“Oh,” she says quietly.
I look up, startled. Unless I’m very much mistaken, I think I’ve just managed to offend her. “I’m not saying . . . It’s not that you’re not . . . I just . . .”
“Are you saying you didn’t want to kiss me?”
I drop my hat and raise my hands. “Marlena, please help me. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Because it would be easier if you didn’t.”
“If I didn’t what?”
“If you didn’t want to kiss me,” she says quietly.
My jaw moves, but it’s several seconds before anything comes out. “Marlena, what are you saying?”
“I . . . I’m not really sure,” she says. “I hardly know what to think anymore. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. I know what I’m feeling is wrong, but I just . . . Well, I guess I just wondered . . .”
When I look up, her face is cherry red. She’s clasping and unclasping her hands, staring hard at her lap.
“Marlena,” I say, rising and taking a step forward.
“I think you should go now,” she says.
I stare at her for a few seconds.
“Please,” she says, without looking up.
And so I leave, although every bone in my body screams against it.
COURTESY OF THE PFENING ARCHIVES, COLUMBUS, OHIO
Camel spends his days hidden behind the trunks, lying on blankets that Walter and I arrange to cushion his ruined body from the floor. His paralysis is so bad I’m not sure he could crawl out even if he wanted to, but he’s so terrified of being caught that he doesn’t try. Each night, after the train is in motion, we pull the trunks out and lean him up in the corner or lay him on the cot, depending on whether he wants to sit up or continue lying down. It’s Walter who insists he take the cot, and in turn I insist that Walter take the bedroll. And so I am back to sleeping on the horse blanket in the corner.
Barely two days into our cohabitation, Camel’s tremors are so bad he can’t even speak. Walter notices at noon when he returns to the train to bring Camel some food. Camel is in such bad shape Walter seeks me out in the menagerie to tell me about it, but August is watching, so I can’t return to the train.
At nearly midnight, Walter and I are sitting side by side on the cot, waiting for the train to pull out. The second it moves, we get up and drag the trunks from the wall.
Walter kneels, puts his hands under Camel’s armpits, and lifts him into a sitting position. Then he pulls a flask from his pocket.
When Camel’s eyes light on it, they jerk up to Walter’s face. Then they fill with tears.
“What’s that?” I ask quickly.
“What the hell do you think it is?” Walter says. “It’s liquor. Real liquor. The good stuff.”
Camel reaches for the bottle with shaking hands. Walter, still holding him upright, removes the cap and holds it to the old man’s lips.
ANOTHER WEEK PASSES, and Marlena remains cloistered in her stateroom. I’m now so desperate to lay eyes on her that I find myself trying to figure out ways of peeking into the window without getting caught. Fortunately, good sense prevails.
Every night, I lie on my smelly horse blanket in the corner and replay our last conversation, word for precious word. I follow the same tortured trajectory over and over—from my rush of disbelieving joy to my crashing deflation. I know that dismissing me was the only thing she could do, but even so, I can barely stand it. Just thinking about it leaves me so agitated I toss and writhe until Walter tells me to knock it off because I’m keeping him up.
ONWARD AND UPWARD. Mostly we stay one day in each town, although we usually make a two-day stopover Sunday. During the jump between Burlington and Keokuk, Walter—with the help of generous amounts of whiskey—manages to extract the name and last known location of Camel’s son. For the next few stops, Walter marches off to town immediately after breakfast and doesn’t return until it’s nearly show time. By Springfield, he has made contact.
At first, Camel’s son denies the association. But Walter is persistent. Day after day he marches into town, negotiating by telegram, and by the following Friday the son has agreed to meet us in Providence and take custody of the old man. It means we will have to continue the current housing arrangements for several more weeks, but at least it’s a solution. And that’s a good deal more than we’ve had up to this point.
IN TERRE HAUTE, the Lovely Lucinda drops dead. After Uncle Al recovers from his violent but short-lived bereavement, he organizes a farewell befitting “our beloved Lucinda.”
An hour after the death certificate is signed, Lucinda is laid out in the water well of the hippopotamus car and hitched to a team of twenty-four black Percherons with feathers on their headbands.
Uncle Al climbs onto the bench with the driver, practically collapsing with grief. After a moment he wiggles his fingers, signaling the start of Lucinda’s procession. She is hauled slowly through town, followed on foot by every member of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth deemed fit to be seen. Uncle Al is desolate, weeping and honking into his red handkerchief and allowing himself only the occasional upward glance to gauge whether the procession’s speed allows for maximum crowd enlargement.
The women follow immediately behind the hippopotamus wagon, dressed all in black and pressing elegant lace hankies to the corners of their eyes. I am farther back, surrounded on all sides by wailing men, their faces shiny with tears. Uncle Al has promised three dollars and a bottle of Canadian whiskey to the man who puts on the best show. You’ve never seen such grief—even the dogs are howling.
Almost a thousand townspeople follow us back to the lot. When Uncle Al stands up on the carriage, they fall silent.
He removes his hat and presses it to his chest. He digs out a hankie and dabs his eyes. He delivers a heart-wrenching speech, so distraught he can barely contain himself. At the end of it, he says that if it were up to him, he’d cancel tonight’s show out of respect for Lucinda. But he cannot. It’s out of his control. He is a man of honor, and on her deathbed she grasped his hand and made him promise—no, vow—that he wouldn’t let what was clearly her imminent end disrupt the show’s routine and disappoint the thousands of people who were expecting it to be circus day.
“Because after all . . .” Uncle Al pauses, clasping his hand to his heart and sniffing piteously. He looks heavenward as tears stream down his face.
The women and children in the crowd cry openly. A woman near the front throws an arm across her forehead and collapses as the men on either side scramble to catch her.
Uncle Al collects himself with obvious effort, although he cannot keep his lower lip from quivering. He nods slowly and continues. “Because, after all, as our dearest Lucinda knew only too well . . . the show must go on!”
We have an enormous crowd that night—a “straw house,” so named because after all the regular seats sell out, roustabouts spread straw on the hippodrome track for the overflow crowd to sit on.
Uncle Al begins the show with a moment of silence. He bows his head, summons real tears, and dedicates the performance to Lucinda, whose great and absolute selflessness is the only reason we are able to continue in the face of our loss. And we will do her proud—oh yes, such was our singular love for Lucinda that despite the grief that consumes us, tugging on our breaking hearts, we will summon the strength to honor her final wish and do her proud. Such wonders you have never seen, ladies and gentlemen, acts and performers gathered from the four corners of the earth to delight and entertain you, acrobats, and tumblers, and aerialists of the highest caliber . . .