“How did he end up a he-she with Mink’s outfit, then?” I asked.
“Theodore Spittle cut a man’s face up for taunting him,” Bess said, “and Mink liked that. A little man like Mink needs minions to do his dirty work. In the confusion before the law arrived, Mink spirited him away. He weaned Spittle off the dope and had someone teach him tricks, and Spittle became Ceecee, the Star of the Show. In his spare time he performs nasty little duties for Mink. But if Ceecee is back on the dope, he’s not reliable. If I find a bottle of syrup or some such in Ceecee’s care, I’m going to enjoy handing it to Mink. Ceecee won’t be star of the show for long. Mink won’t trust him to wipe his own ass.” Bess flung her comb into her bag like game into a sack.
I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. Bess was right. It helped to think of Ceecee as a pathetic geek rather than a dope fiend with a razor. “I guess Billy Sweet should watch his mice,” I said.
Bess laughed. “You’re a huckleberry above a persimmon, you are, boy.”
We were interrupted by Miss Lightfoot, all of a fluster. “Come quick,” she said to Bess. “The giant is vomiting something fierce.”
Bess took off at a run and I followed, but it wasn’t to the giant she ran.
“Send for a doctor, you damn fool,” she yelled at Mink. “What kind of businessman are you, who doesn’t protect his investments?”
“Wasn’t that bottle of stomach bitters enough?” he complained.
Bess snorted. “That’s probably what made him puke.”
“Puking is good. It gets the disease out.” Mink strode gawkily to the giant’s wagon, where the others had gathered. Through the wheels I could make out the hands and knees of the giant as he knelt retching. Perhaps this amounted to more puke than even Mink thought tolerable, however. He smacked Billy Sweet on the shoulder. “Ride back to that settlement and see if they have some sort of medical man. This better not cost a fortune,” he growled at Bess.
I left Miss Lightfoot and Bess to help the giant in what little ways they could and retired to my blanket on the stony ground.
I awoke to sunlight and yells, and crawled from under my wagon.
“You quack,” Mink accused. I followed the voices up to the giant’s wagon. Bonfiglio and Ceecee were positioned behind Mink like bodyguards. Miss Lightfoot bowed her head into a handkerchief, and Bess had her arm around Miss Lightfoot’s hips, which was as high as she could reach.
“I dosed him with bismuth,” said a dark-suited man I assumed to be the doctor, “but his heart couldn’t stand the stress of the vomiting.”
Coldness gripped my gut. “What’s happened?”
Billy Sweet shook his head. “The giant’s dead.”
18
YOU’RE CHARGING ME NINETY-FIVE cents a mile to come out here and kill my giant?”
“If you’d prefer I come back with the sheriff, that suits me, Dr. Mink.” The medical doctor emphasized Mink’s honorific sarcastically. “And I’ll charge you for those miles too.”
Mink and the doctor matched glares in a silent duel, and Miss Lightfoot wrung her handkerchief between her scaly hands, but Mink pulled out his purse and smacked some coins into the doctor’s palm, and I remembered to breathe. “Get that shovel out of the back wagon,” Mink said to Billy Sweet. “You’ve got an all-fired large grave to dig.”
“Hold your horses,” said the doctor. “You can’t plant him on someone’s property uninvited.”
“What do you suggest I do with him?” asked Mink. “Stuff him?”
Was it my imagination, or did the glint of an idea flash through Mink’s eyes at the sound of his own words. I swallowed. He wouldn’t, would he?
“I suggest you bring him into town for a decent burial,” said the doctor, “else the sheriff will be out to find you after all. I’ll write you up a death certificate at my surgery when you come in.” With that, he boarded his buggy and clicked the horse into motion.
“You know, we could boil him down for his bones. That would make a good display,” Mink said to no one in particular.
Miss Lightfoot let out a distraught squeak, and I gulped for words.
“You bastard!” Bess cried, and stuck out her jaw, beard bristling.
The children ducked back behind wagon wheels and bushes.
“Now, now!” Mr. Ginger, heretofore silent, spoke up. “He will do no such thing.” The second face on his forehead twitched rapidly, revealing the stress Mr. Ginger tried to conceal. “I suspect the good physician will be true to his word and send the law if we are not in town soon.”
“Not to mention, we don’t have a pot big enough,” muttered Billy.
Town consisted of Main Street and not much else. A sign at the first wooden building announced its name as Horizontal. What that referred to was anyone’s guess. We traveled the length of the single thoroughfare as people stood in their doors to watch—they were silent and clutched the collars of boys who would follow. We stopped at the far end of town behind a graveyard attached to a clapboard Lutheran church. Two men were digging a grave. A wave of melancholy swept over me. Did the giant have kin who would never know where he lay buried?
The performers kept to their wagons while Mink went in search of the doctor. He came back fifteen minutes later with the undertaker in tow. The undertaker peered in the back of the wagon, then had a few words with Mink, and they proceeded to argue. “At that price we’ll knock together our own box, thank’e,” concluded Mink, and Billy Sweet was set the task.
Since we dared not carry the giant far in a homemade coffin, we laid the giant out directly in his grave, rather than in the church. We drivers wrestled the coffin there with the help of the two gravediggers, plus the undertaker, the doctor, and a sheriff with a walrus mustache, all of whom had arrived for the formalities along with their wives.
The children stayed in their caravan with Apollo and Mr. Bopp on Mink’s orders. Of course, Minnie had already said good-bye to the giant, hadn’t she? The idea gave me gooseflesh.
Miss Lightfoot and Bess disguised their looks with dark veils so they could attend, and Mr. Ginger wore an oversize soft cap pulled low over his eyebrows. It bulged in front in a quite peculiar way. I changed into my best suit of clothes, and Mink donned his top hat for the occasion and added a shirt under the tailcoat he wore for shows. Ceecee had on an elegant evening suit and makeup. The town women glanced sideways at him and at one another.
Earle sat in his cart by the graveyard fence. No disguise could hide him. Townsfolk gathered there too, reluctant to come close for the service, yet unwilling to give up the spectacle, either.
As Miss Lightfoot spoke quietly to the pastor, Dr. Mink surveyed the crowd. “A pity I can’t charge,” he said.
My mouth dropped open, and he had the nerve to laugh.
Prayers were spoken, and the representatives from the community led the hymn singing with dour determination, as if they had to make up for our sins. The pastor said a few words about our giant: “He was a big man, in heart as well as body, but even a big heart fails in the end. He will surely join his dear wife and child in heaven and find comfort there.” I hadn’t even known he had a family.
The sheriff dispersed the townsfolk after the funeral and left the gravediggers to finish their work. We all gathered by the wagons.
“Well, I never gave him credit for his timing before,” drawled Ceecee, “but he went out horizontal in Horizontal.” He giggled, and I glared at him.
“I’m not thrilled to lose one of my acts, Ceecee,” said Dr. Mink. “So shut your trap. Set up the tent, boys.”
I gasped, and even the stoic Al Bonfiglio appeared surprised.
Miss Lightfoot struggled for words, her gloved hands waving in frustration. “We can’t,” she managed with a gulp.
“And lose out on this publicity?” said Dr. Mink. “The town may be a pimple on an elephant’s ass, but we’ve got their attention.”
“Right by the graveyard? Have you no decency?” wailed Miss Lightfoot.
“He was a tro
uper. He’d understand,” argued Mink. His color deepened.
“No, no, no, no,” said Miss Lightfoot. Her voice rose. “I refuse. I absolutely refuse. This is the last straw. No, no, no—”
Mink slapped her. He raised his hand to hit her again.
Mr. Ginger and I raced forward. Bonfiglio blocked my way. Mr. Ginger stumbled and fell. Bess arrived before either of us and kicked Mink in the shin.
“You pig!” the stocky dwarf roared up at him as he hopped on one foot, swearing.
Canvas smacked and a striped torso rolled out of the back of the nearest wagon. Mr. Bopp humped toward Bess as fast as a caterpillar man could.
“You weren’t above ruining her, and now you dare hit her,” cried Bess. She tossed back her veil, the better to aim her bile.
Mr. Bopp reared up like an angry snake at his beloved’s side.
“Please!” Miss Lightfoot begged, but I wasn’t sure if it was Mink or Bess she pleaded with.
“You ruin everyone,” Bess continued. “You enslave the unprotected, take advantage of the needy, steal from the innocent, and harbor fugitives from the law. The only reason I stick with you is so’s I can get to California and find my sister. As soon as I get there, I’m gonna pull foot and leave your sorry show.”
“What do you mean ‘fugitives,’ you crazed dwarf?” Mink rubbed his leg with both hands.
“You know damn well they’d lock him up in New Jersey for slicing that man.” Bess pointed at Ceecee. “If you set another hand on Ruby, I’ll go tell that sheriff, and you’ll be bagged too, for aiding a criminal.”
Ceecee advanced on her, his eyes narrowed, but Mink waved him back.
“Do you think that yokel will believe you, let alone care?” snarled Mink. “And if he does, how do you explain waiting until now to turn me in?”
“Boss, boss,” hissed Billy. “That yokel’s on his way here.”
The sheriff rounded the church. Maybe he’d heard the uproar. He certainly regarded us with distaste. His eyes widened and his lip curled at the sight of the limbless Gunther Bopp. “You forgot this,” the sheriff said, and shoved what I guessed was the death certificate at Mink.
“Sheriff?” said Bess. Would she denounce Mink and Ceecee? Eyes flicked here and there. Glances met. Apprehension. Hope. Fear. “You coming to the show tonight, Sheriff?” asked Bess, her eyes narrowed with guile.
I almost laughed in appreciation.
“Show?” The sheriff looked as aghast as we no doubt had a few minutes before, but he pulled in his belly and stuck out his chest. “There’s no show. We don’t need your kind here parading deformities and stealing washing off the line. You’ll leave town right now while I watch you go.”
I was surprised that Mink didn’t try to charge him for watching us leave.
“You need me,” Mink sneered at Bess as she climbed into the wagon.
For a state that didn’t have a lot of people, Iowa sure had a lot of railroads. We were forever crossing either a track or a river, and every time I had to put my shoulder to a wheel mired in bog, I remembered why a wagon show was sometimes called a mud show. Between the tracks and streams were cornfields everywhere, and on one of our rest stops I gathered some of last year’s corn shucks from a ditch, for I’d had an idea to please Minnie.
We arrived at the next town, rattled and damp, early enough to set up the tents on a patch of common land between a wheelwright shop and a lumberyard, but too late to round up an audience for a show.
The next day was Sunday, and there would be no show, for the law said we were to rest whether we wanted to or not. I decided that throwing a knife for my own pleasure did not count as work, and I went off into the trees that bordered the river beyond our campsite to practice. It felt good to have my knives back in my hands. I took joy in the thunk of the blades hitting the stump I chose as my target.
Rustles and giggles from the nearby bushes alerted me that I wasn’t alone. The children must have thought they were fine fellows to spy on me. It didn’t take me long to find where they lurked, although I couldn’t see their faces. I pivoted and sent two knives smack into the tree above their heads.
They screamed, and instead of our children, two boys I didn’t know ran hell for leather.
“Oops!” I said. Then I couldn’t stop laughing.
When I came back, I found our children and Apollo gathered around Miss Lightfoot while she bleached a white patch into Willie’s hair with peroxide.
“This completes the Piebald Boy’s look, does it not?” she said to me.
I said I would allow that it gave a dash to his appearance.
I went to stow my knives and fetch the corn shucks I had put aside, after which I begged some thread from Miss Lightfoot and some stage makeup, if she pleased. As I twisted and tied the corn, I told the children about the incident in the woods, exaggerating the dismay on the faces of the locals and the screams they made. Much to my pleasure, the children found my tale riotously funny. I daubed little dark eyes and a tiny cherry mouth on the bundle in my hands and, at the end of my tale, handed Minnie her very own corn doll.
Minnie squealed with delight.
“Now you have a doll the right size to talk to instead of the mummy lady,” I explained.
Minnie blinked. “But she won’t stop talking to me. I should talk to her if she talks to me. That’s manners. She’s sorry the bad men hurt you, Abel.” Minnie stared off into space and hummed, then she sang the end of a nursery rhyme. “‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here come a chopper to chop … off … your … head.’”
For a moment I saw an exotic garden, felt the grip of strong hands on my arms, and saw a glittering sickle blade swing toward me. I shuddered. How could she know my dreams?
“Are you all right, Abel?” asked Miss Lightfoot.
“Someone walked on my grave,” I said, repeating one of my mother’s expressions, and tried to laugh off the fear that surged through me. “I’ll make something for you next time,” I told Bertha, trying to push Minnie’s words from my mind. “And maybe the boys.”
“Not a doll!” exclaimed Moses.
“Not a doll,” I agreed.
Ceecee languished on the grass in the shade of Mink’s paneled wagon, once more in his flowered wrapper and turban. The smirk he wore on his face made my skin crawl. When Bess emerged from her wagon with a basket full of towels, he writhed to his feet and approached.
“Nice coiffure,” Bess said to Willie.
“Ceecee had the peroxide,” said Willie, pouting.
“Miss Tuggle, dearest,” Ceecee interjected. “I purchased a gift for you as well.” When she turned from him and wouldn’t take the bottle he offered, he dropped it into her basket.
She glanced at the bottle, then grabbed it and flung it at his head. He shrieked with laughter and ducked. The bottle landed at my feet. I tried to read the label, but it had landed facedown.
“And what else did you pick up at the drugstore, Theodore Spittle, you geek?” she asked. “Was it perhaps in a green bottle?” The smile died on his lips. Did laudanum come in a green bottle? I wondered.
“I’m headed to the river for my weekly whether-I-need-it-or-not,” Bess told Miss Lightfoot, and took her leave.
I didn’t think it wise to tip her hand like that. What had annoyed her enough to be so rash?
I picked up the bottle Bess had thrown. KOSMEO DEPILATORY, the label announced. NO BLEMISH SO TERRIBLE TO A PRETTY WOMAN AS SUPERFLUOUS HAIR UPON THE FACE.
Ceecee snatched it from my hand. “My dear,” he said. “You are the last person to need this.”
His comments stung. I stomped off, too busy stewing to see Apollo approach. He grabbed me by the arm as I reached my wagon. “What do you mean by telling the children you’ll take them away?” he demanded. He looked as stern as anyone could with tufts of hair quivering in his ears.
“Keep your voice down,” I said, looking around for Dr. Mink or one of the drivers. None was in sight.
“Bertha told m
e,” he said in a harsh mockery of a whisper. When I had asked Bertha not to say anything to the grown-ups, I hadn’t considered Apollo.
“Land sakes, boy. You saw what condition they were in when we arrived.”
“I’m here to watch over them now.”
“Great heaven!” I exclaimed. “Can’t you get it through your skull that Mink is not a nice man? He’s mean and neglectful and only out for himself. The giant might not have died if he’d been given help sooner, and I honestly believe Mink would have boiled the man for his bones if that sheriff hadn’t been on hand. How can I leave the children with Mink and his men? Do you think he’d care if any of them died, Apollo? It would just be an inconvenience to him. What if Minnie died? Would he put her in a jar like the babies?”
“But Dr. Mink put me in charge of the children,” Apollo argued. “I can help them now.”
“And so you shall,” I answered, trying to be patient. “Remember that good Mr. Northstar who rescued you from the train?”
Apollo nodded, looking confused by my change in subject.
“You know who he was looking for when he let you out? He was looking for his son, Willie, who had been stolen by a show. That’s our Willie, Apollo. Mink stole him away and left his grandmother for dead, and the best way you can help Willie is to get him back to his father.”
Apollo’s mouth opened and closed for a moment like that of a fish. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Are you making this up?”
I sighed. “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to scare you, but it’s time you were scared, Apollo, so you’ll be careful.”
Apollo’s confusion would soon lead to a sulk. I should take another tack. “You’re doing a magnificent job of caring for those children,” I said. “All I’m saying is you could care for them elsewhere.”
He cocked his head.
“Imagine,” I said. “Apollo Papandreou and His Band of Incredible Children. What an act, huh? And you’d be the only boss. Consider my suggestion, but keep mum. We don’t want Mink to get wind of our plan.”