The Circus in Winter Read online

  She kissed him on the cheek. "Well, honey, if it would make you feel better."

  Doctor after doctor came by train. From the hallway outside the bedroom, Porter heard them murmuring, asking Irene where it hurt. None was ever present, though, when a spell occurred. The doctors opened the door, rubbing their beards or their heads, whispering that they wanted to open her up, some to look at her liver or her intestines, others her heart. One even thought the problem was her lumpy skull. It was the ague, some doctors said, caught from one of the mosquitoes hatched in the fetid summer waters of the Winnesaw. Others called it severe dyspepsia or yellow fever. The last doctor, the best in the country, came by train all the way from Boston, and even he was puzzled. All of them left (as a kind of apology) pills and syrups. The castor oil and calomel turned her stomach inside out, so Porter threw them out and began spooning tiny drops of morphine and laudanum onto her tongue. She slept soundly, at last. The bottles stood like sentries on the bedside table, guarding her from the beast's return. Teaspoons became tablespoons. Trickles became rivers. She was flooded with opiates, floating away.

  Then it was spring again, and he was no closer to finding a cure for Irene than before. Porter mounted the stairs to wake her from a nap and found her already up. The red curtains were open, and she gazed out the window at the unfinished mansion on the hill.

  Without turning her head, she said, "They'll be coming back soon, I suppose."

  "No, the doctors are gone."

  She pointed out the window. "I meant them."

  "Next week. Foreman says it will be finished before the snow flies."

  "Yes, I'm sure it will." Irene said, "I never wanted it."

  He sat down on the bed. "I didn't know that." Even as he said it, Porter knew it wasn't true.

  Irene's laugh was brittle. Turning her head from the window, she said, "I married you because I wanted to live differently. I wanted my life to be an adventure, but you wanted me to live as I was accustomed." She spat the last word from her mouth.

  Porter felt his failure sitting like a gargoyle on his heart.

  "You must promise me you won't let those doctors operate. They don't know what they're looking for anyway. I can just see them gathered around, cutting here and there. A bunch of pirates digging for treasure without a map."

  Porter didn't recognize the cynical, sharp-edged woman in the bed, but he gave her his word. It was, after all, the only thing she wanted from him.

  THIS IS HOW Wallace Porter became a circus man, but not why.

  Not long after the doctors stopped coming, the Hollenbach Circus Menagerie came to Lima, a locomotive followed by fifteen red and yellow railcars. They pulled into the siding along the Winnesaw, and the overalled roustabouts led twenty horses needing new shoes to Porter's livery stable on Broadway—conveniently only a block from the railyard. It would be a fateful day.

  Porter hadn't been out of the house in over a month, leaving his stable manager to attend to his daily business affairs. The winter days had flowed one into the next and nothing had changed except the color fading from Irene's face. When Porter sat in her room, he talked to her whether she was asleep or not. He imagined his life devoid of Irene's illness. In that other world he maintained in his head, he discussed financial transactions with his banker, bartered with a hostler over the price of a new foal, exchanged pleasantries with Irene as he took his dinner alone in the kitchen. One night as he inspected the building site, he finally heard himself chattering away and began to fear for the state of his sanity and soul. He woke Irene and said, "Tomorrow I'm going into town. Will you be all right alone, or do you want me to send someone out to sit with you?"

  Irene shook her head.

  "You don't want me to go, or you don't want someone to come?"

  She nodded her head yes.

  "I'll leave your lunch next to the bed. You won't even have to get up."

  Irene squeezed his hand. Only then did he realize that he hadn't heard her voice in weeks.

  The next morning, Porter rode into Lima, inhaling deeply the wet spring wind. He saw the circus train sitting on the siding as he came into town, and not long after he arrived at the stable, a stumpy, balding man in an unkempt suit walked into his office. "Excuse me," he said, taking off his hat. "Clyde Hollenbach of Hollenbach's Menagerie." He pointed his walking cane. "I've got me some horses need shoeing. Folks say this is the place for it." He dressed in black, like a minister turned to the Devil—florid, rumpled, and red-eyed. His breath smelled of whiskey, his clothes of smoke sunk into the threads.

  "Are you here to put on a show?" Porter asked, but the man shook his head no. Circuses passed through Indiana sometimes, stopping in South Bend, Fort Wayne, and Indianapolis, but never before in Lima. Too small to attract a big enough crowd, most likely. Over the years, Porter had read news stories about Barnum bringing Jumbo the elephant from England, and just two years earlier, Tom Thumb had died with sweet elegies printed in most every paper.

  Hollenbach lit a cigar but didn't offer Porter one. "We're due in Carolina in three days, but these horses need tending to. Normally, I've got my own men to do the work, but I'm a bit shorthanded this season." He puffed at his cigar and stared at the wafts of smoke drifting in the air.

  "Things are slow now. We could have all those horses taken care of by tomorrow," Porter said.

  "Fine." Hollenbach stood to leave.

  "Where are you going to put all the animals? All the people? If you don't mind my asking."

  Hollenbach waved his hand. "Oh, we'll find us a lot to make camp. Sometimes I board them all in hotels and stables, but..." He didn't seem to know how to finish.

  Porter understood that money troubles don't only show up on ledgers, but also in the smell of whiskey and worry on a man. Hollenbach's eyes were slightly frantic, and his fingers twitched and twiddled. What the man needed, he decided, was a good lunch.

  At Robertson's Hotel, Hollenbach ate the beef stew and Boston brown bread offered, but seemed to enjoy the scotch more than the food. By the end of the meal, Hollenbach was soused. "Take it from me," he said, "this is the craziest business there is. Sucker born every minute, my foot. I'm the sucker!" He brought his fist down on the table, shaking the dishes and glasses. "Damn that Barnum anyway. I read that book of his and should have known better."

  "Known what better?"

  "A man can't expect to get anywhere in life when his livelihood rests on the actions of those he cannot control." Hollenbach slugged the last few fingers of his whiskey in a single gulp and poured himself a fresh glass. "They get sick. Have babies. Get lazy and pull on the wrong rope and down it all comes. And what can I do about it? I pay these people a decent wage. They have a place to sleep, and believe me, it's a better life than some of them had before." Standing up from his chair, Hollenbach said, "Allow me the honor, sir, of showing you what I'm talking about."

  They stepped out into the muddy street and walked down Broadway to the river. The railroad tracks of the Chesapeake & Ohio snaked along its banks. From the siding, the smell of campfire smoke and roasting meat drifted toward them. Porter wasn't listening to the circus proprietor's complaints, only the fiddle music ahead. The rising steam from cook pots smelled of mysterious spices, and he inhaled deeply the aromas of cooked meat, animal dung, moldy hay, and liquor. The circus people gathered in warm circles, spoke toasts with rough tongues and laughter. The doors of the railcars yawned open like black mouths, and from within, yellow and green eyes blinked, animal or human Porter could not discern. The circus people called out greetings to Hollenbach, who raised his hand and nodded in return. As Porter walked through the siding, he found a certain respect for the man beside him, who despite his swilling and swearing, made his way among this strange retinue like a general making a friendly inspection of his troops.

  At the edge of the camp, an elephant stood swinging hay into its mouth, rocking back and forth, clanking the chain around its foot. Hollenbach approached its trunk. "This is George, the only elephant le
ft. A good worker. Had to sell the rest. Cost too much to feed." George's skin sagged from protruding bones and Porter stroked the knobbly, bristled hide. One ivory tusk was tipped with a gold ball, the other was broken off, "from lifting tent poles," Hollenbach explained. Porter didn't know anything about elephants, but he knew when a creature was on its last legs. In the war, he'd watched three horses crumple beneath him, one from musket fire, two from starvation and exhaustion. George's sad eye fixed on Porter like a plea, and he had to look away.

  Hollenbach led Porter to his private railcar, his name painted in gold on the sides. The car was a modified Pullman done up in red velvet and mahogany, complete with a sleeping berth, woodstove, and armchairs. They passed the rest of the afternoon drinking more whiskey, smoking cigars. Hollenbach confessed there was not even enough money for next month's hay and soon he would have to sell his circus. The silence of the previous weeks had made Porter hungry for the sound of a human voice, even if it was Hollenbach lamenting his financial woes. He kept the thought of Irene—alone and curled in pain—in the back of his brain for as long as he could. The darkening sky said it was after five, and he was waiting for a lull in the conversation to make his departure when there came a loud rap at the door.

  "Come then," Hollenbach roared.

  The door opened, and a black-haired woman stepped into the light of the crystal sconces. She wore a white dress with a shawl draped over her shoulders and bowed slightly to Hollenbach, then to Porter.

  "What is it, Marta? So late."

  The woman, Marta, bowed again. "My baby is sick, sir," she said, the English correct, but thickly accented. "He needs a doctor."

  Hollenbach sighed and rubbed his forehead. Porter set down his glass and spoke, looking first at the woman's eyes. "I know a doctor. Byrd. Very good, and reasonable. "The last word was for Hollenbach, whose head was still cradled in his hand.

  "I thought your mother could cure these things, Marta?" Hollenbach looked at Porter. "Her mother knows magic. Chants and such. I had to let our croaker, Doc Miller, go at the end of last season, and Marta's mother has done almost as good a job. Right?"

  Marta kept her eyes lowered and clutched her shawl more tightly. "She's been cooking the broths all day. Nothing works for him. I thought you should help." Marta looked up then, her eyes narrowed into slits, and Porter understood that Hollenbach was responsible for the child beyond his duties as an employer.

  Hollenbach missed Marta's look, but not her meaning. He kept his eyes on his drink. "How is he? The baby."

  "He makes noise when he breathes and will not eat." Marta's voice was flat.

  "Well then, tomorrow morning take the baby to this Dr. Byrd, and tell him to send the bill to me." Hollenbach puffed on his cigar and blew the smoke toward her. "Normally, I'd have to deduct some from your month's wages for this, but I'll let it go this time."

  She said nothing and was turning to leave when Hollenbach said loudly, "Porter, do you know how our Marta earns her keep?" Marta stopped still, facing the door. "Turn around dear and show my friend your secret." His voice trembled with a subtle menace, but it was the money, Porter decided, not malice making Hollenbach take it out on the girl.

  Marta came to him, whipping off her shawl with a flourish and covering her hands. Her eyes were closed as if she were praying. "Lift the shawl and, without looking, take my hands."

  Hollenbach laughed. "She's a mystic."

  Porter did as she instructed and grasped her fingers. Her hands were wet, but soft, which surprised him, because he'd imagined that the hands of circus people would be rough with calluses and rope burns. Working hands. There was something odd about her hands, too, the feel of them squirming in his, that he could not place.

  Marta threw her head back, exposing the curve of her throat. Around her neck she wore a beaded necklace cinched tightly. Porter felt silly but tried to smile. Marta's eyes opened suddenly and she pulled her hands quickly away. "You should not be here. Go home."

  Hollenbach rose out of his chair. "Why?"

  "The one he loves is very sick. His hands should be taking care of her now."

  Porter shook Marta by her thin shoulders. "How did she know this? Have you seen the doctor already? Or someone in town? What kind of game are you playing?" As he shook her, the shawl fell to her feet, and then he saw her hands, thin and blue-veined with gold and silver rings encircling each finger. Porter turned her hands palms up, then palms down. On one, he counted seven, on the other eight. Fingers.

  "The extra ones are not mine," she said.

  He couldn't take his eyes off her hands. "Whose are they?"

  Marta motioned to Hollenbach with a nod of her head. "They are his mostly, but I think they are part in this world, part not. They tell me things to say, and mostly, they are true."

  Without even a word of good-bye to Hollenbach, Porter ran out of the Pullman, dodging smoldering fires and canvas tents until he reached his stable and whipped his horse home to the dying Irene.

  FOR THE LUCKY, death is a slow, quiet fade. For the rest, death humiliates, leaving us screaming and praying, covered in sweat, blood, and excrement. Dying, the final throes of it, is a messy business. Irene wanted to save her husband from this. So she staved off death, waiting for that window of opportunity when he might leave her alone. The soul is a funny thing. It can be saved and lost, fed and consumed, and sometimes, at the very end, it can be ordered to do our bidding.

  In later years, when people asked Wallace Porter what possessed him to buy a circus, he told them, "I'd been to see the elephant, that's why." Those who did not know him well assumed that, like the Ringlings, he'd seen a pachyderm somewhere and been bitten by the showman's bug. Those who'd heard his story about George the elephant's accusing eye believed that he bought Hollenbach's Menagerie as a humane act of goodwill. But others recognized the phrase from the days when gold miners and homesteaders headed West and Union boys headed South. Going to see the elephant meant you were going over the wall, into the cave, across the mountain, into the dark night beyond the firelight's reach. When you returned—if you returned—you said, "I've been to see the elephant." Some things once seen cannot be said, and so we say we've seen the elephant instead.

  DURING THAT LONG moonlit ride, Porter didn't pray. He stormed at a gallop to the dark house and saw Irene standing at the bedroom window, waving down to him as she once had, and he thought, The witch was wrong. I'm a fool running all crazy out here. He looked up again and saw it wasn't Irene, but the reflection of the moon shimmering in the window. Porter threw open the front door and ran up the stairs.

  Scattered on the floor were shards from an amber bottle, its contents already soaked into the rug. The lamp next to the bed had long since run out of oil. Caressing Irene's cold hand, he told her about Hollenbach, Marta and her fifteen fingers, George, and the circus people he had seen. As he worked a brush through her tangled nest of hair, Porter pictured his still-unfinished mansion. For the first time, he saw himself living there alone, floating ghostlike from room to room, visiting the intended nurseries and playrooms full of trunks, broken furniture, dust, and cobwebs. He saw the fields around his mansion gone fallow and brown, the barns abandoned, the tulip poplars bare.

  Irene had fouled herself, so Porter placed her slumping form in an armchair while he changed the bedding. He cleaned her with water from the basin, and as he drew the cloth between her soiled legs, he knew he would never have a child, never find the courage to marry again. Irene lay naked on the bed, her skin bluish white, dry, and scaled. He found a jar of salve and rubbed it into her skin. As he anointed her belly, he felt a knot as big as an apple in the pit of her stomach and kneaded it with his fingers, tracing curves and ridges. This apple had been a pea on their wedding day, but Porter had no way of knowing that. He thought: Instead of a baby, I planted this in my wife's womb, this beast which fed on her blood. It was inside her all the time. He dressed her in a fresh nightgown, got into bed beside her, and slept.

  When he woke, the mo
rning light glowed behind the drapes. Leaving Irene, he watched the sun rise over his land and the Cunningham farm beyond. The sky was cloudy purple, turning pink at the edges, and across River Road, flowed the sluggish Winnesaw. Far off in the distance, he heard the long, slow pull of a train whistle and wondered if Hollenbach and his troupe might be leaving already. No, he remembered. They had horseshoes to tend to, Marta's baby to take to Doc Byrd, and surely Hollenbach was in no hurry to begin a season when each day he would sink deeper into his financial hole.

  Porter saw it then, a vision clear as the sun: his name on a dozen railcars, Irene beside him in a private Pullman as they chugged across America, a circus king and queen. She was smiling and squeezing his hand, just as she had two years ago on the wedding train from New York. Then he saw his land overrun by elephants and bears, clowns romping in the grass, acrobats dancing in his trees. In his head, he tallied it up. He knew what price his stables would fetch, but how much would a circus cost? Animals and tents, calliopes and wagons. Circus people, all of them. And barns and bunkhouses to put them all in. Porter parted the red velvet curtains, and sunlight streamed into the dark bedroom. He stood back from the window to show Irene this new life. "Look," he said, almost bowing. "Look at what I'm going to do."

  JENNIE DIXIANNA

  —or

  The Secret to

  the Spin of Death

  WINTER is a long circus Sunday, a time for rest.

  To fill the cold months, the Great Porter Circus & Menagerie held nightly poker games in the cookhouse of its winter quarters in Lima, Indiana. The wind outside howled across the plains and whistled through the walls. In the corners of the room, snow gathered like dust. The players drank cheap whiskey from tin cups and sat at a round wooden table placed so close to the potbelly stove that it seemed like another player. One February night, the competitors were proprietor Wallace Porter, his friend and local businessman George Cooper, elephant keeper Hans Hofstadter, and this night, a rarity—a woman. High-flying Jennie Dixianna joined the men in a flourish of feather boa.