Freaks: Alive, on the Inside!

  “The advance men could use another poster boy,” said A. Marvel. “We could send him on the express from the next stop to join them in Illinois.”

  “Excellent,” said Mr. G. Marvel. “He can work off his debt with them.”

  I couldn’t believe it. They bartered my future away as if I were an indentured servant of days gone by, and it was likely I wouldn’t see a cent of what I had already earned. “We’ll see about that,” I said.

  “It’s that or the sheriff,” answered Mr. G. Marvel.

  That shut me up. I couldn’t reason with these people. When they were through with us, I would gather as many of my belongings as I could and hightail it with Apollo. I had no money to take him home, so he would just have to come with me after all. We’d search for Lady Adventure together.

  I didn’t expect what happened next.

  “Lock that unfortunate in the caboose with a bucket and a keg of water,” said Mr. G. Marvel. “I understand there is a good asylum in the town after next. Just the place for an unruly imbecile.”

  “No, send him back to his family,” I cried as the thug who guarded the door yanked Apollo from my grasp.

  “His family is obviously not doing their duty, else he would not be here,” said the equestrian director. “They have abdicated responsibility.”

  Heaven knows, I didn’t stand a chance, but I swung at the man who seized Apollo—and landed on my back, with stars dancing around my head. I wasn’t sure who had hit me.

  When I pulled myself to my feet, Apollo was gone.

  “Make sure you’re on board this evening,” said Mr. G. Marvel. “If you want us to keep you apprised of the whereabouts of your companion, that is.”

  I took my leave of them without a word because I could think of nothing civil to say. I would have to set Apollo free, or what could I tell his dear mama? How could I ever face his sister again? What would my parents think of me? Was there no one here who would take my side?

  I sought out the Arabian brothers. Surely they would help me. This wasn’t some stranger baby with webbed feet, but someone a friend cared for. They were fine young men; they wouldn’t tolerate injustice.

  But I had thought too highly of them.

  “Sorry, old fellow,” said Frank, his tone distant despite the friendly words. “Nothing we can do. Can’t rile the boss, you know.”

  “I suggest you find more-suitable friends,” Eddie said, and put an arm on his brother’s shoulder to steer him away. “That lad has lost you an excellent position.”

  “He’s a better friend than you’ll ever be,” I called at their backs as they walked away. My outburst mortified me.

  I retreated to my quarters and changed to my older suit of clothing. I packed my knives and my good clothes in my suitcase. I would never use them with this circus now. I had no act and no friends. I was a pariah. There was no place for me here. With no reason to show up for the evening show, I walked to the end of the train and inspected the caboose.

  The door was sealed up tight with a padlock. “Are you all right?” I whispered through a crack in the door.

  “Abel? Is that you?” came Apollo’s muffled voice.

  “Of course it is,” I answered. “They haven’t hurt you, have they?”

  “I’m hungry,” he said a little louder, and I imagined him pressed up against the door. His breathing sounded loud and stuffy, and I knew he’d been crying.

  “I’ll ask them to send you something to eat,” I promised. I hoped someone would.

  “They won’t really put me in a madhouse, will they?” he asked. His voice trembled.

  My heart sank. “Of course not,” I said. I would do anything to stop that.

  A solid roustabout with a shock of ginger hair came around the back of the train. “Hey, you!” he growled, and I left in a hurry—but not before I saw he carried a covered dish. At least my friend wouldn’t starve while I planned a way to rescue him.

  As I walked back to my quarters, one of the equestrian director’s messenger boys intercepted me.

  “I’ve looked for you everywhere,” he grumbled. “You’re to report to the back door of the big top.” To my dismay, he insisted on escorting me there.

  That’s when I found out my servitude had already started— in the menagerie and around the big top back door with a pan and broom, cleaning up animal dung and urine-soaked sawdust. I’m doing this for Apollo, I told myself as I forked pungent elephant droppings into a wheelbarrow, else I’d shove one of these nuggets up …

  Marika walked by and cleared her throat. She peeked at me, deliberately dropped a piece of paper, and moved on. I swept it to me with my broom before anyone noticed.

  I am sorry, her note said. You friend was a surprise for me he frightened me. When he was drag from the wagn I saw yr friend was only little boy. If I can help I surely will. Yrs truly, M.

  Despite all my troubles, I smiled. There was nothing she could do to help, but I didn’t feel quite so alone anymore.

  I made plans while I swept. I’d head back to the caboose after the show. Perhaps I could waylay the man who would bring Apollo supper. When he opened the door, I’d hit him over the head. The blow might not knock him out, but it might slow him down long enough for Apollo to run by, then we’d be off.

  My plans were ruined by my fellows from the dormitory car. They were ordered to escort me to our carriage. They took their duties seriously and were not above a little shoving. Their eyes were bright, and they wore fierce grins, which made me think of the menacing high spirits of a wolf pack.

  As the train pulled out for the next town, the younger fellows surrounded me.

  “Are you a lunatic?”

  “Where did you hide that monkey boy?”

  “Can it talk?”

  The taunting continued as the train left town.

  “What’s the matter, freakmonger? Ashamed to talk to your betters?” said the vulgar clown, glad of another opportunity to pay me back for the night he was dressed down in front of the others by the senior acrobat.

  “Maybe he’s a freak too,” said an acrobat.

  They gathered around my bunk, and I steeled myself for a fight.

  “Maybe we should strip him and see,” said one of the boys.

  The vulgar clown grabbed me by my shirtfront and pulled. The ring I hid was bunched amid the cloth in his fist, and the chain bit into my neck. Another kid took my leg. They had me halfway off the bunk.

  “I’d rather not see,” cried the youngest acrobat—the one who had been upset by my song.

  The others hooted and cackled.

  “He’s not good enough to be in here with us,” said the vulgar clown, who almost choked me with his grip. The chain around my neck flared red hot, and I yelped. The vulgar clown’s eyes glazed over, and he jerked like a faulty clockwork mouse. I feared he was having a fit or going crazy, and I cringed from him. “Let’s red light him,” the clown yelled, then let go of me and looked surprised at his words.

  “Yeah! Red light him. Like they do to uppity roustabouts,” cried someone.

  “Red light, red light,” others took up the call.

  More hands landed on me, while I struggled and protested my unknown fate between gasps and coughs. The senior acrobat, the one supposedly in charge, leaned against a bunk at the end of the car with an evil grin on his face.

  They dragged me fighting down the carriage. I banged my knee against a bunk, hit my head on an oil lamp.

  “Mr. Marvel wants me whole enough to work,” I cried, and managed to get the heel of my hand under a fellow’s chin and push.

  “He’ll thank us in the morning,” the fellow countered, and smacked me in the face.

  I found myself at the carriage door. One of the jugglers pushed it open. The night skimmed by in a gray blur of bushes and trees. Horror consumed me as I realized what they were about to do.

  “No!” I screamed as hands let go and someone kicked me in the back, sending me flying into the night.

  For a moment I
thought I would never land, but gravity won. I skidded through gravel, which peppered my palms with grit and stung like acid, then crashed into a bush.

  Something large hurtled by me, almost hitting me in the head.

  The red lights disappeared down the track, and I understood what those scoundrels had meant.

  And with those red lights went Apollo. How would I ever catch up?

  10

  AS I SCRAMBLED OUT OF THE BUSHES, groaning, my foot thudded into an object that gave under the blow. I felt about with my stinging hands and discovered smooth, worn leather. In the dim moonlight I made out what appeared to be my suitcase. I sighed with relief. I had something to call my own, so I would not appear a beggar. I didn’t know if one of my former companions had taken pity on me or just wanted to be rid of anything to do with me. I was destitute except for a little pocket change, but at least I would have an extra suit of clothes and my knives to earn my keep.

  I was almost sure I was somewhere in Indiana. Should I turn back or continue? I had no idea how far the next town was ahead or the last behind, and whichever way I chose, I would have to earn my fare before I could board a train again. I needed a good-luck charm now more than ever. I clutched the ring I wore and then winced. My neck was abraded from the way that clown had twisted the chain. I snorted. Some good-luck charm. I glanced behind me. When I thought of going back, my heart turned to lead, but when I looked ahead, despite my sorry plight, my heart leaped. I had wanted adventure, and there it was. Apollo was traveling that way on a fast track to disaster, and I had no time to waste if I must rescue him.

  I limped through the rock debris along the side of the tracks and listened for a whistle that would warn me to back away from the sucking airstream that could sweep me under the wheels of a train. The damp odors of summer night were made all the more incomprehensible by the intermingled smell of cinders left by the trains. My head throbbed where it had hit the oil lamp, and my back ached where I’d been kicked. The moon set, and I stumbled repeatedly in the dark. To guide myself, I felt with my foot for the wooden cross slats that supported the rails, stubbing my toes often. My left hip throbbed from my fall, my right knee hurt from its collision with a bunk, and the handle of my bag chafed the scrapes on my hands. So, this is misery, I thought. I wondered if the sun would ever rise again, and if it did, if I would ever see a town, or whether there would be nothing ahead all the sweltering day but steel rails, undergrowth, and the occasional cast-off trash in the rubble of the embankment. That was if the tracks didn’t cross a bridge before daylight and I fell to my death from a trestle.

  Self-pity will get you nowhere, I chided. Apollo was in much more serious peril than I. Where was this vaunted asylum in which the Marvel brothers wished to deposit my friend—in the next town ahead or farther on? Could I find Apollo before he was locked away? If I had money, I could send the name of this asylum in a wire to Colonel Kingston and get on with my adventure, but here I was, looking after the dog boy again.

  Then I wasn’t alone. I sensed a presence to my right, even though I heard no footsteps, even though no one took a breath. Somehow I felt the weight, the volume, the aura, of another human beside me displacing the air. I dared not look. I quickened my speed, and the person beside me quickened too. Did a robber pace me? He would be disappointed. I hoped he wasn’t a murderer as well as a thief. I shuffled and bumbled as fast as I dared, my breath shallow. The stranger stayed with me.

  “I apologize,” a woman’s voice said. “Do not run from me.”

  It was the shadow woman from the field. Surely not? Had I hit my head in the fall from the train? Was I addled? I decided to ignore the voice.

  “I did not want to throw you from the carriage, but you were traveling too far.”

  That settled it. No doubt, in reality I was curled up asleep by the tracks. I stopped and faced the shadow beside me. A faint glow outlined the dark shape of a woman. “You were not on the train, dream,” I said. “A gang of plug-uglies threw me off the train.”

  “I’m afraid I did suggest it,” she said, and hung her head.

  “That was a man.”

  “Who held your ring in his fist. I can touch others via the ring. His mind was weak with fear, and I was able to speak through him.”

  My hand rose automatically to the ring. I remembered the glazed eyes of the clown and shivered, then snatched my hand away. I set off walking briskly again, looking straight ahead, and hoped to leave this dream behind.

  “There is a house by a barn,” she called after me. “A skeleton man will come and take you to me.”

  Several minutes passed and she did not speak again. The air felt thinner, and the world expanded around me. With surprise I noted the night sky had taken on the silvery gray of predawn and dispelled the walking dreams of dark. Up ahead the track divided, and along the right-hand spur a large building loomed. I was alone.

  I struggled up the embankment at the back of a barn with a peeling and faded livery sign painted on the wall. It isn’t unlikely that there would he a barn near railroad tracks—or houses, for that matter, I told myself. That had been no prophecy, and there was no strange woman speaking through other people’s mouths because of my ring. That lady was a ridiculous hallucination brought on by stress and fatigue. And pain. My body screamed a protest all the way up the incline, and I yearned bone-deep for a pile of hay to curl up in. I had to rest before I could go on. I met great disappointment around the side, however, for there sat a modest, high-sided cart under a stand of trees, and a figure was astir in the shadows of the canopy. How could I slip into a barn to sleep while the owner guarded the door, and how would I explain myself to a stern, hardworking farmer, alone as I was, and coming out of nowhere at dawn?

  I crept by in the shadow of the barn wall. Oh, how I ached for the soft straw bedding inside. Then, down the dirt road out front, I noticed a house with windows lit, and I cheered up. If I had to explain myself, I would rather it be to a sympathetic farm wife in her cozy kitchen, with prospects of a real bed in return for chores. I hurried through the dewy grass to the road, accompanied by the scuttles of awakening wildlife. Somewhere behind me a rooster crowed.

  As I drew close to the house, unexpected piano music met me, and not a serious paean to the dawn by a long-dead composer, or a lilting Broadway air, but a raucous, jangling, rollicking, tinkling tapestry that made even my own weary legs want to dance. I recognized the music as ragtime—the new style played by Negro bands. What is this place? I wondered as I walked up the hedge-lined path and knocked on the bright red front door.

  Laughter signaled a woman’s approach. I smoothed my hair and wiped grit from the corners of my eyes and noticed, too late, a tear in my trousers. The door opened not on the simple farmwife I had anticipated, but on a lady still clad in the fancy garb of a night on the town, her face painted in a way I would not expect a country face to be.

  “What is it, darlin’?” she asked.

  I lost track of my words when I glimpsed a giggling lady in her chemise flash by an open parlor door at the end of the hallway. A man in shirttails and black socks, with his bowler still on his head, chased her. With a combination of excitement, anxiety, and awe, I realized this must be a house of ill repute.

  “Please, ma’am … if I do you some chores … would you provide me with a bed?” I managed to stammer out.

  “Well, darlin’, we usually provide you the bed, and then you do the chores,” she replied with a wicked grin, and I blushed.

  “Truly,” I said. “I could chop wood or do kitchen work. Or perhaps I could entertain your guests.” I was too tired to debate morals with myself. “I have some skill as a knife thrower.”

  The woman cocked her head with interest. “I thought you might be circus folk,” she said, much to my puzzlement. “Well, you can come in, but your monkey has to stay outside.”

  “What?” I turned in haste to look where her eyes were fixed.

  A familiar face poked out through the bushes. “I am not a monk
ey!” exclaimed Apollo, and he struggled the rest of the way into the light.

  The woman screamed, her eyes rolled up, and her knees buckled.

  I grabbed Apollo’s arm and dragged him down the path. In moments, angry and frightened patrons and ladies of easy virtue would run to the door; maybe they wouldn’t wait for explanations. I didn’t stop until a stand of trees hid us from the house.

  “Where did you come from? How did you get here? How did you get out?” I gasped between rasping breaths.

  “A man let me out and gave me a ride here,” Apollo said, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.” This time he took my arm, and he tugged me back toward the barn.

  “Is he from the circus?” I asked as we walked.

  “No,” answered Apollo. “He was looking for someone and found me instead. He said, ‘Is that you, Willie?’ and I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘Damn.’”

  How curious. “Did he break the door down?”

  “He didn’t have to,” Apollo answered. “That girl you’re sweet on showed up. She had the key. She stole it, I think.”

  Marika. She did try to help. “Did she know him?” I asked.

  “I reckon not. I heard a girl squeal like she was startled. Then there was a deal of whispering. Then I heard a key in the lock, and I shot out of there, and there they both were. He looked angry.”

  “Maybe because you weren’t whom he wanted to find,” I said.

  Apollo shrugged. “He was going to leave, but the girl begged him to hide me. She said she’d tell you what happened at the next stop and you could come back for me. The man said he couldn’t hang around, but he’d drop me off at some dry-goods store where he knew a man, but I don’t recollect what town.”

  “But you found me instead.” It seemed miraculous.

  “We stopped to rest by that barn, but I couldn’t sleep,” Apollo explained. “Then I saw you go by. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, but I’d know you anywhere. I wanted to yell, but I didn’t want to wake the nice man, so I followed.”