Of course the great floating extravaganza had seen better days. The old packet boat that towed the barge and menagerie behind it was in a constant state of disrepair; its kingposts, hogchains, and stern wheel had been replaced so many times that the vessel could no longer qualify as the original Yellow Wren. (Defaced by weather or wags, the name painted across its bow now read Yellow W en.) While it still maintained a few showy staterooms for its principals, the Yellow Wen seemed to anticipate its own wreckage: the plush banquettes had long since given up their stuffing, the gingerbread trim broken off to feed the high-pressure engine when fuel ran low. The ancient boiler pulsed like a dilated heart; pistons sputtered and would have come to a shuddering halt were it not for the occasional nudge from a passing bum boat. The grand saloon was converted to a mess hall, where performers practiced their juggling and the less carnivorous beasts — the ones not confined to the trailing menagerie scow — roamed free. Excluding the bedlam, however, when viewed from a levee at night, the moonlit Carnival of Fun in its musical progress constituted a siren-like tableau, luring small-town boys to swim out after it and sometimes drown.
Jenny had never meant to outshine her partners. After all, the Piccolomini Brothers — not really brothers but comrades involved with one another in a way Jenny didn’t at first understand — had voluntarily taken her under their wing. Impressed with her natural ability, they helped develop her talents until she was equally proficient on the bounding wire and the tightrope. Dubbing her Mimi Piccolomini, they broadened their repertoire to accommodate her, introducing various properties: unicycles and stilts. But Jenny, a quick study and already accomplished after her years of self-taught endeavor, soon surpassed the skill of her mentors and, without trying, upstaged them. Finally the Piccolominis, complaining of chronic seasickness, took their injured vanity and left the Carnival of Fun at Vidalia for a spot in a circus that thankfully traveled overland.
After that Jenny retired Mimi and, graduated now to center ring, carried on solo as La Funambula, Mistress of the Air. There were other mistresses of the air: Rosa Bunch in her hourglass corset, spinning like a whirligig from her swivel loop, and Yvette, who hung from a single trap by her fuchsia hair. Each regarded herself as a prima in her own right and in that capacity snubbed all other claimants to the title. La Funambula was snubbed as a matter of course, but never wholly integrated into the circus community, she was spared much of the usual venom. In any event, so preoccupied was Jenny with the demands of her midair ballet that she scarcely noticed the cold shoulders she received on the ground.
Marital status notwithstanding, the lordly ladies of the floating circus each had her circle of admirers, sometimes several at a single destination. The sons of senators and cotton barons showered their favorites with flowers and bonbons after every show. Heated competition among these young gallants sometimes moved them to fistfights and even duels, outrages that translated into boasting rights for the ladies in question. Naturally the young men gave their offerings in the hope of receiving favors in return, and while a few of the ladies did reciprocate amorously, all were deft at keeping their suitors at bay. Such artful teasing, however, only increased the tensions that stoked the disorderly atmosphere of the Yellow Wen, and many an embarkation was marked by jealous husbands flinging bouquets and bijouterie overboard.
Jenny, who shared tight quarters with Madame Hortense the Female Hercules, had no room for housing her own gifts, the loving cups and potted viburnums she gave away to the sideshow performers. She had no more need of tchotchkes than of romance, the pain of which she had not the least wish to repeat. Besides, Madame Hortense (whose weightlifting apparatus increased the steamboat’s draft by a foot) had conceived a maternal fondness for the wirewalker, and as Jenny’s self-appointed protector kept the predators at arm’s length.
It was the last of its kind, the Carnival of Fun, a relic from the days when showboats featured canebrake troupers in temperance comedies like Ten Nights in a Bar-Room. While nearly every other touring company or tent show had taken to the rails, Forepaugh and Broadway persisted in the novelty of their riverborne spectacle. With hyperbolic publicity and the promise of shared profits they’d lured a boatload of bally broads, kinkers, and clowns on board the Wen and the Palace that followed in its wake. Later on, as the carnival evolved into an authentic circus, first-class animal and aerial acts were added to the ranks. But in the end, for all its variety the floating “argosy of wonders” was a losing proposition. Salaries aside, the maintenance of the porous packet absorbed the lion’s share (sometimes literally) of the season’s revenue, and even the draw of a loop-the-looping automobile could barely compensate for the cost of steam-heating the amphitheater. To say nothing of the repairs to damage caused by the river itself — the fogs that led to collisions with driftwood, the runnings aground on islands and sandbars. There were medical bills due to accidents and injuries incurred in attacks by the natives of the towns where they played. No matter that the circus went to excessive lengths to convince the yokels of the show’s inherent morality, going so far as to label the menagerie living relics from biblical times: the hippopotamus was “the blood-sweating Behemoth of Holy Writ,” and so forth. Let there be a rumor of godless fornicators among the troupe, and the citizens, under the influence of sanctimony and drink, would rise up to punish the heathen. This was especially the case south of the Mason-Dixon Line, where the show people were often assumed to be of a debased Yankee persuasion. Then pitched battles would ensue, when the company had to defend themselves with guy stakes against knives and firearms.
Nor were the townspeople always satisfied with directing their malevolence toward the human performers. There were the boys that threw pepper between the bars of the gorilla’s cage or fed plug tobacco to the black bear. There was the time in Morganza, Louisiana, when Celeste the elephant, spooked by urchins who poked a broom in her hindquarters, bolted from the parade and crushed an alderman’s wife underfoot. When the town demanded vengeance, the circus had no recourse but to bow to public sentiment. Perfectly tractable now, Celeste was led by the bull handlers to the railyard, where a seven-eighth-inch chain was wrapped round her neck and she was hoisted into the air from a railroad derrick. The chain snapped and Celeste fell to earth in a stupor but made no resistance as a second chain was secured. When she was raised again, she sighed, died, and in keeping with the age-old protocol of lynchings, was dismembered, her bones and tusks displayed as trophies in the courthouse and barbershop.