This Side of Jordan (34 page)

“Melvin?”

Wilted flower petals blown on the cold wind from the nearby woods showered the carnival darkness as Alvin lay on his back staring up at a poster of Jupiter the Balloon Horse nailed onto a two-by-four in front of an exhibit called Cirque Olympic. Clare knelt above him in a plain yellow print frock and cloche hat. She held a small beaded handbag at her side. A sudden gust riffled her dress, forcing her to cover herself from the scurrying sawdust. Across the way, a quartet of polka dot clowns and trained poodles turned cartwheels for a cheery group of children. Swarms of townspeople hurried by. High-arching skyrockets burst upon the cloudy night sky.

“Oh, Melvin, are you all right?” Clare asked, concern in her eyes. “I've been so worried.”

Alvin's head swam as he sat up. He felt confused and had no idea where he was. He mumbled, “I was just having a nap.”

“In the mirror house?”

“Huh?” Alvin's eyes watered and his head hurt. He thought he might be sick to his stomach.

“You were lying on the floor in the mirror house when Mr. Hughes from the radio shop found you. Are you sure you're all right? Maybe I should fetch a doctor. You look awfully pale.”

“I got lost.”

Clare giggled. “Why, you silly! You were only a few steps from the exit!”

“Oh yeah?” Alvin replied, still feeling bewildered. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the rear exit to the Palace of Mirrors. He hardly remembered a thing. “I guess it was dark.”

“When Mr. Hughes and that other fellow carried you out of the mirror house, they said you felt light as a bird.” Wind blew in her hair. “Have you been eating well?”

Alvin rose slowly, keeping his eyes focused on the poster of Jupiter the Balloon Horse. He was sorely feverish. “I got fixed up with a bad radish last week and it gave me a whopping bellyache. I suppose I was pretty sick for a couple days there.”

He stood still for a moment to take his bearings. The Big Top was just ahead along the midway. Clare held him gently by the arm, close enough for Alvin to smell the fragrant Orange Blossom perfume she wore.

“Be careful,” she said, keeping him steady.

“I'm all right now,” Alvin lied, his dizziness easing. “I ain't sick no more.”

“I'm awfully worried. You look so pasty and thin.”

“Well, I guess I been working too much inside them tents,” he told her, as a pair of gypsy swordsmen led a baby elephant past. He tried changing the subject. “This circus is pretty swell, ain't it?”

Clare's expression brightened. “Oh, it's so marvelous I'm just lost for words! It's absolutely grand! Why, I'll bet you've seen a million shows, haven't you? It must be wonderful to be in the circus.”

“It's a panic, all right,” he replied, watching the noisy crowds. “But see, we've got to put it over big every night and that ain't so easy, let me tell you. Some nights, well, even for those of us that got sawdust in our blood, it just ain't in the cards and whatever you do ain't half enough.” The farm boy kicked at the dirt, uneasy with fibbing her.

Clare tugged at his arm. “Oh Melvin, let's go see the lions, can't we? Please?”

“Why, sure we can,” he replied as the wind gusted, fanning up dry leaves and paper scraps. “If that's what you want.” He knew he could honey her up if she gave him half a chance.

“Oh, it is!”

Alvin looked through the noisy crowds to the ticket booth at the opening to the Big Top. “Say, wait here, will you? Let me talk to that tooter over there.”

“All right.” Clare smiled sweetly. “Hurry!”

Alvin went across to the derbyhatted ticket taker. Keeping his back to Clare, he said, “I need two tickets.”

“It's ten cents.” The fellow's eyes were bloodshot and his teeth tobacco stained. He raised his eyes and nodded in Clare's direction. “Is she your sweetheart?”

Still feverish, the farm boy dug the change out of his pocket and handed it over on the sly. “Yeah, what of it?”

“She sure's a peach,” said the ticket taker, his attention stuck on Clare. “I'll bet she's nice to smooch, too, ain't she?”

The farm boy scowled. “Say, maybe you ought to button up your face. I can scrap pretty good and I ain't afraid to, neither.”

“Oh yeah?” The fellow snickered at Alvin.

“Yeah.”

“Get on along, buster, I'm busy.” Turning away from Alvin, he began his spiel again to the passing crowds. “STEP RIGHT UP! STEP RIGHT UP! NOW UNDER THE BIG TOP! FEROCIOUS LIONS TAMED BY THE INCOMPARABLE BALDINADO THE GREAT! WITNESS THE BEAUTIFUL JENNY DODGE PERFORMING THE MOST ASTOUNDING MID-AIR SOMERSAULTING EXPLOITS ON EARTH! WONDER OF WONDERS! STEP RIGHT UP! STEP RIGHT UP!”

The farm boy waved and Clare came over and he led her under the fluttering banners at the entrance to the Big Top, the ticket taker whistling rudely at Clare as she went by.

Once they were inside the tent, Alvin told her, “That fellow gives me the creeps.”

She agreed, “He seems awfully fresh.”

“That ain't the half of it.”

By the crowded plankwood bleachers, Clare squealed, “Oh, Melvin, look at all the pretty ponies!”

The Wild West show had filled the big tent rings with Apache bareback riders and sturdy soldiers in blue cavalry outfits amid deafening gunfire. A frightful massacre! Siberian Cossacks and Arabian swordsmen emerged from the wings to join the fray. Wild horses stampeded over flaming hurdles. Guns boomed. Steel sabers flashed. The audience shrieked with delight at an Indian war cry and another round of booming cannon fire.

Alvin's ears were ringing when he felt Clare pinch his arm.

“Isn't it just wonderful?” she said.

“Sure,” Alvin replied, “but I don't see nowhere to sit.”

Since fainting in the mirror maze, he had become terrifically worried about getting stuck in a crowd. He guessed his fever hadn't reduced much at all and his stomach felt rotten. He watched a band of feathered Apaches riding bareback ponies away from the battle to a large cheer while a troupe of friendly clowns passed out sticks of cotton candy to eager children in the front row. More people shoved past. The ringmaster in red tails and black top-hat bounded into the center ring to a chorus of brass trumpets. High overhead a glittering troupe of blue-sequined aerialists crowded the lofty tightwire perches. Flaming torches flared. Smells of fresh popcorn and steaming horse manure and gun smoke filled the air. The ringmaster addressed his audience by megaphone: “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! EMMETT J. LASWELL PRESENTS THE GRANDEST, MOST COLOSSAL, SPECTACULAR, SENSATIONAL SHOW OF THE AGE!”

“Didn't your little friend say he was with the Wild West show?” Clare asked, entwining her arm with Alvin's.

The farm boy shook his head as he coughed. “Naw, he laid an egg in Joplin with that fool knife trick of his and got canned. Now all they let him do is juggle apples on the midway for a kiddie show. I guess he'll be blowing the circus pretty soon now.”

“Gee, that's too bad. But you'll still be performing tonight, won't you? I'm awfully anxious to watch. Remember, I'll be pulling for you.”

Alvin cocked his head at her, feigning his best expression of puzzlement. “Ain't you seen my act? Why, I put it on an hour ago.”

Clare's jaw dropped. “Oh dear!”

“It went over swell, too. First stunt of the night. Why, I never heard such a racket as when I gave them Bengal tigers the ol' whip. Laswell himself said it was just about the swellest performance he ever seen and he ain't usually that liberal with his compliments. Says he might even star me in the next show.”

The farm boy looked off toward the prancing ringmaster. He scouted the bleachers again for somewhere they could have a better look at the string of gargantuan India elephants parading into the three-ring circus as the daring highwalkers balanced beneath silk parasols and formed pyramids across from the great trapeze. A huge cheer went up from the surrounding crowds. Tramp clowns danced and tumbled on the sawdust. A slim fellow in a silver suit was shot out of a giant black cannon and sailed across the tent into a rope net, saluting to the grandstand as he flew by. Zebras and camels and trained bears appeared in the wings with a family of Turkish acrobats. The ringmaster doffed his hat. When the farm boy turned back to Clare, she was gone. Alvin called her name and walked forward to the edge of the wooden bleachers and searched the audience there. When he didn't see her, he looked back toward the Big Top entrance and the flocks of people crowding around Zulu the Cannibal King who had come into the big canvas tent juggling six bleached human skulls.

“Melvin!”

Clare's voice, nearly drowned out by the commotion in the center ring, came from the musty darkness beneath the old bleachers. Crouching down under the fifth row planks, the farm boy saw Clare kneeling in the damp sawdust with a frilly bundle of white in her arms, a little girl dressed in Sunday lace wearing a cute baby bonnet on her head. When the child noticed Alvin staring at her, she cried out, “Mama! Mama! I want my mama!”

Clare smiled at the farm boy. “The poor dear's lost.”

“How'd she get under there?” Alvin asked, crawling a few feet forward. A Phunny Phord clown car backfired over and over as a pile of midgets in police uniforms chased a pony-drawn firewagon around the outside of the rings and a trio of midget firemen parachuted down from the tent peak. The crowd roared with delight.

Alvin backed up as Clare guided the little girl out from under the bleachers. “She ain't hurt, is she?”

Clare shook her head. “No, but she's awfully frightened. And listen to her voice, it's so husky. I think she's caught a cold.”

The child whimpered and buried her face in Clare's bosom.

“Well, where's her folks?” Alvin asked, searching the crowds nearby for a worried face. There were so many people jammed together under the tent, he wasn't surprised a little kid could get separated from her parents. Glancing up to the white canvas tent top, he watched a Chinese cyclist riding across the tightwire with a pair of squealing red-capped monkeys on his shoulders.

“Why, Melvin, I think she wants us to take her to her mother!”

The farm boy saw that Clare had let go of the child and was being tugged toward the tent exit. “What if her mama ain't left yet?” he asked. “What if she's still looking in the tent?”

The little girl pointed to the exit. “Mama! Mama!”

“You see?” Clare said. “I think she wants us to go with her, the poor dear. She seems to know where her mother went.”

“Well, gee whiz, we ain't hardly seen nothing of the show yet,” the farm boy complained, staring at the child who was about the homeliest kid he had ever laid eyes on. He wished she'd stop her sniveling. There were lots of worse places to get yourself lost than at a circus.

Instead, the little girl whimpered again, “I want my mama! I want my mama!”

Clare picked her up and gave her a hug. “Sweetheart, we'll find your mama, I promise.” She looked up at Alvin. “Don't you see what I mean? Oh honey, I guess we'll just have to find her mother.”

The crowd roared as the Great Baldinado strode into the lion cage and cracked his leather whip at the King of Beasts, inspiring the bandmaster to strike up a rousing chorus of “Cyrus the Great.” A troupe of Egyptian contortionists emerged from a sequence of tiny drums. Gold-spangled acrobats soared on swaypoles high above as Clare led the little girl out of the Big Top with Alvin trailing reluctantly behind.

Wind blew across the busy midway, scattering wastepaper and errant balloons. Music from the carousel rang like distant choral bells. Alvin felt a chill and buttoned his shirt up to the collar. What a switch! An hour ago he had been alone and now he had himself a family. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps he might marry this girl one day if consumption didn't kill him. She was pretty and smelled like spring flowers. He thought he would go with her as often as she'd stand for it. They passed the musical Whirly-Gig as it discharged another group of breathless passengers. A roustabout in a flat cap winked at Clare as he took tickets for the next ride. On a platform a few feet away sat pasty-faced Minnie the Fat Lady eating a ripe watermelon. The little girl whined again for her mother and pointed Clare to the showgrounds entrance, crowded with newly arrived circus-goers. Alvin smelled steamed hotdogs and mustard and watched an old Negro in suspenders and a tarnished derby lead a pair of spotted ponies toward the lot of painted bandwagons. More boys from town hurried by, stuffing popcorn and Crackerjack into their mouths as they ran.

“Why, I think she wants us to take her home,” Clare said to Alvin, as crimson skyrockets lit the black sky. “She's awfully insistent.”

Across the midway, a skinny concessionaire's tiny white poodle rolled over and jumped up and did a backflip off an apple crate next to the soda pop stand. An audience of children clapped loudly.

The farm boy frowned. “Well, that just don't seem at all fair. You hardly been here yet and there's still lots to see.”

“Oh, but there'll be other shows, and you said yourself that you're finished. Isn't that right? Meanwhile, this poor little tot's frightened half to death and can scarcely wait to get back to her mother.” Clare knelt down to give the little girl a kiss on the nose and received a kiss on the lips in exchange. She giggled and the little girl pinched her cheek. Clare picked her up and hugged the smiling child to her bosom. “You see what I mean? Isn't she the cutest thing you ever saw? Oh Melvin, you're looking all blue. I suppose you've got your heart set on seeing the rest of the show tonight, don't you? Well, why don't I take her home myself? It's silly for both of us to leave so early and I'm sort of played out, anyhow, so I'm sure I wouldn't be good company.”

Her dainty yellow frock fluttered in the wind. Somewhere across the dark showgrounds, a trumpet blew. A troupe of sequined acrobats marched out of the fluttering shadows beside the cage wagons.