Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top (30 page)

We had an appointment with a dead man. And we were bringing a dead woman to meet him.

The journey took most of the morning. Not far from town we heard the pealing of church bells.

“I do feel heathen,” remarked Mr. Whitman.

Something in the character of the anthem gave me pause. “No,” I said slowly, recalling hundreds of church bells in hundreds of towns across America. “Those are funeral bells.”

“Collins,” we said together, and he urged the horses toward the sound of the bells.

We reached the church just in time to see a procession from the church, with six men bearing the coffin toward its final resting place. I could not imagine that so many people had turned out for a funeral for a man none of them had properly met, but then I remembered—our business thrived upon the scarcity of spectacle. Surely the funeral of a stranger counted as a spectacle worth seeing.

Mr. Whitman pulled the horses to a halt. I leapt down nimbly enough to turn a few heads; he followed less prettily, and hurried around the cart. “Stop!” I cried, running toward the funeral party.

The men bearing pall stopped, as one does when hearing the word “Stop” cried in a high woman’s voice; at once I was the center of attention. I sought the preacher. His eyes lit up at the sight of me, and I knew he recognized me—from the show or from our prior delivery of the body, I could not guess. “Do not bury this man yet,” I pleaded, with the whole town looking on. “We—we must add something to the coffin.”

There were looks all around. The preacher took me around the shoulders. “It would not do to open the coffin now,” he said, under his breath. “Give his effects to the poor. We should carry on.”

“No,” said Mr. Whitman, coming up behind us. The pastor turned—and he let out a start: for Mr. Whitman had laid the glass coffin containing the Queen of Sheba at his feet.

No performance of ours could have commanded the utter attention that did this simple act.
Oh
, I thought;
if Mr. Prince knew the show we were giving for free!
But I did not speak. The preacher drew away from me, and he bent low over the coffin. “Is this—is this—a
girl
?”

“Please open the coffin,” I said again.

He stood, with a face like he had been smacked by an iron. “Let the coffin down,” he said, in a hoarse voice, to the pallbearers. “Gentlemen, please take your ladies home.” No one moved. “Then—please—open the coffin.”

The six bemused men obeyed. Someone procured a hammer, and the nails were pried free; the coffin lid came open with a stench and a grisly sight, though not so much as I had feared for a man three days dead. Mr. Whitman took up the Queen under his arm—that is how small she was—and brought her coffin alongside Collins’s in the thick churchyard grass. He found the latch upon the glass and, gently as a mother peeling back a blanket from her child, laid open the casket so that the two dead souls lay side by side under the blue sky.

Then—with a hiss of a kettle left too long on the fire—the Queen of Sheba
rose
.

She lurched up in her coffin, shroud tearing at her mouth so that it gaped wide as a scream, turning her head from side to side blindly. The air filled with cries of horror. We could not have planned a better show! Her bone-thin wrists arched as she scrabbled to take hold of her coffin walls; then her groping fingers fell upon the coffin nearby, and further still she crawled, until the brittle hands took hold of Collins within his coffin.

She hissed, wordlessly. Her voice was like dry wind. By spasms she jerked her way to join him in the coffin.

The mouth-rent in her shroud opened wider. Like spiders the dry fingers clutched his jaws. Then she drew herself down, down, to his face, and her tiny teeth showed and then—the teeth tore into his dead flesh, over and over, and the hiss of her voice became a gurgle, a terrible glugging, and her breath bubbled with gore.

I screamed; we all screamed, I am sure. Heedless of us, the dead Queen feasted.

“Bury them!” I shrieked. “Bury them both!”

Mr. Whitman leapt forward to Collins’s coffin. Laying his shoulder to it he shoved the box along the grass until it came to the hole that had been laid open for it. “Help me!” he roared. One brave soul came to his side. Together they hurled the coffin, and the pair joined within in awful union, six feet deep.

Mr. Whitman scrambled for the shovel, and began throwing dirt over the Queen and her prey; I dashed to his side and did the same with my hands. Before I knew it, others had joined. We rained grave dirt upon them until we could see them no longer, then until the dirt stopped moving, then until the earthen mound beside the stone was unexpectedly gone.

I fell back and felt Mr. Whitman’s arms catch me. “She is gone,” he said. His hands shook, but they held mine firmly nonetheless. “I suspect she is hungry no more.”

“Then let us leave her here,” I whispered.

And while the crowd of good Christians made mob among themselves, trying to understand what we or they had done, we left behind the buried dead, the empty coffin, and the best audience of our lives.

That was our adventure. Of course we had trouble from Mr. Prince when at last we returned, late that evening, as all prepared to move along to our next engagement the following day. Mr. Whitman took him aside and made the argument that by disposing of the Queen we had in fact preserved the entire circus. He did not go so far as to call us heroes. But we did it privately to one another.

His argument worked; we kept our jobs. Mercifully, we had no more deaths or nightmares. Mr. Prince did take some revenge from our salaries, but this did us little harm in the long run: we extorted much of the difference from Billy, whose life we insisted that we had saved. And as Mr. Whitman and I learned soon enough, while we wintered between traveling seasons and I took his name as my own, the old adage is true: Two may live as cheaply as one.

And for that happy discovery, I can thank no one but the Queen of Sheba!

Circus Circus

Eric M. Witchey

When the circus was very small, it believed it would grow up to have many multi-colored big tops with banners on the support poles and three rings in each tent. It lived in Mexico then, and its smaller tents were brand new—the Bottle Throw, the Wheel of Fortune, and especially the Palmist and Mystic—because she loved the circus most; and love was, after all, the food that made the circus grow.

The circus worked hard and won the favor of many. It grew, and one day it came across an old circus that was dying. On its last day, the old circus gave up its three big tops. One became a temporary shelter for refugees from a country farther south than Mexico. One became a cover over a produce market in a large village in the Yucatan. The third was given as a gift to the younger, growing circus.

Like other circuses, it went north in the summer, to the land of white people and hard languages. Always, though, it returned to Mexico for the winters. There, like the other wintering circuses, it traveled from village to village. At each village, the circus would find a small, clear area, an area nobody wanted or cared about, a place to dig in its poles and stakes and lift its canvas and lay out its midway and wait for the laughter and love of the children.

At each village, it sent out its people—the stilt walker, the acrobat (because it was still a young circus and only had one acrobat), the fat lady who was also the bearded lady, and the many clowns because anyone could be painted up and sent out to hang fliers and talk to children.

Children.

The circus grew strong on the love of children. It sent out its people to call to the children and bring them from far and wide to spend their pesos and to toss the balls and spin the wheels and have their fortunes told.

Many years passed, and finally a year came when the circus pushed farther south than it had ever gone before—far into steaming highlands and jungles. There, it came on a village, and it settled into a clearing among the trees and called to the people all around, and they came, as they always did. Even though it was in the dark forest, the village was the same as so many villages, and the circus was happy. It had given up the idea that it would one day have many big tops. It had given up the idea that its tents and banners would always be bright. It had grown enough to have two acrobats and to take delight in giving delight.

The children came. They came and played in the midway and laughed.

One boy, a boy who hoped to grow up and join the circus—there was always such a boy in every village, and the circus was careful to pay attention to them—came on the last night before it was time for the circus to move on.

He was a smallish boy who might one day make a good acrobat. Unlike the other boys of his village, this boy had red hair and freckles on bronze skin. The boy had only five centavos, and the circus wondered how he would spend them. At the big top, certainly. Or watching the Geek.

But the boy had purpose in his stride, and he went along the midway straight to the fortune teller. He walked in and sat down on one side of her round table. He stared into her crystal like he might see for himself the things that only a gifted seer like the circus’ Señora Bruja could see.

Señora Bruja, her real name was Maria, swished her skirts and flipped her gray hair and flashed her many rings before she sat down.

The circus liked that. It liked Maria more than most of the others. In its earliest memories, she was there. Sometimes at night she would talk to the circus, and the circus would listen, and it made the circus happy.

The boy watched all.

Señora Bruja settled in her chair. She held out her hand, palm up, and said, “Show the spirits that you value their advice.”

The boy stared into the crystal and ignored her.

“Cross my palm with gold,” she said.

The boy looked up. “This is all I have.” He put his centavos on her palm. “Is it enough?”

Señora Bruja closed her long fingers around the coins. She looked up toward the top of her tent, which was not so new as it had once been, and she said, “Spirit of the circus, this boy begs our advice. Is it enough?”

Of course it was.

No circus could turn down a boy who might one day run away to join it.

The circus rustled its canvas and flapped its tent flaps and tugged on the ropes and stakes just enough to answer.

“It is enough,” she said.

The boy’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened.

“Ask your question, then, my son,” Señora Bruja said. She slipped the coins into a pouch at her waist and closed her eyes to wait for the boy to compose himself and offer his question.

After some time, she opened her eyes to see why the boy was silent. From time to time, boys would get scared and run away without ever asking their questions.

He was still there, sitting and staring.

“Well?” she said.

“The circus can answer you.” He said it like he knew it was true.

Now, normally Señora Bruja would have said something mystical and scary, but this boy wasn’t pretending. He wasn’t being silly. He was just saying that the circus could answer, and since it could, Señora Bruja just said, “Yes.”

“Wow,” the boy said.

“Yes,” Señora Bruja said.

“Will you ask the circus something for me?”

Neither the circus nor Señora Bruja, in all her years as a fortune teller, had ever met such a boy as this. She leaned forward, put her elbows on her table, and slid her crystal out of the way so she could see the boy better. “What is your name, boy?” she asked.

“Manolo,” he said. “And I want to grow up and be a circus.”

“You mean join the circus?”

“No,” Manolo said. “I want to be a circus. I want to have tents and acrobats and animals, and I want all the children from all the villages to love me.”

Señora Bruja sat back. “Ah,” she said. “I see.”

For a while, the two people sat and just looked at each other. The circus is patient in the way that things are and people are not, but even a circus can’t wait forever. Finally, it flapped and tugged and reminded the two that they were not alone.

“Yes,” Señora Bruja said to the circus. “I will ask again.”

“The circus,” the boy said.

“It wants to know your questions.”

The boy sat up straight. He looked all around him.

“Just ask,” Señora Bruja said. “It will hear you.”

“How can I become a circus?”

Neither Señora Bruja nor the circus had ever heard such a question, and neither of them had any idea how to answer. They sat for a while. A line formed outside Señora Bruja’s tent. The circus thought and thought. Finally, it opened tent flaps and tugged on ropes and whispered, “Be a boy who loves to smile and laugh.”

Señora Bruja spoke the words for the boy.

The words seemed to make the boy sad. Finally, his green eyes narrowed and his freckled cheeks colored like a golden-red rose, and he smiled broad and wide. “I will,” he said. “I want to be a circus, so I will!”

He left and others came to sit in the chair. Others came to ask about lovers and money and children and people long ago gone to other lives and worlds.

No other child came. No other question caught the circus’ attention or surprised Señora Bruja.

That night, lying in the stillness and darkness before sleep, Señora Bruja spoke. “The boy,” she said.

The circus knew the one.

“He is very sad.”

“Why?” the circus asked.

“He is not like the other children here.”

“So he is special?” the circus asked.

“So he is, but he is also hurt deep in his heart—alone. Perhaps he should come with us.”

“He wants to become a circus,” the circus said. “He is a boy.”

“Circuses come from somewhere,” Señora Bruja said, “as do boys. Perhaps they are not so different.”

“Tomorrow,” the circus said, “when it is time to leave, we will ask him to come along.”

Señora Bruja smiled, nodded, and slept.

The circus did not.

During the deepest part of the night, the weather in the forest changed. Clouds came to cover the stars. Breezes became winds. The smell of distant rain and dust mingled in the wind and pulled at canvas and sisal ropes.