Avenue of Mysteries (43 page)

“I don’t know,” the boy admitted. He felt frightened.

“I don’t know, either,” Soledad told him. “I just know you’ve got better odds of
staying
at the circus if you’re a skywalker—especially if you’re a
boy
skywalker. You understand what I’m saying, Boy Wonder?” Soledad asked him. It all felt too abrupt.

“Yes, I do,” he told her, but the abruptness scared him. It was hard for him to imagine that she’d ever been pretty, but Juan Diego knew Soledad was a clear thinker; she understood her husband, perhaps well enough to survive him. Soledad understood that the lion tamer was a man who made mostly selfish decisions—his interest in Lupe as a mind reader was a matter of self-preservation. One thing was obvious about Soledad: she was a strong woman.

There’d been stress on her joints, no doubt, as Dr. Vargas had observed of the former trapeze artist. Damage to her fingers, her wrists, her elbows—these joint injuries notwithstanding, Soledad was still strong. As a flyer, she’d ended her career as a catcher. In trapeze work, men are usually the catchers, but Soledad had strong enough arms, and a strong enough grip, to be a catcher.

“The mongrel is male. I don’t think it’s
fair
that he’s called Perro Mestizo—‘Mongrel’ shouldn’t be the poor dog’s
name
!” Lupe was saying. The mongrel, poor Perro Mestizo, wasn’t wearing a costume. In the act
for the dogs, Mongrel was a baby-stealer. Perro Mestizo tries to run off with the stroller with Baby in it—with the dachshund in the baby bonnet barking like a lunatic, of course. “Perro Mestizo is always the bad guy,” Lupe was saying. “That’s not fair, either!” (Juan Diego knew what Lupe was going to say next because it was an oft-repeated theme with his sister.) “Perro Mestizo didn’t ask to be born a mongrel,” Lupe said. (Naturally, Estrella, the dog trainer, hadn’t the slightest idea what Lupe was saying.)

“I guess Ignacio is a little afraid of the lions,” Juan Diego said cautiously to Soledad. It wasn’t a question; he was stalling.

“Ignacio
should
be afraid of the lions—he should be a
lot
afraid,” the lion tamer’s wife said.

“The German shepherd, who is female, is called Alemania,” Lupe was babbling. Juan Diego thought it was a cop-out to name a German shepherd “Germany”; it was also a stereotype to dress a German shepherd in a police uniform. But Alemania was supposed to be a policía—a policewoman. Naturally, Lupe was babbling about how “humiliating” it was for Perro Mestizo, who was male, to be apprehended by a
female
German shepherd. In the circus act, Perro Mestizo is caught stealing the baby in the stroller; the undressed mongrel is dragged out of the ring by the scruff of his neck by Alemania in her police uniform. Baby (the dachshund) and his mother (Pastora, the sheepdog) are reunited.

It was at this moment of realization—the dump kids’ slim chances of success at Circo de La Maravilla, the fate of a crippled skywalker juxtaposed with the unlikelihood of Lupe becoming a mind reader of lions—when the barefoot Edward Bonshaw hobbled into the dogs’ troupe tent. The tender-footed way the Iowan was walking must have set off the dogs, or perhaps it was the sheer ungainliness of the smaller Señor Eduardo clinging to the bigger transvestite for support.

Baby barked first; the little dachshund in the baby bonnet leapt out of the stroller. This was so off-script, so
not
the circus act, that poor Perro Mestizo became agitated and bit one of Edward Bonshaw’s bare feet. Baby quickly lifted one leg, as most male dogs do, and peed on Señor Eduardo’s other bare foot—the unbitten one. Flor kicked the dachshund
and
the mongrel.

Alemania, the police dog, disapproved of kicking; there was a tense standoff between the German shepherd and the transvestite—growls from the big dog, a no-retreat policy from Flor, who would never back
down from a fight. Estrella, her flaming-redhead wig askew, tried to calm the dogs down.

Lupe was so upset to read (in an instant) what was on Juan Diego’s mind that she paid no attention to the dogs. “I’m a mind reader for
lions
? That’s
it
?” the girl asked her brother.

“I trust Soledad—don’t you?” was all Juan Diego said.

“We’re indispensable if you’re a skywalker—otherwise, we’re dispensable. That’s
it
?” Lupe asked Juan Diego again. “Oh, I get it—you like the sound of being a Boy Wonder, don’t you?”

“Soledad and I don’t know if lions change their minds—assuming you can read what the lions are thinking,” Juan Diego said; he was trying to be dignified, but the Boy Wonder idea had tempted him.

“I know what’s on Hombre’s mind,” was all Lupe would tell him.

“I say we just
try
it,” Juan Diego said. “We give it a week, just see how it goes—”

“A week!” Lupe cried. “You’re no Boy Wonder—believe me.”

“Okay, okay—we’ll give it just a couple of
days,
” Juan Diego pleaded. “Let’s just
try
it, Lupe—you don’t know
everything,
” he added. What cripple doesn’t dream of walking without a limp? And what if a cripple could walk
spectacularly
? Skywalkers were applauded, admired, even adored—just for
walking,
only sixteen steps.

“It’s a leave-or-die-here situation,” Lupe said. “A couple of days or a week won’t matter.” It all felt too abrupt—to Lupe, too.

“You’re so dramatic!” Juan Diego told her.

“Who wants to be The Wonder? Who’s being
dramatic
?” Lupe asked him. “Boy Wonder.”

Where were the responsible adults?

It was hard to imagine anything more happening to Edward Bonshaw’s feet, but the barefoot Iowan was thinking about something else; the dogs had failed to distract him from his thoughts, and Señor Eduardo could not have been expected to understand the dump kids’ plight. Not even Flor, in her continuing flirtation with the Iowan, should be blamed for missing the leave-or-die-here decision the dump kids faced. The available adults were thinking about themselves.

“Do you really have breasts
and
a penis?” Edward Bonshaw blurted out in English to Flor, whose unspoken Houston experience had given her a good grasp of the language. Señor Eduardo had counted on Flor’s understanding him, of course; he just hadn’t realized that Juan Diego
and Lupe, who’d been arguing with each other, would hear and understand him. And no one in the dogs’ troupe tent could have guessed that Estrella, the old dog trainer—not to mention Soledad, the lion tamer’s wife—also understood English.

Naturally, when Señor Eduardo asked Flor if she had breasts
and
a penis, the crazy dogs had stopped barking. Truly
everyone
in the dogs’ troupe tent heard and appeared to understand the question. The dump kids were not the subject of this question.

“Jesus,” Juan Diego said. The kids were on their own.

Lupe had clutched her Coatlicue totem to her too-small-to-notice breasts. The terrifying goddess with the rattlesnake rattles for nipples seemed to understand the breasts-and-penis question.

“Well, I’m not showing you the penis—not
here,
” Flor said to the Iowan. She was unbuttoning her blouse and untucking it from her skirt. Children on their own make abrupt decisions.

“Don’t you see?” Lupe said to Juan Diego. “She’s the one—the one for
him
! Flor and Señor Eduardo—they’re the ones who adopt you. They can take you away with them only if they’re
together
!”

Flor had taken her blouse completely off. It was not necessary for her to remove her bra. She had small breasts—what she would later describe as “the best the hormones could do”; Flor said she was “not a surgery person.” But, just to be sure, Flor took off her bra, too; small as they were, she wanted Edward Bonshaw to have no doubt that she indeed had breasts.

“Not rattlesnake rattles, are they?” Flor asked Lupe, when everyone in the dogs’ troupe tent could see her breasts
and
the nipples.

“It’s a leave-or-die-here situation,” Lupe repeated. “Señor Eduardo and Flor are your ride
out,
” the little girl told Juan Diego.

“For now, you’ll just have to believe me about the penis,” Flor was saying to the Iowan; she’d put her bra back on and was buttoning her blouse when Ignacio walked in. Tent or no tent, the dump kids got the feeling that the lion tamer would never knock before entering.

“Come meet the lions,” Ignacio said to Lupe. “I guess you have to come, too,” the lion tamer said to the cripple—to the
would-be
Boy Wonder.

There was no question that the dump kids understood the terms: the mind-reading job was all about the lions. And whether the lions changed their minds or not, it would also be Lupe’s job to make the lion tamer believe the lions
might
change their minds.

But what must the barefoot, bitten, and pissed-on missionary have been thinking? Edward Bonshaw’s vows were unhinged; Flor’s breasts-and-penis combination had made him reconsider celibacy in ways no amount of whipping would dispel.

“One of Christ’s soldiers,” Señor Eduardo had called himself and his Jesuit brethren, but his certainty was shaken. And the two old priests clearly didn’t want the dump kids to stay at Lost Children; their halfhearted questioning about the safety of the circus had been more a matter of priestly protocol than of genuine concern or conviction.

“Those children are so wild—I suppose they could be eaten by wild animals!” Father Alfonso had said, throwing up his hands—as if such a fate would be fitting for dump kids.

“They do lack restraint—they could fall off those
swinging
things!” Father Octavio had chimed in.

“Trapezes,” Pepe had said helpfully.

“Yes! Trapezes!” Father Octavio had cried, almost as if the idea appealed to him.

“The boy won’t be swinging from anything,” Edward Bonshaw had assured the priests. “He’ll be a
translator
—at least he won’t be a dump-scrounger!”

“And the girl will be reading minds, telling fortunes—no swinging from anything for her. At least she won’t end up a prostitute,” Brother Pepe had told the two priests; Pepe knew the priests so well—the
prostitute
word was the clincher.

“Better to be eaten by wild animals,” Father Alfonso had said.

“Better to fall off the trapezes,” Father Octavio had of course concurred.

“I knew you would understand,” Señor Eduardo had told the two old priests. Yet, even then, the Iowan looked uncertain about which side he should be on. He looked like he wondered what he’d been arguing
for.
Why was the circus
ever
such a good idea?

And now—once more navigating the avenue of troupe tents, on the lookout for elephant shit—Edward Bonshaw hobbled uncertainly on his tender bare feet. The Iowan was slumped against Flor, clinging to the bigger, stronger transvestite for support; the short distance to the lions’ cages, only two minutes away, must have seemed an eternity for Edward Bonshaw—meeting Flor, and merely thinking about her breasts and her penis, had altered the trajectory of his life.

That walk to the lions’ cages was a skywalk for Señor Eduardo; to the
missionary, this short distance amounted to
his
walk at eighty feet without a net—however much the Iowan hobbled, these were
his
life-changing steps.

Señor Eduardo slipped his small hand into Flor’s much bigger palm; the missionary almost fell when she squeezed his hand in hers. “The truth is,” the Iowan struggled to say, “I am falling for you.” Tears were streaming down his face; the life he had long sought, the one he’d flagellated himself for, was over.

“You don’t sound too happy about it,” Flor pointed out to him.

“No, no—I
am,
I’m truly very happy!” Edward Bonshaw told her; he began telling Flor how Saint Ignatius Loyola had founded an asylum for fallen women. “It was in Rome, where the saint announced he would sacrifice his life if he could prevent the sins of a single prostitute on a single night,” Señor Eduardo was blubbering.

“I don’t want you to sacrifice your life, you idiot,” the transvestite prostitute told him. “I don’t want you to
save
me,” she said. “I think you should start by
fucking
me,” Flor told the Iowan. “Let’s just start with that, and see what happens,” Flor told him.

“Okay,” Edward Bonshaw said, almost falling again; he was staggering, but lust has a way.

The girl acrobats ran by them in the avenue of troupe tents; the green and blue spangles on their singlets glimmered in the lantern lights. Also passing them, but not running, was Dolores; she was walking fast, but she saved her running for the training beneficial to a superstar skywalker. The spangles on her singlet were silver and gold, and her anklets had silver chimes; as Dolores walked past them, her anklets were chiming. “Noise-making, attention-seeking slut!” Lupe called after the pretty skywalker. “
Not
your future—forget about it,” was all Lupe said to Juan Diego.

Ahead of them were the lion cages. The lions were awake now—all four of them. The eyes of the three lionesses were alertly following the pedestrian traffic in the avenue of troupe tents. The sullen male, Hombre, had his narrowed eyes fixed on the approaching lion tamer.

To the passersby in the busy avenue, it might have seemed that the crippled boy stumbled, and that his little sister caught hold of his arm before he could fall; someone watching the dump kids more closely might have imagined that the limping boy simply bent over to kiss his sister in the area of one of her temples.

What actually happened was that Juan Diego whispered in Lupe’s
ear. “If you really can tell what the lions are thinking, Lupe—” Juan Diego started to say.

“I can tell what
you’re
thinking,” Lupe interrupted him.

“For Christ’s sake, just be careful what you
say
the lions are thinking!” Juan Diego whispered to her harshly.

“
You’re
the one who has to be careful,” Lupe told him. “Nobody knows what I’m saying unless you tell them,” she reminded him.