible I told him Al G. and I had some personal business to attend to. This
news doured his expression-suddenly it looked like pea soup brought
to a simmer-and he looked over at Al G.

Al G. nodded it was okay and Dan left.

"Well, Kentucky," he said. "Caught your finale today."

"You did?"

"I did, just for old times' sake. No wonder the Ringlings want
you so bad. Scares me every time I see it and I've seen it a hundred times if I've seen it once. Don't you worry Rajah will go rogue one of
these days?"

"Rajah? Doesn't know the meaning of rogue."

"Let's just hope he keeps it that way. I'd hate to see you torn up
before you go off to fame and fortune."

"Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Mr. Ringling
wants to buy Rajah. He says he'll give you more than he's worth."

This set Al G. to thinking, though whether it was real thinking or
Al G. pretending his plan was spur of the moment I couldn't be sure.
He was pursing his lips and making a church steeple out of his fingers
and pointing the taller ones into his forehead. He looked up and said:
"It's Sunday, Kentucky. No show tonight. Why don't you and I go for
dinner? We've known each other for almost ten years now and we've
never once had dinner together. We'll paint the town red. Spend some
cash. What do you say?"

Here I looked down at Rajah; my intention had been to spend the
evening with him, as he'd been a little unsettled by the hysteria of the
past week and had taken to getting into my underwear drawer and ripping what he found to shreds. At the same time, I couldn't bring him
into town and there was no way I was going to miss this meeting with
Al G. After I'd accepted the offer, Rajah and I went back to the car.
While I dolled myself up I explained to him I had to go out, but to make
it up to him I'd have one of the butchers bring by a hip bone. Hearing
this, Rajah arfed and turned less mopey.

A half-hour later I inspected myself in the mirror. This was
something I rarely did, for looking at myself without getting a clenched
feeling in the pit of the stomach was a talent I'd never really developed.
Far as I could tell, I had everything right. A drop-waist dress, tight at
the top and bottom, with a belt that made my waist look like it was the
same thing as my hips. A Japanese parasol made from oiled paper, and
why women needed this for evening jaunts I didn't question, my having long accepted fashion as something intended not to make sense. Buckled evening slippers with what they called lavatory heels. (Again,
you tell me.) Velvet evening gloves. A chapeau that fitted the head like
an elasticized salad bowl, my only opportunity for showing off my best
feature being to pomade two tight little curls so they stuck out from the
hat edge and curled around my ears. To top it all off, a fox stole with a
clamp sewed into its mouth, so that even in death it could prevent slippage by chomping on its own tail.

Still, there was no denying the bloom was off the rose. The first
problem was my arms and legs, which weren't as bad as they are today
but were still a mess of scars; though the trend was to wear sleeves
rolled to the elbows, I had to keep mine tight to the wrists, something
that made me look a little grannyish. Likewise with dress hems, which
were drifting up toward the knees, though for obvious reasons not on
yours truly. And though I had a few minor nicks and scars on my face
that could be disguised with foundation, that damn rip to my eye had
done something permanent to the muscles in the eyelid. Truth was, it
hung a tiny bit lower than its partner, the upshot being if you thought
about my face for more than a few seconds you realized it was a little
bit cock-eyed. Seeing this, I squeezed my eyes shut and took deep
inhalations; there'd been people in Hopkinsville who'd looked this
way, and by this I mean just not quite right in the face. Least I had tigers
to blame.

I walked away from the mirror and knelt in front of where Rajah
was lying. I cupped that face in my hands, whiskers tickling what little
of my wrists were exposed. Two emeralds looked up as I said, "Look
what you're doing to me, you naughty tiger. You're going to put men
off me...." He grinned and licked his nose and generally practised being
an imp and a tiger simultaneous.

When I was finished teasing him I kissed him and stood and
looked in the mirror once more and took a deep, nerve-steadying
breath. I stepped outside and saw a car waiting. A chauffeur was holding the door open, though most of what I could see inside was shadows. There was, however, a leg protruding from the gloom, covered in
striped material and ending in a polished spat, and my assumption was
it belonged to Al G.

I got in the car and was proven correct.

That evening Al G. took me to one of the best restaurants in Chicago,
and though I forget the name I remember the menu was all in French
French and not the uncommon French they speak in the Bayou. The
table was decorated with candles and fresh flowers and real silver, and
there were men in tuxedos who wandered around playing whatever you
wanted on the violin so long as you gave them a dollar afterwards. Al
G. joked we should ask for something minor key and frigolet-ish, a joke
that made me chuckle, though in the end he paid for "I Dreamt I Dwelt
In Marble Halls," a song popular back then and one I liked because it
was something I'd dreamt as well.

Was the twenties, you see, and with all that money starting to
float around people were looking for new ways to spend it. Everything
we ate that night had names I'd never heard before: Waldorf Salad and
Lobster Newburg and Oysters Rockefeller and Baked Alaska. Before
dinner we started with a brand-new drink that came in a long-stemmed
glass with a cone-shaped bowl. They called it a martini, and it tasted a
little like the ethyl propolene we used to run the generators (though
with a hint of taste given by the olive plopped in the middle of it). The
sight of all these people in expensive suits and fox stoles sipping these
drinks like they were the nectar of the gods was enough to make me
believe old P.T. had been right when he'd said the public could be made
to believe anything. Hell, I even tried one myself. After two I could've
yodelled from a mountaintop.

Still.

I figured we were here to discuss business, and around the time
the white wine came, along with the funny salad crammed with nuts
and apples and slices of celery, I upped and outed with it: "Al G. We have to talk about Rajah. Mr. Ringling needs an idea what he's going
to cost."

Al G. looked weakened. His mouth shrivelled and his eyes rounded and his eyebrows slanted up and toward the middle, so that they
looked like the sides of a pup tent. He wiped his mouth on a linen napkin and said, "Kentucky. Please..." and without giving me enough time
to figure out what that please was supposed to mean he started telling
me about the first sideshow act the Barnes dog-and-pony ever
employed, a prestidigitator with a sickness that made him keen on
burning things to the ground. One night, when they were playing in a
room above an Odd Fellows Hall, this particular prestidigitator went
back to the hall in the middle of the night and did just that, the building reduced to a mound of cinders in minutes. The whole town got in
a ruckus and when Al G. heard about it he knew what'd happened. In a
flash he packed up his dog, his ponies, his performing mule and his
Edison Vitascope and he hightailed it out of town before the rubes figured out the travelling show was the culprit. As he fled he kept looking
over his shoulder and seeing smoke funnel toward the skies, and as he
did he wished he had a pair of horses instead of two short-legged
ponies incapable of flat-out running.

Course, it was a story that made me laugh heartily, for being
chased by rubes is a panic I'd known once or twice myself. As I
laughed, it occurred to me this was the best sort of story there is:
sad then, funny now, with miles and miles of honest picked up along
the way.

The fish came and after that a huge slab of meat, chateau something or other, that Al G. and I were meant to share. I lost count of the
glasses of wine the waiter brought, though I do remember they kept
changing colours, from white to garnet to a light green one we had
with our flaming ice cream. Throughout, Al G. kept telling one story
after another, and as the wine made me number and number and his
stories made me giddier and giddier, I began to feel like a spoilsport for wanting to discuss matters of commerce. Afterwards we took a walk
down Michigan Avenue, the Windy City not living up to its name that
night for the air was balmy and still and the sidewalks full of people
strolling. It felt good to be with someone I'd known for nearly a decade
and had never rubbed the wrong way. It was like it proved something
good about myself.