Buttercup (11 page)

The boy showed no fear. Eyes were hazel with flecks of amber, a pair of eyes that were surprisingly familiar. Before he could connect with the familiarity, the child kicked him square in the nuts. Silvio howled, dropping the boy. He wheezed, stepping back and grabbing his groin. The child rolled under the train car, away from his reach. “You little fucker!”

he grunted, almost going to his knees. He looked up to see the boy in the wind, running for all it was worth.

***

Her eyes lifted to the cloudy mirror. They met with her surrogate mother’s. Joyce fanned away-imagined heat. It was nearly fifty degrees outside, but Joyce could always be found somewhere sweating in a slip and robe. She watched Della, silent as always, balancing with another hand on her cane.

Lady Joyce never recovered from that snakebite six years ago.

Madame Danique had to give up all her snakes and just read her cards because of it. Still, it wasn’t justice for Lady Joyce. Being a carnie star was all she wanted. Accepting retirement made her bitter and addicted to the hooch. Della gave her a small smile. The end of Joyce’s career dancing the hooch was the beginning of Della’s. Crippled by life and circumstance, Joyce walked with a cane now. She barely escaped an amputation of her foot. She was management for the girl’s tents and the director of Della’s hooch shows. Though she never complained, it hurt Della to see her so abandoned to her fate, especially on her featured nights. Guilt sat in her gut like one of Benny the Strong Man’s weights over many things since that fateful night.

“I was telling Tiny,” Joyce began, “we got enough going with the girls now. You don’t have to dance the hooch forever. It was never meant to be forever.”

Della nodded. Joyce’s concern was genuine. But they both knew the truth. Buttercup was bigger than any of them, and Tiny lined his pockets from town to town, mostly off of her act. He’d just as soon see them both dead before he’d part with money. Besides, Della had grown used to it. The only rules Tiny agreed to when it came to her life as Buttercup was that she was never to turn tricks for townies. After what happened with Silvio, the entire carnival made the rule law. She was just as much a prisoner to the hooch dancing as Joyce was to her cane. In that way, their misery was the same.

“I gots Sylvester to think of. He already out there pickin’ up bad habits from Peanut and the men. I want him to go to a colored college and be something more than a carnie.”

“We take care of our own. You talking crazy—going to college,”

Joyce scoffed.

Della shrugged. “I’s his mother. I’m talking like a mother. You seen the boy lately? He ain’t a baby no mo’, Joyce. He growin’ like a weed, and smart, so smart. I found his little jar of money. I think he stealin’

again, and Tiny will skin him if he is. I can’t keep up with him here. He needs to know there’s more than this.”

“He a carnie,” Joyce snapped. “Colored boy got more chance here in the carnival than he does in that shitty world. You of all people should know that.”

“He more than that, much more than that. And for the record, I ain’t done nothing to shame him into thinking’ he ain’t and to make him think he less than a boy like all them other boys he see in and out of these towns.” She mumbled the rest under her breath. Turning away from Joyce’s scrutiny, she fixed the yellow-feathered garter around her thigh.

“You lie to him,” Joyce said. “You tell him that his daddy is some magic man that run off. That's your story, gal. Not his.”

Della sighed. She understood Joyce’s attachment to her child. She knew Joyce loved him too. But sadly, she knew that the chains of the carnival weren’t put on her neck by just Tiny. Joyce had been secretly unforgiving when they discovered she was pregnant from Silvio. Joyce even made mention more than once of her own barren womb.

Then there was the hooch dancing. Della started dancing after Sylvester was born as Tiny insisted. It had gotten the carnival enough money to hire more girls. Tiny told her she could then quit and raise her fatherless child at the carnival in peace. Tiny kept announcing to the townies that it would be her last show. But the money kept coming, and so she danced for her son and for herself. She didn’t know much else she could do. She was so famous now—as famous as a colored hooch dancer in a carnival could be. In fact, she was so famous she’d even been invited to a Texas Rodeo. Della was now living her mentor’s dream. She looked back at Joyce.

“Say what’s troublin’ you, Joyce. The real story.”

“I want more for you. Always have. Look at you. Broke my heart when you got saddled with a kid but then to have you dancin’ for these fools. It ain’t your life.”

“What you s’pose I do? Settle down? With who? This is who we is, Joyce. It’s who I is. And that’s fine with me,” she lied.

“And your outlaw. What about him? You seen them papers. He’s a bank robber now, a killer too. You been collecting his wanted posters.”

“You goin’ through my things again?” Della snapped.

“I was seeing to Sylvester when I found those papers. All these years, you still thinking on him? After what he done?”

“He did nothin’. You and I both know it. Tiny… it don’t matter. He ain’t comin’ here. Tiny made sure of that. He don’t know about Sylvester and if’in he did, it make no difference,” she said bitterly. “That was a long time ago. It’s done.”

“Time don’t matter when you still wantin’ him. Get him out of your head. You right. He don’t want you or that boy. We your family.”

Oh how the truth burned. Della closed her eyes, refusing to show scant emotion to Joyce. But it burned through her. Yes, she collected his wanted posters and listened for gossip. He went to prison because of her.

Not the rape. No, the law wouldn’t throw a white man in jail just for that.

And there was no rape. But Tiny was able to claim he stole from him as if she was a prize mule he broke in too early. It was then she realized the true nature of the man she considered a father. It was then she accepted that Silvio would hate her forever. “You right. Silvio ‘Bloodshot’ Garelli got bigger plans than me.” She sniffed back the moisture in her nose and eyes. “Now, they playin’ my song,” Della said, with an acceptance of her fate.

Tonight she’d chosen a red and gold Kimono they bought from a Chinaman when they passed through Virginia. It was made of satin. She was told by the rousties that she looked like royalty when wearing it—a true carnival queen. A few have propositioned her more than once, especially nasty, grimy Peanut. Behind Tiny’s back, he persisted. When Della spurned him at every turn, he took to her Sylvester, using him to get closer to her and teaching him things she didn’t like. She’d have to deal with Peanut, one way or another. As for their offers for a good time, she obeyed Tiny’s rule and passed. Her appetite for sex ended when she walked off the stage. Tiny’s wish that she never be touched as her punishment held true.

Joyce shifted in her cane from one hand to the other, her face pinched in disgust. She nodded that Della looked fine. Della winked and went to the curtain. “Find Sylvester, will you? I don’t want him runnin’

wild with no shoes on. He’ll catch the death.”

“Della?”

Della stopped. She looked back at Joyce who managed a weak smile. “I worry ‘cause I love you. I love you and Sylvester.”

“I love ya too, ma.” Della winked.

Lies, Secrets, and Hooch

Silvio dusted his hat off on the side of his leg. He’d wasted time on the kid and lost his way. Situating his hat back on his head, he walked straight for the hooch tent. For her. The Indian barely looked up until he pushed some bills on him. Before he could offer change, Silvio went inside. The men were whooping it up. Four white girls in nothing but their garters danced, arms locked with each other. They kicked their legs left then right, flashing pussy and shaking tits. Silvio frowned.
Had he
missed her
?

Silvio scanned the crowd. Tiny was off to the left, next to the phonograph player. The curtain was drawn. Carnie men were walking around collecting money in their hats. The longer you stayed, the more you paid. This show wasn’t even close to the one he’d been looking for.

He needed the treacherous beauty who visited him in his dreams.

Silvio stalked around the gathered crowd, keeping to the shadows.

He eyed the entrance as he went. The Indian didn’t follow. The other men posted were carnies, body shoving townies for crowd control. Tiny was possibly the only man who would finger him on sight. That wasn’t likely to happen. The midget remained focused on orchestrating the show. The dancing troupe broke out with the ladies giving the boys their money worth, letting them feel, sniff, even lick. His mind flitted back to the time he and Jelly had sat on the front row, vying for the same. His teeth clenched under the tension gathered in his jaw. Silvio watched the back curtain, anger rising, his nostrils flared. Had he made the wrong choice by coming here? Risking his gang, his freedom, for her? Was she nothing more than one of these whores and not worth the trouble? He stepped back, feeling like a fool.

“Give ‘em a round of applause, boys!”

The others did, clapping and whistling. The midget walked slowly across the stage with the aid of his cane. He had aged a tad, but he was the same cruel bastard that watched and laughed as he and Jelly were beaten and then carted off. Maybe he should kill him first.

“That there is the finest pussy north of Dixie!”

One man howled. Tiny smiled, nodding his oversized head. “But that ain’t all. Is it boys? That ain’t the pussy you come for…”

“No, sir. It ain’t! Bring out Buttercup!” another shouted.

“I’m in the mood for some chocolate pussy!” another yelled, getting slapped on his back by several others.

Silvio’s hands bunched into fists. If he were close enough, he’d snap the bastard’s neck for disrespecting him. He kept his cool. He had to be sure. Was she still his Buttercup? His eyes remained trained on the curtain. From his vantage point, he could see nothing, not even a shadow.

But he felt her. Tense, alert, and anxious, he stepped back from the men to the furthest end of the tent. Tiny waved his cane at those gathered.

“Exotic, beautiful, home grown here in the Carnival. She’s ripe and unlike any Negress you’ve ever beheld. Now you know the rules, boys.

This pussy you look at, but don’t touch. My men will see to it.” The midget tapped the point of his cane three times on the stage. “I give you Buttercup.” Tiny’s last words silenced the crowd. He waddled back over to the phonograph and dropped the needle on the record. The jazzy flirty tune that played previously was replaced by a low drumming melody followed by the sexy whine of a sax.
Race music
, possibly. With his hands in his pockets, parting his heavy coat, Silvio waited.
The rules were look and
don’t touch
? He was a man that lived outside of the rules.

***

Trixie walked in. She wore a sack of a dress and again no shoes.

Della didn’t understand the carnies and her son, for that matter, that insisted on no shoes. She once did the same, when she was one of them.

Their eyes met. Trixie rolled hers and walked out. She was now Joyce’s guard dog to see to the girls. Trixie hadn’t seen a stage since Buttercup’s big solo debut, thankfully. She was nothing more than the lot lizard. She always was.

It definitely was not Della’s fault. Tiny’s rules governed all their lives. Joyce told her that men in several counties offered a pretty bounty for a chance to fuck her. Why Tiny never accepted was a mystery to most of the carnies. It wasn’t as if he was above it. Hell, Joyce was his lady and he’d let anyone fuck her in her day if they were paying right. Maybe it was guilt over Sylvester’s pa? Maybe he did see her as a daughter? Maybe he feared those white boys would only use the opportunity to be exceptionally mean to her, meaner than he had been when he stopped speaking to her for the first year of Sylvester’s birth. Whatever the reason, she was grateful. She only had room in her heart for one boy now. Her Sylvester. She never wanted her son to grow up and think his mother was a whore. Hooch was a sin but not the greatest in the eyes of a son for his mother.

I give you Buttercup….

It was her music. Della closed her eyes and went to a place she often visited when she performed. She walked through the curtain.

Always the townies, liquored or not, paused at her arrival. Some glared, resentful of her beauty, a colored that stirred their desires. Others watched with unbridled lust while others in mild curiosity. Still they all paid. She rolled her head, loosening the tensions in the tendons along her neck. Her arms slowly rose at her sides. Two of her girls arrived. They were naked except for a skirt of coins. They wore exotic painted masks over their faces. Each girl rubbed their hands along her back until either stood at her side. They reached to the front of her robe and together peeled it away from her body. Della's skirt of feathers and bells swayed as did her hips.