Nightmare Carnival

It was the grimmest, and shortest, show they’d ever played, the barrists going through their trapeze and tightrope routine like mechanical automatons, not even bothering with bows to acknowledge the applause. North had the zebras pull the big cats through the ring in their cages, making a show of snapping his whip, tugging on tails to get the beasts to snarl and roar and paw the bars more in uncertainty than ferocity before trotting them back out of the big top without opening a single cage. The clowns and dogs rolled in so quickly behind him the specs didn’t realize they were getting shortchanged, not that it seemed to matter. It wasn’t the circus they’d come to see. The four elephants didn’t even perform, the Bishop having them walk with Madelaine down to the derrick car, trunk to tail in single file, to keep her company.

On the midway, shills and grifters played lightning-fast shell games and three-card monte while nimble-fingered pickpockets drifted through the crowd, lifting money and tickets and jewelry and watches. The mooches patted jackets and rummaged handbags in bewilderment while grinders kept them spinning along like leaves swirling in a rain-swollen creek. The police didn’t even need to be juiced to turn a blind eye, all of them down at the rail yard guarding Madelaine.

In the sideshow, the marks were run through ten-in-one shows in record time, so hastily most weren’t aware there wasn’t actually much to see; Theresa had substituted an assortment of pickled punks and devil babies floating in jars of formaldehyde for her act while she got her small animals safely packed up. If anyone recognized Mae as the woman who had sung to an elephant, there was no flash of surprise in their dull, vacuous eyes.

Then the show was over, and the circus lot emptied in minutes, all of Ashton along with thousands more who had swarmed into town for the execution sprinting to the rail yard at the far end of the town. They poured over boxcars, climbed onto locomotive engines, scaled water towers, shimmied up telegraph poles like a swarm of ants.

Mae knew the Bishop would string it out as long as he could to give the rousties time for the teardown, tents and stick joints and gennies and rides dismantled, the animals herded, the equipment loaded onto wagons and hauled to the circus train as fast as possible.

Mae had accepted a ride in one of the tiny pony carts with an elderly caller. When she reached the derrick, Madelaine had already been chained to a rail, the big elephant shifting back and forth fretfully, head down, trunk hanging limply. A few hundred yards down from the track, a steam shovel hissed and clattered as it dug a deep pit, several dozen railroad men shoveling out a muddy grave.

North strode across the rail yard, big shoulders hunched under a plaid shirt, suspenders hanging off his hips. He helped Mae down from the pony cart, the old caller’s hand on her waist to keep her balanced.

“You shouldn’t have come, Mae.”

“She should have at least one friend with her,” Mae said, surprised herself with how hot her throat felt. North looked away, his face reddening.

The Bishop listened as one of the lot manager’s boys whispered in his ear, then nodded without a word to the pair of rousties standing by Madelaine. One drew a thick chain around the elephant’s neck while the other fitted the end to a steel ring. In the expectant silence, the derrick operator started the winch, drawing the chain up tightly. Madelaine stopped rocking, then — as if she believed this was just some new trick she was expected to perform — she heaved both front feet off the ground and stood upright obediently on her back feet. She lifted her trunk and curled it in a meticulous salute to her forehead, holding her pose as if expecting applause. None came. Mae bit her lips to fight back tears.

The derrick operator kept rattling the chain upward, taking up the slack. Madelaine began to struggle as one back foot slowly lifted as well.