August catches up. He lifts the bull hook high and then freezes. He turns his head and scans the audience. His hair flops over his forehead. He grins as he lowers the bull hook, and removes his top hat. He bows deeply, three times, aiming at different segments of the audience. When he turns back to Rosie, his face hardens.
By poking the bull hook in and around her underarms and legs, he persuades her to make a tour of sorts around the hippodrome. They go in fits and starts, stopping so many times the rest of the Spec is forced to continue around them, parting like water around a stone.
The audience loves it. Each time Rosie trots ahead of August and stops, they roar with laughter. And each time August approaches, red-faced and waving his bull hook, they explode with glee. Finally, about three-quarters of the way around, Rosie curls her trunk in the air and takes off at a run, leaving a series of thunderous farts in her wake as she barrels toward the back end of the tent. I am pressed against the bleachers, right by the entrance. Marlena grasps the head halter with both hands, and as they approach I catch my breath. Unless she bails, she is going to be knocked off.
A couple of feet from the entrance, Marlena lets go of the halter and leans hard to the left. Rosie disappears from the tent, and Marlena is left clinging to the top pole. The crowd falls silent, no longer sure that this is part of the act.
Marlena hangs limply, not a dozen feet from me. She’s breathing hard, with eyes closed and head down. I’m just about to step forward and lift her down when she opens her eyes, removes her left hand from the pole, and in one graceful movement swings around so she’s facing the audience.
Her face lights up and she points those toes. The band leader, watching from his post, signals furiously for a drum roll. Marlena begins swinging.
The drum roll mounts as she gains momentum. Before long she’s swinging parallel to the ground. I wonder how long she’s going to keep this up and just what the heck she’s planning to do when she suddenly releases the pole. She sails through the air, tucking her body into a ball and rolling forward twice. She uncurls for one sideways rotation, and lands firmly in a burst of sawdust. She looks at her feet, straightens up, and thrusts both arms into the air. The band launches into victory music and the crowd goes wild. Moments later, coins rain down on the hippodrome track.
AS SOON AS SHE TURNS, I can see that she’s hurt. She limps from the big top and I rush out behind her.
“Marlena—” I say.
She turns and collapses against me. I grasp her around the waist, holding her upright.
August rushes out. “Darling—my darling! You were brilliant. Brilliant! I’ve never seen anything more—”
He stops cold when he sees my arms around her.
Then she lifts her head and wails.
August and I lock eyes. Then we lock arms, beneath and behind her, forming a chair. Marlena whimpers, leaning against August’s shoulder. She tucks her slippered feet under our arms, clenching her muscles in pain.
August presses his mouth into her hair. “It’s okay, darling. I’ve got you now. Shhh. . . It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“Where should we go? Her dressing tent?” I ask.
“There’s nowhere to lie down.”
“The train?”
“Too far. Let’s go to the cooch girl’s tent.”
“Barbara’s?”
August shoots me a look over Marlena’s head.
We enter Barbara’s tent without any warning. She’s sitting in a chair in front of her vanity, dressed in a midnight blue negligee and smoking a cigarette. Her expression of bored disdain drops immediately.
“Oh my God. What’s going on?” she says, stubbing out her cigarette and leaping up. “Here. Put her on the bed. Here, right here,” she says, rushing in front of us.
When we lay Marlena down, she rolls onto her side, clutching her feet. Her face is contorted, her teeth clenched.
“My feet—”
“Hush, sweetie,” Barbara says. “It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” She leans over and loosens the ribbons on Marlena’s slippers.
“Oh God, oh God, they hurt . . .”
“Get the scissors from my top drawer,” says Barbara, glancing back at me.
When I return with them, Barbara cuts the toes off Marlena’s tights and rolls them up her legs. Then she lifts her bare feet into her lap.
“Go to the cookhouse and get some ice,” she says.
After a second, both she and August turn to look at me.
“I’m already there,” I say.
I’m barreling toward the cookhouse when I hear Uncle Al shouting behind me. “Jacob! Wait!”
I pause while he catches up.
“Where are they? Where did they go?” he says.
“They’re in Barbara’s tent,” I gasp.
“Eh?”
“The cooch girl.”
“Why?”
“Marlena’s hurt. I’ve got to get ice.”
He turns and barks at a follower. “You, go get ice. Take it to the cooch girl’s tent. Go!” He turns back to me. “And you, go retrieve our goddamned bull before we get run out of town.”
“Where is she?”
“Munching cabbages in someone’s backyard, apparently. The lady of the house is not amused. West side of the lot. Get her out of there before the cops come.”
ROSIE STANDS IN A trampled vegetable patch, running her trunk lazily across the rows. When I approach she looks me straight in the eye and plucks a purple cabbage. She drops it in her shovel-scoop of a mouth and then reaches for a cucumber.
The lady of the house opens the door a crack and shrieks, “Get that thing out of here! Get it out of here!”
“Sorry, ma’am,” I say. “I’ll surely do my best.”
I stand at Rosie’s shoulder. “Come on, Rosie. Please?”
Her ears wave forward, she pauses, and then she reaches for a tomato.
“No!” I say. “Bad elephant!”
Rosie pops the red globe in her mouth and smiles as she chews it. Laughing at me, no doubt.
“Oh Jesus,” I say, at a complete loss.
Rosie wraps her trunk around some turnip greens and rips them from the ground. Still looking at me, she pops them in her mouth and begins munching. I turn and smile desperately at the still-gawking housewife.
Two men approach from the lot. One is wearing a suit, a derby hat, and a smile. To my immense relief, I recognize him as one of the patches. The other man wears filthy overalls and carries a bucket.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” says the patch, tipping his hat and picking his way carefully across the ruined garden. It looks as though a tank has plowed through it. He climbs the cement stairs to the back door. “I see you’ve met Rosie, the largest and most magnificent elephant in the world. You’re lucky—she doesn’t normally make house calls.”
The woman’s face is still in the crack of the door. “What?” she says, dumbfounded.
The patch smiles brightly. “Oh yes. It’s an honor indeed. I’m willing to bet no one else in your neighborhood—heck, probably the whole city—can say they’ve had an elephant in their backyard. Our men here will remove her—naturally, we’ll fix up your garden and compensate you for your produce, too. Would you like us to arrange for a photograph of you and Rosie? Something to show your family and friends?”
“I . . . I . . . What?” she stammers.
“If I may be so bold, ma’am,” the patch says with the slightest hint of a bow. “Perhaps it would be easier if we discussed this inside.”
After a reluctant pause the door swings open. He disappears inside the house and I turn back to Rosie.
The other man stands directly in front of her, holding the bucket.