Nightmare Carnival

Billy’s wife, Theresa, a hatchet-faced woman from New Jersey who Mae had never seen smile, billed herself as “The Incredible Jasaleena, Hindoo Serpent Charmer from Bombay,” and kept her trio of immense pythons in a heated cabinet in their sleeper. As well as breeding small lizards for the strolling butchers — concession salesmen who peddled them as circus “bugs” on the midway to small children as pets — she jealously maintained her own flea circus. She crafted elaborate harnesses from hair-thin gold wire to shackle the insects to miniature Ferris wheels and crafted flea horses pulling tiny coaches with flea Cinderellas waving from inside. Fleas in tutus were forced to “dance” to diminutive orchestras by hidden candles heating the bottom of the exhibit until they thrashed about in a frenzy, giving credulous mooches the notion the insects had been trained to play instruments or pull carts. But such treatment took a toll on the performers; replacing the dead fleas with live ones was a routine chore. She dressed the dead fleas up as wedding couples, which Billy sold alongside the souvenir photos of a near-naked Theresa with her snakes draped strategically to maintain her modesty.

A few weeks after Mischa died, Bishop purchased five more elephants along with a sea lion and a team of sturdy draft horses to pull the stock wagons from the train to the setup lot. All of the elephants had been born in other circuses and sold on as soon as they could be separated from the cows. If he’d harbored any illusion that Madelaine would feel a natural maternal instinct for the newcomers, the Bishop was sadly disappointed. One of the calves bawled nonstop and refused to eat from the moment he was unloaded from the train wagon, then lay down and died within a week. The other four fared better, healthy if half Madelaine’s size. But while they performed well enough with Madelaine, even deferred to her, the younger elephants had already formed a tight camaraderie of their own while Madelaine still pined for her lost friend.

Without Mischa, the normally good-natured Madelaine seemed bewildered, turning sullen and uncooperative. North was enough of a professional to know how to balance the carrot with the stick to get the best out of his animals. But not even chaining Madelaine down when she misbehaved and beating her with an ankus until she had to be painted with “wonder dust” to hide her wounds before a performance worked nearly as well as had Mischa’s gentle persuasion — his fingers stroking under her wrinkled eye, a whisper in her ear enough to work miracles. North, exasperated, stalked off in frustration as the big elephant turned her face to a wall and rocked for hours with her eyes closed like a disconsolate child.

Pieter Schmidt, Kleininger’s dwarf sidekick who was shot out of a spring-loaded cannon in a puff of fake smoke into a net a dozen times a week, refused to go anywhere near the elephants, terrified of them. Olga, smallest of the Van der Honigsberg sisters trapeze ensemble, complained the howdah was too tight a fit, her legs cramping. They’d tried the monkey, but Madelaine didn’t react well to the gabbling creature struggling hysterically as it was tied down in the howdah, nor did the monkey adhere to its training discipline, no matter how emphatically it was applied to the screeching animal’s head and shoulders. The Bishop finally conceded defeat, and the howdah remained empty.

The oversized poster of happier days crept past Mae’s window and disappeared as the train rolled to a stop, steam hissing loudly, hot metal clanking. Max stirred, stretching naked arms as vibrantly decorated as the circus posters, his strongman-thick body swathed in tattoos of tropical flowers, foundering shipwrecks and mermaids, exotic butterflies and mythical dragons. A campaign portrait of Charles E. Hughes, Senior, in a cartouche of laurel leaves and a furled American flag, covered half his back. Max smiled at Mae, and blinked out the window of the railcar, scratching his unshaven cheeks.

“I think we’re early,” Mae said.

Max coughed, the sound wet and sticky in his lungs, as he rolled a cigarette and lit it. Inhaling deeply, he left it in his mouth as he pulled on a button-up shirt and drew up his canvas overalls, one strap of his suspenders nearly frayed through. “Best be getting the rousties up for the haul, then.” He shoved his feet, still in the socks he’d slept in, into his boots, banged on the partition separating their compartment from Eric and Lavinia’s, eliciting a drowsy groan from the other side. The Bishop had a team of roustabouts along with employing a few forty-milers and itinerant wobblies willing to work for a meal and a bunk before the circus moved on. But any of the able-bodied performers were expected to muck in as well. Max gave Mae a tobacco-perfumed kiss, then jumped down out of the car to help unload the train and set up for the parade through town.