Woman Who Loved the Moon (25 page)

Once again I have restored the title, from “Circus” to the original. Roy Torgeson, when he changed it, said that “Circus” was more succinct, but I think “The Circus That Disappeared” simply took up too much space on the page...

* * *

Evening was dark and warm beneath a sky spangled with stars and laden with the scent of elephant. Angelo sat on the top stair of the trailer. He was mending his leopard skin, which had ripped last week during his wrestling match with Lila, the lioness. Lynellen danced in the dusk a few feet away. Dressed in tights and one of his shirts, she was practicing her belly dancing. She looked sixteen, which was not the case. Bells tinkled on her wrists and ankles.

She sang, incongruously,
“
Chicago, Chicago, that wonderful town!
”

“Can’t you sing something else?”

“You’re jealous,” she said, “because you’re not going home.”

Angelo grinned. He recalled his home town, a half-assed, tired hick town in Marion county, Florida, with neither enthusiasm nor nostalgia. He had ridden a flatcar out of it when he turned fourteen. He’d never much wanted to go back. But he’d never liked Chicago, either, with its crammed streets and smelly imitation beaches. “I’m jealous you’re singing a song to a goddam city and not to me.”

She rippled her stomach muscles at him and went gliding away to the second trailer. The doors were shut, but Angelo could hear through the metal walls the raucous clatter of the rock music that Ricky loved, and played incessantly. In the three months they’d been on the road together he’d never heard the radio click off. The announcers’ accents changed as they traveled, but the music stayed the same. Lynellen knocked on the door. As Millicent opened it the music yelled, sounding like a soul escaping into the night. Lila roared in her cage. She sounded lonely. Angelo rose.

You can put a circus anywhere. Everyone loves the circus. All you need is enough space and willing people to erect the tents, clean the grounds, water and feed the animals, and answer the telephone.
Marvel the Magician’s Miniature Carnival
needed little space: a park, an old baseball diamond, any place with running water and a space to stick a gate. There are always people to help when the circus comes to town. Kids watching the highway see the trucks pull into town and drag their parents (whose memories of earlier circuses lie soft in their bellies) to look. They gape when Jugger and Angelo, the elephant and the animal trainer (also lion tamer, strong man, and catcher for the trapeze act) lug the big canvas tent out onto the grounds. Angelo and Jugger had played the same scene over four states. They would play once more tonight in this Indiana town. Ricky and Millicent in their clown makeup, Lynellen in her sequins, Tony in his tights, and Marvel the Magician in his ringmaster’s get-up strolled into the crowd, saying, “Help put up the circus! Come on!”

And the kids, fresh out of high school and still on the farm, followed the giant black ringmaster or the dwarf clowns or the dancing acrobats to the pile of canvas, where Angelo told them: “
Here, hold this and grab those stakes, the frame’s aluminum but the name of the game’s the same, the tent goes up by sundown
...” pushing them with patter and jokes into a clumsy crew that, by god, got the tent up by sundown. It always worked. At sundown, when the tall lights flicked on, they hauled their friends to the tent.
“
See this? I put this stake in, with Angelo, the strong man. Hey, Angelo!
” Angelo waved to them all, making up names—”
Hey, Curly, hey, Lefty, how ya doing?
”—to see them swell and grin.

Sometimes Ricky grumbled, “Is this the way to run a circus?”

Millicent always answered him. “Damn right.” They all knew it was. The circus was more than a profession. It was a passion, it was their life, it was the only game in town. Each of them, Angelo and Lynellen and Ricky and Millicent and Tony, even Lila and Jugger (short for Juggernaut) was a Barnum bust, an act tossed out of other circuses for being too bad, too good, too simple, too subtle, too lazy, or too late. Lynellen had been a stripper, Tony had been tricking in Dallas, Angelo had been bumming, pitch to pitch, when Marvel picked him up. Each would give his skin to keep
Marvel the Magician’s Miniature Carnival
in business.

Angelo heard Lila pacing. “Hey baby.” She swung her great head toward him but refused to stop. He sat and talked to her. At last her pacing slowed. She stood against the bars, and when he put his hand through, licked it raspingly, a gesture of trust and affection. She had never, except in fear, hurt him. Tony joked,
“
Her mother was an alley cat.
” She was the tamest lioness Angelo had ever seen.

He said good-bye to her and went on to the other cage, where Jugger slept, standing immobile as a gray rock. Tony was filling her water tub. His shadowy form bent over it. Water splashed from the hose. He was talking. “You wanna go to Chicago, big mamma? I bet you don’t. What d’you say we take a run. I open the cage, jump on your back. You run like hell. Think we can find you a bull elephant, maybe in some cornfield away from Chicago?”

Angelo said, “Jugger wouldn’t know what to do with a bull even if you found her one.”

Tony started. “Hey. You move like that damn cat,” he said. “You could say hello.”

“Sorry,” said Angelo. He sat on a nearby crate. “Animals okay?”

“Restless,” Tony said. “They donwanna go to no city.”

Angelo nodded. Lila rumbled from her cage.

“Why are we going to Chicago, anyway?” said Tony. “The big shows go to Chicago. Shriner’s. Ringling’s. They donwanna see us.

“I don’t know,” said Angelo. This had bothered him, too.

Tony shrugged with his palms. “I guess Marvel knows what he’s doin’.”

“I guess.”

“You wanna go?”

Angelo dug a heel into the soft damp dirt. “Not much,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t like cities. Too cold and hard. Buildings like metal and concrete boxes, and no trees.”

“Um. I like cities sometimes.” Tony spoke wistfully. “There’s more people like me in ‘em. I miss the bars.”

“You could find a city gig,” said Angelo.

Tony turned the hose so that it sprayed a dark puddle on the dusty ground. He shut it off. “City circuses got all the pretty boys they want, man.” He spoke without bitterness, and with just a tinge of regret. “I’m getting too old for it. I’ll stick with Marvel. He’s a good manager. It’s a good gig, getting the kids to roustabout, sticking to the small towns. He knows what he’s doing.” He pulled out a cigarette. “You thinkin’ of leaving?”

“No,” Angelo said. “I just don’t want to go to Chicago.”

“Yeah.” Tony’s cigarette glowed.

“You shouldn’t smoke, it’ll cut your wind.”

The acrobat chuckled. “I’m thirty-five, my wind’s shot anyway. I’m a has-been. We’re all has-beens.”

“Give me one,” said the strong man. Tony passed him the pack. They sat in companionable silence while the music from the clowns’ trailer leaked over the fairground, distant as if it came from another galaxy.

The next night the tent filled until it almost burst its seams. The kids played usher for their own neighbors, ran errands for Lynellen, and gingerly, under Angelo’s direction, set up the movable lion’s cage in the center of the ring. Two of them, with Ricky’s rough and expert help, put on ruffs and whiteface and went to cartwheel and pratfall like professionals in front of Marvel as he strode to the ring, his whip snaking and snapping inches above their heads.

Angelo waited behind curtain for his cue. Marvel was a masterful showman. His deep voice resonated to every seat in the bleachers, making the tent expand until its one small ring seemed like three, or ten. Tony juggled. Lynellen danced. Then Marvel said, “In THIS comer, ladies and gentlemen, we present the most SPECTACULAR lion act you’ve ever witnessed, or ever will witness: Angelo the Animal Man, and LILA!” The audience applauded happily. They were ripe for it. Angelo gripped the loose skin at Lila’s neck and took a long deep breath. The big cat gathered herself together. Tony drew back the curtain. They walked out.

The noise continued for a moment, and then stopped. They paced across the tent floor, the man in his leopard skin and the lioness, tawny fur gleaming under the lights, walking silent and controlled and loose at his side. This was Angelo’s act, the act that Ringling and Shriner’s would not take because it was too small, too dangerous, and because no audience (they said) would believe that a man could control a lion with his hands.

They stalked to the cage. Angelo opened the door. Lila went in. He followed her, and closed it behind him.

Out of deference to whatever T.V. circuses the crowd might have seen, Angelo put Lila through a balancing act (without chair or whip), jumping, walking the beam, and so on. The audience oohed and aahed and asked for more. Marvel looked at Angelo. Angelo nodded. He sat Lila down like a sphinx on the floor. Marvel played with words. Angelo no longer heard them, but he heard the tune they made. When it was time he held up his empty hands and walked towards Lila. Like the lioness she was, she crouched, growling with delight. He looked into her eyes and gestured. She rolled on her back, hind legs poised to rip him open, claws carefully gentled for her favorite game.

He lunged on top of her, hands against her neck. The audience shrieked. Angelo crooned at Lila and counted seconds. At the count of thirty he rubbed her throat and she went limp. He stood up and put his foot on her belly, clasping his hands above his head like a winning boxer. The people screamed and cheered and stamped on the benches. He lifted his foot. Lila rolled upright. He caught her ruff and with stately grace they retraced the walk to the curtained exit. Lila jumped into her home cage, curling up in a corner like the mythical alley cat. Jugger set her broad brow against the bars, and pushed the cage back to its place.

Angelo went to the trailer to change for the strong man’s act. Lynellen was in it putting the finishing touches on her makeup. She wore sequins again. “Sounded good,” she said.

He kissed her. “You smell good.”

“I smell sweaty.”

“That’s what I mean.” He tried to hug her but she slipped from his hands and ran toward the tent. Someday, he thought, we’ll go somewhere alone, without Marvel, a faggot, two dwarves, a lion, and a goddamn elephant!

He pulled on the strong man’s costume. It was made of scratchy gold net. Under the lights it glittered like golden chains. He found the ice bucket and took a handful of ice. He rubbed it down his sides and chest. It cooled him. He walked slowly back to the tent. From the tone of the laughter he could tell that Lynellen and Jugger were almost through with their part of the act.

“Angelo?” It was a whisper. He turned to meet it. She was scrawny and young, with feathery brown hair and stick-thin wrists. She held out a hand to him. “Can I talk to you, please?”

He thought,
Another one lovestruck.
But she didn’t have that dreamy-eyed look. “What’s up, kiddo?” he said lightly.

“Could—could I join your circus?”

He smiled at her. “Beautiful, you don’t want to join the circus. The circus for you is one or two or three nights. But for us it’s forever. You don’t want that. Hell, you’re in the circus now. Didn’t I see you running around ushering?”

She nodded eagerly. “Yes. But I do want it forever. I can learn to dance, and to do the elephant act. See what I can do already!” Like a swift wheel she did an acrobat’s flip. “Please, say that I can join.”

“You don’t have to join the circus just to get out of town,” Angelo said gently. “Move to Chicago. Be a secretary.”

“Secretary!” She infused terrible scorn into the word. “Would you be a—a bus driver when you could be a strong man? I
won’t
be a secretary. Please. I’m old enough.”

From the way she said it, Angelo knew she was not. “Sweetheart, it isn’t my circus,” he said. “This is
Marvel the Magician’s Miniature Carnival,
and Marvel is the man who calls the shots. I work for him. I don’t tell him what to do. You have to ask him.”

“I have to ask him.” She sighed, and walked away, head sagging. They never did, the glitter-struck kids. Marvel was unapproachable.

A hard fist struck Angelo’s thigh. He looked down. “Get out there, you big hulk,” said Ricky. “You’re late.”

So he went out there, and lifted weights. Ricky and Millicent came in and tumbled and played and teased the crowd, until Lynellen and Angelo and Tony could sweep back in, wearing black and silver and red, and climb to the trapeze. Ricky sat at the bass drum and went boom with each somersault. It was their tightest act, and they made it good, swooping and flying, until Marvel brought them down. They bowed the carnival to a close. Marvel raised his whip in crackling gratitude to the people of the town, “whose love of carnival makes it happen. But there’s one more night of carnival, ladies and gentlemen,” Marvel sang, “so don’t despair, but be there!”

* * *

After the show they turned all but the trailer lights off, and sat in the great vacant tent. It cooled down. Ricky and Millicent sat together. Lynellen, in jeans and work shirt, prowled the tent with a plastic bag, picking up beer cans. Tony smoked a cigarette. Only Marvel did not share in this ritual. He was in his trailer. They talked a little of the show, of other shows. Tony’s cigarette was almost spent when a slim figure in a silver leotard and blue tights danced into the tent. It was the girl with the feathery hair. She ran up to them. “He said
Yes
!” She turned a back flip for joy. “I asked him and he said
Yes
!”