I lean over and retrieve it. August snatches it from my hand, and the elephant’s ears settle back against her head.
“Here, princess,” says August, addressing me. “I have a job you might be able to handle. Go find Marlena. Make sure she doesn’t go behind the menagerie for a bit.”
“Why?”
August takes a deep breath and grips the bull hook so hard his knuckles whiten. “Because I said so. All right?” he says through clenched teeth.
Naturally, I head behind the menagerie to find out what Marlena’s not supposed to see. I round the corner just as Pete slits the throat of a decrepit gray horse. The horse screams as blood shoots six feet from the gaping hole in its neck.
“Jesus Christ!” I yelp, taking a step backward.
The horse’s heart slows, and the spurts weaken. Eventually the horse drops to its knees and crashes forward. It scrapes the ground with its front hooves and then falls still. Its eyes are open wide. A lake of dark blood spreads from its neck.
Pete glances up at me, still leaning over the twitching animal.
An emaciated bay horse is tethered to a stake beside him, out of its head with terror. Its nostrils are flared, showing red, its muzzle straight in the air. The lead rope is so taut it looks like it’s going to snap. Pete steps across the dead horse, grabs the rope near the bay’s head, and slices its throat. More spurting blood, more death throes, another collapsing body.
Pete stands with his arms slack at his sides, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, still holding the bloody knife. He watches the horse until it dies and then raises his face to me.
He wipes his nose, spits, and gets back to the task at hand.
“MARLENA? YOU IN THERE?” I say, rapping on the door of their stateroom.
“Jacob?” calls a small voice from inside.
“Yes,” I say.
“Come in.”
She’s standing by one of the open windows, looking toward the front of the train. As I enter, she turns her head. Her eyes are wide, her face drained of blood.
“Oh, Jacob . . .” Her voice is wavering. She’s on the verge of tears.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” I say, crossing the room.
She presses her hand to her mouth and turns back to the window.
August and Rosie are making their noisy way to the front of the train. Their progress is excruciating, and everyone on the lot has stopped to watch.
August smacks her from behind, and Rosie hurries a few steps forward. When August catches up, he whacks her again, this time hard enough that she raises her trunk, bellows, and scampers sideways. August lets loose a long string of curses and runs up beside her, swinging the bull hook and driving the pick end into her shoulder. Rosie whimpers and this time doesn’t move an inch. Even from this distance, we can see that she’s trembling.
Marlena chokes back a sob. On impulse I reach for her hand. When I find it, she clutches my fingers so tightly they hurt.
After a few more thumps and whacks, Rosie catches sight of the elephant car at the front of the train. She lifts her trunk and trumpets, taking off at a thunderous run. August disappears in a cloud of dust behind her, and panicked roustabouts dive out of her way. She climbs aboard with obvious relief.
The dust subsides and August reappears, shouting and waving his arms. Diamond Joe and Otis trudge up to the elephant car, slowly, matter-of-factly, and set about shutting it.
COLLECTION OF THE RINGLING CIRCUS MUSEUM, SARASOTA, FLORIDA
Kinko spends the first few hours of the jump to Chicago using bits of beef jerky to teach Queenie, who has apparently recovered from her diarrhea, to walk on her hind legs.
“Up! Up, Queenie, up! Atta girl. Good girl!”
I’m lying on my bedroll, curled up and facing the wall. My physical state is every bit as sorry as my mental one, and that’s saying something. My head is crammed with visions, all jumbled up like a ball of string: My parents alive, depositing me at Cornell. My parents dead, and the green and white floor tiles beneath them. Marlena, waltzing with me in the menagerie. Marlena this morning, fighting tears at the window. Rosie and her snuffing, inquisitive trunk. Rosie, ten feet tall and solid as a mountain, whimpering under August’s blows. August, tap-dancing across the roof of a moving train. August as a bull-hook-wielding madman. Barbara, swinging those melons onstage. Barbara and Nell, and their expert ministrations.
The memory of last night hits me like a wrecking ball. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to force my mind to go blank, but it won’t. The more distressing the memory, the more persistent its presence.
Eventually Queenie’s excited yipping stops. After a few seconds, the springs on Kinko’s cot squeak. Then there’s silence. He’s watching me. I can feel it. I roll over to face him.
He’s on the edge of the cot, his bare feet crossed and his red hair mussed. Queenie creeps into his lap, leaving her hind legs sticking straight out, like a frog.
“So, what’s your story, anyway?” says Kinko.
The sunlight flashes like knives through the slats behind him. I cover my eyes and grimace.
“No, I mean it. Where’d you come from?”
“Nowhere,” I say, rolling back to the wall. I pull my pillow over my head.
“What are you so sore about? Last night?”
The mere mention causes bile to rise in my throat.
“You embarrassed or something?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, would you just leave me alone?” I snap.
He is quiet. After a few seconds I roll over again. He’s still looking at me, fingering Queenie’s ears. She licks his other hand, wagging her stump.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Well, yeah—I think that was pretty obvious.”
I grasp my pounding head with both hands. What I wouldn’t give for about a gallon of water—
“Look, it’s no big deal,” he continues. “You’ll learn to hold your liquor. As for the other stuff—well, I had to get you back for the other day. The way I see it, this makes us even. In fact, I may even owe you one. That honey stopped Queenie up like a cork. So, you know how to read?”
I blink a few times. “Huh?” I say.
“You wanna read maybe, instead of just lying there stewing?”
“I think I’ll just lie here stewing.” I squeeze my eyes shut and cover them with my hand. My brain feels too big for my skull, my eyes hurt, and I may throw up. And my balls itch.
“Suit yourself,” he says.
“Maybe some other time,” I say.
“Sure. Whatever.”
A pause.
“Kinko?”
“Yeah?”
“I appreciate the offer.”
“Sure.”
A longer pause.
“Jacob?”
“Yeah?”
“You can call me Walter if you want.”
Under my hand, my eyes open wide.
His cot squeaks as he rearranges himself. I sneak a look through splayed fingers. He folds his pillow in half, lies back, and grabs a book from the crate. Queenie settles at his feet, watching me. Her eyebrows twitch with worry.
THE TRAIN APPROACHES Chicago in the late afternoon. Despite my pounding head and aching body, I stand in the open door of the stock car craning my neck to get a good look. After all, this is the city of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, of jazz, gangsters, and speakeasies.
I can see a handful of tall buildings in the distance, and just as I’m trying to make out which one of them is the fabled Allerton we reach the stockyards. There are miles of them, and we slow to a crawl as we pass. The buildings are flat and ugly, and the pens, crammed with panicked, lowing cattle and filthy, snuffing pigs, butt right up against the tracks. But that is nothing compared to the noises and smells coming from the buildings: within minutes the bloody stench and piercing shrieks send me flying back to the goat room to press my nose against the mildewed horse blanket—anything to replace the smell of death.